Ten Thousand Islands (4 page)

There is a gift shop, the Red Pelican, that offers sarongs and knickknacks and paintings by local artists. There is the marina office and store. Along with items that you might expect—fishing tackle and suntan oil—there are also items for sale that may be unexpected: strange ball caps in the shape of sharks or manatees, used books, foreign beers.

Inside the office, behind the glass counter, you will find stocky, pragmatic Mack, owner and manager. Jeth Nicholes, the fishing guide, lives alone in the efficiency apartment upstairs.

The other fifteen or twenty full-time residents live aboard boats: a garden variety of sailboats, cruisers and chunky little houseboats. They are umbilicaled to civilization via hoses and electrical conduits, and a couple have tiny satellite dishes. Toss off the umbilicals, though, and they are free again, alone and underway.

That is the illusion, anyway, and one reason they probably live aboard.

There are two exceptions: Tomlinson and myself. Tomlinson anchors his sailboat away from the docks, refusing what he calls “the poisonous delusion of self sufficiency.” I live on the other side of the channel, occupying two weathered cottages under a single tin roof and separated by a breezy throughway, all built on stilts and connected to shore by ninety feet of old boardwalk. One house is my lab. The other is where I live.

Toss in a couple of other fishing guides, Captain Nels
and Captain Felix, a cook, two clerks, plus a fluctuating number of wives-boyfriends-girlfriends-lovers, and you have the entire population of Dinkin’s Bay.

The point to all this is that the marina is small enough to create the same dynamics and interdependencies as an extended family. The men are protective of the women in a brotherly way. The women chide or organize or comfort the men, depending on the situation or their sisterly mood. The metaphor is carried to the logical, responsible conclusion: romantic involvement is discouraged.

It is a common-sense rule and so never mentioned openly.

A short time back, Jeth and Janet Mueller broke the rule. They began a relationship: two shy people in love. It should have worked. Everyone expected it to work. But it didn’t work, and the gradual collapse of the affair created an escalating uneasiness among the marina family.

Which is why Janet moved her houseboat up to Jensen’s Marina on Captiva Island. Jensen’s is a great place, just as quirky and kicked back as Dinkin’s Bay, but her decision to move still left a cloud.

The point being, JoAnn seldom came alone to my house. Over the years, I’d felt an increasing sexual interest in her; she felt the same for me. I liked her plain looks and no-nonsense manner. She knew it. We’d discussed it. Which is why we took pains not to be alone together.

So, for the lady to come running to me, I knew that she had to have a very good reason. In her mind at least, whatever the problem was, it was serious.

Tomlinson was in my lab, futzing with my equipment, peering into the rows of jars that contain chemicals and preserved specimens: the nudibranches, sponges, octopi
and unborn sharks that I collect, prepare and then sell to schools and research facilities around the country.

When I opened the door, he looked at us and said, “Today’s the equinox, you know.”

I said, “Huh?” Then I said to JoAnn, “Oh. He’s talking about astronomy.”

Tomlinson was wearing a Cubs baseball jersey and patched surfing shorts. He had a plastic bottle of sodium hydroxide in his hand, tossing it in the air like a baseball. The moment I realized what he was playing with, I glanced at the other chemicals on the shelf. Volatile, accidental combinations are easily made. But nothing else was missing.

He said, “Yeah, the autumnal equinox, just two days before the full moon. It makes me restless as hell, man. Add a full moon and I go damn near goofy. Nothing helps. I spent all morning meditating”—he shrugged—“whacked off a couple of times. Didn’t dent it. It may be time for some serious medication.”

JoAnn said uneasily, “I’d see a doctor about that. Yeah.”

Now we were in the living room. JoAnn had a glass of iced tea. Tomlinson was on his third or fourth Amber Bock, sitting cross-legged on the tattered gray rug. I was in the chair by the north window where I keep my telescope and shortwave radio.

The ladies of the
Tiger Lily
do not posture. They are tough, direct women who speak their minds. It didn’t take JoAnn long to get to the point. “Doc, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to listen to a story and tell me what sense you can make out of it.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“I want to hear your opinion, too, Tomlinson. That surprised look on your face, I know why. Let’s be honest: you and me, we’ve never been what I’d call close buddies or
sympatico
. To each his own, right? But I know you’ve got a good brain in there somewhere. That’s what everyone at the marina says, at least. So, yeah, I’d be interested in your opinion, too.”

