Florida Heatwave (23 page)

The containers were spread across the kitchen table like hunting spoils, and Zane sipped at his fourth can out of the twelve-pack, still sitting in its “cooler” on the counter. He picked up the cordless phone from its pedestal beside the colored envelopes, and started poking the scroll button on his caller ID, to see if the guy up near Auburn was still in there somewhere, to save the trouble of digging through his phone number drawer—a terribly cluttered collection of paper scraps and shreds of newspaper corners, marked with chicken scratch numbers, most of which lacked any name. It all came from Zane’s head, somewhere, and the number scraps were used to trigger recognition more than outright declare. To make it all worse, the cordless had taken more than a few accidental—and even the occasional on-purpose—piledrivers into the linoleum floor, so the screen didn’t read out completely, missing a dot matrix piece of an eight here or half a zero there.

While he was scrolling through the broken numbers inside his phone’s short memory, it woke up in his hand with a frantic, electronic twang. Even with the busted, distorted screen, Zane immediately recognized Duane’s cell phone number.

Zane’s mind ramped up like he’d just sniffed down a thick bump of the bathtub crank from behind the painting. “Why the hell would he be calling now?” he fretted. He sucked in a fat breath, stabbed the speak button with his thumb, and spoke, “Hello?”

“Zee, what’s goin’ on, man. Hey … what do you got going on this week?” Duane’s voice was loud, worrisome and bothered, uneasing Zane as to whether this was a stressful coincidence or Duane actually knew something was up. The orchestra in the pit of his stomach started tuning up again.

“Ain’t you at the beach, man?”

“Nah, Zee, we left early.” There was a long, hanging pause, and Zane heard a door shut on the other end of the phone. Duane’s voice came back lower, as whispered as a man could get while still maintaining his rugged bass tones. “The bitch got all crazy on me again, Zee. She’s been on me about, I don’t know, getting a job, improving myself, whatever. But we got to fighting pretty bad on the way down there, to where she was like, ‘I’m outta here.’ So we came back home. But when we got here, I saw my grow house door was kicked open, and someone ripped me off for my whole harvest for this year. Well, most of it at least.”

“Did what? Say what?” Zane feigned bewildered inquisition, going through the motions again.

“Yeah, somebody ripped me off. So I was freaking out about that, and she just goes off on me even more, how I’m not doing anything, sitting around, selling weed, and then someone comes and robs us at our home, and how she’s not gonna live like that, settling for that life like I have, or whatever.”

Zane continued with his part. “When did all this happen, man?”

“I guess today. We were arguing last night at the beach after we got down there, and then again all morning and she was over it, so we came home today. But then we got broken into while we were gone, so she’s mega-pissed now, and going up to her folks’ house.”

“Man, Duane, that really sucks.”

“Yeah. But honestly, I don’t want to be around here either right now, ‘cause I’m pretty sure I know who did it, and I don’t really want to be around to be tempted to go over to his house until I cool down and figure out how to handle this proper-like. You think I can come up there for a few days?”

“Up here?” Zane wasn’t sure if he was getting backed into his own answers, or being out-acted, or what. “Yeah … I guess. Sure. I don’t really have anything going on, just work tomorrow and all. Maybe.”

“Awesome, Zee. She said she’d drop me off because she doesn’t want me here by myself either. You know how she is. She thinks the dude who ripped us off is crazy and will come back and think we’re still not here since her car is gone and then he’ll kill me if I’m here.”

“Who is this dude?” Zane asked, feeling it out.

“Just some guy I’ve been dealing with down here. He’s not gonna kill nobody, man. He’s just a normal dude like us. You know how she is, man.” His voice had gone back to normal volume, and Zane could hear Duane’s girlfriend’s voice pecking through the background. “She’s gonna pack up some of her things first, but I’ll be that way in a couple hours, man.”

“Alright.”

“I appreciate it, Zee.” And the other line clicked dead. Zane set the cordless on top of the multi-colored envelopes, and stared at six open containers full of the thick-smelling, fat buds of his probable best friend’s weed, far too big to fit behind the painting.

