Alice Orr - Key West Heat

“I’ll get those,” she said. “Paradise can be disorienting, you know, especially at first.”

Taylor glanced back toward the street one more time before stepping through the doorway. “I’m not so sure about this being paradise,” she muttered.

“I didn’t catch that.”

“It’s not important.”

“Whatever you say, hon.” The woman set Taylor’s bags down in front of a high registration desk that looked as if it must be a valuable antique—oak, aged to a reddish grain, topped with a slab of white marble veined by rose-colored streaks. The woman walked behind it and extended her hand across the marble. “My name is April Jane Cooney. I run this place.”

April Jane was tall, all right. Taylor hadn’t imagined that part at least. However, she was beginning to question her perceptions about the dark car. Maybe April Jane was right. The drastic transition from driving through a northern New York blizzard this morning to stepping into this land of exotica tonight might be enough to distort anybody’s perceptions.

“Now, let’s get you checked in so you can settle yourself down and take a nice, long bath. That’ll have you a hundred percent again in a jiffy. There’s even some stuff in your room that makes heaps of bath bubbles. Look in the cupboard under the bathroom sink. Or maybe you like showers best. Lots of New Yorkers don’t like to take the time for a bath.”

“I’m not from New York City. I’m from rural New York State, ” Taylor said, feeling she was being put on the defensive. “There’s a big difference.”

“I suppose there is,” April Jane said, turning the leather-bound register toward Taylor. “Sign here. We do it the old-fashioned way at the Key Westian.”

Taylor managed a thin smile. She did want to get to her room. Whether she would shower or bathe once she got there wasn’t important to her right now. She did not want to hear anymore about how uptight snowbirds are or what a paradise this place was supposed to be. She was even beginning to resent the golden-brown tan above the curve of April Jane’s peasant-style blouse. Her hair was streaked with blond as further evidence of how much time she clocked in the tropical sun. Suddenly, Taylor was more aware than she wanted to be of her own hair clinging to her neck, the damp wrinkles staining her jacket, the perspiration trickling between her breasts. Suddenly, she wished she could will herself back to this morning’s frigid blizzard. She would be comfortable there, where the chill made her feel sharp and alert the way she liked to be. Aunt Pearl’s warnings about what happened when you strayed too far from home echoed in Taylor’s brain as she scrawled her name in the register. She dropped the pen and grabbed her bags from the floor.

“Let me help you with those, hon,” April Jane drawled.

“I’ll get them myself,” Taylor said a little too harshly.

“Suit yourself.” April Jane sounded amused again. “Second floor.”

Taylor hoisted the bags as best she could and struggled toward the stairs. She knew what a pathetic, bedraggled sight she must be right now, but she didn’t care. She told herself that if she could just be alone, she’d be able to sort everything out. She’d know what she was or was not seeing. She would be able to tell the difference between a harmless illusion and real danger. And, there would be no more overwhelming urges to run back home like a frightened child. She chose not to remind herself that it had been an overwhelming urge that had brought her here in the first place.

* * *

IT WAS LESS THAN AN HOUR later when Taylor wandered out onto the terrace of her second-floor room two blocks off Duval Street. She had taken a shower after all and put on a sleeveless cotton dress. The night air rested on her bare arms, warm and slightly moist and unbelievably warm. The fronds of a tall coconut palm brushed the terrace railing. The scent of night flowers surrounded her, as soft and shimmering as the silver light from the haloed moon or as a whisper of romantic memory. She understood how someone might be so seduced by this place that they could never leave. April Jane might be right. This could possibly be paradise after all. Taylor walked back inside where a circling ceiling fan had cooled the room to a pleasant evening temperature. The shower had revived her from her previously overheated state. What couldn’t be so easily cooled was the reason for her visit to the Keys. She had come here with a burning need to find out why this place haunted her so, and she had very few clues to go on—except for three names.

She had already unpacked the leather portfolio and slipped it between the bed and the nightstand. It contained a copy of Aunt Netta’s will and descriptions of the three heirs she had mentioned in addition to Taylor. There were two relatively small and perfectly understandable bequests, one to Violetta Ramone who had cooked for Netta and kept house at Stormley, where Netta had lived after it was rebuilt, and another to Netta’s longtime friend Winona Starling. The third bequest was larger and more mysterious. Netta had left it to a man with the unlikely name of Destiny Maxwell and the enigmatic instruction “he will know what it is for.”

The description of Mr. Maxwell was not so mysterious, but it was definitely troubling. He was in his late thirties, a lot younger than Aunt Netta had been. Yet, he had apparently been her frequent companion both socially and privately. He owned and operated a Key West saloon called the Beachcomber on lower Duval Street. Had he been Aunt Netta’s young lover? Was that what she meant by his knowing what the bequest would be for? Taylor wasn’t really bothered by that possibility. Aunt Netta had been free to spend her time with whomever she chose and to leave her money to them if she wished. Taylor respected that, though she didn’t like to think that her aunt might have been taken advantage of by an opportunist.