Tomlinson’s stringy blond hair had recently been braided Rasta-style during what he called an “herbal research mission” to Belize. It might have had something to do with collecting chili seeds, but probably didn’t.

Now Tomlinson tugged at one of the beaded ropes and said, “Odds are good, sweetie, that the goods are
bound
to be a little odd when you meet a guy like me.” He smiled his Buddha smile.

JoAnn looked at him blankly for a moment before deciding to refocus her attention on me. “It concerns a friend of mine, Doc. Her name’s Della Copeland, but it used to be Smith before she married, back when our folks lived next door to each other on Marco Island. Della was like an aunt to me or an older sister—she was a junior in high school when I was in fifth grade. I didn’t get along very well with my mom, so Della sort of played that role. We became very close and we’ve always stayed in touch, like family.

“Now Della lives in a trailer park down on Key Largo where she works, tends bar at a funky little place called the Mandalay. A good woman who’s had a hard life, but she’s making it okay. She’s about forty-five or so now, but still attractive. Least, I’ve always thought so.”

JoAnn must have noticed me glance at my watch, because she added quickly, “You need to know a little background
first for you to understand the whole story. That she’s no neurotic goofball. She has a steady job, she’s good at what she does. Della’s a woman who deserves to be taken seriously.”

I said, “I will take your friend seriously, JoAnn, because I trust you and take you seriously.”

I received a private little smile, those sharp green eyes intent.

“Fair enough, Doc. So I’ll skip straight to the problem. Twice in the last couple of months, someone broke into Della’s trailer while she was working. They didn’t steal anything, but they went through her stuff and all of her daughter’s stuff. Della is very prissy neat. Anything gets moved, she’d notice. Whoever did it must be good with locks because they didn’t break anything going in.”

“She contacted the police?”

“Of course. That’s the first thing she did.”

I said, “But the police had no interest. If there’s no sign of breaking and entering, if nothing’s been taken, what can they do?”

“Exactly, that’s just what happened. They told her to get new locks, maybe install an alarm system. But, yeah, that was it. In other words, don’t bother them again unless something really happened.”

Tomlinson was following along closely, I could tell. He is a fidgeter, a sky-gazer. There was a dazzling blue day through the window, with smoky thunderheads forming beyond the marina. The cloud towers were motionless, tinged with pink and purple, so they seemed as permanent as an Arizona canyonscape. Even so, Tomlinson was focused, intense, chewing at a strand of hair. He said, “Has your friend had any hang-up phone calls?”

JoAnn seemed surprised by the question. “Why, yes. She told me she’d received several calls like that. Phone rings, no one there.”

“She doesn’t have caller ID?”

“Della does, but whoever called, it came up ‘private number’ or something like that. ‘Shielded’? I can’t remember the exact wording, but she couldn’t get the caller’s number because I asked.”

“Did they go through her clothing? Her personal items like her underwear?”

“Her clothing drawers, yes, and her daughter’s. The underwear, I don’t know about. You’re thinking like this is some kind of sexual kink, right?”

Tomlinson was silent for a moment, eyes closed, before he said, “Your friend’s daughter, she’s dead, isn’t she?”

JoAnn looked at me, surprised. She couldn’t speak for a moment, but then she said. “How does he know that? There’s no way he could know that. I was just getting ready to tell you.”

I said, “It was the way you said, ‘daughter.’ The intonation. I got a sense that something was wrong, too. Not that she was dead, but that she was sick or in trouble or something. Don’t let it bother you. Tomlinson specializes in the unexpected. Finish your story.”

JoAnn was shaking her head. “If you say so, Doc, I will.”

Tomlinson’s eyes were still closed. He said very slowly, “This girl … this child? She died unexpectedly … and tragically.” He paused, thinking. Then he said, “It was unexpected by everyone, including the child who died. Her last cognitive thought was surprise.”

I said to JoAnn, “Relax. The guy’s very good at making
accurate inductions from simple things most people wouldn’t notice. Think about it: It’s unexpected and tragic whenever a child dies.” Meaning that there was nothing to be surprised about.

