Duma Key(177)

Jack reached out to touch the jagged motto, then seemed to think better of it.

Wireman did it for him. "The verdict, gentlemen... and rendered in the law's own language. Come on. Sunset at 7:15, give or take, and daylight's a fleeting thing. We take turns with the picnic basket. It's one heavy puta."

xi

But before we went anywhere, we paused inside the gate for a good look at Elizabeth's first home on Duma Key. My immediate reaction was dismay. Somewhere in the back of my mind had been a clear narrative thread: we'd enter the house, go upstairs, and find what had been Elizabeth's bedroom in those long-ago days when she'd been known as Libbit. There my missing arm, sometimes known as Edgar Freemantle's Divine Psychic Dowser, would lead me to a left-behind steamer trunk (or perhaps only a humble crate). Inside would be more drawings, the missing drawings, the ones that would tell me where Perse was and solve the riddle of the leaky table. All before sundown.

A pretty tale, and only one problem with it: the top half of Heron's Roost no longer existed. The house was on an exposed knoll, and its upper stories had been torn completely away in some long-ago storm. The ground floor still stood, but it was engulfed in gray-green vines which had also swarmed up the pillars in front. Spanish Moss hung from the eaves, turning the veranda into a cave. The house was ringed with shattered orange tiles, all that remained of the roof. They poked up like giants' teeth from the swale of weeds that had replaced the lawn. The last twenty-five yards of the shell drive had been buried in strangler fig. So had the tennis court and what might once have been a child's playhouse. More vines crept up the sides of the long, barnlike outbuilding behind the court and scrabbled along what remained of the playhouse's shingles.

"What's that?" Jack was pointing between the tennis court and the main house. There a long rectangle of evil black soup simmered in the afternoon sun. Most of the bug-drone seemed to be coming from that direction.

"Now? I'd call it a tarpit," Wireman said. "Back in the Roaring Twenties, I imagine the Eastlake family called it their swimming pool."

"Imagine taking a dip in that, " Jack said, and shuddered.

The pool was surrounded by willows. Behind it was another thick stand of Brazilian Peppers, and -

"Wireman, are those banana trees?" I asked.

"Yep," he said. "And probably full of snakes. Ugh. Look on the west side, Edgar."

On the Gulf side of Heron's Roost, the snarl of weeds, vines, and creepers that had once been John Eastlake's lawn gave way to sea oats. The breeze was good and the view was better, making me realize that the one thing you rarely got in Florida was height. Here we had just enough to make it seem like the Gulf of Mexico was at our feet. Don Pedro Island was to our left, Casey Key dreaming away in a blue-gray haze to our right.

"Drawbridge is still up," Jack said, sounding amused. "They're really having problems this time."

"Wireman," I said. "Look down there, along that old path. Do you see there?"

He followed my pointing finger. "The rock outcropping? Sure, I see it. Not coral, I don't think, although I'd have to get a little closer to be sure what about it?"

"Quit being a geologist for a minute and just look. What do you see?"

He looked. They both did. It was Jack who got it first. "A profile?" Then he said it again, without the hesitation. "A profile."

I nodded. "We can only see the forehead, the indentation of the eyesocket, and the top of the nose from here, but I bet if we were on the beach, we'd see a mouth, as well. Or what passed for one. That's Hag's Rock. And Shade Beach right below it, I'll bet you anything. Where John Eastlake went on his treasure-hunting expeditions."

"And where the twins drowned," Wireman added. "That's the path they walked to get there. Only..."

He fell silent. The breeze tugged at our hair. We looked at the path, still visible after all these years. Little feet going down to swim hadn't done that. A footpath between Heron's Roost and Shade Beach would have disappeared in five years, maybe only two.

"That's no path," Jack said, reading my mind. "That used to be a road. Not paved, but a road, just the same. Why would anybody want a road between their house and the beach, when it couldn't have been more than a ten-minute walk?"

Wireman shook his head. "Don't know."

"Edgar?"

"Not a clue."

"Maybe he found more stuff on the bottom than just a few trinkets," Jack said.

"Maybe, but-" I caught movement in the tail of my eye something dark and turned toward the house. I saw nothing.

"What is it?" Wireman asked.

"Probably nerves," I said.

The breeze, which had been coming at us from the Gulf, switched slightly and puffed out of the south instead. It brought a stench of putridity with it.

Jack recoiled, grimacing. "What the f**k is that!"

"Perfume from the pool would be my guess," Wireman said. "Jack, I love the smell of sludge in the morning."

"Yeah, but it's afternoon."

Wireman gave him a duh look, then turned to me. "What do you think, muchacho? On we go?"

I took a quick inventory. Wireman had the red basket; Jack had the bag with the food in it; I had my art supplies. I wasn't sure just what we were going to do if the rest of Elizabeth's drawings had blown away in the storm that had torn the roof off the ruin just ahead (or if there were no more pictures), but we had come this far and we had to do something. Ilse insisted on that, from my bones and heart.