‘Oh shit,’ exclaimed the man who had been seated beside me. He was hauling golf clubs when thunder crashed and lightning lit up parts of the sky as if a war had begun.
I rented a silver Lincoln and spent some time ensconced inside it at the airport parking lot. Rain drummed the roof, and I could not see out the windshield as I studied the map Hertz had given to me. Anna Zenner’s house was in Palmetto Dunes, not far from the Hyatt, where the man on the plane was headed. I looked in vain to see if his car might still be in the parking lot, but as far as I could tell, he and his golf clubs were gone.
The rain eased and I followed the airport exits to the William Hilton Parkway, which took me to Queens Folly Road. I just wandered for a while after that until I found the house. I had expected something smaller. Anna’s hideaway was not a bungalow. It was a splendid rustic manor of weathered wood and glass. The yard in back where I parked was dense with tall palmettos and water oaks draped in Spanish moss. A squirrel ran down a tree as I climbed steps leading to the porch. He came close and stood on his hind legs, cheeks going fast as if he had a lot to say to me.
‘I bet she feeds you, doesn’t she?’ I said to him as I got out the key.
He stood with his front paws up, as if protesting something.
‘Well, I don’t have a thing except memories of a pretzel,’ I said. ‘I’m really very sorry.’ I paused as he hopped a little closer. ‘And if you’re rabid I’ll have to shoot you.’
I went inside, disappointed there was no burglar alarm.
‘Too bad,’ I said, but I wasn’t going to move.
I locked the door and turned the dead bolt. No one knew I was here. I should be fine. Anna had been coming to Hilton Head for years and saw no need for a security system. Gault was in New York and I did not see how he could have followed me. I walked into the living room, with its rustic wood and windows from floor to sky. Hardwood was covered in a bright Indian rug, and furniture was bleached mahogany upholstered in practical fabrics in lovely bright shades.
I wandered from room to room, getting hungrier as the ocean turned to molten lead and a determined army of dark clouds marched in from the north. A long boardwalk led from the house, over dunes, and I carried coffee to its end. I watched people walking and riding bicycles, and an occasional jogger. Sand was hard and gray, and squadrons of brown pelicans flew in formation as if mounting an air attack on a country of unfriendly fish or perhaps the weather.
A porpoise surfaced as men drove golf balls into the sea, and then a small boy’s Styrofoam surfboard blew out of his hands. It cartwheeled across the beach while he madly ran. I watched the chase for a quarter of a mile, until his prize tumbled through sea oats up my dune and leapt over my fence. I ran down steps and grabbed it before the wind could abduct it again, and the boy’s gait faltered as he watched me watching him.
He could not have been older than eight or nine, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt. Down the beach his mother was trying to catch up with him.
‘May I have my surfboard, please?’ he said, staring at the sand.
‘Would you like me to help you get it back to your mother?’ I asked kindly. ‘In this wind it will be hard for one person to carry.’
‘No, thank you,’ he shyly mumbled with outstretched hands.
I felt rejected as I stood on Anna’s boardwalk, watching him fight the wind. He finally flattened the surfboard against himself like an ironing board and trudged across damp sand. I watched him with his mother until they were scratches on a horizon I eventually could not see. I tried to imagine where they went. Was it a hotel or a house? Where did little boys and mothers stay on stormy nights out here?