Someone's Watching

by Sharon Potts

  Robbie slid off the stool.

  “I have a daughter,” the man said, looking down at the flyer. There was an edge of melancholy in his voice. “I hope you find your sister.”

  Chapter 28

  Headlights on the cars coming from Miami brightened the interior of the Corvair every few seconds. Robbie watched Jeremy hunch forward over the steering wheel, his head turning to follow each one.

  They were parked outside a deserted strip mall a ways north of the tiki bar. Turquoise awnings announced local gifts, souvenirs, shells. It was dark and quiet with no pedestrians and only the constant stream of cars filing by.

  “Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?” Robbie asked.

  “I’m looking for black cars,” Jeremy said.

  A car whished by.

  “Well, you just missed one.”

  “That was an old Corolla. Totally wrong. It needs to be something fancier—like a Town Car or sports car. Tinted windows would help.”

  Robbie thought for a second. “You’re looking for cars from the mainland heading to a house party? But the guy at the bar said the parties were on weekends, not Monday night.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky. Remember the asshole who passed us on U.S. 1? Black car, tinted windows?”

  “Yeah, but honestly, isn’t that a bit of a long shot?”

  “All we have right now are long shots.”

  Robbie felt tired suddenly, the beers getting to her. Jeremy was right. Sure, they’d found someone who’d seen her sister, but the old guy at the bar hadn’t given them much useful information. A couple of punks? They could be anyone or anywhere.

  She looked at Jeremy clenching the wheel. The scar extended over the back of his hand like a starburst.

  They didn’t need to be chasing after shadows. The last time they did, they’d almost gotten killed. The smart thing was to tell Lieber about the man who saw Kate. Tomorrow. Not tonight. Tonight, all she wanted was to curl up next to Jeremy on a big soft bed and let him hold her. Just like he used to.

  Another car sped by. The lights played on Jeremy’s face—his prominent forehead, several-day-old beard covering his cheeks and cleft chin.

  Hadn’t he told her at the bar that he didn’t want to drive back to Miami tonight? What was she waiting for?

  “Jeremy.” She put her hand over his scarred one.

  He turned toward her. His eyes were a deep rich brown. She saw them for an instant in the light of a passing car. And then, his lips were on hers. She tasted him, melted against him. They clung to each other, kissing, touching. His skin so warm. His muscles so hard. “Jeremy,” she whispered.

  They pulled apart to study each other. He took a lock of hair out of her eye.

  A car sped by, too fast. They both looked. Black sedan, tinted windows.

  “Forget about it,” he said, pulling her close. “It was a stupid idea.”

  “No.” Robbie straightened up. “Go. Follow it.”

  He hesitated for barely a second. Then he pulled onto the road, hand on the gearshift. First, second, third—hurrying to catch up with the car. Hurrying away from the moment they almost had.

  Later, Robbie told herself. They still had later.

  They got lucky. The sedan was stopped by a red light and they pulled up behind it. The light turned green. The sedan screeched forward, turning right at the next street, which led toward the bay. Jeremy followed, holding back so they wouldn’t be obvious to the sedan. The street wove around a neighborhood of two-story houses with Bermuda shutters that looked like they’d been built in the 1950s and ’60s. As they continued down the road, the shrubs and trees thickened. The houses became larger, newer, and more widely spaced apart. Just like the neighborhood the man at the tiki bar had described as where the mainlanders lived and had their parties. The sedan turned onto what appeared to be a private driveway.

  Jeremy stayed back, killed the lights, and slowly approached the opening where the car had turned in. A garage door opened at the end of the driveway; the sedan slid inside the garage with the door closing behind it. There were no other cars. No evidence of a party.

  “Looks like I was wrong,” Jeremy said.

  Robbie was surprised by how relieved she felt.

  “Of course, we still have Plan B.” He leaned over and kissed her.

  “Plan B sounds good. Very good.”

  Jeremy turned on the headlights. He drove down the winding road to where it dead-ended at the bay, then started turning the car around. A car driving too fast pulled into a driveway just to their right. A black car with tinted windows.

