Below the Surface (13 page)

She stood in the doorway and stared outside. She'd been so out of it, she hadn't realized it was starting to rain. The wind had kicked up, which made her uneasy. But nothing was stopping her until she got some answers—and she wasn't even certain of the questions.

To Bree's dismay, the Hollimans were not in Daria's class when she poked her head in the door. She had gotten wet darting into the building from her truck, but even if she'd had an umbrella, it likely would have gotten turned inside out, the wind was gusting so hard. The instructor had evidently dismissed the class a bit early.

Too late, she realized her mistake of showing herself so suddenly. Several of the students gaped at her and one pointed. She couldn't blame them. After all, she had even startled herself looking in the mirror last night.

Loudly enough for everyone to hear, she introduced herself to the instructor. “I'm Briana Devon, Daria Devon's twin sister, and I just wondered if I could talk to you for a minute.”

“Of course,” the tall, young man said. His crew cut and open face reminded her of the photo she'd seen of Ted in uniform, the one in the paper that went with his obit and the story about him. “We are all very sorry for your loss,” he told her. “I'm Seth Johnson.”

They shook hands. Several other class members expressed regrets on their way out. “Daria mentioned the Hollimans—Viv and Fred,” she told him, surprised she'd lied so smoothly. It was easy when you wanted something badly. Is that why Daria had lied? “I see they aren't here,” she added. “I wanted to extend an invitation to the funeral to them.”

“They missed today, which is unusual. You know,” Seth said, “I can't say the same for your sister.”

“What do you mean? Daria attended class religiously. It was very important to her!”

“I'm not criticizing,” he said, holding up both palms at her outburst. “After all, this class is set up with flex time, with some online assignments, to suit the needs of our busy adult students. But she had conflicts, especially the night classes, which is when most of the students can make the lectures. As she may have told you, we flip-flop key lectures and exams between this hour and two evenings a month to allow people to attend.”

“And she—she didn't? I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you keep attendance? I just—” She could not think of a lie to cover this bumbling question. “I just would like to know.”

He showed Bree his records. Daria's attendance had been spotty, especially the night classes, always the first and third Tuesdays for the last two months. Damn, Bree thought. Daria was moonlighting to earn more money—for teeth whitening, the new dive watch she gave Bree for their birthday. Or—and this she refused to believe, because they'd always shared girl talk—she was meeting someone. But that must have been it.

Shaken, Bree thanked him and started away, then turned back at the door. “The Hollimans—do you know anything about their Shells Eternal business?”

“Everyone in the class did,” Seth told her. “They were like walking, talking advertisements.”

She went out into the corridor. Walking, talking advertisements—that's what they had wanted Daria to be for them. Now Daria wasn't walking or talking anymore, and the Hollimans had uncharacteristically missed tonight's class.

Before she went outside, Bree leaned against the thick floor-to-ceiling glass window next to the back door of the school and looked past the puddles in the parking lot. Everything looked wet and gray, almost as if the entire place was underwater. Daria, she agonized silently, why did you lie about these little things? Did you really have a toothache that kept you from diving with me that last day? Manny's not being there would have been reason enough I had to go down alone. Come to think of it, Daria hadn't dived much the last several weeks. Why did she miss classes and not mention something as strange as Shells Eternal? And why hide a new man in her life?

Bree glanced down at her watch. However dark it looked outside, it was not even noon on this Friday yet. TGIF day for many people, and among the laid-back locals, that could start early. The Gator Watering Hole had the
Old Florida Laid-back Feel,
as Daria's souvenir coaster read.

The rain seemed to be letting up a bit, but it was so hot and humid that she'd probably be just as wet as if the rain continued. She'd go to that place in the Glades and ask around to see if Daria had ever been there. And if so, with whom?

A
melia knelt on the thick, wet grass with rain and tears dripping off her nose and chin. She bent close to her mother's headstone in the cemetery she had never set foot in since the day of her father's funeral four years ago. The area looked so different now, no tent, no fake grass blankets laid at the lips of the grave, no metal framework holding the coffin before it was lowered.

The cemetery workers had not yet dug Daria's grave. If they had, she might have thrown herself into it, so deep was her despair. She didn't like it that Daria would be buried here on Monday. The twins should be buried somewhere else, together. Since Ben insisted he wanted to be cremated, Amelia wanted her eventual resting place to be here by her mother's.

“Mommy, I think Daria's death is sort of retribution for yours,” she said in a trembling voice. She swallowed a sob. It helped to say things out loud where she was certain no one would hear. “I found that medical report about your death years ago Dad had hidden. The fatal cervical rupture was from the birth of the second child, not that Briana wasn't partly to blame. After you died, Dad forgave them, even favored them. It's not my fault they were his favorite. What happened—” here she emphasized each word “—wasn't my fault!”

