In Osprey we turned on Bay Street off of Tamiami Trail at the Exxon station and then turned left at the next corner, Patterson. The house we were looking for was about two blocks down. We couldn’t actually see the house. It was deep behind trees and bushes huddled right up to the paved street that had no sidewalk. The mailbox was black, looked almost freshly polished, and had a red metal flag tucked down to show there was no mail to be picked up. The house number was in clear white letters on the box along with the name “Dorsey.”
I pulled onto the narrow stone driveway between the trees and drove slowly, leaves and branches slapping against the windshield and top of the car suggesting that visitors weren’t frequent.
We came to a clearing after about thirty yards after the assault of the flora. To the left was a blue Ford, vintage 1950 with collector’s license tags. I parked next to it and got out.
We turned to face a man at work and a woman reading. They were in front of a building, or rather a collection of small one-story buildings connected to each other. The oldest-looking building on the right was solid white stone. Attached to it was a wooden section that contrasted with the stone section. A third section attached to the wooden one was made of something that resembled aluminum siding. Together they formed a single structure that looked as if it had been built by a blind man, but the man on his knees, with a brick in his hand as he worked on a fourth unmatched section of red bricks, was clearly not blind. He turned his head to look at us, brick in one hand, a bucket of mortar at his side. He wore paint-splattered painter’s overalls and a baseball cap that looked like vintage Pittsburgh Pirates. He straightened but didn’t get off his knees.
I guessed he was Clark Dorsey. I also guessed that he was around fifty years old. I didn’t have to guess that he wasn’t happy to see us. His face was a dead giveaway.
The woman was sitting in one of those green and white vinyl beach chairs. There was a round white table next to her and a big umbrella sticking out of a hole in the middle of the table to provide her some shade, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She wore a floppy straw hat and sunglasses and I guessed she had a supply of 46 SPF sunscreen nearby.
The woman took off her glasses and examined us as we approached. She was about the same age as the man, lean, hair still dark but showing some gray, few lines, and a wary smile.
“Clark Dorsey?” I asked as we kept moving forward.
The man got up slowly, put the brick on a huge pile of bricks nearby.
“Yes,” he said.
“My name is Fonesca, Lew Fonesca. This is my friend Ames McKinney.”
The woman I assumed was Mrs. Dorsey didn’t move.
“And?”
“I’m looking for your brother,” I said.
He turned his head to one side. Something he had wanted to forget had come back to haunt him. I glanced at Mrs. Dorsey. She hadn’t responded.
“Why?” he asked, turning his head back to us.
“I’ve been hired to find his wife. Her brother wants to talk to her,” I said.
“That poor son of a bitch,” Dorsey said, wiping his hands on his overalls. “I don’t know where Charlie and Vera Lynn are and I don’t think they’d want to see Marvin even if they knew he wanted to. Marvin’s not all there. The whole family… Marvin’s never really been all there. You talked to him. You can see that.”
“Some people spend their money doing strange things like looking for lost sisters,” I said. “Others go out on little boards and risk their lives for thrills. And then there are others who build strange houses.”
“Your point, Mr…”
“Fonesca,” I said. “My point is that people who aren’t hurting other people should be able to do what they want to do as long as they don’t hurt anybody but themselves.”
“I never see Marvin,” he said, stepping toward us. “I don’t go into town much. Peg has run into him a few times. Even looked him up.”
“We had him out here twice since we’ve been here,” the woman under the umbrella said.
“I’m not comfortable with him,” Dorsey said.
“Clark’s not comfortable with anyone really,” Peg Dorsey said with a smile in her voice.
“What can I tell you?” he said with a shrug. “She’s right. I used to be a fireman. For twenty years. I’ve seen enough trouble, enough people. I don’t stay in touch with my family. I, Peg and I, we keep to ourselves.”
“And you build houses,” I said, looking at the oddity behind him.
He turned his head as if he had never before really considered what he had done.
“The white stone one-bedroom came with the land. I added on. I’m not much of a reader. I don’t care much for television, movies, or newspapers and we don’t have a hell of a lot of friends. So I build. I don’t care what it looks like. It’s comfortable inside. Each addition is a new challenge. Maybe when I’m done, if I ever get done, I’ll cover the whole place with stucco or something.”
“No maybe about it,” said Peg Dorsey.
“No maybe,” Clark Dorsey agreed. “For sure;”
’Two feet higher on the metal-sided one, shored with straight I-beams, and the one you’re working on at least a foot lower than what you’re planning,” said Ames.
Dorsey looked at him.
“They’d line up, give you enough headroom,” said Ames. “Brick in the whole place. Double your property value.”
“Ames used to be in the business,” I explained.
“Retired?” asked Peg Dorsey, shading her eyes.
“Business go bad?” asked Clark.
“Business was fine. Partner was as uneven as your roof over there with just as many unmatched parts,” said Ames.
The Dorseys waited for me. There was no more coming.
“Marvin just wants to talk to Vera Lynn,” I said. “It’s all he has.”
“You a private detective?” Clark said.
“Just a friend, and I’m not going to charge him more than a few hundred dollars tops, find her or not,” I said, “but Marvin’s not going to give up.”
Dorsey looked at his wife and she looked back at him and nodded.
“Charlie and Vera Lynn don’t want to hear from Marvin,” Dorsey said.
“Why?”
“Because of what happened,” Dorsey explained. “You know what happened in Arcadia?”
“You mean the girl who fell out of the window,” I said. “Sarah Taylor.”
Dorsey nodded his head and said, “I’ve got to go inside for a minute. Either of you want water?”
“I’d like that,” Ames said.
Dorsey disappeared past his wife and through a door into the white stone section of the puzzle house.
“Clark doesn’t like to talk about it,” Peg Dorsey said, looking at the door her husband had closed behind him. “He’s leaving me to do the talking.”
I watched her play with her sunglasses, put them back on, and look in our direction.
“The girl who went out that window, Sarah,” she said. “She was a very pretty girl, but a jumpy thing, can’t-sit-still type. She got worse, started acting crazy, one day dancing in the street and singing, the next day sitting on the bench near city hall for hours not talking. Sarah was a pretty girl and she was wrong about most things but she was right about one. Charlie had been engaged to Vera Lynn, or as close to engaged as you can be from the time you’re both fourteen. They were comfortable together, Charlie and Vera Lynn. Charlie had no trouble with Vera Lynn’s brother Marvin who was, let’s put this kindly, not fully together from the time he was born.”
She paused, bit her lower lip, and went on.
“What made things worse was that Marvin was Sarah Taylor’s puppy dog. He has no guile, that Marvin. He adored Sarah, would follow her around, sit with her on that bench, even dance with her in the street. Arcadia wasn’t filled with good-looking, smart men with a future. I was lucky. Sarah wasn’t. Sarah started to spread the word that she and Charlie had a thing together and that he was dropping Vera Lynn. Some people even believed it. They just saw that pretty girl on the outside and not the one inside. It doesn’t matter. If the town is small enough, people want to have a good box of rumors to pass around, especially one involving the young police chief even if the rumor comes from someone like Sarah.