“Yes, sir,” he said, but did not look up from the flowerbed.
“I’m looking for the dockmaster,” I said.
“You’ve found him,” he said.
“I’m Matthew Hope.”
“Donald Wicherly,” he said, and rose abruptly. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to ask you some questions about a phone call you took last night.”
“Why?” he said. His eyes were the color of the sky behind him, squinched now and studying me suspiciously. The hand holding the trowel was on his hip, he stood in angular expectation, a tall, lean, weathered man wanting to know why I had questions, and probably wondering besides why he should answer them.
“I’m an attorney,” I told him. “I’m here about Michael Purchase.”
“You’re Michael’s attorney?”
“Yes. Well, actually, I’m his father’s attorney.”
“Which is it then? Michael’s attorney or his father’s?”
“His father’s. But I’m here on Michael’s behalf.”
“With Michael’s knowledge or without it?”
“He knows I’m here,” I said. I was lying, but I wanted information, and I was beginning to resent this examination before trial. “Michael got a phone call last night,” I said. “About eleven-thirty. You took the call.”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Did you take the call?”
“I took it.”
“Where would that have been?”
“In the office.”
“Who called him?”
“I don’t know. The party didn’t identify herself.”
“It was a woman?”
“A woman, yes.”
“Could you make a guess at her age?”
“Well, no, sir, I don’t think I could.”
“Can you tell me what she said?”
“She asked if this was Pirate’s Cove, and I said it was. She said could she please speak to Michael Purchase? I told her he was down on the boat, and I’d have to go fetch him. She said would I do that please, and I went down to get him.”
“Then what?”
“He came up to the office with me, and talked to her on the phone.”
“Did you hear the conversation?”
“Only the tail end of it. I’d gone back to my apartment for something I wanted to staple on the bulletin board. He was still talking when I came into the office again.”
“What did you hear?”
“He said ‘I’ll be right there,’ then he said ‘Good-bye,’ and hung up.”
“You didn’t hear him mention anyone’s name?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“Did he say anything to you after he hung up?”
“He said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Wicherly.’”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He didn’t say where he was going, did he?”
“No, but I’d guess he was going to where he told that woman he’d be going.” He paused. He looked into my eyes. “According to what I heard on the radio about what he’s supposed to have done, why then he’d have gone straight to the house on Jacaranda to kill the three of them. That’s where he’d have gone, and that’s what he’d have done.” He shook his head. “But I’ll tell you, Mr. Hope, I find that mighty hard to believe. I just don’t know any boy nicer than Michael Purchase, that’s the truth. His parents got divorced when he was just twelve, you know... well, I guess you know that, you’re his father’s attorney.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“That ain’t an easy thing for a young boy. We had a long talk about it one night. Told me he was finally coming through it, after all these years. So you see, when I hear on the radio he killed his father’s wife and his two sisters... those girls were his sisters, Mr. Hope, there was his father’s blood in them and in Michael both, the same blood. Whenever he talked about them, they were his sisters, never mind half sisters. His sisters this, his sisters that, he could have been talking about his full sister, that’s all a lot of crap, anyway, isn’t it? It’s how you feel about somebody that counts. He loved those little girls. And you don’t do what the radio says he done if you love somebody. You just don’t.”
But he said he did, I reminded myself.
9
From a phone booth in the marina restaurant, I called Ehrenberg and told him I’d like to talk to Michael Purchase as soon as possible. He said the boy was still being processed and asked if I could make it a little later in the afternoon.
“What do you mean by ‘processed’?” I said.
“Putting him through the booking facility. Photographing him, printing him, taking hair clippings, blood samples — we’re allowed to do that, counselor, he’s been charged with Murder One. We’ll be sending everything up to the state lab in Tallahassee. I don’t know how long it’ll take for them to compare the boy’s hair with what we vacuumed off the woman and the two girls. Might be nothing there at all, who knows? I’m betting the blood on his clothes is theirs, though.” He sounded glum. He paused, and then said, “What did you think of his statement?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Neither do I.”
“When can I see him?”
“Can you give us till four-thirty?”
“I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up. I took another dime from my pocket, inserted it into the coin slot, and dialed Aggie’s number. She was breathless when she answered the phone.
“I was on the beach,” she said. “I came running up to the house. Where are you, Matt?”
“The restaurant at Pirate’s Cove. Are you still alone?”
“Yes.”
“Can I come there?”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated. Then she said, “All right. Park at the public beach, and come up on the ocean side.”
“I’ll be there by three,” I said.
