by John Clement
As soon as I opened the door, I heard a furry-footed stampede coming up the hallway from the kitchen, and then I spent a good ten minutes rolling around on the floor greeting everybody. Then they all scampered after me into the kitchen, where I slid my backpack off my shoulder and zipped it open a little further. Gigi was inside, half-asleep in his makeshift bed of socks and underwear.
“You okay in there?”
He wriggled his nose, which I took to mean yes, and then I propped the bag up on one of the bar chairs, looping the shoulder straps over the chair to secure it. The cats’ food supplies were lined up on the counter next to the refrigerator, which was covered with family photos—class pictures and wedding shots—along with roughly a thousand refrigerator magnets. One read, MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME: CLEAN MY KITCHEN. Another displayed a cheerful woman in a red bandanna, holding a slice of chocolate pie to her lips. The caption read, STRESSED IS DESSERTS SPELLED BACKWARDS.
I thought about sitting down right there on the floor and wasting an hour or two reading them all, but I knew those cats wouldn’t be too happy with me if I did that, plus I still had lots of other pets to tend to. I prepared ten individual bowls of kibble with a little bit of warm water, then I distributed them all around the kitchen so everybody had enough room to eat in private. Then I did a thorough run-through of the house and found Lucy in one of the bedrooms, sunning herself on a windowsill.
When I came in, she rose up on all fours, pressing the tips of her toes down and arching her back, purring like a tiny storm generator as I ran my fingers from the scruff of her neck to the tip of her tail, leaving little furrows in her plush, silky fur. I bent down and pressed my forehead into hers.
She said, “Thrrrrp…?”
I said, “Yes, ma’am.”
I’d brought her bowl with me, specially prepared with her prescription senior kibble, plus a little canned wet food on top to make it extra tempting. As I put it down on the carpet, she hopped off the sill and took a few dainty bites. I sat down on the edge of the bed and sighed. I knew I needed to give the Wincocks a call. I realized I’d left them so abruptly, and I was pretty sure those reporters had probably broadcast video of Michael and me sitting on the side of the road outside the crime scene.
Mrs. Wincock answered on the first ring.
“Dixie, are you okay?”
“I’m totally fine. I just wanted to apologize for running out of there so fast. That private lane where they found the body…”
She said, “I know, we saw everything on the news. Do you know who she was?”
“A tourist, visiting the island looking for a place to buy. But I just called to let you know I’ll be at your house tomorrow to take care of Mrs. Heedles just like we planned.”
I heard a sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s good to hear. I knew you’d call if there was a problem. We leave for New Orleans bright and early in the morning.”
I said, “Okay, well, have a good time at the…”
I stopped myself from saying the word wedding and opted for “trip” instead.
She hesitated. “Dixie … if you need to talk, you know you can call me anytime.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so I just said, “Okay, sounds good!” and hung up the phone.
By then, Lucy had scarfed up all her food and was sitting next to me on the bed, gazing into my eyes and kneading my thigh with her paws. I usually don’t have to worry about spending a ton of time with the Piker cats, mainly because there are so many of them they do a perfectly fine job of keeping each other entertained, but Lucy seemed to be taking a little longer getting used to her new family.
I cupped her chin in the palm of my hand and said, “Let’s go take a look at the pond.”
She padded after me into the kitchen, where I shook my head thinking about Mrs. Wincock’s offer. What did she mean, if I needed to talk? Talk about what? Guidry? Did she think I cared? That I gave a rat’s ass about that stupid wedding? That I’d want her to report what Guidry’s tuxedo looked like, or the flower arrangements, or how many people were there, or what the cake looked like, or whether Monochrome had chosen to wear a white gown?
No, thank you.
I shook my head again as I washed all the kitty bowls and put the supplies away. I shook my head some more as I led everybody out to the backyard, and then I shook my head at least two or three more times while I gave Lucy a good grooming. We sat in the grass next to the pond. I ran the brush through her coat, removing enough fur to stuff a small pillow, and we watched the goldfish patrol the water’s edge in languid circles while the other cats hunted around the fenced perimeter for crickets and butterflies.
