The Mangrove Coast Read online

  Amanda mistook the comment for sarcasm. “Seriously, Sedona’s a real place. She wants to go there and take a seminar or take a sweat lodge, one of the two. Frank, he just sat there smiling, accepting it like a complete idiot. He told me that’s what she offered him, a new way of looking at life. She’d awakened a new spirituality in him. Something like that. They’d known each other in a previous karma—Jesus, it was all I could do not to bust out laughing—and that, together, they’d discovered a mystic link to certain elements in the sea. Bottle-nosed dolphins. They are very, very big on dolphins.”

  I liked the way she said that. I liked her hard-nosed rationality; was beginning to see Amanda Richardson more and more as an individual and less and less as the daughter of a long-dead friend.

  She was still talking about the new wife; didn’t like her, but I also got the impression that part of it, maybe a lot of it, was jealousy. “My God, listening to Skipper, it really was a struggle to keep a straight face. But Frank, this guy I’d always known to be damn near cold-blooded when it came to logic or business or anything like that, was sitting there sipping a fine cabernet telling me he and his new squeeze had been talking to Flipper. The way he was behaving, it was like aliens had come down from Mars and taken over his body or something.”

  I said, “When people go through big changes, they sometimes stop thinking rationally.”

  “It sounds like you speak from experience.”

  “I do my share of dumb things. I’ve gone through periods where I seem to specialize in the behavior. But I’m usually rational.”

  “There was a time when I could say the same thing about my stepfather.”

  “Then I don’t understand it.”

  “Yeah, well, you haven’t met Skipper. Frank was thinking with his testicles, trust me.” She paused for a moment; gave me an amused look. “Tell me something, Dr. Ford. You’re a biologist, one of those solid, mild-mannered, UP-front guys. It’s practically stenciled on your forehead. And Frank can’t be more than seven or eight years older than you. So why is it that middle-aged men confuse immaturity with youth? Or is it just that an aging brain starts shrinking before the rest of a man’s body?”

  She gave it a light touch, but there was some anger down in there deep, the same place her thirty-second rule came from.

  Thinking, Me? Mild-mannered? I said, “So your stepfather’s not the only one in the family who knows how to make cutting remarks.”

  “It wasn’t aimed at you, just an overall observation.”

  “Men in general, huh?”

  “They do seem to be fairly predictable. Not all, but most. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not gay, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “I wasn’t wondering. I was commenting on your attitude.” When I saw her expression condense, I added quickly, “Not criticizing. Just commenting.”

  “You didn’t see how devastated my mom was when Frank left. Like I told you, she was dependent on him. I’d moved out, then he moved out. So there she is, forty-some years old, overweight and a dud in bed according to the husband who abandoned her, living all alone. This beautiful woman, probably the kindest person I’ve ever met, and I’m not saying that just because I’m her daughter. She was hurt, disillusioned, she was depressed and vulnerable as hell. A perfect target for any wandering asshole who wanted to take advantage of her. You expect me to be happy about that?”

  “Are you talking about the guy she disappeared with or someone else?”

  Amanda said, “I’m talking about him, yeah, that’s exactly the guy I’m describing. Jackie Merlot, the one I’m telling you about.”

  According to Amanda, Gail had met Merlot years ago. She pronounced it “MUR-lowe,” similar to the pronunciation of the wine. At about the same time, Gail also started seeing Calloway as her psychologist. “Apparently, Mom knew Merlot back when the two of us still lived alone. I say apparently because I can’t remember ever seeing the guy until about eleven months ago. When I did meet him, just looking at him, something about his face, those eyes, it gave me the creeps. Jesus, talking about him gives me goosebumps right now. See?”

  I looked at the freckled arm extended toward me. When I touched my fingers to her forearm—there were, indeed, goosebumps—she flinched slightly, saying, “Merlot was supposedly one of Frank’s earliest land syndicate investors. I think he and my mom met through Frank at some party or something, got to be friends, but once she started to date Frank, Merlot vanished from the picture.”

