Key Lime Pie

by Josi S. Kilpack

“Thank you,” Sadie said with a sincere smile. “But I need to get to the airport. I’m heading home.”

  If she’d been on the receiving end of such a statement, she’d have wondered why the woman who had just arrived was leaving. But Layla didn’t seem to notice the oddity of it. “Okay,” she said, opening the door and letting herself out.

  “You’re welcome,” Sadie said even though Layla hadn’t thanked her. She watched Layla for a moment, then began pulling away when something caught her eye and caused her to press her foot on the brake instead of the gas. The screen door was in place, but the front door was open, allowing Sadie to see into the house. When they’d left, nearly an hour earlier, Layla had shut and locked the door, Sadie was sure of it. For half a second she argued with herself; it wasn’t her business, it was probably the mysterious Tia who’d left it open. But Sadie hadn’t even finished presenting that side of the case before her eyes were drawn upward and she saw something else.

  Smoke.

  Chapter 14

  Layla!” Sadie shouted, throwing the car into park with her right hand while shoving the car door open with her left, running up just as Layla reached the porch. “Don’t go in there!” As soon as she’d left the car she could smell the smoke as well as see it.

  Layla turned to look at Sadie mere moments before Sadie reached her and grabbed Layla’s arm, pulling her back down the cracked sidewalk. Her eyes weren’t on Layla stumbling alongside her; they were glued to the top of the house, where tendrils of smoke reached for the sky—tendrils that now looked too small to be a house fire. She looked through the screen and front door. There wasn’t any smoke coming from inside, but she noticed the wood around the door frame had split and when she looked at the top of the porch, she could see splinters she hadn’t been able to see from the car. Someone had broken into the house while they’d been gone. And something was burning.

  Sadie continued pulling Layla away from the house until they reached the gravelly shoulder of the road near Sadie’s car that was still running with the driver’s side door open. Layla followed without complaint or question.

  “Wait here,” Sadie said. With her eyes still on the smoke, she ran toward the side of the house, noting right away that the grass didn’t feel as solid as grass in Colorado did. It was a strange sensation, giving just a little bit beneath her feet.

  Forcing herself to ignore the weird texture, she followed the pillar of smoke to an old oil drum that sat in the middle of the bricked patio behind the house. There were holes punched around the bottom edge of the drum, and enough soot hiding the original blue paint that Sadie recognized it as what she would call a burn can at home. She had one herself—the holes at the bottom allowed air to circulate and the can itself created a handy way to contain burning weeds and twigs.

  It was a relief to know the house wasn’t on fire, but Sadie’s senses stayed on high alert as she scanned the backyard, which touched five other backyards. She saw no one as she approached the oil drum, which seemed to be smoldering rather than in the middle of an active burn. When she reached it, she found it half full of an indecipherable mess. The smoke certainly didn’t help her identify any of the contents, and Sadie pulled back, her eyes stinging. She looked around, blinking quickly to get the smoke out of her eyes, and spotted a hose wound up against the side of the house. Moments later the contents of the oil can were wet and stinky, but no longer on fire. She looked into the can again and realized that whatever had been in there was beyond saving.

  She lifted her head and looked through the sliding glass door of Layla’s house. She could see into the kitchen and part of the living room. Nothing seemed out of place—no drawers emptied, no furniture overturned—but something had been put in this can and lit on fire, and since whoever had done it had broken into the house, it made sense to assume that whatever was in the can now had been in the house when she and Layla had left.

  Her hand was mere centimeters away from the handle of the sliding glass door before she pulled back as though it too were on fire. What was she doing? Entering a crime scene? Putting herself right in the middle of the action? Again? Shaking her head, despite the fact that there was no one to see her, she stepped away from the patio.

  I’m done with this kind of thing, she said to herself when she reached the grass. She turned around, leaving the fire can and the patio behind her as she made her way back around the house. I’m going home.

  Even as she declared it in her mind, she knew it wouldn’t be that simple. She had to call the police and at the very least give a statement about what she’d seen.