When we were done, Lucy headed back to her spot on the windowsill in the bedroom. I told her I’d stop by again later, giving her a kiss on the nose as a little thank-you for cheering me up a bit. I left everybody else napping in a furry pile on the couch in the living room.
After that, I found myself driving aimlessly down Ocean Boulevard with one hand on the wheel and the other tucked inside my backpack on the passenger seat, absentmindedly massaging the scruff of Gigi’s neck. I realized I had absolutely no idea where I was headed.
I pulled over to the side of the road and sighed as Deputy Marshall pulled in behind me. If ever there was a possibility that my twenty-four-hour escort might have been relieved of his duties, I knew it had been completely eliminated the moment that poor woman’s body had been discovered in my driveway. Detective Carthage had been adamant—I wasn’t to be left alone for one second.
Marshall got out of his car and trotted up to my window. “You okay?”
I waved him away. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just needed to make a phone call.”
He took a couple of steps back. “Okay, sorry. Just checking.”
I pulled my phone out of the cup holder in the center console and flipped it open as he made his way back, but I didn’t need to make a phone call. I needed to get focused before I went on with my day.
I paged through the contacts on my phone, absentmindedly looking for something, anything, that might take my mind off things. Caroline’s name appeared. They still hadn’t gotten ahold of her, but Detective Carthage had insisted I not call her again until they had a chance to talk to her first. I was worried sick about her, but I tried not to think about it. I told myself she was fine and kept scrolling.
The name of my favorite haunt rolled by—the Village Diner, which for all intents and purposes is my home away from home—but the thought of stopping by for a cup of coffee made my heart sink. Judy, the diner’s only full-time waitress, is probably my closest friend, and Tanisha, the cook there, is like a sister. I knew I couldn’t face them without blabbing out everything that had happened … and I wasn’t sure I felt like reliving it just yet.
Then, Guidry’s name rolled by, summoning more questions about the wedding, which I was beginning to think everybody in this damn town was attending except me.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror and muttered, “What in the world is wrong with you?”
Two women had lost their lives, and here I was fretting about an old flame getting married. What was it? Jealousy? First of all, what a dirty, low-down thing to do to Ethan, the man who loved me now, who accepted me for who I was, who didn’t go away. And second, it wasn’t like Guidry had run off with another woman. Our undoing had been just as much my decision as his.
Enough, I told myself. There were a lot more important things to worry about. At that, the image of poor Mrs. Reed’s face appeared, and then slowly fading into view was Sara Potts. I realized with a jolt that I had no idea if Sara’s family had been contacted yet. Would they want to meet me? Would they want to know the details of what I had witnessed? And would Mr. Reed want to talk to me too? I was, after all, the last person on earth to have seen both their loved ones alive.
And then I looked at myself in the rearview mirror and took a deep breath.
No.
I wasn’t the last person to see them alive …
>
That was someone else.
18
Detective Carthage had asked me to meet him at the Siesta Pavilion, a little covered courtyard at the edge of the beach where there’s a collection of long picnic tables, a tiny gift shop that sells beach toys and cheap souvenirs, and a snack bar. I knew it was no coincidence—it was the very same snack bar where Sara Potts had worked until two days ago.
The place was filled to the brim with kids in board shorts and bikinis, all running around in the sun, wet, barefoot, and chattering like wild monkeys. If it hadn’t been that Carthage was dressed in his regulation faded jeans and white oxford button-down, I might not have been able to tell him apart from all the other fresh-faced teenagers.
I spotted him on the far side closest to the beach. As I wound my way through the tables with the smell of fast food wafting up around me, I realized with a groan I’d barely eaten a thing all day long. I wondered what Detective Carthage would think if I grabbed a hot dog and a couple baskets of curly fries to wolf down during our meeting, but I managed to control myself.
