We stopped at the food tents and I got in line for the fried things with Taylor while Nick stood in a separate queue for roti, a tortilla-like wrap made from ground lentils wrapped around curried chicken. And I was the one trying to lose the baby weight. Bad Katie.
I kept Nick in my line of vision. I was still flustered. Everything from the surreal interview with Elena and the lurking presence of Mr. Jiménez, to the weird exchange between the grieving widow and my husband, to getting fired on the way out the door—all of it unsettled me.
“What do you want to eat, Taylor?” I asked.
“I want to go see Wilburn,” he insisted.
“Sure, but before we go see Wilburn, what food do you want?” Taylor had turned toward the barns and was shifting from foot to foot as he swung my arm and heaved toward the pigs. “If you don’t answer me, I’m getting you dirt and bugs, OK?”
“Noooooo, Mama. No dirt and bugs. I wanna see Wilburn.”
“You can, after you eat your dirt and bugs.” I looked around for Nick and saw him and the girls. Good.
Taylor started to giggle. “I’m not s’posed to eat dirt. Daddy said so. And bugs are yucky. I want rice and peas.”
There’s my little island boy. “Rice and peas? Are you sure? Because they have dirt and bugs if you want it.”
“I want rice and peas.”
“Oh, good. I thought it was weird that you wanted dirt and bugs,” I teased. Maybe I could keep his brain occupied with silliness long enough to feed him.
Just at that moment, the local man ahead of us in line turned around with his food in hand and our eyes met. His, black and unnerving, drilled into mine, startled and green. I knew him. And he certainly acted like he knew me. He walked toward me and my pulse thumped in my ears like a bass drum. His strides ate the ground between us in giant gulps, then he broke eye contact, stepped around me, and walked past.
The timpani drum kept beating until my ears burned. I heard something else now, too.
“Mama, Mama, MAMA.”
Pull it together, crazy lady. “Yes, honey,” I said with the appearance of complete sanity.
He pointed at the food server. Oops.
I gave my order, I think. Or I gave an order. And I paid and took the food. But my mind was whirring like a messed-up hard drive. Missing sector alert, data corruption error, total system failure imminent. Who was that man? Why did he stare at me like that?
When Nick and the girls returned, I realized I had lost sight of them for a while.
“Honey?” Nick peered into my vacant eyes. “Are you OK?”
“Mama’s quiet,” Taylor said. “She wouldn’t talk to the lady.”
“Oh, Taylor, you silly. I’m fine. Mama got distracted. That’s all.”
Nick lifted his chin and looked down his considerable nose at me. I tried with some success not to like him.
“I’m serious! I’m fine,” I lied. “Let’s grab a table and eat.”
We sat at a picnic table that only took five Clorox wipes for me to render usable and ate our meal. “Take You There” blared from giant speakers at the corners of the tented area, and the local youth danced; the songwriters hailed from the neighboring island of St. Thomas. I didn’t enjoy my paté as much as usual. Taylor ate one tenth of his rice and pigeon peas and announced himself full and in need of a bathroom.
“Let’s go, buddy, I need to use the loo, too,” Nick said. “We can leave the ladies here to eat the rest of our food while we’re gone.”
Off they went. Lanky dark Nick and squatty dark Taylor. Taylor was bound to be olive-skinned like Nick, since Nick’s sister bore the same genes, and Taylor’s father—his nasty drug-dealing father, from whom we’d won custody after Teresa died—also had brown skin, hair, and eyes.
As I watched, Nick stopped to talk to a Latino man that had stood up to intercept him. His neck bling flashed gold from between the sides of his shirt, which was unbuttoned too far down his chest. And he had a mustache. Open shirts, gold medallions, and mustaches travel in threes. The man motioned to his left, and Nick and Taylor followed him until they disappeared from my view.
That was perplexing. The closest bathrooms had been right in front of them. It agitated me to lose sight of them, but Liv woke up and whimpered.
“Little red, come to Mama,” I crooned. It turned out she needed a stealth diaper change and a quick bottle of formula. I cradled her in my arms to feed her. Every time I held one of the girls, they felt heavier. They were growing so fast. Jess timed her wake-up to coincide with Liv polishing off her bottle, so I propped Liv up in the stroller behind her bar of squeaky toys and started on Jess.