  She groaned low in her throat at the thought of staying here longer, creating more opportunity for Eric to catch up with her. In addition to that, she worried about her own ability to keep her curiosity at bay. She was embarrassed right now, and that was enough to drown out her hunger for finding answers, but how long would it last? It felt a little like how she imagined an alcoholic felt when they went into a bar. The longer they were there, the better the chance of them having a drink. The reasonable solution, then, was to avoid the bar. But she had to make a statement. What dumb luck.

  When she rounded the front of the house, Layla was standing in exactly the same place Sadie had left her. The driver’s door to Sadie’s car was still open, and the slight hum in the air reminded her that she hadn’t turned off the engine.

  Sergeant Mathews had said that people looked out for Layla, and Sadie wondered why exactly. Was Layla ill? Had something happened that kept her from reacting to things the way normal people did? Sadie wished she’d asked Mathews more questions, but the timing hadn’t been right and it really wasn’t any of her business. She was going home.

  “We need to call the police,” Sadie said when she reached Layla.

  Layla looked from the house to Sadie’s face, confused. “Why?”

  Why? Sadie repeated in her own mind. Wasn’t it obvious? But this was Layla she was talking to.

  “Someone broke into your house and then put something in the fire can out back,” she explained.

  Layla turned her head to look at the front door. “Oh,” she said simply.

  Sadie paused another moment, then pulled out her phone and the card Sergeant Mathews had given her. Mourning the disruption in her plan to return home as soon as possible, Sadie dialed the number and waited.

  “This is Sergeant Mathews,” he said a moment later.

  “This is Sadie Hoffmiller; I just left your office.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hoffmiller. How can I help you?”

  Sadie took a breath and began her explanation. “Well, it’s like this . . .”

  Chapter 15

  The officer explained at length how Sadie was to fill out the statement form. She nodded politely, but in her mind she was recalculating her time frame. If she flew out of Miami before 2:00, she could be home in time to make some good biscuits and gravy—thus redeeming the Southern food she’d been so horribly denied—and could pretend the last twenty-four hours had been a mere blip of unreasonable thought on her part. At some point she’d have to face Eric, but the longer she could put it off the more time she’d have to come up with a plausible explanation for her behavior.

  “ . . . then sign here and return it to me.”

  Sadie smiled at the officer and put her hand out for the form he’d already attached to a clipboard. “Thank you,” she said. It looked nearly identical to the forms she’d filled out in Garrison. Piece of cake.

  She leaned against the hood of her car—which she’d turned off right after calling Mathews—and began filling in the blanks. Layla was a few feet away, speaking to Mathews, who had arrived after rescheduling his other meetings. If Sadie slid a little closer she’d be able to hear what they were saying. Instead, she stayed right where she was, allowing their voices to remain indecipherable.

  The squeak of the screen door tricked her into looking up as an officer came out of the house and headed toward Mathews. Mathews ended his conversation with Layla and took a few step
s forward to meet the officer. They were close enough that Sadie could hear what they were saying even though she didn’t want to. Well, she did want to, but she didn’t want to want to.

  “Nothing seems out of place,” the officer explained. “We’ve been through every room. It’s clear and undisturbed.”

  But the door was kicked in, Sadie said to herself. Someone had a reason to get in there. And the timing was impossibly coincidental—the very time Sadie and Layla were at the police station.

  She commanded herself to stop it. No more questions!

  “What about the fire can?” Mathews asked. “Have we identified its contents?”

  “Clothes,” the officer said, shrugging. “And what’s left of some three-ring binders; the papers inside are unsalvageable, I’m afraid.”

  Sadie’s hand slowed.

  He continued. “Officer Kerr is laying everything out, and the fire chief is on his way over to help, but so far there doesn’t seem to be anything all that important.”