As I slid into the bench opposite him, he pulled out two file folders from his briefcase and laid them on the table in front of me.
He said, “Hi, Mrs. Hemingway.”
“You can call me Dixie.”
There was an awkward pause, and for some stupid reason I felt compelled to keep on talking. “Being called Mrs. Hemingway just makes me feel like an old lady…”
I added a lighthearted laugh, but the noise that came out of me sounded more like the bleat of a guinea pig (or an old lady). I cleared my throat and told myself to shut the hell up. Why in the world I was so nervous in the presence of a kid almost young enough to be my own son was beyond me.
Just then, two teenage girls, one blond and one brunette, walked by in bikini bottoms and matching tie-dyed T-shirts. One was carrying a plastic tray from the snack bar, piled high with fries and onion rings, and the other had a giant candy-striped beach umbrella balanced on one shoulder.
“Matt?”
Both girls stopped in their tracks.
Detective Carthage looked up and immediately blushed. “Oh, hey.”
The blond said, “OMG Matthew Carthage? What are you doing here? Didn’t you move to Harvard or something?”
He nodded. “Princeton, yeah, but I’m back now.”
She glanced briefly at me and then frowned. “You dropped out?”
“Uh. No, I graduated already.”
She flashed him a goofy grin and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Wanna come hang out with us?”
Carthage turned to me and said, “Well, we’re kind of in the middle of something here…”
The brunette, the one with the umbrella, held up one hand and waved it at me, kind of like a beauty pageant princess on a parade float. “Hi. Sorry to interrupt. I’m Alison and this is Kerry. We went to high school with Matt, but for some reason they wouldn’t let us go to Harvard.”
The blond girl giggled. “Yeah, I can’t imagine why, but I guess we can’t all be geniuses. We’re juniors at Florida State.”
I said, “Oh, cool. Nice to meet you both.”
She said, “Yeah, must be nice to have Matt home for the summer, huh?”
I gulped. “Yeah, it sure is…”
She gave me a polite, pitying smile that teenagers reserve for their elders and then turned her attention back to Matthew.
“Well, we’ll be down by the volleyball courts if you change your mind and wanna come hang out with the dumb kids for a change.”
She wrinkled her nose and gave him a wink.
He stammered, “Okay, yeah, sure.”
As they made their way, the brunette twirled her umbrella at me. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Carthage!”
I gave her a thumbs-up and said, “You bet!”
Inside my head, I’m not much older than seventeen, so it’s always a bit of a shock to the system whenever I’m reminded of the ugly truth. In fact, it was all I could do to keep from leaping off my seat and attacking the child with her own umbrella, but given the fact that a homicide detective was sitting right across the table from me, I figured I’d better keep my mouth shut and my butt in the seat.
Detective Carthage’s face had turned bright pink. “Sorry about that.”
I said, “OMG it’s totally fine.”
He blushed. “Maybe we better move somewhere more private…”
“Good idea,” I said. “You gather up your files and I’ll get my walker.”
We moved over to a bench just a little ways up the beach but more deserted, and as soon as we sat down, Carthage said, “Before I forget, we found Caroline Greaver.”
I gasped. “You did?”
“This morning. She’s in Key West. She’s apparently having a wonderful vacation. And you were right about her phone, it died and she didn’t have a charger with her.”
I must have looked like I’d just been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. “So … she’s okay?”
He nodded. “I explained everything that’s happened, so she was a little shocked, of course. She asked me to thank you for taking care of her pets, and that she’ll call as soon as she can get her phone charged up.”
A feeling of relief washed over my body. I realized this entire time I’d feared the worst … that somehow Caroline had gotten mixed up in all of this … that she’d found herself in the path of the killer.
I said, “Wait … if her phone is still dead, how in the world did you find her?”
“I’m a detective. That’s what I do.”
