Stuart Kaminsky - Vengeance

I hung up. I already knew her address and phone number, but it didn’t hurt for her to be cooperative. I found an old crumpled London Fog coat, back in my small closet. My wife had given it to me. Not a birthday or holiday gift. Just something she thought I needed.

I went out, down the stairs with the rain waterfalling off the roof and from the sky. Rolls of thunder, flashes of lightning. It would have been nice just to sit and watch and listen.

The Geo was at the rear of the lot, as close to the stairs as I could get. I had left the doors unlocked so I didn’t get too wet when I climbed in. There was just enough time for a quick breakfast. I had the feeling that the advances I had been given by Beryl Tree and Carl Sebastian were almost gone. I didn’t want to check.

I found a space right in front of Gwen’s Diner a minute away from the DQ. I ran in. There weren’t many customers. The go-to-work rush was long over. Old Tim from Steubenville was at the counter, in the same seat he had been in the last time I was here. There was no Corky Spence, the trucker who had thought I had served him with papers. I sat next to Tim, who looked up from the magazine and coffee in front of him.

“Process server,” he said, pointing a finger and smiling.

Gwen Two said, “Eggs, bacon, hash browns, coffee?”

“Right,” I said.

She brought coffee immediately.

“Reading something interesting here,” Tim said. “About the Sargasso Sea. Hundreds of miles of floating sea plants in the middle of the Atlantic.”

He pointed east toward the Atlantic.

“Filled with little animals, weird fish, big worms, turtles.”

“That a fact?”

“A fact,” Tim said. “People used to be afraid centuries back, thought they’d get tangled in the plant life, but it’s thin stuff. Off of Bermuda out there. Animals, plants. They die. Drop down thousands of feet. Animals down there eat it. Food chain.”

“Just like on land,” I said.

“Cynical comment,” he said. “Place I’d like to go is Galapagos Islands. You know Darwin was always seasick on a boat?”

“No,” I said.

Gwen Two put the hot plate of food in front of me. The eggs were over very easy. Orange marmalade for my rye toast. I had become a semi-regular. Listening to Tim, having Gwen Two know what I wanted, helped take some of the horror out of the morning. I ate, paid attention to Tim and checked the clock.

Caroline Wilkerson had a less than modest house just over the north bridge leading to Siesta Key. Siesta is smaller, more ambling and less upscale, less high-rise and less resort-lined than Longboat Key. Siesta still has the sense of lush greenery and the memory of village. That’s not to say Siesta has less wealth that the longer, thinner finger of its rival to the north. Siesta’s money, generally, is more tastefully secluded.

The home of Caroline Wilkerson was big and new. Eight steps led up to a large double door with frosted-glass square windows etched with fleurs-de-lis. On each side of the doors were two white pillars, which probably did nothing to hold up the floor and enclosed balcony above. The house itself went for a balance between almost-orange brick Florida and Mount Vernon. It was about the right size and shape to decorate the back of a new U.S. Mint coin. Yes, a commemorative pink, Florida half dollar, the Wilkerson house on one side, a flamingo on the other.

It was still raining and thunder rolled, but far away inland.

I parked in the brick driveway behind a red Jaguar, hurried up the steps and pushed a well-hidden white button. A hum, somewhat like the musical sound made when Harvey turned on his computer, sounded inside the house.

Caroline Wilkerson opened the door. She was in pale blue tights, a towel around her neck, her white hair a bit frizzled, her face pink, handsome and without the trace of a line or wrinkle. She hadn’t gone to any trouble anticipating my visit.

“Come in,” she said.

In I went, following her across pink terrazzo floors to a patio beyond a living room, dining room, kitchen and a big, cozy-looking library. The patio was under a room above it that provided a roof. There was none of the screened-porch look to this house. It was open. The bugs that plagued the houses inland did not come in from the gulf on the keys. In front of the broad terrazzo patio was a swimming pool with a Jacuzzi and a small waterfall from it to the pool. Beyond the pool was a broad inlet. I stood watching a long-necked white bird glide through the rain, looking down for a feast of fish brought to the surface by the rain.

I was feeling poetic. I was feeling as if I had just eaten a large breakfast. I was feeling like not thinking about what I knew I had to do.

The table was white wicker with a glass top. The chairs were matching wicker.

“Will this take long?” she asked. “I’m running late.”

“Nice house,” I said.

“Thank you,” she answered, making it clear that the opinion of a short, balding Italian process server would not make her day. “Please have a seat. Coffee, tea, juice?”

“No, thanks,” I said, sitting.

She toweled off and sat.

“Well?” she said.

“Why did Dr. Green tell me to come see you again about Melanie Sebastian?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’d ask him when I see him, but we’re not really on social speaking terms.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think he’s given Melanie particularly good advice,” she said. “Excuse me.”

She got up nervously, went into the house and left me sitting and looking at the rain now coming down more reasonably but still hard. The rain had not cooled the morning. When she came back, Caroline Wilkerson was without towel and carrying a glass of clear, white liquid.

“Water,” she said, seeing me look. “I don’t drink.”

“None of my business,” I said.

“You’re quite right,” she said, sitting and looking at me.

“Mrs. Wilkerson,” I said. “I’m trying to find your friend. I think she’s in some kind of trouble. The way she’s acting just doesn’t make sense. Does she have a history of emotional problems?”

“Did you discuss this with Carl?”

“Not yet. I’m just following up Green’s suggestion.”

“Why not ask him, then? He’s the psychiatrist.”

“He wouldn’t tell me. Patient confidentiality. That may be why he sent me to you.”

“Oh God,” she said, looking into the sky. “I hate this.” Pause. “Melanie was depressed, profoundly depressed, probably still is. She even talked to me several times about suicide. She was supposedly working through it with Geoff Green.”

“What was she depressed about?”

Caroline Wilkerson ran a finger over her moist upper lip, looked at the moisture and said,

“I don’t know. Maybe something from her past. She didn’t talk about her past much. Just before she ran away she had visited a relative up north, an aunt or something, her last living relative I think. Melanie’s older brother had died in Vietnam. Her father died when Melanie was a baby. Her mother, I don’t know, Melanie didn’t talk much about her but from a few things she dropped from time to time I got the impression that her mother had some serious mental problems.”

“You think Melanie may be…”

“Disturbed,” she said.

“Suicidal?”

Her head went down.

“Yes. I talked to a doctor friend. From what little I could give him, he thought the problem might be chemical imbalance, inherited. I think it very possible that Melanie might do something to herself if you don’t find her soon.”

“And Carl Sebastian loves his wife?” I asked.

She gave me a look that suggested she was examining a demented lower species.

“Adores her,” she said. “You should have seen them together. Melanie is Carl’s life. He’s a remarkably strong and resilient man for his age, but I think if Melanie… if you don’t find her, he won’t survive long or, if he does, he’ll be a broken man. My husband always said Carl was a genius, that Carl had an instinct for the right deal, the right moment. Carl helped make my husband wealthy. Find Melanie, Mr. Fonesca.”