Shadowed Paradise (27 page)

There was something serene about the Calusa,
Jody thought. Less than a quarter of a mile and they’d dropped back
to the time of the Indian tribe that had given the river its name.
Jungle surrounded them, trees dangling low over the dark waters,
the call of birds, the chitter of squirrels, the faint hum of
insects. A snowy white egret stalked along one bank. As they passed
a fallen tree trunk that extended out over the water, a fat frog
plumped into the water with a splash, closely echoed by the rise of
a fish, the two concentric circles overlapping in a great swirl. A
snook? Jody wondered. Her brothers sneaked away whenever they could
to fish these waters. Above the tree tops, two turkey-headed
vultures swooped low, circled, swooped lower yet. Jody shivered.
Something had to keep the jungle clean, but preying on the dead was
just too ghoulish for a sunny Saturday afternoon.

“
Look!” Kim hissed. “To your
right,”

“
Je-ez!” Jody breathed, glancing at the
far bank, her paddle frozen in mid-stroke.

The alligator was ten feet if he was an inch.
Stretched full length on a muddy bank, he seemed to be peacefully
snoozing, enjoying the early afternoon sun. Without a word the
girls steered closer to the side of the river inhabited by humans
and glided on by. Quietly, very quietly.

A sudden shout, a loud splash, the rising
note of gleeful male voices shattered the girls’ already shaken
nerves. The canoe rocked, then drifted as both girls thrust their
paddles hard against the current, backwatering to a stop behind a
drooping willow.

Stupid world, Jody thought as she caught her
breath—two girls who had lived here all their lives hiding from the
sound of male high spirits because evil had tainted trust.
Cautiously, she stuck her head around the delicate leaves of the
willow branch and peeked at the bank ahead. And sighed in chagrin.
“It’s Slade Whitlaw and his buddies,” she told Kim. “Guess the
surf’s not up. They’re jumping off the bank. Some macho version of
Dare the Gator, I guess. Trying to wake the old boy up. You know
how gators think splashing means food.”

“
Slade Whitlaw? You’re kidding. We
couldn’t be that lucky.”

“
Of course it’s Slade. Who else would
be crazy enough to jump into the Calusa? Let’s go back,” Jody
added, raising her paddle.

“
Go back!” Kim reduced what started as
an outraged shriek to a hiss. Fortunately, the shouts and splashing
on the bank ahead covered her gaffe. “In case you haven’t noticed,
girlfriend, these are the most popular jocks in Calusa County. And
the richest. We’d have to be nuts to run for it like a couple of
little mice.”

“
Squeak, squeak,” Jody mocked. “My
hair’s a mess, I’m wearing cutoffs, my brother’s old T-shirt, no
makeup. And you want to parade out there in front of the
them
?”

“
Shit, yes! Let go of the bush.” Kim
hoisted her paddle and stuck it firmly into the brown
water.

“
No!” Jody hissed, tightening her hold
on the willow branch.

“
Don’t be stupid. Let go!” Kim thrust
hard with her paddle, swinging the rear of the canoe away from the
tree. For a few seconds Jody clung to her handful of swaying leaves
before reluctantly letting go, allowing Kim to steer them back out
into the current, where they were almost instantly visible to the
boys on the bank.

Hoots, catcalls, and whistles. What else
could they expect? Jody thought.

“
Hey, Kim,” called Josh Tyree, “why
don’t you girls go over and pat that old gator on his snout? Bet he
wouldn’t mind being paddled by the likes of you.”

“
Naw,” drawled Matt Henson, pausing in
the process of using the old oak’s roots to pull himself up onto
the bank. “Just one snap of his jaws and you girls’d be lunch meat.
I bet he’s got a hankerin’ for sweet things.”

Jody dug in her paddle. They
weren’t
going any farther. Absolutely
not.

Kim pulled hard toward the bank. Jody
backwatered.

“
Stop it!” Kim hissed. “This is our
chance to make an impression. You want them to remember you, don’t
you?”

“
They’ll remember us all right!” The
last thing Jody wanted was a scene. Reluctantly, she gave a
tentative dip to her paddle. The canoe moved toward the boys on the
bank.

