That night, Louis had stayed outside, just to make sure Frank wasn’t slipping out after the TV went off. But he never left. Finally at three a.m., Louis had gone home, lying awake on the sofa while Pierre’s fan cooled the sweat on his body.
This morning he had called Diane Woods. He heard relief in her voice when he told her he had found out nothing.
“So what now?” she asked.
“Your father is as normal as the sun coming up every day,” he told her. “I can’t go on taking your money.”
“Please, just a few more days,” she said “I want to be sure.”
Louis had reluctantly agreed to stay with it for one more week. He needed the work, but he knew it wasn’t right to take Diane Woods’s money. Especially since he was taking the day off today to see Bessie Levy about the baby skull.
A green road sign announced he was coming into Bokeelia.
Bessie Levy had said to go to the marina across from Cap’n Con’s Fishhouse and ask for directions from there.
Louis pulled up to the white clapboard restaurant and got out. The bright orange sign in the window said CLOSED. The marina across the street was nothing more than a dock with about ten slips. He spotted a man on one of the boats and went out to him.
“Excuse me, can you tell me where Bessie Levy lives?” Louis asked.
The man’s eyes disappeared into his catcher’s mitt of a face as he squinted at Louis.
“There,” he said, flicking a hand over his shoulder before turning back to his lines.
Louis looked out over the blue waters of Charlotte Harbor and saw a ramshackle wood house built up on stilts about five hundred yards offshore.
“How do I get —- ” he began.
“Well, you can swim. Or I’ll take you out for ten bucks,” the man said without looking up.
Louis hesitated. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”
The man had the boat’s motor running when Louis came back carrying the box and they motored out to the stilt house. Louis handed over a ten and climbed up the wood ladder, the box tucked under his arm.
Bessie Levy was waiting at the open front door. She was tiny, not even five feet, dressed in a faded denim shirt, old khakis, and green rubber waders. Her hair was a thin fuzz of brightly dyed red around a face deeply creased by age and spotted by the sun.
Her buckshot eyes immediately silenced him.
“You’re late,” she barked.
She stood there, arms akimbo, legs planted on the warped wood deck, her chin scored by frown lines. With the red fuzz of hair and little puppet chin, she reminded Louis of Howdy Doody.
“I know, I know,” Louis said quickly.
She started gathering up a pail and shovel by the door. “I told you, I got —-”
“A hot date, yeah, I know.” Louis shifted the box to his other arm. “Look, Miss Levy, I need —-”
“Too late. I gotta get going, ’cuz if I’m not in that bed by four, I don’t get any.”
“Please, Miss Levy, I just want you to take a look at my skull.”
Her black eyes shot up. “Your skull?”
Louis held up a hand. He set the box down and opened the flaps. Bessie Levy came forward and looked in. Her eyebrows twitched.
“Where you find that?”
“Captiva. On the beach after the hurricane.”
She looked up at Louis. “That’s a baby skull.”
“I know.”
“It’s old.”
“I know that, too. But that’s all I know. I was hoping you could tell me more.”
Her eyes went out over the waters, now tipped with silver from the slanting sun.
She looked at Louis. “You like oysters?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Well, too bad. You ain’t getting any tonight and neither am I.”
She set the pail down with a clang and nodded to the door. “Come on in then. Let’s go have a look at your baby here.”
CHAPTER 10
Louis paused in the doorway, blinking to adjust his eyes to the dark after the sunlight outside. It took him a moment to make out Bessie’s form over in the corner. She was pulling off her rubber boots. They landed with a thud and she turned to face him.
“Let’s take a look then.”
He put the box on a table in the center of the room. While Bessie busied herself trying to find her glasses, he looked around the room.
The windows were shuttered, with only slits of sunlight seeping in. It was one big room with a kitchenette off in one corner. There was little furniture —- a couple of old stuffed chairs, a worn sofa, a bed tucked behind a wicker screen, and the large wooden table in the center. From what he could see, the walls were covered with shelves, all filled to bursting but with what he couldn’t tell.