Shadows (6 page)

No one spoke. The car's occupants held their breath. The angled rays of the high summer sun and dappled reflections off the water slanted between the trees behind the house. The effect was one of a dark energy emanating from inside, as though its cracked and broken windows were illuminated from within by the light from ancient exploding stars.

The wide front door hung open, a seductive invitation to a dark interior veiled by dust motes that glittered in the spectral greenish glow of light filtered through chlorophyll.

“Dios mío,”
Nazario murmured under his breath.

“This is it,” Kiki whispered.

In its abandonment, the Shadows had become half-hidden, dwarfed by the lush and verdant, wild and overgrown subtropical forest around it. Nature had become part of the house. They were as one.

Creeping vines and the winding, intrusive roots of a walking banyan tree had crept over the hanging wraparound porch. A strangler fig tree had attached itself to a copper rain gutter, then climbed up to traverse the tin roof. Native lignum vitae and ficus trees towered over the Shadows, which was surrounded by stands of palm trees: sabal, royal, Keys thatch, and areca.

The jasmine had run amok and yellow-and-black long-winged butterflies fluttered among the intricate purple flowers on passion vines that had swallowed the porch railings.

“Look at those vines,” Kiki Courtelis whispered. “The early Spanish thought that the Passiflora's three-part stigma represented the nails used in the Crucifixion and that the five stamens signified Christ's wounds.”

“The developer ain't here yet,” Corso said. “Or he gave up on us and left while we were still trying to find this godforsaken place.”

Ripe mangoes lay everywhere, rotting on the ground, unharvested and forgotten.

“Look it that,” Corso complained, climbing out of the car. “I got a mango tree I can't get the first piece a fruit outta. Pruned it, mulched it, sprayed it. Spent a fortune on fertilizer. Wound up with one lousy mango that never got ripe. One! Damn thing must a cost me a hundred bucks. Nobody's touched these trees for years, and look it that, a bumper crop all over the ground.”

He picked one up. Round, firm, and fragrant, the color of a summer sunset.

“Ya know, somebody tol' me that when a tree doesn't produce, you should take a baseball bat to it. Just beat the living crap out of it and it'll get scared into producing fruit. Ya know, it feels threatened, that it's gonna die, and starts to deliver.”

“Good idea. Maybe I could try it on detectives who don't produce,” Burch said mildly.

“Where's Edelman?” Stone frowned. “He should have been here already.”

“We already have permission. We can start without 'im.” Burch stepped carefully around the wicked spines and red flowers of a crown of thorns. Like drops of blood, they crowded the stepping stones from the driveway to the front stoop.

“Listen,” Kiki Courtelis said.

They heard the rumbling of a big engine and wide tires on the gravel drive.

Is that what the killer heard that night as he waited in ambush? Burch's eyes roved the property, then met Stone's. He knew he and the young detective wondered the same thing. Where was the gunman concealed? He sighed as Stone shook his head. The untended foliage was so wild and overgrown, it was impossible to tell. Hell, it had been more than forty years.

Stone took the Rolatape, a digital tape measure on wheels, out of the car trunk, along with his own camera and a sketch pad.

The approaching vehicle swept around the final curve into view. An SUV, a silver Lincoln Navigator.

“That's him,” Kiki Courtelis murmured in disgust, “the worst pirate to plunder South Florida since the sixteenth century.”

Jay Edelman, toned, tanned, and well-manicured, was in no hurry. Cell phone to his ear, he was in excellent shape for a man in his fifties. His shades were expensive, his silk shirt sea-foam green, his pale trousers linen, and his shiny loafers Ferragamo.

“Gentlemen.” He snapped the cell phone shut. “And the ubiquitous Ms. Kiki Courtelis. Why am I not surprised? She's everywhere, protesting my permits at City Hall, presenting petitions at public gatherings, a very busy girl.

“Don't tell me she's the reason you're here?” He turned to the detectives.

“Routine,” Burch said, introducing himself and the others. “The homicide here was high-profile, so we decided to update our records while it's still possible.”

“Help yourselves, Detectives. Isn't it a fabulous piece of property?” He stood in front of the Shadows, basking in his pride of ownership. “Look around. What do you see? A jungle. A raw, overgrown, underdeveloped piece of land. You know what I see? One hundred and thirty thousand feet of luxury waterfront condo living. Two hundred and fiftytwo units. Just four apartments to a floor, the smallest, three thousand square feet under air, the largest, forty-two hundred square feet. Ten-foot ceilings, twenty-five hundred feet of twelve-foot-wide wraparound balconies with summer kitchens outside.”

“The price tags?” Burch asked.

“Apartments will range from two-point-five to five million.” He shrugged. “Each owner will have a private two-car enclosed parking space in the main garage and each will spend an average extra million dollars on upgrades and interiors.”

“What are you calling it?” Nazario asked.

The latest trend for new luxury condos rising all over Miami was one-word names: Onyx, Everglades, Apogee, Continuum…

The developer's face lit up. “We considered Utopia, Elysium, or Paradisio, but after Ms. Kiki Courtelis was kind enough to bring it to everyone's attention, we opted to keep the historic name—Shadows. Part of the sales pitch, it has a certain appeal, a theme.

“A tile mural will dominate one wall of the lobby: the famous rum-runner, what's 'is name? The old captain at the helm of his trusty boat crashing through a stormy sea.” He chortled.

“The residents' private lounge will be called the Rumrunner.” His smile widened. “I even offered Ms. Courtelis a consulting job with our interior designer. The offer is still open.”

He winked at Kiki, who turned her back.

Edelman's cell phone rang and he wandered off for a brief conversation, then returned, checking his expensive gold watch.

