Dragonfly Read online

  "Somebody tell that asshole to shut up!" Brud bellowed.

  His blood pressure was knocking him for a loop. He had to sit on the edge of the bed for a couple of minutes, listening helplessly to Clare scream in heartbreak. It would pass, he consoled himself. Clare would be all right eventually. And so would he. Just another minute or two. Then he would make his way downstairs to his leather-paneled study, close the doors on everybody, sit and recall every little thing he could about "Joe Tucker." He was a clever boy, but somewhere along the line, in the months he'd hung around Omaha screwing Glare and scheming to get his hands on a large chunk of cash, he'd made a mistake. Left a clue as to who he really was.

  He just needed to be patient, Brud thought. It would all work out, to his ultimate satisfaction.

  Chapter Two

  After the Omaha praject was completed and he was home aboard the Dragonfly, Joe was a long time surfacing from the depths of a complex malaise.

  He spent ten days at anchorage in Fajardo, once the Dragonfly was back in the water. Immediately after leaving Omaha he had shaved off the inch of beard he wore as Joe Tucker, and he renewed his tan on flawless blue days. He ordered marine supplies and restocked the big galley for the first couple of months of aimless sailing he had in mind. There was always work to be done on the Swedish-built sloop. She was fifty-six feet of teak and mahogany laid over a canoe-shaped hull of fiberglass, Vinylester resin and four coats of epoxy. He had local help with the topside refurbishing, the sanding, polishing and varnishing, but, relishing solitude, he always sailed alone. He was big enough and had the strength and agility to handle the necessary spread of sail.

  Many things never seemed to function following Dragonfly's extended stays in storage. Despite Joe's careful inspections, a couple of daylong shakedown cruises provided plenty of aggravation. Plugs popped out of teak decks, diodes blew, transducers failed, a bilge pipe valve malfunctioned, clew rings cracked in a fresh breeze, tools were either missing or stowed in the wrong lockers. Much of this was to be expected, and shouldn't have had him in a sullen mood. But, instead of feeling the familiar exhilaration as problems were dealt with and his boat-handling skills sharpened, he couldn't shike the lethargy that dogged him in the lulling tropical twilights when the Dragonfly lay at anchor off the marina harbor and the couple of raucous cafés where he customarily spent a lot of his free time.

  Isobel Tavarés heard that he was back and came around from the hotel where she worked in Guest Relations. In Puerto Rico, everyone has a nickname and hers was "Puchi." She was a small lively Latin package with flattened Taino features and coarse straight black hair that grew to the tip of her tailbone when she didn't have it in braids. Joe was on shore unloading his Yamaha trail bike from the back of the small pickup truck he rented while he was staying in Fajardo. He wore ragged denim shorts and neoprene flip-flops.

  Puchi put on a smile for him, although she was seething.

  "Hey, long time, Joe."

  "Yeah, I guess it has been, Puchi." He smiled too, willing her to forgive him, but when he offered to kiss her she backed up a step, skeptically.

  "So, you just take off like a sinvergüenza and I don't hear from you. How am I sposed to feel, I mean, like shit, no?"

  Joe frowned. "Didn't hear from me! I wrote you, what, half a dozen times?"

  "How the fuck should I know? Wrote me where, the other side the moon, maybe?"

  "Hey. Hey, Puchi. I told you what I do for a living. Hydraulic engineering. There was an emergency. I flew out to the Pacific, barely had time to pack. You were up there in Newark with your mami so sick, remember?"

  "Uh, yeah. What do you mean, the Pacific?"

  "Java, babe. Big hydroelectric project, the company I work for sometimes. I was in the middle of a jungle, you know? Got real sick for a while. I spent time in a hospital in Surabaya. Bad fever. I almost died."

  "Ay, bendito," Puchi said, but with a slight skeptical twist of her lips. "And you wrote to me—that's the truth, huh?"

  "Puchi, you know I'd give up my front-row seat in hell for you."

  "Joe, you know what you got? You got lying blue eyes. But I forgive you anyhow." He bent to kiss her, but she leaned back. "What about that Swees girl live in Humacao, she works for Warner-Lambert? I know about you and her, man. She have letters from Java? 'Oh, I miss you, love you only, boo-hoo.'"