“I’ll be waiting.”
We both knew it was reckless; we didn’t give a damn. Calusa in season is not designed for lovers. Aggie and I had first begun seeing each other in May, almost a year ago. The tourists had left shortly after Easter, and we’d had no difficulty finding places where we could be alone together. But just before Christmas the shrill cry of the snowbird was heard upon the air again — and from Tampa south to Fort Myers the neon NO VACANCY signs crackled and sputtered like a single unbroken electrified fence. In January, we stole a weekend together in Tarpon Springs, and then returned to a city still overrun with tourists; everytime I saw a CALUSA LOVES TOURISTS bumper sticker, I wanted to honk for Jesus. I went to Aggie’s house for the first time that month, and I’d been going there at least once a week since, sometimes more often. It was at the beginning of February that we decided we would ask for separate divorces. We made the decision because we weren’t true adulterers. We were, instead, people who’d happened to fall in love with each other while we were married to...
Ah, yes, the judge would say, you’re just a pair of decent souls, poor innocent babes in the woods who’ve been humping your brains out for the past ten months in this or that motel and even in the lady’s own house, lying and cheating and stealing, yes, stealing! That’s exactly what you’ve been doing, you cannot look me in the eye and pretend you’ve not been stealing. And I’m not referring only to the time you steal in this or that trysting place, those steamy hours you spend together in embrace, oh no. I’m referring as well to the intangibles you swipe from your separate spouses: the trust, the love, the honor you granted them by contract and which you now burglarize as unconscionably as thieves in the night. You are all those things, the both of you; you are liars, cheats, and thieves.
And I would say, Yes, your Honor, you’re right.
But you see, that’s exactly the point.
I folded my jacket on the back seat of the Ghia and then took off my tie and unbuttoned the two top buttons of my shirt. I left my shoes and socks on the passenger seat up front, locked the car, and crossed the parking lot to the beach. There were bathers in the water despite the shark scare on the east coast. Sandpipers skirted the shoreline, gulls shrieked overhead. Out on the Gulf, a Hobie cat with a red-and-white striped sail glided soundlessly over the waves.
Aggie’s house on Whisper Key was built some two hundred yards back from the water’s edge, powdery white sand turning coarser as the beach vaguely became the western approach, tall grass springing out of the sand, palm trees in clusters, a path of round irregularly spaced stepping stones leading to the rear wall of the house. The house stood on stilts, a contemporary two-story structure of weathered gray cypress and large glass areas that now reflected the midafternoon sun. An old lady in a flowered housedress was shelling just at the shoreline. Her head was bent, she did not look up as I veered off the beach, and walked through the palms toward the screened pool area on the lower level.
I was always glad to see her. I told her once that this was how I knew I loved her; I was always very glad to see her. An almost boyish gladness. A grin I could not suppress. An irresistible desire to hug her. I did that now, the moment I stepped into the tiled and shaded corridor where she waited for me. Grinning, I hugged her, and kissed her closed eyes and kissed her mouth briefly and held her away from me and looked at her.
She was wearing a white bikini, her skin tan against it, except for a narrow line of paler flesh just above the bra top. Long black hair combed as sleekly straight as Cleopatra’s, gray eyes, a mouth perhaps too generous for her face, an almost perfect nose, tiny white scar above the bridge. Sometimes, away from her, I conjured images I thought were surely false — her hair couldn’t possibly be as black as I imagined it, her eyes so pale, her smile so radiant. And then I’d be with her again, and my pleasure at simply seeing her would give way in an instant to the shock of recognizing once again how extraordinarily beautiful she truly was.
I put my arm around her waist, resting my spread hand on her hip, and we walked together through the familiar tiled hallway, past tall potted ferns in white tubs, and up a circular staircase set with dark wooden pie-shaped steps in black wrought iron. A window here leaped vertically tall and narrow to the west, ablaze with orange now as the sun hovered midway between ocean and universe. The guest room was on the topmost level of the house, one windowed wall angled somewhat less than due west to catch the sunset and at the same time lessen the glare. The other wall faced an inland lagoon crowded with marsh grass, a sandy beach coming to the eastern side of the house where sea grape fanned out over a slatted wooden wall.
We had come long past examining what we did here in this house together while her husband and children were away from it. Aggie took off her bikini the moment we were in the room, and I undressed swiftly and then we lay side by side on the bed and shamelessly made love. The orange glow on the vertical stairwell window carried through the open doorway where we’d left the door purposely ajar in order to hear any unexpected sounds from below. Her mouth tasted of salt.