  Not now, Robbie thought.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Jeremy said, but he slowed where the car had pulled in.

  Oak, ficus, and palm trees formed thickets on either side of the road. Cars were parked haphazardly on the grass and in the circular driveway. Expensive shiny sedans and coupes, Porsches, Ferraris, other sports cars she didn’t recognize. Mainly black, some red, a yellow one. They all had tinted windows.

  “We don’t have to stop,” he said.

  There wasn’t necessarily any connection between this party and her sister, but what if there was?

  “We’re here,” Robbie said. “We should at least check it out.”

  Jeremy turned into the narrow road, then pulled the Corvair off to the side in a darkened copse of trees and bushes so it wasn’t conspicuous.

  “How are we going to handle this?” Robbie whispered as they got out of the car.

  “Just act like we belong.”

  “We’re not exactly dressed for a party.”

  “Sure we are.”

  Small white pebbles covered the circular driveway that led to the house. There had to have been hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. Robbie and Jeremy stayed on the grass, near the shrubs and trees.

  At the end of the driveway, a white rectangular house elevated on stilts backed up to the bay. There was a red metal sculpture of a jumping or flying dragon in the courtyard.

  The front door was tall, wide, windowless, and white. Jeremy took hold of the doorknob.

  “You’re not going to knock?” Robbie whispered.

  “Nope. We just walk in like we belong.”

  He pulled the door open, but a large black man with dreadlocks was on the other side blocking their entrance. “Name?” he said, looking down at his clipboard.

  “Shit,” Jeremy said. “I forgot something.”

  He led Robbie back to the bushes.

  “Now what?” she said.

  “We wait and see what happens.”

  Several people walked along the driveway, their shoes scattering the pebbles. They must have been in the black car that Robbie and Jeremy had followed in. The bouncer let them inside.

  “So we stand here all night?” Robbie asked.

  “Not all night. We’ll give it another few minutes, then we’re out of here. I’m thinking of that sweet motel on the bay. Didn’t the woman in the office say she had a room for us?”

  Robbie again heard the sound of crunching pebbles. A slender woman in a Jackie Onassis-style dress and jacket was walking gracefully toward the house. Her hair was parted on the side so that it covered her forehead at an angle and was then brought back into an upsweep.

  “It’s Gina Fieldstone,” Robbie whispered. “What’s she doing here?”

  “You know her?”

  “Yeah. Her husband’s an up-and-coming politician. Gina said they’d try to help find Kate.”

  “Go.” Jeremy gave her a little push.

  Robbie shook her head.

  “Go,” he said a little louder.

  The clicking sound stopped. The woman turned toward Jeremy’s voice.

  “Gina,” Robbie called, waving as she stepped from the bushes.

  Gina drew herself up like a cornered cat, then she relaxed. “Robbie. You surprised me.” Her champagne-colored suit was illuminated by the floodlights positioned atop the house. “I hadn’t realized you’d be here. What a relief.
I was afraid I wouldn’t know a soul.”

  So Robbie’s presence here, wherever here was, wasn’t that extraordinary. “I’m glad to see you, too.” Robbie hoped to get a handle on whose party this was. “Is your husband with you?”

  “My husband?” Gina looked momentarily flummoxed. And then she let out a few notes of her lingering xylophone laugh. “No. Certainly not. Stanford keeps away from these events like the plague.” She took in Robbie’s jeans and T-shirt. “Oh well. I’m inappropriately dressed, as usual.”

  “Anything goes at these parties.”

  “Well that’s good.” Gina glanced down the pebbled driveway. “If I’d known it was such a long drive from Miami, I never would have come. My publisher is clueless about distances when he sets something up for me. He assumes everything in Florida is a half hour away.”

  Robbie wondered how Gina had gotten down here. Had she come herself or had her escort from the other night driven her?

  Gina seemed to be studying Jeremy, as though not sure what to make of this handsome guy with his scraggly beard.

  “This is Jeremy Stroeb,” Robbie said.