A name popped into my head. George. George something or other.
That was it. George Tutein. The cop who investigated the dead guy in the driveway. The one who had barged into our kitchen. The one who had given a ride to the wacko babbling about dead people under Annalise. The one who had signed his name to the crap police investigation into my parents’ deaths. He was the man I had seen in the patés line. Well, damn. He remembered me, too. And he didn’t flash me a winning smile. Great, just great.
A mop of tousled hair entered my vision and pulled me away from my thoughts.
“We’re back, Mama,” Taylor said.
I bounced Jess on my knee to burp her. “I thought you guys must have fallen in. What took you so long?”
“We weren’t gone that long,” Nick said.
“Pretty long. I lost you there for a while. Who was that guy you were talking to?”
“What? No one. We went straight there and back. There was a line.”
You’re lying to me. Nick’s lying to me.
“Really?” I asked in a voice that said I knew he was acting dodgy. “Whatever, Nick.” Difficult as it was, I decided to drop it until we weren’t in front of the kids. I knew he’d gotten my meaning. I changed the subject. “Well, who’s ready to go see some pigs?”
“MEEEEEEE!” This, from Taylor. Of course. Off we trundled toward the livestock barn. I pasted on a smile and forced Nick’s lie out of my head.
In the barn, Taylor begged and begged for a piglet. Nick and I remained stalwart in our no’s. When he didn’t win the pig war, Taylor sulked and suddenly wanted every small creature we saw. As in, “If I can’t have Wilburn, can I have a bunny? A chickie? A duck? A calf?” We repeated “no” one thousand times until he threw a tantrum, snuffling and wailing. The joys of parenthood.
When Taylor had finally worn himself out, we left the Ag Fair. This time I pushed the stroller and Nick draped our sleeping boy over his shoulder. Taylor’s body stretched half the length of Nick’s, his pudgy legs dangling to Nick’s waist.
Nick must have checked his text messages twice for every one time Taylor asked for an animal friend. The joys of marriage. He checked them again now.
“What’s up, Nick? You’ve had your eyes glued to that screen the whole time we’ve been here,” I said.
“Work. Sorry.”
“Work?”
“Yeah, work.”
“Was the guy you walked off with earlier ‘work,’ too?”
“What?”
“You know. When you took Taylor to the potty? And you guys walked off with some guy, all cloak and daggerish?” And then told me you didn’t?
Nick kept walking, but he didn’t look at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We went to the bathroom, that’s all.”
Only the sleeping babies stopped me from yelling “Liar, liar pants on fire” at the top of my lungs. As it was, I muttered it just loud enough for him to hear. Who was this man, and what had he done with my perfect husband?
I ignored him and strapped the babies into their car seats for the ride home.
Chapter Seven
When our alarm went off the next morning, I asked, “What time is it?” without opening my eyes.
“Five a.m. I’m leaving to go interview some witnesses.”
“Witnesses for what?” I asked. As if I couldn’t guess.
“Petro-Mex.”
“Are you going to fill me in?”
“Katie, I told you already, you aren’t working on this with me anymore. This feels too dangerous. I have to do this one alone.”
Alone. As in, without his wife around. On the heels of meeting the Mexican Sexpot, lying about meeting a strange man at the Ag Fair, and texting his fingers off, he had to do this alone, without his fat brainless wife who’d just had two babies.
“That’s bullshit, Nick,” I said, my voice low but hard.
“No, it’s the right thing to do,” he said, matching my volume.
“Well, I obviously have no say in this. So, whatever.”
“Don’t be like that, baby. Please.”
“What, you mean like pissed? Too late.” I turned to face the wall and wrapped my arms around a long pillow.
“I love you. I’m sorry I’ve made you mad.”
He slipped his arms around me from behind and molded himself against me. My body responded without considering how mad I was. If a woman’s personal parts could pout, mine did. Traitors. His cold nose prodded my neck, looking for warmth. He didn’t find any.
