High Tide Read online

  When no one so much as moved even an inch in the direction of the luggage, Ace shook his head in exasperation, then turned and snatched the remote from Tim. “Would you help rather than hinder?”

  “Sorry, boss,” Tim said, but he didn’t look sorry. “I couldn’t resist it. That thing sure does look real.”

  “That’s why it cost me every penny I had,” Ace muttered. “Now get on that end and check its tail. See if there’s so much as a scratch.”

  Now that Ace and Tim had taken over, the deliveryman was leaning against the back wall and using a pocket knife to trim his nails. “So how come you don’t have a real alligator?” he asked. “You runnin’ out of real ones down here?” He laughed at his own joke. “Too many handbags and shoes?”

  Ace had to nearly push a woman aside as she leaned so far over to see inside the crate that she was in the way. “Kendrick Park is a bird sanctuary,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  When the man looked puzzled, Tim said quietly, “He doesn’t like to put things in cages, but alligators draw crowds.”

  The man pondered that for a minute. “I see. So you thought that if you get a fake alligator you’ll get tourists, but ol’ Ivan here won’t cry crocodile tears of loneliness. Right?” He was grinning at his little witticism.

  When Ace didn’t bother to answer, Tim said, “Exactly.”

  “You about through with your inspection, Mr. Birdman?” the deliveryman asked.

  “The damage on the crate is on the bottom. To do a proper inspection, we’re going to have to take it out and look at its belly.”

  “Just what my wife says to me every night,” the man said under his breath to Tim, who turned red and choked on his laughter. At the moment his boss didn’t look as though he was in the mood for jokes.

  “Okay, Tim, get the tail. Careful. I don’t want it hurt. Okay,” Ace said a moment later as he looked at the huge alligator replica stretched out full length on the floor. “It looks undamaged.”

  “So you want to sign this now, so I can go get something to eat?”

  “All right,” Ace said, stretching out his hand; then he took a deep breath before he signed the paper saying the terrifically expensive replica was now his responsibility. For a moment he glanced up at the plane passengers that were now surrounding them. They were silent, tired after their flight from New York, or maybe they were just awed at seeing what they had hoped to see on their trip to Florida. Whatever, they were just standing there watching this free show while suitcases went unnoticed, round and round on the carousel.

  “Okay, so let’s get him back in his box,” Ace said. “Tim, you get the tail, and I’ll get the head.”

  For a moment, Ace hesitated as he tried to figure out how best to get a grip on the beast. In the next second he inserted his hand, then his arm up to his armpit down the alligator’s mouth. When a collective “Ooooh” went up from the watching crowd, he smiled. This was going to work, he thought. Over on the other side of the state, Disney was making a fortune with his fake animals, while farms here in Fort Lauderdale were barely able to feed their 450-pound ’gators. And getting ma, pa, and the kids to want to go see a flock of flamingos was a losing proposition—and he had the empty bank account to prove it.

  As Ace and Tim were putting the giant fiberglass alligator back into the box, neither of them saw the inquisitive toddler slip between the suitcases and pick up the remote control that Ace had carefully set on top of his toolbox. The little boy, at eighteen months, just loved to push buttons.

  “Bloody hell,” Fiona muttered as she disembarked the plane. She’d had a couple of hangovers in her life, mostly while in college, but nothing like this. Not only did her head hurt, but she could feel even the tiny bones in her ankles. She’d fallen asleep on the plane, and the attendant had had to wake her, which made her the last one off the plane.

  Dragging her backpack on over her shoulder sent more pain through her. She and the rest of The Five, as they’d dubbed themselves as kids, had stayed out until two A.M., laughing riotously over everything in their lives, but most especially over Fiona’s having to go on a fishing trip.

  “You?” Jean had said. “I can’t imagine you more than two miles from a manicurist.” Jean was a sculptor and her hands always looked scraped and worn. But all four of the women knew that Jean didn’t need to do anything to make a living; she had a trust fund.

  As Fiona walked into the airport, the bright light coming through the huge windows made her hide her eyes while she fumbled in her bag for the sunglasses she’d bought at La-Guardia Airport. In New York they’d seemed so dark she could hardly see through them. But now the glare made them seem like clear glass.

  The airport seemed empty as she trudged ahead, her aching head filled with nothing but bad thoughts. How was she going to survive the next three days? Would this man require her to clean fish?

  When she stepped onto the escalator leading down to the baggage carousels, the movement almost made her retch. Quickly, she fumbled in her bag for a tissue, then held it to her mouth. Why was she here and what did this man Roy Hudson want with her? And why Florida? And if Florida, why not some nice clean, private beach? Why was he insisting on going into the swamps or whatever to look for—

  Because Fiona had a tissue to her mouth and her eyes closed, she had descended the escalator without seeing the silent, watching crowd at the bottom. But when she stepped off, she nearly fell on top of a man with a paunch and not much hair.

  “Pardon me,” she said in a voice as husky as her brain was feeling.

  The man looked up at her and his face softened. “Any time,” he said, then stepped aside so she could see what they were all watching.

  Later, Fiona said that she didn’t think, she just moved. What she saw—her eyes blinking behind the dark glasses, her mind full of swamps and alligators and the treachery of the state of Florida—was a man with his arm being eaten off by an enormous alligator. As the alligator started to thrash its tail, then move its head from side to side, the man shouted something incomprehensible as he tried to free himself from the attacking reptile.

  In school Fiona had been the girl with the fastest reaction time in any game, whether it was soccer or pickup sticks, and now she lost no time. Next to her was a woman with an airport luggage cart, and on top of it was a pink bowling ball bag with the name Dixie embroidered on it.

  Without a thought, Fiona picked up the bag and threw it with all her might at the midsection of the alligator.

  She wasn’t prepared for what happened next. The alligator exploded! It didn’t open its mouth and release its victim. Instead, there was a terrific noise, then the whole nasty green thing seemed to fly into thousands of pieces that went flying around the airport.

  While Fiona stood there in stunned silence, the rest of the people in the airport seemed to go crazy. Instantly there was screaming and shouts of, “Bomb, bomb!”; then sirens went off and people started running.

  Unmoving, still not understanding what had happened, Fiona removed her sunglasses and looked at what she thought had been an alligator. A man came toward her and there seemed to be a double row of teeth attached to his upper arm. Her eyes were on the oddity of the teeth, but when she looked up at the man to ask why he was wearing teeth, she saw that he was furious and he was coming after her.

  Instinctively, Fiona took a step backward, whereupon she tripped over the luggage cart of the woman who had had the bowling ball bag. But now the woman was gone, probably to join all the many people who were screaming and running frantically for the exits.

  “Lady, I’m going to kill you,” the man said as his hands made for Fiona’s neck.

  But the alligator teeth, and what looked to be a detached eyeball, slipped down his hands so that both teeth and murderous hands were coming for her throat. Fiona opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

  But then, just before the man reached her, two security guards and a boy with red hair grabbed the man, teeth and all, and p