Randy White - Seduced

“I can understand the confusion,” I said, “but why would I lie about the age of a tree?”

“Not lie,” he said, “just mistaken. I should have worded it differently.” When he chuckled an apology, I pictured freckles on a tanned face. “Thing is, after Hurricane Charley, the Florida Ag Department mandated that every citrus tree in this part of the state be destroyed. It had to do with the spread of a fungus disease. They didn’t notify you?”

I didn’t answer immediately. On both sides of the dark road, mobile homes slid by in grids, some still decorated with Christmas lights. Behind me, I sensed Reggie scoot closer, listening.

“That was fifteen years ago,” I said. “Are you asking me as a person or as a member of the citrus industry?”

“As a friend,” he said. “Nothing official, but it could be important. You can trust me, Hannah.”

I wasn’t so sure. I muffled the mouthpiece and whispered over my shoulder, “Are you following this?”

Reggie’s whiskey breath replied, “We gotta turn right in about three miles. There’s no signs, so use your brights.”

I returned to the phone. “My mother owns those trees. It’s not up to me who I trust or don’t. I don’t mean to be rude, but what’s your interest?”

“Staying employed and paying my bills,” Kermit chuckled. “My personal opinion is, ordering those old groves cut was the single biggest biological mistake this state has ever made. Stupidity or hubris, it’s hard to say, but I wish people would’ve had the nerve to tell those Ag Department cops to go to hell.”

Loretta had said worse than that when men in government trucks had showed up, handing out notices and giving orders.

I told him as much, and relaxed a bit. “My great-grandfather planted grapefruit and oranges, and a big tamarind on a parcel behind the house-this was back in the early nineteen hundreds. Some of them are still standing. The honeybell oranges came later, but I wouldn’t call it a grove. Over the years, my mother’s had to sell off acreage to pay the bills, mostly pasture, but not the citrus.”

“My folks had to do the same in California because of taxes. Are they sour oranges? That old rootstock is darn near impossible to find. About thirty years ago, everyone switched to Swingle or Carrizo because of virus.”

Those names were foreign to me.

“Aren’t all citrus trees from that period sour?” I asked. “We have sour tangerines, too, the last I checked. Mostly, I just pick the honeybells and Duncan grapefruit and ignore the others. Not even those lately, because of the citrus greening-”

“Yes, HLB,” Kermit said. “It won’t be long before we’re all out of business if we don’t find a fix. That tour I gave you this afternoon barely scratched the surface of techniques I’m experimenting with. The reason I’m interested-” He stopped, interrupted by voices in the background; a woman’s muffled words, then a child saying, “Daddy… you promised.”

“Gotta run,” Kermit said after a short exchange with his daughter. “Just one more thing. Those old trees, are they still producing? I don’t doubt the disease has damaged the leaves, but how’s it affected the fruit?”

I said, “I’ve got a friend, a marine biologist, who asked me something similar this morning. I didn’t have an answer for him, either.”

“A special friend?”

The grove manager had his family nearby, so I didn’t mind the playful insinuation.

“No one would call a man like him romantic, but he is smart. His idea was to single out trees that aren’t diseased and backtrack to the reason. A different soil type, or elevation, or a different variety-anything. That’s assuming we still have trees that’re healthy. Saltwater’s his specialty, not citrus farming, so maybe he’s way off.”

“Thinking out of the box,” Kermit mused. “That’s what I’m trying to do, too, but your friend doesn’t understand how complex the disease is. I’m afraid there aren’t any simple solutions. On the other hand… yeah, I’ve got to ask myself why hundred-year-old trees are still alive?”

“If they aren’t,” I said, “I can point you to some backcountry islands where key limes and other citrus grows wild. You’d need a boat and a machete.”

“You’re not talking about original Spanish seed stock?”

I replied, “I have no idea,” and left it there because Reggie was pointing again, urging me, “Slow down… hit them brights. We gotta take a right up ahead.”

“How about I check the grove tomorrow?” I said to Kermit. “I’ll call you after my charter.”

“I’d appreciate that. Better yet, if you’re free in the afternoon, I wouldn’t mind seeing those trees for myself. It sounds nice, the little fishing village where you live. Sulfur Wells-is that the name?”

We had talked about that earlier, the man interested because he was new to the area via a job south of Anaheim, then a research position at the Lake Alfred Station in central Florida.

Even so, I was reluctant to agree until he said, “I’ll bring Sarah along, if it’ll help change your mind.”

I liked the idea of leading his little tomboy daughter around our property; I told him so, and hung up.

“You forgot to ask about the man Lonnie was with,” Reggie scolded as I turned west onto a narrow road, with potholes, where weeds had sprouted knee-high, no houses around in all this darkness and open sky.

“Tomorrow,” I told him.

Something else was on my mind. There is no explaining why an empty road and weeds in the headlights suddenly changed my mood and my reasoning, but it did. It caused me to rethink my quick decision to meet with Kermit, a married man, albeit a devoted father. We wouldn’t be alone if he brought Sarah along-yet, I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.

I pulled over and sent a text that read:

Bring your wife, too. I’ll invite my biologist friend.

Seconds later, his response pinged my phone:

Great. Just googled Sulfur Wells.

“Do you trust the new grove manager?” I asked Reggie, pulling back onto the road.

He was still hanging over the seat, searching for the next turn. “Why would I? Only knowed the man a few months. The governor thought highly of him, though. He’s supposedly an expert in his field, but that’s no reason to trust a person. I couldn’t count the number of experts I’ve met through the years. Why you ask?”

In the middle of my answer, Reggie lunged again. “Look’a them eyes glowing-you see that? Up ahead, something scrambled across the road. Had some size to it.”

I didn’t see anything, just potholes and weeds, so returned to the subject. “Kermit seems like a nice enough man. It sounds like Lonnie is going to fire him. That’d be a shame. He’s got a family to take care of, and his daughter’s a doll.”

“A dog, maybe, or coyotes,” Reggie said. “Coyotes are thick, these days. Wished I’d’ve brought a gun. You bring a gun?”

I felt my jaw muscles tighten. “Silly me,” I said. “I’ve been so busy moving dead bodies around, firearms totally slipped my mind. Reggie-why not just tell me what happened instead of dragging me all the way out here?”

“There’ll be a gate on your left,” he said. “When I open it, pull through. Make it fast, then wait until it’s closed. We don’t want any company.”

We were on foot, hiking across a section of raw land Mr. Chatham had bought years ago on spec, back when the city of Cape Coral was still a hundred square miles of swamp and mosquitoes. To create buildable ground, developers had dug four hundred miles of canals, and piled the fill higher than the hopes of fast-talking salesmen who pitched the lots as “Waterfront Homesites.” They did it mostly by phone, when the weather up north had turned frosty. Many of the canals dead-ended far from navigable water, but that detail wasn’t mentioned in the low-down-payment contracts. Other details were omitted, too, as was the truth about a serious miscalculation, or the developer’s lack of scruples. Dredging more canal frontage than any city in the world had damaged the region’s aquifers and forever changed Florida’s water table.