SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY (8 page)

MYSTERY CHILD STILL UNCLAIMED

Officials in Cedar Key are still unable to locate the parents of the little girl found wandering along a Gulf-side street the night of June 18, as Hurricane Agnes began moving into the area. Charlotte Wilson, H.R.S. spokesman who now has custody of the child, estimated her to be two years of age. No one is reported missing in the area and inquiries nationwide have produced no response.

During a search of Levy County for the girl’s parents, local police officers interviewed a cashier at the Otter Creek Cafe who said a young woman and small child arrived there on a Greyhound bus and ate at the restaurant late the afternoon before the storm struck. The cashier, Betsy Mae Terry, said the woman inquired about a bus to Cedar Key.

About thirty minutes later the woman told the cashier she had found a ride and drove away in a car. Mrs. Terry did not see the driver, however, and said she did not get a good look at the child. She was unable to identify the little girl later found in Cedar Key. She gave the police a detailed description of the woman, and they are attempting to locate her.

Police Chief Wiley Saunders suggested that the girl might have been abandoned by migrant workers who were seen in town prior to the hurricane and whose whereabouts are unknown.

The child is in good condition, but disoriented, and unable to help with her identification. She was rescued from the storm by artist Marcia Waters, 46, of Cedar Key and taken to the school house for safety. Mrs. Waters and her husband, prominent local citizens and approved foster parents, have asked to care for the little girl until her parents can be found.

Brandy tucked the newspaper article with care into her notebook—another piece of the puzzle. She would fax a copy to Rossi’s office. Swinging the car around, she drove back up Second Avenue to collect her golden retriever. Marcia’s station wagon already stood in her driveway.

The artist met Brandy on the porch in a white shirt, long denim skirt, and sandals instead of her smock, probably a concession to meeting customers in the gallery. She folded her arms across her chest. “I understand you encouraged Cara to take a foolish risk last night,” she said.

As Brandy edged into the living room, a door in the hallway opened. Uncomfortable, Brandy shifted her focus to Cara’s slight figure coming out of the hall. Since their meeting in the cemetery, Cara had changed into a blue and pink paisley print dress with a Peter Pan collar. Brandy wondered if the immature style had been Marcia’s selection.

“I had no idea Cara would go to Shell Mound alone,” Marcia said.

Cara hesitated in the doorway, but she spoke up. “Catching whoever was digging near the mound was a real service to the parks department, even if I didn’t get the picture I went for.” She straightened her shoulders, as if remembering something else, even more important. “This morning Brandy told me something no one else would.”

Brandy dropped her gaze while Cara stared at Marcia. “An investigator’s been in town. He had information about a woman who might be my mother. I’m sure that’s what Mr. MacGill came here to tell you last night. You know how much I’ve wanted to find out about my birth parents! Now the man’s gone.”

Marcia flushed, Brandy did not know if from anger or hurt. “I suppose she told you money might be involved. Is that what really interests you?

Cara’s eyes clouded and she sank into a chair before the fireplace. Confronting her foster mother, Brandy thought, was not what she did best. Marcia turned to Brandy. “We have to leave now. Cara’s helping in the gallery today. Your dog’s leash is on a peg at the back door.”

Brandy glanced at the photographs on the mantel. In the faded one, the child’s eyes and hair were lighter than Cara’s, the oval of her face a bit fuller, but they had a similar delicacy. Marcia Waters had lost one daughter, Brandy reminded herself. She did not intend to lose another. Brandy moved toward the door. “Is there a description of the child who came here with her mother? Anything that would connect her with Cara?”

“The cashier at the Otter Creek café was the only person who talked to the woman,” Cara said. “You’ve seen her account. Useless.”

Brandy looked at the artist, but Marcia shook her head. “A hurricane was coming. I’m sure the woman simply changed her mind about coming to Cedar Key. Quite sensible.” She arched her neck and seemed to look down at Cara from a great height. “Cara persists in this fiction. Her attitude’s common among adopted children. She wants to glamorize her birth parents. The fact is, she was most likely abandoned by workers trying to escape the storm. We’re not likely to learn anymore at this late date.” Marcia picked up her black sweater from the back of a chair. “We’ve got to go. The gallery should be open now. The weekend’s our best time.”

Cara helped lift Brandy’s bouncing retriever onto the rear seat and gave her a quick nuzzle. “You’re a sweet dog,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight.” But the life had gone out of her voice.

