Uh oh. Nothing good ever came out of Nick’s mouth after “No offense, but.” I interrupted. “It’s OK, Nick. You’ll just be a few feet away in the kitchen. I’ll call you if I need you.”
I immediately regretted my words. This man had an unsettling vibe. I didn’t want to talk to him alone, but it was too late. The look my husband gave me would freeze the blood in the veins of a lesser redhead. He stalked to the kitchen, his footsteps drumming his displeasure in a deep bass tone. I suspected I would have some making up to do later. I almost called out for him to come back, but I pushed my nerves aside. Don’t be a wuss. He’s only twenty feet away.
“You Ms. Katie that buy this house?”
“I am.”
“I here about the dead.”
“The dead pig?”
“I don’t know nothing ’bout no pig. I here about all the dead people dem under the house.”
Liv whimpered. “Shush, love.” I bounced her lightly. She was falling asleep; not me. This man had shocked my system like a triple espresso. I wasn’t the only one wide awake, either; I could feel Annalise rise up. She didn’t like this man any more than I did. The dogs reappeared in the yard. Where the hell had they been? They kept their distance but formed a rough perimeter around the stranger.
“Excuse me?” I spoke loudly, hoping to draw Nick back to me without scaring my visitor away until I’d heard him out.
“All the dead men and women dem buried under this house,” he said. “I work here, long time ago, building the house. I see skeletons dem with my own two eyes. The boss man—the bad man—he try to cover it up so nobody know. But I know. He put this house on sacred ground. He disrespect the dead.”
Eerie night music filled my ears as thousands of bats’ wings beat the air, vacating Annalise’s eaves to begin their evening hunt. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I said to him.
“This house built on a slave graveyard. The law say you can’t go digging up the dead.”
Was it built on a graveyard? Against the law? I had no idea about either point. He went on.
“Maybe I think you don’t want me talking to the government about this. Give me a little something for disrespecting my people dem, and I won’t say nothing. I going now for a time, but when I reach back, maybe you have something you want to give me and my family.”
He turned on his heel and walked off toward the bush, but as he crossed the yard, the light above the door exploded, showering glass in a wide arc that left Liv and me untouched. Glass flew at him and the sound chased his back, but if he was hit, he didn’t flinch.
Only I could see the tall black woman with the knotted headscarf standing two steps away from the porch. A scowl puckered her young face, and her calf-length plaid skirt whipped around her bare legs as she slowly disappeared. Well done, Annalise! I could have told him not to piss off my house.
The dogs gave way to him, growling low and I felt an urge to whisper, “I see dead people dem,” in my best local accent. This guy was spooky. What if he was telling the truth? My mind reeled from the possibility. It was highly unlikely, though. I felt Nick’s hand on my shoulder and relief surged through me.
“I’m sorry, sir, what did you say your name was?” I called after the old man as his black skin disappeared into the black night. He didn’t answer.
Chapter Two
Nick and I shared an incredulous look. I hugged Liv close and pressed my lips against her fine red hair. Suddenly, a thunderous crack whipped our heads around. Nick and I ran to the driveway after what had clearly been gunfire, my feet pounding the hard-packed dirt as Liv bounced up and down on my hip. I held her neck with one hand and wrapped her body tight with my other arm. I was running blind, and the night was fading from charcoal to jet ahead of me. The night sounds magnified; the sickeningly sweet evening air made it hard to breathe.
Nick pulled away from me and crossed the distance fast. Over his shoulder he shouted, “You and Mom stay in the house with the kids. Send Dad. And lock the doors behind us.”
I could hear the pounding of my heart as it pulsed in my burning ears. I stopped to catch my breath. Words of retort automatically formed on my lips but I bit them back. What kind of brain-dead idiot runs toward a gunshot holding her baby anyway? Two long beats passed before I spun around. I walked double-time back to the house and Kurt met me on the way.
“That sounded like a gunshot,” he said.
“Yes! Nick asked you to please come—and hurry,” I said.
