Seduced (Hannah Smith, 4, Band 4) - Hardcover

White, Randy Wayne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399169776 ISBN 13: 9780399169779

Verlag: PENGUIN GROUP, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Hannah Smith returns in the stunning new adventure in the New York Times–bestselling series by the author of the Doc Ford novels.
 
A fishing guide and part-time investigator, Hannah Smith is a tall, strong Florida woman descended from many generations of the same. But the problem before her now is much older even than that.

Five hundred years ago, Spanish conquistadors planted the first orange seeds in Florida, but now the whole industry is in trouble. The trees are dying at the root, weakened by infestation and genetic manipulation, and the only solution might be somehow, somewhere, to find samples of the original root stock. No one is better equipped to traverse the swamps and murky backcountry of Florida than Hannah, but once word leaks out of her quest, the trouble begins. “There are people who will kill to find a direct descendant of those first seeds,” a biologist warns her—and it looks like his words may be all too prophetic.

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Besides the Hannah Smith novels Gone, Deceived, and Haunted, Randy Wayne White is the author of twenty-three Doc Ford novels, most recently Cuba Straits and Deep Blue. He has also published four collections of his columns for Outside magazine and elsewhere. In 2002, a one-hour documentary film called The Gift of the Game, about the author’s trip to Cuba to find the remnants of the Little League teams founded by Ernest Hemingway in the days before Castro, won the Best of the Fest award from the 2002 Woods Hole Film Festival, then was bought by PBS and broadcast in the spring and summer of 2003. A veteran fishing guide who at one time had his own local PBS show, White lives on Sanibel Island, Florida.

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One

I was enjoying the conversation with a man I used to date, a biologist named Marion Ford, until the subject swung from Florida oranges to a giant snake. He’d seen it crossing a bay south of the island where I grew up and still occasionally reside.

“How far south?”

“A ways. We were flying back from Key West.”

“That’s where you disappeared to?”

“I’ve been traveling,” he said, which was typical. “It was a Burmese python—twelve, maybe fifteen feet long. Too big for a boa. Hard to be sure of the size because it was swimming, but that’s not the point.”

“It is to me,” I said. “If you’re trying to scare me into moving closer to your lab, I’m flattered, but I’d prefer the particulars first. There are better ways than inventing snakes.”

“Invent?” He was mystified. Marion has warmth, if you get to know him, but he is slow to recognize playful humor.

“I don’t doubt you saw it, but there’s a hundred miles of coast between here and the Keys. Was the snake closer to Naples or Sanibel Island?”

“Let me finish. I was making a connection between the parasites killing your orange trees and higher-profile exotics like pythons, boas, a whole long list of reptiles that are taking over the state. Not just reptiles, of course. Fire ants have all but destroyed the quail population. Brazilian pepper trees are another example, but they were intentionally introduced by state biologists, so—”

“Marion,” I said patiently, “you know I’m not fond of snakes, and you know why. Please stick to the subject.”

“I thought I was.”

“You were for a while. Now you’re not.”

I was aboard a tidy Marlow cabin cruiser that is my home, neatening up the galley, with the phone to my ear. As we talked, I could look out the cabin door and see the family dock built by my late Uncle Jake as it wobbled through the mangroves. Across the road, atop an Indian mound, was an old yellow-pine Cracker house with a tin roof and a wraparound porch. Veiled by screening were ceiling fans, a summer kitchen, and a hammock where, as a child, I had often slept on hot summer nights.

What I chose not to notice was a black Lincoln Town Car parked in the shade. For more than an hour, I’d been trying to ignore the thing. It belonged to an old-time Florida millionaire who, twenty years ago, had been my mother’s secret lover. Two brain surgeries and a fondness for smoking pot have not improved her memory, nor pacified her mood swings and sometimes wild behavior.