Cara’s trapped, Brandy thought, as she pulled away from the curb. Unless she had help, Marcia Waters would never let her break free. She’d never go away to study, or find her original family or be herself. She looked again at her watch. She was fifteen minutes late for meeting John.

She was almost to Second Avenue when she slowed at an intersection and noticed a commotion at a tiny Gulf beach a block to her right. Several men in jeans and coveralls were standing around or leaning on pick-ups, a fish and oyster panel truck was parked to one side, and what appeared to be a wrecking truck was backing toward the water. A white police car with red and blue stripes zipped past.

A few minutes later Brandy found John beside the salmon-colored museum, his camera aimed at a flock of yellow-breasted birds feeding on the berries of a Red Cedar. He held up a white café bag, proof that he had kept his part of the bargain, and opened the driver’s door. “I can’t wait to check the width of the boat slips at Fowler’s Bluff.” He grinned. “I’ll see if our boat would fit. Then on to your Shell Mound picnic among the haunts.”

Brandy slid over into the passenger seat. “One short detour,” she said, her smile apologetic. “Something’s going on at the end of E Street, just a couple of blocks from here.” She loved the unadorned labeling of Cedar Key’s downtown streets. No developer’s Sunset Lanes and Rolling Gulf Avenues. Just plain numbers and letters in proper sequence. “Let’s duck down and take a look.”

Above Atsena Otie Key the sky threatened rain, and the morning’s breeze had become keener. “The paper says the storm’s going to hit Key West,” John said, turning left at the next block. “At the rate it’s moving, it won’t get near here ‘til the middle of the week.”

Brandy reached back to open a window for Meg, letting in a pungent whiff of rotting seaweed. “We’ll be long gone then.”

By now the wrecker had backed across a band of flattened sandbags and a few feet of beach, littered with Gulf sea grasses. A cable was slowly reeling in a car. She could see the shiny black suit of a diver in the water. A small crowd in jackets and jeans had collected along the concrete abutment left of the narrow strip of sand. A pick-up truck stood to one side, a Marine Service Divers sign on the cab.

Near a clump of cabbage palms at the corner stood the tall officer Brandy had seen with Rossi at the police department, and with him Angus MacGill in a knitted cap and sweater. When the policeman waved their car away, John turned at the bottom of the slight hill and parked down the block on First Street. As Brandy climbed out of the car, she could see shrimpers watching from a trawler that lay off shore, and a sports fishing boat with a covered command console drifting toward them.

“Tide’s about out,” MacGill said as they joined him. “It was high about four this morning. No one copped onto the car until ten.” He gestured toward a frame house on the other side of an adjoining vacant lot. “Then someone over there rang these lads.”

John looked across the street at a white frame house with concrete steps leading up a hill to a screen porch. “Didn’t anyone hear a car go into the water?”

The officer was now sketching a diagram of the scene on a small pad. He glanced up at the nearest house, his eyes, shielded by the black cap, even more melancholy than the day before. “Family there’s on vacation. So far no one heard anything definite. Would’ve been about seven feet of water here early this morning.”

“Officer Doggett, Brandy O’Bannon...” MacGill began, noticed John and added, “.Able. A reporter from Gainesville.”

“Don’t know as folks there’d be interested in this accident, Ma’am.” Doggett turned and looked up the rise of E Street, past the Fish and Oyster panel truck. “Looks like the poor devil came down the street much too fast, couldn’t make the sharp right hand turn at the corner of

First, and plowed off into the water, right? Would’ve sunk out of sight pretty fast at high tide.”

Beside the wrecker Brandy recognized the powerful figure of Truck Thompson in his fisherman’s cap and black jacket. He had taken his big hands out of his pockets and was helping the wrecker crew re-secure the cable. “Thompson could save them some trouble,” Brandy said. “Looks like he has the muscle to lift the car straight out of the water.”

MacGill nodded. “Truck’s a strong lad, right enough. Before this shellfish farming came in, a man had to stand six, seven hours a day with a pair of heavy tongs, raking up oysters and lifting them into the boat. Learned the trade from his dad, and nobody better at it.

“Had quite a reputation for fighting in high school. They say even the girls he dated were afraid of him. It still takes a cheeky lad to cross him.” MacGill’s lower lip protruded. “Someone did once, mind, about two years ago when Truck got his Project Ocean Oyster lease. Truck caught the lad helping himself to Truck’s bed. The poor bugger was lucky to get away with a few bones still intact.”

