Ten Thousand Islands (12 page)

I watched the would-be state senator’s expression flex with attention as Tomlinson said, “Dorothy had a kindred relationship with the people who built mounds on this island. An archaeologist said she had a great gift for finding things. But she didn’t find things; she was called to them. The people who built the mounds spoke to her. It is fitting that she go back to be among them.”

He took up a book, saying, “In 1568, Father Juan Rogel, a missionary to the Calusa people, wrote, ‘The King of these islands told me that each person has three souls. One is in the pupil of the eye. Another is in our shadow. The last is our reflection in a calm pool of water. When a person dies, two of the souls leave the body. But the third soul, the truest soul, lives in the pupil of our eye and remains in the body forever.”

The four punk rockers stood at the back of the circle, off by themselves. Two guys, two chubby girls with bad posture, their body piercings gleaming like surgical staples. I guessed the guys to be in their early twenties, the girls younger, maybe still in their teens. All of them with an attitude, hanging with their leader, the tall, knobby guy who had a dragon tattooed on his forearm. The other male, shorter but much thicker, had what looked to be the tail of a snake winding up his bicep; the four of them whispering among themselves as Tomlinson spoke, which I found irritating as hell.

The others there were pretty easily labeled. Several newspaper types, all female. One late forties and very fat—from the
Enquirer
, judging by her brightly flowered look-at-me caftan and floppy straw hat. Two in their early
twenties, serious expressions, journalism school aloofness. A photographer, male, late twenties. A cameraman from a local TV station and a female reporter who kept checking her makeup; she carried lipstick and hairspray in a little pouch.

Two men, however, were not so easily assessed. One was massive, with florid cheeks and nose, a beer drinker’s paunch, deep into his forties. He wore shorts and a T-shirt, as if this were a recreational event, part of the Marco Island tour.

The other stood off by himself in the shade listening. Abe Lincoln face, black Navaho hair, dark eyes, wrists protruding from a cheap dress shirt that was too small, baggy pants belted around his waist. He had the shrunken look of a whiskey alcoholic, a pack of Marlboros showing through breast pocket, his hair greased back.

I moved slowly toward Detective Parrish as Tomlinson finished, saying, “What better proof of God and immortality than Dorothy’s great genius? Than all the fallen Calusa who spoke to her? Their truest soul, the soul that lives in the pupil of their eyes, will be comforted by her return.”

After a prayer and an appropriate silence, I spoke in a low voice to Detective Parrish, “Who’s the man in the white shirt? The skinny guy.”

Parrish was standing, arms folded. He was wearing Ray-Bans now that the service was over. He said, “You didn’t already find out your ownself? I’m surprised.”

“It’s what I’m doing now,” I said. “A smart cop is the logical place to start, right?”

He pursed his lips, smiling. “The skinny man, he’s the girl’s father, the one run off and left them. Ms. Copeland, she asked me not to let him near her, wouldn’t speak
a word to him. Said he didn’t care ’bout the girl when she was alive, why bother now she’s dead? I took him aside and told him stay away, and he just said, ‘Fine, fine,’ like he didn’t have much fight left in him anymore. Said his name is Darton.”

I’d watched Darton Copeland stop and say something into the ear of Ivan Bauerstock. Watched Bauerstock turn as if Copeland didn’t exist, then walk away from the smaller man.

Now Darton Copeland was crossing the street toward the 7-Eleven, a scarecrow figure, diminished in size by distance.

“How about the guy with the red face? He looks like he just got off a cruise ship.”

“Man with the belly? No, he’s local. Got that hard-ass, I’m-a-tax-payer attitude. Wouldn’t tell me nothing. Gave me the Negro cop look, like why waste his time? So I asked around and his name is Rossi, has a construction company on the island. Apparently got some money. Guess he just came for the show. Next you’re going to ask me about the freaky kids, the ones with green and purple hair. Why they here?”

I nodded.

Parrish was looking at them, taking in how they reacted to his stare. “Some coincidence, huh? how I already checked what you think needs to be checked.”

“Like you’re a mind reader.”

