The Vision (13 page)

She locked the back and started toward the front again, pausing only to sift through the

mail on the Victorian occasional table by the door. “Nothing dire,” she murmured. “Let’s

go.”

She locked the door as they left, and started back down Duval Street.

“Where are we going?” he asked her.

She glanced at him with a trace of amusement. “The Hard Rock Cafe.”

“I thought you preferred your Conch insider places.”

“It’s a cool Hard Rock,” she told him.

He wasn’t surprised when they arrived and she knew the young people acting as hosts at

the door. He wasn’t surprised, either, when she opted to sit inside—Deep South natives

of any kind usually preferred air-conditioning to the charming notion of dining in the

sunshine and garden atmosphere of an outdoor café.

The restaurant was located in a handsome historic home, late 1800s, with some of the old

incorporated with the customary decor of the chain. After they walked up the stairs, she

pointed out a guitar signed by Jimmy Buffett, and a number of pieces of Elvis Presley

and Beatles memorabilia.

After they had ordered drinks—she opted for alcohol that afternoon, choosing an island

concoction with an umbrella—she told him the place was supposedly haunted.

“Is anywhere not haunted here?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “Ask our waitress,” she told him.

He did. Their waitress was a pretty young college girl whose eyes widened when

Genevieve encouraged her to tell Thor about the ghosts.

“The place really is haunted,” she assured him.

“Oh?”

“One man committed suicide here, and suicides always return to haunt the place where

they died.”

“I see.”

“Honestly. Another man died downstairs…but I personally think it’s only Mr. Curry

doing the haunting. His father was a millionaire, but he managed to go broke in a year.

And then his wife left him.”

“That’s adding insult to injury,” Thor agreed pleasantly.

“I’ve been up here alone when a black shadow kind of sweeps around…cleaning towels move. And Brett set up a table one time only to have all the forks and napkins moved to

another table,” she said, eyes wide. “Trust me—I do not stay up here alone at night.”

Thor thanked her for taking the time to tell her story. After she left, he looked at

Genevieve, lifting his glass, arching a brow. “So you think that the place is haunted?

You’ve seen shadows, things moving around?”

She shook her head. “No, I’ve never seen a thing.”

“So?”

“They tell good stories here,” she said. “But lots of people believe in ghosts.”

He reached across the table, frowning, barely aware he had set his hand over hers. “There

are shadows at night. Shadows when the light changes. People might forget which table

they’ve set up—or someone else might move the table settings.”

She pulled her hand away, picking up her glass. “Absolutely true,” she told him.

Once lunch was served, Genevieve determinedly changed the subject from ghosts, asking

him when he first got into diving.

“I had this great book when I was a kid,” he said. “Story about a sunken ferry discovered

right in the St. Johns, near where I lived. I was hooked. How about you?”

“Family vocation. My grandfather was a frogman in World War II. I think I was thrown

in the ocean before I could walk.”

“So that’s how it goes, growing up as a Conch, huh?”

She shrugged. “For lots of people. I have friends who hate the water. Some of them still

love Key West. They just love the streets and the atmosphere, the sunsets. A lot of people

just kind of find Key West. And then stay here.” She tilted her head at an angle, smiling

ruefully. “You know, we really are the Conch Republic. In 1982 there was a big stink

about the number of illegal aliens and drugs that seemed to be flowing into Miami from

the Keys. The Border Patrol set up a blockade on US1 in Florida City, trying to get a grip

on the problem. Traffic was so backed up, people couldn’t get in or out. The mayor of

Key West went to the Miami courthouse to seek an injunction, but nothing was done, so

Key West seceded from the United States. After a few minutes of rebellion, the ‘prime

minister’ surrendered to the admiral at the navy base and demanded a billion dollars in

foreign aid and war relief.” She shrugged. “He made his point, and now it’s great for the

local businesses. You can buy Conch Republic passports, T-shirts…you name it.” She

smiled.

