It was 8 a.m. at Dottie’s Downtown Diner and the counter and booths were filling up fast. Mitch Miccosukee slid into a booth set back from the bustle and waited for his client, Horace Lutz.
Within
seconds Dee Dee popped into view, an old-school waitress who never wrote
anything down and always got everything right.
“Morning,
Mitch. Whacha having?”
“Morning,
Dee Dee. Give me two eggs over easy, sausage links, hash browns, whole wheat
toast and black coffee.”
“You got
it,” Dee Dee chirped, already kitchen bound and moving fast.
Mitch looked
toward the front door just as Horace Lutz lumbered in. A meaty man with a
bowlegged gait and downcast gaze, he was a familiar sight around town shopping
or dining with his wife Olga. They’d been married for 42 years, becoming one of
those couples that achieve a kind of brand identity – Horace & Olga, Olga
& Horace. No one ever thought of one without the other. That is until a
couple days ago when Olga went missing.
Mitch
motioned to the empty seat across from him. “Morning Horace, how you holding
up?”
“Surviving,”
Horace grumbled. “Worried sick about, Olga.”
“Of course
you are,” Mitch said consolingly. “You have my word that I’ll do everything in
my power to help you find her.”
“I
appreciate that,” Horace mumbled. “The police were no help.”
Just then
Dee Dee popped up tableside with Mitch’s breakfast. “Can I get you something,
Horace.”
“Just
coffee, black.”
“Coming
right up.”
Mitch picked
up his fork and took a tentative poke at his hash browns while eyeing Horace
intently.
“Tell me
about the day Olga went missing. It was Wednesday, right?”
“Right. We
were out for our morning walk,” Horace recollected. “Well, I waddled, she
walked.”
Mitch smiled
at the mental image.
“After a
mile or so, she was still feeling pretty peppy and I was pooped. I told her ‘happy trails’ and headed back to
the house to wait for her return. I’m still waiting.”
“Is there a
way she would have gone out of habit – a specific street, direction, route?”
“We stuck to
certain streets within the neighborhood, ones with less traffic, better
scenery, friendlier dogs,” Horace indicated.
“Did you
notice anything out of the ordinary in the area that day?”
Horace
looked up at the ceiling for a moment, running through the streets in his mind.
“Nothing that
stands out,” he concluded.
Mitch jotted
some notes down as Horace talked.
“What about
Olga? Did she seem like she had something on her mind that day … something
distracting her?”
Horace put
his coffee cup down and slowly sat back.
“The truth is, Olga had something on her mind at all times. She was
always thinking, daydreaming, brain-storming. I can’t count how many times I’d
have to yell for her to stop right as she was going to step in front of a bike
or runner or something.”
“Well, the
good news is, if she was in an accident, we’d know it by now,” Mitch assured.
“So what do
we do now?” Horace asked glumly.
“You are going home to get some rest,” Mitch asserted. “I’m going to get to work.”
With his worried
client’s words fresh in his head, Mitch Miccosukee drove over to Evergrass
Groves to search for clues on the missing Mrs. Lutz. A working class burb in
the central Florida town of Mosquito Lake, Evergrass is an unassuming cluster
of modest homes with an abundance of kids and pets and an absence of crime and commotion.
Mitch traced
the route Horace and Olga had covered together on the day of her disappearance,
then canvassed a web of streets within a three-mile radius beyond where they
parted ways. Other than a cordoned off area protecting a sinkhole and some
construction at a home being remodeled, everything appeared neat, tidy and
empty of explanations.
“Where you
hiding, Olga?” Mitch muttered as he surveyed the world outside his windshield.
“Are you off somewhere daydreaming while your husband waits and wallows?”
Needing to clear his head and regroup,
Mitch decided to swing by his house to pick some mangoes off the freakishly
large tree in his backyard. He often bragged to friends that during the peak of the season the tree was capable of feeding every squirrel, bird, iguana and human in the
known mango-eating civilized world.
His favorite
part of mango season was using “the picker” to pluck high hanging fruit from
the upper branches of the tree. The picker is an eight foot long pole with a
molded plastic basket on the end that allows normal sized people to pull down
mangos like a fruit-loving giant from a children’s fairy tale.
