“Hey babe, what’s up?” Nick asked.
“Where were you? I’ve worried myself sick about you!” I said.
“Silly. I went to buy you presents. I found so many wonderful things for you that I just lost track of time, and then I didn’t finish in time to leave last night. I stayed over, and today I bought even more gifts for you.”
Now I noticed the wheelbarrow in front of him. He pushed it closer to the bed. Presents on top of presents crowded its belly, each one wrapped in crisply folded bright paper and festooned with a white bow.
“But it’s not Christmas. It’s not even my birthday!” I exclaimed.
“It doesn’t have to be. I said I’d put a smile on your face every day for the rest of our lives. I missed a few days, so I bought you a present for each of them. Go ahead, open them.”
How to choose? A box near the top of the pile in shiny red paper seemed to cry out, “Pick me!” I grasped it and pulled it toward me. Underneath the presents, the wheelbarrow turned into a rubber life raft.
I looked into my hand. My iPhone was buzzing. Waking me up. What time is it? Five thirty—I’d slept for at least four hours.
In the middle of the day? What?
Oh.
Nick.
My tears started. I let it out. I sobbed. I thrashed and wailed. I moaned. I screamed. I cried all my tears. And as I rolled around on his side of the bed, I discovered the t-shirt he had worn yesterday before he left.
I buried my nose and face in the worn black cotton, breathing in his scent, dragging him into my lungs, searing my husband into my olfactory memory. I held up the shirt. “Hailey & Hart,” it said, and below that, “Legal Eagles Softball Team.”
My iPhone buzzed again with a text message from Ava, who was with Rashidi, checking in for news. I dropped the phone onto the bed without answering her.
A knock sounded on my door. “Katie, are you awake?” Kurt.
“Yes.”
“Detective Tutein is here to see you. Can you come out?”
Crap. What in holy hell could he possibly want? He’d all but refused me police assistance and tossed me from his office. Plus threatened me about Annalise.
“Yes, I can, but give me just a second.” I peeled off yesterday’s clothing and slipped Nick’s softball t-shirt over my head. I pulled up a fresh pair of jeans, slipped on sandals, and exited my sanctuary.
Kurt met me in the hall. “I invited him in for coffee, but he wanted to stay outside.”
“Kurt, Nick really didn’t trust this guy, and I don’t either. I’m going to meet with him, but keep an eye on us, could you?”
“Do you want me out there with you?” Kurt stood up straighter, to his full six feet two inches.
I pushed my hair behind my ears. “No, I don’t think he’ll talk to me unless I’m alone. Feel free to come outside, though, if things don’t look right.”
“I’ll be watching from the kitchen window,” he promised.
“Good. I’m sure the dogs will stand guard, too.” I slipped out the door.
Tutein had parked his car on the apron of our driveway nearest the kitchen door. He sat behind the wheel. I raised my arm in acknowledgment of his presence. He motioned me with his hand to come, pointing at his passenger seat. I hesitated. He gestured again, scowling. Great.
I deposited myself in his car, thinking, “At least I have my phone.”
He put the car in reverse and backed rapidly down the drive.
“Excuse me. Where are we going?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Let me out, please. Unless I am under arrest, let me out of this car, now,” I said, almost shouting, my throat tight, cutting off my air like a tourniquet.
He slammed on the brakes and threw the car into park just outside the gate to Annalise.
“I thought you want my help, Mrs. Kovacs.”
“I do, but you’re scaring me.”
“I’m a police officer. You have nothing to be afraid of, do you?”
Loaded frickin’ question. I wrestled with an answer. He spoke again in a mock-courteous tone and Continental accent. “Please accompany me on a drive, Katie. I’d like to talk to you.”
His voice raised the hair on my arms. Why was he calling me Katie? It felt wrong, but I didn’t have a lot of options.
“All right,” I said. “I’m just going to let my father-in-law know where I am.”
“Of course,” he said.
I texted Julie and Kurt simultaneously. “I have gone for a drive with Detective Tutein. I will return in half an hour. Everything is fine.”
