Millicent Winship was seventy-seven years old, ninety-two pounds, ridiculously rich, and as tough as a garfish. Her only daughter, Whitney, had shamed the family by abandoning her husband and son and moving to Paris, where she had opened a cheese shop. Mrs. Winship didn’t care much for the fellow Whitney had married, but she felt very bad that he’d been left alone to raise her only grandchild—a burly and rebellious boy named Duane, after his father.
So Mrs. Winship had decided that the least she could do was provide her grandson with the best possible education. Because of his poor grades and occasional behavior problems, the Truman School wasn’t exactly eager to have young Duane Jr. as a student. Mrs. Winship solved that problem by sending an extremely large check.
It wasn’t often that she got to see Duane Jr. because she divided her time among five different homes in five different states—California, New York, Arizona, South Carolina, and Florida. All of Mrs. Winship’s houses were located on championship golf courses; she herself didn’t play the game, but she loved watching the players traipse in their colorful outfits down the emerald slopes, pausing every few steps to hack feverishly at a tiny white sphere. Mrs. Winship thought golf was the most amusing spectacle that she’d ever seen, and she would spend hours spying on passing foursomes through the special high-powered binoculars that she kept on the back windowsill at each of her fairway residences.
Mrs. Winship spent only two weeks a year in Naples, but during these visits she always invited Duane Jr. and his father out to dinner. If they failed to respond promptly, Mrs. Winship would command her chauffeur to drive her to the Scrod household so that she could personally raise a ruckus.
Which was her intention on this day as she rapped sharply on the screen door and barked her grandson’s name over the notes of a Mozart symphony that was blaring from the stereo speakers inside.
Before long, the music cut off and Duane Scrod Sr. shuffled to the door. He was flustered to see Mrs. Winship and made a halfhearted pass at smoothing the tangle of oily hair under his trucker’s cap.
“Afternoon, Millie,” he said with false cheeriness. “What brings you here?”
“My grandson. What do you think?” she snapped. “Where is he?”
“Wanna come in?”
“I certainly do not. Why aren’t you answering your telephone?” Mrs. Winship demanded. “I left a message about a dinner engagement—that was two nights ago, and I’ve received no reply.”
Duane Scrod Sr. sighed ruefully, and so did the large macaw on his shoulder.
“I see you’ve still got that stupid bird,” Mrs. Winship remarked.
“She’s not stupid. She speaks three languages.”
“Really? Pick one and have her tell me where DJ. is.”
“She doesn’t know,” Duane Scrod Sr. muttered, “and neither do I.”
It was an unsatisfactory answer, as far as Mrs. Winship was concerned.
“We’re talking about your one and only child,” she said, glaring, “and you don’t know where he is?”
Duane Scrod Sr. opened the door and came out on the porch. “He said he was goin’ camping somewhere out in the boonies. That was a couple days ago, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“But what about school?” Mrs. Winship asked.
“He said he needed a break.”
“Oh, that’s rich.”
Duane Scrod Sr. threw up his hands, nearly toppling the macaw from its roost on his shoulder. “What d’you want from me, Millie?” he whined. “The boy has his own agenda. I can’t make him do what he doesn’t want to do.”
“Oh, of course not. You’re just his father,” Mrs. Winship said sarcastically. “Is he in trouble again? And tell me the truth for once.”
Duane Scrod Sr. sat down in a rotting wicker chair and vigorously clawed at an insect bite on one of his bare feet. “A cop was here about an hour ago,” he admitted. “Somebody lit a fire out by the Big Cypress, and they think it was Junior.”
Millicent Winship closed her eyes and thought: Not again.
Duane Sr. said, “They don’t have enough to bust him. They’re just fishin’ is all.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Duane Sr. reached in a pocket and took out a sunflower seed, which he fed to the macaw. He said, “When DJ. gets home, I’ll make sure he calls you. Maybe we can all go to that steak place again, the one up near Bonita Beach.”
“Unless he’s in jail,” Mrs. Winship said, “in which case we can bring him a lovely fruit basket.”
“Aw, don’t be like that.”
“Are you still out of work, Duane?”
“What do you expect? I got no wheels!” Indignantly he pointed at the Tahoe upon which he had painted BOYCOTT SMITHERS CHEVY!!!!! “They still won’t give me a new transmission,” he griped.
“Perhaps it’s because you torched their building—you think that might have something to do with it?”
