Fallen King: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 6) (5 page)

I thanked him and accepted the bottle, handing it to Linda. He went on to explain how they’d been kayaking the backcountry all the way down from Chokoloskee and decided to stay on the Cape a few days.

“You paddled here from Chokoloskee, Eugene?” I asked. “That’s gotta be fifty miles. How long did it take?”

“My friends call me Gene,” he replied. “We weren’t in any big hurry. We stayed in chikees along the way for a day or two whenever we got tired. It’s been the trip of a lifetime starting about a week ago. We’re meeting friends in Flamingo on Tuesday and go back up to Chokoloskee with them on Thursday.”

“What’s a chikee?” Linda asked.

“The ones built by Native Americans are sort of a thatch-covered hut on stilts,” Nancy replied. “The ones built by the Parks Service are on a dock out in the middle of the water. One end of the dock is covered with a tin roof to shade your tent, but open all the way around. They’re built right over the water and are set up all along the water trail. Very romantic. Well, except for the big blue Port-A-Johns at the other side of the short dock.”

“Y’all have a seat,” Rusty said. “We just finished lunch, but there’s some leftover redfish, if you’re hungry.”

“No, thanks,” Gene said as he and his wife sat down next to Kim on a palm log. “We ate before we came up here.”

“Guess that means it’s yours,” Rusty said to Pescador and placed the fry pan in front of him. Pescador looked up at me, waiting.

“Go ahead,” I told him and he started inhaling the two leftover fillets. Linda had put one uncooked fillet in a bag in the cooler for breakfast.

“That’s a well-trained dog,” Nancy remarked. “How long did it take you to teach him not to accept food from others?”

“I didn’t. He won’t eat even when I put food in front of him, unless I tell him to. He adopted me about a year ago after Hurricane Wilma. We never could find his owner.”

Nancy insisted Linda open the wine and we sat around the fire sipping it from paper cups and talking about their trip, fishing, flying Beavers, boating, and the remote beauty all around us. I even permitted Kim to have a small cup of the wine.

The Tolivers were originally from Chicago, but moved to Tampa when he sold his very successful advertising firm to his vice president a year ago. Kids through college and retired at fifty-five, they bought a house in the suburbs near Pinellas Park, across the Bay from Tampa.

“Sounds like you’re living the dream,” Linda said.

“We’re happy,” Nancy said. “Two years ago, we visited Sanibel. One day on a whim, we drove down to Flamingo and rented kayaks and camping gear. We spent the night right here and loved it. Originally we’d wanted to build somewhere near Port Charlotte, but friends talked us into the Tampa area. We already knew a few couples that retired there. What do you do?”

“I’m in law enforcement,” Linda replied. “Jesse owns a charter business, Rusty owns a restaurant and bar and Kim starts college in the fall. She’s taking a year off to help her dad.” Kim smiled at the compliment.

The truth is she’s a lot of help. She’d taken over the scheduling and created a calendar on the laptop that prompted me to take care of certain preparations for an upcoming charter early enough that it didn’t get to be a last-minute thing. I insisted that she keep it to one charter a week, two at the absolute most. The calendar was filled with one charter a week for the next five months. Certain regular clients filled in a second day in several of those weeks. I’d given her my handwritten notebook of clients with notes as to how much they’d be willing to pay and how good they tipped the crew. The crew being her for the time being.

“Do you charter your plane, Jesse?” Gene asked.

“Not yet. I own a sports fisherman for offshore charters and a couple of smaller boats for clients who want to fish or dive the backcountry.”

“You could make a killing with that plane,” he said. “There are isolated lakes and springs all over the Glades that fishermen would pay dearly to be dropped into for the weekend.”

The conversation continued and I found that I liked Gene and Nancy. They had a deep, abiding love for south Florida and for being outdoors. They also had the time to enjoy both. It was obvious they weren’t hurting for money, but didn’t act like a lot of wealthy people I’d known.

As the sun slowly neared the horizon out on the Gulf it began to paint the high clouds above the Glades a burnt orange. Gene said they should be getting back to their camp. We all said our goodbyes and agreed to stop by their camp before leaving tomorrow.

