Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  SWAMP SEARCH

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Originally published in Murder, July 1957.

  *

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  SWAMP SEARCH

  I noticed the blue-gray Caddy on my road, but had no time to watch it twist and bounce the twenty miles through Everglades sawgrass, palmetto, and slash pine from the Tamiami trail to my place.

  I’d been out all morning in the helicopter hunting for strays and just as I glimpsed the Caddy, I saw one of my Santa Gertrudis heifers caught in a bog. Lose a cow in that ooze, you never see her again. I needed every cow I had, every penny I could earn on my farm. I was in hock, even paying for the ’copter on installments.

  I engaged the pedals, the wings rotated slowly and I hovered over the bawling cow. The pinch-rig I’d made was an ice-tong affair of steel and leather I let down on my cable.

  “Take it easy, baby,” I told the cow. “You’re too valuable to lose in that goo.”

  The cable winched down, I closed the pincher about her belly and started upward. The sucking noise of the ooze and bawling of the cow rose above the revving of my motor.

  I let the heifer swing a moment to impress her, then set her down in high grass, cussed her once for luck, reeled in my line and peeled off toward the house where the Caddy was parked in the yard.

  She was sitting in the Caddy looking around when I walked toward her. What she saw was bare sand yard without even a slash pine growing in it, brown frame house of four rooms and porch, coal-oil lamps and outhouse. Rugged, but beautiful to me. It had belonged to my folks. They’d died while I was in a Chinese prison camp. It got so this lonely place was what I’d dreamed of coming back to.

  “How’d you get this far off the trail?” I said. “My road is hard to find.”

  She got out of the car, smiled. Except for her shape she wasn’t terrific; wavy brown hair, deep-set brown eyes and squared chin. “Not as hard to find as your house. I had a ball getting here—the car scraped between the ruts.”

  “It’s been dry or you’d never have made it.”

  “I’d have made it.” Something about her voice made me look at her again, closer.

  Her gaze touched my helicopter, and didn’t move on. She smiled again. “You Jim Norton?”

  I nodded and she said, still watching the ‘copter, “I’m Celia Carmic… Mrs. Curt Carmic.”

  Carmic. I stared. The whole state had been alerted in a search for Curt Carmic. He had crashed in his private plane on an Everglades hunting trip. After a week of intensive searching, the Coast Guard had abandoned him as dead.

  I invited her up on the porch. “I’m sorry about your husband, Mrs. Carmic.”

  “Yes.” She shook her head as though still unable to believe it. She made a wad of her handkerchief. “Curt and I were—very happy, Mr. Norton. He was—well, several years older than I, but he was a vital man, had the world in his hand.” Her head tilted. “I don’t say Curt didn’t have enemies. Every strong man does.”

  Her eyes were moist, her voice sounded full of tears. She told me about Carmic. She glossed over the way he got a discharge from the Marines in 1943, but said that from 1945 he’d had great success, headed two companies making parts for the Korean police action, Carmic Defrosters.

  “Curt was due in Washington on the Monday following his trip. They were investigating his war profits. Curt was ill at this injustice, his doctor told him to rest. His idea of rest was a weekend hunting trip in the Everglades. But more than anything, Mr. Norton, he wanted to come back and clear his name.” Her chin quivered. “I can’t believe Curt is dead.”

  I didn’t know what to say. All I wanted down here was peace, and a chance to make a living my way. I’d been in the world she talked about. I’d had it.

  “They searched for Curt for a week. I know they were thorough and didn’t find a trace. I can’t give up. Can you understand that, Mr. Norton? I’ve got to find him. That’s why I came to you.”

  I waited, not knowing why I didn’t want to get mixed up in this thing. She said, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars—and pay all expenses if you’ll help me search for him.”

  I had plenty of use for a thousand dollars. I couldn’t buy the picture she painted of Curt Carmic. Him I never knew, but I knew his Defrosters and there was a good reason for that Senate inquiry. Still, no man would take to the Everglades even to escape a government investigation.

