Steve forced a smile. “They won’t bother you as long as you make them keep their distance.”
“How do you do that?”
“Beats me.”
The joke registered. She rewarded him with a brief softening of her features.
They found Pice on the deck of the Black Caesar, fussing with the contents of a stowage cabinet. He greeted them in a booming voice like a cannon shot.
“You must be the Gardners. Right on time, too.”
Steve shook the captain’s hand. Creased and leathery, like a well-worn glove.
Somehow Pice managed to compress his entire biography into a few introductory sentences as he walked back to the car with them to help unload their supplies. His full name was Chester Edmund Pice, and he’d lived in the Keys all his life, thereby qualifying as a bona fide Conch. His boat, as they had surely observed, was the Black Caesar, so christened in honor of a half-historical, half-legendary buccaneering companion of Blackbeard.
“But old Caesar, now, not only his beard was black,” Pice explained with a lion cough of laughter. “He was black, every bit as black as yours truly. He made piracy an equal-opportunity profession.”
Pice himself, he assured them, had never run the Jolly Roger up his mast. For more than forty years he’d fished the Florida Straits, before deciding to give the fish a break and himself a rest. Semi-retired now at sixty-five, he’d made an arrangement with the Larson family to ferry vacationers to and from Pelican Key.
“I’ll get you there,” he promised cheerfully while helping the Gardners load their luggage and groceries aboard his boat. “And I’ll be back to pick you up in two weeks.”
Steve handed him a small traveling case of Kirstie’s. “There’s supposed to be a motorboat at the island for everyday use.”
“Sure is. Little wooden-hulled job with an Evinrude outboard. Nothing fancy, but she’ll get you back and forth to town. You won’t use her much, though. You won’t care to leave Pelican Key. It casts a spell on you. Half a month there, in blessed isolation-why, it’s as good as a miracle cure.”
He hefted their heaviest suitcase without strain and went on speaking as if he were empty-handed.
“Believe me, I know. I see them all the time-people like you. They show up worn out and frazzled and cranky, with the world’s weight bearing them down, and when I retrieve ’em a couple weeks later, they’re like members of a whole new species.”
Kirstie was amused. “We’re not usually quite so worn out. It’s just that we’re a little tired after the drive-”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that you look frazzled, ma’am,” Pice said hastily, worried that he’d given offense. “You’re a vision of loveliness and youth.” He winked at her. “But your hubby, now, he could use a rest.”
Kirstie nodded, meeting Steve’s eyes. “Definitely.”
Steve could hardly dispute the point. “That’s why I’m here,” he said mildly. “And I know I picked the right place, because I used to visit Pelican Key fairly regularly.”
Pice put down the suitcase on the gangplank and studied him with a squinty pirate’s eye. “Did you, now? Paying a call on Mr. Larson?”
“No, this was seventeen years ago or more. Back when I was in high school. Before Mr. Larson lived there.”
“Before…? Son, in those days Pelican Key was uninhabited.”
“I know it.”
“So who exactly were you visiting?”
“Nobody.”
“You’ll have to explain that.”
“My best friend’s dad had a boat docked up north. Every summer the three of us would cruise south to Islamorada. Then my friend’s dad would canvass the local bars, while the two of us boys rented a dinghy with an outboard motor and went exploring. Somehow we always ended up at Pelican Key. Probably we weren’t supposed to be there; Larson owned it even then, of course, though he hadn’t started the restoration work yet. Anyway, nobody ever stopped us.”
“What did two boys encounter on Pelican Key that was so fascinating?”
“Everything. The old plantation house, the reef, the boardwalk through the mangrove swamp… Is the boardwalk still there?”
“Fully repaired, and good as new.”
“Glad to hear it. It’s important to me-the whole island, I mean. We had some great times on Pelican Key.” Steve felt wistful sadness welling in him. “Some great times.”
“Now he’s bent on recapturing his lost youth,” Kirstie said, aiming for a tone of playful banter, but just missing.
Steve felt a flush of embarrassment. “That’s not it. Or not… not exactly.”
“Then what, exactly?” she pressed. “What are you really trying to find?”
“Nothing. I mean… Pelican Key is a special place, that’s all. I wanted to see it again.” His answer sounded lame even to him.
Pice cut in with a diplomat’s poise. “This friend of yours-what was his name, anyhow? Maybe I knew him.”
“I doubt it. He was a kid like me.”
“His pappy, then. You said he liked to hoist a glass. I’ve been known to frequent the local groggeries myself on rare occasions.”
“Albert Dance was his name. His son was Jack.”
“No, doesn’t ring a bell. Unusual name, Dance. I’m sure I’d remember it. Was this the marina where you tied up?”
“As a matter of fact, it was.”
“There might be some folks here who’d know you.”
“I imagine so. Mickey Cotter, for one. He was a security guard at the time.”
“And he still is. He’s an old man now-older than me, if you young folks can imagine such a thing-but he keeps on working. Mans the guardhouse from midnight to seven.”
Steve was pleased to hear that. “Well, if you see him, let him know that Steve Gardner is here for a visit. He might not recall the name, but he’ll remember Mr. Dance’s boat. Twenty-five-foot flybridge cruiser called the Light Fantastic. Mickey has a memory for boats.”
“That he does.” Pice smiled. “You know, it’s comical. Here I’ve been sounding off about Pelican Key like you’re a pair of ordinary tourists, and you know the island better than I do.”
“Steve knows it,” Kirstie said. “I don’t. I’ve never even been to Florida before.”
Pice picked up the suitcase again. “Well, you beautify the landscape, ma’am. Believe me, you do.”
He boarded the boat, lugging the suitcase and whistling.
“What do you think?” Steve asked Kirstie once Pice was out of earshot.
She smiled. “I think he is Black Caesar, reincarnated. All he’s missing is a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder.”
“You never know. He just might have that parrot around someplace.” He took her hand. “Our captain is right about one thing. You do beautify the landscape.”
“Oh, stop,” she whispered, turning away.
The trip got under way a few minutes later. Anastasia stretched out in the cockpit. Pice took the helm seat on the flying bridge, and Kirstie settled into the bench behind him. Steve remained on the dock long enough to cast off the bow and stern lines, then jumped aboard.
Pice started the twin diesel engines, engaged the astern gears with a double clunk, and carefully throttled back, easing the boat out of its berth. When the bow was clear of the dock, he swung toward the channel, shifted to the ahead gears, and nursed the paired throttle levers forward. The Black Caesar chugged into the entrance channel at a cautious speed.
Steve climbed the ladder to the flying bridge and sat down beside Kirstie.
“Seasick yet?” he inquired.
She showed him her tongue. “Does it look green?”
“No more than usual.”
They passed between the buoys marking the harbor entrance. Pice headed southwest, past Shell Key, then motored under a bridge festooned with fishing lines into Hawk Channel, the waterway between the Keys and the reef.
They were running east now, toward the sun. Pelican Key was ahead somewhere in the brassy glare.
Steve was too fidgety to stay seated. He rose, bracing himself against a stainless-steel safety rail, and drew deep breaths of the briny sea air, swallowing it like food.
From this vantage point he could look down unobtrusively over Pice’s shoulder and read the tachometers and oil-pressure gauges on the control console. He watched the tach needles climb to 2,000 rpm as Pice opened the port and starboard throttles a little wider. A light spray misted the windshield; the wipers beat briefly to clean it.