The Treasure Man. Pamela Browning

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СКАЧАТЬ am not in the mood for joking, Chloe. I’m falling apart. I can’t even pull myself together long enough to throw a load of laundry into the washing machine.”

      “Do you want me to come home, Naomi? Help you out?” She waited with dread for her sister’s answer, knowing that she’d go if Naomi needed her.

      “No, Chloe,” Naomi said. “We’ll get through this. But thanks.”

      Chloe, all but heaving a giant sigh of relief, decided to broach a new topic. “How are Jennifer and Jodie?” she asked. Naomi and Ray’s twin daughters were ten years old and never gave them any trouble. So far, anyway.

      “J and J are upset that Tara’s disappeared, like all of us.”

      “Give them my love.”

      “I will.”

      “And Grandma Nell—is she adjusting to the assisted-living home? Or is she still trying to decide if she likes it?”

      “Chloe,” Naomi said patiently. “Stop assuming responsibility for other people’s well-being. Our grandmother is doing fine. She’s made a new friend, and they watch their favorite TV program together every day. The friend’s family treats them to dinner at the country club. Grandma’s happy. Repeat after me. Grandma’s happy.”

      “‘Grandma’s happy,’” Chloe recited as if by rote.

      “You’ve got it. You’ve got it! Listen, Chloe, I’d better hang up in case Tara tries to call home on this line instead of our cell phones.”

      “Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”

      “Love you,” said Naomi.

      “Love you, too.”

      She heard the sliding glass door to the annex grinding along its track. It was located under her bedroom window, and a glance outside told her that Ben was no longer sitting and staring morosely out to sea. While she dressed, she heard the Jeep’s engine roar to life as Ben left. Briefly, she wondered where he was going, but she didn’t have time to mull it over. She had work to do.

      Downstairs, she threw all the windows open and hauled the wicker rockers outside to the front porch, where last night’s rain had washed everything fresh and clean. A row of red hibiscus bushes bordered the porch, their flowers as big as saucers, and overhead, in a nearby palmetto tree, a mockingbird’s white feathers flashed as it flitted to and fro. Beyond the rolling dunes, the sea was glassy and calm. This day, like every day in summer, would be scorchingly hot. The sun was already blazing down on the sand.

      Unfortunately, the Frangipani Inn wasn’t air-conditioned. Tayloe had been adamant that the winds off the ocean cooled it enough; she’d insisted that if the natural breezes had been good enough for her grandparents, they were good enough for her. Chloe wasn’t so sure. Sea breeze or not, air-conditioning seemed like a really good idea in this hot and steamy climate.

      Once she’d opened the house, she tackled the dirty dishes in the sink, then measured the small study off the library, where she intended to set up her workshop. The space was cluttered with an old treadle sewing machine, a box of dusty jelly jars and various other debris. She’d place a workbench at one end of the long, narrow room A telephone outlet behind Tayloe’s old desk would make it convenient to connect to the Internet. Between the workshop and the kitchen, a large closet, formerly a butler’s pantry, would house her jewelry-making supplies. The closet contained a safe, where she’d keep the precious and semiprecious gems she used in her one-of-a-kind designs.

      All that decided, she was finishing off a slice of peanut butter toast when someone began hammering on the front door.

      Through the sidelight, Chloe spotted a tattered white sailor hat with the brim pulled low. She threw the door open to Zephyr Wills, one of the most senior of Sanluca’s senior citizens. Known as the Turtle Lady, she felt that it was her obligation to safeguard the big loggerhead turtles that nested up and down the coast.

      “Chloe!” Zephyr cried, her round wizened face crinkling into a broad smile. She was under five feet tall and as frail as a bird. “Gwynne told me you were driving all the way from Texas, gal. What’s the matter—you tired of cowboys?”

      “And how,” Chloe said with feeling.

      “Well, no wonder. All those sweaty horses, all that nasty dust. I knew a cowboy once, but never mind about that right now. Thought you’d never open the door. With Tayloe and Gwynne, I always walked right in. Didn’t think you’d care for that, though.”

      “I, um, wouldn’t have expected it,” Chloe admitted.

      The Turtle Lady wore her customary white long-sleeved shirt, which she donned every day for protection from the hot sun. Chloe could have sworn that Zephyr’s plaid shorts were twenty years old, which was almost as long as Chloe had been vacationing at the Frangipani Inn. Zephyr carried a ruffled parasol; it was her trademark.

      “Come for a walk with me, Chloe. We’ll check out the latest nests.”

      Zephyr had always liked company on her morning nest-hunting expeditions. Tayloe was usually willing to oblige; Gwynne, too.

      “I’d love to,” Chloe told her, nudging Butch back inside with her foot.

      “Get a hat. You don’t want to have a sunstroke. Is your cat coming with us?

      “No, he doesn’t much like the beach.”

      “That’s just as well. No telling what trouble he could get into out there.”

      Chloe found a hat on the rack inside the door and skipped down the steps with a kind of heady anticipation. In her girlhood, she had listened with fascination to Zephyr’s explanation of the habits of loggerhead turtles. During their summer breeding season, female turtles lumbered onto land to lay eggs in a shallow nest in the sand. Then they returned to the ocean, never to see their own offspring, which hatched in a matter of weeks and clambered down the beach to the ocean, subject to predators and often so confused by the lights on land that they headed the wrong way. Zephyr considered it her mission in life to make sure the babies found the sea, and she sent them off with a little blessing and prayer for their safety.

      Due to the nearby coral reefs being constantly ground to bits by wave action, the sand on this beach was famously pink. The ocean at this hour was still a deep cerulean blue, but as the day progressed and the sun climbed higher, its color would change to a cool, inviting turquoise. An onshore breeze, picking up now, fluttered the brim of Chloe’s hat and ruffled her hair. As they walked, Zephyr cast inquisitive glances at her from under the parasol.

      “You used to be a redhead,” Zephyr stated. “What happened?”

      “Uh, well, magenta and bronze and green and a color called Desert Dream, which I’ve settled on, finally. I want to look like a normal person for a change.” She wore her hair in a straight bob slightly longer than chin length, having dispensed with the spiky style she’d tried last year.

      “You always were kind of different,” Zephyr ventured. “Gwynne was predictable, Naomi was sedate, but you were always turning cartwheels down the beach or ripping off all your clothes and jumping in the water.”

      Chloe laughed. “I doubt if I’ll be doing any nude swimming around here now. There are СКАЧАТЬ