Paradise Burning by Blair Bancroft Page B

grazing cows and horses. Even a riding academy and a
vast horse farm, which included a racetrack and a glimpse of a home
that made Tara look like the gardener’s cottage. By the time Mandy
came to the bridge across the river, she had rubbernecked so much
her shoulders were stiff.
    Nothing, absolutely nothing, about
downtown Golden Beach—which prided itself on being one of the
Florida’s finest resort and retirement communities—had prepared her
for the vast bucolic acreage on which some of its citizens lived.
Hearing Peter say there was a cattle ranch across the river was far
less of a surprise than seeing so many cows, horses, pastures, and
stables on this side of the
river. Florida was a very strange place. Not at all what Mandy had
expected.
    She found the bridge. About a mile beyond it,
homes began to appear, nearly all wood frame and sensibly elevated
on stilts. One or two were Key West style, though not as elegant as
their cousins in Amber Run, but most were country cottages elevated
solely for practicality instead of any attempt at architectural
grace. All were set in the midst of a live oak forest so large and
so old that the Spanish moss dripping from every branch seemed like
honored beards of age. With the river on one side and the oaks
above, Mandy realized these people on the far side of the Calusa
had a natural air conditioning the rest of Golden Beach’s citizens
could only envy.
    Nearly every yard was fenced. To keep dogs
and children in, Mandy wondered, or alligators out? Probably both.
Not to mention that these people built here because they enjoyed
their privacy. Mandy winced. Did that make her a voyeur?
    It took only five minutes to drive by every
home in the enclave, yet she was certain she was still two or three
miles north of the place where she’d seen the blonde in the white
dress. So what now? Mandy turned around and drove back to a place
where the road forked and she’d gone left instead of right. As she
turned onto this last unexplored road, Mandy guessed she was going
south, but she’d made so many twists and turns to get where she was
that her usually reliable sense of direction was sadly skewed.
    The houses fell away, the road narrowed,
turned to dirt. Mandy had visions of Wade Whitlaw hiding behind a
sturdy oak, shotgun in hand. Perhaps she should turn around. But
where? Drainage ditches hugged the narrow track on either side.
Mandy gritted her teeth and kept going, vowing to turn around at
the first wide place in the road. Independence was all well and
good, but she might be overdoing it. One glimpse of a woman on a
riverbank was not worth getting shot at. Or arrested for
trespassing.
    The road came to an abrupt dead end.
Mandy braked to a halt, staring in fascination at a very
business-like eight-foot chain link fence topped with four strands
of barbed wire. The gate boasted a key-pad lock . Oh-oh . The fine hairs on the back of her neck
rose. This was more than a desire for privacy. That fence, not to
mention the signs she’d ignored, screamed she was trespassing big
time. She needed to get out. Now.
    There was, thank God, a turnaround in
front of the towering gate. Mandy had just begun to maneuver the
car around when she saw a man striding down the road behind the
fence. He was moving in the brisk, almost bristling, manner of a
man who had to be moving—going somewhere, doing something—or go
stark raving mad. Horribly embarrassed, Mandy once again braked,
too polite to run from the scolding she was about to receive. The
man had a right to scold. She was a Peeping Tom, caught red-handed. He did not, she noted with
relief, carry a shotgun.
    But as Mandy sat there quivering, the man
never faltered in his stride, never gave the slightest sign he even
noticed her existence. He reached the gate, slammed his palm
against the silver metal bar at the center, his taut energy
palpable, then turned on his heel and started back down the sandy
trail. Mandy’s breath whooshed out in a long