be helpful.
As he walked toward the door, he was thinking about the next seventy years. He came from a long-lived family, so it was probable that he would live to see ninety. Maybe beyond that. He had a lot of life before him and he’d made up his mind. He’d talk to his father and then set out in the direction he wanted for himself. One that would take him happily through all the coming decades.
When the young man stepped out into the July night, he had less than two minutes to live.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Torpor. Malaise. Lethargy. These are descriptions that fit the year-rounders when the dog days of August approach and the heat and humidity hang so heavy over our island that their weight drives us to the ground, turning us into whining creatures who scurry like spider crabs from our air-conditioned homes to air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned markets or restaurants or bars and back again. The key is sparsely populated, with even some of the full-time residents fleeing to cooler climes in northern states or the mountains of the Midsouth. It is a time when few tourists visit our island and those who do are other Floridians who trade the heat of the interior for the anemic breezes that blow from the Gulf of Mexico. It is a time when listlessness stalks the island, when we fall into a kind of stupor that is interrupted only by our need for cold beer and whiskey and boozy comradeship with our fellow sun dwellers, those souls who gladly trade the blissful Florida winters for the harsh summers that drive less hardy mortals into cooler venues to the north.
August had crept up on me with little fanfare. Another month gone, a little closer to mid-October when our weather usually turns gorgeous for its seven month run up to the heat of the summer that comes early in our latitudes.
So, on the first day of August, I drove the Explorer north across the Longboat Pass Bridge onto Anna Maria Island, through the towns of Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach and into the village of Anna Maria City that perches on the northern end of the seven-mile-long island. The bed and breakfast was a large and rambling Key West-style home that boasted five bedrooms, each with a private bath. It sat on the tip of the island with views over Passage Key Inlet to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge and Egmont Key. A thin beach separated the water from the grass lawn behind the little inn.
A small brass sign on the front door invited me in. I walked into a large foyer with hardwood floors and a staircase ascending to the second floor. A desk sitting near the stairs held a computer and a small bell. A sign welcomed me to the Anna Maria Inn and suggested I ring the bell for service.
A woman came from the back in response to the bell. “Hello,” she said, “I’m Jeanette Deen. You must be Mr. Royal. Right on time. Detective Duncan said you’d be by this morning.”
I’d read the transcript of the statement a young police officer had taken from Jeanette Deen. I knew she was in her mid-sixties and had bought the Anna Maria Inn with her husband about ten years before when she had retired as principal of an elementary school over in the middle of the state.
The woman standing before me looked to be late forties, perhaps early fifties if you wanted to stretch it. She was trim and fit, her dark hair showing only a few strands of gray. She was smiling and I could see the reflection of the beauty she must have been in her youth. She was still beautiful, but in a more restrained and refined way. She had aged gracefully and because of good genes or good living or both had retained much of her youth far beyond the age when most of us begin to wrinkle and sag.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Deen,” I said. “I appreciate your taking the time to speak to me.”
“Please call me Jeanette, Mr. Royal. I hope I can be of some help. It was truly tragic what happened to that young woman. Come on back to the kitchen. I’ve got fresh coffee brewing.”
I followed her to the back of the house and sat at a table in a dining nook that was surrounded by glass, giving me the benefit of the view up Tampa Bay to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. She