A small smile appeared on his lips as he laid a file on the bench between us. Clipped to the top was a photocopy of a driver’s license. I recognized the woman in the photo right away. It was Edith Reed.
Carthage said, “This is the woman who visited your house that morning with her husband, right?”
I sighed. “Yeah. That’s her.”
“We found her license in the bushes about twenty feet from the car. Her purse was nearby. Apparently, she decided to stop by your house again, alone, to see if anybody was home. She took a walk down your driveway, and that’s when someone stabbed her.” He glanced at me. “The same as Sara Potts.”
I closed my eyes. “Until now, I had no idea how Sara Potts had died.”
“If it’s any consolation. Neither of them would have seen it coming. They probably both died quickly.”
“And what about the man across the street?”
He frowned. “What man?”
“Rupert Wolff. The man I saw on Caroline’s front porch.”
He shook his head dismissively. “No. We looked into that. He’s just visiting, but there’s something else I need to tell you. It’s about Edith Reed.”
Almost immediately I pictured her, lying in my driveway surrounded with magnolia petals. I felt my jaw tighten. “It’s about the other note, isn’t it?”
“Yeah…”
“Did it have my name on it too?”
“No.”
His gaze was fixed on the group of teenagers playing volleyball down by the water’s edge. I couldn’t tell from this far away, but I figured his two high school friends were probably among them. Just before Carthage answered, I heard one of the kids call out, “Nice shot!”
Detective Carthage looked down at his hands.
“It said, ‘Third time’s a charm.’”
19
Here’s how they make a spicy grapefruit margarita at Colonel Teddy’s Tiki Bar on Siesta Key:
Take a fresh habañero pepper, cut it in half, and then steep it in three ounces of Pueblo Viejo tequila. Next, add an ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice, an ounce of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, and then one ounce of simple syrup plus a couple handfuls of crushed ice. Cover and shake it for no less than thirty seconds and then immediately pour it, ice and all, into a mason jar with a salted rim, garnished with a wedge of key lime or meyer lemon or both.
You can specify how hot you like it.
For example, if y
ou ask for “pleasantly spicy,” they’ll drop the pepper in a cocktail shaker, pour in the tequila, and then remove the pepper immediately. If you ask for “taste-bud abusive,” they’ll let the pepper sit with the tequila for a couple of minutes. Ask for “medical supervision advised,” and they’ll use a safely guarded reserve that’s been steeping for who knows how long.
And here’s how you drink a spicy grapefruit margarita at Colonel Teddy’s Tiki Bar on Siesta Key: as slowly as possible.
It’s preferable to kick your sandals off and dig your toes in the sand, and if you really want to do it right, you swivel around in your stool and turn your face to the sun to watch the waves roll in. Traditionally, you wait until at least 5:00 P.M., but here in Siesta Key, things are a bit more laid back, so it wouldn’t be considered a crime at four. If you happen to have a serial killer on your tail, 3:45 is perfectly acceptable.
After I left my meeting with Detective Carthage, the rest of the day felt like a blur. I’d seen to all my pets—that much I remember. And I remember when I got home our driveway was still cordoned off with police tape, so I had to leave my car on the side of the road. Mrs. Reed’s body had already been removed and taken to the county coroner’s office by then, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk down the lane. Instead, I thrashed my way through the woods with Deputy Marshall following about ten yards behind me, and then I walked along the beach to the house. Marshall sat on the porch all night long, despite Ethan’s protests, but to be honest I think he was secretly as happy as I was to have an armed deputy guarding us overnight.
I stirred my finger around in my margarita.
So, someone is trying to kill you.
I nodded, as if I’d come up with something completely brilliant.
Well, isn’t that just wonderful?
I nodded again. It seemed almost too outrageous, too surreal, to be true. And why? Was there something I was missing? Some detail that would explain it all? I knew if I could only connect the two murders I’d have an answer. The problem, of course, was that the only discernible connection between Sara Potts and Edith Reed … was me.
