Duma Key(181)

"Around back, but... did either of you see that heron?"

Jack shook his head. So did Wireman, looking bemused.

" I saw it," I told him. "And if I see it again... or if either of you do... I want you to shoot it, Jerome."

Wireman raised his eyebrows but said nothing. We resumed our tramp along the east side of the deserted estate.

xv

Finding a way in through the back turned out not to be a problem: there was no back. All but the most easterly corner of the mansion had been torn off, probably in the same storm that had taken the top stories. Standing there, looking into the overgrown ruin of what had once been a kitchen and pantry, I realized that Heron's Roost was little more than a moss-festooned fa ade.

"We can get in from here," Jack said doubtfully, "but I'm not sure I trust the floor. What do you think, Edgar?"

"I don't know," I said. I felt very tired. Maybe it was only spent adrenaline from our encounter with the alligator, but it felt like more than that to me. It felt like defeat. There had been too many years, too many storms. And a little girl's drawings were ephemeral things to start with. "What time is it, Wireman? Without the bullshit, if you please."

He looked at his watch. "Two-thirty. What do you say, muchacho? Go in?"

"I don't know," I repeated.

"Well, I do," he said. "I killed a f**king alligator to get here; I'm not leaving without at least a look around the old homestead. The pantry floor looks solid, and it's the closest to the ground. Come on, you two, let's pile up some shit to stand on. A couple of those beams should do. Jack, you can go first, then help me. We'll pull Edgar up together."

And that's how we did it, dirty and disheveled and out of breath, scrambling first into the pantry and going from there into the house itself, looking around with wonder, feeling like time travelers, tourists in a world that had ended over eighty years before.

Chapter 18 Noveen

i

The house stank of decaying wood, old plaster, and moldy fabric. There was also an underlying greenish odor. Some of the furniture was left ruined by time and slumped by moisture but the fine old wallpaper in the parlor hung in strips, and there was a huge paper nest, ancient and silent, clinging to the ceiling in the rotting front hall. Below it, dead wasps lay in a foot-deep hill on the warped cypress floorboards. Somewhere, in what remained of the upstairs, water was dripping, one isolated drop at a time.

"The cypress and redwood in this place would have been worth a fortune if somebody had come up and got it before it went to hell," Jack said. He bent down, seized the end of a protruding board, and pulled. It came up, bent almost like taffy, then broke off not with a snap but a listless crump. A few woodlice came strolling from the rectangular hole below it. The smell that puffed up was dank and dark.

"No scavenge, no salvage, and nobody up here partying hearty," Wireman said. "No discarded condoms or step-ins, not a single JOE LOVES DEBBIE spray-painted on a wall. I don't think anyone's been up here since John chained the door and drove away for the last time. I know that's hard to believe-"

"No," I said. "It's not. The Heron's Roost at this end of the Key has belonged to Perse since 1927. John knew it, and made sure to keep it that way when he wrote his will. Elizabeth did the same. But it's not a shrine." I looked into the room opposite the formal parlor. It might once have been a study. An old rolltop desk sat in a puddle of stinking water. There were bookshelves, but they stood empty. "It's a tomb."

"So where do we look for these drawings?" Jack asked.

"I have no idea," I said. "I don't even..." A chunk of plaster lay in the doorway, and I kicked it. I wanted to send it flying, but it was too old and wet; it only disintegrated. "I don't think there are any more drawings. Not now that I see the place."

I glanced around again, smelling the wet reek.

"You could be right, but I don't trust you," Wireman said. "Because, muchacho, you're in mourning. And that makes a man tired. You're listening to the voice of experience."

Jack went into the study, squishing across damp boards to get to the old rolltop. A drop of water plinked down on the visor of his cap, and he looked up. "Ceiling's caving in," he said. "There was probably at least one bathroom overhead, maybe two, and maybe a roof cistern to catch rainwater, back in the day. I can see a hanging pipe. One of these years it's gonna come all the way down, and this desk will go bye-bye."

"Just make sure you don't go bye-bye, Jack," Wireman said.

"It's the floor I'm worried about right now," he said. "Feels mushy as hell."

"Come back, then," I said.

"In a minute. Let me check this, first."

He ran the drawers, one after the other. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing... more nothing... nothing..." He paused. "Here's something. A note. Handwritten."

"Let's see it," Wireman said.

Jack brought it to him, taking big, careful steps until he got past the wet part of the floor. I read over Wireman's shoulder. The note was scrawled on plain white paper in a big flat man's hand:

August 19, '26

Johnny You want, you get. This is the last of the good stuff, just for you, My Lad. The "champers" aint my best ever but "What The Hell." Single-malt's OK. CC for the "common herd" (ha-ha). 5 Ken in the keg. And as you asked, Table X 2, and in cera. I take no credit, just struck lucky, but it really is the last. Thanks for everything, Pal. See you when I get back this side of the puddle.