SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY (2 page)

She struggled to her feet and trudged back toward the outside door. Here she picked up the bear, clung to him, turned around, and backed down the cement steps into the wind, her only thought to find her mother. Behind her the door slammed shut.

Her legs stung with cold. Soon her pink coveralls were plastered against her small body. Her soaked hair flew around her head. She righted herself at the foot of the steps, wavered, and plunged forward, still screaming, “Mama!” The only answer was the bellowing of the wind, a sharp salty smell, and frigid water pelting her face. Waves thundered nearby on big rocks, poured around them, crept near her feet. Wind gusts knocked her over next to a tree, drove her down in the flood up to her knees. She pulled herself up, clutching the trunk, beyond crying. Her eyelids would scarcely open. Where was her mother?

Far, far away she could see a thin glow. Leaving the tree behind, she pushed on through the spinning water toward the distant light, but was caught by a fierce blast and blown into a mass of shrubbery. Gripping the soggy bear, she closed the numb fingers of the other hand around a root and held on.

CHAPTER 1
 

The road ran west under the clear Florida sunlight. As her husband drove over the final bridge into Cedar Key, Brandy O’Bannon opened an untidy notebook and studied the classified ad clipped to a page:

Wanted
: Woman, daughter, 2, moved to Cedar Key June 18, 1972. Urgent message. Contact immediately. Privacy assured.

Emergency. Leave phone number for Anthony Rossi, Island Hotel.

This ad had intrigued her. On a slow day at the Gainesville bureau, reporters often flipped through the regional classifieds, searching for story ideas. Who was this woman who had disappeared for twenty years? And in a tiny Florida town of artists and fishermen and aging docks?

As a potential feature, the missing woman ad was a long shot, but Brandy needed this working holiday with John. She smiled up at him. “I read that a cat can sleep undisturbed in the street here. My woman and child should be easy to spot.” Only now, she thought, the child would be about twenty-two.

Fifty miles of pines and back roads separated the busy university city of Gainesville from nineteenth century Cedar Key, as exposed on its Gulf coast island as a shell washed ashore. They passed a shallow bay, bristling at low tide with oyster beds and a cluster of crab traps, then a fish processing company. Brandy jotted down a few descriptive notes, then glanced again at John. Since they left the main highway thirty minutes ago, he had hardly looked at the cabbage palm hammocks, the pines, the soaring hawks and turkey buzzards, the isolation. Usually he gloried in escaping the city, in taking their pontoon boat far down the Florida rivers, in camping out in the wildlife refuges and the state parks.

“Near here there’s a wonderful out-of-the-way fish camp on the Suwannee,” she said. “It’s at Fowler’s Bluff. We could rent a boat there. Meg would love it.” On cue, the golden retriever sleeping on the back seat raised her creamy-gold head and peered out the window.

Today John probably didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be in Gainesville. She watched his profile in the strong October light—deep-set eyes, a straight nose, if a bit sharp, an assertive chin. Now his lips turned up in a rare half-smile. “The main trouble with Cedar Key is that it’s always getting slammed by hurricanes. That empty lot we just passed—years ago some vacation cottages were swept away there. You picked some weekend get-a-way.”

“Not to worry. The only bad weather now is off Cuba.” Brandy tucked a cartoon they had both laughed at back into the notebook and closed it. Her random note-taking offended John’s sense of order. Architects were tidy by instinct.

“I should’ve stayed in town and worked on the bank restoration drawings. We’ve had some structural problems.” His dark eyebrows lifted. “I’ve been on stories with you before. You going to stash me away in some seedy hotel and forget about us?” He gave her a rueful glance.

“No way, my love.” She patted his knee. He would not pour over the bank plans alone. He’d have the help of his intern, Tiffany Moore, a perky blonde with high cheek bones and a sultry voice. Brandy worried about the time John spent with her. Brandy’s own face, she thought, was a bit too round, her mouth overly wide. She consoled herself that he had once admired the elegant tilt of her nose.

Of course Brandy wanted him here, but it wasn’t easy, working on a story while she tried to tantalize her own husband. She cocked her head toward him. “There’s either a story about this missing woman or there’s not. You’ll like the historic hotel, and we’ll have most of the weekend for ourselves. We can check out the fish camp and picnic at Shell Mound Park tomorrow. It’ll be romantic. You’ll see.”