Better, I’d decided, to call a friend rather than fixate on what might be going on up there. Inside, it was just the two of them: my mother, Loretta, and eighty-year-old Harney Chatham, the former lieutenant governor of Florida, who was also a married man.

Not that anyone remembers lieutenant governors. Even Mr. Chatham’s recent prostate surgery had not made the news.

Ford asked, “Are you still there?”

I realized my attention had drifted. “I’m not one to interrupt, but that doesn’t mean I’m not listening. How big was the snake?”

Apparently, he had already covered that ground. Instead of sighing, as a normal person would, he calmly repeated the ­details—a quality that was admirable, I suppose, but also rankled me. It was as if he were a professor tutoring one of his slower students.

“Hannah,” he added, “I haven’t heard from you in more than three weeks—”

“You disappeared a month ago, so what do you expect?”

“I didn’t disappear, I was traveling,” he reminded me. “Now, out of the blue, you call to tell me the oranges in your citrus grove are dying. Why ask me for advice?”

“They’re withering,” I corrected, “with a sort of green mold on the skins, and the fruit’s bitter.”

“The entire grove?”

“The ones I care about. The honeybells and grapefruit, all my favorites. You can tell by the leaves. They start to curl up, with yellow streaks.”

“But not all?”

“I didn’t think to check.”

“You should. If some of the trees aren’t infected, I’d step back and ask myself what’s different about them? Less shade, more sun—a different soil or rootstock? But if the entire grove is ­diseased—”

I said, “It’s not big enough to be called a grove; not really. Just a few dozen trees my grandfather planted way, way back.”

“I know. All I’m saying is, you must have ties to people in the citrus business who can give you better advice than me.”

Again, my eyes moved to the black limousine. “Some of the biggest,” I replied, “but I do miss our talks. You’re a biologist, and it’s been a while, so I thought maybe you’d heard something new.”

This, he found humorous. “The parasites that spread citrus greening don’t have fins, and they don’t swim. I’m a marine biologist. All I know is, they’re exotics, and they’ve damn near ruined a billion-dollar industry. Is that really the reason you called?”

I was about to cover my deception by shifting topics when I saw Loretta charge out of the house wearing a housecoat and fluffy pink slippers. Her mannerisms were frantic as if she were being chased, or had suffered a second brain aneurysm. She bounced on her toes and flapped her hands in my direction, then charged back onto the porch.

“Something’s wrong,” I said.

“Nothing we can’t fix, Hannah, if you’re willing to—”

“Not us, my crazy mother,” I interrupted, and went out the cabin door in a hurry.

The former lieutenant governor was either dead or in a bad way. I knew it when Loretta blocked me from the porch, saying, “Even as a child you had a selfish streak. Now you refuse to do me this one little favor?”

The favor she had demanded was, “Go away, and, for god’s sake, don’t call the law. It’s too late to save your mama from ­sinning . . . But you didn’t hear that from me. I’m not gonna confess to anything.”

I felt a little dizzy when I heard those words. “Where is he, Loretta?”

“Who?”

“You don’t think I recognize his car? If Mr. Chatham is sick, we need to do something. Please tell me something terrible hasn’t happened.”

She stared at the Lincoln Town Car and hyperventilated.

“Loretta, move. If Reggie’s sleeping in the backseat, go bang on the window and get him up here. I’ll look for myself.”

Reggie was Mr. Chatham’s limo driver.

“Not until I think this through,” she snapped, and squared herself in front of the door. Loretta isn’t a large woman—not compared to me, her only child—but she has a magic way of puffing herself while her bright blue eyes catch fire. “For once in your life, do something to make me happy, Hannah. Just go away and leave us be.”

“I’m not leaving until—”

“Do as you’re told, young lady!” she hollered, and glared with those wild eyes of hers.

For an instant, I was a child again, standing in the same doorway of the same house that hadn’t changed much since my mother had stung me with similar words many...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PENGUIN GROUP
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0399169776
• ISBN 13: 9780399169779
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar