The Postcard (13 page)
Not that I was surprised, but Dia’s house was so fast and strange, that from the moment we got off the bus, ran across her yard, and stepped through the door, I felt as if I were falling.
Her mother was a heavy block of a lady with big hair who laughed the whole time we were there. She was laughing when we reached the screen door. She was laughing when we opened it. She laughed when Dia barged in.
“Deeeeee-aaaa!” she howled. Her greeting was like a song. “You must have smelled your favorite —”
Dia peeked over her mother’s shoulder (not difficult, because Mrs. Martin was so short). “Mmm, meat loaf !”
“And beans!” her mother laughed. “And malangas!” Her hands were covered in red ground meat. She raised them from the pan on the counter. “Here, here, smooch!”
“Mom, how long for supper?” Dia asked. “Oh, this is Kenny. His dad fell off a ladder and he’s staying with his neighbor. He’s Mrs. Huff’s grandson.”
“Jason,” I said.
“Ooh,” Mrs. Martin came at me and squeezed my face between her wrists. “I’m sorry about your grandma,” she said, smiling sadly. “She was lovely to my Dia. You poor boy.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She kissed me, then pulled back and frowned. “Dee-Dee! I hope you two haven’t been —”
“Mom!” she screamed.
“— smoking,” said her mother. “I smell cigarettes!”
“Gosh, Mom, no,” said Dia. “It’s Tim’s postcard. It stinks.”
Her mother laughed as if she’d known all along, not even looking at the postcard, but turning back to the oven. “That’s fine. Forty-five minutes. Have some bread if you’re hungry. Sit at the table. Eat the table, if you’re that hungry. Ha! Kevin, sit.”
“Jason,” I said.
“Can’t, Mom,” said Dia, heading back toward one of the bedrooms. “Gotta get on the Internet. Dad coming?”
“He called. The Gandy’s stuffed up like a nose. But not too long.”
The Gandy. Again.
Dia sighed. “Why does Dad go that way?”
Mrs. Martin snickered. “He’s your father, that’s why.”
Dia darted back across the kitchen, stuck her face into the refrigerator, pulled out a plastic bag of sliced cheese, shoved a slice into her mouth, gave me two of my own, and was down the hall to her room in less than a minute. The layout of the house was pretty much like my grandma’s except that the garage and the bedrooms were on the opposite sides of the house.
Dia stopped abruptly, nearly knocking me down, and started back toward the kitchen. “Mom, can you or Dad take us to Sunken Gardens before it closes?” she called over my shoulder.
“He can. I need to watch this, okay?”
“Okay.”
As we left the kitchen a third time, Dia spun on her heels, slid into the bathroom, and slammed the door in my face.
“Start the computer,” she said through the door.
“What?” shouted her mother from the kitchen.
“NOTHING!” yelled Dia.
“Okay!” said her mother.
Holy crow!
I checked both bedrooms for the smaller bed, found it, slumped into her desk chair, and started her computer.
While I sat there exhausted by a minute’s worth of loud talk, I glanced around her room. It was small, like the one I had in my grandmother’s house. There were pillows everywhere on the floor, books stuffed into built-in shelves along the wall under the window, a dresser piled with more books and makeup stuff, and a pair of dolls curled up on her bed as if they were napping. A police car drove past on the street outside her window. I knew it wasn’t after us. It wasn’t even driving slow; and for sure it wasn’t the same officer as at the hotel. But I had this idea that if someone were looking down on me lately, it wouldn’t have looked good.
Lying to the police at the hospital, sneaking into an abandoned hotel, breaking into a Historical Society site? And who was that in the hotel, anyway? Who was . . . the Limper? Who made that strange call to my house? The same guy? A different guy? Could people really be following me? Did they want to stop me from finding the story? Was it bigger than that? What did they not want me to know about?
Was I finding things I shouldn’t find?
That made my neck tingle. My eyelids began to twitch. What had I gotten myself into? Should I tell Mom everything —
Oh, my gosh! Dad!