I held firm, and he slipped out, whisper-quiet. I tensed, my body ready to run after him and relent, but the part of me he’d lied to overpowered the impulse. I showed him.
I made myself stay in bed until I heard him drive away, then I got up to use the bathroom and saw that in my brightest, sluttiest red lipstick, Nick had written, “SMILE, I’m a sucker for you,” on the bathroom mirror. A Blow Pop lay on the counter beneath it. Where had he found the candy? As if that even mattered. He was pulling out all the stops.
Well, I was still upset. He was sorry for making me mad? I hated nothing worse than a non-accountable non-apology. How about sorry for being a big fat Pinocchio? How about being sorry for treating me like a child? He could stew in it for now.
By six a.m. the morning had entered warp speed. I ran around the house with my in-laws and Taylor as the twins took turns crying and the cat and dog wove in and out of our feet. The doorbell rang in the midst of the rush. The last time I had answered this door, it was Officer Tutein. Thinking of him made me think about the wacko who thought Annalise was standing on dead people, which made me think about the dead guy in the driveway. Which made me think about Nick. Nick had not texted me, and his silence was grating on me.
I tried to wipe the crankiness off my face before I threw open the kitchen door, and was relieved to find Rashidi on the porch.
“You,” I said.
“Me,” he replied, holding out his arms for Jess. I handed her over without a word. Jess cooed and her fat little hand reached up toward the Rasta beads in the dreadlocks that swung at her eye level. “Uncle Rash here, Princess, and I’ma spoil you good.” He walked past me into the kitchen.
“Come in,” I said to his back.
All but a few of my friend’s long dreadlocks were tied back into a tail today. This was his formal look, so I knew he must be teaching later. He taught hydroponic farming and other topics I didn’t understand at the University of the Virgin Islands. He gave botanical tours of the rainforest, too, and it was on one of those that he had first introduced me to Annalise. He also ran a lucrative side business as a tour guide to the stars. His Rasta-man looks drew continental women to him like albino bees to dark honey.
“Hi, Rashidi,” my father-in-law said.
“Hello, Kurt. How the old man of the sea today?” Rashidi answered. Kurt had had a long career as a ship pilot back in Corpus Christi Bay in Texas.
Kurt gave his stock answer. “Just another crappy day in paradise.”
“Yah, mon. Where the missus? I wanna feast me eyes on some beautiful women this morning, so I come here first.”
“I hear you, Rashidi,” Julie called out, appearing in the kitchen with Taylor at her heels and Oso at his. She fussed over Rashidi as he kissed her cheek. “Have something to eat. We just finished breakfast and there’s leftover whole-wheat blueberry pancakes. Better hurry before Kurt gives them to the dogs. And we have coffee.”
“Hi, ’Shidi,” Taylor said, head-butting Rashidi’s leg.
“Hey, tough stuff, watch me leg.” To Julie, Rashidi said, “Pancakes? Better for me than those mutts.” He grabbed a plate and fork like family. “Katie look in need of the coffee, for true. May I brew me some tea instead?”
“No, no, you eat, I’ll brew,” Julie said, putting a kettle on the stove. Julie and Rashidi had a love fest going that would have made Kurt jealous if Rashidi were twenty years older. Kurt just smiled and wandered into the garage to putter with his tools. He had set up a carpentry shop in there when they followed us from Texas to St. Marcos, and he was working on mahogany side tables for the great room.
Rashidi managed to serve his plate and eat with Jess tucked adoringly into the crook of his left arm. Jess took after her grandmother where Rashidi was concerned. Taylor ran off behind Julie, who had promised to color with him, and I fetched Liv from her bouncy seat and sat down beside Rashidi with another cup of coffee. Immediately Liv twisted her head to fix her eyes on Rashidi.
“Your popularity with the ladies is enough to make me queasy, Rash,” I said.
“Yah, I’ma ladies mon. That why I come here today,” he said between bites.
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Nick tell me all about your Day of the Dead, and that old guy who saying Annalise built on a graveyard. I got some information for you, from a pretty lady who work in the gov’ment.” The kettle began to whistle and he jumped up to turn off the burner. He returned to his chair with a cup of chamomile tea.