When they were only a few feet from the
exposed oak roots the boys were using as a ladder, Josh Tyree—all
one hundred eighty Golden Beach linebacker pounds of him—plunged
off the bank in a cannonball into the river. The canoe rolled,
pitched and went over in a tumble of flying paddles, bare feminine
legs, shrieks and shouts.

On the far bank the gator woke and slid
silently into the river.

Kim’s head bobbed to the surface and Josh
grabbed her. No longer finding the boys’ attention thrilling, she
raised a fist and pounded his chest while Josh, muttering abject
apologies, dragged her toward the bank.

There was no sign of Jody. The dark waters
were impenetrable, but the gator’s armored head with the protruding
humps over its eyes was clearly visible. He was now half way across
the river, heading toward the splash that just might mean
dinner.

Slade, who’d hit the water as soon as the
canoe rolled, didn’t know Jody Stevens well, but the ranching
families kept track of each other. Two of her brothers were in his
classes and he’d been at a few of the same beach parties with Jody.
She swam like a fish, so she was in trouble. Either she’d been
knocked unconscious by the canoe as it went over or she’d been
caught beneath the surface in the octopus-like roots of the old oak
that had been washed out in the June flood. Slade breathed deeply
and executed a surface dive straight down.

It was grope and feel. Grope and feel. The
oak roots were relatively thin and slimy. If he touched something
larger . . . rounder . . . Slade knew right there and then he would
never dive into the Calusa again. This was it. The end of
childhood. And that was before he felt what he’d come for. A hand,
the firm roundness of an arm. Infinitely relieved, he tugged.
Tugged harder.

The arm came loose.

Slade shot to the surface, gasping in
shock and horror. Disbelief. He’d dropped the . . .
thing
, thank God.
Get a grip, Whitlaw. That wasn’t Jody. Jody’s still down
there
. A swift glance showed that Matt had maneuvered
the capsized canoe into a makeshift alligator barricade. Josh Tyree
was searching the water on the other side of the huge oak’s tangled
root system.

Ruthlessly, Slade shut out the awful thing he
had discovered. A few gulps of air and he plunged back into the
massive snarl of roots below.

Jody was there. Together, Slade and Josh
pried the clinging roots apart and got her out. Since all three
surfers were trained in CPR, Jody was soon coughing up great spurts
of brown water. It was Slade who called 911, Slade who hovered as
Jody was transferred to the ambulance. Slade who called the police
and then went back to the river, diving once again into the murky
depths.

The single bravest act of his young life.

“
I threw up all over him!” Jody wailed
to Claire early Monday morning. “
Slade
Whitlaw
, and I spit the Calusa ri–right down his
trunks.” Jody hung her head, hot tears threatening to spill onto
the papers on her desk.

Claire rolled her chair next to Jody’s and
gave her a hug. “I’m sure he was nothing but relieved, Jody. Take
my word for it.” The only reply was a shuddering sob. “Are you sure
you ought to be here?” Claire asked anxiously. “It seems to me you
should take it easy for another day or so.”

A gulp, a small sniff, and then a
firm
No
. “Believe me,” Jody
said, “it’s much better to be too busy to think.” She squared her
shoulders, blew her nose, and reached for her message pad. Her
fingers slowed, pausing just short of their goal. “He came to see
me. Slade. At the hospital,” she whispered. “He was so nice . . .
never said a word about . . . about the other thing.”

Claire, too, had not said a word about
Slade’s grisly discovery, rather hoping that Jody didn’t know. “So
you’ve heard,” she said gently.

“
Dad told me last night. Said if I was
determined to go back to work, I’d better hear it from him first.”
Jody shook her head. “Poor Slade. He really had a bad
day.”

“
And you didn’t, of course,” Claire
murmured.

“
Do they . . . have they found out who
it was?”

“
They think so.” Claire bit her lip,
wondering just how frank she should be. Task Force members had had
a weekend only slightly less nasty than Jody’s and Slade’s. Even
Brad had been shaken by the grisly task of identifying the arm
Slade found in the Calusa. The search for more body parts included
killing the gator and examining the contents of its
stomach.

