The Big Caper

The Big Caper
Lionel White
1957
Chapter One

1.
Kosta arrived on Tuesday.
Frank had already left for the gas station, over in town on Route Number 1, two blocks from where the principal street of Indio Beach intersected the four-lane north-south highway. This main street, Orange Drive, continued on east for another three or three and a half miles, through the better residential section of the town. It then crossed the new, state-financed concrete bridge spanning the river, ultimately terminating in a dead end at the public beach on the Atlantic Ocean.
Kosta came in a taxi, driven by a colored man, at eight-thirty on this Tuesday morning, the last week in January. Kay was alone on the flagged patio, sitting there with her third cup of coffee and her seventh cigarette and postponing what awaited her in the large, rather old-fashioned kitchen.
What waited was the collection of dishes from their breakfast, along with the dishes from the night before, when they had entertained the Loxleys, the young couple that lived a quarter mile down the narrow sand road and ran the laundromat on Coral Street.
The Loxleys, like themselves, were fairly new in town. In a community such as Indio Beach, population 4,351 in the summer and 9,332 in the winter, there are three distinct and separate groups of people. There are, first of all, the "natives," those that have lived there for a long time. A long time, in Florida, is anywhere from ten years to a generation or so. There are the newcomers, that group which has almost doubled the static population of the town within the boom years since the war. And there are the winter residents and tourists, who come down to spend anywhere from a week to four or five months, and whose money keeps the economy of the town on a very level and very prosperous keel.
It was to the middle group that both the Loxleys and Frank and Kay belonged, and from this same group that they had drawn most of their friends.
According to the instructions that Flood had emphasized, they had circulated with the "natives" as much as possible. They also had hoped to form friendships with some of the winter visitors, particularly the more gregarious ones. But the wealthy Northerners who came down for the season were not exactly hobnobbing with the proprietor of a gas station and his wife, even if the wife was a slender, attractive blonde with nice manners, and the old residents formed a tight little clique of their own and were extremely reserved; if not downright cold.
A taxi pulled up on the hard-packed sand in front of the house and Kosta backed out of the rear compartment, hauling a cheap, imitation-leather suitcase after him. He handed the driver a bill and waved the change away and then turned toward the semi-enclosed patio on which Kay sat sipping her coffee.
She knew who he was at once, although she had never laid eyes on him before. Flood had telephoned Sunday night to warn them that he would be arriving on Tuesday.
Kosta was the arsonist.
She observed with an almost aloof curiosity his slow, labored approach up the long path that circled in and out among the worn-out orange trees, the heavy suitcase banging against his short legs and impeding his progress. The house sat well back from the road in the center of what had once been a fairly prosperous citrus grove, but which, through the passage of years, had been allowed to degenerate until the fruit was no longer salable.
It was an old house, for Florida, where any house more than twenty or twenty-five years old is considered a landmark. Built during the boom years in the twenties, it was a large frame and stucco monstrosity showing neo-Moorish influence.
Flood himself had found it. It suited his purposes very well, being at once outside of the town proper and in an isolated section; having as it did more than a dozen rooms; and, possibly most important of all, being available at an extremely reasonable rental.
Kay was standing, holding open the screen door, as Kosta approached. She noticed that the short walk had brought large drops of perspiration to his forehead. He looked, she judged, about forty.
He hesitated as he reached the door, looking up at her. "Flood's girl?" The voice had a high, thin quality, and he spoke barely above a whisper.
Kay nodded and he passed her without another word and stepped onto the patio.
She stepped around him and opened the second screened door, which led into the square, sparsely furnished living room. He followed her, dropping his suitcase the moment he was in the room. He went at once to an oversized rattan chair and slumped into it. He removed his hat, and, taking a handkerchief from his inside breast pocket, carefully wiped his