The thrill
of luring mangos down from their lofty perches was a real adrenaline rush for
Mitch, and when he spotted a rare beauty about 20 feet up the tree he moved in
for the conquest. Just as he maneuvered the picker into position, a squirrel
with impeccable timing boldly leaped from a nearby branch and clasped onto the
prize fruit deflecting his picker with its long bushy tail and strong hind
legs. Momentarily stunned, Mitch regained his balance using the picker to joust
and jab at the mango-crazed rodent.
“Stick to
gathering nuts and seeds, you mangy tree rat,” he taunted. “How would you like
to spend the rest of your life in a small cage spinning around on one of those
little wheels?”
After a
frenzied battle that dislodged a couple dozen mangoes and coated Mitch and the
picker in sap and fur, the insurgent squirrel begrudgingly gave up and took
flight. As he disappeared over the fence, Mitch raised the coveted fruit to his
mouth, chomp off a hearty bite and bellowed triumphantly, “Who dares challenge
the Mango King!?”
Glancing at the picker in his juice-drenched hand, Mitch had a connect-the-dots moment that made him view an earlier sighting with fresh eyes. It was time to pick up Horace and circle back to Evergrass Groves in search of a prize more rewarding than backyard mango.
The light of
day was in twilights’ last gleaming mode when Mitch and Horace pulled up to the
barricades encircling the sinkhole. With
its moist tropical climate, Florida was particularly susceptible to these
collapses in the earth’s surface layer. Their scope can range from a
pot-hole-size depression to a crater that eats a three-story building like it
was a burrito.
Mitch
grabbed the picker out of his SUV and skirted around the barricades to find a
sturdy spot. With Horace holding his feet, he slithered down on his stomach
thrusting the pole out in front of him and down into the hole.
“Olga! Olga
Lutz!” he shouted. “Are you down there? My name’s Mitch. Your husband Horace
hired me to look for you.”
Silence hung
heavy in the air as the sinking feeling of a misguided hunch began to wash over
Mitch.
“I’m here to
help,” he added, as if assuring a hesitant homeowner that he wasn’t trying to
sell something. “Your husband is here with me and he’s a nervous wreck.”
“We’ve come
to take you home, darling,” Horace croaked hopefully. “We ain’t leaving without
you.”
The unbroken
silence brought Mitch to the brink of despair. But then, just when all appeared
lost, he felt … something.
Looking down
at the picker he saw a tug, like the moment a fish is caught on the line. He
tightened his grip and pulled up on the pole as if to reel in a snapper or
grouper. Or a 79 year old woman named Olga.
“I’m here!”
Olga cried out. “Thank you, thank you.”
Horace let
out a jubilant roar. “Yessss! Thank God!”
“Here, give
me your hand,” Mitch instructed.
Olga
clutched the picker with one hand and reached out to Mitch with the other as he
hoisted her up and over the sinkhole’s edge and into Horace’s waiting arms.
“Are you alright?”
Mitch gasped, massaging his throbbing arms.
“I think
so,” Olga speculated. “How long was I down there?”
“Two days,
14 hours, 26 minutes,” Horace pinpointed. “What the heck happened, honey?”
“I was
walking along and felt a rumble like a big truck was coming by. Only I didn’t
see any truck and then I felt the ground crumble and cave in. I just tucked and
rolled with it until I hit bottom.”
Mitch
listened in amazement. “Did you call out for help?”
“I was
afraid if I yelled I might trigger another landslide. So I just laid low and
daydreamed about what I would do when I got out.”
“You are one cool cookie,” Horace observed
glowingly. “And you must be starved.”
“Well, now
that you mention it, is it my imagination or do I smell mango?”
“That’s just
my fruit picking pole,” Mitch said sheepishly.
“Let’s get
you some real food,” Horace chuckled. “Care to join us at Dottie’s Diner Mitch?”
“Thanks for
the offer, but you two have some catching up to do,” Mitch begged off.
“Besides, I’ve got some mangoes to pick, and if I don’t do it the squirrels and
iguanas will. Rain check?”
“Rain check,”
Horace and Olga echoed in unison.
As Mitch
pulled in his driveway that evening, something in his field of vision looked
out of whack. Feeling a vague uneasiness, he slung his picker over his shoulder
and walked around the side of the house to the backyard.
There, where
the mango tree had been, was an enormous sinkhole. He threw the picker in and
drove to Dottie’s.
###