  Sadie’s mind went back to her explanation to Mathews about the contents of the box. Nothing important. For the second time in twenty minutes she growled low in her throat and threw a mental tantrum about having to step even further into this whole situation. Mathews moved forward as though to go to the back of the house and Sadie was tempted to let him, but she was the only person here who knew what had been in the box. She couldn’t withhold that kind of information.

  “Sergeant Mathews,” she said, tucking the pen beneath the clip of the clipboard and moving toward him. He turned and waited for her to catch up with him, watching her with careful expectation. She looked at the grass, wondering if she wanted to do this. Her experience with police officers hadn’t necessarily built trusting relationships. Would Eric want her to tell? Did it matter? Was it fair to distrust every police officer she ever met simply because she’d run into a couple difficult ones?

  “Mrs. Hoffmiller,” he said when she reached him.

  “That box I brought from Colorado,” she said. “It was in the living room when Layla and I left for the police station. Is it still inside?”

  “You said it was a Sunkist box, right?”

  Sadie nodded. Mathews looked past her and got the attention of another officer. He told the officer what to look for and the officer went back to the house. Before speaking again, she took a breath. Hoping she was wrong about what else she had to say. “It would fit in that oil drum, I think.”

  Mathews had been watching the door and turned back to face her. She held his eye, but neither of them spoke. A few seconds later the hinge of the screen door squeaked again and moments later an officer approached.

  “No Sunkist box, Sergeant,” the officer said. “Want me to check the other rooms?”

  “Sure,” Mathews said, but Sadie knew that he knew as well as she did that it was a fool’s errand. He nodded to Sadie. “Shall we head out back?”

  Sadie fell in step beside him. As they walked, she tried to write on the statement form some more, eager to complete the paperwork even though she knew that yet one more thing was now standing in her way. Walking and writing at the same time resulted in horrible handwriting so she tucked the clipboard under her arm.

  They rounded the house and Sadie crinkled her nose at the wet cinder smell of the backyard. A sheet of plastic had been laid out on the patio and several black mounds were spaced every few inches upon it. She stopped when Mathews did, just in front of the dissected mass and pointed at the item that first caught her attention. “That’s the red sweater,” Sadie said. “It was at the top of the box.” Parts of the red yarn were still visible, probably where the sweater had been folded. She pointed to another clump of blackened fabric. “I’m assuming that’s a pair of jeans—there were two of them.” The three-ring binders were easy to identify since they were now metal rings attached to melted lumps of plastic, and what she assumed was the music box was still the right shape, only black. She imagined the ballerina inside was melted. It had seemed to be a memento of Megan’s childhood, and Sadie was sad to see it destroyed.

  “I’m going to need a list of everything you saw in that box,” Mathews said, his eyes fixed on the burned items and his tone grim. “Every detail.”

  “Okay,” Sadie said dryly. Every minute that passed made her more antsy to leave. “Do you have an inventory form handy or are they back at the station?”

  Mathews looked at her strangely, and she realized that normal people didn’t know the proper form for something like this. Even when she tried to be normal it didn’t work.

  “The station,” Mathews said. “We’ll take Layla with us. I’d like to make sure she’s okay.”

  “All right,” Sadie said, defeated. She pulled the clipboard out again. “Let me just finish this statement. The officer who gave it to me is expecting it.” His name was Newman but Sadie didn’t like the way Mathews was looking at her so she chose to be vague. Normal people were vague all the time.

  “Sure,” Mathews said, but she heard his tone and didn’t like it. Until now she had been on the sidelines; now she’d somehow moved closer to the nucleus. Her trip home was getting farther and farther away, which made meeting up with Eric more probable every minute. Without saying anything else to Mathews, she began heading back to the front of the house. Mathews stayed in the backyard to talk to Officer Kerr.

  Moments later, Sadie rounded the front of the house. She paused long enough to finish the last sentence on the statement form and had signed her name to the bottom when a prickling sensation began climbing up her spine. She lifted her head to look around and was immediately captured by a pair of bright blue eyes.