“Nice folks,” Rusty said, as the couple walked hand in hand back to their camp and we prepared the steaks for dinner.

That evening, after watching a spectacular sunset, we feasted on choice rib eyes, baked potatoes, and coconut swamp cabbage. Afterward, we walked along the beach to the north, getting away from the light of the campfire, so the stars were more visible.

Aside from our fire and that of the Tolivers, the nearest artificial light was in Flamingo and as small a town as it is, there was no spillover from that direction. Just a hundred yards from our camp, the vastness of the stars filled the night sky as our eyes adjusted to the darkness. Rusty pointed out and named many of the prominent stars, planets, and constellations to Kim, who soaked it all in like the proverbial sponge. He explained that if you knew the time and date and could measure the angle of certain stars above the horizon, you could determine pretty accurately where you were.

“If we’re only thirty miles from the Keys, why doesn’t anyone ever come here?” she asked. “I’ve never seen a place that was half as beautiful.”

“Ever hear of the English writer, Gilbert Chesterton?” Rusty asked her.

“I remember reading a book by G. K. Chesterton in English Lit.”

“Same guy,” Rusty said as he stopped and looked up at the Milky Way, stretching from horizon to horizon. “I remember a line from one of his works. Don’t remember which one. But it’s always stuck with me. ‘The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.’ Tourists don’t flock to the Keys to be isolationists. They’re not interested in seeing the natural beauty all around us. They come down Highway One for the fun and booze. Folks like the Tolivers? They’re travelers.”

“Pretty deep for a redhead,” I said, quoting one of my favorite childhood heroes, Matt Dillon.

Rusty must have liked the show as well. He responded with Miss Kitty’s line, “Well, I’m a pretty deep redhead.”

Kim pointed to the west, near where the sun had disappeared two and a half hours earlier. “That’s Neptune just about to set, right?”

“Sure is,” Rusty replied, impressed. “The king has fallen.”

Strolling along the beach of Cape Sable with my daughter and friends, it was easy to let my mind drift back, remembering the first time I was here. It was 1967, and my dad was home on leave for Christmas. Pap had let Mom and Dad borrow the thirty-four-foot cat-rigged shallow-draft sailboat that he had just finished building the previous summer. I’d spent weekends at Mam and Pap’s house, helping him work on it. That two weeks on it spent here with my parents was a very special time for me.

At the formative age of seven, most of the kids I knew were tucked into nice warm beds on Christmas Eve, anxious to see what Santa would bring. Sailing south out of Fort Myers four days before Christmas, it took us two whole days to get here. We stayed close to the coastline, less than a mile offshore most of the way and sailing straight through the night. Mom and Dad were both great sailors and took turns all night long. I remember passing miles and miles of desolate coastline once we cleared Marco Island. Arriving here just before sunset on the second day, seeing nothing but white sand beach stretching out in both directions and the vast emptiness of the Glades just beyond it, I was certain there was no way Santa and his reindeer could find this place and I began to worry. We spent the following day just walking on the beach and splashing in the warm water. Occasionally Dad would pull a deadfall out of the higher part of the dune and drag it down to the sand, well above the high tide mark.

“Wood’ll rot in the vegetation, son,” I remember him telling me. “Even if we don’t need it, someone else might come along later and want a fire. You should always leave a place better than you found it for the next guy.” Kneeling on the sand so as to be eye to eye with me, he said, “We’ll be here for two weeks, son. Then I have to go away for a while.”

Dad was a Staff Sergeant in the Marine Corps and in my child’s mind, he was the King of the World. He was deployed a lot, so Mom and I didn’t see him all that often. On one deployment, he was gone for over a year.

That two weeks here would be the first and only Christmas I remember spending with him. Sometimes, we’d pack our clothes up in the summer and go to where he was stationed, if he was able to get family quarters. But he always insisted we maintain a home in Fort Myers, so I could go to the same school.

“Two weeks?” I’d asked him.

“Don’t worry,” Mom had said, smiling at me and tousling my hair. “The jolly, fat man can find you, no matter where you go.”