The car raced down the narrow rainforest road. Tutein drove with his left wrist draped over the wheel, a study in nonchalance that belied the rapid weaving he achieved with his forearm. I wanted to grab his steering wheel with both hands, but I stayed mute and still.
Tutein veered left and catapulted down an even narrower, bumpier dirt lane without flinching. I gripped the armrest. Thirty seconds later, he stopped the car and a dust cloud settled around us.
We were alone. Only a mile or two from Annalise, but still very, very alone. I rested my hand on my iPhone again, comforted by its solid presence beside my right thigh.
Tutein pushed his seat back and put his arms behind his head, like no police officer I’d ever known.
“Katie, pretty Katie, what kind of trouble you got yourself into?”
Apparently, a whole heap of it. Why had I come out here with this man? I started guiding myself through plans for fight or flight. I flipped my iPhone over without moving my body and typed a text to Kurt and Julie using my peripheral vision. “Help me 5 min west dn dirt rd.” I hit send.
Tutein saw me. “You sending up smoke signals? I think you find you have no service, but if you do, no problem. We won’t be here long enough for it to make a difference.”
I briefly considered attacking him, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t hurt me. My in-laws knew I was here with him. And I needed his help. I needed whatever information I could drag out of him.
“What’s going on, Tutein?” I asked, forcing confidence I didn’t feel into my voice.
“Detective Tutein to you, Katie. And I just want to have a talk. You have some problems. No more husband, for starters. Did you know Officer Ferber report to me? She tell me that Nick ran off in his airplane. No disappearance. Just a philandering man leaving his wife.”
My temper flared. “Left me? I don’t think so. That premature judgment had better not stand in the way of a full investigation. He is gone. His plane is gone. He’s missing. I want him found.”
His predatory sexuality turned to icy command. “Better not? Or you do what, exactly?” He paused, and I could hear his keys clinking against the steering column from when he had brushed them with his big hand. “Don’t threaten me, or you might end up like your parents. You want something from me? Then you better learn to play nice.”
Tutein can make threats, Katie can’t. Check. I swallowed. I nodded.
“Look over there,” he said, pointing into the bush. “See anyone you recognize?”
My eyes darted hopefully to the dense greenery and trees in front of us—Nick?—and I saw the crazy old man who had appeared out of nowhere on my doorstep talking about dead people. He walked toward the police cruiser, opened the back door, and got in.
“Good afternoon, good afternoon,” he said. Damn island manners, even in this situation. What a farce.
“Good afternoon,” Tutein replied. “You met the lovely Mrs. Katie, right, Tim?”
Tim. That was his name.
“Yah, I meet she at the house where dead people dem buried.”
“And what did I tell you about her and the dead people under her house?” Tutein asked him.
“That we tired of continentals dem disrespecting us and taking what ours. That you gonna make sure she do the right thing by me. That if not, you take me to the gov’ment to tell me story. That I wait for you.”
“That’s right,” Tutein said. He tu
rned around and faced the man. “And, in the meantime, I take care of you. You go stay with my cousin.” And he turned to me. “You know my cousin, don’t you, Katie?”
Everybody was somebody else’s cousin on this island. “Who is your cousin?”
“He told me he was a friend of yours. No, wait, he told me he was not a friend of yours. My bad. My cousin’s name is Pumpy.”
I remembered Pumpy quite well. Nearly two years ago, he’d been the tile contractor working on Annalise. He had stolen from me. Worse, he had conspired with Junior, the general contractor, a man who had nearly gotten a worker killed—and would have, if Annalise hadn’t saved him. I’d fired them both and my dogs had to chase Junior off. And Annalise had . . . well, she had possibly chopped off his head with a machete when Junior showed up uninvited. Whether she had or not-and I wouldn’t put it past her-Junior was a missing person. And Pumpy was his friend and partner. Junior had and Pumpy did despise me. The feelings were mutual.
“I know Pumpy,” I said.
Tutein smirked. “So, what am I to do? You want my help in finding your husband. You want me to keep your little secret. You want, you want, you want, but what you gonna give me to help me make these big decisions about whether to help you?”