“
Her name was Jeannette Tyler,” Claire
said. Newly wed. Pregnant. Her wedding rings still on the hand at
the end of her disembodied arm. “Her husband reported her missing
when he got back from a trip to Tampa Saturday night. She was
sitting the models at that new development south of town, the one
where the land is all stripped and there are three models just
sitting out in the middle of nothing except a man-made
lake.”

Jody nodded. “Myrtle Lakes. Old Gus Johnson’s
place. He had a stroke about a year ago. Sent all his kids to
college and no one wanted to ranch any more. Why should they, when
they can live like kings without lifting a finger?” she added
somewhat bitterly.

“
That’s the one,” Claire confirmed. “It
seems she disappeared sometime Friday, and since the models were
all open, no one complained when they didn’t see a sales agent on
Saturday. Guess they just thought she was busy with a customer
somewhere else.”

“
They think it’s the same guy, don’t
they? The nut case . . . the serial killer?”

“
No one seems to think the husband did
it—he was conducting a real estate seminar in Tampa from Friday
night through five on Saturday. So, the nut case is a definite
possibility. Though why he dumped her body in the river no one
knows.”

“
And the gator got her.”

“
It seems likely,” Claire murmured
uncomfortably.

“
I missed it, you know,” Jody said.
“Dad said the gator came right up to the canoe, that the boys were
all heroes. He also says the boys deserve a trip to the woodshed,
but he’s going to treat them to steaks at Outback
instead.”

“
To tell you the truth,” Claire
admitted, squeezing Jody’s hand, “the thought of Jamie growing up
positively terrifies me.”

That brought a grin and a knowing look to
Jody’s pale face. “Then maybe you’d better get busy on providing
him with some brothers and sisters so you won’t have just him to
worry about. I think that’s why my parents are so cool. They just
don’t have time to worry about all the mischief five of us can get
up to.”

Jody and Claire went back to work with
lighter hearts. Life was easier when you shared the misery.

Until Claire remembered. Jeannette Tyler was
salesperson for one of Golden Beach’s newest developments. The same
position Claire would have at Amber Run.

Every year in mid-summer, T & T sent out
invoices to its seasonal renters, notifying them of the balance due
on their reservation deposits. Since nearly all of T & T’s two
hundred seasonal rentals were already booked for the following
winter, Claire found the task of checking the database’s initial
deposit figures against the daily bookkeeper’s records particularly
tedious.

She sighed, leaned back, and took a moment to
clear her head. Swiveling her chair toward the broad expanse of the
reception area, she stared beyond Jody to the odd sight of Maggie
McKinnon in close conversation with Ken Millard. Shy, inarticulate
Ken who had evidently strayed from his normally unbending routine
of walk-in, speak-a-shy-greeting,
pick-up-the-accounting-printouts-and-leave. He was standing close
to Maggie, his thin, surprisingly attractive face bent down to hear
what she was saying. Maggie’s smile was radiant, trusting.
Naïve.

Claire shivered.

Ridiculous. Ken Millard was as innocuous as a
lamb. Fussy, a bit obsessive, but a handsome figure of a man. And
Maggie could certainly use a bit of attention. And yet . . .

“
But, Claire, he asked me to The
Pelican!” Maggie wailed a short while later when Claire cornered
her in the backroom. “I’ve been here six months and I’ve never
eaten there,”

“
I’m not suggesting you break the
date,” Claire sighed. “I’m only saying, be careful. This isn’t the
best time to be starting a new relationship.”

“
But Ken’s worked for Phil forever,”
Maggie protested.

On the verge of saying Ken Millard gave her
the creeps, Claire bit her tongue. Surely the killer couldn’t be
anyone so obviously quirky. And certainly not someone they knew.
Not a member of T & T’s real estate family. Not a friend. “I’m
sorry, Maggie,” Claire apologized, “Just . . . just don’t be too
trusting until you know him better, okay?”

“
Gotcha.” Maggie grinned. “Frankly, the
few—the very few—dates I’ve had since moving down here have been
real duds. This’ll probably be a one-timer too.” Maggie’s flippancy
faded. “But thanks for caring, I appreciate it.”