Everglades Read Free Page B

good. He’s been sneaking around, watching me off and on for the last two weeks. Maybe longer, because that’s when I first spotted him. Following me across the state from Coconut Grove, clear to Sanibel—this, I didn’t expect. It’s getting scary now, and I’m sick of it.”
    I asked again, “But why? ”
    “I think it has to do with Geoff, my husband.”
    “Your husband? Does he think you’re having an affair?”
    Why else would he have her followed?
    “No, it’s not that. I’d never do something like that. My husband . . . Geoff, he disappeared. He’s dead.”
    It took me a few moments before I could find the voice to answer. “ Dead. Sally, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t hear a thing about it.”
    “I wish I felt the same. But I don’t. Six months ago, October twenty-seventh, on a fishing trip to Bimini, Geoff supposedly fell overboard. It was at night, so no one realized it until the next morning. No witnesses. His body was never found.”
    I said, “‘Supposedly.’”
    “I don’t believe it. I’ve never believed it. I don’t think the insurance company does, either. If the man out there is a private investigator, they probably hired him.”
    I said, “Good God,” surprised by her reappearance, by the situation, by the implicit obligation. Friendship comes with responsibilities—reliability during crisis being among them. If an acquaintance does not behave accordingly and dependably, he or she is not your friend.
    “The insurance company doesn’t want to pay off?”
    Sally was shaking her head. “No, of course they don’t. But they will. They’ll have no choice. Not with all the evidence my attorney’s presented to the circuit court—which she says is standard in any death settlement case where the body hasn’t been found. Otherwise, the state waits five years before issuing a death certificate.
    “My attorney’s really first rate. She knows how the system works. Which means they’re going to have to pay. A big figure with lots of zeros behind it deposited right into a money market account. She expects the court to rule in our favor within a couple of weeks. Two weeks—that’s about the same time I noticed skinhead in his car, following me.”
    “Has he ever said anything? Confronted you?”
    “No.”
    “Have you been getting any hang-up calls?”
    If he was a stalker, not a P.I., hang-up calls would be evi dential.
    She replied, “No. I occasionally get a hang-up, like everyone else, but not enough to worry about.”
    I put my arm over her shoulder, and began to walk her up the wooden steps toward my house, still not risking a glance behind me. “What’d he say when the police questioned him?”
    “The guy? They’ve never managed to catch him. He’s pretty tricky. They think maybe he has a scanner or something, because he’s always gone by the time they show up. Or that I’m nuts and imagining things. So maybe I’m glad he’s out there and you’ll see him, too. If he’s still there. I was beginning to doubt my own sanity.”
    Standing, holding the screen door wide open for her, I finally turned and took a quick look shoreward.
    Sally was not imagining things.
    There he was: a large man trying to hide himself in the mangroves, binoculars in hand, using them to scan the area in our direction.
    “Nothing wrong with your sanity,” I told her. “Maybe the Sanibel police will be luckier. Let’s go inside and call.”
    “Call if you want. ’Far as I’m concerned, though, he can stand in the bushes all night. Let the mosquitoes carry him away. Now that I’m here, back on the island, I feel safe. For the first time in a long, long time, I feel safe.”
    I thought for a moment before I said, “That might not be a bad way to handle it. With this storm coming, let him stand out there and get soaked. Then I’ll use the noise, the rain in the trees, to slip around behind him. Maybe he’ll be more cooperative, more talkative, if I surprise him.”
    She held herself away