“Beside the point!” Duane Sr. huffed. “I paid my debt to society. I did my time.”
Mrs. Winship was more sad than angry. Despite his unattractive personality, Duane Scrod Sr. had always been a hard worker and a good provider, until Whitney had run off to France. Then he’d sort of fallen apart, losing interest in the antique piano shop that he’d owned in Naples. Within a year the place had gone bankrupt, and since then Duane Scrod Sr. hadn’t been able to hold a steady job. The low point had come when he’d burned down the Chevrolet dealership.
“Those six months you were locked up,” Mrs. Winship said, “I still don’t understand why you didn’t have Duane Jr. call me. What were you thinking, letting that boy stay out here all alone?”
Duane Scrod Sr. looked up from his bug-chewed foot. “Maybe I was ashamed for you to know what happened,” he said in a scratchy voice. “Hey, DJ. took care of himself just fine. He never went hungry, Millie—I had some money put away.”
Money that I’d sent you, thought Mrs. Winship, so you wouldn’t lose your house to the bank.
“There was plenty for groceries,” Duane Scrod Sr. went on. “He did all right, like I’ve told you a hundred times.”
Mrs. Winship shook a finger at him. “Nothing is all right around this place. Not you, not your son—nothing. It’s time to get a grip on life, Duane. Time to move on.”
Duane Scrod Sr. rose with a squeak from the old wicker chair. “Yeah,” he said.
“Oui!” chirped the blue-and-gold macaw. “Ja!”
Mrs. Winship rolled her eyes. “Would you kindly tell your parrot to shut up?”
“She’s not a parrot.”
“How did Duane Jr. get out to where he’s camping?”
Duane Sr. said, “He drove himself.”
“Did he now?”
“He’s got his license, Millie. He turned sixteen two months ago.”
Mrs. Winship’s eyes narrowed. “I’m quite aware of that. I sent a birthday card, remember?”
Duane Sr. looked embarrassed. “I told him to call you and say thanks for the check. I guess he forgot.”
“So you bought him a car?”
“Naw. Fixed up a motorcycle that we found in the want ads,” Duane Sr. said. “DJ. has a fondness for motorcycles.”
“Oh, terrific. Next Christmas I’ll get him a helmet,” Mrs. Winship said, “and some funeral insurance.”
Duane Scrod Sr. frowned. “Now, why do you always have to take that snippy tone?”
“Why? Pourquoi? Warum?” cried the macaw.
“Listen to me, Duane,” Mrs. Winship said forcefully. “If I don’t hear from my grandson soon, life will get extremely unpleasant for you. I’m not paying his tuition so that he can skip class and roast weenies in the woods. That’s an insult to me, and I resent being insulted.”
Duane Scrod Sr. flinched like a puppy that had just been smacked on the butt with a newspaper. He said, “I’ll do my best to find Junior.”
“Good idea, because I’m not leaving town until I see him,” Mrs. Winship declared. “Now give me a straight answer—do you think he’s the one who set fire to the swamp?”
“Truly? I couldn’t say.”
“Why in the world would he do such a thing?” Mrs. Winship said. “Since you’re the only other arsonist I know, I thought you might have some special insight.”
Duane Sr.’s eyes flashed in anger. “I never taught that boy to set fires. He knows better.”
“Then let’s hope the police are wrong.” She was halfway down the steps when he called her name.
“Hey, Millie, wait! What do you hear from Whitney?”
The question made Millicent Winship’s heart sink.
She looked up at Duane Sr. and quietly said, “She’s not coming back from Paris.”
“So the cheese business is good?”
“I’m sorry. I really am,” said Mrs. Winship. “By the way, your precious bird just pooped all over your shirt.”
Duane Scrod Sr. looked down at the mess and nodded bleakly. “What else is new,” he said.
On the same Monday morning that Nick had watched Smoke eat Mrs. Starch’s pencil, Capt. Gregory Waters was being evacuated from Iraq to an American military installation in Germany. From there he was flown to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., a hospital for soldiers.
Nick and his mother flew up on Thursday morning and waited an hour in the lobby. Finally a doctor came out and introduced himself. They followed him along a maze of drab corridors teeming with nurses and orderlies and patients; Nick had never seen so many young men and women in wheelchairs.
The doctor took Nick and his mother into a private room. Using a cross-section diagram of the human body, he explained that Captain Waters lost his right arm and most of the shoulder when something called a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG, had struck the Humvee in which he was riding.