I wasn’t so sure. But the following morning, the three things that I’d written to Santa about, the three things that I wanted more than anything in the world, were right there in the tiny salon of the boat. My mom and dad sipping coffee and laughing together on Christmas morning, my very own coffee mug with my name on it, and a brand new rod and reel.

Just two months after that trip, Dad was killed in the recapture of Hue City, in Vietnam. Days later, my grief-stricken mother overdosed on sleeping pills. My whole life was shattered just weeks before my eighth birthday.

The night had been only slightly warmer than the previous. This cold front was taking forever. We each had a small dome tent, set up so they encircled the fire pit at the center. When I woke up, it was still dark outside, but the moon had risen, and coupled with the millions of stars, there was plenty enough light to see. I dressed quickly, stumbling out of my tent, still fixing my trousers and nearly bumping into Linda as she was dragging a large piece of driftwood over to the fire with three forks like a trident.

She glanced down as I struggled with a stuck zipper and grinned. “Are those jeans coming off or going on?”

Finally, the zipper pulled free and I adjusted my heavy denim work shirt while looking at her. In the moonlight, she was even more beautiful, the soft light caressing away the tiny lines of her face and accentuating the shadowy curves of her body even in the red flannel shirt she was wearing.

I took the driftwood from her hand and tossed it nearer the fire. Then, taking both her hands in mine, I slowly pulled her toward me, until we were standing toe to toe, her breasts pressing against my chest and the now faint smell of jasmine filling my nostrils.

Moving my hands to her waist, I pulled her into my embrace as her arms wrapped around my shoulders. Burying my face in her hair, the scent was stronger. It was a good, clean, fresh smell, with just a touch of the salt and iodine from the sea. I liked it.

I leaned back a little and looked into her eyes. They smoldered with an intensity I’d not seen before as she pressed her hips tighter to my groin.

“The waters you’re steering toward could get rough, Jesse.”

“I’m a pretty fair sailor. If it gets too scary, either of us can drop anchor at any time.”

“One day at a time? No promises or plans?”

“Yeah, I think that’d be a safe tack.”

“Me too,” she sighed and tilted her head up. I lowered my lips to hers and we kissed for the first time on a beautiful stretch of moonlit beach that held so many great memories for me. It wasn’t a deep, passionate, all-or-nothing kind of kiss. Just two good friends, taking one tiny step.

She stepped back, smiling. “We better get some coffee on. I’m told you’re real grumpy without it.”

She turned and walked toward the fire, my eyes following her. I’m pretty sure she put a little more sway in her hips than usual just for my benefit. Or maybe it was just the fine, powdery sand. Bending at the waist to pick up the driftwood I’d thrown, she tossed her hair over her shoulder, looked back and caught me staring. She smiled, laying the driftwood on the fire.
No
, I thought,
that was all just for me
.

Kim nearly sprang out of her tent, wearing gray sweatpants and a red hoodie sweatshirt. Holding a roll of toilet paper in one hand, she saw me, then looked all around.

“Across the dune,” I said. “Rusty thought to bring a portable. Just toss a little sand in the hole when you’re done.”

Kim raced across the dune as Rusty crawled out of his tent and stood up, stretching, with a big grin on his face. “Someone say something about coffee?”

“Be ready in just a minute,” Linda replied, surmising from his grin that he’d heard everything we said in front of his tent and approved.

“Good, we’re burnin’ daylight. I gotta hit the head, be back in a minute.”

“Me too,” I said, walking along with him toward a cluster of sea grapes a little way down the beach that had become our urinal.

Once out of earshot, Rusty said, “I like her.”

“Who?”

“Linda, ya dumb Grunt! I think y’all would be pretty good for each other.”

“We’re just friends, bro.”

“Yeah, right. Ya know, that’s what I always said about Juliet, too.” Juliet was Rusty’s late wife and Julie was named for her. As far as I know, Rusty’s never even looked at another woman since her death.

As we walked back toward camp, he said, “Seriously, though. She’s the only one that’s come along since Alex that’s even close to being your match. It’s been a year, man.”

“A year, two months, and twenty-one days,” I said.

