SHADOW OVER CEDAR KEY (7 page)

As Brandy and John took a table, Cara came swinging around the black screen from the kitchen, a tray of eggs and bacon shoulder high. As she set it down before Truck, she gave Brandy a knowing look. She wasn’t groomed with the care of yesterday, and the color in her dainty cheeks was pinker. “I was just telling Truck and Mr. MacGill about my excursion last night,” she said.

Brandy laid down her menu and sighed. At least Cara seemed all right. “You didn’t go out to Shell Mound alone?”

“Yes I did.” Cara’s glance swept over the others. “Brandy here’s a reporter. She says her paper would like a picture of the Shell Mound ghost.” Her brown eyes focused on Brandy, her eager voice rising. “I did get a shot of someone. It wasn’t a girl in a flowing gown. It sure wasn’t a hunter, either, unless he goes after game with a spade.”

Truck glowered. “Had no damn luck myself. In my boat most of the night for nothing.”

“Actually, then, I had better luck.”

Brandy spoke up. “Did the person digging see you?”

“Don’t think so. Heard me, I think, but probably thought I was a possum or a deer. I snapped two shots in good moonlight. At least one ought to get the face.”

MacGill picked up his coffee from the side board and slid into a small table by the door. “A dig there’s illegal, mind. It’s a dicey business, taking a picture. Did Marcia approve?”

Cara pulled her pad and pencil out of an apron pocket. “I didn’t tell her last night. I had to this morning, though. She heard me change clothes.”

John and Brandy both ordered fruit and eggs. “And the photographs?” Brandy asked. “When will they be developed?” Maybe she could at least cobble together the Shell Mound story.

“Dropped the film off in Chiefland. That’s why I was out so late. No place here to handle it.” She indicated Cedar Key’s backwardness with a shrug. “I can’t do color in my darkroom. The pictures will be ready Tuesday morning, right after I finish serving breakfast.” She picked up Nathan Hunt’s empty plate.

“No mysterious round light?” Brandy asked, hopeful.

“Sorry. But maybe I can prove who was digging at the mound. Might be a story in that.”

John gave Brandy a righteous look. “I said the stunt would be dangerous. No telling who was fooling around the mound. You know we’ll be back in Gainesville by Tuesday.”

Brandy glanced at him across the table. “I’d make a trip back to see a really interesting picture.”

Hunt rose, picked up his Windbreaker, and looked at MacGill, who was cutting into a hard-boiled egg blanketed in sausage. “Sounds like we’ve all been out last night. I went after croakers and grunts early this morning myself. No luck. Going to try around the mouth of the Suwannee.”

He had gone and John and Brandy were finishing breakfast when the breathless young desk clerk bobbed through the door. “It’s Mr. Rossi, sir,” she said to MacGill. “I can’t locate him anywhere. He’s just

I”

gone!

MacGill’s square face darkened. “Without checking out?”

She retreated a step. “Must’ve left, really early. His car’s not here and his door’s partly open.” Brandy remembered the footsteps on the back stairs and said a quiet, “Damn.” If Rossi was gone, her chance of covering the missing woman assignment was gone, too, as well as the ghost story, unless Cara’s picture exposed a hoax.

Brandy and John followed MacGill upstairs. While John disappeared into their room to brush his teeth and collect the camera, Brandy stood at a discreet distance and watched MacGill open the investigator’s door. When he entered, she edged forward and peered inside. The closet door stood open, its hangers bare.

The bed covers were turned back and disheveled, although she could see no indentation in the pillow. On the bedside table MacGill discovered the room key. Under a water glass beside it lay several bills.

The Scotsman pocketed the cash. “At least, he didn’t try to do the dirty. He got no calls before we closed up. None except the one at dinner.

Brandy stepped into the room. “I heard someone in the hall after twelve. Then someone came in and left by the back stairs very early this morning. Maybe Rossi got news of the woman he’s looking for.”

“How?” MacGill stooped over the waste basket, shook his head, and lifted out an empty Scotch bottle. “Looks like your man had one over the top before he left. He showed a taste for the stuff in the lounge. He’d hardly be fit to drive.”

Cara, once more in jeans, slipped past John as he descended the stairs and appeared in the doorway. “I’ll clean the room. They don’t need me in the kitchen.” She favored Brandy with a warm smile.

