SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY (10 page)

“New York, you say?” Jeremiah Strong favored them with a grim smile. “Been looking for a New York connection.”

Brandy edged nearer up the trail. She could see the bulge of the waxy, soil-splotched forehead, the prominent nose. On Rossi’s chest a black, encrusted cloth had been wadded against his body. “He was a private investigator,” she added. “Said he was looking for a missing woman and her daughter.”

“Yeah.” Strong gave her a quick glance. “He’d have a cover.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. He said the client he worked for died while he was in Cedar Key, but he was still on the case.”

Once more Strong raised his eyebrows. “That sound likely to you?” He frowned. “You’re a newspaper lady, right?”

Brandy nodded and, feeling defensive, crossed her arms over her chest.

“The most important thing is, you don’t write anything until I say. You going to cooperate, Ma’am?”

“I plan to call my editor, but I’ll tell him I’m waiting for a Sheriff s Office briefing.”

The white teeth gleamed again. “Soon’s we get the hands bagged and the body off to the medical examiner’s lab in Gainesville, I’ll be to Cedar Key. Get a more detailed statement. Both of you, stay available.” He tugged a worn spiral note pad from his pocket and jotted a few lines. “I want to talk to all the folks who saw Mr. Rossi as the Island Hotel. Don’t you be telling them about this before I get a chance to talk to them, see how they act.” He leaned forward. “Three-quarters of all the crime along this coast is drug crime, ma’am. We been after a Levy County-New York connection for two years. Could be this guy.”

John glared at the untidy pile of leaves, sticks, and dirt thrown up by the retriever and rubbed his forehead. “I suppose our dog destroyed most of the evidence.”

“That’s one way to look at it, I reckon.” Strong put his large hands on his hips. “Come down to it, though, without this dog, the perp sure might have got away with murder.” He glanced down at the still face in the depression beside the trail. “Like the Bible say ‘Look to it; for evil is before you.’”

Brandy did not know if he referred to Rossi’s death or his suspected deeds.

They went single-file down to the road where Strong paused at the cable. “Some place there’s a spade with dirt on it from Shell Mound.” He crossed to the road and pointed. “A separate set of tire tracks.” He summoned Snapp. “Better be starting with the casts.”

Brandy asked herself where she had seen other tire tracks today. From the van a technician took a camera on a frame that pointed directly down and made a photograph. Then he placed a portable frame above the tracks and started for the bay with a pail. As John and Brandy climbed into their car, the detective and Snapp were holding the ends of a measuring tape and noting the distances of the grave from two widely spaced trees.

On the gloomy drive back to the hotel Brandy opened her notebook and doodled a thick-soled oxford in the margin of a blank page. “Detective Jeremiah Strong’s a bright and careful guy, but I think he’s on the wrong track.”

She began noting what she had seen and heard at the mound, then paused to stare at the pine farm slipping by. “Last night Rossi said he would find out today where the missing woman meant to stay. Said the cottage is gone now, but he would find out who had owned it. Why would he be concerned, if he was here on a drug buy?”

CHAPTER 8
 

Brandy reached between the seats to pat the golden-red retriever as John parked by the artist’s front walk. “One more night with Cara. She’ll be good to you,” Brandy said. “Don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault you spoiled our day.”

Marcia answered the doorbell, her spare figure draped in her paint-splattered smock. She looked down at Meg, prancing beside Brandy on a short leash, and gave a brusque nod toward the side gate. “Fact is, the gate’s already open,” she said, spun around, and retreated toward her studio. Meg’s not the only one in the dog house here, Brandy thought, guiding the retriever into the back yard and giving her a final pat. She did not see Cara.

But when Brandy opened the lobby doors of the Island Hotel, Cara was slumped in one of the wooden chairs at the round coffee table, leafing through an album of the hotel’s history. She looked up, large eyes somber in her heart-shaped face. “Mother and I had another row. We both heard about the private detective’s car.” She pushed back her veil of long hair. “I think she’s glad he may be dead. Now I’ve got no way to find out if he knew about my real mother.”

Brandy pursed her lips and looked at John. “I need to talk to Cara and call my bureau. It may take a little while. Could you wait for me upstairs or in the lounge?”

John rolled his eyes and started up the long white stair case.

She turned to Cara. “Did you ever see the classified ad Mr. Rossi put in the local and Gainesville papers?”

