Ron Base - Tree Callister 03 - Another Sanibel Sunset Detective
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Authors: Ron Base
Tags: #Mystery: Thriller - PI - Florida
| Ron Base - Tree Callister 03 - Another Sanibel Sunset Detective | |
| Tree Callister [3] | |
| Ron Base | |
| West-End Books (2012) | |
| Tags: | Mystery: Thriller - PI - Florida Mystery: Thriller - PI - Floridattt |
THE MYSTERIOUS WOMAN. She tries to seduce Tree in Paris and Key West—and she may be trying to kill him on Sanibel Island.
TWO SHADY CHARACTERS. A former director of the Pakistani Secret Service, Miram Shah, wants Tree to find his missing fiancée. Accused Serbian war criminal Javor Zoran has lost his true love. He insists Tree find her. Could both men be looking for the same woman?
THE DOCTOR WITH A MACHETE. Actually, Dr. Edgar Bunya says the correct name for his machete is a cutlass. Dr. Edgar plans to use it to cut off Tree's hands.
THE DEAD BODIES. From Key West to Useppa Island to Sanibel, Tree keeps stumbling across corpses. The cops don't like this one bit.
His marriage is in jeopardy, his son is in trouble, his life is being threatened, and time is running out for Tree Callister.
Table of Contents
ANOTHER
SANIBEL
SUNSET
DETECTIVE
a novel
RON BASE
Also by Ron Base
Fiction
Matinee Idol
Foreign Object
Splendido
Magic Man
The Strange
The Sanibel Sunset Detective
The Sanibel Sunset Detective Returns
Non-fiction
The Movies of the Eighties (
with David Haslam)
If the Other Guy Isn’t Jack Nicholson, I’ve Got the Part
Marquee Guide to Movies on Video
Cuba Portrait of an Island
(with Donald Nausbuam)
www.ronbase.com
Read Ron’s blog at
www.ronbase.wordpress.com
Contact Ron at
Copyright © 2012 Ron Base
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval system—without the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, One Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, M6B 3A9.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Base, Ron, 1948-
Another Sanibel Sunset Detective / Ron Base.
ISBN 978-0-9736955-6-4
I. Title.
PS8553.A784A64 2012 C813’.54 C2012-906903-5
West-End Books
80 Front St. East, Suite 605
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5E 1T4
Cover Design: Bridgit Stone-Budd
Text Design: Ric Base
Electronic formatting: Ric Base
Sanibel-Captiva map: Ann Kornuta
Second Edition
For Ray Bennett
Raymundo!
Map
1
It was the night of Freddie’s sixtieth birthday, and they were celebrating at Tour d’Argent, the most famous restaurant in Paris. They sat near the big windows that gave out onto a sixth floor view of Notre Dame at dusk, dramatically cast against a deepening sky that lit the barges on the Seine in a crimson glow. The comfortable purr of people with money murmuring over good food and fine wine filled the perfumed air.
You could learn to live like this, Tree Callister thought. You could forget all the things that you came to Paris to forget.
Out loud Tree said, “Francis Macomber has everything, including money and a beautiful wife. Why he probably ate regularly at this very restaurant.”
“He could be here tonight,” Freddie Stayner said.
“Francis is on safari in Africa, hunting lions, anxious to test himself, the limits of his courage. But when he is finally confronted with a lion, when it gets right down to it, he turns and runs. Francis is a coward.”
“You know you tell me the story of Francis Macomber every time we come to Paris,” Freddie said.
“That’s because of all the things Hemingway wrote, including
The Sun Also Rises
, his masterpiece—the novel that caused me to fall in love with Paris—I keep coming back to
The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber
.”
“You and Hemingway and Paris,” Freddie said. “What is it about the three of you?”
“I’m not quite sure,” Tree said. “I think it started when I was a rookie reporter, that’s when I read Hemingway’s Francis Macomber story. It haunted me.”
“I think it still haunts you,” Freddie said.
“Maybe you’re right. I keep wondering what would happen if I was in Macomber’s shoes. Would I run from the lion?”
“If you were smart, you would,” Freddie said.
“Anyway, from my vantage point in Chicago, Hemingway and Paris looked like the last word in hard-boiled romanticism. In those days, we were all trying to imitate Hemingway, or what we naively thought was supposed to be Hemingway.”
“Hemingway killed himself,” Freddie said.
“A few of us even tried to duplicate that part,” Tree said.
The waiter appeared and Freddie insisted they begin with quenelles de brochet, pike dumplings.
“The dumplings are made with fish,” Freddie explained when the food arrived. “They originated in Lyon where there are lots of pike.”
“They’re delicious,” Tree said, digging his fork into the soft flesh of a dumpling.
“Particularly with the Nantua sauce.”
“The what?”
“The creamy sauce that comes with it. I think they used crayfish tonight, although you can use lobster.”
“Is there anything you don’t know?” Tree said.
“Too many things,” Freddie answered. “For instance, I don’t know what the future holds. I wish I did. It would make things so much easier.”
“We are not in Paris for the future,” Tree said, hoping to deflect Freddie from pursuing this line. “Maybe the past, a little bit. But otherwise we live in the moment, and we don’t worry about anything else.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Freddie persisted. “Wouldn’t you like to know what happens?”
“I know what happens. We die. That’s what happens. What’s worse, we are closer to the end of it all then we are to the beginning. We know what’s going to happen, and every day we get closer to it—except in Paris. Here, you get the impression you could live forever. At least, I do.”
She gazed at him for a long time before she said, “In the meantime, we have problems, Tree, and they don’t seem to be going away very fast.”
“I know that,” he said. “But it’s your birthday and Paris is our escape together, so let’s concentrate on that.”
“Paris doesn’t seem to be working its magic this time,” Freddie said.
Tree saw the unexpected tear run down her cheek. He took her hand in his. The noise of the rich eating and laughing and having the time of their lives rose up around them.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I shouldn’t have had that second glass of wine.”
“You haven’t had a second glass.”
“Well, don’t let me order one.” She wiped the tears away. “Then I really will be out of control.”
He held her hand tighter. “Let’s just enjoy ourselves tonight,” he said. “Tonight there is only us in Paris.”
She forced a smile as she lifted her wine glass. “To Paris,” Freddie said. “Where there are no problems. There is only Paris.”
“More than enough for anyone,” Tree said.
“At least for tonight,” Freddie said.
“Happy birthday, my darling,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, and tried to sound happy when she said it.
They touched their glasses together, and kissed, and the servers chose that moment to arrive with their main courses: the sole farcie for him; the roti for her. They finished dinner without further discussion of problems, real or imagined. Tree asked their waiter to take a photograph, the two of them holding hands, staring wide-eyed into the camera. When he looked at the photo later, Freddie’s smile appeared plastered on, as if someone had attached it to an unhappy face. Her eyes looked dead. Or was he imagining that?
They floated out of the restaurant and down the elevator onto the street where they proceeded to walk hand in hand along the Seine, Paris all around them, now cast in a deep evening blue, the light provided by passing bateaux mouche and the lamps along the quays and on the bridges.
On a night like this, your stomach full of good food, holding the hand of the woman you loved more than any other single person in the world, you were supposed to be happy, without a care in the world, feeling the lightness and joie de vivre of Gene Kelly in
An American In Paris
.