Patricia Cornwell - Cruel and Unusual

"We sure as hell didn't," Marino said.

"Jennifer Deighton was paranoid," I said. "She indicated to Grueman in the fax she sent him that there was something wrong about what was being done to Waddell. Apparently, she'd seen me on the news and had even tried to contact me, but continued to hang up when she got my machine.”

"Are you thinking she might have had papers or something that would tell us what the hell this is all about?”

"If she had," I said, "then she was probably sufficiently frightened to get them out of her house.”

"And stash them where?”

"I don't, know, but maybe her ex-husband would. Didn't she visit him for two weeks the end of November?”

“Yeah.” Marino looked interested. "As n matter of fact, she did.”

'Willie Travers had an energetic, pleasant voice over the phone when I finally reached him at the Pink Shell resort in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. But he was vague and noncommittal when I began to ask questions.

"Mr. Travers, what can I do to make you trust me?” I finally asked in despair.

"Come down here.”

"That's going to be very difficult at moment."

"I'd have to see you.”

"Excuse me?’

"That's the way I am. If I can see you, I can read you and know if you're okay. Jenny was the same way.”

"So if I come down to Fort Myers Beach and let you read me, you will help me?”

"Depends on what I pick up.”

I made airline reservations for six-fifty the following morning. Lucy and I would fly to Miami. I would leave her with Dorothy and drive to Fort Myers Beach, where there was a very good chance I would spend a night wondering if I'd lost my mind. Chances were overwhelming that Jennifer Deighton's holistic health nut of an ex would turn out to be a great big waste of time.

Saturday, the snow had stopped when I got up at four A.M. and went into Lucy's bedroom to wake her. For a moment I listened to her breathe, then lightly touched her shoulder and whispered her name in the dark she stirred and sat straight up. On the plane, she slept to Charlotte, then wallowed in one of her unbearable moods the rest of the way to Miami.

"I'd rather take a cab," she said, staring out the window…

"You can't take a cab, Lucy. Your mother and her friend will be looking for you.”

"Good. Let them drive around the airport all day. Why can't I come with you?”

"You need to go home, and I need to drive straight to Fort Myers Beach, and then I'm going to fly from there back to Richmond. Trust me. It wouldn't be any, fun.”

"Being with Mother and her latest idiot isn't any fun, either.”

"You don't know he's an idiot. You've never met him. Why don't you give him a chance?”

"I wish Mother would get AIDS.”

"Lucy, don't say such a thing.”

"She deserves it I don't understand how she can sleep with every dickhead who takes her out to dinner and a movie. I don't understand how she can be your sister.”

"Lower your voice," I whispered.

"If she missed me so much, she'd want to pick me up herself. She wouldn't want someone else around.”

"That's not necessarily true," I told her. "When you fall in love someday, you'll understand better.”

"What makes you think I've never been in love?” She looked furiously at me.

"Because if you had been, you would know that being in love brings out both the best and the worst in us. One day we're generous and sensitive to a fault, and the next we're not fit to shoot. Our lives become lessons in extremes.”

"I wish Mother would hurry up and go through menopause.”

Mid-afternoon, as I drove the Tamiami Trail in and out of the shade, I patched up the holes guilt had chewed into my conscience. Whenever I dealt with my family, I felt irritated. and annoyed. Whenever I refused to deal with them, I felt the same way I had as a child, when I learned the art of running away without leaving home. In a sense, I had become my father after he died. I was the rational one who made A's and knew how to cook and handle money. I was the one who rarely cried and whose reaction to the volatility in my disintegrating home was to cool down and disperse like a vapor. Consequently, my mother and sister accused me of indifference, and I grew up harboring a secret shame that what they said was true.

I arrived in Fort Myers Beach with the air-conditioning on and the visor down to shield the sun. Water met the sky in a continuum of vibrant blue, and palms were bright green feathers atop trunks as sturdy as ostrich legs. The Pink Shell resort was the color of its name. It backed up to Estero Bay and threw its front balconies open wide to the Gulf of Mexico. Willie Travers lived in one of the cottages, but I was not due to meet him until eight P.M. Checking into a one bedroom apartment, I literally left a trail of clothes on the floor as I snatched off my winter suit and grabbed shorts and a tennis shirt out of my bag. I was out the door and on the beach in seven minutes.

I did not know how many miles I walked, for I lost track of time, and each stretch of sand and water looked magnificently the same: I watched bobbing pelicans throw their heads back as they downed fish like shots of bourbon, and I deftly stepped around the flaccid blue balloons of beached Portuguese men-of-war. Most people I passed were old. Occasionally, the high-pitched voice of a child lifted above the roar of waves like a bit of bright paper carried by the wind. I picked up sand dollars worn smooth by the surf and beached shells reminiscent of peppermints sucked thin. I thought of Lucy and missed her again.

When most of the beach was in shade, I returned to my room.

Showering and changing, I got in my car and, cruised Estero Boulevard until hunger guided me like a divining rod into the parking lot of the Skipper's Galley., I ate red snapper and, drank white wine while the horizon faded to a dusky blue. Soon boat lights drifted low in the darkness and I could not see the water.

By the time I found cottage 182 near the bait shop and thing pier, I was as relaxed as I had been in a long time. When Willie Travers opened the door, it seemed we had been friends forever.

"The first order of business is refreshment. Surely you haven't eaten," he said.

I regretfully told him I had.

"Then you'll simply have to eat again.”

"But I couldn't.”

"I will prove you wrong within the hour. The fare is very light. Grouper grilled in butter and Key Lime juice with a generous sprinkling of fresh ground pepper. And we have seven-grain bread I make from scratch that you'll never forget as long as you live. Let's see. Oh, yes. Marinated slaw and Mexican beer.”

He said all this as he popped the caps off two bottle of Doe Equis. Jennifer Deighton's former husband had to be close to eighty years old, his face as ruined by the sun as cracked mud, but the blue eyes set in it were as vital as a young man's. He smiled a lot as he talked, and was beef jerky lean. His hair reminded me of white tennis ball fuzz.

"How did you come to live here?” I asked, looking around at mounted fish on the walls and rugged furnishings.

"A couple of years ago I decided to retire and fish, so I worked out a deal with the Pink Shell. I'd run their bait shop if they'd let me rent one of the cottages at a reasonable rate.”

"What was your profession before you refined?”

"Same as it is now.”

He smiled. "I practice holistic medicine, and you never really retire from that any more than you retire from religion. The difference is, now I work with people I want to work with, and I no long have an office in town.”

"Your definition of holistic medicine?”

"I treat the whole persons plain and simple. The point is to get people in balance.”

He looked appraisingly at me, set his beer down, and carne over to the captain's chair where I sat, "Would you mind standing up?”