“Uh-huh. What the tall one told me was, the one with the thing in his lip. Like a silver horseshoe? He told me they read about the girl in the paper, how cool it was she could find things, things that was lost. Like maybe she had psychic powers or was a witch or something, so they were curious. Decided to come and watch the psychic girl
get buried, that’s what he told me. Only they’re kind of disappointed they didn’t get to see her body when the casket was open. They said that was pretty much a bummer—the short fat girl, she told me that. ‘We’re kind of, you know, bummed ’cause we waste all this time and, you know, don’t even get to look inside.’ Know what the fat girl asked me? ‘Is she like a skeleton now or just rotted?’”

I said, “Indignant because they’d been left out, that was her attitude? They couldn’t even shut up during the service.”

Parrish allowed a confidential chuckle. “Oh yeah, man. These kids today, everybody owes them something, huh? Makes me want to move to my cabin in Colorado, go up there and wait for the end to come. You white people, you’re bad enough. But it’s gotten so I don’t even like my own kind no more.”

O
ne of the women I’d guessed to be a newspaper reporter stopped us in the little parking lot, saying, “Excuse me, Mrs. Copeland, I’m with Everglades University, Museum of Natural History. Any chance we can sit down and talk about your daughter, how she did what she did? At your convenience, of course.”

Long minutes before, we’d had to wait while Della was comforted by Teddy Bauerstock, Ivan’s politician son, the two of them embracing, swaying back and forth, while she sobbed, “You were the only one who was kind to her, treated her like she wasn’t strange. It’s so sweet of you, Teddy, to even remember. I thought you forgot about us years ago,” as he patted her back, tears in his own eyes, camera shutters making their scissors sound.

We had to wait a little longer as he spoke to reporters, his arm around Della’s shoulder, a protective posture. “Dorothy was my friend. No … she was more like my little sister. I didn’t know her well. We didn’t spend a lot
of time together, but enough to become close. Her brilliance made her seem different, and we all know how cruel kids can be to those who are a little different. More than once I had to step in and tell the local bullies to back off, leave her alone.”

That caused Della to smile as she dabbed at her eyes.

He wasn’t finished.

“As some of you know, my family’s beach house is on the east point of the island, near Indian Hill. There’re a lot of mounds on our acreage. Dorothy liked to walk up there by herself and just sit. Sit there and look out over Barfield Bay. That’s what I’m going to do right now. Before Dad and I head back to the ranch, I’m going to sit on one of those old Indian mounds and think about Dorothy, and what’s happened to this great state of ours. Think about what a sad thing it is that thieves and bullies can do what they want to innocent people when there’s no one there to protect them.”

Bauerstock had the ability to grit his teeth and flex his jaw muscles in a way that suggested resolve. He flexed jaw muscles now as he added, “It’s time we put a stop to this sort of thing. Dorothy had a lot to teach us. I think she’s teaching us still.”

Which got more tears from Della, Ivan Bauerstock standing in the background, nodding at the way his son was handling himself, and no wonder: Teddy Bauerstock was very, very good. A compelling voice, lots of eye contact, forceful in the right places but also a self-deprecating way of smiling that suggested boyishness over a core of strength.

Earlier, I’d watched him shake Tomlinson’s hand, speaking animatedly as Tomlinson nodded a solemn understanding. Same with the journalists, one by one. Got
them off alone, face-to-face, slightly closer than the thirty-three inches of comfort space that behaviorists say we require.

But me, he’d dismissed with a frank glance of assessment: I am a person without politics, and he was able to read that. There was no way I could help him, so I was an unproductive investment in time.

I’d stared back into Teddy Bauerstock’s congenial face with its congenial smile and I saw eyes that were as expressionless as holes in a small-bore rifle. I had seen eyes like his once before.

Where?

The man had a future in Washington. No doubt about that.

Now this woman from Everglades University wanted attention, which I found irksome. I’d had enough of cemeteries and crowds. I was eager to get on the road, change back into canvas shorts and T-shirt, put my boat in the water as soon as possible and feel wind in my face.

But no, we had to stop again. And this woman wasn’t even a reporter.

Talking to a reporter, at least, was something that I planned to do willingly….

Her name was Nora Chung, an Amerasian, probably half Vietnamese with some Indian in her, too, though I’d already misjudged her once and was reluctant to make any more assumptions.