  Nearly twenty years later, Merlot had reappeared.

  “I don’t know how he heard about the divorce. Maybe he read it in the paper or something, but only a couple of weeks after the thing was final, Merlot was back on the scene. Mom had been living by herself for more than a year by that time. Frank and his soulmate bimbo were a public item, not even trying to hide the fact they were living together. He’d even gone to the trouble of making a full confession to my mom about his affair. About why he’d outgrown the relationship and why he hoped they’d be friends, but their life as husband and wife were over, because he needed space to grow and he’d met an old spirit probably from another lifetime, meaning Skipper. Can you imagine someone as nice as my mom sitting there listening to this bullshit? Also that he wished her well, but that she had to go on and find a new life. Nice guy, huh?”

  “Kind of surprising behavior for a psychologist.”

  “Yeah, it’s like little Skipper had actually screwed the man’s brains loose. But you know what gets me most of all? Frank really is a pretty nice guy. That’s one of the reasons it hurt my mom so much. She wasn’t just dependent on him, she liked him. He took care of her, he made her laugh. About a month after Frank left, she told me the whole story. The both of us just sat there holding each other and crying.”

  I was sitting at the galley table, drinking iced tea, listening. I could look across the water to the row of guide slips, each with its own ornate wooden sign. Name of captain, name of skiff. At the end of the T-dock was Janet Mueller’s bright blue houseboat moored snugly among the more expensive sailboats, Aquasports, Makos and fiberglass party cruisers. Curled up on the stern deck of Janet’s boat was the marina’s black cat, Crunch & Des. His tail was slapping rhythmically in sunlight. He looked as predatory and as bored as some of the big lions I’d seen years ago while working in Mozambique.

  Thinking about Mozambique, the way its jungle rose as a green bluff out of the mud of the Zambezi River, caused me to think about the small Central American nation of Masagua. Similar jungle, similar earth odors, similar rustred rivers. It also caused me to think about Pilar Balserio.

  I said to Amanda, “I’ve read that losing a lover is like having someone die. Someone you care about. When a relationship ends, they say you have to go through a mourning period.”

  “Well … my mom certainly did that. She’s a very sensitive person. If there’s a commercial on television that uses a dog or a baby, she gets teary eyed. It used to drive me nuts, but that’s just the way she is. When I was growing up, all my girlfriends absolutely loved her. Same with the boyfriend I had in high school. The two of them still stay in touch. At least, they stayed in touch before she met Merlot. See, I’m telling you about the kind of person my mother is. She’s very caring and extremely thoughtful. You need to understand that to understand why I’m positive she’s in some kind of trouble.”

  According to Amanda, Merlot began by telephoning her mother regularly, checking on her, then dropping by to bring her books or little presents. Gail Richardson was lonely, depressed, and she welcomed the friendship.

  “This was after they’d spent quite a bit of time getting reacquainted on the Internet.”

  I said, “What?”

  “You know, the Internet, the America Online thing. You don’t have a computer?”

  “No.”

  “I thought everyone had a PC. But you know how it works, right?”

  I nodded. Tomlinson had told me about it.

  “Mom and Merlot did a bunch
of E-mailing, visiting the same chat rooms, that sort of stuff. Conversations through cyberspace. Merlot in his house, Mom in our old place, which is why it always seems so safe having on-line friends. I guess the two of them spent a lot of time getting reacquainted, just typing away.

  “After a while, they had their own Internet friends, their own little circle, people she’d never met. This was early on she told me about the Internet stuff, back when she was still open about her relationship with Merlot. Like I told you, the Internet stuff always seems so harmless.”

  “Your mother’s good with computers?”

  “No. You don’t have to be good with computers to work the Internet. She was just lonely, that’s all. She’d be online almost every night. I know, ‘cause I’d always get a busy signal when I tried to call. Finally, I talked her into getting a second line.”

  “She spent that much time.”

  “Yeah. What else did she have to do?”

  “And always with Merlot?”