John would be waiting. “I hoped Mr. Rossi would contact me before he left town,” Brandy said to MacGill, then turned to Cara. “Before we pick up our dog for the day, we’re taking the historic driving tour. It includes the old cemetery. I’d like to see the grave you mentioned.” Maybe she could still make sense of all these fragments of information.

Cara brushed her hair back with fingers that trembled a little, her voice low. “Mr. MacGill lets me have the flowers from the dining room. I’m taking some out there in about half an hour. Meet me there. I’ve got an old newspaper clipping to show you.”

Brandy had started across the downstairs lobby when the desk clerk called to her. Reaching behind her, the woman lifted a message from a mail slot. “With Mr. Rossi gone and all, I forgot. I took a phone call for you early this morning, about seven-thirty.” She handed Brandy the paper. Brandy scanned the clerk’s neat hand. “Forget the classified ad story,” the note read. “A more important one’s breaking here. Come back to the bureau as soon as you can.”

“Can I call back?”

“The person said they couldn’t be reached today or tomorrow.”

It didn’t sound like the State News Editor or his assistant. No specifics. “Did the caller leave a name?”

The clerk shook her head. “Said he was calling for your boss. I couldn’t even tell for sure if it was a man. There was a lot of noise and the person spoke real soft.”

Brandy asked John to wait, stalked to the phone booth, and called the bureau. The sports editor answered. No one else was in the office. He didn’t know of a change in anyone’s story budget. Or about any sudden big news. Both the State News Editor and his assistant would be at the city desk today as usual. Brandy asked if he would verify the early morning message and call her back if it were genuine. She hung up, a bit rattled. Was Rossi that concerned about her questions? Who else would want her off the story?

About a half an hour later Brandy and John located the old graveyard on Cemetery Point, bounded on three sides by marsh land and shallow inlets. It lay on a gentle rise, its graves covered with pine needles, a few of the oldest with oyster shells. At one side of the circular drive sat an unkempt station wagon.

While John stayed behind the wheel, reading a leaflet about historic homes, Brandy stepped out into the sharp smell of salt air. A cool breeze made her thankful for her long-sleeved white shirt. The only sound came from traffic on the other side of a shallow bay, the only motion from Cara at the edge of the graveyard, laying a centerpiece of white and gold chrysanthemums before a small headstone.

“Give me a few minutes,” Brandy said to John.

He looked at his watch. “It’s nine-forty. If you’re set on taking Meg, we’d better pick her up soon. We ought to get to the Suwannee fish camp around noon.”

Brandy nodded and began picking her way among tombstones. When she was quite close, Cara sat back on her heels and squinted up at her. “Someone was in the cemetery last night,” she said. “There’s no real protection, not even a fence. Kids come in to party.” She pointed to tire tracks over a grassy area and a few pieces of broken glass beside the ruts.

“It’s a shame,” Brandy agreed. She peered at the modest gray stone. She could read “Rest in Peace, Ye known but to God,” and below that, “Female, 1973.”

Cara settled down on the grass. “Got a minute?”

Brandy lowered herself beside Cara, while an osprey wheeled up from a nest in a tall marsh pine and dived toward the water.

“Marcia doesn’t like me to come here. I don’t tell her anymore.” Cara gestured toward Brandy, palms up. “After all, she hasn’t told me much. She found me during the hurricane of 1972. She was on her way to the school house for shelter. My foster dad was already there, but Marcia had been helping a friend on First Street board up her windows.” Cara glanced down. “I’m sure she saved my life. I can never forget that. She says I must’ve been left by migrants. Some came here several days earlier, she said, looking for work at the fish houses. The Health and Rehabilitation Service office finally let Marcia and my foster dad keep me. They’d been foster parents before.”

“And the woman buried here?”

Cara’s large eyes met hers. “More than a year after the 1972 hurricane, a skeleton of a young woman was found in the old cistern in the hotel basement. No one knows how it got there.” Her voice quivered. “But the day I was found, a woman and a little girl about my age left Otter Creek for Cedar Key. The woman was educated, well-dressed. I read about them in an old newspaper at the Historical Society Museum. I brought you a copy of the story. No one knows what happened to them.”

She made an effort to steady her voice. “I think the woman buried here was my mother.”

Carefully Cara lifted a Xerox copy of a clipping from a plastic bag and handed it to Brandy. Then she looked away. “I think I must be that girl, and if I am, my mother was not some migrant worker that can’t be located.”