She gripped her hands together, trying to find the right words to stop her pain. “I thought that when I had my two boys, everything would be better, but it isn't. I try to want to do things with both of them, but they are so loud and get so dirty and they want to swim and snorkel, and you know where that leads. But I didn't mean to shout at Daria and hit her that last day…”

She almost choked on those words she hadn't meant to say. Was she sorry? Her guilt was making her physically sick, so didn't that mean she was sorry? At least now, she and Bree would be closer, wouldn't they? That is, if Bree ever got over losing Daria.

It began to pour. Her hair stuck to her head and rain ran down her neck and throat. Bree had said Daria's hair had been streaming loose under all that water, holding her and the boat down, holding it down to drown…

Amelia squeezed her eyes tightly shut, but the images of herself trapped underwater wouldn't go away. It was like in the nightmares she'd had since Mommy died, worse when Dad and the twins went scuba diving. Trembling, she forced her eyes open. Tears, rain, deep water, even blood—it was all the same.

“I'm sorry, Mommy. Really sorry…” she whispered.

When she heard a low, distant rumble of thunder, she knew she'd better get going. Thunder might mean lightning, and she had no intention of ending up in the hospital like Bree, or worse.

That fear was surely rational. That meant she was coping, that she wasn't clinically depressed, didn't it?

“What happened could have been worse,” she whispered to herself as she got to her feet. “Bree could be dead, too.”

She bent to stroke her mother's wet, gray marble tombstone in farewell, but she couldn't bear to touch her father's.

Bree drove south on the Tamiami Trail through fitful rain and gusts of wind until she reached the turnoff to Cypress Road, heading east into the Everglades. A small runway with a few prop planes huddled by a single hangar at the intersection. She had to wait before making the turn as a string of cars came at her from the other direction. Although most people drove Alligator Alley to cross the state toward Fort Lauderdale or Miami, traffic was still heavy on this older route linking Tampa and Miami. She glanced across the airport tarmac; even in the rain, one man was working on an airplane. If the Gator Watering Hole wasn't too far down this road, it was possible that pilots stopped for a few drinks there. Now that was a scary thought.

After her turn, the tires crunched wet gravel; she drove slowly on a road barely wide enough to be called double lane. She was immediately on the edge of the Everglades, where shallow water surrounded grass on both sides of the road and cypress trees and their knobby knees poked through the so-called river of grass. She passed some slightly elevated islands called hammocks, from which sprouted pine and palms. Vegetation grew so thick in the heat and humidity here that she felt she was almost driving through the seaweed world on the bottom of the gulf.

She wondered how their—now her—precious turtle grass was doing at the Trade Wreck site. It needed to be monitored and photographed again, but who would be her dive buddy now? She'd have to give the Clear the Gulf Commission their “state of the sea grass” report alone next week. And it was going to be dire enough that all hell could break loose over that, too. She sniffed hard and grabbed a tissue from her purse to wipe her nose.

Although Manny was great with motors, machines and technical problems, he'd never make it as her new diving buddy. If he couldn't see all the way below the surface, he wasn't going down. He couldn't speak for their sea grass project. She might have to hire someone for dives—that is, she and Manny might—but she couldn't bear to think of running Mermaids without Daria. Funny, how she'd hardly given a thought to the business since that fatal day.

If—just if—someone was behind Daria's death, did they assume that, deserted at sea in rough waves and an approaching storm, Daria's twin would die that day, too?

About a mile off the highway, Bree saw a hand-painted sign for the Gator Watering Hole. The actual hole was a water-filled ditch surrounding the building and small parking lot on three sides like a moat. That could indeed hide an alligator or two. In these parts alligators made their way into golf course lakes, ornamental ponds, canals and ditches. People had to keep an eye on pets and children, not to mention themselves.

The tavern or bar—whatever it would dare call itself—looked like a dive out of the backwoods boonies, which it was. Its roof was part sturdy old Florida tin over the main section and part ragged palm thatch over the full-length porch, like the Seminole Indian–style
chickee
huts which had been made fashionable on cabanas and pool bars at ritzy hotels. But there was nothing ritzy about this ram-shackle place.

Bree was pretty certain this was a wild-goose chase. Even if it was a short drive from Daria's accounting class, she couldn't fathom her sister meeting someone here. And it would be pitch-dark out here at night. Bree decided she'd have to go back to the next accounting class and ask if the students had gone here as a group. Or else Daria had just found the coaster, it had intrigued her and she'd kept it. But those
Luv ya, babe
notes bothered Bree. Who had written that back to her sister? She needed answers now, before they buried Daria, so that she could go on with her own life. Since she was here, a quick question or two in broad daylight—or cloaking rain—could help to settle her soul.

Three vehicles were parked in front and one in back, all pickup trucks, two in various stages of rusting out. One of them displayed a Confederate flag and a gun rack in its back window, not uncommon in these parts. One had balloon tires like locals used for what they called swamp buggy races through mud-filled obstacle courses. Bree parked off to the side so she could stay away from the other vehicles.

It boosted her courage to see a woman step out onto the porch and light up a cigarette. She had too much hair, too much makeup and too-tight shorts and halter top, but at least it wasn't all good old boys inside. After just a couple of puffs, she tossed the cigarette in a puddle and darted back inside. Maybe she was the cook or waitress.

