Powder Burn - Carl Hiaasen [28]
He parked under the canopy of lush trees in front of his house. An outdoor spotlight, automatically timed to flash on at dusk, illuminated the walkway to the front door in a tunnel of white light. The moths and mosquitoes fluttered excitedly in and out from the shadows, and Meadows hurried into the house.
On the drive home, suddenly, fixed clearly in his mind, had come an image of the Ecuadorian oil ministry, what it should and would look like. It gave Meadows a rush just to think about starting the drafting. He had not felt so much enthusiasm since the shooting.
Meadows flipped a switch on the wall, and overhead fans began to purr. “To work,” Meadows said to himself, “but first, a swim.”
He peeled off his shirt, kicked off his trousers and ambled to the porch. The wind had died, and the bay was smooth indigo glass in the night.
Meadows noticed that the light in the swimming pool was on. He did not remember leaving it that way, but then again he had been forgetful these past weeks. Could it have been the pool service? What day do they come? Meadows wondered. It must have been them.
The pool was clean and clear. The underwater spotlights threw an iridescent aqua glow on the dense foliage in Meadows’s backyard. The architect slipped out of his undershorts, savoring the privacy. Just me and the sleeping sparrows.
Meadows walked to the deep end, squatting twice to check the right leg. No pain. He stood erect on the diving board, letting his eyes measure the four quick steps.
A small branch, dropped from one of the old oaks, lay at the end of the diving board. Meadows retrieved it, his steps springing on the fiberglass platform. He tossed the branch into a hedge, and it landed with a rustle. The racket flushed a small chameleon, brown and mottled. Terrified, it ran full bore, its tail straight in the air, on a beeline for the swimming pool.
“Watch out, little fella.” Meadows laughed.
The tiny reptile skittered into the pool, and suddenly the lights flashed. In that fraction of a second, Meadows heard a sound like the ripping of a stiff piece of linen. Then a wave of heat rose off the pool, and it was pitch-black.
Meadows inched back off the diving board, trembling, naked and unarmed. He waited fearfully for a noise, for footsteps hurrying through the yard, for a cold voice.
But the night was silent.
Slowly, in small steps, he moved toward the house until he was seized by his own fear and adrenaline. He broke into a run, but not before the architect saw it floating in the clear hot water: the twisted, blackened corpse of the chameleon, as crisp as a dead leaf on a quiet lake.
Chapter 8
OCTAVIO NELSON surveyed the pool, then peered out at the bay, where a rusty shrimper labored south, nets streeling. He drank deeply of the still night air, hot, humid, salty.
“Beautiful place,” Nelson said. “Setup like this must have cost you a bundle.” He bent down to the spot where the electric cable snaked through the areca bushes into the shallow end of the pool.
“Clever,” he muttered, as though to himself. “Those guys are usually not that clever. One little foot in the water and ciao.”
Nelson decided not to call the boys from the lab. They would find no fingerprints, no discarded tools, no trace of whoever had so carefully and skillfully rigged a swimming pool for death. Nelson walked back to the wooden porch steps, where Chris Meadows sat with his elbows on his knees, knuckles white around a glass of amber liquid. On the phone Meadows had been tightly in control, but just barely. Little wonder. This was a no-nonsense hit, and by rights he should be dead.
“Once again you’re a lucky man, amigo,” Nelson said softly.
Meadows swirled the ice in his glass. The Jack Daniel’s was his third. He did not speak for a long moment, as though not trusting himself to speak. His face was the color of the limestone