Ron Base - Sanibel Sunset Detective 01 - The Sanibel Sunset Detective (27 page)

Tree turned to Tommy. “Why don’t I meet you at the car?”

“Okay, sure.” Tommy gave Ray a mystified glance as he walked away.

Ray said, “How’s the arm, Tree?”

“Still a little sore, Ray.”

“So you’ve taken a round,” Ray said. “Well, that’s a step in the right direction, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I’ve always wanted to be shot.”

“But it was basically a scratch, right?”

“Well, it broke my arm.” Did Tree sound defensive? Maybe Ray Man would appreciate Tree more if the shot had killed him. He would have liked that just fine.

“Let me ask you something, Ray. Where were you in Vietnam?”

“What?”

“Vietnam. When you were there. Where were you?”

“I wasn’t in Nam.”

“You weren’t?”

“Philippines. I ran a supply chain.”

“You fed people?”

“They couldn’t have fought the war without guys like me.”

Tree tried to think of something to say. He couldn’t think of anything.

“Todd, myself, a couple of the boys from Kiwanis, we’re doing a little fishing this weekend out in the gulf. Few beers, few laughs. We might even drop a line in the water. Thought you might like to join us.”

Tree wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “You want me to go fishing with you?”

“You’re not busy, are you?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Then come along with us.”

“I’m not going fishing with you, Ray.”

The Ray Man’s face hardened. His eyes got smaller. “Hey,” he said. “I’m trying to reach out to you here.”

“I appreciate that, Ray. But I’m not going fishing with you.”

“Look, you hit me. Fine. Maybe I deserved it, I don’t know. You had your moment. Now you’re a local damned hero, shooting bad guys, screwing up tourism. Good for you. But I need Freddie back at work.”

“You’ll have to talk to Freddie.”

“This is crazy what’s going on. Things happen. It’s water under the bridge. Tell her that, okay?”

“Water under the bridge?”

“I want her back at work.” He turned and marched off across the lot. He had a funny kind of quick step. Like a duck in a hurry.

Then Ray stopped. He turned to Tree and called out to him. “None of this changes my opinion of you.”

Tree said, “How do you spell, Mississippi, Ray?”

“What?“

“Never mind.”

Ray recommenced his curious duck march.

40

N
othing had changed at the Brand house except the “For Sale” sign in front. An elegant “For Sale” sign, Tree noted. Things could only be for sale elegantly in this neighborhood.

He climbed the steps to where Jorge waited. The major domo had the good manners not to comment on the sling holding Tree’s arm as he led the way through the foyer and into the living room. Elizabeth Traven was artfully arranged in a shaft of morning sunlight. The hellion with the wild hair and long legs was nowhere in evidence. The plantation matriarch was on duty.

They stood, eyes on each other, in awkward silence. Finally, she said, “Well, you don’t look too much the worse for wear.”

“Winged me, as they used to say in the cowboy movies.”

“I don’t watch cowboy movies,” she said.

“I’m shocked,” Tree said.

“I understand you knew the FBI agent who was killed.”

“Savannah Trask. We lived together for a time when she was a law student.”

“And she is the boy’s real mother?”

“So it seems. She had been involved with Reno O’Hara in Chicago. They had the baby together. She gave up custody when she was transferred to Miami.”

“Curious. A woman giving up her child like that.”

“She’d taken a leave of absence to come here and find her son. So had her partner, Agent Lazenby.”

“So obviously she’d had some sort of change of heart.”

“Obviously.”

“How do you feel about all this, Mr. Callister?”

“I don’t feel very good, Mrs. Traven. It was all so unnecessary.”

She scrutinized him as though trying to ascertain how to handle this; what tack to take in an encounter she had not expected.

“Let’s sit outside,” she said. “It’s such a pleasant morning and who knows how much longer I’ll be able to enjoy it.”

“I see you’ve got the house up for sale.”

“There’s no money. Well, that’s not totally true. But there’s certainly not enough money to hang onto this place.”

A vast lawn floated off toward a tidal bay and the clear, straight horizon of the sea. They sat on lovely white rattan furniture beneath a bright green umbrella. Hillary Traven drifted by, a tiny stork in the distance. She saw the two of them and waved.

“How is she doing?” Tree said.

“What’s the term they use? As well as can be expected? That’s it.”

Jorge appeared as though conjured from a puff of smoke, to ask if they wanted anything. Elizabeth suggested coffee and Tree went along. Jorge withdrew. Pink spoonbills skimmed the grass near the water.

“When I’m not dealing with Trotsky, I’ve been reading all about you.”

“The reporter got carried away.”

“Quite the hero.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“In a way, I suppose I am,” she said. “I did not expect you to rise to the occasion.”

“No one is more surprised than me.”

“I suppose the world needs more people like you, Mr. Callister, people whose grasp occasionally exceeds their reach—and they get a nice write-up in the local paper.”

“So how are you holding up, Mrs. Traven?”

She turned her face toward the sea. “Trouble and more trouble; my husband’s fight to get out of prison; this last bit of nonsense; unhappy bankers; avaricious real estate agents. Lawyers added to lawyers; platoons of them. I can’t keep their names straight. I have no idea how we’re going to pay for them. But they don’t seem to worry so why should I?”

She gave him sidelong glance. “The little bit of good news, at least from my perspective, they’ve decided not to prosecute me.”

Jorge returned with a silver coffee service. They were silent while he went through the ritual of asking Tree what he wanted in his coffee, and then pouring milk, adding sugar for Elizabeth, leaving them both staring at china cups they did not touch.