“We know,” Nick’s mother said tightly. “They phoned us from the base in Ramadi. Can we see him now?”
“Did they also tell you that, because of the severe damage to the shoulder, we might not be able to fit your husband with a working prosthetic?”
“Like a mechanical hook, you mean?”
“It would be difficult,” the doctor said, “but we’re not giving up hope.”
“Can we see him, please?”
The doctor led them up a flight of stairs, then down another long corridor. Every patient they saw was missing an arm or a leg—sometimes both legs. Nick tried not to stare. Before entering his father’s hospital room, he paused to brace himself.
Capt. Gregory Waters was propped upright in bed, though his eyes were closed. His chest, wrapped with gauze and heavy tape, moved up and down slightly when he breathed. Nick noticed that his dad’s hair had been shaved, and that one side of his face was pink and mottled with welts. A clear tube carried amber fluid into his remaining arm from a plastic bag strung on an aluminum rack beside the bed.
Her eyes welling, Nick’s mother stood wordlessly at the foot of the bed. She looked shaky, so Nick put an arm around her waist and walked her to the only chair in the room.
“He’s still on lots of pain medication,” the doctor said, “so he’ll be groggy when he wakes up.”
“Could you get my mom a glass of water?” Nick asked.
After the doctor left, another long hour passed before Nick’s father awoke. He smiled sleepily when he saw them. Nick’s mother hugged him and stroked his face. Nick squeezed his left hand, and his father squeezed back firmly.
Glancing at the bandaged knob where his right arm used to be, he joked, “Now I’ll have to sew up the extra sleeve in all my shirts.”
Nick’s mom said, “Very funny, Greg.”
“So I’ll have to learn how to throw a curve left-handed. No big deal.”
Always a good athlete, Nick’s father had been a pitcher in the Baltimore Orioles farm system when he’d first met Nick’s mother. According to the newspaper clippings in a family scrapbook, Greg Waters’ fastball had once been clocked at 94 mph.
He never made the big leagues, so he’d gone back to college, earned a degree in business administration, and taken a desk job with a sprinkler supply company in Fort Myers. After three years of being bored out of his skull, he returned to baseball as a pitching coach for a minor-league club. He was happy, but the money wasn’t great. That’s one reason he’d joined the National Guard—the sign-up bonus had paid for Nick’s first year at the Truman School.
For one weekend every month, Greg Waters went to Tampa to train as an army soldier. The country was at peace, and neither he nor his family ever imagined that he’d be sent overseas to face real combat. Everything changed after the invasion of Iraq.
“Did they say when I can go home?” Nick’s father asked.
“It all depends. Tomorrow you start rehab,” Nick’s mother said.
“What fun.” Greg Waters blinked heavily. “I’m so damn tired.”
Nick’s gaze fell upon the rounded white knob of gauze and tape where his father’s muscular right arm had once been. The bandages were so shiny that they looked fake, like part of a mummy costume for Halloween.
His mom said, “Greg, you get some rest. We’ll come back at dinnertime.”
“You’re not gonna try to feed me like a baby, are you?”
“No, sir. You’re going to feed yourself.”
“That’s my girl.” Nick’s father grinned. “Nicky, you holding up okay?”
“I’m good, Dad.”
“It’s a rough deal, I know, but things could be worse,” he said. “I was lucky to get out of that place alive. The guy sitting next to me in that Humvee, he didn’t make it.”
Nick felt his head start to spin. “Was he your friend?”
“Like a brother.”
Nick lowered his eyes. It was almost unbearable to think how close his father had come to dying.
When he looked up again, Capt. Gregory Waters was fast asleep.
After visiting Duane Scrod Sr., who was not especially helpful, Detective Jason Marshall picked up Dr. Dressler at the Truman School, and together they went to the residence of Bunny Starch. The headmaster had requested to come along, which was fine with the detective.
Walking up the creaking steps of the old house, Dr. Dressler exclaimed, “The rat’s gone!”
“The what?” the detective said.
“She put a stuffed rat on that rocking chair,” Dr. Dressler said. “She named it after one of her former students.”
Jason Marshall looked doubtful.
“I’m serious,” said Dr. Dressler.
The detective knocked on Mrs. Starch’s door. Nobody answered. He pressed the doorbell, but it was out of order. They walked around to the other side of the house and rapped on the back door. Still no response.
