in again. This time he touched something geometric, metallic, and retrieved a small fireproof box. He snapped the latches and flipped open the lid. Inside was a blue spiral-bound address book, two one-hundred-dollar bills, a large empty plastic sack, and something in a cloth bag. Ford pulled the drawstrings and dumped the contents out of the bag. He sat, staring. There were several pieces of intricately carved jade, tiny parrots and pre-Columbian god figures with bleak, drilled eyes. There were also two bright-green gemstones among the jade. The stones were large, each about the size of a robin's egg, roughly cut, multifaceted, pulsing with light in the dusty sun rays that filtered through the tree canopy.
Emeralds.
As he returned the stones and the notebook to the box, the plastic sack caught his attention. It wasn't completely empty. Gathered in one corner were small beige flakes of something; something that looked like dried leaves. Ford dipped his finger in, aware of a familiar smell; a smell similiar to that of old leather. He stood quietly for a time, thinking, then put everything back into the metal box, latched it, and carried it slowly back up the mound.
The wind had turned the body so that it now faced the cabin. The vultures were back at work, and it was when Ford averted his eyes that he noticed the note for the first time: a piece of paper tacked to the avocado tree, hanging there like some kind of public notice. Ford stood looking at the note without touching it. Finally he took a few steps closer, reading:
Ford rocked back and forth on his heels, back and forth, staring. Finally he ripped the note away, carried it out into the sunlight, and read it again. Then he folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.
He stood on the high mound looking at the bay. The bay glittered in a grid of harsh afternoon light. It would be dark within two hours, and it was a forty-five-minute boat trip back to Sanibel Island. Ford stood thinking hard, hating his own indecision, then turned suddenly.
In the boat he found old three-strand nylon rope. He carried the rope back up the mound and used it to tie the bloated hands and legs. Finally he forced the shoe back onto the corpse's swollen foot.
TWO
The last thing Ford did was jot down the registration numbers of the trihull boat tied to the mangroves. He also made a fast trip around the perimeter of the island, kicking grass and mud the whole way, making sure there wasn't a second boat still hidden somewhere.
There was not.
On the trip back he stopped at a bayside restaurant that had a phone booth and started to dial the sheriff's department in Fort Myers, but then remembered that Sandy Key and Tequesta Bank were in Everglades County, just across the line. He got the number of the local sheriff's department from the front of the book. He told the woman who answered: 'A man named Rafe Hollins has been murdered. You can find his body on Tequesta Bank,' and immediately hung up. At a 7-Eleven he bought a quart of beer—Coors in a bottle—then got in his boat and headed straight out into the Gulf, needing air. The sun grew huge at dusk, pale as a Japanese moon, and Sanibel Island materialized on the horizon as a thin black line on the gray flexure of sea.
It was nearly dark by the time he got to Lighthouse Point, and he ran beneath the causeway and turned south into Dinkin's Bay. At the mouth of the bay was a strand of beach where there were coconut palms and secluded piling homes. Jessica McClure lived alone in the last house, an old clapboard place with a tin roof that was built on a point among the gumbo limbo and casuarina pines. In his first weeks on Sanibel, he'd had occasional glimpses of Jessica standing at her easel on the dock: a striking figure in faded jeans and T-shirt, a tall, lithe woman with a private, introspective expression but a friendly wave. They finally met one morning when Ford was wading the sandbar across the channel from her house, digging beak-throwers more than a foot long with chitinous beaks and pairs of wicked-looking black teeth. Jessica had watched from the dock for a time, then climbed into her little wooden skiff and puttered over. She had waved again as she got out of the boat, strode to his side, and peered into one of the collecting buckets.
'Hum ...' She had looked up at him, her expression quizzical, interested. 'They're sea snakes, right?'
Ford told the woman they were clam worms, as he got his first close look at her: pale, pale-green eyes, long auburn hair that was copper streaked in the fresh sunlight; her face like something out of a 1940s movie, Carole Lombard maybe, high oval cheeks, full mouth set in an expression of slight bemuse-ment, good skin and no makeup at all. She was probably in her late twenties but carried herself as if older; reserved but sure of herself; a woman who lived alone and liked it. She was almost as tall as Ford: the gawky, awkward teenager come of age whose beauty, in developing late, had probably spared her the self-consciousness common in beautiful women who had lived too long with the knowledge that they were always, always under inspection.
Looking into the bucket again, Jessica had said, 'Clam worms, huh? I like the color, that iridescent green. They're really kind of pretty. '
In the collecting bucket, the clam worms were writhing, their beaks protruding and retracting mechanically. Ford told her that beak-throwers had to be dug carefully, not just because they were delicate, but because they could bite, and not many people would agree with her that the worms were pretty.
Jessica had said, 'I guess most people wouldn't,' which could have come off sounding self-congratulatory but didn't because she said it so objectively, a simple observation which pleased Ford. She was smiling, more at ease but still aware she was standing knee-deep in water with a stranger. 'I'm Jessi McClure, the woman who's been waving at you.'
'I know. You're the artist.'
'And you're M.D. Ford, the guy who fixed up the old stilt house. But I don't know what the initials stand for, just that everyone calls you Doc.' She was still smiling, but not giving it too much. 'I asked about you the last time I was at the marina. So which is it?'
'Which is what?' Ford had picked up the bucket and was moving down the sandbar again.
'Do they call you Doc because of the initials, or because you have a lab and look at things under a microscope? Or maybe it's those wire-rimmed glasses.'
'I had the initials before I had the microscope. Back in high school, though, it was because my first name is Marion.'
'Marion's a nice name.'
'Easy to spell, too.'
They had spent the rest of the day together and then had dinner: Ford sitting across from her at a table at Gran Ma Dot's, feeling the sensual impact of her face, her body, but not quite sure he wanted to pursue the attraction. For one thing, he thought the quick pass might offend her. He had already found out she preferred classical music to cult rock, ocean swimming to aerobics, so maybe she was an anachronism when it came to curb-service sex, as well. For another, Pilar, the last woman he'd been involved with, had almost gotten him killed; worse, he'd been in love with her—a first for Ford. What he'd most enjoyed about the past year was living without the complications of romance; of doing whatever he damn well pleased without having to yield to the exigencies of emotion or the plans of some woman.
No involvements, he decided, not with her—at least until the rules had been established, the parameters set.
He saw her nearly every day after that; at first on the pretext of teaching her something about marine biology, then just because it was fun. Some evenings he would boat to her house on the point, or maybe jog the back way, come up quietly and surprise her. Other nights he would look out and see her porch light go on, a sure sign that she was leaving. A few minutes later he would hear her skiff's motor, and soon she would holler up from the darkness, 'Hey, Ford—how about some company?' It was a couple of weeks before he finally kissed her; touched his lips softly to hers, then harder, feeling her mouth respond, feeling her body go soft and slack as her back arched slightly. But she had pulled away then, pressing his hand to her cheek, looking up with those eyes.
Ford had said, 'I guess it just hadn't crossed my mind before,' smiling with Jessica because it was such an obvious lie.