He capped the containers back off, and stalked through the house, once overing everything with a frantic glance. It certainly didn’t seem like Duane suspected him of snatching the drugs, but he might. If Duane knew he got ripped off, yet someone purposely left two of the Tupperware half-pounds behind, plus the pint jars, he might have figured it was someone who knew him and didn’t want to be completely ruthless about it. If Duane thought that, there couldn’t be more than a couple of people other than Zane that were crazy enough to rip him off but conscientious enough to leave some behind. “Why didn’t I just steal it all?” hind sighted Zane.

He settled on the kitchen to find a good spot to stash everything. The containers were airtight and held the aroma in, but just in case a corner randomly popped open, the smells from the kitchen could help conceal any exposure. The dollar store trash can, old food, plus dishes in the sink from four days ago, there was plenty in here to smell first.

Zane opened the freezer door, looked in on the credit card in its frozen Gatorade bottle purgatory, and realized there was nothing much to hide behind inside there. On the off-chance Duane went looking in the fridge or freezer—or cabinets or closet or anywhere really—Zane would have to keep this stuff far out of place. The freezer’s cool air drifted over his left arm, feeling good on the blackberry prickle sores, and on down his leg. He took the steel toes of his work boot and gently poked at the grate in front of the refrigerator’s underside. It rattled hollowly. Zane crouched down and peeked through the slats, looking through a heavy collection of dust into a darkness that looked to be five or six inches tall.

The grate had one screw on one side and a clasp on the other, so after Zane backed out the Phillips head, the whole thing popped right off. Zane removed it delicately, trying to keep the dust from shaking off the inside of the grate. He stuck his hand inside and felt nothing but more dust. Reaching back as far as his forearm would let him, he still felt nothing, except for the cool, slightly perspired metal bottom of the refrigerator. He positioned two of the containers along the edge, measuring if he could get them both in long ways. They fit, so he pushed them back first, then two more rows of the weed containers, up under the refrigerator, and then back as far as he could get it all to slide. He went out to his truck, dug a handful of the loose coffee from inside the tool bin behind the passenger seat, and took that back in the kitchen to sprinkle all along the outer edge of the floor under the refrigerator. Finally, he swept the loose grounds underneath, then screwed the grate back into place, peeked in from a few different odd angles, and took a couple deep breaths full of beer.

Zane was sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window, when he saw Duane’s girlfriend’s car pull up beside his truck. Duane’s girlfriend always drove because Duane had lost his license four years ago for the rest of his life because of too many DWIs. Then, he and Zane totaled his car swerving through back roads just before a Sunday morning sunrise two years ago, and Duane never bothered buying a new one.

Zane got up, yanked open the tight-fitting door and watched Duane, leaned over into the car, saying something to his girlfriend while looking Zane’s way. Duane reached in to the floorboard, pulled out a green back pack, slung it over his shoulder, and shut the door of the car. Duane’s girlfriend was staring ahead towards Zane, and he waved at her politely. She just rolled her head backwards, shifted the car in to reverse, and the car followed her gaze. Duane’s face slipped into a sly grin soon as he heard the gravel crunching under her tires.

“Man, thank God that’s over with. What’s goin’ on, Zee?” He was at the door and they shook hands in the two-stepped casual manner of old friends with a long history of delinquency together, with a thumb-locking tight hand clasp slipping back to interlocked fingers, finally snapping away in a celebratory release.

“Holy shit, man. What is going on?” Zane was genuinely glad to see his friend, alive and in the flesh. “Come on in, dude,” he said, stepping aside, allowing full access to his little rented kitchen.

Duane walked in, flopping his backpack down on the counter next to the grocery bag of what was left of the beer. He unzipped the backpack and pulled out a slender glass bong, plus one of the same orange Tupperware containers of weed as was stuffed under the refrigerator.

“Let’s burn one, Zee.” Duane filled the bong with a splash of water from the croaking faucet, and sat at the table, popping the top off the Tupperware and twisting out a little piece of fleshy plant to stuff into the side of the glass contraption.

Zane slid uneasily into the opposite chair, the refrigerator standing over Duane’s left shoulder. Duane’s left arm jutted out, offering the bong to Zane. “Here you go, man.”

Zane took it with a “Thanks, man.” And simple as that, they were at it again, just like old times.