Bree backed in against the palm tree trunk barrier at the top of the east-side ditch so she was parked heading out. As her wheels bumped against the barrier, something she'd forgotten hit her.

Up until the time they were in their teens, Dad sometimes used to teasingly pronounce Daria's name like
Dare
-i-a, because of the risks she sometimes took. He'd dubbed her his daredevil, “The Evel Knievel of the Deep,” known for too fast a descent or too deep a dive. Only when his little daredevil almost choked to death from swallowing chewing gum underwater did she slow down. That's right, Bree thought,
Dare
-i-a had once been so sure that nothing could harm her that she reveled in taking risks.

Bree had always been more circumspect. She wasn't going to take any chances in this place, either. Just a quick question or two and she was out of here.

As she headed toward the building, a quickening breeze shoved clotted clouds overhead, and the rain increased. The wind was coming from the same direction as the storm that had killed Daria.

The rain beat incredibly loudly on the tin roof. Other than that, the place was quiet, the lighting lousy. No TV blaring, no canned music. Stepping into the building was like stepping back in the past. An old jukebox half blocked the entryway but it sat silent. Plain, mismatched wooden tables and chairs were clustered around the edges of the small room; a row of rattan stools lined a long bar. There was a worn-looking pool table in the corner.

The clientele was negligible, as she had hoped. Two guys who looked like denizens of the deep Glades played foosball, and one man hunched over a table, apparently asleep. The woman was not in sight. From behind the bar, through a small opening with a serving counter from what must be the kitchen, drifted the smell of frying burgers. The walls had no neon-lighted beer signs, just some Florida State Seminoles and Miami University Canes football pennants and blow-ups of the stadiums.

Actually, the dominant decor could be called early alligator. At least ten gator skulls, with open jaws flaunting razor-sharp teeth, were nailed high on each of the four walls. They seemed to grin at her.

Suddenly everyone looked at her; the men stopped talking and playing foosball. The only sound was the rattle of rain on the metal roof and the swish of palm fronds against it.

Here we go again, she thought. They think they're seeing a ghost. Her heart careened to her feet. That meant Daria must have been here.

“You're here way off schedule, honey,” said the bartender, a tall, gaunt man. “You want the usual?”

Hadn't they heard Daria was dead? She guessed it was possible. Glades guys were not like boaters and divers, totally attuned to what went on in or near the water. In that case, she wouldn't be dead woman walking, but live one talking.

“Sure,” she said, deciding to be Daria to see if that got her more info than the way she'd intended to proceed. “Change of plans about my schedule,” she told him, and dug in her purse for some money. The foosball game picked up again, along with the other conversations. “When were you expecting me?”

“Next Tuesday, like always,” he muttered, slapping down a tall, old-fashioned Coca-Cola glass on the bar.

Bree's eyes widened when he poured it half-full with lemonade and half with foaming beer. Daria loved what the Brits called shandies; she'd learned to drink them when she'd dated a snowbird from Toronto.

“Okay, then, this one's for here, and these beers are for the road,” he told her with a smile that was missing two prominent teeth. “Or for the guy you're meetin' out back, like always.”

Bree's pulse pounded as he produced two bottles of Mountain Brewed beer. “Tell me what he looks like,” she said, trying to sound coy as she put money on the bar. “I just might have the wrong guy in mind.”

“Never really seen him, and you know it, but Bess—” he gave a toss of his head to indicate the kitchen “—or a little bird musta told me, well-built, dark hair. Out here it's see no evil, speak none neither. Say, you two goin' parkin' in the Glades in this wet mess, since it's nearly dark as night outside?” he asked with a laugh.

Bree realized her mistake now. She might insult him if she explained who she really was and started to grill him. Having pretended she was her sister, she could hardly ask more about the guy she was meeting. Well-built and dark haired? Someone who called Daria “babe” and liked Mountain Brewed Beer? And someone who didn't come in here for his own drinks?

She drank half of her shandy down, just because she was suddenly so thirsty, then spilled most of the rest of it on her wrist when a clap of thunder sounded. It seemed to echo off the metal roof and inside her skull. Lightning! She had to get in the truck and get out of here.

“Thanks,” she said, stuffing the two beers in her big purse and heading for the door.

“Don't he want them opened this time?” the bartender called after her.

“No. I'm—we're fine,” she said, realizing it was probably a good thing they thought she was meeting a man outside.

Even with her sensitivity to light, Bree was surprised to see how much darker it had become outside in mid-afternoon. She prayed it would not turn into another one of those afternoon deluges like the one that had trapped her and Daria. She had to get home and think through all she'd learned. She wanted to come back here with Manny or Cole, maybe even Ben, though she didn't want him to know she was investigating on her own.

Daria obviously did have someone she was meeting secretly. A married man? Had she rekindled a flame with Josh Austin? No way, not with a stunning wife like his and his high profile, not to mention how busy he was.

Holding her big purse over her head for a break in the rain so she could see, Bree ran for her truck.