  Gina fondled a rhinestone button on her suit jacket. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You, too.”

  Gina took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, I suppose we should go inside.”

  “Sounds good.” Jeremy held the front door open.

  “Gina Tyler Fieldstone,” Gina said to the dreadlocked bouncer. Robbie and Jeremy followed her into a foyer with a staircase leading up to the main part of the house. Music was coming from above and a smell of something sweet—perfume? Incense? Marijuana? And there was something else familiar, that didn’t seem to belong. Chlorine.

  They climbed the staircase. The upstairs vestibule opened onto a huge area with an indoor swimming pool.

  Robbie felt a quickening. Lieber had said that Joanne had very likely died in a swimming pool. But lots of houses had swimming pools; what were the odds it would have been this one?

  Robbie looked up. The dark, starless sky was visible through a roof made of see-through panels.

  People surrounded the glowing blue rectangle. They were dressed like an upscale South Beach crowd—short black dresses on the women, black T-shirts or sport jackets on the men. No one was quite as casual as Robbie and Jeremy. Robbie’s hand went to one of her feathered earrings. She was feeling extremely conspicuous.

  There were bars at either end of the pool and women in bikinis and stilettos were walking around offering trays of hors d’oeuvres to the guests.

  “Hmmm,” Gina said. “You’re certainly not in Kansas City, Dorothy.”

  Robbie did a double take. The servers were wearing transparent bikinis, making the young women virtually naked.

  “What are you drinking?” Jeremy asked.

  “I guess a beer,” Robbie said.

  He looked at Gina, waiting.

  “Nothing for me just yet,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Jeremy walked toward one of the bars, shoulders back, arms swinging, like he totally belonged.

  Gina watched him, frowning slightly. Robbie remembered telling her that she didn’t have a boyfriend and, in less than a week, Gina had seen Robbie with both Brett and Jeremy. Robbie hated giving Gina the impression that she was loose.

  “Jeremy’s an old friend,” Robbie said. “He’s helping me find my sister.”

  Gina tilted her head. “Here?”

  “Maybe. There’s a good chance that Kate and Joanne were in Key Largo the Friday they disappeared.”

  “Sounds like the police are getting closer.”

  “I hope so. I worry about what you said the other day. That the longer Kate’s missing, the less likely she’ll be found.”

  Gina nodded solemnly and rolled the rhinestone button between her fingers. “I’ve spoken to Stanford about the case and he has a few people checking into it as well.”

  “Really?”

  “Why are you so surprised?”

  “I know you offered—and I thought that was amazing of you—but honestly, I didn’t think your husband would have time to do anything.”

  “You sound jaded, Robbie. As though you don’t have faith that people want to help each other.”

  “Most people don’t. But I’m truly grateful to you for all you’ve done.”

  Gina looked away, as though embarrassed. “I’d better find our host.”

  Before Robbie had a chance to ask who their host was, Gina slipped into the throng of guests, conjuring up for Robbie the image of a white swan amidst a flock of dark ducklings.

  Jeremy returned and handed Robbie a beer. “Where’s your new friend?”

  Robbie gestured toward the crowd with her head. “She just told me her husband has some people trying to find Kate.”

  “No kidding,” Jeremy said. “He must be pretty connected.”

  “I guess. He’s with the Department of Justice.”

  “But isn’t that federal? How would he get his people to check on something local?”

  “I don’t know, but she said he’d managed it somehow.”

  A dark-haired server sashayed by. Her sheer organza bikini shimmered. Robbie had a flash of something unpleasant. Kate? But there was no way her sister would be here, parading around almost nude knowing her best friend was dead.

  “We should go,” Robbie said. “Before someone realizes we don’t belong.”

  “Let’s just walk around for a minute,” Jeremy said.

  “But it’s a waste of time. This isn’t the kind of place Kate and her friend would have gone to. These people are older and have money; they’re not a bunch of wild partiers where a couple of teenage girls might have gotten in trouble.”

  A server with a perfect hourglass figure held out a tray of hors d’oeuvres. “Raw tuna with wasabi dumplings,” she said to Jeremy. “Want one?” It wasn’t clear whether she was offering something from her tray or her personal menu.