I looked at my watch. It had somehow gotten to be late afternoon. How the heck did that happen? I pulled out my phone and called the hospital right away. After being transfered a few times, I got his nurse.
“He’s sleeping,” she said. “He was asking about you. Can I tell him you’re coming?”
“Yes, yes. I’ve been busy with the house packing all day.”
She said nothing.
“So, yes. I’ll be there soon.”
“I’ll tell him.” She hung up. I so had to get there.
Not hearing a flush from the bathroom yet — it was that close — I made a quick call to Hector.
“Dude!” he said when he heard my voice. “I’m dying here! Rain and hammocks don’t mix. And by that I mean it’s raining. When are you coming home? I mean, how’s your dad, but when are you coming home?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“What?” yelled Mrs. Martin.
“What
what
?” called Dia from the bathroom.
“NOTHING!” I shouted back.
“Okay!” they chimed together.
“Hector, look,” I whispered into the phone, “there’s a kind of mystery I found. At least I think it’s a mystery.” I told him as much as I could remember.
“Your dad’s lawyer friend, Mr. Fracker, died sixty years ago? So who was the guy using his name? No kidding a bizarre mystery. A bizarre zombie mystery. Singapore? The Everglades? Do people actually escape from alligators?”
“It’s a story,” I told him. “So maybe. I don’t know. That’s the least of it. There’s so much nutty stuff. I feel as if I’m drowning in it.”
“What was that weird word?” he asked.
“Oobarab.”
“Sounds like a kind of animal.”
“You’re thinking of caribou or baboon or something.” I spelled it for him, then heard the bathroom door finally open. “Gotta go. We’ll talk soon.”
Dia came in and saw me with my phone. “Did you call Mrs. K to tell her you’re eating here?”
Gosh!
“Good idea,” I said. So I called to tell her I’d see her later. She said, “I’ll hide my key in the mailbox for you. And see? It was good to put on lights, wasn’t it?”
“You were right,” I said.
When I hung up, Dia was reading the home page of Sunken Gardens. We scanned through the slideshow of historical pictures, the onscreen map, and finally the virtual tour, none of which were all that helpful. We couldn’t find where the waterfall in the postcard might have been or whether it was still there.
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “It could still be there.”
“Except that don’t they tear everything down here?” I said.
She turned. I thought she was going to say something to me. Instead, she yelled into my face. “MOM, WE REALLY HAVE TO GO TO SUNKEN GARDENS! WHERE’S DAD?”
I nearly fell out of my chair. “What the —”
Her mother appeared, laughing, at the door of Dia’s room, wiping her hands on a towel. “S’okay with your neighbor you go there, Jimmy? And then you eat here after?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “She’s fine with it.”
Mrs. Martin smiled. “Then, you better move it! Your dad’s here!”
“My dad?” I said.
Dia got up. “No, mine, Spinky.”
A skinny man with a full head of black hair as wild as Mrs. Martin’s came into the room, grabbed Dia, and whirled her around. One of her sneakers flew off. “Poppy!” she yelled.
“Dee-ey!” he said. “And who’s this?”
“You know. The boy on the bus,” said Dia.
I shook his hand. “Jason. I think,” I said.
“Nice to meet you. Staying for supper?”
“We need a ride to Sunken Gardens first, then we’ll eat,” said Dia. She spun around at me, and frowned. “So, your toes glued to the floor or what?”
Both Martin parents laughed and laughed. I guessed they must have had a lot of fun with Dia saying crazy things all the time. The next thing I heard was the jangle of car keys and we were out the door. The three of us piled in Mr. Martin’s front seat because the back was filled with all kinds of stuff.
For the next fifteen minutes, he talked nonstop. He had grown up in Cuba but moved to Tampa with his parents when he was young. They had worked in a place called Ybor City, where the big cigar-making business was. He moved to St. Petersburg when he and Mrs. Martin got married, but they have dinner with his folks in Tampa every week.