Cara shook her head. “The papers disappeared at the Gallery. Even Mr. MacGill said something happened to theirs. I didn’t even hear about it. I doubt I’d have looked at the classifieds, anyway.” There it was again—everyone keeping news from Cara.

Before Brandy stepped into the phone booth, she took Cara’s old newspaper clipping out of her notebook. When she reached the State News Editor and explained that she’d had a message to drop the Cedar Key stories and come back to the Bureau, he sounded perplexed. “Practical joke, maybe?” He sounded doubtful.

“There’s more. John and I found a body today. By accident. The man was murdered. The Levy County Sheriff’s Office has to make a positive I.D. before they release the story, but we’re sure he’s the guy who placed the personal ad. Could be a big story, maybe for a full run.” She glanced at the clipping. “Make a note of this name and see if anyone can locate a Betsy Mae Terry. Used to work at the café in Otter Creek years ago. Let me know in the morning. I have a good lead on who the missing child is.”

His voice quickened, excited now. “Find out what you can and modem the story tomorrow. Make it before four.”

Brandy dropped into a chair next to Cara. “Mr. MacGill must have Anthony Rossi’s address. We could try to contact his agency. Maybe someone there knows something.” Brandy frowned. She could not break her word to Detective Jeremiah Strong about the body, but at least she could let Cara know the authorities would investigate Rossi. After all, Angus MacGill had mentioned a drug bust in Cedar Key. “I got the impression that the police think Rossi was involved in drug trafficking here. They’ll be checking on him.”

Cara’s lips turned down. “Even if they do, they won’t care about me. They won’t try to identify the missing woman.”

Brandy felt a twinge of guilt. She thought of the tall, lean artist who had saved a tiny child from drowning, and then reared that child as her own. Was Brandy herself responsible for the rift developing between them? John would certainly say so. John said she may be harming Cara, not helping her.

“Marcia’s been a wonderful mother to you, hasn’t she?” Brandy touched the girl’s arm. “She obviously cares about you, and you wouldn’t have your interest in photography without her.”

Cara glanced down at the open album. “That’s true. Of course I’m fond of my foster mother. I don’t want to hurt her.” Her gaze wandered over a black and white photograph of the hotel interior. It showed the rear of the lobby and a figure in the entry way to the kitchen, holding open the door. “But I’ve grown up. Marcia refuses to understand that.” She tapped the photograph with a slender finger.

“I’ve got to know what happened right here in this hotel twenty years
a
g°.”

Brandy sat back, thoughtful. Some questions, she agreed, for Cara’s peace of mind should be answered. “We don’t know for sure you’re the little girl Marcia rescued. But we do know the year and date is right.” Besides, Brandy sensed a first rate human interest story.

She ambled across the lobby toward the desk where the young clerk was punching in numbers on a computer screen. John had signed the register right after Rossi. The investigator’s address should be there. She rested her elbows on the counter. “I’d like to see if my husband remembered to register yesterday afternoon.”

The clerk glanced up, eyes defensive behind her large glasses, reached for a bound volume open on the counter, flipped back a page, and thrust the book toward Brandy. “Your names are here. Mr. MacGill would never, you know, overlook something like that.”

The bachelor Scotsman had a loyal following among the staff, Brandy noticed. She peered at Anthony Rossi’s now poignant scrawl above John’s signature and memorized the New York City address. While the clerk returned to her task with a righteous shrug, Brandy jotted the address and phone number in a note pad and slipped it into her bag, then re-joined Cara.

“Got it,” she said, glancing at her watch. Five o’clock already. Too late for the historical museum. “If I write a feature story about Rossi’s search, I need background. Like newspaper stories of both hurricanes, the one in 1950 and the one in 1972. But the museum’s closed now, and it’s not open on Sundays.”

Cara shut the album. “I could probably help you there. One of the docents lives right down the street. Maybe she’ll meet you at the museum because you’re a reporter. The historical society’s always looking for publicity.”

She stepped into the phone booth beside the lobby doors and in a few minutes came back with a slight smile. “Mrs. Fleur said okay. In about fifteen minutes. I told her you just wanted to see specific newspapers.” Cara sat down again and propped her chin in her hands. “She’s a sweet old thing, but don’t let her fool you. She’s still totally sharp. Her family’s been in Cedar Key for five generations, like Truck’s family, the Thompsons. Before she retired, she was one of my elementary school teachers.”