Kurt didn’t bother to answer. He sprinted into the night after Nick.
Julie was frozen in place holding Jess. I patted Taylor’s shoulder and herded him onto the couch in the great room.
“Taylor, how about some Disney Channel?” I clicked it on, knowing that it would be a miracle if it was enough to hold this busy child still. I looked back at my mother-in-law, who still hadn’t moved. I needed her help, so I gave her a gentle prod. “Julie, I’ll take care of the doors and windows. Could you find a place for the girls?”
Julie hesitated, eyes wide, then nodded and arranged a blanket for the babies on the great room rug. She spoke soothingly and was soon entertaining the kids.
I sprinted from door to window to door, closing and locking. Unless the weather was bad, we usually left all of them open, letting the trade winds cool the house. Today we had opened them as far as they would go. I cursed Annalise’s design: seven doors and thirty-seven windows. This was not a “just go deadbolt the front door” type of undertaking.
“Annalise, I would really appreciate it if you would learn to do this yourself,” I muttered. No response; none expected. Her quietude was encouraging; normally, if she sensed a threat, she transmitted her agitation with vibrating cups and saucers and snaps of electricity.
I had no sooner finished locking up than I heard three raps at the kitchen door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s us, Katie,” Nick said.
I unlocked the door and opened it wide for Nick and my father-in-law. Kurt’s face was ashen. This couldn’t be good.
“We need to call the police,” Nick said.
I stared at my husband. Nick is a private investigator by trade, but in my opinion, he’s a Lone Ranger and borderline scofflaw. And that’s when he worked in the states. Here on St. Marcos, no one called the police if they could help it. Cops and perps were nearly indistinguishable. The St. Marcos Daily Source featured bad-cop stories on its front page several times a month, with crimes by officers ranging from drug trafficking to kidnapping and murder.
On top of that, our local friends had advised us that as non-natives, we must never harm an intruder; if the police got involved, they would always side with the local, even if he was armed. Some gave even stronger advice: don’t just “not harm” the would-be burglar/rapist/murderer/kidnapper—kill them instead, then dump the body offshore past the Wall, a 6,000-foot drop less than a mile off the northern edge of the island. Nick and I had agreed that if we ever had an intruder, we would call our friend Rashidi for help, not the police. Our protection consisted of five dogs, an aluminum baseball bat, a flare gun, and a jumbie house, and we had not had a single incident since we moved back to St. Marcos a year ago. Until today.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s a car parked near our gate, out on the road,” Nick said. “With a very dead body inside. Fresh dead.”
A million questions warred with my restraint, but I held them back and handed Nick the phone. He explained the situation several times to the officer on the other end of the line.
“We live off of Scenic Road on the north side of the rainforest. We heard a gunshot near our house.”
“No, I didn’t know that it was a gunshot, but it sounded like one. I went out to see what it was, and I found a car parked outside our gate.”
“OK, well, I found a dead person inside the car.”
“No, I don’t know who it is. No, I’m not one hundred percent sure it is a ‘he,’ but the dead person
is large, I’d guess over six feet and more than two hundred pounds, and doesn’t have a woman’s shape.”
And on and on it went, my questions answered as he answered theirs. I twisted my gold wedding band, which had been my mother’s, and my grandmother’s before her.
Nick looked whipped when he finally hung up the phone. “God, I miss Jacoby, “ he said, referring to a police officer friend of ours who had been murdered in the line of duty. “But they’re on their way. I’m showering before they get here—it could be minutes or hours.”
I followed him into our bathroom.
“Are you all right, Nick?”
He turned on the hot water full-blast and stepped into the shower. We were entering the dry season, and a full water-pressure splurge when you are dependent on a cistern is a sign that you are either very foolish or very upset. Nick was not foolish. The bathroom filled with steam and I traced “I love you” in the mirror while he soaped up.
He said, “I’m exhausted from chasing that damn pig around, and now we have to deal with this. You know how it will go with the cops.”
“I do,” I said. “Oh my God, I forgot about Wilbur on the table.”
“Can you put him on ice? I’m sorry I won’t be able to help you much—but I bought several bags of ice on my way home.”
“Ice. I hadn’t even thought of that. Wilbur is decomposing on my brand-new dining room table.” My shoulders and voice tightened.
“Katie . . .”
“There’s a dead pig on the table, a dead guy in the driveway, and a legion of dead people dem ready to swim up through our cisterns into the house. It’s the freaking Day of the Dead up here.”
“He’s not really in the driveway,” Nick said, turning off the shower. “And you know there are no dead people under the house. That guy was just looking for a quick buck.” He wrapped himself in a towel and wrapped his arms around me. “And we are having a wonderful party tomorrow for our two perfect daughters.”
I used the back of my wrist to hide a smile. “I hate it when you ruin a good tantrum. I was just winding up.”
He kissed my lips. “Are you going to put that nasty stuff on my face or not?”
I adopted a serious expression and pulled out the expensive moisturizer Nick secretly loved. I performed my ritual of massaging it into his face with my own just inches from his, humming “You’re So Vain.”
Nick crossed his eyes. “That’s better. I could feel wrinkles like the fjords of Norway forming.”
“OK, Methuselah.” I gave his cheek a firm pat when I had finished. “I’ll go take care of Wilbur while you deal with St. Marcos’ finest.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
Nick didn’t look like Methuselah. He looked damn good. I looked down at my Sloop Jones knit dress, my standard uniform. I loved the painted-on colors and the blousy shape of the sleeveless mini, and I owned it in seven different patterns, one for each day of the week. Was I a match for my sexy husband? I wondered. Nick got better-looking every year, and he hadn’t given birth to twins three months ago. I sometimes forgot about the flabby body underneath my baggy dresses, but I knew I didn’t look like the same woman he had fallen in love with. She was an attorney who wore Donna Karan and St. John knits with three-inch slingback heels to work, who rocked the beaches of St. Marcos in a string bikini, her freckles so sun-kissed they almost counted as a tan.
I had to keep my thoughts off this track.
I walked out and found Julie and Kurt feeding the three youngest Kovacs, one from a box of Cheerios and two from a bottle. No, I did not breastfeed. I was a giant La Leche fail.
“Thank you for taking care of the kiddos earlier,” I said to my mother-in-law.
“I’m sorry I panicked, Katie,” she said. “I’m better now. Although I’m very disturbed about the dead man.”
“Me, too.” More than I dared show or admit. I wondered if the murderer had sped away or was still hiding in the forest. Or had the man died at his own hand? Either way, a dead body in the driveway was seriously bad karma.
When Nick and Kurt went back out to the body to meet the police, I went to the dining room to study the Wilbur project. Beanie-baby-type stuffed animals snuggled “Wilburn” on all sides; Taylor had been busy. The sweet boy had placed a stuffed pig nearest the dead swine’s head. Those toys would be taking an antibacterial dunk in the washing machine, stat.
My tabletop was made of glass. I had come so close to buying a mahogany-topped table, but mahogany would have been a disaster now. I worked a waterproof tablecloth underneath his plastic-sheathed body and tucked rolled towels around him, then laid bags of ice over him and wrapped more plastic around everything to hold it all in place. I ducked into the kitchen to jot myself a note to buy more plastic wrap, then stepped back into the dining room to inspect my work.
“Ah, you have mad skills, Katie Kovacs, mad skills,” I told myself, then went into the kitchen to make our very late dinner.
When Nick finally dragged himself back into the house two hours later, he looked like he needed another full-water-pressure shower. He joined me in the kitchen while I made him a plate of leftovers.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
“The cop in charge of the police investigation, George Tutein? He’s not a nice dude,” Nick said.
“Dude?” I laughed. “You sound like a teenage surfer from Port Aransas, Texas. And with that hair,” I ruffled the brown waves that always seemed a bit too long in the most perfect way, “you look like one, too.”
He pretended to ignore me, but I saw he enjoyed it.
I continued. “I haven’t met him, but I’ve heard of him. In fact, he’s the officer who signed off on my parents’ deaths, then had Jacoby send me to hire their murderer as my private investigator on the case. And I read about him in the paper recently. He won the St. Marcos Police Officer of the Year award. There was a picture of him with his kids and wife. It said she’s a pediatrician.”
“Huh. Well, maybe he got up on the wrong side of the bed today. Did Kurt tell you they identified the body?”
“No. Who was he?” I asked. I stuck his plate in the microwave under the island countertop.
“The guy’s a Petro-Mex employee named Eddy Monroe.”
The Petro-Mex Refinery ranked second only to the local government as the largest employer on St. Marcos. The Mexican government owned Petro-Mex, a multinational oil and gas company, which in turn owned 100% of the refinery.
“You mean one of the employees escaped the compound?” I regretted the quip almost instantly. “I’m sorry, that’s not very nice of me; he’s dead, after all.” I set Nick’s plate in front of him and handed him silverware, then decided to go all out and got him an O’Doul’s out of the refrigerator.
“Thanks, babe,” he said. “It’s true, though. That is the most insular group of people I’ve ever seen. They’re like a cult, almost.”
The refinery ran a housing compound of 750 homes. Inside the barbed-wire-topped fences lived nearly 3,000 people. They had their own restaurant, pool, church, recreation center, grocery store, and gas station. Residents offered services like day care and hairstyling from their homes, and their children even went to school within the gates. They didn’t have much reason to leave the compound, and when they did venture out they seemed confused to find themselves on a beautiful tropical island. Who was I to judge, though? I would feel like Rip Van Winkle if I were locked behind a barbed-wire fence beside a roaring industrial plant, too.
Nick continued. “It took all I could do to keep Tutein from marching into Annalise and interrogating all of you. I’m not so sure he won’t.”
I gave the countertops a good wipe-down and surveyed my kitchen’s smooth green and tan granite countertops, mahogany cabinets, stainless steel appliances, and striated porcelain tile. The “colors of outside inside” palette usually soothed me. Not tonight.
“I could handle him,” I said.
Sometimes I wondered if my husband forgot I was not only a t
rial attorney, but also a black belt in karate, thanks to my cop-father’s obsession with self-defense. I moved to the sink and began scrubbing dishes. I had a dishwasher, but hand washing used less water.
“Seriously, Katie, I would prefer you and he never even cross paths.”
Nick rarely had such visceral negative reactions to people. I made a note to stay away from Officer Tutein.
And of course that’s when Tutein walked in. Or tried to.
I heard someone attempting to open the door, really throwing his weight into it, but it stayed shut like it was locked. It wasn’t, which meant it was someone Annalise didn’t like.
“Who’s there?” I asked.
“Detective George Tutein. Let me in, please.”
Knocking would have been nice. I opened the door and stood aside. He had pulled his unmarked car all the way up to our front door and parked on the grass. Someone in the front seat was staring at me, with only the whites of their rounded eyes clearly visible in the dark.
“I can’t get cell reception. Let me have your phone, please,” Tutein said without a greeting or asking my name. He held out his hand.
“We don’t have landlines up here, but you’re welcome to try my cell,” I said. I took my battered old iPhone out and offered it to him.
He stared at it. “Never mind, then.”
He wheeled around and walked out, and the door slammed shut behind him of its own volition. It was easy to love Annalise. She was our oversized guardian angel.
I turned around to find Nick watching me.
“You’re right,” I said. “He’s an ass, and very odd. Why wouldn’t he want my cell phone?”
Nick tapped his lip with his index finger, then said, “Maybe he didn’t want you to have a record of his call in your log. Hey, speaking of asses, guess who showed up out there, babbling about dead people?”
“Our wacko from earlier?”
“Yep. Went right up to Tutein with his story. Tutein asked me about it. I told him the guy was crazy and that there were no skeletons, but Tutein stuck him in the back of his unmarked to give him a ride to town.”
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 2
