She walked over and switched off the television and led Shreave down the hall. Even after the bedroom door closed, Honey could hear her saying: “I don’t want to stay here. I want to go to Sarasota and check into the Ritz-Carlton. I want a massage, Boyd. I want a sandy beach where I can wear my new thong. I want to go back to the room and order French wine and watch dirty movies on Payper-View.”
Honey Santana hurried outside and started stuffing the gear into the duffel bags. Her whole plan would be doomed if Shreave caved in, which seemed highly probable. Were he able to resist the vision of Eugenie Fonda power-tanning in a bikini, he’d surely be won over by the promise of a candlelit pornfest.
Honey feared she might crumble to pieces if Shreave bailed out now. Working late into the night, she’d fine-tuned her campfire lecture. A man such as he-a man who phoned people at the dinner hour and then insulted them coarsely when they objected-needed a lesson in manners and propriety. A few days in the wild would strip away all that smugness. A tour through the islands would expand his mind, open his eyes and deflate that superior attitude. Boyd Shreave would come back humbled and enriched. Of this Honey had convinced herself, and it was crushing to think that her mission would fizzle on the launchpad if his girlfriend bugged out.
Then Boyd and Eugenie emerged from the trailer-he sporting a new Indiana Jones-style hat; she sullenly smearing sunblock in her cleavage. Honey was practically giddy with relief. Wordlessly the couple helped her hoist the kayaks onto the car and, after a struggle, cinch them down. Shreave displayed a striking ineptitude for tying knots, but Honey didn’t mind redoing the straps. She was astonished that Shreave had rejected the decadent Ritz-Carlton scenario in favor of blisters and bug bites, and she wondered if she had misjudged him. Time would tell.
“That’s an awful lot of stuff for a day trip,” he remarked as they crammed the duffels into the backseat.
“Always be prepared,” Honey said lightly.
To her boyfriend, Eugenie muttered: “Now she sounds like you.”
They launched the kayaks next to the Rod and Gun Club. Eugenie graciously accepted Honey’s offer of a life vest but Shreave said he didn’t need one, citing several record-breaking performances on his high school swim team. Eugenie didn’t even pretend to believe the stories and Honey had trouble keeping a straight face, especially when Shreave lost his footing and sledded on his ass down the boat ramp. The fearful look in his eyes was not that of a man who was one with the water.
With almost no arguing, he and his girlfriend chose the yellow kayak. Honey held it steady while they stork-stepped aboard. After a few dicey moments they finally got settled-Boyd in the stern, Eugenie in the bow-and Honey eased them into the current. Quickly she climbed into the other kayak and followed.
The tide was falling hard, which was promising. A downstream paddle on a deep, wide river should have been effortless, even for amateurs. Yet right away the yellow kayak began zigzagging erratically. Before Honey could catch up, it plowed into a tangle of mangroves along the far shore. Shreave was cussing so loudly that he flushed a white heron and a flock of gray pelicans. Honey arrived on scene and saw Eugenie wildly swinging her paddle at spiderwebs, Shreave using his new hat to shield his face from the hail of broken twigs and leaves.
Honey was embarrassed by their racket, which had sullied an otherwise-lovely morning. She tied the bow of the Texans’ kayak to the stern of hers, and with some effort towed them out of the clinging trees. It was only a hundred-odd yards farther to the mouth of the river, beyond which lay Chokoloskee Bay, as slick as a mirror.
When they reached open water, Honey unhitched the other kayak and watched as it again started to vector wildly under Shreave’s rudder. She recalled from her trips with Perry Skinner that the weaker paddler should always take the bow, and therein lay the problem: Shreave’s girlfriend was clearly the stronger of the two. Knowing that he wasn’t nimble enough to switch places without capsizing the craft, Honey instead suggested that Eugenie Fonda lighten her stroke.
Shreave piped: “Yeah, I tried to show her the right way to do it but she won’t listen.”
“That’s because you’re a spaz,” Eugenie pointed out. She was still picking dewy filaments of spiderwebs from her hair. “My ninety-year-old grandma can paddle better than you, Boyd.”
Honey Santana began hearing distant echoes, so she covered her ears and shut her eyes. Soon there was the dreaded music-it sounded like Celia Cruz, whom her parents adored, and possibly Nine Inch Nails in the background. Honey took deep breaths, as she’d been advised to do by many therapists. If only these two would stop fighting, she thought. They’re ruining everything.
Boyd Shreave shouted: “What are you doing over there?”
At first Honey didn’t realize he was addressing her.
“Are you sick, or what? Don’t tell me you’re sick,” he said.
She looked up, smiled lightheartedly and waved for the Texans to follow. Where, she wasn’t sure. The charts were stowed in one of the duffel bags, and she didn’t feel like stopping to dig them out. That she could do later, when they took a break for lunch.
With clean brisk strokes she headed across the widest part of the bay, in a direction that she correctly estimated to be north-northwest. Not far ahead was a well-marked pass, she recalled, that would lead them toward the Gulf of Mexico.
Which will be as calm as a birdbath this morning, Honey thought.
In the other kayak, Eugenie Fonda could be heard saying, “Boyd, would you please find out where the hell this woman is taking us.”
Followed in short order by Shreave hollering: “Hey, Nature Girl, where we goin’? I gotta stop and unload some a that coffee.”
Honey picked up the pace. As she paddled harder, the songs in her head began to fade. “Stay close, and watch out for oyster bars,” she called over her shoulder. “We’ll be there soon.”
Fry showered quickly and threw on some semi-fresh clothes, then grabbed his book bag and skateboarded to the crab docks. Perry Skinner was on one of his boats, taking the diesel apart. Fry climbed aboard and told him what he’d seen earlier at the trailer park.
“I’ll check it out,” his father said, seemingly unconcerned. “You get along to school now, so you won’t be late.”
“But what if Mr. Piejack is after Mom?”
“Don’t worry about that asshole.”
As soon as his son had gone, Skinner hopped down from the boat and drove home, where he removed a loaded.45-caliber semiautomatic from a floor safe in the laundry room. Even in Florida it’s against the law for convicted felons to have a gun, but as vice mayor of the town (and one who’d successfully petitioned to have his civil rights restored), Skinner had granted himself an ad hoc exemption. None of the police officers would dare arrest him, and he was on poker-playing terms with the local sheriff’s deputies. Only the federal park rangers posed a potential problem, but they mostly kept to themselves.
Skinner got on his motorcycle and went searching for Louis Piejack. Nobody was hard to find in Everglades City, which was geographically as complicated as a postage stamp. Piejack’s green pickup was parked next to the boat ramp by the Rod and Gun Club. From a distance Skinner was unable to identify the two men sitting in the front seat, though he assumed one of them was Louis. There was no sign of Honey Santana or her guests. Skinner parked the motorcyle near the restaurant and strolled down to the seawall, where Piejack would be sure to notice him. The gun was tucked in the back of Skinner’s pants and concealed by the tail of his work shirt.
Looking downriver he caught sight of two kayaks, one red and one yellow, heading more or less toward Chokoloskee Bay. The woman in the red kayak looked from a distance like Honey, which meant it probably was. Nobody else in the whole county looked like Honey. In the second kayak was a man in a wide-brimmed hat and a woman in a papaya-colored halter. Their teamwork with the paddles was not exactly fluid.