“The only thing that keeps me from getting really, really pissed at you, Mrs. Traven, is knowing why you did all this.” He nodded in Hillary’s direction. “That whatever you did, you did for her.”

“Yes,” she said, delivering another of her trademark rueful smiles. “Sometimes, like you, I surprise myself.”

“It’s just that you have a funny way of going about helping.”

“We didn’t think we had a lot of choice. Hillary has a rare liver disease. Biliary atresia. When she was a child they treated it with an operation called the Kasai procedure. It worked, but then eighty-five per cent of children with the disease need a liver transplant within the next twenty years. So sure enough, by the time Hillary turned twelve, she was in a terrible state and in urgent need of a transplant.”

“But the right liver was not available,” Tree said.

“What’s more there was a very long waiting list. Hillary couldn’t wait. We had to do something.”

“By now your husband was in prison. I thought that’s where he would have met Dwayne Crowley. But they were in separate facilities.”

“That’s right.”

“It was you, Mrs. Traven.”

She looked at him without comment.

“Maybe you were feeling lonely and miserable, I don’t know, but you found your soul mate in Dwayne Crowley at Prisonlife.com.”

Her face darkened. She kept her eyes firmly on Hillary, down on her haunches, intently watching the birds as they fed along the shore. When Elizabeth spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid. I can’t believe just how stupid I acted. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. But you’re right. I was lonely and frustrated and angry. I was rummaging around various prison websites, trying to come to terms with where my husband was and what it meant. I stumbled across Prisonlife.com quite by accident. Dwayne struck just the right chord in the state I was in—a strong, reassuring voice in the night. Just what I needed—or thought I needed.”

“Dwayne put you on to his wife, Michelle.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Mickey introduced me to Reno O’Hara and Dara Rait, body parts dealers in South Florida. Illegal but reliable. The way of the world these days. If you want something, you have to be willing to pay for it.”

“They had the perfect donor, a boy your niece’s age.”

“They would even provide the Mexican doctors willing to perform the operation for a price. One-stop shopping. We were desperate. Hillary was going to die if we didn’t do something.”

“Marcello, however, didn’t want to go along. He didn’t want to have a scary operation and so he ran away. He was determined to find the mother who had been writing, promising to come for him.”

“Unexpectedly resourceful. Somewhat like yourself, Mr. Callister.”

“No, Marcello is much better than me, better than I could ever imagine being,” Tree said. “To do what he did, to survive the way he survived. He’s an amazing kid.”

She lowered her eyes and said, “Yes.” The only intimation of guilt or remorse she allowed herself.

“Anyway,” Tree continued. “Reno murdered Dara and that threw a wrench into everyone’s best laid plans. Something had to be done. Reno had to be removed.”

“Dwayne?”

Tree shook his head. “It looks as though Detective Mel Scott did the honors, revenge, I suppose, for what Reno did to Dara, the woman he’d fallen in love with.”

“All of a sudden there are bodies turning up everywhere,” Elizabeth said. “I couldn’t believe what was happening. I’m in the middle of some sort of inter-gang feud.”

“That’s when you should have pulled out,” Tree said.

“I didn’t feel I could. I felt I had to make the best of a dreadful situation.”

“So you helped them out by coming to me. You became a client hoping to get to Marcello.”

“As I said Mr. Callister, I didn’t have a lot of choice.”

He stared at the white china cups on the white table. The coffee remained untouched. The spoonbills had deserted the tidal basin. A breeze played with the tendrils of Elizabeth’s hair. A beautiful, troubled woman, he thought, whose difficulties were far from over.

It was as though she read his mind. “I don’t need your sympathy,” she snapped.

“I know you don’t,” he said, standing. “But you’ve got it, anyway. And Marcello’s too.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He wants to donate part of his liver to Hillary. That’s what you need, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, not able to keep the surprise out of her voice. “I guess the question is why?”

“Now that he knows about your niece, that a liver transplant will save her life, he wants to help.”

Momentarily, she was at a loss for words. “Marcello would do that? He would give Hillary part of his liver.”

“Yes.”

“That’s astonishing,” she said. “What made him change his mind?”

“He didn’t know what was happening. Everyone was angry and threatening. He thought his mother was coming. All sorts of things were swirling around. If someone had taken the time to speak to the boy calmly and reasonably, explain the circumstances, simply love him, all this might have been avoided. Instead, bad people scared him, and so he ran away.”

She stood up, emotions playing on her perfect features that included vulnerability—but mostly relief.

“We will pay him, of course.”

“You probably don’t have the money,” Tree said.

“We will find it. Maybe we won’t pay a couple of rich lawyers but somehow we’ll find it.”

“Marcello doesn’t want your money. He has no real concept of it, anyway. He just wants to help.”

“I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“The next time you see Marcello, just say ‘thank you.’”

They stood looking at one another, exhausted fighters who had punched each other to a standstill.

Hillary Traven, shimmering among the spoonbills, waved at him as he left.

Tommy Dobbs waited behind the wheel of his car as Tree came down the steps. He reached over and opened the passenger door and Tree slid inside.

“Thanks for waiting,” Tree said.

“No problem, Mr. Callister. No problem at all. Where to now?”

“Drop me over at Lighthouse Beach.”

41

W
hen they got to the beach, Tree said, “Let me off in the parking lot, Tommy.”

“No problem, Mr. Callister. Anything I can do for you. That’s fine.”

He pulled the car to the stop. Tree looked at him. The car idled. Tommy stared ahead, swallowing hard, Adam’s Apple bobbing.