Pointing, voice pinched, I said to Maggie, "That whole damn beach has been moved."
I said it in the tone reserved for deep, original discovery. Maggie's response was deflatingly matter-of-fact. "Sure it has," she said. "Remember when the cranes were here, the barges? A year or so ago? They dredged and filled and planted for a solid week."
Well, no, I hadn't remembered the cranes and barges. Maybe I was out of town. More likely, more characteristically, I just hadn't paid attention. Now I said to Maggie, "Go in closer."
She nosed the dinghy toward the phony shore. I leaned forward and squinted at palms. I was struck by several things about them. Palms rustled softly and they threw long shadows. Alone or in small clusters, they back-bent with the prevailing winds. And they basically all looked alike.
I found the trees that Kenny Lukens had been scrabbling under when he died, the ones that butted up against the fence. They were a pair; their bases perhaps four feet apart. For maybe ten feet up, their trunks diverged, then gradually leaned together in an inevitable parallel.
I looked beyond the steel enclosure. Three, four yards inside it, there was a virtually identical pair of palms. The same distance apart. The same raised and stringy roots. The same windswept geometry.
I rubbed my stinging eyes. Kenny Lukens had memorized the trees under which he'd stashed his treasure. Probably he'd counted steps up from the water's edge. He'd counted right, he'd remembered right, but new trees had been put in and the shoreline itself had been moved, widened as a stabilizing buffer for the private lots beyond. A final insult to poor strange Kenny: He'd died digging the wrong hole.
I pointed past the fence to the farther set of trees. "The cranes," I said. "The barges."
Maggie measured distance with her eyes. She understood. "Oh my God," she said.
"Wanna bet that's where the pouches are?"
She didn't take the wager. Instead, she blinked and panned across as much of the island as we could see from where we sat. She said, "I know a little bit about the setup here. It's a pain getting past that fence."
Getting past the fence? Until she said it, I hadn't really thought of getting past the fence. I kept thinking that I'd done enough. Like figuring out where the pouches were, why no one had found them so far. Wasn't that enough?
"Just one entrance," she went on. "By the dock where the island's own launch comes in. There's a guard there. You have to be a resident or an invited guest to be let in."
I frowned up at the private island. It was elaborately landscaped. Manicured. Hibiscus shrubs had been sculpted into hedges; patches of coarse Bahama grass gave neatly onto beds of vinca and bird-of-paradise. This was a version of nature that took a ton of work. "How about if you're a gardener?" I said.
Maggie lifted an approving eyebrow.
Too bad, though, that the idea hadn't come a couple minutes sooner; and we'd gotten out of there by now. Because as I was speaking, The Lucky Duck—its bow wave pink, its windscreens glinting—roared by in its early morning return trip to its berth.
The gambling boat stayed in the main channel, perhaps forty yards from where our dinghy lightly bobbed; and maybe I only imagined that it slowed as it was pulling even with us. But no— the drop in pitch of its engine was hard to deny. We turned our backs, whether soon enough or not we couldn't tell. We had no idea if we'd been noticed, if there was anyone to find it strange that we were reconnoitering at daybreak. But there was something slightly sickening in the way that Mickey Veale's spreading wake crawled beneath our little craft, slithering and undermining.
The big boat lumbered past; the skiff eased off in its rocking. We swallowed fear and Maggie feistily picked up where we'd left off.
"Gardeners," she said. "That could get us in."
Us again. I didn't have the energy to argue. Even though my gut was telling me the whole thing was a really bad idea. Still, I said, "I think I know a way. I've got to talk to someone."
The sun was already bleaching out to white, and the dark water had turned emerald. We sat there for a moment, letting the gambling boat get well clear of our path. Maggie seemed about to speak, then caught herself, then gestured toward the island and spoke up anyway. "Pete," she said, "you're going to finish this. I know you are."
I didn't answer. I had my doubts. I yawned.
"It's just a habit," she said, as she turned the skiff and motored slowly to the dinghy dock at Redmond's Boatyard.
32
Potatoes were frying at Raul's; coffee had just been brewed.
We were among the very first customers, and we grabbed the choicest table—in the corner, next to a wall that dripped purple bougainvillea, under a mahogany tree. I suddenly realized I was famished. I ordered steak and eggs. Maggie laughed, but then she did too. You can't do this kind of stuff on oatmeal.