“I
love
Sunken Gardens!” he said. “It opened a hundred years ago, and it’s sunken because it’s in a sinkhole, I bet you didn’t know. It almost went under a few times, but keeps coming back better than ever. I love all the old places that are still around.” He reached over my head to the back seat and plopped an old cigar box in my lap.
“No thanks,” I said. “I don’t —”
“Ooh, Daddy,” Dia said, flipping the box open. Inside were maps and brochures for attractions all over Florida. Places called Sulphur Springs, Paradise Park, Orchid Jungle, Gatorama. Some of the places, he said, didn’t exist anymore.
Dia and I fished around until we found one from Sunken Gardens from the 1960s. I got excited to think that the waterfall might actually still be there.
“Take the map. It could be handy,” Mr. Martin said as we drove into the parking lot of the Gardens.
“You bet,” said Dia. “We’re solving a mystery, Dad.”
He laughed. “That’s my Dia. Here’s a twenty. Be safe?”
“Always!”
The sun was starting to dip, but it was still hot. We had less than an hour and a half before closing time. Dia gave her father a hug, then grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the entrance.
“See you back out here at six,” her father said. “I’ll be parked outside the gift shop.”
“He’s cool,” I said.
“Yeah, he is. Hurry up.”
Ten minutes and sixteen dollars later, Dia and I were inside Sunken Gardens. They might have called it Sunken Jungle. It was thick with high trees and low tropical plants and overflowed with flowers and vines and blossoming bushes that spilled over onto narrow winding paths. Ponds and marshes dotted the sides of the paths while a green stream slithered through the whole park like a snake.
We found a bench in the Oak Pavilion, a brick patio surrounded by tall trees, and spread her dad’s old map and a new one on our knees. The garden was as hot as a sauna; the air was close, thick, and hard to breathe. Birds cackled and screamed from somewhere just beyond us.
“It’s changed, but not that much,” said Dia. “Which is good.”
Mothers with strollers went by. Grandparents and grandchildren. An older woman all dressed in pink and yellow passed our bench, smiling. Next came three workers, one carrying a short ladder, another a rolled-up hose, laughing at something one just said. Everyone seemed so much fresher than me. I was soaked.
“There are only two waterfalls on the map,” said Dia finally. “We have to follow the paths nearly all the way to the back.”
The moment we got up, I saw a flash of shiny black suit vanish among the plants.
Are you kidding me? No way. I’m seeing things.
I hurried after Dia. We wormed our way down one path, where we saw giant bird cages with — what else? — parrots in them. I couldn’t help thinking about the little connections — the cut-through, the flower shop, the Gandy Bridge, the parrots. I felt as if the story were going on around us. We passed the old fenced-in entrance building that was no longer used and some flamingos lolling next to a pond. There was rustle behind me. Turning, I saw a beret disappearing behind the building, and I knew for certain.
“They’re here!” I whispered. “Dia, we’re being followed. I’m seeing people from the funeral home.”
She smiled. “You see dead people?”
“I’m serious.”
She glanced down the path herself now, her smile fading. “You know what? I’d be more surprised if you didn’t see them. It means we’re onto something. Keep moving.”
Besides my being nervous as we hurried on, I found the paths very confusing. We went over some of them twice, wasting time we didn’t have, and dead-ended in an open garden that took us all the way back to the entrance. I could barely follow the new map and hoped that Dia could make sense of her father’s old one. When we finally heard rushing water, I got excited. But it was a small waterfall, not at all the one on the card.
I was disappointed. Disappointed and angry that I had spent the whole day with Dia when I was supposed to be seeing my father. Besides, were we being followed? Actually
followed
? This was serious, wasn’t it?
I stopped. “Forget this,” I said.
“What?”
“The whole thing. What are we doing here? I don’t care if there’s a mystery. What difference does it make? My dad’s in the hospital, for crying out loud. I should be there! Can we just go —”
Dia looked me in the eyes. “Hold on. Is this how you deal with everything? Just quit?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Stop mowing the lawn. Stop thinking about Grandma. You’re like the guys tearing down that old hotel because it’s not new enough. Jeez. Have some guts, will you? We only have a little over a half hour left. If there’s any chance of finding out about Nick and Marnie, we have to. Marnie’s your
grandmother,
after all.”