“How did you happen to acquire the house?” Burch asked.

“Saw it from my company's chopper, out scouting waterfront properties. Had my eye on it for a long time.” He rubbed his palms together. “One of the last undeveloped parcels on the bay, in the same family since the twenties, believe it or not. Took some time to track down the out-of-state owner. Once she heard our offer, she was happy to unload it.”

“If you don't mind me asking…?” Burch said.

“Forty million.” The developer smiled.

“Jesus,” Stone said.

Nazario gave a long, low whistle.

“People unfamiliar with the local market are always shocked at how much waterfront property values have escalated. I'm sure it was a windfall for the widow. Old what's-his-name, the captain, probably paid twenty bucks an acre back in his day. Let's just say the owner was thrilled. So am I. In this area, it's a bargain.

“Look, you don't need me for this,” Edelman said. His heavy onyx ring gleamed dark in the light filtering through the trees. “Be careful if you go inside. The place could fall down around your ears.”

“No way, Edelman,” Kiki sputtered. “This house weathered hurricanes before you were born. It wouldn't look bad if you hadn't deliberately exposed it to the elements so it would deteriorate.”

“Not me,” he said smoothly. He shook his head. “It must have been the homeless. You know how they break into vacant buildings, take over, and do irreparable damage.” He took a last eager look around. “We're about to break ground,” he said, “on the most exciting project in South Florida.”

Kiki was fuming. “He set the house up for demolition,” she said as Edelman's SUV disappeared around the big curve of the winding driveway. “He did the same thing to an irreplaceable Art Deco hotel in South Beach's historic district,” she raged, loud enough for Stone to hear. He was taking notes, measuring the distance from the front porch to the driveway.

“He made a deal with the city to construct a high-rise tower on the Beach. The condition was that he preserve and restore the historic three-story hotel already on the property. He agreed, then broke out the windows, removed the doors, and exposed the old building to rodents, insects, wind, rain, and salt spray. Then he convinced the city it was unsafe, impossible to save or restore. The city condemned it, knocked it down, and gave him permission to increase the size of his project. That's his MO, how he skirts the law. He should be in jail.”

“We can try to get on the agenda for the next city commission meeting,” she said, focusing on Burch. “You and your detectives could testify that the Shadows should be preserved.”

“Oh, no you don't,” Burch said. “You're not dragging us into that one.”

“Can't they move the house to a city park or some other location?” Stone looked up from his notes. “I've heard of that being done.”

“How?” Nazario demanded. “You'd have to take the trees with it. No way to separate them now.”

“Yeah,” Corso said. “It would be like doctors trying to separate those Siamese twins.”

“Conjoined.” Stone grimaced.

“Whadaya talking about?” Corso said. “Where I come from they're Siamese.”

“That's politically incorrect,” Burch said.

“Hell with that,” Corso grumbled. “They pussified the whole damn department with that politically correct crap.”

Stone sighed.

“The house might survive a move,” Kiki said hopefully.

Corso scratched his neck, then his elbow, and began swatting mosquitoes and no-see-ums, tiny, nearly invisible insects whose nasty stings create angry red welts.

“You still got that mosquito repellent?” he asked.

Kiki dug the can out of her briefcase.

He sprayed himself from his bald spot down to his ankles, then passed the can to the others.

Stone and Nazario flagged the spot where Pierce Nolan bled to death in the arms of his wife and daughters, according to the notes and diagrams in the case file.

“There's so much mystery here,” Kiki Courtelis said, watching them wistfully. “Lots more than just an old murder case. You know, the Devil's Punch Bowl is on private property right near here.”

“I've heard of it,” Stone said. “Never saw it.”

“Me, too.” Burch nodded.

“What the hell is it?” Corso mopped his brow with a handkerchief.

“A natural freshwater spring first discovered by ancient Indians,” she said. “Somebody, probably the Tequestas, carved a deep well in the limestone bluff above the bay shore centuries ago. There's an arrow marked on a large rock nearby. It's still there, worn smooth by time. Pirates used the spring later and the Spanish used slave labor to improve access to it.

“I was there once when I was little. It's a shallow well with a circular mouth and two stone steps inside that lead to the water's edge.

“It was a favorite gathering place for settlers as early as 1808, one of Miami's first tourist attractions. An old newspaper story reported that the most delicious spring water flows from the rock under the bluff of the shore.

“Its origins are mysterious. No one knows how it got its name. Isidor Cohen, an early Miami pioneer, wrote in his memoirs that ‘frequent drinking of the water from that mysterious spring is believed to endow one with perpetual youth.'”

Stone had stopped work to listen. “So you're suggesting it might be what Ponce de Leon was in search of when he sailed into Biscayne Bay in the fourteen hundreds?”

“The Fountain of Youth,” Burch said.

“Could be,” Kiki said. “Seminole Indians from as far away as Immokalee used to visit the Devil's Punch Bowl once a year and fill containers with the water. Part of some sacred tradition. Reporters would try to interview them, but they refused to talk about the ritual, or their ancient beliefs.

“It's in somebody's backyard now, inaccessible to the public. A damn shame. We've lost so much history,” she said earnestly. “It would be terrible to lose this, too.”

“One thing I have to say for you,” Burch said grudgingly. “You don't give up, or shut up.”

Distant thunder rumbled to the west as storm clouds built across the Everglades. The slick face of the bay seventy-five yards away, beneath a downward slope, began to stir as the wind picked up and the air became sweet with ozone.

“Let's look around inside, then get out of here before the storm hits,” Burch said.

They took flashlights from the car and climbed the Shadows's sagging front steps.

“Dark as a tomb in here.” Stone's voice echoed off empty walls.