  “How long would you want to search?”

  “Until we find him.” She paced my porch. “I’ll pay the thousand dollars for anything up to ten days. After that—” she spread her hands, left that unfinished. Tensely she watched me until I nodded. She cried then. She stood rigid and tears ran down her cheeks.

  The rest of the day we studied flight plans and maps. She had all the information she could get on the Everglades and the weather.

  I tried to shrug off the feeling of wrong that persisted. Any profiteer who’d sell Carmic Defrosters to his country should have been investigated and any woman who’d lived ten years with him should know that. Yet she spoke of him as though he were saintly. I reminded myself it didn’t matter, it was a thousand dollars to me, but the nagging sense of emptiness stayed.

  We set up the first flight pattern, figured mileage, weather and gas capacity and set for seven the next morning. When the time was set, Celia Carmic became a different woman.

  First she’d been the bereaved wife, then the cold general over map briefing and weather data. At supper she chatted about her life in Washington. She ate delicately—like a she-wolf with a Vassar education. I’d never met anyone like her; I had to smile.

  “Why are you laughing at me?”

  I fumbled my fork. “I’m not laughing.”

  She stopped eating, touched her lips with a paper napkin. “How old are you, Jim?”

  I remembered the war years, the prison. “I’ll be a hundred next April.”

  “I’d say twenty-three.”

  “Say whatever you like.”

  She looked around. “No girl to share all this?”

  I shook my head. “The kind that would share this I wouldn’t want. And the other kind—” I stopped. I suddenly knew the only kind of woman I’d ever wanted. We just looked at each other… “I can’t afford what I want,” I said.

  “What would you do to be able to afford her?”

  “Anything.”

  “Sure?”

  “Anything at all.”

  “You might be held to that,” she said. “And soon.”

  About five A.M. I heard something stir in the house and jumped out of bed. Sleep-drugged, I staggered across the room. I reached the guest room door before I remembered Celia was there.

  I stopped in the doorway, fully awake, realizing I was in my undershorts; it was too hot to sleep in anything more.

  She was fully dressed, white shirt, jodhpurs, gleaming boots. She had a handful of maps and weather data. “Sorry I wakened you, Jim. I couldn’t sleep any more. I’m too anxious to get started.”

  I mumbled something and backed off. She let her eyes prowl over me and then walked out into the front room leaving me gaping after her. Where was the bereaved wife? Where were those unshed tears?

  From that moment there was a sick emptiness in my stomach. But the second the flight started, she was all business.

  She sat with the flight pattern mapped on her lap. After I filled all gas tanks at the Lewiston Airport, she watched compass and mileage indicator until we reached the lines marking our first pattern. Coldly serious, she read that country minutely with field glasses.

  She never took five, never relaxed. This land was huge bolts of scorched brown, ribboned by black strings of water. Heron took flight, I pointed out a wildcat. Nothing down there but silence and heat waves.

  We made our circle, reached the end of the flight pattern. She sat back, dropped the binoculars. Red circles encased her eyes. “We know they’re not in there.”

  “We’ll take the second pattern tomorrow.”

  She seemed to have lost interest. She was watching me again from the corner of her eyes. I set the ’copter down in the yard.

  “Think I could learn to handle a windmill, Jim?”

  “It’s not easy. But I could teach you.”

  She looked thoughtful.

  After supper she wanted a drink to celebrate the end of our first flight. All I had was a few cans of warm beer. We drank that. She laughed and talked, teasing me about being a farmer stuck away from the world. Suddenly for no reason we stopped laughing and we stopped talking.

  Crickets and frogs screeched outside the windows. It was so quiet I heard mosquitoes frantic against the screens.

  I tried not to stare at her, but I couldn’t keep my gaze off her. I asked if she were sleepy. She said no. We sat for a long time and listened to the crickets. That night I didn’t sleep much….