No need to tell him yet that the State News Editor had assigned her an additional story about the Indian midden known as Shell Mound.

The classified ad about the missing woman had first hooked the State News Editor. He had leaned his lanky frame back in his chair, studied it with cheeks puffed out, tapped his pencil once or twice on the desk, and nodded. “Okay, sounds weird enough. Check out this guy Rossi.” But one story wasn’t enough. Maybe he didn’t yet trust her to follow through. Reaching into a drawer, he’d handed her a memo. “Check out this Halloween feature while you’re in Cedar Key. A fishing buddy called this morning, said the local paper ran a story today about the Shell Mound spooks, a girl and her dog. Says they’re on the prowl again.” He’d grinned.

The memo gave no details, only the name of the community paper and a contact there. Apparently the legend was well-known. She’d have to look for a new angle. But her first task was to find Rossi and pry loose his story, if there was one.

With the interview in mind, she had stowed her usual jeans in her suitcase and chosen a tailored navy slack suit with a crisp white blouse for the day. On the telephone yesterday, a clerk at the Island Hotel said a Mr. Rossi was expected. She needed to produce a strong feature, or two, if she was ever to move from the three-person bureau to the news room downtown.

John swung their small sedan left, onto a street of weathered cypress and stucco buildings, their Victorian balconies shading the sidewalk. “The whole town’s on the National Register of Historic Places,” Brandy said. “No beach. Fewer than a thousand people. That includes some laid back tourists.” She hoped this would be another long weekend like the one at Daytona a few months ago, lazy beach reading by day, making love by moonlight.

They passed an art gallery, a small pink museum, a fire department tucked under a balcony railing, and a café. In the next block John pulled up to a square burgundy and cream building with the solid look of a nineteenth century fort. A large
Island Hotel
sign hung from the second floor balcony.

John’s interest in the old structure had induced him to come. “One of the oldest hotels in the state,” she said. “I’ll find out about this guy Rossi while you register. Then I’ll take care of Meg. A clerk told me they would recommend a place to board her.”

Instantly a thumping began in the back seat. She pushed the golden retriever away from John’s charcoal slacks, now sagging from the hook at the back window, and plucked from them a few red-blonde hairs—Meg’s, not her own. They were almost the same coppery color. She and her dog had been a pair three years longer than Brandy had known John Able, but he’d never quite accepted Meg, just as he’d never quite accepted the demands of her job. “Meg will love Shell Mound, too,” she said.

Under the high ceiling fan, the lobby felt cool. Brandy gazed approvingly at the varnished chairs, the plain bench, the old Victrola beside a pot-bellied stove, the windows trimmed in cypress. From behind the counter on one side of the long room, a man of medium height with curly gray hair and very blue eyes came out of the shadows carrying a book. He glanced at the lap top computer in John’s hand, the Nikon around Brandy’s neck, and her loose leaf notebook. “Must be the newspaper lass. I’m your proprietor, Angus MacGill. Room’s ready, Miss O’Bannon.”

“Gainesville Tribune
,” she said. John was accustomed to her professional name, but he hated her to be addressed as “Miss.” She took his arm. “My husband, John Able. We’re both interested in the hotel. He renovates historic buildings. I write an occasional column about them.”

“Hotel dates back to 1859,” the Scotsman said.

Brandy peered at the register. Her quarry had already checked in. The name above John’s was Anthony Rossi of New York. “The gentleman who registered just before us is the person I came to see. Did you read his ad? He names the hotel.” She opened the notebook and handed the clipping to him. “I expect you’ll be getting his messages.”

MacGill scanned the words, the mouth in his square face clamped tight, then thrust out his lower lip and scowled. A swinging door opened to his left as a young desk clerk with plastic rimmed glasses and French braids trotted in from a nearby passageway. “You were asking about Mr. Rossi?” she chirped. “He signed in yesterday.”

Brandy looked at the hotel owner. “Mr. Rossi’s trying to locate a woman who hasn’t contacted her family for twenty years. Were you in Cedar Key in 1972?”

The Scotsman shoved his book under one arm. “Nosy bugger, that Rossi. Pushy New Yorker. Asking a lot of questions. Not likely to win him friends around here. In Cedar Key we live and let live.”

