Duma Key

"Doris Day, 1956," I said. "The future's not ours to see." And a good thing, too, I thought. "One thing I'm pretty sure of is that Davis was right when he said this was the last delivery." I tapped the date: August 19th. "The guy sailed for Europe in October of 1926 and never came back. He disappeared at sea - or so Mary Ire told me."

"And cera?" Wireman asked.

"Let it go for now," I said. "But it's strange - just this one piece of paper."

"A little odd, maybe, but not completely strange," Wireman said. "If you were a widower with young daughters, would you want to take your bootlegger's last receipt with you into your new life?"

I considered it, and decided he had a point. "No... but I'd probably destroy it, along with my stash of French postcards."

Wireman shrugged. "We'll never know how much incriminating paperwork he did destroy... or how little. Except for having a little drinkie now and then with his pals, his hands may have been relatively clean. But, muchacho..." He put a hand on my shoulder. "The paper is real. We do have it. And if something's out to get us, maybe something else is looking out for us... just a little. Isn't that possible?"

"It would be nice to think so, anyway. Let's see if there's anything else."

ii

It seemed at first there wasn't. We poked around all the downstairs rooms and found nothing but near-disaster when my foot plunged through the flooring in what must once have been the dining room. Wireman and Jack were quick, however, and at least it was my bad leg that went down; I had my good one to brace myself with.

There was no hope of checking above ground-level. The staircase went all the way up, but beyond the landing and a single ragged length of rail beside it, there was only blue sky and the waving fronds of one tall cabbage palm. The second floor was a remnant, the third complete toast. We started back toward the kitchen and our makeshift step-down to the outside world with nothing to show for our exploration but an ancient note announcing a booze delivery. I had an idea what cera might mean, but without knowing where Perse was, the idea was useless.

And she was here.

She was close.

Why else make it so fucking hard to get here?

Wireman was in the lead, and he stopped so suddenly I ran into him. Jack ran into me, whacking me in the butt with the picnic basket.

"We need to check the stairs," Wireman said. He spoke in the tone of a man who can't believe he has been such a dumb cluck.

"I beg pardon?" I asked.

"We need to check the stairs for a ha-ha. I should have thought of that first thing. I must be losing it."

"What's a ha-ha?" I asked.

Wireman was turning back. "The one at El Palacio is four steps up from the bottom of the main staircase. The idea - she said it was her father's - was to have it close to the front door in case of fire. There's a lockbox inside it, and nothing much inside the lockbox now but a few old souvenirs and some pictures, but once she kept her will and her best pieces of jewelry in there. Then she told her lawyer. Big mistake. He insisted she move all that stuff to a safe deposit box in Sarasota."

We were at the foot of the stairs now, back near the hill of dead wasps. The stink of the house was thick around us. He turned to me, his eyes gleaming. " Muchacho, she also kept a few very valuable china figures in that box." He surveyed the wreck of the staircase, leading up to nothing but senseless shattery and blue sky beyond. "You don't suppose... if Perse is something like a china figure that John fished off the bottom of the Gulf... you don't suppose she's hidden right here, in the stairs?"

"I think anything's possible. Be careful. Very."

"I'll bet you anything that there's a ha-ha," he said. "We repeat what we learn as children."

He brushed away the dead wasps with his boot - they made a whispery, papery sound - and then knelt at the foot of the stairs. He examined the first stair riser, then the second, then the third. When he got to the fourth, he said: "Jack, give me the flashlight."

iii

It was easy to tell myself that Perse wasn't hiding in a secret compartment under the stairs - that would be too easy - but I remembered the chinas Elizabeth liked to secrete in her Sweet Owen cookie-tin and felt my pulse speed up as Jack rummaged in the picnic basket and brought out the monster flashlight with the stainless steel barrel. He slapped it into Wireman's hand like a nurse handing a doctor an instrument at the operating table.

When Wireman trained the light on the stair, I saw the minute gleam of gold: tiny hinges set at the far end of the tread. "Okay," he said, and handed back the flashlight. "Put the beam on the edge of the tread."

Jack did as told. Wireman reached for the lip of the riser, which was meant to swing up on those tiny hinges.

"Wireman, just a minute," I said.

He turned to me.

"Sniff it first," I said.

"Say what?"

"Sniff it. Tell me if it smells wet."