Хилари Боннер - A Deep Deceit

‘I have a new husband, two young sons and a new life,’ she went on. ‘I will never ever forget the daughter I lost, nor how I lost her... but... life goes on...’

There was a catch in her voice. She paused as if unable to continue for a moment. When she spoke again she did so quite calmly and deliberately. ‘Harry was a raving lunatic. I didn’t know it when I married him. You didn’t know it either, did you? We both found out, though.’

Theodore Grant had hinted at her being mercenary and perhaps self-seeking. Well, who could blame her? She had built a new life out of the wreckage of one she wanted only to forget and she didn’t want it spoiled. She had tried to bury the terrible hurt of her previous life. I could relate to that. I studied her for a moment before we left. There was genuine pain in her eyes. She may not have been the kind of person I would choose for a friend, she did not exactly ooze warmth, but then, why should she to Mariette and me? She was another very American painted lady, but beneath the overdone layers of apparently obligatory make-up she was, more than likely, a perfectly ordinary, probably perfectly nice woman. And she had suffered. There was no doubt about that.

I didn’t like her, though, for all that. But then, I suppose I wouldn’t, would I?

I had just one request to make before we left. ‘If you do ever hear anything from him, would you let me know?’

She laughed humourlessly. ‘He really got you under his spell, didn’t he?’ she remarked. ‘He did it to me once too...’

She was right, of course. I had been under Carl’s spell. He was that kind of man.

‘Look, Suzanne Adams, or whatever you call yourself, if the bastard ever walked into my life again I don’t know what I would do. And that’s the honest truth of it. I’ll tell you one thing, though, he’s wrecked my life once. I’m not going to let him do it again...’

Her words were strangely chilling. Her façade of sophistication could not mask the turmoil she was so patently experiencing. There was desperation in her voice. Her eyes glazed over as she spoke. I wasn’t sure at all what she meant and suspected it might be better for my peace of mind that way. Certainly, I found myself hoping that if Carl was in America he would not try to contact his real wife.

Desperation can make people dangerous, as I knew only too well. Carl had been desperate when he had forced me to hide away with him back in Cornwall, and kept me locked up in that dreadful hut. I had considerable sympathy for the painted lady and all she had suffered, but I couldn’t help wondering how far she would go to protect her new life.

There was no sense in hanging around at Bay Point. Even with my inheritance we couldn’t begin to afford a room there and it didn’t seem very likely that the management would invite us to stay as their guests. We climbed back into the hire car and headed on down to Key West.

‘Wow,’ said Mariette. ‘I couldn’t believe how much that woman looks like you. You saw it, didn’t you. I know you did. You couldn’t miss it...’

Uneasily I muttered my agreement.

‘They say men always do that, marry the same woman over and over again. Looks are the only thing you have in common, though, I reckon, thank God. She’s a bit of a hard case, isn’t she?’

I smiled grimly. ‘After what she’s been through, what do you expect?’

I was, however, deeply disturbed by my meeting with the woman with whom Carl had shared years of his life, the woman who had given birth to his child. I suppose that was natural enough, but my feelings went way beyond jealousy or resentment or anything like that.

‘There’s something nobody’s telling us, I’m sure of it,’ I said. ‘Something that has caused Carl to be the way he is.’

We had called ahead to Key West and booked into the Artists House, home of the painter who had played such a part in Carl’s childhood. Mariette insisted that I needed to calm down and relax. She was probably right. The Bay Point experience had made me very tense indeed.

She drove in a leisurely fashion and managed to find a wonderful roadside fish restaurant for lunch, which someone back home in Cornwall had recommended. Even if you knew the mile marker it was hard to spot Monte’s, little more than a shack by the roadside, but as I tucked into fresh prawns and deep-fried soft-shelled crabs I was very glad we had managed to find it. I had learned to enjoy fresh seafood in St Ives, but had never eaten stuff like this – and out of cardboard cartons with a plastic knife and fork.

We arrived at Key West around midday. Mariette manoeuvred the car efficiently enough through the narrow streets of the island that forms the furthermost tip of America and even managed to find a parking space not far from the centrally positioned Artists House.

The man in charge, Jim, bade us welcome and showed us to a room, which I thought was stunningly beautiful. It had once been Eugene Otto’s studio. The furniture was old and solid. I had never been in so beautiful a room. Mariette and I were both bowled over.

Even the house cat, Boots, was a stunner: big, black and sleek.

I mentioned Carl’s name to Jim, his real name, Harry Mendleson.

Jim looked blank. ‘We’ve only had the house a couple of years,’ he said, when I told him how Carl had been brought up in Key West and had spent many hours in the very studio room we were renting watching Gene Otto paint. ‘I’ll ask around. There’s sure to be somebody who knows.’

That evening we walked down to Mallory Dock in time for the sunset. We ordered margaritas out on the pier and sat on high stools gazing west. The waiters and waitresses wore big smiles that said ‘Please tip me’, and kept wishing everyone a nice day. There was a carnival atmosphere. It was one of the perfect sunsets the island is famous for. The sun was a blazing amber ball when it sank into the sea and everybody cheered. I fell very silent. It was exactly the way Carl had described it to me and precisely how I had imagined it. Except for one thing. Carl was not there with me.

I drank in the atmosphere and made myself concentrate. Could he be here somewhere, drinking in a bar, walking along the beach, just a stone’s throw away from me?

‘Birds come home to roost... people always want to go back, they can’t stop themselves.’ DC Carter’s words haunted me. I knew by then that nobody much had a very high opinion of the man or his ability as a detective, but his theory was convincing and, as he had told me, based on long experience.

We walked back up Duval Street taking in the sights and found a rather good hamburger joint where we gorged ourselves on burgers and fries. On the way back to the Artists House we called at a couple of bars. Everywhere we went I asked after Harry Mendleson but drew a blank. I suppose it wasn’t surprising. As far as I knew he had left Key West more than twenty years previously, had only rarely returned and had left America a good fifteen years ago. The Key is inclined to have a transient population. People come there to work in the tourist industry or just bum about for a time before relaunching themselves into real life – and nothing much about Key West was very real, I was already beginning to discover.

There must be some people in Key West who had lived there all their lives and maybe generations of their families before them, but on that first night we never came close to finding any. Maybe they had more sense than to hang out in the bars of Duval Street.

In the morning when we wandered into the kitchen at the Artists House where Jim was serving a casual buffet breakfast, he had encouraging news. ‘Frank Harvey,’ he said. ‘That’s who you want to speak to, apparently. He’s a retired doctor. Lived here all his life and treated half the town. You’ll find him in Ezra’s bar out by the southernmost point almost every night, they say.’