  Next morning I was out of bed and dressed hours ahead of Celia. I fixed breakfast but not even the odors of coffee and eggs wakened her. I let her sleep. I didn’t trust myself in that room. I remembered why she was here—a husband lost in the swamp. I had to keep remembering that.

  At a quarter of seven she came out, voice angry. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  I stared at her, knowing how I’d fought to keep out of that room. “Why didn’t you bring an alarm clock?”

  We stood tense across the table. Then she smiled and looked very pleased about something….

  We’d been flying about three hours and suddenly Celia grabbed my arm. An electric charge went through me at her touch. Maybe you don’t know what it is to want like that. I was sick, wanting just two things: never to find her husband and to have money so I could afford Celia Carmic.

  She pointed to something glittering. I engaged the pedals, idled off the engine and we settled in a cleared space six inches above water.

  She scrambled out of the plane, ran through muck and saw-grass. I plodded after her. When I reached her, she was swearing, words she shouldn’t even have known.

  Somebody had cut open a five gallon oil can, tossed it beside the creek. She followed me back to the ’copter.

  We retraced and she was silent, did not even mention learning to handle the ’copter. We set down in the yard about four and she walked silently into the house.

  After supper she discovered the old wind-up phonograph in the front room. She played an ancient record. “Sweet—Stay As Sweet As You Are.” She wound it, played it again.

  “Reminds me of you,” she said. “Sweet and innocent.”

  I remembered her disappointment this afternoon when she thought we’d found a sign of her husband. This was a different woman.

  “Come on, Jim, dance with me.”

  “I don’t dance.”

  “I’ll teach you.” She came over, took my hands. Hers were like ice. I stood up. She came into my arms, moved closer. Her hands slid up my back….

  I wanted to sleep through next morning. It was good burying my face in the warm fragrance of her hair. But when I thought about the flight, I thought about her husband. I didn’t like that.

  I pulled her closer. She went taut. “No, Jim. We’re going to search.” She pulled away, eyes hard. “We’re going to search all day. Everyday.”

  In the plane, I felt her nearness, I could smell her. All day she kept binoculars fixed on that changeless land.

  “We’re not staying out long enough,” she said.

  My voice was hard. “We’ll look as long as you like. That doesn’t keep me from hoping we—don’t find him.”

  Her fingers closed on my arm. “Don’t say that, Jim. Pray we do find him.”

  How could she do that, turn her emotions off and on? I could not forget last night; for her it had never happened. She loved her husband. She came to me. It didn’t make my kind of sense. I clammed up.

  We reached the end of the pattern. She dropped the glasses, rings deep about her eyes. But when she dropped the binoculars, she dropped the search. Now her brown eyes sought something else. “How long, Jim, before we get home?”

  Her voice was breathless. I went empty. Her hand gripped me. “It’s too far. Hurry.”

  I tried to hurry but they never built enough speed in a flying windmill for us. I set the ’copter down in the yard, killed the engine. We ran across the yard. That was when I saw the car tire tracks.

  I stopped. The tracks came in from the road. “Somebody’s been here.” I sounded like Papa Bear.

  Celia frowned, but pulled me toward the house. “Probably some salesman.”

  Footprints in the sand led around the house, paused at every window. “Persistent.” I said.

  For no reason I could explain, I felt that old sense of wrong mixed with unexplained fear. “I’ll take the ’copter. Maybe I can catch him before he gets back to the Trail.”

  “Don’t be a fool.” She pressed against me. “I’ve waited all day. You’re not chasing down some salesman. You’re not going to leave me tonight.”

  I didn’t, either….

  Next morning I woke up thinking about those tire tracks and footprints. Too many things were unexplained, wrong. I fixed breakfast but didn’t eat anything. Celia ate like a plowman.

  I followed the flight pattern but my mind wasn’t on it. Celia never relaxed. We’d not found one encouraging sign, yet she never mentioned quitting. One thing was now certain. She was compelled by something stronger than that love she’d talked about the first day. Did she love Carmic at all? She never discussed him outside the ’copter. She never worried about the hell he endured if he were alive in that swamp country. All she did was glue her gaze to that ground.

