Dying to Retire Page 11

  “Darn,” I said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “We were so busy yesterday, I never thought to buy him a gift. We’ll have to stop along the way.”

  “What do we need a gift for?”

  “We’re guests. I don’t want to arrive empty-handed.”

  “Plenty of miles between here and Key West. We’ll find something. What’d you have in mind?”

  “I thought perhaps a nice food basket, or something else we can all share,” I said. “He shouldn’t have to feed us as well as put us up.”

  “Truman said not to worry about groceries,” Seth said, gathering up his mug, plate, and napkin from the metal table. “According to him, his refrigerator is so full it won’t hold a scrid more, and his cupboards are overloaded. We can take him out to dinner while we’re there. I’m sure he won’t object to that. Can’t tell if he’s on a restricted income. He’d never let you know. Let’s let him be a host, if that’s what he wants. Give the man some dignity. And if you see a gift store on the ride down, just sing out and I’ll pull over.” He slid open the glass door and ambled toward the kitchen.

  I followed him, placed my mug and plate on the side of the sink, and picked up a towel to dry our dishes as he washed them.

  “Tell me what Detective Shippee said to you when you called him,” I said.

  “How’d you know I called him?”

  “He stopped by last night.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. He brought one of my books for me to sign for his wife.”

  “Well, he wasn’t happy when I spoke to him, I’ll tell you that. What did he say to you?”

  “I asked you first.”

  Seth handed me a clean mug, and I wiped off the water. “I told him I’d taken Portia’s pillbox from the top of her dresser,” he said, “because I wanted to check out certain pills I’d seen in one of the compartments.”

  “And he said . . . ?”

  “Well, I won’t repeat his language word for word—it was pretty colorful—but the gist of it was I might’ve interfered with state’s evidence.”

  “He said ‘state’s evidence’?”

  “Ayuh. I asked him why a pillbox would be evidence. Did he suspect any criminal activity in Portia’s death? He clammed up real fast.”

  “What you did do was add hand- and fingerprints to the pillbox,” I said. “But, of course, we couldn’t have known that would be a problem at the time.” I wiped the last of the dishes, musing about the situation.

  “I can always tell when you’re runnin’ something around in your head,” Seth said, putting the mugs and plates back in the cupboard. “What is it?”

  “There are two other pillboxes, according to Clarence. I wonder if the police have those, and if they were the same color as the white one you took.”

  “Who cares about the color? It’s what’s inside ’em that’s important.”

  “That’s true, but the color might be important, too.”

  “How so?”

  “If all three of Portia’s pillboxes were the same color, then she would just take one and put it in her purse. But let’s say she used a white one for breakfast, a yellow one for lunch, and a pink one for dinner. In that case, she’d be more likely to take the pillbox for the next mealtime that was coming up. In other words, if she went to a meeting before lunch, she’d take the yellow one, and if she went to the Residents’ Committee meetings on Thursday afternoons, she’d take the pink one because her next meal would be dinner.”

  “Why couldn’t she just go home and take the pills?”

  “She could, but that’s not what she did,” I replied. “Minnie said she always carried her pills with her in case she got delayed.”

  “So if the white box was the breakfast pillbox, then most likely it would be Clarence who put the diet pill in with her supplements and medicines.”

  “Exactly. That box would be filled fresh every morning—by Clarence. Nobody else would be there.”

  “It should be easy enough to find out. Ask your pal Detective Shippee. And you never told me what he said to you last night.”

  “He didn’t say anything until I told him I’d seen the autopsy report.”

  “And then?”

  “And then he asked what I thought of the results. I told him that, from what I’d heard from Portia’s friends—and husband—it was highly unlikely that Portia would knowingly take a diet pill.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He agreed with me.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. But he wouldn’t tell me if the police were doing anything about it, and I asked him several times. I also told him about Sam suspecting Portia was killed by a hit man. He said he’d heard that.”

  “What did he say about me?”

  “About you? Nothing.”