Thor grinned, glad to see that her mood had lightened.

The check came just then, and she reached for it. “Expense account,” he reminded her,

taking it from her.

She stood as he laid money on the bill. “Come on, then. I’m taking you for an after-lunch

drink. And I am paying for it.”

A few minutes later, he found himself in Captain Tony’s Saloon.

“Are you taking me on a tour?” he asked her.

“This is where Sloppy Joe’s was originally, although it wasn’t called that then. If I

remember the story right, Joe Russell refused to pay the extra dollar a week when the rent

went up in the thirties. All his patrons just picked up their drinks and the furniture and

moved down the street to where Sloppy Joe’s is now.”

“I see.”

“What would you like?” she asked, indicating a table by a tree trunk. The tree grew next

to the bar and disappeared at the ceiling.

“I’m sticking with beer,” he said.

He took a seat at the table by the tree while she waited at the bar for their drinks. Looking up, he saw that the rafters were covered with hundreds of bras, some signed.

A table away, two women were sitting with two children, a boy of about six and a girl

who was maybe five years old. The kids had drinks that looked like Shirley Temples,

while the women were nursing more exotic concoctions. One of the women noted him

and flushed—he guessed she was embarrassed to be in the bar with children. “We’re

trying to cover the hot tourist spots,” she said.

He smiled back and pointed to a table closer to the street. A man there had two boys with

him who were about eleven or twelve. “It’s my guess it’s fine,” he said.

She looked relieved. Her companion turned to him and smiled, as well. “I told her it

would be okay.” The second woman stared at him for a minute. Her eyes widened in

recognition, and she leaned forward and whispered to her friend. They both stared at him

and flushed, then looked at each other again and started whispering.

They both stared again and smiled. He heard the mom whisper, “…really handsome….”

He had enough of an ego that he couldn’t help a moment’s bemusement—and deep

appreciation.

But where the hell did they know him from? They didn’t look the type who were into

diving magazines.

Then again….

He wasn’t sure why, but he felt uneasiness settling in. There had been a number of news

crews down by the beach that morning. Most of their group had politely refused to be

interviewed—neither he nor Marshall particularly wanted their project associated with

the tragedy of the young woman’s death. But he was pretty sure he had seen Alex and

Lizzie answering a few questions before managing to escape the reporters.

Genevieve joined him then. He waved a hand toward the bras.

“Have you got one up there?” he asked.

“No.”

“Interesting,” he said.

She grinned. “We’re here for the tree,” she explained.

“We are?”

“There’s a legend that a woman was hanged from that tree.”

“Legend?”

“She supposedly haunts this place.”

“More hauntings?”

“Ghosts are all over in Key West,” she said with a shrug. “They say.”

“But you’ve never believed in them?” he asked.

“No,” she told him.

As she spoke, the little girl at the nearby table began shrieking. “No! No, Mommy, no!

There’s a lady in there.”

“Ashley, shh. Honey, that’s just a story,” the mother said, distressed. “Ashley, please, let me take you in there. We’ll have an accident.”

“Excuse me,” Genevieve told Thor, then walked over to the other table and hunkered

down. She flashed a smile to the woman. “You need to go to the bathroom, huh?” she

said to the little girl. “And you heard the story about the ghost lady who haunts the

bathroom, right?”

“She tried to hurt a little boy once,” the little girl told her, wide-eyed. “A man told us the story, and how the lady is still in the bathroom.”

“Now, think about it,” Genevieve said. “If you were a ghost, would you really want to

come back and hang around in the bathroom? Ugh! There are much better places to

haunt. I’ve lived here my whole life, and my mom and dad came here with me lots when

I was little. I’ve used the bathroom. Your mom will go with you. It will be fine, I

promise.”

The mother looked at Genevieve gratefully. “We really shouldn’t have let them hear quite

so many stories,” she said apologetically.

Genevieve laughed. “You’ll be fine, won’t you?” she asked the girl.