  "Puchi, God's truth, when I look at you I can't remember any other woman on the face of the earth. How's your mami? Was it her gall bladder again?"

  "Yeah. They do this operation now, they doan have to cut nobody open so much. They sock out the stones in bitty pieces. She's hokay. Well, I got to work tonight, hotshot. Maybe tomorrow night, huh?"

  Joe's face fell a yard and a half. "Puchi, I have to make a quick trip. Four or five days. I'll be back by Sunday."

  Hands on her hips, she said, "Quick treep? You know, sometimes I wonder about that big boat of yours. What you carry from island to island that might get you in big troubles some day."

  "Do I look stupid to you, Puchi? I'm a recreational sailor. I work hard when I work, get paid well for it, then I take a few months off to enjoy life."

  "I can get a little time off myself, Joe."

  "That's good, Puchi. Real good. Come Sunday, we'll plan something, just you and me."

  On Sunday Joe was in Montserrat, one of the world's tiny snoop-free banking havens. From there it was only a full day's reach to his favorite place in the Caribbean, the anchorage at Bourg on Terre-de-Haut, an even smaller and less-well-known island in the Antilles chain. He had forgotten Puchi and his. spur-of-the-moment promises. Joe had made a lot of promises to women all over the Caribbean and in Mexico, a sometime haunt of his. But he had no interest in women right now. Clare Malcolm was still hanging around, in his daytime reveries, in his restless dreams.

  He had first seen Clare in Town and Country, where he found most of his projects. T and C devoted several of its pages each month to society weddings and charity events; sometimes a full page, in color, covered a particularly trendy fund-raiser. The event in Omaha was a ball to benefit pediatric AIDS, and Clare Malcolm was the chairperson.

  Over several months Joe could look at hundreds of photographs of elegant women in their thirties and forties without a trace of frisson; then something would stimulate his curiosity bump. Perhaps there was a psychic connection he didn't understand. He looked at the face of Clare Malcolm for a few moments, noting that she was almost a head taller than the other women in the group photograph, and wore a voluminous gown of a green material that reminded him of leftover Christmas wrap. Then he clipped the page from the magazine, folded it and put it away. This was his usual practice. He had a drawerful of magazine and newspaper clippings aboard the Dragonfly that he never referred to after his initial tickle of interest. A couple of times a year he emptied the drawer and added the clippings to a bonfire on a deserted beach.

  But sometimes, after a week or so of uneasiness that had a strange, sensuous appeal, he would retrieve the recent article or photograph and look at it again. This was the case with Clare Malcolm. He spent a half hour meditating on her image. She was blond, with her hair pulled back from an asymmetrical, rather long face. A healthy, blandly handsome Midwestern face. There was no stiffness in her pose for the camera. Her mouth was wide, and she was smiling. But he sensed reticence in her smile. Her hands were gloved. He couldn't tell if she was married. Not that it mattered. He had dealt with both married and unmarried women. Often the married ones fell hardest for him. And often their husbands didn't give a damn until they found out, too late, what Joe had cost them.

  It was the new year. Joe and the Dragonfly were in Cayman Brac. After a day of diving the spectacular vertical walls, he sailed over to Grand Cayman and in Georgetown visited the branch of a British bank where, as a corporate entity called Reef Adventures, Ltd., he did some of his business. A fax was sent from the bank to the detective agency in Atlanta he used on a rotating basis with two other agencies in the States. Within te
n days, by Federal Express, he had everything that was available on Clare Malcolm. A few good recent photos were included with the report.

  Clare was thirty-three. Born and raised in Nebraska. With her brother Donald, forty-one, she shared a country estate that had been in the family for more than a hundred years and was still a working farm. Just under nine hundred acres, down from about five thousand acres at the turn of the century. The house, built in 1883 at the edge of the Great Plains, had a name: Windward. It was a massive limestone Victorian mansion with a couple of wings added on, not very artfully. Neither she nor her brother was married. Her first husband, T. Bristow Lescoulie, commonly known as "Tunkie," was, according to their wedding photo, a grinning gargoyle with abundant golden curls and a dearth of character in his face. In the same photo Clare looked taller than her husband and poker-faced from stress. She was nineteen. The marriage had lasted eight months. Clare got the divorce, and was in therapy for three years afterward. Two engagements followed. Both were broken in short order.