  “But you said—”

  “I knew you’d spoken to him because you’re a responsible person. You told Clarence you’d call the police and tell them you’d taken Portia’s pillbox, and I knew you’d keep your word.” I walked into the living room to get my handbag.

  “That was pretty tricky, Jessica,” Seth sputtered.

  I smiled at him. “I’m ready to leave. Are you?”

  After making sure both apartments were locked up, we loaded our bags into the white sedan—which Seth had come by with the assistance of Sam Lewis, who’d provided a lift to the closest auto rental agency—dropped off the apartment keys in a box at the rec hall, and drove through the arched entrance to Foreverglades toward the main road, passing a number of joggers running to and from the development. The temperature was expected to rise to near ninety, but the early-morning air was cool. We kept the windows open, the freshness of the breeze adding to our enjoyment of the adventure ahead.

  I sat in the passenger seat with a map of southern Florida on my lap. My help was needed only until we found our way to U.S. 1, after which it was a straight shot south all the way to Key West. I hadn’t taken a car trip in a long time and looked forward to what is often billed as one of America’s most scenic drives, the Overseas Highway—more than a hundred miles of archipelago, skipping from island to island over the forty-two bridges linking them, driving through desert landscape and thick jungle, past tangles of mangrove and smooth sandy beaches.

  The roads were fairly free of traffic until we connected to Route 1; plenty of other like-minded drivers had decided to get an early start, too. We crossed the Jewfish Creek drawbridge, a span more than two hundred feet long, marking the division of Barnes Sound on our left and Blackwater Sound on our right, and entered Key Largo, the longest and perhaps best known of the Keys, thanks to the classic movie star-ring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

  Even at that early hour, T-shirts waved in the breeze in front of souvenir shacks, and cars lined up alongside roadside eateries, some with long fishing poles strapped to their roof racks. Myriad signs advertised day trips aboard seagoing vessels fishing for marlin, wahoo, and sailfish. Dive shops promised face-to-face meetings on the coral reefs with sea urchins, anemones, and manta rays for snorklers and scuba divers. And glass-bottom-boat tours offered the same views for those who didn’t want to get wet. The jumble of signs, billboards, and business establishments might discourage some vacationers seeking unspoiled landscapes and less commercial encounters with nature, but I took delight in the jaunty, informal seaside atmosphere, and felt a pang that Seth and I were not donning orange life vests and going off for a day of fishing.

  “I’ve seen so many signs for conch chowder, conch fritters, and key lime pie that I’m getting hungry,” Seth said.

  I checked my watch. “It’s still early,” I said.

  “It’s not early for breakfast, and we barely had any.”

  “We should be in Key West well before lunchtime, provided the traffic doesn’t get worse.”

  “My stomach is making noises now,” he groused.

  “Can you hold out till we’re a little farther south?” I asked. “Maybe I
’ll see a store where I can get something for Truman, and you can get a snack at the same time.”

  Seth frowned but assented to my request. We continued south, the markers on the side of the road counting down the miles to the end of the highway. We passed through Tavernier and across our second bridge to Plantation Key. By the time we reached Islamorada, not even a quarter of the way, Seth—more accurately his stomach—had lost patience.

  “This place looks good,” he said, turning off the road into a space in front of an outdoor food stand with five stools pulled up to a counter, and large signs advertising the menu. While I walked around a bit to stretch my limbs, Seth ordered a cup of chowder and a slice of pie.

  “I got two forks if you want to taste the pie,” he called to me as he sat at a picnic bench on the side of the stand.

  “No, thanks. I’m not hungry yet.”

  “Don’t see how. You had the same nonbreakfast I did.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, raising my arms over my head, “but maybe another cup of tea would be nice.” I ordered it and waited for the lone server, a young man not more than sixteen by the looks of him, to pour hot water over a tea bag. A large sign behind him said, THE ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC KEY LIME PIE.

  “What makes your key lime pie original?” I asked when he set the paper cup in front of me and I paid.