Nick had told me that Rashidi was working his contacts for information. “Thanks,” I said. “What did she say?”
“She say the boss man at the Department of Planning and Natural Resources the one over antiquities and such, and he make the rules and do what he like. She say he not got enough to do, and he like to stick he nose in other people business.” He shoveled in the last of the pancakes.
“Born and raised in the St. Marcos tradition, it sounds like.”
“Yah, and she say if he hear ’bout old bodies underneath a house he all over it. Last time something like this happened, he haul a continental guy off in handcuffs. But a week later, the boss man show up at work driving a new car, and problem solved. No digging, no jail, no fines. So my advice keep quiet ’bout the skeletons.”
I hated my continental status in situations like this one. “If there even are any skeletons. But I expected as much. Maybe we’ll never hear a word about them again, but I think your information means ‘plan for the worst.’”
“Where Nick?” Rashidi asked. He had taken his plate to the sink and rinsed it. Better than family.
“Interviewing witnesses on that Petro-Mex case. You know, the dead guy we found in our driveway.” I checked my iPhone; it was already 10:45. “I haven’t heard from him since before dawn.”
I texted Nick quickly: “Rashidi came over to update me on DPNR vis a vis Annalise/graveyard. Can you please check in and let me know your plans?”
Rashidi, meanwhile, had taken Jess over to the bouncy seat and buckled her in. She immediately kicked and chortled. Her hand shot out and whapped a spinning duck. “Bye, baby doll. Good day, Kovacs family.”
“You’re off?” I asked.
“Yah, mon, I head to the university to romance some more beautiful women. I see you later. Good day, Annalise,” he said, patting a stout masonry wall as he exited.
“Thanks, Rashidi. Have a good one,” I said.
Later, after Julie and I fed the kids and settled them in for naps, I retreated to the upstairs office and Julie went downstairs to the rooms she and Kurt had moved into six months after we came here from Texas. Their bottom floor apartment opened onto the patio and swimming pool and had a view of the west-end beaches and ocean beyond. The main floor housed the kitchen, master suite, great room, music room, and a guest bedroom, and upstairs Annalise had three bedrooms and
a library. One bedroom belonged to Taylor, one was a nursery for the girls, and one we had converted into an office.
I loved the office. While my computer booted up, I threw open the balcony door to let in the breeze and stood at the railing. The view transported me. I imagined myself looking out over this same vista a hundred and fifty years ago, when the sugar mills and plantations were thriving. I could almost hear the creak of leather harnesses in the distance as horses turned the crushers inside the mills, grinding sugar cane into sugar. The scent of fermenting mangoes floated up from the orchard, making me think about the homemade mango ice cream in the freezer—snack for later. I scanned the road through the thick canopy of trees for my husband’s car. No luck.
Nick rarely went this long without contacting me. He’d left so early, though, maybe he’d forgotten to charge his phone. I looked down at mine again, and there was a message light. It was from him.
“Busy. Going well. Home for dinner.”
Wow, that was super informative. I checked my inner pulse and it appeared I was still mad at Nick. I didn’t want to spend the evening fighting, but the odds weren’t looking good for me to become the bearer of sweetness and light anytime soon.
In the meantime, I had work to do, and apparently Nick had piled a bunch of crap on my desk before he left. I started to move the stack of paper to the floor but stopped when I recognized maps of the refinery. This was no longer my business, since he had dismissed me from the Petro-Mex case “for my own safety,” but I began to study the pages one by one. They were printouts of the harbor and the huge field of tanks, shipping schedules from the Petro-Mex harbor, and a stack of emails to and from Eddy Monroe. I read every last word of them, but nothing held any significance for me. I set Nick’s papers on the floor and logged into my email at exactly 1:00 p.m. I loved catching a clock with double zeros.
As I browsed my inbox, the power suddenly cut out and my screen went black. Damn, another power outage? I looked up as the ceiling fan’s blades slowed. The digital display on the clock was black. I waited a few beats for the generator to kick on—nothing. I walked to the second story landing and leaned out.
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 6