“But who says we’ll even find anything?” I said. “It’s probably long gone —”
“You’re gone,” she snapped. “I’m going searching.”
She stormed off, and the parrots cackled behind me. She made me feel I don’t know what, but she had one thing right, and it hit home. Marnie
was
my grandmother. If there was anything to discover about her, I guessed I could spend a half hour finding out what it was. I followed the girl.
We hustled down all the paths, keeping clear of people as best we could. I was sure we were still passing places we had just seen — we saw the workers and the smiling lady three more times — but it was all so green and hot and thick I couldn’t even be sure. By this time, security guards were moving more obviously down the paths, urging people gently back toward the main entrance. A guard came our way. I pretended to wait, smiling, while Dia leaned over and fiddled with her sneakers.
“The Gardens are closing,” I said to her.
“Coming, honey,” she said brightly. When the guard passed, she did an about face and plunged into the overgrowth behind us.
“‘Honey’?” I said. “What the —
ooof!
”
She yanked me into the bushes after her. “Shush up!” she hissed. Crouching, she glanced both ways, then turned again and darted under some hangy things to a back part of the path.
She stopped. “Holy cow!”
We faced a very tall waterfall made mostly of concrete molded to look like rock. The greenery was different. Vines hung from higher trees than were there before, and the bushes surrounding the waterfall were bigger in some cases and smaller in others, but it was the same waterfall on the postcard.
“Amazing!” I said.
The postcard’s pinhole was directly in the bottom side of the uppermost ledge about seven feet up from the ground. Water gushed out of a pipe up top and tumbled down several ledges to a pool at the bottom.
“There must be plumbing for the waterfall, which means pipes and stuff hidden near the top,” she said, squinting toward the upper ledges. “I say there’s a hatch somewhere up there that hides the waterworks. How do you want to do this?”
I thought about boosting her up, then about her boosting me up, which might have worked better, or about finding a log or thick stick and both of us grabbing it and poking at the ledge —
“Time’s up. Get in the pond and lean over,” she said. “I’m going to stand on your back.”
“What am I?” I said. “A cheerleader —”
“In and lean,” she snapped. “Do it. It!”
Looking both ways, I slid off my shoes and stepped into the pond. The water was cool and wasn’t deep. She got in after me and pushed hard against my back. “Down!” I nearly fell, then steadied myself, standing there like a tipped-over “L,” while she jumped on my back piggyback style. Then, she slowly got to her feet.
“Stop wobbling!”
“I’m standing in muck —,” I said.
I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her leaning and reaching upward, when out of nowhere goldfish, huge ones, began to slither around my ankles.
Oh man.
I closed my eyes. She pulled one foot away from me and planted it on a ledge halfway up the waterfall.
“I see the plumbing box under the top ledge,” she said. “I knew it!” She tested her footing to bring the other leg up, then slipped back. I half caught her in my arms.
“Watch the hands, Romeo!” she said.
“Sorry.”
She hoisted herself on my back again, then perched as high as possible on the fake rocks, one foot on my spine, water sloshing over her hands and arms. She began jostling and banging the hatch until it suddenly swung open. She rooted around for a few seconds when something heavy and square fell out from among the pipes and dials and wires under the ledge. It tumbled down the rocks past her, barely missing my head, and splashed at my feet. It was a shallow metal box just like the first.
“We have it!” she cried. She reached up once more to snap the plumbing hatch closed, then hopped down next to me. Meanwhile, the box had fallen open in the water, and papers had spilled out. They started to sink under the pond water.
“Get the pages!” she said. I grabbed them from the water and wiped the pages on my jeans until I saw I was smearing the type.
“Good one, Smitty!” she said. “Quit it —”
SNAP!
A branch cracked.
We froze.
“Uh-oh . . . ,” she whispered.
We stood there, dripping wet, our hands full of soggy paper, while someone rustled in the bushes beyond the end of the path.