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“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” She smiled, but I thought her eyes were sad. Maybe it was only the light. “You must think I’m a regular nutbird.”
“No,” I said. “We all have our ways of coping. My wife…”
“What?”
“Never mind.” I wasn’t going to tell her what my wife had said during the last hard months of our marriage (our first marriage): Sometimes I see him. That was a can of worms I didn’t want to open. I watched her go, and as she disappeared into the gloom of twilight lensing to full dark, I heard that squeaky wheel and thought I should have oiled it for her. It only would have taken a minute.
I went back to the house, locked up, and rinsed off our plates. Then I picked up the book I was reading, one of the Joe Pickett novels, and went down to Greg’s office. I had no interest in Greg’s workstation, hadn’t even turned on the desktop computer, but he’s got a hell of a nice easy chair with a standing lamp nearby. The perfect place to read a good novel for a couple of hours before bed.
He’s also got a cat named Buttons, now presumably residing in Greg’s East Hampton abode with Greg and his current girlfriend (who would no doubt be at least twenty years younger than Greg, perhaps even thirty). Buttons had a little wicker basket of toys. It was now on its side with the lid open. A couple of balls, a well-chewed catnip mouse, and a colorful rubber fish lay on the floor. I looked at these a long time, telling myself I must have kicked the basket over earlier in the day and just not noticed. Because really, what else could it have been? I put the toys back in and closed the lid.
Greg’s caretaker was Mr. Ito. He came twice a week. He always wore brown shirts, brown knee-length shorts with sharp creases, brown socks, brown canvas shoes. He also wore a brown pith helmet jammed down to his extremely large ears. His posture was perfect and his age was… well, ageless. He reminded me of the sadistic Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai, and I kept expecting him to pass on Colonel Saito’s motto to his less than energetic son: “Be happy in your work.”
Except Mr. Ito—first name Peter—was the furthest thing from sadistic, and a native Floridian born in Tampa, raised in Port Charlotte, and living across the bridge in Palm Village. Greg was his only client on Rattlesnake Key, but he had plenty of homes on Pardee, Siesta, and Boca Chita. Printed on the sides of his panel trucks (he drove one, his lackadaisical son the other) was the motto AH SO GREEN. I suppose it would have been considered racist if his name had been McSweeney.
It was getting on for August when I spied him taking a break one day, standing in the shade and drinking from his canteen (yes, he had one). He was watching his son circling Greg’s tennis court on a riding mower. I came out onto the patio and stood beside him.
“Just taking a break, Mr. Trenton,” he said, putting on his mask. “Back at it in a minute. I don’t deal with the heat as well as I used to.”
“Wait until you get to my age,” I said. “I’m curious about something. Do you remember the Bell twins? Jake and Joe?”
“Oh my God, yes. Who could forget? 1982 or ’83, I think. Terrible thing. I was as young as that idiot when it happened.” He pointed to his son Eddie, who appeared to be communing with his phone as he mowed around the court. I half-expected him to roll across it at any time. That could spell disaster.
“I’ve met Allie, and… well…”
He nodded. “Sad lady. Sad, sad lady. Always pushing her stroller. I don’t know if she really believes the kiddies are in it or not.”
“Maybe it’s both,” I said.
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no?”
I shrugged.
“What happened to them was a fucking shame, if you’ll pardon my French. She was young when it happened. Thirty? Might have been, or a bit older. Her husband was much older. Henry was his name.”
“Is it true snakes got the kids?”
He pulled down his mask, took another drink from his canteen, put his mask back in place. I’d left mine in the house.
“Yeah, it was snakes. Rattlers. There was an inquest, and the verdict was death by misadventure. The papers were more discreet back then and there was no social media… except people talk, and that’s a kind of social media, wouldn’t you say?”
I agreed it was.
“Mr. Bell was in his office upstairs, making calls. He was some sort of grand high poobah in the investment business. Like your friend Mr. Ackerman. The missus was taking a shower. The boys were playing in the backyard, where there was a high gate, supposedly locked. Only it really wasn’t, only looked that way. The county detective in charge of the investigation said the gate latch had been painted over several times on account of rust, and it didn’t catch the way it was supposed to and those boys got out. She used to push em in the stroller—don’t know if it’s the same one she’s got now or not—but they could walk just fine and they must have decided to go to the beach.”
“They didn’t take the boardwalk?”
Mr. Ito shook his head. “No. I don’t know why. No one knows why. The searchers could see where they went in, there were broken branches and a little piece of a shirt hanging from one of them.”
SEE YOU LATER, ALLIGATOR, I thought.
“It’s about four hundred yards from Rattlesnake Road to the beach, all of it choked with undergrowth. They made it about halfway. One of them was dead when the searchers found them. The other died before they could get him back to the road. My Uncle Devin was in the search party and he said each of those little boys had been bit over a hundred times. I don’t believe that, but I guess it was a lot. Most of the bites—the punctures—were on their legs, but there were more on their necks and faces.”
“Because they fell down?”
“Yeah. Once the poison started to work, they would have fallen down. There was only one rattler left when the search party found the boys. One of the men killed it with a snake pole. That’s a kind of thing, has a hook—”
“I know what they are. Allie carries one when she walks near dark.”