He added, “In her way, she was gifted. Perhaps brilliant.”

My explanation had done nothing to change the expression of astonishment on JoAnn’s face. “Yes, she was very gifted. Dorothy, that was her name. She died fifteen years ago. I’d moved away from Marco by then.” Now JoAnn returned her attention to me. “But how Dorothy died and why she died, that’s another story. Della thinks the break-ins have something to do with her daughter’s death, even though it happened a long time ago. That’s why you need to hear the whole thing.”

I got up, went to the little ship’s galley, which is my kitchen, and got the jar of iced tea out of the fridge. I carried it into the living room as I said, “So tell us what happened, JoAnn. Me and the friendly witch doctor here, we’re both at your disposal.”

She grinned, then chuckled. Her face was attractive in an unspectacular way: a successful woman with her own life, her own mind and way of doing things.

D
ella Copeland came from a family of fishermen and clammers, people who lived in tin-roofed houses and built their own boats. Like JoAnn’s people, the Copelands and Smiths were spread around South Florida from Flamingo to West Palm. Della’s parents had settled on Marco Island before the Mackle brothers turned it into a famous resort and forced land prices sky high.

When Della graduated from high school, college was not a consideration. Who had money for college? Instead, she went to work waitressing at the Marina Inn in Goodland, where she met a forty-year-old pompano fisherman out of Upper Matecumbe, though his people were from Devil’s Garden, north of the Big Cypress Indian Reservation. He was part Cracker, part Miccosukee and he looked a little like Clark Gable.

“His name was Darton Copeland,” JoAnn told us. “He was a strange one, Dart was. I was just a girl, but even I could tell there was something unusual about him. The
way he’d look at you, his eyes had this kind of … I don’t know, like a glow to them. Have you ever seen a wolf?”

I said, “Photographs, that’s all.”

“They were like that. His eyes. They were a sort of brownish yellow. They had a light to them.”

One thing about Della, JoAnn told us, she’d always had perfect judgment when it came to men. “Put her in a stadium full of a thousand guys and she’ll pick the biggest loser and abuser every single time. Why some women are like that, I don’t know. Sad thing is, they’re usually the talented girls, the ones with a lot to offer. Maybe deep inside they’re afraid they’d soar away if some jerk wasn’t there to drag them down and make things ugly and safe.”

Two months after meeting Copeland, Della was pregnant. She was eighteen years old. Copeland married her in a drunken wedding ceremony and vanished one month later, and four months before his daughter, Dorothy, was born.

“We heard rumors that Dart was living back on the Keys with one of his wives. He had several wives, it turned out. Della’s daddy went looking for him a couple of times but never found him, so Della raised Dorothy on her own. This little blond-haired child, she looked like an angel, she really did. Big blue eyes and very, very long, delicate fingers. That’s what I remember best about her. Her eyes and those fingers of hers, like stems on flowers.

“I was twelve when Dorothy was born, and mature for my age, so I baby-sat her lots of nights while Della did her waitressing. One thing I can tell you from personal experience, that child was different. I think you’ve been around me enough to know I’m the solid type, Doc. I’m a show-me person. I believe that when we die, we die, and
that’s all there is to it, and I’ve never bothered reading a newspaper zodiac column in my life. What a racket. But this child was different. I don’t know what caused it or why, but she was.”

JoAnn swirled the ice in her glass, looking to me for some reassurance. Tomlinson spoke before I had a chance. “You and Doc are a lot alike, no argument there. Branches of the same tough tree. And this guy”—he hammered his thumb at me—“is straight as cable. Or Wally Cleaver. You say the baby was different? We believe you.”

“But how?” I asked.

“One thing was, she was always so … distant? Yeah, like only part of her was in the room with you. Only part of her heard what you said. Like most of her, maybe the most important part of her, was in an entirely different world.”

Tomlinson was nodding, like he was enjoying the story but already way ahead. He asked, “Did the child tell you what she could hear?”

JoAnn paused for a moment, then said very carefully, “She told me that she could hear voices. She told me that herself. One night she looked out the window—this was down on Marco Island; she couldn’t have been more than six—Dorothy looked out the window and she said, ‘There are so many people trying to talk to me, JoAnn. All the talking, it makes me so tired. They won’t let me rest.’ She was crying. Very upset.”