  Joe began to get a faint but probably accurate impression of what was behind -the slight, sad reticence of Clare's smile.

  Two years at Vassar before her marriage, then she earned a degree in fine arts at Lincoln when she was twenty-five. No attempt to establish a career for herself. She didn't travel much. Horses and good works took up her time. At the moment she was in residence at the winter house in Hobe Sound, scheduled to ride in a charity ilorse show in Boca Raton over the weekend. They had a major corporate sponsor, so it was one of numerous events during the winter months on the gilded East Coast of Florida that anyone could buy his way into.

  Florida. He had done a project in Sarasota nine years ago, so there was always a chance of an embarrassing and potentially hazardous encounter in Boca Raton. It was much too small a world in the circles Clare Malcolm frequented. But the odds were acceptably long that he'd run into Lottie Santangelo. She had to be, what, fifty-five now? And she'd never expressed an interest in horses during the five months he'd been intimate with her. King Charles spaniels were Lottie's abiding passion.

  He decided to keep the beard he'd been wearing since his last project ended, seven months ago in Honolulu. Darken it, and his hair, leaving it full and over the ears. He had most of the right clothes aboard the Dragonfly for a social weekend in Boca.

  It was not his intention to make a move on Clare Malcolm at this point. He might not even want to meet her. With the assistance of the Amiga computer aboard the Dragonfly he did some further research and felt that he was well enough prepared, if it happened, but for now observation was all he had in mind. He always spent a great deal of time taking his time, examining all projects with a well-educated eye for the probabilities, ultimately rejecting four out of five prospects. The young ones were too well protected, the old usually defenseless. He preferred a real challenge. And his hunch was that Clare Malcolm had pretty well given up on men.

  The well-attehded three-day riding event was held at the Sandalfoot Polo Club on the last weekend in January. There were a lot of striped tents, some of them air-conditioned, set up around the paddocks, the schooling rings and the manicured Bermuda of the Grand Prix course. Auctions and a showing of contemporary artists helped the well-heeled while away their time. There was a lot of unobtrusive security from Wackenhut, but anyone was free to wander around the stable area. On Friday he watched Clare Malcolm schooling a big black stallion named Roy Bean. The horse had a very good hind leg and good stamina in the deep sand of the schooling ring. Miss Malcolm complemented him with a long, strong back, an assured seat. She jumped to a second-place finish on Saturday as rain clouds moved in.

  Roy Bean's owners were from Fort Smith, Arkansas. At the Polo Club they entertained in a custom Silver Eagle motor home, the sort of luxury that country-music stars enjoyed on the road. Joe insinuated himself into the company of some young horse bums and hung around with them until he saw Clare Malcolm leave the Silver Eagle by herself and stroll across the stable grounds to the exhibits. In one hand she had a foam cup with the Budweiser logo on it. She had changed out of her riding clothes into faded Levi's and a gingham Western-style shirt. Her figure wasn't much and there was no exercise discipline that could change it. She was tall from the waist up, with a low-slung butt. Ample breasts, and a too-long neck. She had recently washed and combed her hair, but it wasn't completely dry. Without makeup she had a lot of freckles. She smiled and nodded, but joined no groups, making her way a little aloofly past the sponsors' pavilion to the art show. The music of Elton John blasted from numerous speakers. It looked more and more like rain. Joe decided to follow her.

  The piece Clare was most interested in, a rectangular oil-on-burlap painting reminiscent of Miró, had a red SOLD sticker on the frame, as did several others by the same artist, identified as Stanley Wax.

  "Well, damn," she said softly and regretfully, and swallowed the rest of her Bud.

  "I felt the same way," Joe said. When he spoke he was instantly a Texan.

  Clare gave him a cursory unsmiling glance. "Do you know Wax?"

  "I've never seen any of his work. Is he local?"

  She resumed her study of the painting she'd considered buying. It had grown darker outside; thunder rumbled and rain began to fall on the tent.

  "I think he lives in Spain now. But he's had a gallery in South Beach, oh, four or five years, since they cleaned up that area."

  "I like him. He's not afraid of texture even though his vernacular is the subconscious. Kind ofpricey. For me, anyhow. Saw you ride earlier. I thought your big black was getting a little squirrelly before the last grid."

