High Tide (24 page)

Fiona couldn't hide her contempt. “No, those things have those nasty action figures. They are
not
dolls. No one has ever …” At the words of “no one has ever,” she hesitated, then looked up, her eyes wide.

With an I-told-you-so smile, Ace took her hand and led her down a narrow path to a tiny dry hill, then made a motion for her to sit down.

“Not even Disney?” he said as he put his binoculars to his eyes.

“Puhlease. Those people pop them out for the movie, then two weeks later you can't find them. I'm talking about something that lasts for twenty years.”

Fiona glanced down at her sketchbook, but she hadn't opened it yet.

“So what's her name?”

“What?”

“What's the doll's name? Swamp Girl?”

“Oh, something to do with the sun,” Fiona said, then smiled. “Octavia ‘Tavie' Holden. ‘Holden' for William Holden the actor who later turned conservationist. Tavie has
two boyfriends, one who lives in civilization and one who is a guide in the Everglades.”

“Kind of like you,” Ace said softly. “One man on dry land and another from the swamps.”

But Fiona wasn't listening to him. “The guide is named Axel and the other man is named Justin.” She opened her sketchbook and began to draw.

For hours, until about one o'clock, they were silent, Fiona furiously drawing, Ace scanning the horizon and making notes in his book. And it wasn't until he waved a pastrami sandwich under her nose that Fiona came out of her trance and looked up.

“You planned this, didn't you?” she said, her mouth full, her sketchbook on the ground beside her.

“Self-defense. I couldn't take the smell of marijuana. You know that those plants you were admiring at the Joneses were grass, don't you?”

“Grass as in—”

“Two to five, or whatever the charge is now,” he said.

“I guess you and I will soon get to find out all there is to know about sentences.” She hadn't meant to add a sobering thought to the day, but she had.

“Show me what you've drawn,” he said, then sat down beside her.

Fiona could smell him. He didn't wear aftershave, but she knew his smell. After all, she shared a house with him, shared a car, had shared a hotel room and a bed. He leaned across her, and she could feel the warmth of his hair near her face. He'd been in the sun again without a hat, without any sunscreen. She'd told him not to do that.

When she said nothing, he turned to look at her, and
Fiona's breath drew in sharply. Their lips were inches apart, and she could smell his breath, feel the heat of his body.

“Ice?” he said abruptly, then rolled away from her.

“Yeah, sure,” she said as briskly as possible, to cover the pounding of her heart.

“You were going to tell me what you've come up with,” he said as he handed her a cube of ice from the cooler, but he stayed at arm's length.

Fiona took the ice and wondered that the little cube didn't instantly turn to steam in her hand. All morning she'd been sitting near him in perfect contentment, but now she was suddenly aware of him and of their isolation. But they were always isolated, weren't they? They lived together in a perfect little house, and they were—

“ ‘Adventure Park, add more schooling. Not for commerce, for teaching,'” he read aloud, and she looked up to see that he had her sketch pad in his hand. “What's this about?”

“Just some ideas I had. How can children learn what happens when they throw their drink cans out the window if they don't see the results? You could use the park to teach them.”

As she talked, the shaking of her body began to recede and she focused on the ideas she'd had for making Kendrick Park a paying concern. “You could offer free tours to anyone showing up with ten children or more. Hire poor but smart and zealous college students to act as tour guides. Do some Disney stuff with fake birds of prey coming at them. Impress the kids for life.”

“And who pays for all this?”

“The doll, of course.”

“What about the boys? And don't you dare tell me that you're going to ‘educate' them into liking dolls.”

Fiona gave him a blank look. “I have no idea. What do little boys play with?”

“Something with more action than a doll,” he said, deadpan.

“Right. Violent things. Well, then sell them some plastic alligators that you can open up and there's a man's arm inside the belly. With a watch on it.”

To Fiona's shock, Ace suddenly became furious. His dark brows drew together in a scowl. “I don't think you should joke about things you know nothing about.”

At that he turned away, and she feared that he was going back to the car. Had she somehow managed to ruin their precious day out?

Immediately, she went after him. “I'm sorry,” she said quickly, but she didn't really know what she was apologizing for. Truth was, she could hardly remember what she'd said. Going to him, she put her hand on his arm. “I didn't mean to insult your state. In fact, I'm growing to like the place. It's—”

“That's how Uncle Gil was found,” Ace said softly.

Fiona couldn't understand what he was saying. “Found? I don't—” She drew in her breath. “You mean … ?”

“One day he went out birding and didn't return. We found … his gold watch a couple of weeks later.”

Fiona didn't want to ask more, didn't want to hear more. Sometimes there were images that entered a person's mind and never left.

“Look, maybe we should go back,” he said. “The mosquitoes will—”

He broke off when he saw her face.

Fiona didn't know what put the idea in her head. Maybe it was thinking of the watch. The
gold
watch. And behind Ace's head was a knotty old tree and the way the sun hit it made something in the side of it sparkle.

With her hand over her mouth, her eyes as wide as twin moons, she took a step backward.

“What?” Ace whispered.

“Gold,” she managed to get out.

“What's gold? Where?”

“The lions. If …” Her throat closed.

They had been together in such intimate circumstances for so long that Ace read her mind. “If the story is real, then where are the lions? Good point.”

