The Water Keeper(72)
If I was waiting for a storm to pass or let up, this would be a good place to do it. Nobody in their right mind would attempt to pick up anyone from land or deliver them either to another vessel or—and this got me thinking—a house on stilts. The wind and waves made it impossible. Both people and boats would be crushed. But if the wind abated, I’d stow my boat right about here.
I needed to do some snooping around, and I couldn’t do it with a deck full of tired people. We exited the marina and wound through the mangroves en route to Key Largo. Mangroves are one of my favorite trees, and Summer picked up on this as we slipped between them. She, too, was glad to be out of the eggbeater.
The sun was falling, but she chose to say nothing. She just stood there. Next to me. And if I’m honest, I liked it.
Chapter 32
Key Largo loomed on our left, and soon we passed beneath the Card Sound Bridge. A bridge of some reputation. Years ago, some crazy writer with a broken heart drove his Mercedes off the top of the span. His mangled German automobile had been salvaged and erected as a rusty monument on the shore nearby. His body, on the other hand, was never found.
We passed through the relatively calm waters of Barnes Sound, where Clay sat up and began taking notice. Off to our left, an old sailboat, maybe sixty feet or better, lay on her side, taking on water. Had been for years. Her mast was snapped at the waterline. She’d never recover. Lost at sea. Once beautiful. Now, not so much.
We idled beneath US1, and the life of Key Largo opened before us. Waterfront bars, jet skiers, fishing boats—the calm waters were alive with people. Most had come to snorkel or scuba in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, a three-mile by twenty-five-mile underwater haven on the other side of the Key. In the Atlantic. It’s Florida’s Grand Canyon. Living coral for seventy-five square miles or thereabouts. It’s so fragile, and so alive, that boaters aren’t allowed to anchor in it for fear of killing it. It’s one small part of a larger whole known as Florida’s Great Reef, which stretches from Miami to some seventy miles south of Key West. If you really want to “see” Florida, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than Pennekamp. It’s an undersea wonderworld. Full of sergeant majors, jack crevalle, pompano, yellow grunts, mangrove snapper, smiling barracudas, sharks, leopard rays—you name it, it’s there. Then there’s the coral. Every color under the rainbow paints the coral, which waves at you as the current ripples through.
But there’d be no Pennekamp for us. I skirted along the eastern edge and pulled into the marina attached to the Key Largo Bay Marriot Beach Resort. I needed something that attracted the party crowd.
I parked the boat much like you do your car and rented three rooms. As the dark reds and crimson of sundown burst onto the western skyline, I handed each their key and told them, “Don’t wait up.”
Clay stiffened. So did Summer. Both objected, but I explained, “I’ve got to do some snooping, and besides, I need your eyes and ears around the pool deck. I need you to listen to what people are saying. I’ll be back. Midnight. Maybe after.”
Summer tried to convince me otherwise, and I told her, “You can be the most help to me if you’ll watch Ellie, drink some drinks with umbrellas sticking out the top, and listen closely to what other people are saying.”
Gunner looked at me and pushed his ears forward. I patted my thigh and he stiffened and looked at Clay. Clay said, “Get on,” and Gunner hopped down into the boat. I cast off, eased back out into the water, and tried to shake off both the weary and the tired. Behind me, Summer stood on the dock, arms crossed. I turned the wheel and returned, pulling up alongside the bulkhead. She looked down at me. I shifted to neutral.
“I’ll be back.”
“I know.”
“Oh, you do?” I’d missed that completely. “I thought you looked worried that I might not.”
She shook her head. “I’m worried about the condition you’ll be in when you do.”
I laughed. “That’s comforting.”
I turned the wheel and put the resort in my wake. With daylight fading, I shifted to nighttime mode on my electronics, passed back beneath the Card Sound Bridge and within sight of the Mercedes monument, and began hugging the easternmost coastline. As long as I stayed within cover of the mangroves, I cut through smooth waters. But the moment I ventured too far from the protection of the shoreline, the waves and whitecaps returned. An hour later, shrouded in darkness, I cut all my running lights, running illegally and blind to anything but radar, and continued creeping along the inside. When I reached Elliott Key, I tied up loosely to a mangrove and watched the entrance to the cove through Leica binoculars.
For three hours I studied the cove and the rough waters of the bay. In the distance, silhouetted against the sky, I counted seven houses on stilts. Each was dark. Not a light anywhere. The only lights I could see were those of the Miami shoreline and the lighthouse just north.
At two a.m., a forty-plus-foot vessel cloaked in black and carrying five engines on her transom idled out of the cove without a single running light. Once clear of the shallow water, she throttled up and churned the rough water, having set a vector for what looked like Stiltsville. That boat was far more capable of handling six-to eight-foot seas, which was what we were looking at. I could survive in my Whaler. That boat could navigate. Big difference.
Losing sight, I knew I needed to close the gap. I pulled in my line, set my phone inside a watertight OtterBox, and ventured out where the waves began crashing over the gunnels. Within minutes I was soaked. Between my chart and the physical landmark of the lighthouse, I set a course toward the closest house, knowing I couldn’t get near any of the pilings or the waves would split Gone Fiction against them. The vessel I was following no doubt had bow thrusters. Given her weight, agility, and power, she could navigate close enough to one of the homes to either take on or offload passengers.