“So yeah, all I’ve got left is pretty much enough for me this year with maybe a little extra to sell. I’ve got some still drying out, but those plants were pretty sparse, and not the same as this stuff. This was the shit I was counting on to make the big bank this year.”

Zane relit the bud to burn the last of it down to ashes, then handed the glass back to Duane, checking out his old friend’s eyes. Zane could see he wasn’t suspected in the slightest.

“Man, that sucks. You think you know who did it, though?”

Duane was looking down, refilling the chamber, “Oh yeah. This one guy from down there. He’s sniffed around out there before, asking me a bunch of questions and all. Wanting to know a lot more than a dude should want to know, you know?” Duane lit the lighter, and started sucking on the top of the long length of glass. When he stopped, he eased back, ponytail nearly brushing the refrigerator door, a statue for six or seven seconds before turning his head right and exhaling a thick plume of smoke that bounced against the kitchen windowpanes. “But yeah, Zee, it most definitely does suck.” He looked back down, mouth quickly back on the glass.

Zane looked past his friend on the other side of the table, freezer door behind his friend’s head.

“Know what, Duane? I’m not digging it much lately either, don’t like being here right now. I’m sick of this place. Alabama sucks.” Duane was repacking the bong again. “Let’s go down to Pensacola, get a hotel room, cut loose.”

Duane pushed the glass back across the table. “Man, I’d love to, but I don’t have much money right now, maybe a hundred dollars. I don’t really want to hit my folks up right now either because I’ll have to explain to them about why me and the bitch left the beach house early this week, and all that.”

Zane tapped his lighter a couple of times against the kitchen table. The bong sat on a corner of the blue phone bill envelope. “I think I’ve got us covered, Duane. I’ve got a credit card I ain’t ever used in the freezer there. It’ll thaw out by the time we get to Pensacola. This is as good a reason to use it as I can think of.”

Duane laughed, and said, “Alright, man. I’m down. You can drop me off at home on the way back. And maybe we can go see this dude who ripped me off together, too.”

Zane clicked the flame from the lighter in his hand, put it in the right place, and took a deep, intoxicating breath. His stomach was finally starting to quiet down.

ALEX KAVA AND PATRICIA A. BREMMER

The pounding
came from somewhere outside her nightmare. Maggie O’Dell fought her way to consciousness. Her breathing came in gulps as if she had been running. In her nightmare she had been. But now she sat up in bed and strained to hear over the drumming of her heartbeat as she tried to recognize the moonlit room that surrounded her.

It was the breeze coming through the patio door that jump-started her memory. Hot, moist air tickled free the damp hair on her forehead. She could practically taste the salt of the Gulf waters just outside her room. The Hilton Hotel on Pensacola Beach, she remembered.

A digital clock beside her, with glow-in-the-dark numbers, clicked and flipped to 12:47. She was here on assignment, despite a Category 5 hurricane barreling toward the Florida Panhandle. But forty minutes earlier all had been calm. Not a cloud in sight to block the full moon. Only the waves predicted the coming storm, already rising higher with white caps breaking and crashing against the shore. Maggie liked the sound and had left the patio door open—but only a sliver—keeping the security bar engaged. She had hoped the sound would lull her to sleep. It must have worked, at least for forty minutes. That’s if you considered nightmares with fishing coolers stuffed full of body parts anything close to sleep.

She hadn’t been able to shut off the adrenaline from her afternoon adventure, hovering two hundred feet above the Gulf of Mexico in a Coast Guard helicopter. It hadn’t been the strangest crime scene Maggie had ever visited in her ten years with the FBI. The aircrew had recovered a marine cooler floating in the waters just off Pensacola Beach. But instead of finding some fisherman’s discarded catch of the day, the crew was shocked to discover human body parts—a torso, three hands, and a foot—all carefully wrapped in thick plastic.

However, it hadn’t been the body parts that had tripped Maggie into what she called her “nightmare cycle,” a vicious loop of snapshots from her memory’s scrapbook. Some people slipped into REM cycle, Maggie had her nightmare cycle. No, it wasn’t the severed body parts. She had seen and dealt with her share of those. It was the helicopter flight and dangling two hundred feet above control. That’s really why she had opened the patio doors earlier. She wanted to replace the thundering sound of the rotors.