The Mangrove Coast by Randy Wayne White

Author:Randy Wayne White
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Suspense
ISBN: 9781101573747
Publisher: Berkley Books
Published: 1999-11-01T07:00:00+00:00

10

The Calloway family home was in the Lauderdale suburb of Coral Ridge south of Oakland Park and north of Plantation. Probably one of the original gated communities on the Intracoastal Waterway, built back in the fifties when dolphin-finned Cadillacs and pink stucco defined the sunrise coast.

There were banyan vines and shadows on streets that never took the full heat of summer because of moss and filtered light. The brick gatehouse was unattended, but the neighborhood still had the solid look of corporate money, good benefits and upwardly mobile executives. Not old-time wealth, but high-salaried position players with plenty left over for pension plans and toys.

Tomlinson was talcing it all in. “The people who first lived in these houses, I bet they voted for Eisenhower and bitched about Elvis back when they were built. Caddys, yeah. Can’t you picture great big land yachts sitting in the driveways?”

We were in my Chevy pickup, windows down, driving through the shade of ficus trees. We’d crossed the saw-grass flats of Alligator Alley to I-595, then north on U.S. 1 past Freddy’s Anchor Inn, tattoo parlors and Comfort Suites, then through the Kinney Tunnel into a gray corridor of furniture stores, Burger Kings, Porsche and Ferrari dealerships, Chinese restaurants.

Now we were looking at houses that were set back behind thick brick fences, the yards hedged with sea grape. Dominant colors were conch pink and Bermuda white. Not many Cadillacs in the driveways, though. Mostly sport utility vehicles in earth colors, but a few BMWs and Lexuses hitched up close to large ranch houses with red tile roofs showing through the trees.

“Can you smell it?” Tomlinson said. “The Atlantic Coast, man. It … smells different. Big ocean, big seas, lots of wind out there beyond the condos, even if you can’t feel it.”

I was cruising at maybe ten miles per hour and the truck cab was filtering odors.

I said, “Yeah, nice air. Not as dense.” Meaning not as heavy as the air on Sanibel Island.

No matter where I’ve been in my life, I can get within ten miles of an ocean and feel it. Can sense the implied weight of the sea even if the horizon is blocked, fogged in, you name it. Thatch-roofed huts or trees or mountains or high rises, it didn’t matter what stood between us. The convexity of sky is always different. Brighter? No, but there is a distinctive sheen to it, as if rarefied by lightning or chemical reaction: saltwater, oxygen, wind, isolation. I always, always know if the sea is near.

The Calloway house was several blocks from U.S. 1, just off Bayview at the corner of 8th Street and Middle River Drive, not far from Bayview Elementary and the Coral Ridge Yacht Club. Very solid-looking brick one-story painted key lime yellow with vines that trailed up the walls and framed the bay windows. Pie-shaped quarter-acre corner lot, old tropical vegetation, the weathervaned masts of sailboats showing above the roofs of neighboring homes.

A yachting community. Each house with its own dock out back.

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