He kept his eyes on me as he told Tim, “You can go now. I come back for you.”
Tutein reached out and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. I shuddered. He grinned at me, showing his ivory teeth.
“Yah, meh son,” Tim said, and slipped out of the car. I broke Tutein’s gaze and watched the old man’s bowed back until he blended into the trees and vanished.
I seethed. I raged. I imagined Tutein as fish food. I loathed the man. But I hadn’t the foggiest idea of how to wiggle out of his trap without committing a felony against a cop. I gripped my useless phone and kept quiet.
“I think you must return home and consider how best to help me make these difficult choices, Katie. As a sign of good faith, I give you one piece of information, though. Information about your husband.” His smirk spread into a gloat.
Seconds ticked by.
I looked away, out the passenger window into the peaceful green dusk. I would not ask him for it.
After an endless minute, Tutein lowered his voice and leaned close enough that his breath hit my cheek in hot puffs. “I hear your husband fly to Mexico.” He pulled a few inches away, lifted his hand, and stroked the backs of his fingers down my left cheek, then straightened in his seat.
Bile rose in my throat. Mexico? Puerto Rico or St. Thomas for a day trip I could fathom, and had almost come to accept. But Mexico? Not without telling me. Never without telling me.
“You’re wrong. And I’m going to find him, and prove it,” I said, feeling spittle shoot from my lips.
Tutein laughed softly, put the car in gear, and pointed it back toward Annalise.
Chapter Ten
Kurt scrubbed his hand from the front of his scalp across the top of his head. Now I knew where Nick picked up the gesture. He had spent the afternoon trying to track Nick through the St. Marcos airport and the FAA. No luck at all there.
After I’d found him in the kitchen and told him my story, he leaned onto his elbows on the breakfast bar and said, “Why would Tutein think Nick flew to Mexico? That’s a helluva long trip for a private plane. Nick wouldn’t make that trip.” He sat up straight on his bar stool and scrubbed his head again.
I leaned back against the island in front of him and held Liv tightly against my chest, trying to pacify myself with her warmth and sweet smell. My blue spiral notebook with my to-do list and notes was on the island behind me. “I don’t know. But I know Tutein isn’t going to help us.” I considered the detective’s smarmy suggestion that I “help” him make his decisions and thought about his skin touching mine. No way. “We’re sitting on a time bomb with him and the Annalise accusations, too. He could show up with DPNR and haul me away in handcuffs at any moment. We’re on our own, Kurt, and we have to move fast.”
Julie was preparing dinner with her hands shaking and tears slipping down her cheeks every so often, listening while we talked. They had lost Nick’s younger sister Teresa only one and a half years ago. This had to be killing them.
Taylor and Oso ran in and out of the room playing chase. Kurt leaned down and picked Jess up out of her bouncy seat and held her to him in much the same way I was holding Liv. All present and accounted for, except Nick.
“I agree,” Kurt said. “Without the police, do you think we should hire someone private to help us?”
“Who? Nick is the one to hire for situations like these. And only someone local could move fast enough to make a difference.” I considered my next words carefully. “You know I worked with Nick at Stingray. I also did hundreds of investigations during my ten years as an attorney. We can do this, Kurt.”
“Yup, I think we could. I think we have to. Could your contact at Petro-Mex help?”
“I already left a voicemail for him. His name’s Ramirez.”
Julie set plates in front of us. Sandwiches and chips. Such a wonderful mother, mother-in-law, grandmother . . .
Mother?
The image of a mother entered my mind . . . another mother, a different kitchen. I had seen a mother in a kitchen somewhere.
Elena’s mother, Elena’s kitchen.
“Kurt, I have an idea. I can’t just sit here and wait for Ramirez to call me back. Let’s drive down to the compound and make a surprise visit to the widow Monroe. She held back on Nick and me when we interviewed her, but I think I can get her to talk to me without the goon from Petro-Mex standing over her shoulder.”
“Good idea,” Kurt said, standing up.
