Without so much as a grumble, Sally said, “Next?”
Then she looked up. “Oh, Sassy. Nice to see you. How can we help you today?”
“Well, for starters you can guarantee me that grouch”—I pointed a hitchhiker’s thumb in the direction of the departing loudmouth—“will never come to the Read ’Em and Eat for lunch.”
“He’s disappointed. You’d be surprised how many people think that there are exceptions to the rule about reference material. Why just the other day . . .” Her curls formed a halo as she gave her head two strong shakes. “Never mind. How can I help you? On the phone you mentioned wreckers.”
“Not exactly—well, maybe—but first I’d like to see whatever you have on the Ten Thousand Islands, books, maps, historic documents.”
Sally came round from behind the desk and motioned me to follow her to a corner in the back of the room.
“We have a ton of information, much of it from NOAA and the Fish and Wildlife Service. And of course we have books filled with the history and geology of the area. Some are quite scholarly, some are more diary-like.” She pointed to a row of waist-high flat files. “We have topographical maps, climate maps, nautical charts . . . nearly any map you can imagine, including copies of hand-drawn maps from centuries ago.”
She picked up a book chained to the side of the flat file and flipped it open to a page half filled with signatures. “You’d have to sign in for the maps and then, as with all the material, you have to stay in this area.” She indicated the tables and chairs between where we were standing and her desk.
I nodded without really listening. My eye caught two familiar names in the sign-in book and intermittently another name, unfamiliar to me, popped up.
Rowena’s scrawl was barely legible, but I knew it well. She often paid for her book purchases by check. The two times that Tighe Kostos visited the map collection, he signed with a grandiose signature that included his title and company.
But Ellis Selkirk had an extraordinary interest in the flat maps, and when I flipped to the previous page, he’d signed in there a few times as well. I turned my attention back to Sally.
“This Ellis Selkirk has been here a lot. Did you ever notice him wearing mirrored sunglasses and a bucket hat?”
Chapter Twenty-five ||||||||||||||||||||
“Oh, I know who he is. He’s focused on a few precise areas and researches them intently.” Sally leaned down, opened a drawer in the flat file and carefully removed what looked like a nautical map. “He always wears a faded green bucket hat. The aviator glasses usually hang from the neck of his shirt.” She lowered her voice. “And he swears under his breath when he leans over a map and the glasses clatter to the tabletop.
“This is one of his favorites. It’s a copy of a 1922 hand-drawn map of the Gulf extending south from Cape Romano along the Ten Thousand Islands.”
She spread the map on a table and we both stared at it. I asked a question that often popped in and out of my mind since we moved to the Gulf Coast.
“You know, I’ve always wondered how many islands there are. I mean, really, we took a boat ride down to Key West last year, and I know we went past a lot of islands along the coast, but . . .”
The librarian in Sally was always happiest when she could answer a patron’s inquiry. I watched her consider, striving to be exact. “Well, no one’s ever counted them, of course. There are so many types of landmasses down there.” She dropped her index finger to a spot on the map. “Right here on the south bank of the Chatham River, Possum Key is a large island, while on the north bank is a smaller body, originally a shell mound, which provided fertile farmland for the likes of Edgar Watson and other settlers arriving either side of 1900. Many of the tiniest islands are actually tangles of mangrove trees growing out of the water, their roots trapping soil.”