Page 15 of Camino Ghosts

“Just six years ago. Retirement.”

“So none of us were here when Lovely tried to convince the state to preserve Dark Isle.”

Bruce shook his head and said, “I’ve never heard that story.”

“We found it this morning in the archives at the library. The story is dated in March of 1990. She claimed to be the owner of the island, the last descendant of the slaves, and she wanted to give it to the state of Florida if it would promise to protect it. Evidently, the state had little interest in doing so. It wasn’t much of a story.”

But Steven especially liked it. “That could be important evidence. It tends to prove that she was in fact the owner of the island. You see the problem here, right? A rather huge problem. In her own book, Lovely admits she left the island when she was fifteen years old. If we can believe that she was born in 1940, then she left in 1955. And she writes that she was the last person to leave. Everybody else was dead. Tidal Breeze will no doubt use her own words to drill home the point that the island was deserted then and has been so for decades now.”

“How can she prove she was born there?”

“With no paperwork, no records, it will be difficult. She needs a lawyer, Bruce, and soon.”

“Don’t we all? I doubt she can afford one.”

“What about a pro bono lawyer?” Mercer asked.

Steven laughed and said, “That’s my specialty, right? Clients who can’t pay.”

“It’s called a nonprofit for a reason,” Bruce added.

“It has to be pro bono,” Steven said. “No one can afford the fees it’ll take to fight Tidal Breeze. I can do it to a point, but I’ll have to find some help. Right now the first step is to talk to the client. That’s up to you, Bruce.”

“Okay, I’ll give it a try. But no guarantees.”

Mercer said, “There are some interesting stories about Dark Isle in the archives. Have you heard the one about the LSD boys?”

Bruce shrugged as if he hadn’t a clue. “No.”

“The story was dated May of 1970. These three teenage boys sailed out to Dark Isle to smoke pot. Figured they would have plenty of privacy. One took along some LSD, which I gather was rather new to the area in 1970. All three were tripping out and began making noises that attracted two large panthers. At first the kids thought they were just hallucinating, but when they realized the panthers were real, they jumped in the water and tried to escape. Two were rescued by a fisherman. The third one was never found, thus the headline and big story. His father was a well-known dentist on the island.”

Thomas added, “They claimed they heard people screaming from the bush, but the police were skeptical. It was never clear what the boys really heard and saw. They were in another world.”

They ate for a moment, savored the story, and sipped wine.

Thomas said, “And in 1933, during the Depression, there was a WPA project to record the oral histories of surviving slaves. There were still a few around then, and these two grad students were being paid by the government to find them. They knew about Dark Isle and decided to go find some descendants of former slaves. They were warned to stay away but insisted. When no one would take them to the island they rented a boat and went out anyway. They were never heard from again.”

“Come on,” Bruce said.

“I’m not making this up. It’s in the newspaper, front-page headlines. November 1933.”

“Was there a search party or something?” Steven asked.

“I don’t know, but the sheriff is quoted saying he wasn’t going out there looking for anybody. Said only fools and folks working for the federal government would set foot on Dark Isle.”

Mercer and Thomas were enjoying the tag team. She took another sip of wine and said, “Right after the Second World War, a military plane was working the coast, taking aerial photos of everything. The navy was looking for a place to build a submarine base. The plane made a pass over Dark Isle and something happened.”

“Must have flown too low,” Thomas added.

“It crashed on the beach, killed the three men on board.”

Steven held up his hands and said, “Okay, I get the message. I’m not going anywhere near that island.”

2.

Miss Naomi Reed welcomed her two granddaughters, hugged their mom goodbye, and got them seated at the kitchen table with bowls of their favorite sugar cereal. She had not been raised on such junk food, but her upbringing was not important. Kids nowadays ate all kinds of bad food because it was sweet and delicious. Almost all of the grandmothers Naomi knew had given up on healthy diets for their young ones. They had lost all the food fights. The kids were already getting chubby. Let their parents worry about that.

Or their mother. Their father was seldom home. He drove a truck for a big corporation and the more he drove, the more money he made. Naomi was happy to keep the girls during the summer months. It was free babysitting for her daughter and precious time for Naomi.

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