“Leave everything here to me,” Julie said. “Just go find Nick.” Her eyes looked as red as mine felt.
Quickly, Kurt and I deposited babies in bouncies and high chairs, grabbed our sandwiches, and went through the garage toward the truck, which I had parked right outside. On our way out, a machete clattered to our feet from its hook on the garage wall. Kurt and I looked at each other.
“Annalise is full of good ideas, too,” I said, and scooped it up.
“I can do better than that,” Kurt replied.
He disappeared into the house. I ran after him to grab my notebook. When I returned to the truck to wait for him, I added “Talk to Elena” to the list. Kurt reappeared in the passenger seat of the truck and held up the item he had retrieved: a flare gun.
“Excellent.” I mashed the gas pedal to the floor, and we were off.
While I drove, Kurt updated me on the rest of his conversation with the FAA. They had asked him whether he absolutely knew that it was Nick who took the plane. “I had to admit to them I didn’t know. Someone coulda stolen it. Or moved it. And no one at the airport had any idea where the plane went or who had taken it,” he said. Ultimately, he had convinced the FAA to notify the Coast Guard. The Coasties would look around St. Marcos for signs of a downed plane. “Unfortunately, our plane doesn’t have an electronic locator. If it did, they could track its position by the signal. Searching the area is really the best they can do, with so little to go on.”
I couldn’t disagree.
Twenty minutes later, we sat outside the compound’s high fences, Kurt rubbing his hair again, me bouncing my knee. The guard lumbered back to my window from the phone mounted on the side of the security building.
“She no home,” the guard said.
“Can you try her again? Maybe she just isn’t answering,” I replied.
“I try her three times already. When she no answer, I call her other number. Mrs. Monroe answer that. She gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? Where?” I asked, my face growing hot.
“I can’t tell you that. But I supposed to call Mr. Jiménez if anyone asks about her, so I call him, too, and he on his way. Please wait right here. He coming to talk to you.”
He gave me a friendly salute and walked back to the building.
Jiménez? He
was the HR guy that showed up uninvited to Elena’s and didn’t want Nick to have Eddy’s computer. This didn’t sound good. I filled Kurt in.
Another guard poked his head into our car. “Everything all right here, miss?” he asked. He was older than the other one, with pockmarked skin and a droopy eyelid. I eyed him like Quasimodo. He eyed me like a juicy rib eye. Subtly, I changed gears.
“Oh, hello, sir, yes, we are great. How are you?”
“Fine, fine, thank you,” he preened.
I pointed at the other guard. “We were just waiting for him to come back and tell us where Elena Monroe has gone. Do you know Elena?”
“Yes, ma’am. She beautiful. I see her today before she leave for Mexico.”
Be careful what you ask for, Katie. Mexico? Mexico?? I remembered Tutein’s words: “You should be asking why Eddy Monroe killed himself in front of your house.” My face went from hot to icy and I rocked forward and backward in my seat. I willed myself to freeze, to act normal. Kurt closed his hand over mine.
I inhaled deeply and fished again. “Well, we sure are going to miss her around here,” I said, my voice barely shaking.
“Yes, me, too,” he said wistfully. “She say she not coming back to the island.”
“Did her mother go with her?”
“I don’t know,” the guard answered.
“Can you give me her mobile number so I can call her myself?”
“No, ma’am, I not allowed to give out phone numbers. I sorry.”
“Please?”
“I wish I could, but man dem fire me. I can’t. Good night, miss.” He started backing away.
“OK. Well, thank you. Good night, sir.”
He lifted his hand in a gesture of farewell and walked toward the next car in line.
I looked back toward the entrance building and saw Jiménez storming towards us with the guard trailing behind him. Time to leave.
I pulled the truck forward and made a tire-squealing U-turn, then drove for half a mile. Kurt didn’t break the silence. When my phone rang, I parked on the side of the road to answer, trying to shake the image of Elena’s hand in my husband’s at the end of our interview a few days ago. I had faith in Nick, but that didn’t mean I liked all this talk about Mexico.
Finding Harmony (Katie & Annalise Book 3) Page 8