I was married three times and divorced twice. I’d met Alex four years ago. We were just friends, too. We went out a couple of times, nothing serious. We ran, swam, and worked out together nearly every day and became very good friends. She left a year after that when her kid brother was diagnosed with cancer. Two years later, she reappeared without warning and things moved a lot faster. A week after her return, we were married and looked forward to a life together. She was murdered that night. I still see her face in my dreams from time to time, hear her laugh in the rustling of a coconut palm, and catch her scent on the morning breeze.

“We’re just going to take it one day at a time,” I finally said, quietly ending the conversation as we walked into the camp.

The coffee was ready and Kim was frying the last fillet for use in omelets, while Linda was stir frying peppers, onions, corn, and swamp cabbage in another skillet.

Thirty minutes later, we washed down the last of the omelets with the last of the coffee and started getting the fishing gear loaded into the canoes.

Some of the most challenging fishing in south Florida is for sea trout along the mangrove fringed inland estuaries of the Glades. While trout aren’t all that difficult to catch, coaxing them out of the millions of mangrove roots is difficult, and they can dart between them, either tangling your line or cutting it on the oysters and barnacles that are also found there.

We’d be taking the canoes around East Cape Sable into Micmac Lagoon then on up into Lake Ingraham, a total of about eight miles round trip. From our camp, it would only be a few hundred yards portage straight over to the Lake, but the trip is more a part of the adventure than arriving at the destination.

We shoved off, leaving Pescador to watch the camp. I knew he’d wander around, dig in the sand, swim, and chase fish and crabs, but he wouldn’t stray far from the camp and I’d be able to hear him bark if anyone came near. Besides, six hours in a canoe wasn’t his style. Too much pent-up energy in the morning. Just as the sun began to peek above East Cape Sable in the distance, Kim jumped into the canoe Rusty was pulling into knee-deep water. Smiling over at me, she said, “Bring me the far horizon, Uncle Rusty.” I smiled back at my daughter and helped Linda aboard my canoe.

Moments later, we were paddling toward the rising sun, just a hundred feet from shore. The tide change was an hour earlier and the rising water created a current along the flats, helping push us south so that just forty minutes later we were passing the Tolivers’ camp. They were on the tip of East Cape, sitting in folding chairs, sipping coffee and watching the sunrise. They waved as we passed and Gene called out to us, reminding us to stop by on our way back.

Rounding the tip of the sand spit a hundred feet to the south, I tapped Linda on the shoulder. When she turned, I nodded back to where the Tolivers sat watching the daily spectacle of a new day dawning and said, “Where they’re sitting is the southernmost part of mainland Florida. They seem to fit in with it pretty nicely.”

She nodded and looked over at the couple. For a moment I saw something in Linda’s face, a sad, almost longing expression, as if she’d lost something and knew she might never have it again. I felt that way at times, also. Just as quickly the frown faded, she looked at me and smiled. “I thought Key West was the southernmost point.”

“It’s an island. Doesn’t count. That’s the mainland.”

She smiled again. “You really love it here, don’t you? You seem more relaxed and at ease than any time since I met you.”

“Yeah, this is one of my favorite places in the whole world. My parents brought me here when I was a kid and later, my grandparents brought me many times. Later still, I came here by myself or with friends. I grew up just a hundred miles north of here and spent a lot of weekends down here in my teen years.”

We passed the first small creek that goes back into the interior of the island. It’s an interesting creek, better left to kayaks even at high tide. Twisting and turning, it runs for more than five miles, but eventually gets to the lake. We turned into the larger second creek a hundred yards past it. Just a little further east is a manmade canal that allows larger boats access to the lake, but bypasses the lagoon. By larger, I mean flats skiffs, or maybe a small center console.

The current in the narrow creek was reversed by the flooding tide, bringing clean seawater into the lagoon. It was so clear, you could make out the details of the sandy bottom four feet below us. We drifted silently upstream with it, twenty feet apart, paddling only to adjust course. This was the Florida I remembered as a youth, wild and natural. No cars or roads, no planes overhead, nothing but time to enjoy the things you could see and hear and the company you were with. I was eager to see if this canoe trip would have the same effect on Kim and Linda as it did on me all those years ago.

