Free Ron Base - Tree Callister 03 - Another Sanibel Sunset Detective by Ron Base Page B

just that, but she was helping him.
    She returned, handing him a couple of tissues. He pressed them against his perspiring face. His stomach began to settle.
    He said, “What are you doing?”
    “I’m trying to help you.”
    “What are you doing here?”
    “What do you think? I’m going to Key West.”
    “You’re following me.”
    She snorted with laughter. “That’s rather arrogant, don’t you think?”
    He sat back, taking deep breaths. Around him, he could hear passenger voices over the throb of the jet engines. Voices that appeared to be enjoying the ride. He glanced around. No one else was puking into plastic bags. He felt foolish and embarrassed.
    “Come on. Susan or Cailie or whatever your name is, you manage to insinuate yourself into my life in Paris—”
    “Is that what happened?” She laughed. “I insinuated myself into your life?”
    “And the next thing you’re on the island. I approach you at the Visitors Center and you deny you even know me. Then you reappear with my son at the Lighthouse.”
    She stood and smiled down at him. “You think too much of yourself, Tree.”
    “Why did you tell my son your name is Susan Troy?”
    “Maybe that’s my name,” she said.
    “Then why did you tell me it’s Cailie Fisk?”
    “I hope you’re feeling better.”
    When she went to move away, he grabbed her wrist and that wiped away the smile. “Don’t do that,” she said sharply.
    “That’s how you knew I was in Paris, wasn’t it? Chris told you. You followed us there. But why?”
    Her face had gone flat. “Let go of my wrist,” she said.
    He released her. “Why? Why are you doing this?”
    “Maybe I’ve decided to move to Sanibel. Maybe I’ve decided that you’re not much of a detective, and there might be room for another detective on the island.”
    He stared up at her. “You’re kidding.”
    The smile had returned, brighter than ever. “Someone who can get things done, who doesn’t hide things, who can solve unsolved murders. I think I would be good at that.”
    She swayed off along the aisle. Several male heads swiveled to watch her appreciatively.
    Tree sat with unfocused eyes on one of the LCD screens in front of him. Two heavyset sports commentators, bursting out of shiny suits, silently opened and closed their mouths. They were talking about football he didn’t understand, on a boat he hated, in a state surrounded on three sides by water that made him sick. What was he doing here, bedeviled by a weak stomach and threatening women?

13
    Tree stood, taking deep, gulping breaths of air. By now the boat had slowed, entering calmer waters as it approached Key West. He made his way up on the deck and was immediately hit by a wave of warm air and a gentle sea breeze that helped clear his head. He stood at the railing, and watched the tiny figures hovering above him, suspended in the blue Key West sky harnessed to brightly colored parachutes. Beachfront homes with screened-in porches were scattered among palm trees. Ahead on the left, a coastguard vessel lay like a roughly hewn piece of ivory at dockside.
    He came down the gangplank after the Key West Express docked and made his way along a covered walkway looking for Susan or Cailie or whatever the blazes her name was. There was no sign of her. Why? He asked himself for the hundredth time. Why all the dishonesty, the elaborate deceits? What was the point? Because he refused to sleep with her in Paris? He was a sixty-year-old man. She was a beauty in her thirties. Even in his wildest fit of arrogant narcissism—and there had been enough of those over the years—he could not imagine his animal appeal lay behind her decision to come to Sanibel.
    When he couldn’t find a taxi, a pedicab driver named Marco insisted Tree should ride with him. “Can you take me to the Southernmost House?” Tree asked.
    “No problem,” Marco said.
    Tree climbed into the cab while Marco clambered onto the bicycle, announcing he would take a route that