  Eric was watching her from several feet away while he talked to one of the other officers. His hair was pulled back and there was mud on his shoes, but that was all she noticed before the prickling sensation turned into a full-on tingle and, despite her internal protestations to the contrary, she remembered what had drawn her to him in the first place.

  Chapter 16

  Sadie did everything she could to avoid talking to Eric at Layla’s house, which wasn’t hard to do since Mathews had him cornered, firing questions at him at lightning speed. When Eric’s voice started to rise, Mathews shut him down and left a couple officers on the scene while ordering the rest of them back to the station—along with Eric, Layla, and Sadie. At least Sadie got to drive in her own car, Layla automatically tagging along. Eric rode over with Mathews even though his rental car was still parked in the carport. She assumed Mathews had insisted on it.

  Sadie drove slowly, giving herself a tour of Homestead on the way and hoping that Eric would already be in Mathews’s office when she got to the station. Layla didn’t seem to notice. By the time they arrived, Eric was nowhere to be seen and Sadie got to work on the inventory form. Layla sat next to Sadie on one of the blue plastic chairs, content to silently watch the comings and goings of the officers. The woman piqued Sadie’s curiosity a great deal, but she kept pushing it away. To get the answers she wanted, she’d have to ask questions, and she was against that at the moment. She just wanted to do what she had to do and get the heck out of Florida as quickly as possible. And yet she could feel the pull of the man in the other room, urging her to stay with his silent desire that she do so.

  She put all her focus into the paperwork she’d been given, but couldn’t help glancing at Mathews’s office each time raised voices escaped the edges of the door. She wondered what she would say when it was her turn to talk to Eric.

  While part of her felt taken advantage of, another part of her wanted his arms around her as he whispered an explanation that would make everything all better. She assumed the hug-and-apology option was inspired by the part of her that didn’t want to be wrong about Eric; she had to admit she liked the idea that he would trust her. She bounced back and forth between both fantasies until she was completely confused. What did she want?

  It was vastly unsettling not to know her own mind, and she hated the idea of facing Eric when s
he was so unsure of her feelings. If she were open to the idea of attempting to repair whatever it was between them, it wouldn’t happen here. Not under this kind of pressure, and not with how she felt toward him right now. And then she felt guilty for focusing on her internal conflict when there were bigger issues taking place around her—a dead girl with Megan’s bracelet. Better to step out of this tension-filled situation than expect to get a good outcome here and now.

  “I want to go home,” Layla said, causing Sadie to look at the woman sitting next to her. She was so quiet it was easy to forget she was there at all. She seemed agitated and tapped her foot against the tile. “Tia made barbeque chicken for sandwiches and pasta salad for lunch.” Sadie waited for her to say something about Wheel of Fortune, but she didn’t seem to remember.

  “I’m sure they’ll let us go soon,” Sadie assured her. After she said it, Sadie realized she’d used us, joining her plans to Layla’s. She shook her head and went back to the inventory form. There was no us. Not with Layla, not with Eric. Sadie needed to remember she was not a part of this.

  She bent over her clipboard, intent on finishing the list of items she’d seen in the box that she now wished she’d have left in the trunk of her rental car. No one would have known the box was even in Florida if she hadn’t taken it into the house. Which brought up a whole new passel of questions. Who would have known the box was there? And who would have known its contents? Layla had barely glanced at it. What had been in the box that was important enough to be destroyed?

  She reviewed her list, trying to identify anything that seemed to stand out. As before, however, nothing seemed particularly interesting and she was again reminded that the contents of the box seemed to be dregs—leftovers. She wished she’d paid more attention to the papers in the binders, and to the photos and receipts in the tea tin, but she’d merely glanced at them, not realizing she’d be the last person to ever see them in their original form. She included the details she remembered—one of the receipts was to a Texaco station, another was the yellow carbon of a credit card sale to . . . somewhere. She knew from prior experience that it was often the small details that made all the difference. Whoever burned all those details likely knew the same thing.