“Was the letter handwritten or typed?”
“Typed, I think. Yes, I’m sure of that.”
“I see. Well, did you ever know a man named Wendell Baxter?”
“No. And would you mind telling me just who you are and what this is all about? Are you drunk?”
“I’m not drunk,” I said. “I’m in trouble up to my neck, and I’m trying to find somebody who knew this man. I’ve got a wild hunch that he knew you. Let me describe him.”
“All right,” she said wearily. “Which shall we take first? Mr. Hardy, or the other one?”
“They’re the same man,” I said. “He would be about fifty years old, slender, maybe a little over six feet tall, brown eyes, graying brown hair, distinguished looking, and well educated. Have you ever known anybody who would fit that?”
“No.” I thought I detected just the slightest hesitancy, but decided I was reaching for it. “Not that I recall. Though it’s rather general.”
“Try!” I urged her. “Listen. He was a quiet man, very reserved, and courteous. He didn’t use glasses, even for reading. He was a heavy smoker. Chesterfields, two or three packs a day. Not particularly dark-complexioned, but he took a good tan. He was a superb small-boat sailor, a natural helmsman, and I would guess he’d done quite a bit of ocean racing. Does any of that remind you of anyone you’ve ever known?”
“No,” she said coldly. “It doesn’t.”
“Are you sure? No one at all?”
“Well, it does happen to be an excellent description of my father. But if this is a joke of some kind, I must say it’s in very poor taste.”
“What?”
“My father is dead.” The receiver banged in my ear as she hung up.
I dropped the instrument back on the cradle and reached dejectedly for a cigarette. Then I stopped, and stared at Bill. How stupid could I get? Of course he was. That was the one thing in common in all the successive manifestations of Wendell Baxter; each time you finally ran him down, he was certain to be dead.
I grabbed up the phone and put in the call again. After it had rung for three minutes with no answer I gave up.
“Here’s your ticket,” Bill said. “But I still think you ought to take the car. Or let me drive you down there.”
“If they picked me up, you’d be in a jam too. I’ll be safe enough on the bus, this far from the Miami terminal.”
It was after sunrise now, and we were parked near the bus station in Homestead, about thirty miles south of Miami. I’d shaved and changed into a pair of Bill’s slacks and a sport shirt, and was wearing sun glasses.
“Don’t get your hopes too high,” Bill cautioned. He was worried about me. “It’s flimsy as hell. She’d know whether her own father was dead or not.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’ve got to talk to her.”
“Suppose it’s nothing, then what? Call me, and let me come after you.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll call the FBI. I’m not doing myself any good, running like this, and if I keep it up too long Bonner and those other goons may catch up with me.”
The bus pulled in. Bill made a gesture with his thumb and forefinger. “Luck, pal.”
“Thanks,” I said. I slid out of the car, and climbed aboard. The bus was about two-thirds filled, and several passengers were reading copies of the Herald with my description on the front page, but no one paid any attention to me. There was no picture, thank God. I found a seat in the rear beside a sailor who’d fallen asleep, and watched Bill drive away.
In a little over an hour we were on Key Largo and beginning the long run down the Overseas Highway. It was a hot June morning with brilliant sunlight and a gentle breeze out of the southeast. I stared out at the water with its hundred gradations of color from bottle green to indigo and wished I could wake up from this dream to find myself back aboard the Orion somewhere in the out islands of the Bahamas. How long had it been going on now? This was—what? Monday? Only forty-eight hours. It seemed a month. And all it ever did was get worse. I’d started out with one dead Baxter, and now I had three.
And what would I prove, actually, if I did find out who he was? That wouldn’t change anything. It would still be my unsupported word against the rest of the world as to what had become of him and that money he’d said he had. I was beating my brains out for nothing. No matter how you sliced it, there was only one living witness, I was it, and there’d never be any more.
We passed Islamorada and Marathon. It was shortly after eleven when we rolled onto Spanish Key and pulled to a stop in front of the filling station and general store. I got down, feeling the sudden impact of the heat after the air-conditioning, and the bus went on. I could see the secondary road where it emerged from the pines about a quarter of a mile ahead, but I didn’t know which branch I wanted. A gaunt, leathery-faced man in overalls and a railroad cap was cleaning the windshield of a car in the station driveway. I called over to him.
“Holland?” He pointed. “Take the road to the left. It’s about a mile and a half.”
“Thanks,” I said.
For the first half mile there were no houses at all. The unsurfaced marl road wound through low pine and palmetto slash that was more like the interior of Florida than the Keys. From time to time I caught glimpses of water off to my right. Then the road swung in that direction and I passed near some beach houses and could see out across the half-mile channel separating Spanish Key from the next one to the westward. The houses were boarded up with hurricane shutters as if their owners were gone for the summer. I stopped to light a cigarette and mop the sweat from my face. All sound of cars passing on the Overseas Highway had died out behind me now. If she wanted an isolated place to work, I thought, she’d found it.
The pine began to thin out a little and the road swung eastward now, paralleling the beach along the south side of the Key. The next mailbox was Holland’s. The house was on the beach, about a hundred yards back from the road, with a curving drive and a patch of green lawn in front. It was large for a beach house, solidly constructed of concrete block and stucco, and dazzling white in the sun, with a red tile roof and bright aluminum awnings over the windows and the door. In the carport on the right was an MG with California license plates. She was home.
I went up the short concrete walk and rang the bell. Nothing happened. I pushed the button again, and waited. There was no sound except the lapping of water on the beach around in back, and somewhere farther offshore an outboard motor. About two hundred yards up the beach was another house somewhat similar to this one, but there was no car in evidence and it appeared to be unoccupied. There was still no sound from inside. The drapes were drawn behind the jalousie windows on either side of the door. The outboard motor sounded nearer. I stepped around the corner and saw it. It was coming this way, a twelve- or fourteen-foot runabout planing along at a good clip. At the wheel was a girl in a brief splash of yellow bathing suit.
There was a long low porch back here, another narrow strip of lawn, a few coconut palms leaning seaward, and a glaring expanse of white coral sand along the shore. There were several pieces of brightly colored lawn furniture on the porch and under the palms, and a striped umbrella and some beach pads out on the sand. The water was very shoal, and there was no surf because of the reefs offshore and the fact that the breeze had almost died out now. Far out I could see a westbound tanker skirting the inshore edge of the Stream. A wooden pier ran out into the water about fifty feet, and the girl was coming alongside it now.
I started out to take a line for her, but she beat me there. She lifted out a mask and snorkel and an under-water camera in a clear plastic housing, and stepped onto the pier.