  “My great-grandmother had one of the first key lime trees down here—today they really only grow ’em on the mainland—and she invented the recipe,” he said, tapping the glass dome covering the pie. “Ours has a graham-cracker crust and meringue topping. Sometimes people make it with a regular crust. That ain’t right. And it’s supposed to be meringue, not whipped cream. That’s what my mom says.” He smiled at the pie, from which a large piece was missing. “Best there is. Want a slice?”

  “Can you give me a sliver? I’ll pay for a whole slice. I’m not really hungry, but that’s very tempting.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll just give you a taste. No charge.

  Then you see what you think.” He cut a thin piece of pie, scooped up a spoonful of custard, crust, and meringue, handed the spoon to me, and waited, smiling all the time.

  “Just delicious,” I said, thanking him and savoring the mixture of crunch, sweet tartness, and creamy meringue.

  “Don’t let nobody sell you a green key lime pie,” he said. “The juice is yellow, kind of, but it definitely ain’t green.”

  “Someone else told me that,” I said.

  “And make sure you buy from a reputable place. Sometimes, if they run out of key limes, they pass off lemon meringue as the same thing.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Want a slice now?”

  “No, thanks, but do you sell the whole pie?” I asked, thinking this might be the perfect gift to bring Truman. I had no idea of his taste in home furnishings or reading matter, but a wonderful dessert is always welcome.

  “How far you going?”

  “Key West.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t do it. Don’t have no dry ice to give you, and judging by the traffic, you’ve got hours ahead. The pie wouldn’t be as good as what you just had, sitting in a hot car for that time. I can’t let you do it.”

  “Too bad,” I said, impressed by his willingness to forgo a sale to maintain his product’s quality. “It’s wonderful.”

  “Best in the Keys,” he said proudly. “Tell you what. I’ll give you the name of a place I heard of farther down where you can get a pie. Not as good as my mom’s, of course, but it’s a lot closer to Key West.” He wrote the name on a napkin and handed it to me. “Stop by here on your way back up and have a whole piece.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said, “and I’ll tell my friends to stop by, too.”

  He waved as Seth—now a happier driver—and I got back in the car.

  I told Seth of my plan to bring Truman an original key lime pie, and put the napkin into the glove box so we wouldn’t forget to visit the place the young man had recommended outside Key West.

  “How was the chowder?” I asked.

  “Good! Kind of like a combination of Manhattan and New England,” he said, “with tomatoes and corn.”

  The remainder of our trip was a combination, too, of frustrating stop-and-go traffic and uplifting stop-and-view panoramas, especially the Seven Mile Bridge linking the Middle and Lower Keys. With the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other, the concrete path snaked over aquamarine water, filling us with wonder and true appreciation for the miracles both nature and human effort can achieve.

  A large amount of the Lower Keys was dedicated to wildlife refuges, but civilization—and the development it brings—was clearly in evidence well before we reached Key West. I wavered between disappointment at how much of the land was paved over, and understanding the lure such a tropical paradise held as a human refuge for those escaping a more intense lifestyle.

  We stopped as instructed on Stock Island to pick up a key lime pie from the stand recommended by the young man. Another THE ORIGINAL AUTHENTIC KEY LIME PIE sign, affixed to the front of the screened porch, greeted us when we drove up. Inside, a ceiling fan circled lazily over the single counter and half a dozen tables. As the proprietress put the pie in a box, I could see that it had a pastry crust instead of a graham-cracker one.

  “We’ve been making it that way for generations, ever since my family moved to the Keys during the great Depression,” she said when I queried her about the authentic recipe. “Those graham-cracker crusts have only been around since the fifties. Must’ve been a Nabisco invention. True conches”—she pronounced it conks—“know their pie is supposed to have a pastry crust.”

  “What’s a conk?” Seth asked, coming in to see what was keeping me.

  “It’s what we native Key West islanders call ourselves,” she replied. “It’s spelled C-O-N-C-H, but it’s not said that way. Remember that and you’ll endear yourselves to the residents.”

