Twilly said, “I could be persuaded to wonder the same thing.”
“What about the frogs?” Desie asked. McGuinn was on the prowl again, jerking her around like a puppet.
“Toads.” Steven Brinkman made a sweeping notion with one arm. “They buried them.”
“Nice,” said Twilly.
“Because Clapley’s people got it into their heads that they might be a problem later on, when the crews started clearing the island. They were afraid somebody like the Sierra Club would make a stink with the newspapers, because the toads were so small and there were so many. So Clapley’s people decided to bulldoze ’em in advance, to play it safe.”
Desie was watching Twilly closely. She said: “He’s making this up, right?”
“I wish.”
She said, “No, it’s too awful.”
“Well,” said Brinkman, “you didn’t hear it from me. We never spoke, OK?” He turned his back on them and slowly made his way into the pines. He walked with his head down, pausing every few steps as if he was searching for something.
Twilly said to Desie: “I’ve seen enough.”
“You think he was on the level? I say he’s still drunk.”
“Turn the dog loose.”
“I will not.”
He pried the leash from her fist and unclipped it from McGuinn’s collar. The Lab bounded to a hillock of freshly turned soil and began digging exuberantly, his shiny black rump waggling high. After a minute or so, Twilly told Desie to call him back. Twilly went over to the place where McGuinn had been digging and, with the toe of a shoe, finished the hole. Then he reached down and picked up a pearly gelatinous clot of mushed toads.
“Come here, Mrs. Stoat.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“You wanted proof, didn’t you?”
But she was already running, McGuinn at her heels.
Later, in the car, Twilly told Desie it was time for her to go home. She wasn’t prepared to argue. He dropped her at a gas station in Bronson and gave her two fifties for breakfast and clothes and a cab ride to Gainesville. So she wouldn’t be walking around half-naked, Twilly purchased a plastic raincoat from a vending machine. The raincoat was bright yellow and folded into a kit no larger than a pack of Camels. Desie unwrapped it and, without a word, slipped it on.
Twilly walked her to the telephone booth and put a quarter in her right hand. He said, “I’ll be on my way now.”
“Can’t I say good-bye to Bood—I mean, McGuinn?”
“You two already said your good-byes.”
“Now, remember the trick I showed you to give him his pills. The roast-beef trick. He’s partial to rare.”
“We’ll manage,” Twilly said.
“And keep him out of the water until those stitches are healed.”
“Don’t worry,” he said.
Desie caught her reflection in the cracked glass door of the phone booth. With a frail laugh, she said, “God, I’m a mess. I look like a drowned canary.” She was stalling because she couldn’t make sense of her feelings; because she didn’t want to go home to her wealthy powerful husband. She wanted to stay with the edgy young criminal who had broken into her home and abducted her pet dog. Well, of course she did. Wouldn’t any normal, settled, well-adjusted wife feel the same way?
“You’re serious about this?” she said to Twilly.
He was incredulous at the question. “You saw what I saw. Hell yes, I’m serious.”
“But you’ll go to jail.”
“That all depends.”
Desie said, “I don’t even know your name.”
Twilly smiled. “Yes, you do. It’s printed on the car-rental receipt, the one you swiped out of the glove compartment last night in Fort Pierce.”
She reddened. “Oops.”
As Twilly turned away, Desie reached for his arm. She said, “Before I go home, I want to be sure. That was no joke back there? They deliberately buried all those harmless little—”
“Yeah, they did.”
“God. What kind of people would do something like that?”
“Ask your husband,” said Twilly, pulling free.
7
The airplane was a twin-engine Beech. When Desie stepped aboard, the pilot asked, “Where’s your friend?”
Desie was flustered; she thought he meant the kidnapper.
“The dog,” said the pilot. “Mr. Stoat said you were traveling with a dog.”