Island of Bones (8 page)

One Heineken hadn’t been enough. After a fitful night, he was awake but just lying there, sweaty and tired. The sheets were kicked to the floor and even Issy, who usually slept by his side, had retreated to the cool of the terrazzo floor.

The phone rang and he glanced at the clock. Eight-thirty
a.m. He let it go ten times but it wouldn’t stop. Finally, he rolled out of bed and picked it up.

“Mr. Kincaid? This is Diane Woods.”

She was speaking carefully. He knew that meant hangover.

“He’s disappeared,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“My father. He’s gone.”

“How do you know?”

“I called him first thing this morning. He didn’t
answer, and when I called the library, they said he hadn’t come in. I am on my way over to his house now. Will you meet me there? He might be inside. He might have done something to himself.”

“Look, Miss Woods, you really should go
—- ”

“Please. I don’t want to go in there alone.”

Louis had been leaning on his knees, head down. He sat up. “Where are you?”

“I’m at home.”

“Okay, meet me at his house in a half hour.”

Dian
e’s Honda was in the drive of Frank’s home, and she got out as he pulled up. She was dressed in a dark skirt and red blouse, her hair neat around a made-up face. She was wearing sunglasses despite the fact it was overcast.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Maybe we should call the police.”

She shook her head. “Please, just come in with me.”

He followed her to the porch. It was covered with leaves and there were a couple of copies of the
News-Press.
A white plastic planter hung by the door but there was nothing in it but dirt. Diane reached up to the planter and dug out a key.

“You don’t have your own key?” Louis asked.

She turned to look at him but he couldn’t see her eyes through the dark glasses. “No. Why would I?”

You’re his daughter, Louis thought, but he let it go.

“He leaves a key outside because he is always losing his own,” Diane explained, unlocking the door.

Louis went in first and did a quick walk-through of all the rooms.
There was no one in the house. He came back to the front door, where Diane was waiting.

“He’s not here,” Louis said.

Diane shut her eyes in relief.

Louis turned and looked around the living room. It looked much like he had imagined
. Plain, a little run-down, like no one really had the time or energy to invest it with the small things that made the difference between a house and a home.

The living room was browns and tans, the furniture nondescript and old. Cheap bookcases, filled to bursting. There were a couple of generic framed landscapes on the walls but there was nothing to really speak of the personality of
the person who lived here. Nothing except a framed photograph on the end table next to an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. It was of Diane, her hair longer, her smile shy, her cheeks and lips tinted pale pink in the style of old high school senior portraits.

The
room smelled of cigarettes, must, and something Louis recognized but could not name. He had smelled it once before, in the closed-up cabin of an ex-cop named Lovejoy. It was the lonely odor of one man alone, undiluted by fresh air, sunlight, or the perfume of other human beings.

Louis heard the rasp of drapes and turned to see Diane working at closing the gaps facing the street. Then she turned. She had taken off the sunglasses and she was looking at the room.

She looked at Louis. “I...I’m sorry, the place is a mess.” She went to the overflowing ashtray, picked it up, and looked around the room, like she wanted to empty it. Then she just set it down on the dusty table.

“My father is not the neatest man,” she said. And then she gave Louis an odd smile, like she was apologizing.

“Can I look around some more?” Louis asked.

She nodded and hea
ded toward a back room. The bedroom drapes were drawn so she turned on the overhead light. Louis paused by the door, looking at the room.

It was like the living roo
m, the bed unmade, another overflowing ashtray, a jumble of clothes in a laundry basket in the corner. In the open closet, Louis could see the white shirts, brown slacks, and jackets that made up Frank’s library uniform. On the nightstand, there was a plate with a half-eaten sandwich and a small stack of books with one volume spread open, facedown. A pair of half-lens reading glasses were lying on top of the book.

Louis picked up the book. The ti
tle was “Theory and Practice of Romance Etymology.” Louis set it back, putting the glasses on top exactly as he had found them.

“I don’t think he’s gone anywhere. At least not for good,” he said. When Diane didn’t answer he turned to her.

She was looking around the room, her mouth hanging slightly agape, her eyes not quite concealing her disgust. He knew now why she didn’t have a key to her father’s house. It gave her an easy reason to stay away.

She saw him staring at her and went slowly to the bathroom. “His toothbrush is gone,” she called out.

“Maybe he’s spending the night somewhere. Maybe he has a girlfriend.”

She came back into the bedroom. “You’ve been watching him. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. He doesn’t even have any friends. He barely has a life.”

Louis watched her as she went to the bureau and slowly pulled out the top drawer.

“You sound like you’re embarrassed by him,” Louis said.

She spun around. “I’m protective. How can anyone be embarrassed by their parent? They are what they are.”

She went back to searching through the drawers, but more slowly now, like she had no idea what she was looking for.

“What happened to your mother?” Louis asked.

“She died when I was seven,” Diane said.

“How did she die?”

She shut the drawer, turning to face him. “He didn’t kill her if that’s what you’re wondering. She died in a car accident. He was at work when it happened.”

Louis didn’t reply.

Diane took a deep breath. “My father raised me alone after that
. It wasn’t easy for him. He’s kind of a closed man, didn’t ever really understand me, I suppose.”