Cara sighed. “I need to get ready to serve dinner by six. When you’re through at the museum, come to the kitchen. I’d like to show you the basement. If you write about the skeleton, you ought to see where it was found.”

“I need to tell John,” Brandy said.

An early October dusk had descended on the balcony when Brandy located him. He sat in the failing light, his historical restoration book in his lap. Chopin had been replaced by the more plaintive Tchaikovsky. Beyond the dockside restaurants and shops, clouds piled in smoky shapes above Atsena Otie Key and a wind blew from the Gulf. “Before we eat dinner,” Brandy said, “I want to run over to the museum. One of the docents is going to open up briefly for me.”

When Brandy bent to kiss his cheek, he gave her a wry smile. “The weekend’s working out like I predicted.”

Brandy flushed. There was justice in his complaint. And yet she couldn’t turn back now. She had to know more about Cara, about Rossi, about the unidentified woman in the cemetery, and she had to find answers this weekend.

“I won’t be long. The docent’s already on her way. I’ll meet you in the lobby in an hour.” As she raced back downstairs, she wondered if she had allowed enough time for a tour of the basement.

Brandy recognized Miss Fleur immediately. She was hurrying down the sidewalk, bulky purse under one arm, a petite, elderly woman in a pale aqua knit dress and sensible oxfords, her white hair in a wispy bun. Brandy waited under the balcony of the salmon-pink museum while Miss Fleur’s shaky hand turned the key in the lock.

“Indeed, we’re quite pleased to help you.” Miss Fleur pushed open the white door. Her voice was soft, like the pouches under her eyes and the folds of skin below her cheeks. “Do come right on in.”

She snapped on a light and advanced with dainty steps to a small table where she opened the sign-in book. The long room was lined with wall maps and glass cases on wooden stands. Under the fluorescent lights lay fossil and shell collections, Indian artifacts, antique bottles, eighteenth century dresses and uniforms, impressive layouts on the lost cedar pencil mills, and on the last industry to go, the factory that made palm fiber brooms.

With one fragile, blue-veined hand Miss Fleur waved away Brandy’s dollar bill for the collection box.

“It’s two hurricanes I’m interested in, 1950 first.” The storm, she said to herself, that killed the first little Cara. “Oh, dear, yes. Such a terrible time!” Miss Fleur trotted to a display of newspapers mounted on vertical panels and began turning through them. “I was here, then, of course. Fortunately, the new school had just been built. We used it for shelter. And the new pier just finished a few months before. Gone.” She gestured with both hands, thin eyebrows raised, suggesting the enormity of the damage. “You know what that storm was named? Hurricane Easy!”

Brandy paused at a newspaper dated September 6, 1950, with a photograph of President Truman on the front page, and scanned the hurricane story. Easy had begun as a “baby” hurricane—thus its name—and traveled slowly at about thirteen miles an hour up the coast from the Caribbean. For fourteen hours it had remained stationary off shore at Clearwater, eighty miles south. No one expected any real trouble. Almost no one in Cedar Key or elsewhere evacuated.

Then something queer happened. The storm came roaring out of its loop, smashed into Cedar Key early in the morning of September 5th, hovered like a whirling demon all day, its winds clocked at 125 miles an hour before the gauge was blown away. Then it made another loop, moved the eye over the town a second time, and struck again full force. At five that afternoon winds were still estimated at one-hundred miles an hour.

Cedar Key had born the brunt of the hurricane for seventy-two hours, taken twenty-five inches of rain. Half its houses were destroyed by “wind and wave,” as well as the newly restored fiber plant and the entire Cedar Key fishing fleet. The hurricane had targeted the town, then bore in twice to demolish it. Nature’s vengeance, Marcia would’ve said, for all the damage to Cedar Key’s environment. For her, the “baby” hurricane had a terrible irony. “Was there any loss of life?” Brandy asked.

Behind the table now, Miss Fleur’s face crumpled. Her fingers flew to her cheeks. “Oh, indeed, yes. Only one, it turned out, but that one was so dreadfully sad.”

“Mrs. Waters’ daughter?”

“A baby, really, about two years old. Marcia was a very young woman then. They had a cottage on the Gulf. When the storm hit that morning, Marcia waited for her husband to come home with his pulpwood crew. Actually, the men couldn’t get back to town. Cut off by high water. Had to stay in two little buildings out in the pine woods. Wind tore the roofs off. No one knew how awful the storm would be.” Tears trembled in her eyes.