Kim rode silently in Rusty’s canoe, sitting tall on the front bench, looking all around and watching the bottom glide by. They were ahead of us as we rounded a bend in the creek and I heard her sharp intake of breath. Rusty slowly and quietly back paddled the canoe until we caught up. Rounding the bend and coming alongside, Linda had the same reaction.

The predominant color on Cape Sable is green, with many variations from bright to dark, set against the white sand that covers all the dry land and a smattering of brown and tan bark. There before us, wading in the shallows of the lagoon, was a large flock of flamingos, nearly a hundred of them. The sudden appearance of the vibrant pink and red birds foraging in the yellow-and-cream-colored shallow water was startling against the customary green background.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” Kim sighed.

Linda turned toward me, her face full of wonder, smiling. “You knew this would be here?” she barely whispered. I nodded and she mouthed,
Thank you
.

We drifted silently on, slowing as the current decreased in the broad expanse of the lagoon, making no sound to intrude on the birds feeding in the shallows. If they hadn’t been here, we could have fished along the edge of the lagoon for the elusive sea trout. Instead, we floated slowly past the flock, drifting toward the short creek mouth that would pass us on through to Lake Ingraham.

Once in the much larger lake, we separated by a few hundred feet and fished the mangrove-covered banks. Kim was first to catch a trout, using the same rod and reel I’d received as a kid only a few hundred yards from this very spot and what seemed like a lifetime ago. I’d given it to her on Christmas just a few weeks earlier.

We drifted and fished the morning away, talking little and enjoying the warm sun, light breeze, and beautiful scenery. Again there wasn’t a cloud to be seen except way to the east, over the heart of the Everglades. I pulled off my work shirt and felt the sun warming my arms and shoulders through my light tee shirt.

Well before noon, we’d all caught our limit of four fish, keeping them in two coolers we’d brought just for that purpose, filled with seawater from the lake. Sixteen trout would make for a great dinner back at the island tonight.

As we were getting ready to take advantage of the outgoing tide, I heard Pescador bark once. A moment later, I could just make out the high-pitched whine of an outboard engine getting closer. We were on the north side of the lake, away from the narrow isthmus that is Cape Sable. Beyond that was our camp and Florida Bay. Standing up in the canoe, I could just see the wings of the plane over the far dune.

“We better paddle across and check it out,” Rusty said.

The pitch of the outboard increased as we started across the lake to the far shore. Pescador started barking more when suddenly the sound of the engine raced and then died completely. The fool had run aground, which meant it probably wasn’t a skiff. I paddled harder as Pescador continued barking even more nervously.

We made it to knee-deep water and I jumped from the canoe, splashing ashore as fast as I could, distancing myself from the canoes. By the time I made it to shore, Pescador’s barking was mixed with viscous snarls. He was pissed. I ran headlong into the tangle of sawgrass, young mangroves, casuarinas and sea grapes, crashing through them with reckless abandon. Somehow I sensed that this wasn’t good.

When I got to the top of the dune, I heard the first gunshot. I quickly pulled my Sig 9mm from the holster in the back of my pants. The center console was aground fifty feet beyond my plane, and two black men were wading toward it. Pescador was in the water, swimming toward them and still barking. One of the men took aim at him and fired again, missing by ten feet. I was two hundred feet away, well beyond anything remotely considered accurate range for a handgun. I stopped, planted my feet and aimed. I squeezed off two quick shots, then ran down the slope toward our camp.

The two shots were both wide. I knew I didn’t have a chance of hitting anything from that range. I just wanted these guys to know they were in for a gun battle if they decided to continue. I called Pescador off and he turned immediately and started swimming toward me. The two men had reached my plane at the same time that I reached our camp and sprinted past our tents to the water. Two more shots rang out and kicked up twin geysers to my left.

The men had made it to my plane and one had climbed up on the starboard float, but the door was locked. I started walking toward them, gun raised and aiming at the guy still in the water. Suddenly Kim was at my left side, her own Sig Sauer P229 raised and taking aim. Hers is a smaller version of my P226, but the same caliber.