  “Not at first. I spend my share of time on-line. I’ve got E-mail friends all over the world, so Mom and I used to jabber away to each other. For some reason … it’s hard to explain … but there are certain subjects that are easier to write about than talk about. So that’s what we’d do. Write notes back and forth about all kinds of stuff. She’d write about the way it was between her and my real dad, and I’d write about … well, private stuff, the way I felt about things.”

  “So what happened?”

  “What happened was she got involved with a different group of E-mail friends. I wasn’t a part of it. And I think she had an on-line crush on some guy from California. She never told me that, but if my mom mentions a guy more than twice, I know she has some feelings for him. I warned her about telling strangers too much about herself. I mean, no one really knows who anyone else is on the Internet. Right?”

  I didn’t reply. I had never been on the Internet. I had a phone. Sanibel’s good little library and the post office were just down the shell road. What did I need with the Internet?

  She was still talking about it. “Like the guy she was E-mailing, the guy who she said was from California. He could have been anyone. Like a ninety-year-old man from Jamaica. Or maybe not a man at all, but a woman. Or maybe some kinky teenager who lived two houses away. People can say anything about themselves. And there’s no way of knowing.”

  “Did she say how Merlot found her on-line?”

  “No. Just that she’d been E-mailing an old friend who’d been very kind and helpful to her. Her saying that, I think it was her way of telling me that she was going to start dating again. Mom and Frank were couples people. The only people they socialized with were married couples, so Merlot was one of the few single men in the picture. But every time I asked about him, my mom insisted that she had no romantic interest. Just that he was very kind to her, someone to talk to. So I figured, fine, that’s exactly what she needs. A friend.”

  But Amanda’s opinion changed when she finally met Merlot. “I stopped by Mom’s house one afternoon. I hadn’t called ahead and he was there, the two of them sitting out by the pool. Have you ever surprised someone doing something they shouldn’t be doing? That’s the way Merlot reacted. I could see his expression change when I walked in, surprised like he was ready to jump up and hide. I couldn’t figure out why. They were both fully dressed, they weren’t even sitting that close together, but I still had the feeling I’d interrupted something. Not from my mom. She was happy to see me, perfectly at ease. But from him, he was very nervous, lots of shifting around in his chair and the kind of eye contact where someone’s searching your face for a reaction.

  “He recovered pretty fast, though. After that, he was as nice and charming as he could be. He’d been saving a couple of presents for me. A hat and a T-shirt from some rock group he claimed to be associated with. And he made sure that I was the focus of conversation. But even if he’d have reacted differently when I walked in, I don’t think I’d have trusted the guy. He’s got all the social skills and he’s very, very smooth. Too smooth. He’s a hugger and a cheekkisser, one of those feel-good people who’s great at a wedding or a dinner party, but there was something odd about him. Just looking at him made me feel … dirty? No, that’s a little strong. But creepy, yeah. Something about Jackie Merlot … just wasn’t right.”

  Amanda said she didn’t tell her mother about her negative reaction to Merlot because she didn’t think it was necessary. Gail Richardson insisted that Merlot just wanted to be friends and that she had absolutely no romantic interest in the man.

  “I believed her. Up to that point, I don’t think she’d ever lied to me in her life. She needed friends and I wasn’t about to interfere. Besides, I never in a million years imagined that someone who looked like Merlot could get to first base with my mom. The man is more than just unattractive, he’s actually kind of disgusting.”

  I said, “Oh?”

  “Picture a mound of mashed potatoes or a very large marshmallow with the face of a teenage boy attached. Hairless and cheeky, that kind of face. Add one of those tiny, round mouths you sometimes see; one of those rosebud Irish mouths, then stick a blond toupee on top and razor-cut it smooth. You know, a disco haircut from the seventies. I don’t know why it’s blond, because he looks like he might have a little bit of something else in him. Asian? I don’t know, something. Eastern European maybe. But that’s Jackie Merlot. And he’s big. Huge, actually. One of those really freakish oversized men.

