Alice Orr - Key West Heat

Her immediate impulse, conditioned by years of Aunt Pearl, was to get back in the cab and escape. But Taylor never did anything on impulse, at least not before today. Besides, all the way from the Key West Airport she had been less than at ease with the driver of this outlandish pink taxi who looked like he’d just crawled off skid row. She’d prefer not to drive any further with him, not even back to the airport. She couldn’t leave the Keys yet anyway, anymore than she had been able to resist coming in the first place. There was something to be settled for her on this island. She’d been haunted by that feeling for weeks now. She had to find out what it was all about. Maybe then she could put the past, what little she could recall of it, to rest at last.

Taylor climbed out of the cab, dragging her belongings with her. She should have had the driver help with her bags, but he hadn’t offered and she hadn’t asked. She did stupidly independent things like that sometimes. Her hair was heavy on her neck from the humidity, and tendrils clung to the dampness of her cheeks. By the time she lugged this load up the steps to the guest-house porch, she’d be drenched with perspiration, and the Key Westian looked too small to have a bellboy. She stopped to catch her breath and also to try to get a handle on her apprehension.

Everything bad that ever happened to the Bissett family had happened on this island, starting with the day her father, Paul Lawrence Bissett, met Desiree Loyola. He was a young naval officer, fresh from a small town in northern New York State and green as the valley of the St. Lawrence River for which he had been named. She was a pale-eyed beauty who captured the young naval officer without so much as a shot over his bow. He married her and gave her Stormley, a tall, stately house by the sea, as a wedding gift. His maiden aunts did not approve. Netta moved to the Keys to watch out for Paul and his interests, but not even that was enough to prevent disaster. Within a few years, he had deserted both country and family, and his beautiful wife was dead, consumed by the inferno that some said was her deserved end.

After that, Taylor had been taken back to northern New York to be raised by her great-aunt, Pearl Bissett. Netta Bissett remained in Key West. Pearl had passed away two years previously, and now Netta was gone too. During Pearl’s final illness, she had instructed Taylor to sell off all Bissett holdings on Key West, especially Stormley, after Netta died. Taylor worked full-time managing the Bissett family’s considerable north-country interests. Still, lawyers and realtors could have handled the Key West details. That had been Aunt Pearl’s plan. Taylor wouldn’t even have to show up here, where nothing but bad fortune had ever befallen her and those she cared about.

Taylor would have been content to go along with it—except for the dreams. They began a few months before Pearl died. They came in the hour before dawn and were filled with creatures made of tangled green foliage and smoke. Sometimes Taylor was embraced by these creatures. Other times they pursued her. She awoke with her heart pounding from both terror and fascination, and with the certainty that these images had something to do with this Isle of Bones where she was born.

“Leave well enough alone,” Aunt Pearl would have said were she still alive. “Don’t ask for trouble.”

But the dreams felt to Taylor as if she already had trouble. Not even her long, soothing talks with Early Rhinelander could erase those shadows from her mind. Early, the dear family friend who had brought her north from the Keys as a toddler with Pearl, had stayed in New York and become Taylor’s most trusted confidant. Unfortunately, even Early couldn’t resolve this restlessness in Taylor’s spirit. She’d known somehow that only returning to her birthplace could accomplish that. So, here she was, damp and uncomfortable in her too-heavy clothing, standing on the low curbstone of the Key Westian Guest House on Amelia Street.

It was after ten at night. She had taken the last commuter flight from Tampa on the mainland. She wasn’t even sure there would be anybody around to check her in at this hour. She should have mentioned the time she’d be arriving when she made the reservation. She didn’t ordinarily neglect details like that, but her whirlwind decision and departure had been anything but ordinary for her. It occurred to Taylor that there might be a price to be paid for that hastiness.

What looked like a single lamp burned behind the lace curtains of the guest-house door. Maybe she should go up there and see if anybody was available to help carry her bags. She was about to do that when she noticed something peculiar down the block, back along the way the cab had driven.

The streetlights were far apart and shadowed by the thick greenery of tropical trees. The moon was also barely visible through the veil of foliage. Taylor could feel the dark blue of the sky more than she could see it. Still, she was sure she had seen a car being driven slowly along the opposite curb with its headlights off. That car had stopped a few houses from where she stood, and was still there. She couldn’t make out who was inside the car from this distance in the near darkness. Why had the car been driven without headlights? Why did the driver just sit there now, without getting out?

Maybe a pair of lovers were lingering for a last kiss in the tropical night. The car appeared to be dark in color, but Taylor couldn’t really tell. The shadows here might make anything look dark. Taylor remembered the pink cab. Hadn’t she noticed the cabdriver watching her a bit too attentively in his rearview mirror? She strained to make out the contours of the car down the street. Had the cab looked like that? She usually noticed such things. Tonight she had not, another example of not being quite herself in this place.

