Duma Key

I hugged her again. "Go on. Check in. Buy magazines. Watch CNN. Fly well."

"All right, Daddy. It was amazing."

" You're amazing."

She gave me a hearty smack on the mouth - to make up for the one her mother had held back on, perhaps - and went in through the sliding doors. She turned back once and waved to me, by then little more than a girl-shape behind the polarized glass. I wish with all my heart that I could have seen her better, because I never saw her again.

vii

From the Ringling Art Museum I had left messages for Wireman - one at the funeral home and one on El Palacio 's answering machine - saying I'd be back around three, and asking him to meet me there. I also asked him to tell Jack that if Jack was old enough to vote and party with FSU sorority girls, he was old enough to take care of his damned cell phone.

It was actually close to three-thirty when I arrived back on the Key, but both Jack's car and Elizabeth's vintage silver Benz were parked on the cracked square to the right of Big Pink, and the two of them were sitting on my back stoop, drinking iced tea. Jack was still wearing his gray suit, but his hair was once more in its customary disarray and he was wearing a Devil Rays tee under his jacket. Wireman was wearing black jeans and a white shirt, open at the collar; a Nebraska Cornhuskers gimme cap was cocked back on his head.

I parked, got out, and stretched, trying to get my bad hip in gear. They stood up and came to meet me, neither of them smiling.

"Everyone gone, amigo?" Wireman asked.

"Everyone but my Aunt Jean and Uncle Ben," I said. "They're veteran freeloaders, dedicated to squeezing a good thing to the very last drop."

Jack smiled without much humor. "Every family's got a few," he said.

"How are you?" I asked Wireman.

"About Elizabeth I'm okay. Hadlock said it was probably for the best this way, and I suppose he's right. Her leaving me what may amount to a hundred and sixty million dollars in cash, securities, and properties..." He shook his head. "That's different. Maybe someday I'll have the luxury of trying to get my head around it, but right now..."

"Right now something's going on."

" S , se or. And it's very weird."

"How much have you told Jack?"

Wireman looked a bit uncomfortable. "Well, I tell you what, amigo. Once I started, it was damn hard to find a reasonable stopping place."

"He told me all of it," Jack said. "Or so he claims. Including what he thinks you did about restoring his eyesight, and what you think you did to Candy Brown." He paused. "And the two little girls you saw."

"Are you okay with the Candy Brown thing?" I asked.

"If it was up to me, I'd give you a medal. And the people of Sarasota would probably give you your own float in the Memorial Day parade." Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets. "But if you told me last fall that stuff like this could happen outside of M. Night Shyamalan movies, I would have laughed."

"What about last week?" I asked.

Jack thought about it. On the other side of Big Pink, the waves came steadily in. Under my living room and bedroom, the shells would be talking. "No," he said. "Probably wouldn't've laughed then. I knew from the first there was something about you, Edgar. You got here, and..." He ran the fingers of his two hands together, lacing them. And I thought that was right. That was how it had been. Like the fingers of two hands lacing together. And the fact that I only had one hand had never mattered.

Not here.

"What are you saying, hermano?" Wireman asked.

Jack shrugged. "Edgar and Duma. Duma and Edgar. It was like they were waiting for each other." He looked embarrassed, but not unsure.

I cocked a thumb at my house. "Let's go in."

"Tell him about finding the basket first," Wireman said to Jack.

Jack shrugged. "Wasn't no thing; didn't take twenty minutes. It was sitting up on top of some old bureau at the far end of the attic. Light from one of the vents to the outside was shining in on it. Like it wanted to be found." He glanced at Wireman, who nodded agreement. "Anyway, we took it down to the kitchen and looked inside. It was heavier than hell."

Jack talking about the heaviness of the basket made me think of how Melda, the housekeeper, had been holding it in the family portrait: with her arms bunched. Apparently it had been heavy back then, too.

"Wireman told me to bring the basket down here and leave it for you, since I had a key... only I didn't need a key. Place was unlocked."

"Was the door actually open?"

"Nope. What I did first was turn my key and actually lock it again. Gave me a hell of a surprise."

"Come on," Wireman said, leading the way. "Show and Tell time."