  “But the way he moves, the way he looks, he seems far more feminine than masculine. When he walks, he takes small, quick steps, almost like he’s dancing, and he has the kind of high, gravelly voice that I associate with large women who smoke a lot or who are very overweight.” She paused for a moment, thinking about it before she added, “So make it two reasons I didn’t think Merlot had a chance with my mom. Physically, he was way too unappealing, plus I also figured he was gay. He seemed so … safe.

  “Turns out,” she said, “he wasn’t.”

  By the time it was obvious that Gail Calloway and Merlot were involved in a physical relationship, it was too late for Amanda to tell her mother about her gut reaction to the man. Not that she didn’t try to tell her.

  She did.

  But it was too late to carry much influence. Merlot had a hold on her by then.

  “It’s the only way I can describe it,” Amanda told me. “He had a powerful hold on her that just kept getting stronger and stronger. When I asked her why she was interested in Merlot, her answer actually gave me chills. Her exact words were, ‘Because he thinks I’m pretty. He buys me presents and he says the nicest things to me.’

  “Doc, my mother is not a shallow person. Besides, she’s a fairly wealthy woman on her own. Frank and the courts saw to that. The way she said it, ‘He buys me presents,’ her voice had this robot kind of little-girl quality that scared the hell out of me. ‘He thinks I’m pretty.’ My God, like all the confidence she’d once had had been destroyed when Frank split.

  “I’m no spoiled little brat. I don’t have to approve of the man my mother dates, but there was something … weird? … yeah, something weird about this guy. It really bothered me. Another thing was, the more she saw of Merlot, the more distant she became toward me. Same with her closest women friends, and she had quite a few. We almost never heard from her. That sense that something sneaky was going on—the same thing I saw in Jackie Merlot’s face the day I surprised them—I now began to hear and see in my mother. It wasn’t like her. I knew then what I’m now positive of: Merlot had control of her and, whether she knew it or not, my mom was in trouble.”

  Gail Richardson began to spend weekends at Merlot’s home. Then she spent whole weeks at a time; increasingly long periods when Gail seldom made an attempt to communicate with her daughter or her friends. Amanda had the strong impression that Merlot discouraged outside contact. She saw her mother briefly in September, then again around Halloween. More than a month of silence followed befor
e Gail finally replied to one of Amanda’s many phone messages to Merlot’s house. A few days later, Merlot had his telephone number changed.

  “It was getting pretty close to Christmas by then,” Amanda said. “I didn’t know what in the world to do, so I finally broke down, called Frank and I’d told him what was going on. What scared me most of all was the sound of Frank’s voice when I told him. He recognized Merlot’s name right away and I realized that maybe, just maybe, Merlot had been a patient of Frank’s instead of an early investor like Mom had told me.”

  “You say that just because of the way your stepfather reacted?”

  She was nodding, very matter-of-fact. Her expression said: You’d have to know the guy to understand. “The way Frank reacts, that’s the only way you’d ever know anything from his shrink days. He takes the ethics of his old profession very seriously. It’s the only thing that explained why he sounded so damn worried.”

  “When you mentioned Jackie Merlot.”

  “Exactly. When I told him, what he said was, ‘Jesus Christ, no wonder your mother didn’t tell me.’ And a little bit later, he said, ‘I thought Jackie Merlot would be in a facility by now,’ and then he clammed up quick, like it had just sort of slipped out. But he was worried enough to hire a professional to have Merlot investigated, and he also offered to go with me to Merlot’s house and insist that we be allowed to speak with Mom.”

  Which is just what they did.

  Confronting Merlot while briefly reuniting with her mother had created an awkward, emotional scene. Amanda had a tough time telling me about it. People who shield themselves with a hard outer core do it for reasons of protection. Her voice broke several times. She drifted between tears and rage, but each time fought her way back under control.

  Merlot had a rental in one of the older canal-front subdivisions off A1A, Lauderdale. That he apparently had a live-in male roommate was unexpected. Amanda described the roommate as tall, muscular, not really black but not really white, with some kind of heavy accent, maybe French or Creole.