Brandy took a second look at the oysterman’s solid physique. “Was he charged with assault?”

MacGill grinned. “Truck’s family’s been in the oyster business here for five generations. For a few days it was sticky wicket. But in the end, no charges were filed. He’s not so nervy since he got serious about Cara.”

A diver lifted his mask and came sloshing across the beach toward Officer Doggett. “No luck, man,” he called. “Door’s open on the driver’s side, like I said, but I can’t see a body. Might be blood on the front seat.” The diver’s craggy young face looked distressed. “Maybe the driver got out, but he didn’t make it to shore. The tide would’ve started running out pretty fast about four.” Before he turned toward the truck, he handed Doggett a small packet. “Found these broken glasses on the floor. They might get lost.” He gazed across the calm

Gulf waters. “We’ll need to get a boat and search for the body off shore.”

The officer’s heavy face seem to sag even more. He lifted his cap and scratched his high forehead. “No footprints. Just skid marks at the corner. Hard to see why a guy would come down the hill that fast. Maybe he didn’t know about the turn, right?”

The wrecker crew had now pulled the car onto the beach and began hoisting it up with their crane. Doggett stepped across the street. “Got to move your panel truck, Mr. Thompson,” he called. “The wrecker needs more room.”

Truck’s round head swiveled in his direction. “Got plenty damn room,” he snorted.

The officer gave him a bland look. “Move it now, Mr. Thompson.”

Truck stamped across the bed of seaweed, small eyes aflame, growling, “Got one too many damn cops in this town.”

“Right,” said Doggett, unperturbed.

Brandy shook her head. “He’s still got a temper. Does it bother Cara?”

MacGill settled his cap more firmly over his ears. “I expect she knows if she ever leaves Cedar Key, he’ll be in a wax, that’s for sure.” They walked across to the beach and stared at the dripping car, a blue Chevrolet coupe. MacGill cocked his head. “Sounded like luggage banging around in the boot.”

“Divers brought out a briefcase,” Doggett said. “Recognize the car?”

Brandy bit her lip and nodded. The Gainesville airport decal was clear on the rear bumper. She had written a description of it the day before.

“Rossi,” she said.

MacGill spoke up. “Makes sense. I pulled an empty bottle of Scotch whiskey out of the bin in his room this morning. He must’ve had a skinful.”

Doggett dropped his voice, his St. Bernard eyes doleful. “Happens all the time. Guy gets smashed and racks up another DOA, right?” With long strides, he advanced on the wrecker.

While Doggett and the mechanic opened the door and peered inside, the motorboat moved in closer, its driver standing at the console, binoculars trained on the scene. Brandy could make out “Fisherman’s Fling” on the bow. Nathan Hunt of Miami Beach was satisfying his curiosity. The officer looked toward Hunt, his mouth turned down.

“Something rum about that lad,” MacGill said. “Doggett knows it. Sports about in his fancy boat and says he’s dead keen on fishing, but no one ever sees him do much. Boat’s got a lot of storage, mind. I ask myself what’s he carrying, if not fish?”

Brandy stared at him. “Are you suggesting something illegal?”

MacGill lifted his head and chose his words with care. “I’m not saying anything, except the narcs staged a drug bust right here at Dock Street a couple of years ago. They didn’t bag the whole ring, and my friends tell me they didn’t stop the drug trade around here, either.”

Brandy looked again at the slim figure of Nathan Hunt in a madras plaid Windbreaker, surveying them all from the under the broad brim of a sun hat.

“Tarted up like a dog’s dinner all the time,” MacGill added. “Free to come and go. No job that I can make out. I say, where’s he get the money?”

“Probably a wealthy man’s son,” Brandy said. But MacGill had sewn a seed. She remembered the monogram
B.B.
on the fine socks of Mr. Nathan Hunt.

“Odd thing,” Doggett said, closing the car door. “Car’s on cruise control. Guy wouldn’t need that in town.”

John took Brandy’s arm. “There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s get on with it. Time’s a-wasting.” Brandy moved with him toward their car.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I need to be at the museum before it closes at four. I want to see the clippings there about the hurricanes of 1950 and 1972. Those are the years Marcia Waters lost one daughter and found another.”