  “Thanks.” Jeremy took a dumpling and popped it into his mouth.

  The server walked away. She had an amazing butt.

  “Pretty good,” Jeremy said, taking a pull from his beer bottle. “What? You’re not enjoying this?”

  “We’re not here to enjoy. We came to see if this might be where those guys brought my sister and it obviously isn’t.”

  “Come on. One walk through.” He licked his fingers. “It’s ridiculous to me that some people live like this. And this is probably just a vacation house. It had to have cost five or ten million.”

  Reluctantly, Robbie followed Jeremy past windowed rooms. She could see the reflections of a couple of party crashers in jeans and T-shirts holding bottles of beer. She put her face against the glass to look inside. Bed, dresser, flat-screen TV, a painting of something flying. A dragon? The far wall was a window through which Robbie could see the bay, a black horizon against a moonless sky.

  She and Jeremy continued down the hallway. Curtains were drawn in some of the rooms and Robbie wondered who was in there and what they were doing.

  A very large long-haired cat appeared from out of nowhere, reminding Robbie of the Cheshire cat. Robbie watched it slip through flaps covering a kitty door that led outside, probably to a porch or balcony.

  “That cat has the right idea,” Robbie said to Jeremy. “Can we leave now?”

  “I guess.”

  They squeezed past people holding cocktails and champagne glasses. Giant canvases covered the white walls. Each painting depicting a monochrome dragon—red, green, blue. The dragons had large, distorted penises.

  “Someone has an interesting fixation,” Jeremy said. “I wonder who the dragons mate with.”

  “Let’s go,” Robbie said. She put her beer bottle down on a table with other discarded drinks. “This place is starting to creep me out.”

  Jeremy slid his arm around her and guided her through the crowded pool area. “Okay, little Miss Wholesome. We’ll head back to that nice motel on the bay where there are no scary drag—
”

  “Shit,” Robbie said.

  “What?”

  “Keep walking,” Robbie said in a low voice. “I don’t want her to see me.”

  “Who?”

  “This girl Maddy, who used to work at The Garage. She’s the server standing by the bar. The one with blonde hair and a mermaid tattoo on her arm.” Robbie figured she didn’t need to specify the large breasts and dimpled butt in the sheer bikini.

  “So?” Jeremy said. “What’s the big deal if she sees you?”

  “It’s just embarrassing. She quit without notice. Really inconsiderate.”

  Just then, Maddy turned toward them holding a tray of drinks. Her eyes met Robbie’s. Maddy looked confused, but then she noticed Jeremy and smiled.

  “Hey,” Maddy said, as she got closer. “I was worried for a minute.”

  “About?” Robbie said.

  “That you were still dating Brett.” She puffed out her chest when she got near Jeremy.

  “You know Brett?” Robbie said.

  “Yeah. He got me this job. Wasn’t that sweet? Said he had an anonymous client that wanted to make sure I was taken care of. And this pays way better than The Garage so I don’t have to be away from my son so much.”

  Was Brett somehow connected to this party?

  Maddy raked her fingers through her wild blonde hair, balancing the drink tray in the crook of her other arm. “And like, I heard you and Brett weren’t a thing anymore.”

  “We’re not.”

  “So as long as my boyfriend doesn’t find out—” Her voice faded off. Robbie followed her eyes.

  Brett’s head, with its spiked hair, stuck out above the crowd. He was on the other side of the pool, facing a couple of men. His body was stiff like he was primed to hit someone. And then Robbie noticed the orange ponytail and taut face of Brett’s boss, Mister M. Could this be Mike’s house? Mike’s party? It made sense that Gina would be here; she was a client of their public relations firm.

  Mike appeared to be saying something to calm Brett down. Robbie recognized the other guy from BURN Friday night—good-looking, with brown hair and a messed-up lip. He put his hand on Brett’s shoulder. Brett shrugged him off, then pushed through the crowd with the jittery motions of a prizefighter between rounds.