“She don’t get a lot of visitors. So I reckon maybe you’ve got business over there?”
Brooke found herself squirming a little under his stare. “Something like that.”
He was sizing her up. “You a lawyer? You look like a lawyer to me.”
“Good guess,” Brooke said, keeping it light. “How about you? I assume you work for Mrs. Warrick? In what capacity?”
“Whatever needs doin’, I do,” C. D. said. “Run the boat, work on the vehicles a little. Fetch groceries and supplies from the mainland. Like that.”
“How nice.”
“She ain’t in real good health. Took her to the doctors over in Jacksonville last month. She don’t say a lot, but I reckon they gave her bad news. Louette, she’s kinda the housekeeper, she says Josephine don’t eat much. Makes sense. She was pretty stout when I met her, but lately, she’s gotten real skinny. Eat up with cancer probably.”
Brooke wondered how Josephine Warrick would feel about one of her employees gossiping about her health with a total stranger.
“If that’s true, I’m sorry to hear it,” Brooke said politely.
She pivoted sideways, signaling their discussion was over, gazing back toward the mainland. She knew it was a five-mile crossing to Talisa, and she didn’t care to spend the trip chatting with this unnerving cornpone Popeye.
He took the hint and gunned the boat’s motor the minute they passed the last piling marking the no-wake zone. She gripped the seat with both hands and within minutes found herself being drenched with sea spray every time the small vessel crested one wave and bounced back into the water.
***
Eventually, Brooke saw a green swath appear on the horizon, and ten minutes after that, C. D. slowed the boat down and they glided into a narrow tidal creek. At the creek’s widening, she spotted a long dock jutting into the water. A sturdy black man stood at the end of the dock, his arms crossed over his chest. A child of about eight or nine sat at the edge of the dock, holding a cane fishing pole. Long, bead-wrapped dreadlocks reached to his shoulders.
“Hey, Lionel,” C.D. called. “Catching anything?”
The kid looked up and waved. “Ain’t no fish biting today. You take me for a boat ride?”
“Sorry, pal, maybe another time.”
As they approached the dock, C. D. put the boat in neutral, and the black man tossed them a thick line, which the captain knotted to a cleat on the bow.
“Hey,” the man said quietly, nodding politely at Brooke.
“This here’s Shug,” C. D. said. “He’ll drive you up to the house.” He busied himself fiddling with something on the boat’s console.
Shug bent down and gripped Brooke’s arm at the elbow, helping her make the two-foot leap from the boat’s deck to the dock.
“You okay?” Shug asked solicitously. “Got everything?”
“Oh,” Brooke said, pointing toward the bench on the stern. “Oh no. I left my briefcase.”
C. D. grunted, picked up the briefcase, and slung it in the general direction of the dock. Shug reached out and snagged it, midair, before it could hit the water.
“You have a nice visit now, you hear?” C. D. said. “I’ll be around when you’re ready to go back.”
***
An ancient, rusted seafoam-green Ford pickup truck was parked at the end of the dock among a motley-looking assortment of junker cars.
Brooke patted the rounded front hood. “Wow. How old is this thing?”
“Mmm, I think it’s from around the late fifties,” Shug said, opening the passenger-side door. “I do know that Mr. Preiss Warrick bought it new way back when. He’s been gone a long time, but Miss Josephine, she don’t like to part with nothin’ that was his. Likes to keep everything just like it was before he passed.”
He turned the key in the ignition and pumped the gas pedal. The truck’s motor whined, then stalled. He shook his head, repeated the same motion twice before the engine finally caught. Moments later, they were bumping along the narrow crushed-shell roadway. Brooke poked her head halfway out the open window, marveling at the scenery.
Gnarled, moss-draped live oaks on both sides of the road met in the middle to form a dense, nearly impenetrable canopy of green overhead. Thick stands of palmetto, swamp myrtle, pines, and cedars were festooned with blossoming jasmine, whose heavy scent perfumed the air. As they rounded a bend in the road, she spotted a pair of blue herons intent on fishing for their lunch in a shallow ditch. Another turn revealed an expanse of marsh where patches of sun-bleached driftwood and cypress knees were host to dozens of large, brown nesting birds.
