Vengeance Read Free Page A

do my best to find her.” I said. “A few more questions. What’s your last name?”
    “Tree. My name is Beryl Tree. My daughter is Adele
Tree. Took my maiden name back when Dwight walked out, took it back and gave it to my daughter. His name is Handford, Dwight Handford.”
    “And he knows you’re in town and where you’re staying.”
    “Didn’t tell him where I was stayin’. Just ran into him on the street, coming out of the Waffle House across from the motel. He looked scared, then mad. I asked him where Adele was. He hit me, told me to get back to Kansas or the next time he saw me he’d …”
    She stood looking at the humming air conditioner. She had something more to say. I waited.
    “He, Dwight, was married before me. Said he divorced her. Had a daughter before he married me. Josh, he’s the sheriff …”
    “I know.”
    “Josh came checking on him once. Didn’t know what it was about till Adele ran off. Then Josh told me. Dwight spent prison time for … for doing his first daughter when she was twelve.”
    I knew what “doing” meant.
    “Adele’s a pretty girl,” she said. “Too pretty maybe.”
    “I’ll find her,” I said.
    And she was gone.
    I pulled some Kleenex from my drawer, wiped my head, face and neck, and threw the used tissues into my Tampa Bay Bucs wastebasket. My shirt was sweat-blotched and clinging wet to my back. It was a hot December day in Sarasota, probably about eighty-four degrees and humid–hot for winter, but not unheard of. It was the middle of the snowbird season. Tourists and winter residents rented or owned overpriced houses and apartments on the mainland in Bradenton, Sarasota and all the way up the coast to Pensacola and down the coast to Naples. The winter crowd with real money were in the resorts and condos on the beaches of Longboat and Siesta Keys. All in all, there were about
200,000 people in Manatee and Sarasota Counties combined during The Season.
    In Sarasota, south of the airport, there is a strip of low-cost motels on Tamiami Trail. The strip stretches for a couple of miles to downtown and stops just before the theater district. The primary residents of the motels are small-time pimps and prostitutes, mostly runaways like Adele, though in the winter unknowing French and German tourists wander into these motels with their families, swimsuits and cameras. This was where I’d start looking for Adele’s phone booth. If that failed, I’d go south of Bay Front Park and downtown and start my search among the malls, restaurants and shops.
    Sarasota has hundreds of restaurants catering to retirees, tourists and full-time working residents. It could be a long day or two of work. If she was still in town, I didn’t think Adele would be that tough to find, and I needed the fifty dollars. My backup was to find Dwight Handford. From what little Beryl had told me about her husband, I had the feeling he wouldn’t be found by simply looking in the phone book. I was right. I’d find him if I had to, but I’d go for that phone booth first. How long it would take to find Adele Tree depended on what happened at my meeting in less than half an hour.
    I had gone three weeks with no work but serving papers twice, thirty-five dollars for each job. Both servings had been easy. They’re not always easy. People who took the court order I handed them tended to see me as the enemy, the messenger for the system, the first step in doing them in. I’ve been slapped, threatened and hit a few times. Usually, though, the recipient was stunned. I always dressed casually, spoke politely and asked if I was speaking to the person I was looking for. If I was, I handed the papers to him or her. If I wasn’t and the person admitted that I had come to the right place, I gave that person the papers. It was legal.
    I could simply drop the papers on a table or on the floor.
    There are servers who simply tear up the papers they are supposed to serve and swear that the deliveries were made.