  "Squirrelly?" She cocked an eye at him. She had changed from custom-fitted Vogel riding boots to less formal ostrich-skin pointy-toes. Still Joe was able to look down at her. "I guess. He showed a tendency to veer when I schooled him. But he's just a big baby, really. This was his first shot in high prelims. He got all fussed after that tight triple."

  "Very tight. Two faults on that one is no disgrace."

  "Still, I didn't deliver the ride Beaner is capable of. It's only the second time I've ridden him in competition. Deatcy asked me as a favor; the job they did on her hip joint after she spilled in the Ox Ridge didn't turn out right. I'm used to hunters."

  "Rocking-chair course, compared to Grand Prix."

  "Right." She dropped her gaze, appraising his status as if it were an instinct she'd been born with, powerful as the need to find her mother's breast. Classic two-button blazer; striped Gap shirt open to the middle button, revealing the hand-carved miniature of an Olmec head he wore on a gold chain; Lauren khakis; dusty—but not dirty—Lucchese boots. Difficult to place him on the social scale.

  "Miró used to say he painted what he saw. And what he saw were hallucinations brought on by hunger. One meal a week while he was struggling in Paris. Harlequin's Carnival?"

  She nodded, trying to recall the painting. "I never heard that story."

  "I guess I know a jot of them. Too many. I'm an art historian." He did a proper amount of fumbling for his business card. "Joe Tucker."

  "You're from Austin?" Clare said, studying the card as if it were a text dense with footnotes. He sensed her shyness, a reluctance to take the next step.

  Rain drummed harder on the vinyl tenting. Some people ducked inside, laughing at the deluge. He moved a step closer, isolating the two of them, proclaiming them a unit as the tent continued to fill. Her chin came up. She smiled, then touched her lower lip with a forefinger, a childlike gesture that he subsequently discovered had many meanings. Caution; a question; surrender.

  "I'm Clare Malcolm," she said. "Nice to meet you, Joe."

  Chapter Three

  On a dead-calm morning in the Iles des Saintes, Joe awoke sweaty and with a tingling of dread that became a donus.

  Just past sunrise. A hundred yards from where the Dragonfly lay at anchor in the harbor, the village of Bourg was waking up. Voices spoke the soft French Creole patois of the island. Someone whistled cheerfully
ashore. He heard the familiar sounds of carts with squeaky wheels, the wooden mallet of a boatbuilder rhythmically tapping a chisel. Frigate birds cried out above the walls of Fort Napoleon. Outside the harbor, beyond the reef, he heard fishermen calling languidly to other fishermen in their orange-and-blue boats. On his own boat the chittering of tiny sucrier birds in the rigging underscored giggles and the voices of children sternly shushing One another. It was his first morning in Les Saiñtes in almost eleven months. But already he had company.

  He'd been dreaming about Clare. In the dream they were at a black-tie affair at Omaha's Joslyn Museum. But the party was somewhere behind them. They were exploring a gallery he'd never seen before. The gallery made him uneasy. There were shadowy portraits in leafs' gilded frames on the velvet walls, menacing faces he couldn't quite make out. He was having difficulty swallowing. It seemed very hot to him. He was sweating buckets, but Clare didn't seem to notice. She had him by the hand and she was strong. Pulling him from one side of the gallery to the other. "Look!" she said. "Look! They're all here!" He didn't know what she meant, but he wouldn't take his eyes off the floor to find out. "Come-on, Joely!" Clare said, manic with excitement. He had dug in his heels. He wouldn't be budged. She laughed at his stubborn expression. "Just one more, Joely-Moly. Look at this one." Her tone changed. "JoelyPoly! I mean it. You have to look." But he couldn't. He knew who it was, towering over him in a portrait three stories high, looking down at him with displeasure and contempt. He felt so awful, so guilty, he couldn't raise his eyes from the dirt floor to acknowledge her. A hot wind was blowing. What did he do that was so wrong? Maybe Clare could tell him. He looked up, squinting, but the sun was in his eyes. A blazing white desert sun. In the distance, a cloud of dust. Clare was walking away down the middle of the shimmering tar road. At least, he thought it was Clare. But he was terrified that it was not. Clare was the only one who had the answer: What did I do wrong? When he ran after her receding figure, he came to 'a shocking halt. His feet were mired in soft asphalt, which began to lap around his thin bare legs like a dark wave of the sea—he was screaming.