Brandy noticed the title of a volume on a short bookshelf behind him, the collected poems of Robert Burns. “Ah, yes,” she said, “but we mustn’t hold a man’s origins against him. ‘A man’s a man for a’ that.’” Having a degree in literature came in handy, but she was aware that he had not answered her question.

The clerk parked her glasses on the top of her head and leaned forward. “Mr. Rossi said he was going over to the police department a few minutes ago. Said we could reach him there if he had any calls.” From a stack of papers on the counter she handed Brandy a map of Cedar Key. “If you want to find him, he’ll probably still be there. A block off Second Avenue, behind City Hall.”

MacGill’s mobile face went still. Then he glanced at the girl, his frown deepening. Behind him rose a print of Edinburgh Castle’s stark walls. Its dark parapets gave the lobby a brooding quality that the proprietor would not have intended.

Brandy put a finger on the map and changed the subject. “We need to board our dog. Can you suggest a kennel in the area?”

MacGill ran one stubby hand through his hair and paused. “A lass works here heard me say a newspaper reporter was coming this weekend. Says she’ll take care of your dog. She has a bonny fenced garden. She wants to talk to you about newspaper work, mind. We’ve got no kennel in Cedar Key.” He pointed toward the main street. “The lass’s not here now, but her mother will still be in her art gallery on Second Avenue. Be closing up in about half an hour. She’ll show you to the house. Name’s Marcia Waters. A water color artist.”

Brandy handed John the camera. “While I’m finding Mr. Rossi and taking care of Meg, you can get us settled and imbibe the ambiance.”

John looked out at the silent street, at its fringe of tattered cabbage palms and its cracked sidewalks, and then at the lobby sign that read “Neptune Lounge.” He gave her another lop-sided smile. “I plan to imbibe something with considerably more wallop. And soon.”

Brandy grinned and started toward the double glass doors. He would enjoy lining up their shoes in the closet, facing all their clothes on hangers in the same direction, and organizing the medicine chest before she could bounce in and create her usual good-natured disorder. He’d set up his small tape player, put on one of his favorite études, and get in the mood to relax.

In the car Meg laid her head with its curious cream-colored mask on the back of the driver›s seat and made a small, complaining noise in her throat. Brandy gave her a pat before wheeling back down Second Avenue. On a side street behind the white wooden city hall, she spotted a Police Department sign. The department shared a modest annex with the library, each marked by a bright blue door. Opening her bulging notebook, she removed a memo pad, tucked it into her purse, and swung out of the car.

Inside the reception room, a swarthy man in an open-necked sport shirt was leaning over the counter, talking to a tall officer in a black uniform. Brandy moved up behind the petitioner. With one blunt finger the man tapped a large black and white photograph on the counter. “Back in June of 1972 somebody in Cedar Key saw this woman. I need to talk to the chief. Is he back yet?”

Brandy›s blue eyes widened. Thanks to the chatty hotel clerk, her timing was perfect.

“Hadda little kid with her, a girl two-years old. The woman meant to live here.”

The officer ran a hand across his expanding forehead and into its bristly rim of hair and shook his head. “Never seen her. But I wasn›t here then. Sorry.” His melancholy eyes lent the last word credibility. “The chief gets back from vacation tomorrow. I›ll give him your card.” He glanced at a clipboard. “Anthony Rossi, right?”

“You got it.” The New Yorker removed a pair of rimless glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I›ll leave a copy of the picture. Checked with a data base before I came down, and the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Jacksonville, driver›s licenses, everything. She gotta be using an alias. That don›t surprise me.”

He replaced the glasses and tipped his head back, a stocky figure with an angular face and a prominent nose. “Somebody in a place this size oughta remember her. We know my client›s niece got here okay. The aunt got a post card from her niece. She mailed it from a café a few miles up the road, and she knew where to go for help.” He leaned on one elbow and stared at the portrait, as if willing the subject to appear. “Had plenty of scratch. Sold some bonds and cleaned out her checking account. My client didn’t figure on hearing from her niece again, unless she had trouble.”

He looked up, pushing his face closer to the officer. “I checked the date. A hurricane hit the town early the next morning, but the record shows no one got hurt. The niece was to let my client know if she left Cedar Key.” He dropped his gaze. “The kid, she’d be grown now. My client don’t want me to give out the real names yet. Not ‘til we find her and get her okay.”