Ashley laughed suddenly. “Ugh! Who would haunt a bathroom?”

Genevieve rose. The woman stood, too, taking her daughter’s hand. “Thank you so

much.” She paused. “You people are divers, aren’t you? And you’re the diver.”

Genevieve frowned. “I’m a diver,” she murmured.

“You were on television.” The woman lowered her voice. “We saw you.”

“Oh?”

“You saw that body they discovered this morning. In the water. You saw it days ago, but

the police divers couldn’t find it—and then it washed up this morning,” the woman said

softly.

“Mommy!” Ashley tugged at her hand, apparently really ready to go to the bathroom

now, ghost or not.

“Um…have a lovely time in Key West,” Genevieve said. She spun around, her face pale.

She hadn’t touched her drink, and she didn’t reach for it then. “Let’s go,” she said to

Thor. “Please.”

She was halfway down the block when he caught up with her, even though his strides

were long and he moved fast.

“Genevieve!”

She stopped, turned around and looked at him.

“Hey,” he said, taking her by the shoulders. “You knew there were news crews crawling

all over the beach this morning!”

“I didn’t give anyone an interview saying I’d seen that woman in the water,” she

protested.

“Then someone else did. Why are you so upset? I mean, you did see her down there. So

what’s wrong?”

She didn’t answer right away. She just stared with fixed interest at a middle-aged man

walking his dog down the street.

“I…it shouldn’t be so sensationalized,” she said.

“A woman has been murdered,” he said quietly. “That’s serious news. Especially in a

place where that isn’t—thankfully—a daily occurrence. People are going to talk.”

“We shouldn’t be involved,” she murmured.

Gen shook her head. He kept his hands firmly on her shoulders, forcing her to look at

him.

“Genevieve, it’s tragic, but it all makes sense, and you were right all along. There was a

woman in the water.”

She stared back at him, and her eyes suddenly held a veiled shield of bitterness. A dry

sound, almost a rueful laugh, escaped her. “You don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“I saw a woman in the water.”

“Right.”

“No, wrong. I saw a woman in the water. But not the same woman!”

He stared at her blankly. She wrenched away from him and, nearly running, disappeared

into the crowd on Duval Street.

7

J ay had been a cop a long time.

He’d seen pretty bad stuff. Not much could compare to some of the auto accidents he’d

seen on US1.

But that afternoon…

He’d been the city officer on the scene, while Charlie Grissom had been the lucky one

from the county. They’d stood in the cool, antiseptic morgue alongside the medical

examiner, Dr. Freeland, while the M.E., brusque and businesslike on all occasions, had

pointed out the most important features of the body.

The ankles—what remained of them—were given a lot of attention. Despite the many

things he had witnessed through the years, Jay felt ill. Maybe it was the smell in the

morgue. It was clean, but it had a chemical odor that reeked of death. Maybe it was the

fact that the bloated body had filled with gas that was now escaping, and there was no

disinfectant on earth that could disguise that fact. Maybe it was the girl’s face, which was now almost a caricature of life. Nothing seemed real, and yet it was painfully real at the

same time.

“When she went into the water, she was alive,” Dr. Freeland told them. “She drowned.

That was her cause of death. She fought the ropes that were holding her down. If you’ll

look, you’ll see where the skin on her ankles is ripped. And then there are her fingers.

She tried desperately to free herself. I set the rope aside. I’m sure the crime lab will be

able to discover something useful about it. This here—” he indicated the torn flesh and

white bone at the ankle “—is where she broke free at last.” He gave them a weary

grimace. “We all know the sea is a pretty brutal place. The fish ate away at the flesh and

the fiber and…that’s how she surfaced.” He stared up at the two men. “Gentlemen, I’d

guess, based on the tides, she went into the water off the southwest side of Key West. She

was probably in deep water when she went in. It was five to seven days ago.”

Freeland had a few more comments for them. They’d scraped her nails, but would have