“Guess I’ll come back tomorrow,” Jason Marshall said.
Dr. Dressler was disappointed. “Can’t you just break in? What if she’s ill or she had an accident or … something else happened?”
“I can’t go inside a house without a search warrant,” the detective explained, “and a judge won’t give me a warrant unless there’s cause to believe a crime’s been committed. There’s no evidence of that, Dr. Dressler.”
Frustrated, the headmaster trailed Jason Marshall back to his unmarked police car.
“That letter I got about a ‘family emergency,’ I just don’t buy it,” Dr. Dressler said. “The woman has no family that I can locate anywhere.”
The detective leaned against the fender of his car and took out a pack of chewing gum. He offered a piece to Dr. Dressler, who said no thanks.
“Libby’s told me all the crazy stories about Mrs. Starch,” Jason Marshall said. “Kids love to talk, and normally I wouldn’t pay much attention. But now you’re telling me she kept a stuffed rat on the porch—this isn’t the most normal person in the world, would you agree?”
Dr. Dressler nodded. “She’s a bit quirky, for sure.”
“Maybe she just freaked out after the fire on the field trip,” the detective speculated. “That had to be a scary experience—eventually she finds her way out of the woods and rushes to our house with Libby’s asthma inhaler. Then she drives home, looks in the mirror, and says, ‘Geez, I could have died out there! I really need some time off.’ ”
Dr. Dressler was skeptical. “Not Bunny Starch,” he said.
“Imagine spending the night all alone in the Big Cypress while it’s burning,” Jason Marshall said. “I don’t care how tough you are, it definitely would shake you up.”
“Anything’s possible, I suppose.”
“Just a theory.” The detective took out his cell phone. “What’s the number at this house?”
By now the headmaster knew it by heart: “555-2346,” he said.
Jason Marshall dialed and waited. Mrs. Starch’s phone rang only twice before an answering machine picked up.
“There’s a message,” the detective whispered to Dr. Dressler.
“What does it say?”
Jason Marshall touched the Redial button and handed the cell phone to Dr. Dressler. The headmaster listened intently to the recorded greeting on the other end:
Hello, people. I’ll be away from school indefinitely because of an unexpected family matter. You may leave a message at the tone, though it might be a while before I have time to reply. Please accept my apologies in advance. Now here’s the beep!
“Is that her voice?” the detective asked.
“Sure sounds like it,” Dr. Dressler said.
“First the letter, now the voice message on her phone. I’ve got to be honest—there’s nothing more the sheriff’s office can do. The woman is obviously alive and well,” said Jason Marshall.
“Then why no phone calls?”
“Maybe she doesn’t feel like answering questions about a ‘family emergency’ that doesn’t really exist. Like I said, she probably just needed a break, so she made up an excuse not to come to school.”
“But that’s not like her,” Dr. Dressler asserted again.
“Some people burn out on their jobs all of a sudden. I’ve seen it happen before.” The detective opened the car door and slid behind the wheel.
“Just a second,” said Dr. Dressler. He stepped quickly to Mrs. Starch’s mailbox and peeked inside. It was empty.
On the ride back to the Truman campus, the headmaster asked Jason Marshall about the arson investigation. The detective said he’d turned over the information about Duane Scrod Jr. to the fire department.
“So far, they haven’t been able to connect him to the crime,” Jason Marshall said.
“Did they turn up any clues?”
“Nothing that panned out. Near the scene of the fire they found a ballpoint pen with a name on it—Red Diamond Energy. It’s some oil-and-gas company from Tampa that has a small lease out there near the swamp,” Jason Marshall said. “Needless to say, young Mr. Scrod is not on their payroll. It’s unlikely that the pen was his.”
“So what happens to your arson case?”
“Not much, unless we catch a break.”
Privately, Dr. Dressler was relieved that Duane Jr. wouldn’t be arrested anytime soon, if at all. The ugly publicity would have been damaging to the reputation of the school. Years earlier, a Truman student had been caught driving a stolen sno-cone truck and it had made the TV news all the way over in Miami.
“Do you want me to call you when Duane returns to class?” the headmaster asked Jason Marshall. “Would you still like to speak with him?”
“Might as well—just to let him know he’s on our radar.”
“Good idea,” said Dr. Dressler, although he suspected that Duane Scrod Jr. would not be even slightly intimidated.