  When we returned, I searched first for new tire tracks. There was none. I couldn’t say why, but I felt no better.

  Celia pretended disinterest, but she looked for them, too.

  After supper, she started the phonograph. It blared but only intensified the silence. She toppled into my lap. “It’s too quiet, doll. I’m a big city girl. The Embassy—F Street. Got to have excitement. Where you going to take me?”

  I smelled the warm fragrance at the nape of her neck. “I know where I want to take you.”

  “There’s a juke joint about a mile down the Tamiami Trail from your road.”

  “Twenty miles. Nickel juke. Ten cent beer and mud farmers.”

  “That’s where I want to go.”

  I looked at her squared chin, didn’t even bother to argue.

  She drove recklessly on the twisting roadway, parked beside the Seminole Inn. An anaemic neon glowed fitfully. There were gas pumps out front, motel cottages in the rear. Inside was boot-scarred bar, small dance space, unpainted tables, candles in beer cans, booths. There were half a dozen customers. We sat at a table, ordered beer. She seemed to have forgotten her husband, so I tried to.

  A man sat alone at the end of the bar near the juke. I didn’t pay any attention to him at first. I noticed he was pretty-boy handsome, with a golden, sculptured profile, thin mouth.

  We’d been there about ten minutes before I realized he was watching every move we made. Every time I looked up, his eyes would go flat and he’d stare beyond me.

  “You know that character?” I said to Celia.

  “Who?” She said it too carelessly. There weren’t that many people in there. I got that old empty feeling.

  “Handsome,” I said. “The blond god over there. He must know you, he’s staring at you.”

  Celia looked dutifully. Her eyes met Handsome’s for an instant. I saw something flicker in his flat eyes—something green like jealousy, red like hatred. It flashed and was gone. He looked at his beer.

  “I’m sure I never saw him before,” Celia said. “Want to dance?”

  What I wanted was to hit somebody or something. If she knew the guy, why didn’t she say so? I had to be sure. I excused myself, went through the door marked “His’n.”

  From inside I watched Celia. She got up after a moment, walked over to the juke. Handsome swung around at the bar as I’d known he would.

  For a moment I was ill. I pressed my ear against the pine paneling, trying to hear what they said. Celia punched coins into the juke. “Stay away.” Her voice was a sharp whisper.

  “I’ve got to see you!”

  “You can’t. I told you you couldn’t.”

  “You’re crossing me—” The blaring music drowned his words. I washed my face, rinsed out my mouth, staring at my reflection in the dirty window.

  I was silent driving home. Celia laughed, teased, called me a baby. She slid over close, laid her head on my shoulder. It was a gray night, strung with stars and full of wrong.

  “I wish you’d teach me to run the ’copter, Jim.”

  I felt pebbles in my throat. I wanted her to tell me the truth, but by now I knew better. I wouldn’t waste my breath. “You couldn’t take your eyes away from those binoculars long enough to learn.”

  She sighed. “That’s right. That’s most important, isn’t it?”

  I didn’t say anything. It didn’t seem important at all.

  When we got back next afternoon from the fifth flight pattern, I saw the new tracks. “Well, he was back again,” I said.

  She took it big. “Somebody is trying to sell you something.”

  “That’s God’s truth.”

  “—and just can’t believe you’re gone so much!” She met my gaze evenly when she said that and didn’t even blush.

  We ate supper silently. Afterwards she marked out the next flight pattern. I didn’t even bother to look at it. I told myself I was going to bed alone. I didn’t. She had me all clobbered, but I wanted her worse than ever.

  The next morning we took off as usual. I asked her to explain the prowler.

  She said it must be a neighbor of mine, or a salesman.

  I shook my head. “Don’t give me that. I have no neighbors. A salesman would travel that road once, maybe; never twice.”

 

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