Slowly, Fiona raised her arm and pointed to the old tree behind Ace. He looked behind him, but from the angle he was looking, he could see nothing unusual. But when he looked back at Fiona, she still had her mouth covered and she was still pointing.

Ace put the binoculars down, climbed over eight feet of spike palms, and ran his hand along the side of the tree. On the third pass he found the protrusion. The tree had nearly grown over it, but using his pocket knife, he extracted what looked to be a long, thick nail, with an inch-diameter head. The number four was on the head. And the nail was made of gold.

When Ace climbed down to Fiona, his outstretched hand had the nail in the palm.

But she didn't take the nail. Instead, she stepped away from him, her face showing shock.

“What is it?
Tell
me,” he demanded.

“I …” She cleared her throat, then lowered her voice. “I … My father …”

“So help me—” Ace warned, taking a step toward her.

“I have the map to the treasure. My father sent it to me. I know where the gold lions are hidden.”

Ace stood still for a moment, looking at her, then at the golden nail in his hand. If the nail was part of the map and he'd found the nail here, then …

“The lions are on my property, aren't they?” he said softly. “And my uncle probably found them, so he was killed.”

Sixteen
 

“Okay, so forgive my terminal stupidity, but please tell me just one more time. You did
what
with the treasure map?”

Fiona glared at him. Her hands were crossed over her chest, and her mouth was a tight line. It wasn't easy to be self-righteous while standing in a swamp. “I didn't
know
it was a real map. Look, could we get out of this place?”

He acted as though he hadn't heard her. “If you could remember what the map looked like, maybe I could go from here to the lions. If they're still there, that is.”

“My father sent me a total of twenty-two maps. The first one arrived when I was one year old, and it was a map to Lollipop Mountain, and he sent twenty-one maps after that. How was I to know that one of them was real?”

“All right,” Ace said, turning away from her and trying to
conceal his frustration. He'd asked her about the maps days ago, but she'd said they couldn't be real, but now he had a gold nail in his hand and she was saying that her father had used such nails in one of his treasure maps.

When he turned back, he was calmer. “Okay, explain it to me again.”

Fiona gritted her teeth. He was acting as though she had
willfully
withheld information from him. “When I was nine he sent me the Map of the Nails. At least that's what my friend Ashley called it; it was her favorite map.”

“Nine.” With his hands behind his back, Ace began to pace. There wasn't much land to walk on. Around them was swamp, and Fiona was sure she could see the outline of something slithering just below the surface of the water.

“But you received the
Raffles
story when you were eleven. And weren't those the letters that were stolen? Was the map for when you were eleven also stolen?”

“Yes,” she said, her anger seeping out of her as fear began to replace it. Ace had always said that this had been in the planning for a very long time. Now she was beginning to realize just how long someone had been planning this. But why? she wondered. If the thief missed the map the first time, why not just make a second burglary? Or did he want something more than just a couple of gold lions?

“So your father sent you the map two years
before
he sent the story?”

Ace's voice was so insistent that she almost thought he was reading her mind and hearing her horrible thoughts. “Yes.”

“And all these years the maps, including the one from
when you were eleven that was later stolen, have been hanging in the hallway of your New York apartment. Right?”

“Exactly.”

“But now they are … ?” He waited for her to answer.

“The last time I saw the originals they were sitting on the floor of my office in a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag, waiting for me to take them home.”

“Great,” Ace said as he sat down on a stump. “Think we can call your boss and he'll send them overnight down to us?”

“I
knew
you weren't listening to me,” she said, then put her fists to her sides. Why did he always work so hard to make her angry? Why couldn't he have listened from the first and—

“I'm listening. Explain, please. I have all day.” With that he crossed his arms over his chest and looked up at her with a smile.

Fiona took a deep breath. “All right, I will try once again to explain. Twice a year Kimberly is given an assignment. It's hinted that the assignment comes from the president of the U.S., but Legal said we couldn't say that outright. Anyway, she's worked in a circus, been a tour guide in a restored early American village, an Elizabethan actress, an interior designer, a—”

“And you get to sell clothes and accessories for every new character she plays.”

“Someone in this world has to make money exchange hands,” she said more sharply than she intended.

“Was she ever a philanthropist?”

“As a matter of fact, she was,” Fiona snapped; then suddenly she laughed, and her anger and her fear left her. When she'd first realized that she had a real treasure map in her possession, her fear had made her unable to speak. Then
Ace had been his usual pain-in-the-neck self, blaming her for not thinking of the map sooner, not understanding a word she said, but now his joke seemed to release the pentup emotion inside her.

Turning, she smiled at him. “Actually, that was one of our more successful launchings. A very rich old man hired Kimberly to give away his millions so his greedy relatives wouldn't benefit by his death. We improved the lives of lots of people with the money we gave away that year.”

“And this year?”

“This year Kimberly had to learn about maps so she could become a cartographer. Seems there are some places in the Montana mountains that no one has explored, and the president—”

“Right,” Ace said, cutting her off. “So what did you do with the maps your father made for you?”

“Lined her trunk. You see, accessories are available with each persona. When she went undercover in England in an old house as a Victorian parlor maid—”

“Very
old house,” Ace murmured.

“It was a tourist place. Kimberly has only time-traveled once. Anyway, that year Victorian clothes and household gadgets were available, as well as a book about Victorian life.”