What Taylor was more curious about, however, was if Netta might have confided in Mr. Maxwell. Had she told him things about the Bissett family and its history in Key West? If so, Taylor wanted to know those things, along with whatever Violetta Ramone and Winona Starling might have to tell. It was too late at night to go calling on either of them right now, but a Key West saloon was sure to be open at this hour.

Taylor picked up her small handbag and the room key on her way to the door. She took a few steps toward the front stairway then thought better of it. She had a feeling that, despite April Jane’s casual manner, she kept a close watch over things around here and would be far too interested in the reason for Taylor’s going out alone so late. She used the back stairs to avoid that interest. The back door had a release bar across it. That meant it could be opened from the inside only. Taylor would have to take the front entrance back in. She could see herself tiptoeing barefoot up the stairs like a teenager out past curfew. The thought made her smile, but that smile disappeared as soon as she stepped outside and the door clicked shut behind her.

The back door did not open onto a street or a well-lit path as she’d thought it would. Instead, a pattern of flat stones led from the stoop through an overhang of foliage with no visible light along the way. Taylor moved cautiously down the steps to the stone walk and the entrance to the overgrown pathway. She could see that the foliage actually arched over the path for some distance to the street beyond. The light from the opposite entrance was just bright enough to reveal that much. There must be a wood or wire trellis structure that kept the greenery from filling in the opening altogether.

A shudder ran through her. She had been suddenly reminded of her dreams. There was a tunnel much like this in one of them, made up of long, undulating fronds that reached out to grab her as she ran through. She still trembled at the remembered sense of great danger lurking among those wild, grasping, green things. Taylor’s experience with the dark car had made her skittish already. She would have preferred not to be reminded of her nightmares right now. She told herself that there was no person lying in wait along this passageway or she would be able to make out their shape even in the dim light. She couldn’t be accosted from the side because of the trellis and the thickness of the shrubbery.

But what about non-persons? Wasn’t this the tropics, after all? Weren’t snakes and other creepy-crawly things common to this part of the world? She took a deep breath against that possibility. Another deep breath and Taylor was into the tunnel, which smelled faintly of leaf mold. She hurried but would not allow herself to run. Her heart tripped at the sound of her own footsteps and the attention they might arouse among whatever beings lurked within the green wall that surrounded her.

“Stay where you know the territory and the territory knows you.” Aunt Pearl’s words rang in Taylor’s head as haunting accompaniment to her hurried steps. She could almost feel Aunt Pearl keeping pace and whispering, “I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.”

Taylor didn’t take a full breath again until she was out of the passage. She didn’t slow her pace until she was standing beneath a street lamp where she was forced to stop for a moment to get her bearings. She had studied a Key West street map on the way down here in the plane. She knew precisely where the guesthouse was located in relation to the place she was now headed. Her exit through the backyards had taken her one block closer to her destination. She took a few more deep breaths to slow the tripping of her heart then set out along the cracked pavement toward Duval Street.

Small, modest houses lined the block on both sides. She was alone on the street—no people, no vehicles parked in possible ambush, no leafy nightmare creatures in evidence. Duval Street was famous for its noisy nightlife, but all was quiet here. She had deliberately chosen an address near the center of things but still at some distance from the hubbub of Mallory Square, with its sunset worshippers and late-night revels. Her guesthouse was only a few blocks from the southernmost point on the island, which the brochures all bragged of as also being the southernmost point in the entire United States. Almost not in the same country with the rest of us, Taylor thought, and wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She was reminded yet again of being out of her element.

The tropical air caught in her heavy hair. She could feel it there like a gossamer web among the strands. She raked her fingers through it and felt the coolness of that web and the fullness of the waves made suddenly untamable by this place. She pulled the strap of her handbag from her shoulder and began fishing inside for a wide-toothed comb that might bring the honey-colored mass under control. She was still poking around in her purse when she felt a movement behind her.

“What’s an angel like you doin’ out here on her own?”

He must have come out of one of the shop doorways that bordered the street. She was on Duval now. The shops were all closed along here, and there was no one else on the street, at least not near enough to be of help if she needed it. He was tall and very thin. His clothes hung loosely on him. His shirt was open several buttons at the neck, and his pants fit more like pajamas than trousers. She thought he might be wearing sandals from the sound of his shuffling along the pavement, but she couldn’t see his feet in the shadowy night.

She began walking fast away from him, down Duval Street toward the bright neon and the sound of music ahead. She could see that the lighted shop fronts were closer on the opposite side. She would cross the street when she got there, maybe step inside one of the open boutiques till she was sure she wasn’t being followed any longer. She could hear him, still laughing softly behind her. She glanced back over her shoulder.