Louis glanced around the room. More bookcases like the living room, the shelves all filled. There wasn’t even room to slide in a pamphlet. Louis scanned the nearest shelf. The books all appeared to be scholarly stuff, many of the books about foreign languages. No novels or light reading.

Louis turned back to Diane. “Do you notice if anything else is missing?”

She looked around, shaking her head. But then she stopped, and moved to the closet. She pointed to the shelf.

“His rifle,” she said. “He kept it in a case on that shelf.”

“How long has he had it?”

Diane blinked. “Forever. I mean, it’s old. I remember I used to watch him clean it when I was little. He would take it out of the case, lay it out on a towel on the kitchen table, and spend hours cleaning all the parts and then put it all back together again. He never took it out except to clean it.”

“He didn’t hunt?”

She shook her head. “He wasn’t interested in the outdoors. I never saw him use it. Not once. I always got the impression it was an heirloom or antique or something and that was the only reason he kept it. He never said.”

“Do you know what kind it was?”

She shook her head.

“Think. Did he ever call it a Savage?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t care. I hate guns.”

Louis’s eyes scanned the bedroom once more. There was a desk crammed in one co
rner. “Is that where you found the articles?”

Diane nodded and went to the desk, pulling out the top drawer.

“They were in here,” she said, handing him a leather binder. “I put them back after I made the copies I gave you.”

Louis flipped through the book. It was an old date book
from 1983, but most of the pages were blank. There was an occasional reminder of an appointment, but nothing out of the ordinary.

He sifted through the stack of papers under the book. Utility bills, receipts from local stores, statements from the
Lee County Library Credit Union, a dry cleaner’s claim stub for three pairs of men’s slacks.

He found a receipt dated yesterday. It was from Seven C’s Bait and Tackle Shop in Fort Myers.

“Does your father fish?” he asked.

“No.” Diane’s brow furrowed. “He
won’t
even eat fish. He’s allergic to it.”

Louis glanced into the untidy bathroom and turned back to Diane. “Show me the rest of the house.”

She led him to a small second bedroom that she said used to be hers as a child. The room was as neat and orderly as a lawyer’s reception area. They ended up in the kitchen.

It was a mess. The Braun coffeemaker still had a cup or two left in it. There were dirty dishes in the sink and an egg-
encrusted
pan on the stove. Louis glanced around, and seeing a door, walked to it. It opened into a small garage. Small slits of sunlight squared the garage door. He tried the light, but it was burned out. Stepping down into the shadows, he used the light from the kitchen to maneuver the two steps. He spotted a flashlight and turned it on, shining the beam over a cluttered tool bench, storage bins, and the garage walls. The light flashed on something metal in a corner and Louis went to it.

It was a fishing rod, hung on two brackets. It was an old rod, coated in dust
. But from the little Louis had learned about fishing, he could tell the rod was expensive, not something your average pier-dangler would have in his garage.

There was a second set of identical brackets below the rod, empty.

Louis took a step and something crackled under his foot. He trained the light down and it picked up several large white plastic bags with the red letters TAL BRODY’S SPORTS CITY. He started going through the bags.

Diane came up behind him. “What are you looking for?”

Louis didn’t answer. Finally he pulled out a small paper and trained the flashlight on it. It was a sales receipt. The first item was a Coleman Sundome tent.

“He’s gone camping,” Louis said.

“Camping?”

Louis held up the receipt. “In a brand-new tent. And with a new lantern, first-aid kit, water bottles, the works. Six hundred and eighty dollars’ worth.”

Diane took the receipt and shook her head slowly. “My father has never spent a night outdoors in his life.”

“You said he doesn’t fish either.” Louis shined the beam up on the rod and empty brackets.

Diane was staring at the fishing rod. “That can’t be. He doesn’t even like being near water.” Her voice was soft, like things were just now coming back to her. “I remember once, when I was little —- I must have been little, because it was just after my mother died —- we were down by the pier and there were these boats. I asked him if we could go out on one. But he said we couldn’t. He said he didn’t like the water because he couldn’t swim.”

She turned abruptly, heading back to the kitchen.

Louis found her standing in the center of the living room, eyes vacant.

“I thought I knew him,” she said softly.

Louis stopped a few feet from her. He felt like telling her the first thing that had popped into his head -- that no one really knew their parents. You only knew the idealized version —-dependable, de-sexed and devoid of human failings. If you were lucky. If you weren’t lucky, you saw your parents in all their ugliness. Like the sad woman he remembered withered in her addiction. Or the faceless man in the faded photograph, the only image he had of his father.

He turned to Diane. “Look, Miss Woods, I think you are worried for no real reason.”

“No reason! What about the articles?”

“By themselves, they mean nothing.”

“Then why did he keep them?”

“Why don’t you just ask him?” Louis said firmly.

“I can’t,” she said.

Louis shook his head. A voice inside was telling him to just leave and not get pulled any further into s
ome messy emotional drama with this woman and her old man. Besides, even if he were to go after Frank Woods, he didn’t know where to begin. There were a million places he could hide in, not just the usual campgrounds and parks but dozens of forgotten little islands where a man could put in a boat and get lost forever.

“I’m leaving,” he said. He went back into the kitchen. She followed and grabbed his arm.

“Wait. There’s something else,” she said. She let go of his arm. “Please, just wait.”

She disappeared back into the bedroom. When she came back, she stood there for a moment, her eyes searching his face.

She held out her palm and he looked down.