Brandy folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket to read later. “You said there was another Cara Waters.”

“Long before I was born, Marcia had a little girl about my age. Looked a lot like me. She was lost.” Cara drew her knees up and locked her slender arms around them.

“Lost?”

“Like I told you, her name was Cara, too. She drowned in the hurricane of 1950. They had a house on the Gulf then, and it got swept away, the little girl with it. Marcia thinks her death was part of some awful retribution. The whole fishing fleet was smashed. Oyster men lost everything. They’d been ruining the beds, of course, over-harvesting. My foster dad was the foreman of a timber company. Then, of course, lumbering wasn’t controlled. All the old forest was already gone. He was almost killed when the wind ripped the roof off the shack he’d gone to for shelter.”

“No wonder you’re frightened of hurricanes.”

“Mr. MacGill says hurricanes hit here so often because we’re stuck in an island in the Gulf. But Marcia thinks nature’s programmed to strike back.”

A horn honked. Brandy looked at her watch. Five of ten. As she lifted herself up and brushed off her slacks, Cara scrambled up beside her. “After the first little Cara drowned, Marcia worked with environmentalists for twenty years. She thought people had been ruining the natural environment. If they were being punished by nature, Marcia wanted to restore what had been lost.” She looked up to see the osprey fly back to its nest, then began again. “Then she found me in another hurricane near the same place. It was like her child had been brought back by the storm. That’s why she gave me the same name.”

Puzzled, Brandy looked at her as they started back toward the road. “Did she think you were the same child?”

“We looked similar, but I don’t think she really confused us, not after a while. But deep down, maybe she always has.”

“And when you were found, you couldn’t identify yourself?”

Cara shook her head. “Marcia says no one could make out what I was saying. I was too scared. They say I wasn’t even three yet.”

As John eased the car down the road toward them, Brandy reached the driveway, Cara beside her. “We’re going to pick up Meg and go out to Shell Mound this afternoon,” Brandy said. “I’ll take some pictures of my own.”

Cara nodded. “You could stop at the caretakers and report the digging. He doesn’t have a phone in the trailer.”

Brandy opened the passenger door and paused. John would certainly say that Cara’s identity was not Brandy’s problem. He had asked her to be quiet about her suspicions. Yet someone should tell Cara about Rossi.

“A private investigator from New York was staying at the hotel,” Brandy said. “He was looking for a woman who disappeared in 1972, said she came to Cedar Key with a little girl. He wouldn’t tell me the missing woman’s name. The investigator was Anthony Rossi. He left this morning early, but he said money was involved for the missing child. You should try to reach him.”

Cara’s eyes widened. “The hotel should have his address.” The quiver returned to her voice. “The newspaper said the woman buried at the hotel was murdered. The case was never solved.” She put one hand on Brandy’s arm. “You’re a reporter. You know how to investigate things. I hope you’ll help me find the truth.”

Brandy gave a slight nod and slipped into the car seat. “I’ll think about it.”

When Cara turned away, John gunned the engine and headed for the cemetery entrance. “That girl’s not your problem, Bran.”

She opened her notebook and scribbled a few lines. “Just curious. Might be a story there. And I do wish I could do something to help her.”

He gave her a tight-lipped glance. “You may end by doing the girl more harm than good.” She wished John was not so often right. She doodled a gravestone in the margin, then closed the book, unfolded the Cedar Key map, and switched to a topic he would find more agreeable. “Why don’t I drop you off on the main street? You could pick up a picnic lunch at the café while I collect Meg.”

Neither MacGill nor Truck had told Rossi about the skeleton in the hotel cistern, a reservoir for storing water long ago abandoned. Why? She hoped Rossi had not left town without keeping his appointment with the police chief. Surely the chief would mention the unsolved murder. Brandy gripped her notebook, eager to jot down the thought that had taken form. She wondered if the cocktail waitress was referring to the skeleton in the basement when she said Rossi came to the hotel nineteen years too late. Brandy would have to bounce that idea off Rossi when she saw him again—if she saw him again.

CHAPTER 6
 

John stepped out of the car at the café. “Next stop, the Suwannee River.” Brandy was pleased to see his rare half-smile. Before she drove to Cara’s house for Meg, she pulled the folded newspaper clipping from her pocket. It was from the regional edition of the Gainesville paper, dated June 25, 1972. Below items about George McGovern’s campaign aides and the bombing in Viet Nam, Brandy read: