So much for not telling the authorities. The white eyes staring at me from Tutein’s car must have belonged to him. At least Nick had a chance to explain our side of the story to Tutein. I looked up from rinsing dishes at Nick, who had finished eating and was texting someone.
“Who’s that?”
Nick looked at me with blank eyes. “Huh?”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Oh. The head of security for Petro-Mex. You know how I’ve tried to get their business for a year? Well, I called him as soon as I saw the dead guy’s Petro-Mex uniform. He retained me to help them determine the cause of death. They don’t trust the police. Tutein already informed them that it’s an open and shut suicide. But Petro-Mex says it can’t be.”
This was a lot to take in. Alarm bells rang in my head, far away but getting louder. “Why?”
“He just got married. No one believes he was the type to kill himself, and especially not now. Supposedly his co-workers think he was stupid happy.”
“Why does Petro-Mex even care? I mean, isn’t this a family matter?” I had started the process of drying and putting away the dishes now, and realized that in my consternation, I had dried the same plate three times.
“They don’t make much of a distinction between family and company, really.”
Ah, right. The cult. I held out my hand for his dishes, but Nick stood up and took them to the sink himself. And washed them. It was nice of him to help, finally. When he was done, he pulled a chain attached to his belt loop and flipped out the gold pocket watch we found hidden in the walls of Annalise. I’d had it repaired for him as a “Congrats, Dad” present when I learned I was carrying the twins. It still read “My Treasures” on the front as it had when we first discovered it, but now it held pictures of the three kids and me, instead of the family of Annalise’s previous owner.
“Ten o’clock,” he said.
I was beat. “Wanna finish this conversation in bed?”
“Sure.” He followed me to our bedroom, saying, “I think this is going to be a big one for us. It would be nice to have more on-island clients.”
Nick worked almost exclusively for stateside clients. But he also primarily did computer-forensics-type investigator jobs. Not potential murders.
“I don’t know, Nick. I’ve got a bad vibe about this one. You’re the only you I’ve got. I’d like to keep you safe and sound.”
“Worrywart.”
But that was the funny thing—I wasn’t. I rarely worried about Nick. Now, I felt uneasy. It felt like this investigation would make every day a Day of the Dead until it was over. We were so isolated out here. We relied on each other. I couldn’t lose Nick, and I hated this foreboding.
The words blurted out of my mouth. “Nick, don’t take this job. Please. My sixth sense is talking to me.” I held out my hand and he took it. “I can’t explain it, but I’m scared.”
He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry, I have to take it. I need you to support me on this. If it goes sideways, I’ll drop it. OK?”
I stared off into the distance, fighting the dread inside me. It seemed I had no choice. But I knew. I knew something was off with this investigation. Or did I? I could be making something out of nothing. My sixth sense wasn’t always right. But why take the chance? I didn’t want another dead man at our house. Especially not this one.
I realized what needed to happen. I would have to be the one who kept him safe, that’s all, and I knew how to do that.
“When do we start?” I asked.
Once upon a time, Nick and I had worked together at the Dallas law firm of Hailey & Hart. Later, and up until the twins were born, we had partnered at his private investigation company, Stingray, when I wasn’t working for peanuts as the twangy Texas-born half of a singing duo with Ava, my exotic local partner. It made sense for me to volunteer for this case.
“Whoa, cowgirl. There is no ‘we’ on this one. This is a death case—way too dangerous. And you have a lot going on up here, with the babies and all. I’ll get Rashidi to help me if I need it.”
I’d met my friend Rashidi around the time I met Ava, when I first moved to St. Marcos. He was the one who had introduced me to Annalise. Nick had since co-opted him from me, however. I felt heat creep from my collarbone up my neck and ears and over my head until my scalp flamed. I knew I didn’t technically push my brain out when I was in labor with the girls, but some days it felt like Nick treated me that way.
Nick whistled something tuneless as he sat down at the small writing table in our bedroom and jotted notes into a spiral notebook.
“Nick—” I started to say.
His head swiveled around, yanked by the tone of my voice, but my iPhone rang.
Ava. Maybe talking to her would give me time to back away from the ledge. Because I was about to jump off of it and all over my husband.
“Later,” I said to Nick. Did I hear a muffled exhale from him?
“Hi, Ava,” I answered, and I walked into the bathroom for the call.
“Hello, Katie. I got a call for a gig. When you start singing with me again?”
Ava’s question felt sudden, even though I had expected she would ask it at some point.
She continued into the pause I did not fill. “We could make it work, even with the kids—like only book daytime gigs if you want. I still get calls from places wanting afternoon beachside entertainment for the tourists.” Ava’s daughter was only one month younger than my twins.
“Let me ask Nick,” I hedged.
“Then you tell him ‘no’ is not an acceptable answer. Monday night we invited to perform a set at a Yacht Club party. You need to dress nice—none of your bag dresses—and do something with that hair. I’ll swing by Monday afternoon, and we rehearse.”
I feigned nonchalance but a thrill ran through me. I would sing tomorrow night! That beat the heck out of worrying about dead people or how to keep my husband from becoming a dead person himself.
I hung up and went back into the bedroom, where Nick was still working his pencil. I decided to hold off on the news about the Yacht Club until after the christening party. I dressed for bed. I pulled back the covers. I cleared my throat noisily.
When he finally looked at me, he asked, “What’s wrong?”
I sucked oxygen in to displace the space in which my words were hiding, and pushed them out on the exhale. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. At least not completely. But there is one thing I want that is very, very important to me. I need you to say yes to it.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” he asked.
“I want to work with you on the Eddy Monroe case for Petro-Mex.”
He didn’t look happy about it. He kicked the bed frame into line, stalling for time. I kept my face neutral while he wrestled it down inside himself.
He spoke slowly when he got around to answering. “Yes, on one condition.”
“What?”
“That we start with an emergency meeting of all Stingray Investigations personnel assigned to the Dead Guy In The Driveway case.”
I considered his proposal and found it acceptable. “Let the meeting begin,” I said, beckoning with my finger. He swan-dived onto the bed.
Technically, what came next might be called sexual harassment in some companies, but it was the most effective teamwork session of my career. When the ceiling fan came on of its own volition, we met eyes and laughed.
“Thank you, Annalise. I think we’re going to need that,” Nick said.
“She takes good care of us. But I can assure you, she will turn on you like a feral pig if you ever do me wrong.” I know it sounds strange, but my jumbie house was my best friend. We had each other’s back.
He bit the back of my neck and I groaned—in a good way.
“Feral pig? You’ve got Wilburn on the brain and your Texas roots are showing.” He nibbled some more. “I will never do you wrong, but not because I’m scared of some big voyeuristic jumbie house built on a graveyard.”
A pi
cture of Nick toppled over on my bedside table with a firm thwack. One by one, every picture of Nick in our bedroom fell on its face.
“That’s kinda disparaging, honey. And we don’t really know whether she’s built on a graveyard or not. But I think those pictures are what Navy types would call a shot across the bow. An apology would be good before she fires off a real cannonball.”
“I’ll consider myself warned. My sincerest apologies, Annalise. Although you are a big jumbie and a voyeur, I mean that in only the most respectful and complimentary way. I’ll withhold judgment on the graveyard part.”
My house fell silent. Nick gave his full attention to the nape of my neck and the heat between us grew from a sizzle to bonfire.
I smiled again, and let myself go.
Chapter Three
“Katie, I’m taking the morning off today,” Nick said when we woke up on the day after our christening celebration.
What a terrific idea. Our daughters’ soiree was lovely, but we had worked so hard between guests and babies and whatnot that we had hardly said boo to each other the whole time. I pushed the light satin coverlet aside and rolled over onto my adorable husband, considering how best to reward him for this gesture.
“So, I’m thinking I’ll head over to the airport and get a few hours up in the plane, then put in an honest three hours’ work before I meet Rashidi for his surfing lesson on the North Shore. Maybe you and the kids could meet me for dinner afterwards before your gig with Ava?” he said.
I rolled back off him. Thank goodness I had not gotten any further into the reward process. Honestly, ever since he and his father bought that Piper Malibu airplane, he had been obsessed. He had that tendency: planes, surfboards, bass guitars, and whatever case he was currently working on, Nick had a lot of enthusiasm for his pursuits. Apparently, I hadn’t made the list that morning.
I bit my lip and thought One should never speak hastily in anger. One should instead plot carefully and act strategically. So first, one should lull her target into a false sense of safety.
“OK, if that’s what you want to do, baby, that’s fine with me. I’ll just be here with the kids and your parents. Is there anything you would like for me to do for you today while you’re out, honey?”
Was the last “honey” too much? Did I give myself away?
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Because if you are, it would be great if you’d pick up some wax for me and meet me at the beach with my board. That would save me a ton of time, because you know I can’t leave my board in the hot car or all the wax will melt off.” He nuzzled the back of my neck. “What did I ever do to deserve you? I can’t possibly imagine.”
Nope, I obviously had not shown my hand. So, step two: after a gentle approach to the target, go for the jugular.
“Let me get this straight: instead of spending time with the kids and me, you are going to go fly and surf half the day, and then fart around on the internet and Twitter?”
Nick’s dark eyes said “oh shit” but his mouth did not form any words.
“And on top of taking care of your children, you would like me to run your errands so you can maximize your fun time without us?”
In my experience, the target usually makes at least one defensive move.
“I did suggest we meet up for dinner,” he said.
“Well, I guess I would have to agree with you, then.”
“What do you mean?” Nick’s pupils dilated to their widest setting.
“I can’t possibly imagine what you ever did to deserve me.”
My work was almost done: I would allow the target to recover and find its way back into my good graces on its own.
Nick studied my face. “Katie, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“I know.” Deep sigh. “I know you didn’t.”
I let the silence work its magic.
“How about we take the kids on a picnic into Ike’s Bay, just the five of us? We can put the girls in the snuggle carriers, and I can carry Taylor in the backpack.”
I resisted, but not too much. “No, that’s OK, you go fly and surf.”
“I want to be with you guys. We can give my parents a day alone. They won’t know what to do with themselves.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I would love to, Nick.”
Amazing how easy it was for me to make everyone in the family happy. Truly, I have a gift.
Of course, the actual trip wasn’t the idyllic family outing I’d envisioned. All three kids squalled as if we had dipped them in acid instead of the ocean. But it would make for funny memories someday.
At seven o’clock that night, I was standing offstage beside Ava, a spot at once familiar and disturbingly foreign to me. My nerves jangled like the silver bangles on Ava’s arm. I would not throw up, though; that would be very bad. Ava and I pretended not to glare at each other, but we spoke through gritted teeth under our smiles.
“Where you been?” Ava asked.
“What do you mean, where have I been? I’m here right when you told me to be. In fact, I’m early,” I retorted.
“I leave you a voicemail! They change our time. I give you the new time and our song list in my message.”
My bad. I’d forgotten to listen to my voicemail. But Ava had been a no-show for practice, which was why I’d come early: to hook up with her for a quick run-through of whatever songs she intended us to perform.
“If you had shown up to rehearse today, it wouldn’t be a problem,” I said.
“Something come up and I can’t make it.”
Lord help me. With Ava, something came up more often than not. Last year, when she house-sat Annalise while we were off-island in Corpus Christi, she’d left to meet a record producer in New York without telling us. Then, when the producer was only interested in our duo, not Ava’s solo, she ran off on a whim to Venezuela with her (now) baby daddy. Burglars stripped Annalise bare with her gone and our friendship had never quite regained its footing. Ava still resented me for messing up the record deal with my absence, and I couldn’t get over her casual abandonment of Annalise.
“Well, I’m here now, and it’s our turn to sing next. So what are we going to do?”
“Do you think you can start with ‘It’s My Party’?”
I looked out into the audience at the Yacht Club’s annual Memorial Day Fling fundraiser. Most of the partygoers were continentals in the sixty-plus age range, so it made sense to perform something they could relate to.
“Of course,” I said.
“If you not comfortable, I can do it by myself.”
“I’m fine with it,” I snapped.
“Good,” Ava snapped back.
Time to chill. I concentrated on Ava’s best qualities and fast-forwarded through “It’s My Party” in my head.
Ava handed our background music to the young guy manning the sound system, who looked like he was barely out of his teens. His youth only served to emphasize my age to me, although I could still say I was thirty-seven for a little while longer. Luckily, I exuded youthfulness in comparison to the Yacht Club’s patrons tonight, most of whom were probably so liquored up they wouldn’t be able to tell if I was nineteen or ninety. From their forte rumble and staccato peals of laughter, it seemed they were well on their way. I watched a woman of about my mother-in-law’s age teeter toward the bar, listing dangerously to one side. If her stagger didn’t give her condition away, the fuchsia lipstick she had applied unevenly to her mouth did. Not a pretty sight.
I had grown accustomed to singing to drunken tourists with Ava when we performed together, pre-babies. Ironically, it did not bother me to be around all this alcohol. Sure, the smell turned on my central nervous system, but the buffoonery turned it right back off. I never wanted to be like these people again.
I searched the room for Nick. We had left the kids with his parents and driven the winding island roads for forty-five minutes to get here, and he’d dropped me off at the door before going to pa
rk the car. I picked my way around the big stones that littered the dirt lot, trying not to break my heel or twist my ankle in my dress-up shoes. I wore a figure-hugging blue and purple dress with spaghetti straps and a deep V neckline. It had been a favorite of mine before I had kids, and tonight I added Spanx power panties to achieve the right “hot enough to wear in front of a crowd” look. If people had compared me to Nicole Kidman before, I would count myself lucky if I rated Lucille Ball tonight.
Upon making my grand entrance, I had caught the frantic “get over here” gestures of Ava and gone straight to the stage. She, of course, looked sexier than me in peep-toe leopard print shoes trimmed in red and a scarlet stretch-wrap dress with caplet sleeves. I did the best I could with what God gave me; God just gave Ava more.
So, here we were, ready to kill each other and ready to go on. When the musicians before us had finished their set, Ava and I walked onstage and adjusted the microphones. Nick appeared just in time on stage left, talking to possibly the only woman in the room under forty besides Ava and me. Of course. Nick was not traditionally handsome, but he was sexy, and he had a magnetic appeal that attracted women to him like he was true north.
I was glad he’d come tonight, though. He hadn’t protested the gig, which made me suspect an ulterior motive; he’d frowned on me performing since my last trimester. Fatherhood brought out his paternal side—only I wasn’t his kid.
The sounds of our music played through the massive Klipsch speakers around the room. This East End club allowed the platinum-and-diamonds set to enjoy themselves without leaving their safe homogeneous community. The only black faces in the room belonged to Ava, the sound guy, and the servers. When we finished our first set, we got such an ovation that the sound guy asked if we would do another.
“So, your next act a no-show?” Ava asked.
“For true,” the kid admitted.
“What you do for us if we help you?” she asked in a tone I could never have pulled off.
“What you want?” he asked.
“I want you to get us some afternoon gigs.”
“Yah, I hook you up. No problem.”
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 3