The card she handed us said she was assistant director of anthropology, and a Ph.D. Impressive for a woman who looked just a couple of years out of her teens. Tall with broad shoulders—maybe a competitive swimmer at one time. Very long legs in beige dress slacks; a lean upper body, thin and bony beneath a dark blouse with pearl
buttons; wire-rimmed glasses over sloe eyes and an Anglo nose; hair cut rice-bowl style, advertising her ethnicity.

Della Copeland had the voice of a veteran waitress, deepened and slowed by smoky bars and sore feet. She took a cigarette from her friend Betty Lynn and lit it now, letting her breath out slowly as if she’d been wanting to do it for a while; making the feeling last. Then she looked at the anthropologist through a haze of blue, saying, “We already talked to a bunch of archaeologists. Back when my Dorothy was still with us. We talked to a couple people they sent down from Tallahassee. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

The younger woman said, “I’ve read the transcripts, the interviews with Dorothy, but there are some other things I’d like to ask. Not now, though. It’s not a good time, and I sincerely don’t want to impose.”

Della’s eyes were red from crying. She was probably short-tempered, too, from the heat and a week of emotional abrasion. “What I suppose you really want is to find out what valuable things might have been buried with my little girl. Something nice for your museum. You get me off and make nice to me, hoping I’ll say, ‘Here, take it for free.’ That’s what Dorothy and me used to do. Gave it away. We gave it all away, not a penny for ourselves.”

The anthropologist stayed cool, nodding her empathy. “That’s in the records, too. Your generosity. I’m not going to pretend I wouldn’t love to see anything your daughter found. But later, when you’ve rested. Can I call you? Thing is, I don’t have your number.”

Della made a sound of exasperation and opened her purse to find a pen and paper. “You scientific types,” she said, “you never get tired of asking.”

A couple of people had stopped close enough to listen:
two other women I assumed were journalists, including the one in the caftan who now had a little camera in one hand while she waved for attention with the other, calling, “Mrs. Copeland? Mrs. Copeland! The thing the gentleman’s holding”—she pointed to me—“why’s it wrapped in a handkerchief?”

Della took a deep drag on her cigarette as she handed her number to the anthropologist, dark eyes focusing. “‘Cause maybe what my friend’s got there is private. Maybe something just between my little girl and me. Which means it’s nobody’s business but my own, lady, and sure ’nuff none of yours.”

The woman’s voice had a bellows quality that I have come to associate with a predisposition to hysteria, neutered cats and astrology. “Your friend took something from your daughter’s casket. Is that what you’re telling us?”

“Lady, what I’m telling you is, it’s none of your affair.”

Speaking more firmly, letting everyone hear her reporter’s voice, she said, “Please don’t be that way. Why the secrecy? I believe your daughter actually possessed real psychic powers. I want to write about her for one of the biggest papers in the nation. I’m psychic myself. It’s what I
do
.”

“You’re a psychic?”

“That’s right.”

“Then why bother asking questions? Read my mind, get your own answers. Maybe you’ll see a real butt-whipping, you look hard enough.”

Caftan-woman’s reply was an insincere smile that was a parody of patience. “I’m not the enemy, I’m your friend, Mrs. Copeland. It was the golden medallion, wasn’t it? That’s what you hid in Dorothy’s coffin.”

“My daughter’s coffin is none of your business, lady!”

“You’re upset, I can feel it. But people have a right to know. No matter what you think, readers have rights.” Caftan waved the little camera. “How about letting me take just a quick picture? Maybe you holding the medallion and standing by your dear daughter’s casket.”

I was aware of a soft growling sound, a feral-like purring, and realized it was coming from Della who had begun to move slowly toward the woman in the caftan.

Time for someone to step in and take charge.

I touched Della’s elbow, gave it a meaningful squeeze. It stopped her. I waited for a moment before I put my lips to her ear and whispered, “Trust me, trust what I’m going to do,” before I said to everyone close enough to hear: “This lady has a pretty good point. Ms. Copeland is understandably upset, but we have no desire to be secretive. Della? Do you mind if I show them?”

“I think the fat tramp better watch her mouth, is what I think.”

I chuckled as if she were joking. “Then I have your permission.”

“Whatever you want. But me, I’ve said all I’m going to say.”