The Water Keeper(62)
As Summer, Ellie, and I carefully made our way up the walkway from the dock, movement to my left caught my eye. Camouflaged against the backdrop of what was once a Japanese garden now lying in ruins, I spotted a huge lizard, at least six feet long, leashed to a palm tree. Yes, six feet. And leashed.
Closer to the house, more movement caught my eye. A monkey, also leashed, had climbed into the gazebo, but fighting the tether, he’d inadvertently wrapped himself tightly around one of the two-by-sixes. Afraid, he continued to pull wildly against the cord and emitted an ear-piercing shriek when we appeared on the pool deck. Not wanting him to choke, I cut the end of the leash, loosing him. Sensing himself free, he made a final chirp, circled the pool, ran over to the lizard, pounced on it, smacked it in the face six or eight times, and then climbed the ten-foot retaining wall and disappeared, dragging his leash, never to be seen again.
I would have slid open the sliding-glass door, but it was missing. Not broken. Not cracked. Not sitting oddly canted on its runner. But missing. Completely gone. We stepped into the house where we were met by a blizzard of cold air blowing from the vents—which immediately escaped out the several missing doors and windows. If the outside of the house was trashed, the inside defied the laws of architecture and engineering.
The interior had once been supported by a colonnade of eight large wooden columns—three of which were now missing, exposing Volkswagen-size holes in the ceiling. A fourth lay at an odd angle with an ax stuck into its side. Two Gone with the Wind–style staircases led up to the second and third stories. One of the staircases was totally gone. The shape of the intact staircase helped me recognize the odd pieces of wood circling the ashes of the bonfire.
Both of the faucets in the kitchen were running at full go, which normally would have just meant a waste of water. But given that the drains had been stopped up, the floor of the recessed kitchen was flooded in six inches of water. Summer was about to step in and turn off the faucets when I touched her arm and showed her the myriad of electronics and wires now submerged in water. I walked into the utility room, opened one of several breaker boxes, and flipped everything off. Free from the possibility of electrocution, Summer turned off the faucets. The eerie quiet allowed us to hear water running elsewhere in the house. Probably upstairs.
From the utility room behind the kitchen, I opened a door into the eight-car garage. Two bays were empty, while six cars filled what remained. Two Porsches, a Range Rover, a McLaren, a Bentley, and a Dodge diesel pickup of the 2500 class. Parked in its own outcove was one untouched BMW motorcycle that looked to be twin to the one Knievel took swimming. All of the tires of each vehicle were flat, including the bikes hanging on the wall, save the truck and the motorcycle.
Returning inside the house, Summer and Ellie followed in dumbstruck amazement at the wreckage inflicted upon a once-beautiful home. At the amount of money wasted and the stupidity exhibited. I stood on the staircase and surveyed the landscape, guessing that the house had suffered several hundred thousand dollars of damage.
On the second floor, I counted ten bedrooms. There had evidently been a pillow fight because a million down feathers covered the floor, furniture, and return-air vents. There had also been a paintball war—all the mattresses and box springs had been extracted from the beds and leaned on their sides along the halls, creating a maze of protecting walls now covered in fifty thousand neon pink, red, green, and yellow splotches. Many of the doors had either been ripped off their hinges or had the pins removed, adding to the maze. Similar to the pool deck, clothing and bottles littered the floor.
On the third floor, which once housed the exercise room and theater, someone had greased the marble hallway with some type of oil or Crisco. At the far end, they’d piled empty bottles like bowling pins. I’m not sure what they’d used for a ball unless it was their bodies, which might explain the oil. Although I’m not sure anything could explain anything about this chaos other than extreme and prolonged hallucinogenic drug use by a lot of people.
The fourth floor housed a library and office. It had fared best with only minor violence, which suggested that drunk and high people had tired of walking up stairs. I was about to return downstairs when Summer pointed at a ladder that led out of the library and into what looked like a crow’s nest. We climbed the ladder and found a bedroom, bathroom, and small kitchen. Maybe a mother-in-law suite, although I couldn’t imagine someone of any age climbing all those stairs on a regular basis. That was until Ellie opened a door to reveal an elevator shaft. I say “shaft” because the elevator itself had been freed from its cable and now lay four floors below in a mangled heap.
Trying to make sense of all this, and staring out the glass toward the dock below, I noticed a helicopter pad atop the dock house. Minus a helicopter. Looking at the mayhem around me and the absence of a helicopter, I guessed this party had taken place prior to the party at the cabin in the Everglades. I figured they’d trashed this place, hopped in the helicopter, and flown west. My guess now was that they’d flown south.
We three were still standing with our jaws open when we heard the sound. A thud.
Turning toward the noise, I saw spewing steam and heard the sound of running water from the bathroom, so I followed both. They led me to a large tub. The walls of the entire bathroom were made of glass blocks, giving warped yet spectacular and unobstructed 360-degree views of the Intracoastal to the west and the Atlantic to the east. Surrounding the tub and scattered on the floor lay thirty or forty plastic bags that, according to the labels, once held twenty pounds of ice each. I could only imagine that the ice was used to fill the tub, but the tub was empty. Moving around it, I stepped into the walk-in shower, which poured steam—it doubled as a steam bath. Umpteen stainless steel taps, all of which were currently spewing, filled the room with steam. Someone’s personal car wash. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.