  She tied a bow of string in the middle of the box, pulled off a tiny blossom from a jelly jar of wildflowers perched on the counter, and twined the stem around the string. “Have a good time,” she said, handing me the box. “Come back again.”

  With our house gift safely stored on the backseat, we crossed the final bridge into Key West, both the island and the city. Truman’s instructions guided us into a neighborhood called Old Town, past Victorian mansions with white picket fences.

  Downtown, the city was filled with people; they wandered in and out of the stores and myriad art galleries, holding shopping bags and soda cups, and licking ice-cream cones. They filled the tables at outdoor cafés, and tied their bicycles to every palm tree along our route. At times the sidewalks were so congested, people walked in the street to make their way around the crowds. We shared the roadway with scooters, mopeds, bicycles, tricycles, and even a unicycle. At one intersection we stopped to make way for the Conch Train, which provides tours of the city, its passengers sitting in bright yellow open cars shaded by a green striped awning. The “locomotive” pulling it was a gussied-up tractor.

  Seth turned into a residential side street, strangely quiet after the hubbub of the more commercial thoroughfare. We drove slowly, looking for the number of Truman’s house. Most of the homes were pastel colored or white, except for a vivid lavender one at the far corner. They were large and imposing, with columns and gables, broad verandas, and shaded galleries on the second floors, reminding me of the older homes I remembered seeing in New Orleans. The plantings on the relatively small lots were lush, in some places nearly concealing the front of the house. Despite the cracked and buckled sidewalk where the roots of banyan trees had pushed up the pavement, there was a look of prosperity to the street, of new money spent on old houses.

  We drew up in front of the purple house, peering out the window, searching for the house number Truman had given Seth. A man in shorts and a pink-blue-and-yellow Hawaiian patterned shirt was sitting on the porch in an old-fashioned double rocker. When
he spotted our car, he rose from his seat, shaded his eyes, and waved.

  “Seth! Seth!” he called, slipping his bare feet into sandals and shuffling toward the stairs. He was tall and spare. His gray hair, what there was of it, was pulled back into a wispy ponytail that hung down his back.

  “Truman?” Seth said, clearly astounded at the alterations in the companion of his youth.

  “The very same,” he called out.

  Truman hurried down the path and pointed away from the house. “You’ll have to go ’round the corner to the driveway and pull into the back. You can’t park here. You’ll get a ticket.” He squatted down so he could see into the car. “Seth, you old coot, it’s good to see you.” He pounded Seth’s shoulder. “Hi, there, Jessica. I was hoping I’d get to meet you.” He pushed his arm past Seth and shook my hand. “Go on around. I’ll meet you in the driveway. I’m glad you guys don’t have an RV. I wouldn’t know where to tell you to park it. It would never fit, and the town hates them. They barely tolerate cars, much less trailers. See you in a minute.” He turned and trotted back up the path.

  Seth sat for a moment, his mouth agape, before clearing his throat and releasing the brake.

  I cocked my head. “He’s changed a bit, I take it.”

  “More like transformed,” Seth said. “Always perfectly groomed. Never without a tie. Used to make me feel like a poor relation standing next to him.”

  “Retirement often encourages people to explore new directions,” I said. “Or maybe it simply allows a person’s true nature to emerge.”

  “But he’s a completely different man.”

  “You may seem different to him, too.”

  “I haven’t gone from a normal person to a hippie.”

  “Seth, you’ve only just said hello. It’s been years since you’ve seen each other. Give it a little time.”

  “Ayuh,” Seth said, stopping at the corner before making the turn. “I know. I know. You can’t judge a book by its cover. But, Jessica, I think the contents may have changed here as well.”

  “He seems genuinely happy to see you.”

  He didn’t say anything more, but frowned as he drove beneath the low-hanging branches of a tree that arched over Truman’s driveway. The gravel crunched under the tires as we pulled to a stop before what I assumed had once been a garage. It was painted the same intense hue as the house, and still had the broad, multipaneled garage door, but a smaller door, painted blue, had been cut into it. A matching sign with white letters tacked up on the right said, DISPENSARY.