Maybe the lovers didn’t want the neighbors to see them drive up and start kissing in the car, so they turned the headlights off. That scenario was preferable to imagining she was being stalked by a cabdriver. Taylor shook her head in wonder that she was even taking time to contemplate such theories about the simple presence of a parked car. The heat, which her north-country metabolism found so difficult to assimilate in mid-February, must be addling her brain. She bent down to pick up the bigger of her bags in one hand, then balanced it by slinging the smaller duffel over her opposite shoulder along with her purse. She straightened up slowly and was about to turn toward the guesthouse when she saw that the car had begun to move.

It crept along even more slowly than when she had first noticed it coming down the street. For a moment, she wasn’t entirely certain the car was moving at all. Then she saw that the gap had widened between the body of the vehicle and the curb. The car was creeping in her direction with its headlights still off, like a dark, crawling hulk in the night. Taylor shuddered, causing the strap of the carryall to slide down her arm, shifting the balance she had so carefully adjusted and pulling her precariously to one side.

Taylor tried to hunch the strap back upward. Rough fabric chafed her neck as her jacket was pulled askew. She could feel her clothes sticking to her everywhere. She longed to drop the bags right here and make a beeline for what she hoped would be the air-conditioned lobby of the guesthouse. But what if that was exactly what the driver of the car wanted her to do? What if he was after her luggage? She’d heard about thieves who prey on tourists in resort areas.

The car was close enough now for Taylor to see it more clearly. It was either dark green or navy blue. She recognized now why she hadn’t been able to see inside and still could not. The windows were tinted and opaque from the outside looking in. The wide, blank eye of the windshield made a sinister image as the car continued its slow, steady advance.

This was definitely not the pink taxicab she had taken from the airport. This car was not only darker in color, it was also of much more recent vintage. Its sleek surface glistened like brand-new in the occasional patch of streetlight. Taylor’s common sense told her that this was not the kind of vehicle likely to be owned by a petty luggage thief. She held tight to her bags anyway and staggered toward the guest-house steps. Meanwhile, her overheated brain registered the fact that the car was picking up speed.

She struggled through the opening in the white picket fence that surrounded the guesthouse. Her suitcase bounced clumsily as she thumped it upward from step to step. She looked over her shoulder to see the car almost at the curb where she had been standing only a moment ago. Her heart jumped, and her right shin bumped sharply against the edge of the top step, almost sending her sprawling across the porch floor. Taylor lunged onto the porch just as the light behind the lace curtain glowed suddenly brighter, and the door opened.

“What’s goin’ on out here?” drawled an amused female voice. “You’re makin’ enough noise to wake ‘em up all the way over at City Cemetery.”

“I’m sorry,” Taylor gasped as she struggled toward the door, “but I have to get inside.”

“Slow down, honey,” the woman in the doorway said. She touched Taylor’s arm. “Heaven’s sake, you’ve worked yourself up to a mighty sweat.”

Taylor pressed forward, but the tall woman’s strong grip restrained her.

“What’s eatin’ you, girl?”

“That car,” Taylor blurted out, jerking her head toward the street.

“What car might you be referrin’ to?”

Taylor spun around, half expecting to see the dark hulk with its blind, black windows crash through the white pickets and mount the porch steps after her. What she did see made her let the carryall and purse drop to the floor on one side of her and the suitcase plop down on the other. The street appeared even more shadowed in contrast with this lighted porch. The opposite side was lined with frame houses set close to the sidewalk. She could just make out the clusters of bougainvillea tumbling everywhere, from the balconies and along fence tops. But there was no dark car in sight.

Taylor hurried to the edge of the porch and peered down the street in the direction the car had been headed. The roadway was empty, except for a few parked vehicles along the nearer curb. Could the dark car have slipped into hiding among those vehicles? Taylor moved down a step, as if she were about to run to the street and check the parked cars. She hesitated. Did she really want to do that? Her heart was still pounding from the fright her stumbling flight had given her.

“Wait up, hon.” The tall woman was beginning to sound concerned. She crossed the porch to Taylor. “Where are you dashing off to?”

“There was a car....” Taylor gestured down the street.

“I didn’t see any car. I didn’t hear one, either.”

Taylor dropped her arm to her side. Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t heard the car herself. Maybe she couldn’t have heard anything above the thumping of her heart. Or, maybe the car’s engine had purred too smoothly to be noticeable. But would that still have been the case after it picked up speed?

“You just flew in from up north. Right?” the woman asked.

“What?” Taylor looked up at her. “Yes, that’s right. I flew from New York State.”

“Well, that explains it.” She took Taylor by the arm and urged her back toward the door. “You snowbirds sometimes get a little rattled when you first wing it down here to the tropics.”

“Snowbirds?” Taylor bent to pick up her bags, but the tall woman beat her to it.