Duma Key

There was a fair amount of Florida Gulf Coast scattered on the hardwood floor of the entry: sand, small shells, a couple of sophora husks, and a few bits of dried sawgrass. There were also tracks. The sneaker-prints were Jack's. It was the others that made my skin freckle with goosebumps. I made out three sets, one large and two small. The small ones were the tracks of children. All of those feet had been bare.

"Do you see how they go up the stairs, fading as they go?" Jack said.

"Yes," I said. My voice sounded faint and faraway to my own ears.

"I walked beside them, because I didn't want to mess them up," Jack said. "If I'd known then what Wireman told me while we were waiting for you, I don't think I could have gone up at all."

"I don't blame you," I said.

"But there was no one there," Jack said. "Just... well, you'll see. And look." He led me to the side of the stairs. The ninth riser was on our eye-level, and with the light striking across it, I could see, very faintly, the tracks of small bare feet pointing the other way.

Jack said, "This looks pretty clear to me. The kids went up to your studio, then came back down again. The adult stayed by the front door, probably as lookout... although if this was the middle of the night, there probably wasn't much to look out for. Have you been setting the burglar alarm?"

"No," I said, not quite meeting his eye. "I can't remember the numbers. I keep them on a slip of paper in my wallet, but each time I came through the door turned into a race against time, me versus that fucking beeper on the wall-"

"It's okay." Wireman gripped my shoulder. "These burglars didn't take; they left."

"You don't really believe Miss Eastlake's dead sisters paid you another visit, do you?" Jack asked.

"Actually," I said, "I think they did." I thought that would sound stupid in the bright light of an April afternoon, with a ton of sunlight pouring down and reflecting off the Gulf, but it didn't.

"In Scooby Doo, it would turn out to be the crazy librarian," Jack said. "You know, trying to scare you off the Key so he could keep the treasure for himself."

"If only," I said.

"Suppose those small tracks were made by Tessie and Laura Eastlake," Wireman said. "Who made the bigger ones?"

Neither of us replied.

"Let's go upstairs," I said at last. "I want to look in the basket."

We went up (avoiding the tracks - not to preserve them, but simply because none of us wanted to step on them) to Little Pink. The picnic basket, looking just like the one I'd drawn with the red pen I'd pilfered from Gene Hadlock's examining room, was sitting on the carpet, but my eyes were drawn first to my easel.

"You can believe I beat a hasty retreat when I saw that, " Jack said.

I could believe it, but I felt no urge to retreat. Quite the opposite. I was drawn forward instead, like an iron bolt to a magnet. A fresh canvas had been set up there and then, sometime in the dead of night - maybe while Elizabeth had been dying, maybe while I'd been having sex with Pam for the last time, maybe while I'd been sleeping beside her - a finger had dipped into my paint. Whose finger? I didn't know. What color? That was obvious: red. The letters that staggered and draggled and dripped their way across the canvas were red. And accusing. They almost seemed to shout.

PRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=book cover"

viii

"Found art," I said in a dry, rattlebox voice that hardly sounded like my own.

"Is that what it is?" Wireman asked.

"Sure." The letters seemed to waver in front of me, and I wiped my eyes. "Graffiti art. They'd love it at the Scoto."

"Maybe, but that's some creepy shit," Jack said. "I hate it."

So did I. And it was my studio, goddammit, mine. I had a lease. I snatched the canvas off the easel, momentarily expecting it to burn my fingers. It didn't. It was just a canvas, after all, one I'd stretched myself. I put it against the wall, facing in. "Is that better?"

"It is, actually," Jack said, and Wireman nodded. "Edgar... if those little girls were here... can ghosts write on canvas?"

"If they can move Ouija board planchettes and write in window-frost, I imagine they could write on a canvas," I said. Then, rather reluctantly, I added: "But I don't see ghosts unlocking my front door. Or putting a canvas up on the easel to begin with."

"There wasn't a canvas there?" Wireman asked.

"I'm pretty sure not. The blank ones are all racked in the corner."

"Who's the sister?" Jack wanted to know. "Who's the sister they're asking about?"

"It must be Elizabeth," I said. "She was the only sister left."

"Bullshit," Wireman said. "If Tessie and Laura were on the ever-popular other side of the veil, they wouldn't have any problem locating sister Elizabeth; she was right here on Duma Key for over fifty-five years, and Duma was the only place they ever knew."

"What about the others?" I asked.