Between the bar and the fireplace were scattered a handful of tables, and the wall opposite them was composed of wide windows that looked out onto another porch and beyond that the ocean.
“Hello!” Sorenson bellowed once they’d stepped inside. Arlen set his bags down beside the door, and Paul followed suit. A minute after Sorenson’s cry, they heard footsteps and then a figure rounded the corner from some unseen room Arlen took to be the kitchen and faced them across the bar.
It was a woman. Her silhouette stood out starkly against the light from the beach, but the front of her was lost to darkness.
“Walter,” she said, in a voice that seemed to come from behind a gate with many locks.
“Becky, baby, how are ya?” Sorenson approached the bar with his big black case in his hand, and Arlen and Paul followed a few paces behind.
“Grand,” the woman said in a tone that implied just the opposite. As they drew close enough to see her, Arlen felt the boy draw up taller at his side and understood the reason-she was a looker. She wore a simple white dress that had been washed many times, but beneath it the taut lines of her body curved clear and firm. Her face was sharp-featured and smooth, framed by honey-colored hair, and she regarded them with cool blue eyes.
“Who are your companions?” she said.
“Road-weary travelers, and parched,” Sorenson said. His standard grandiose demeanor seemed to have risen a notch.
“I see.”
“Might I have a pair of beers and one Coca-Cola?”
She didn’t answer, just turned and slipped into the kitchen and then returned with two beers and a bottle of Coca-Cola.
“Thank you,” Paul said, and even in the shadowed room Arlen could see red rise in the boy’s cheeks. She was that kind of beautiful. The crippling kind. Arlen himself said not a word, just took a seat at the bar. She gave him no more than a flick of the eyes before returning her focus to Sorenson.
“You need to finish your beer, or can we handle our business?”
“No need to rush,” he said, and was met with a frown that suggested she saw plenty of need.
“Well, when you’re ready, I’ll be in the back,” she said. Arlen had the sense that she was unhappy Sorenson had brought strangers along.
“Aw, stay and talk a bit. I’ve neglected to make introductions. This here is Arlen Wagner, and his young companion is Paul Brickhill. They’re CCC men.”
“How lovely,” she said in the same flat voice.
“And this,” Sorenson said, “is beautiful Becky Cady, the pride of Corridor County.”
“Rebecca,” she said.
“Ah, you’re Becky to me.”
“But not to me,” she said. “Walter, I’ll be in the back.”
She turned and went through a swinging door into the kitchen, and then it was just the three of them in the dim bar.
“Another dry county?” Arlen said.
Sorenson shook his head.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“I told you last night, Mr. Wagner, business isn’t about booze these days.”
Sorenson took a drink of his beer, and now Arlen could see that sweat was running down his face in thick rivulets, more sweat than the heat deserved. He looked over his shoulder at the door, had another drink, and then looked again.
“You expecting company?” Arlen said.
“Huh? Um, no.”
Paul said, “Why’s it called Corridor County?”
“The waterways,” Sorenson answered. “There are inlets and estuaries all over the shore here, and they wind around and join the river about ten miles inland. It’s a crazy tangled mess, though, and every storm that blows through shifts things around and puts up sandbars where there didn’t used to be any. Nobody but a handful of locals can navigate the whole mess worth a shit.”
He got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”
He picked up the heavy black case and walked around the back of the bar and through the swinging door where Rebecca Cady had gone. Arlen looked at Paul, saw the question in the boy’s eyes, and shrugged.
“Go look at your ocean,” he said, hoping to distract the kid until Sorenson came back out and they could get on the road.
Paul got to his feet and walked over to the windows, gazed out at the sea, waves rolling in with their tops flattened by a freshening wind, and then went out on the porch. After a moment Arlen picked up his beer and followed. The smell of the sea rode toward them in warm, wet gusts, and seagulls screamed and circled the beach. South, there was nothing but sand and short dunes lined with clusters of grass, but to the north the shore seemed to curve inland and thickets of palms and strange green plants that looked like overgrown ferns traced what Arlen assumed was one of the inlets Sorenson had mentioned. He could see the roof of another structure through the trees. Some sort of boathouse, probably, sheltered from the pounding waves of the open water.
Paul stepped off the porch and walked down to the beach. He slid his shoes off and rolled his pants up to his knees. Arlen leaned on the weathered railing and felt a smile slide across his face as he watched the kid pick his way over the sand and down into the water, wade in until the waves broke over his knees and soaked his trousers. Paul seemed to have forgotten anyone else existed, just stood in the water, staring out at the line where sea met sky.
The wind was blowing steadily now, and that was probably why Arlen didn’t hear the car. As it was, he caught a lucky angle. He’d turned back to glance in the bar, checking to see if Sorenson had reappeared, and saw a flash of movement through the windows at the opposite end of the building. It was gone then, and he took a few steps to the side and still couldn’t see anything. After a glance back at Paul to make sure he was still standing in the surf, Arlen set his beer down on the rail and walked off the porch and around the side of the building. There, parked at the top of the sloping track that led down to the Cypress House, a black Plymouth sedan had pulled in beside the trees. The sun was shining off the glass and Arlen couldn’t see anyone inside, but the car hadn’t driven itself here.
He pulled back, leaning against the wall to get himself out of sight. Felt foolish doing it, but all the same he didn’t want to be seen staring. Sorenson had been acting damn strange since the moment they’d arrived, and now someone had parked up at the top of that hill and stayed in the car as if waiting on something. It didn’t feel right.
Paul was walking along the shore now, shin-deep in the water, his eyes still on the sea. Arlen went quietly back up the porch steps and then stepped inside the bar, taking care to move sideways, keeping out of view of the front windows.
“Hey, Sorenson,” he called, voice soft.
Nobody answered. The place was empty.
“Damn it,” he muttered, and then went around the bar and rapped his knuckles on the swinging door. “Sorenson!”
“Hang on, Wagner.”
There was something in the man’s voice Arlen hadn’t heard before, and it gave him pause. For a few seconds he stood there on the other side of the swinging door, and then he said the hell with it and pushed through and stepped into the tiny kitchen. There was a grill and a stove on one side and a rack of shelves on the other and nobody in sight. Another door stood opposite, closed. He crossed to it and knocked again.
“Damn it, I said give us a min-”
“I think somebody’s looking your car over,” he said. “Or maybe Miss Cady’s used to guests who park at the top of the hill and don’t come inside.”