by Alice Sharpe
HER HOUSE WAS a single-story sprawling white structure that sat back away from the shores of Florida Bay. A large patio surrounded the building on the water side, while huge trees and rolling waves of low-lying plants anchored it to the grass on the other. A fence encircled the land side of the property. The only sign that two small boys lived there was a wooden play structure on the lawn, all but hidden by flowering shrubs.
The setup shouted money.
“My in-laws live less than a quarter of a mile south of here,” Kate said as he drove the car through the open gate, traveled the circular driveway and parked under a graceful portico. One of the doors of the garage was open, revealing an empty spot; Mac could see the rear bumper of a large, dark SUV parked behind the closed door beside it. An old red car was parked in the breezeway connecting the garage to the house.
As Kate unclipped her seat belt, she added, “Good, that’s Nellie’s car. She must be here. This house is on the same property as the big house. They both belong to my in-laws. I’m still living here only by virtue of their generosity. I can’t wait to move, but then, that’s the story of my life.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant by that. He opened his mouth to ask, but a challenging look from her changed his mind.
As Mac hung back a little, Kate walked briskly across the rock patio and tried the knob of the front door. He had to admit her boldness jolted him. He realized at once that was just the shock of seeing her know where she belonged, what was hers, who she was.
“It’s locked,” she said, banging on the wood with her fist.
“Is there another door?” Mac asked.
“The laundry room door is off the breezeway,” she said, turning. But at that instant, the front door flew open and a plump woman, with graying red hair and wearing a white apron and black running shoes, stood framed in the doorway.
She cried, “Ms. Katrina,” and engulfed Kate in a hug that all but swamped her.
Mac heard Kate utter, “Nellie,” with obvious relief in her voice.
Mac felt another unexpected twinge of loss. This was yet another step in her journey away from him. How selfish was he that such a thought should even creep into his head?
Kate finally disentangled herself from Nellie’s arms. “Where are Charlie and Harry?” she demanded, her voice desperate. “Nellie, where are my babies?”
Nellie looked to be on the far side of forty. Laugh lines were currently at odds with the frown wrinkling her brow. “They’re with the doctor and his wife, up in Fort Myers,” Nellie said, grasping Kate’s hands. “They’re fine, Ms. Katrina, honest they are. The doctor said you drove off last week but he didn’t know where you’d got to. I’ve been worried sick.”
In two strides, Mac was at Kate’s side.
“Dr. Priestly said she drove away from his house?”
Red curls went every which way as Nellie first shook her head and then nodded. “Maybe from his house, maybe from here, what does it matter? All I know is that her car is missing.”
With some urging, Kate allowed herself to be led into a wide entryway decorated with potted palms and baskets of orchids. It looked like the lobby of a posh resort.
“Come sit down,” Nellie said softly. “I’ll make something to drink.”
“Why are they in Fort Myers?” Kate said, her voice beginning to sound numb. It was as though all her energy had been focused on getting here and finding her children, as though hearing they were not near had broken something inside her.
Nellie said, “The doctor had…business up that way. He and the others will be home first thing in the morning, Ms. Katrina. Please, come sit down. You look exhausted. I know you don’t like iced tea, but I just bought a whole bag of lemons. Let me make you some lemonade.” Nellie cast Mac a suspicious look.
Nellie seemed to have come to a decision about him, and Mac wondered on what basis she had made it. Her occasional glances radiated disapproval, yet he could think of nothing he’d done since meeting her that she could disapprove of.
He needed to get Nellie alone and talk to her.
“Why don’t you take Nellie’s advice, Kate,” he said gently. “Grace” had almost slipped out and he was grateful he’d caught it in time. Gesturing in the direction of the living area, where upholstered wicker furniture commanded a peaceful view of the patio and the water beyond, he added, “Catch your breath. I’ll help Nellie with the lemonade.”
Kate ignored him, flashing anxious eyes at her housekeeper instead. “You said they’ll be back tomorrow?”
“First thing in the morning.”
“When did you last see them? The boys, I mean.”
“Just two days ago when I packed their clothes for the trip. Ms. Katrina, what’s going on? Are you sure you’re okay? The doctor warned me that if you came back you might not be…feeling well.”
“What else did the doctor tell you?” Kate asked, her voice trembling.
“Nothing. Honest. He just said that he didn’t know where you’d gone, just that you were upset when you left. He assumed you met up with one of your…friends…from the old days.”
Her voice trailed off as her gaze strayed to Mac and then back to the tiled entry floor.
Aha. He was the nefarious “friend.”
Nellie’s declaration seemed to be the last straw for Kate. She sagged at the knees. Mac caught her. Nellie rushed into the living room and tossed pillows aside to make room for Kate on one of the sofas. Kate sank onto the soft white cushions with a sigh worthy of a woman three times her age and then leaned her head back. Mac was dismayed to see how wounded and how hurt she looked.
And so vulnerable.
And oddly out of place.
The room was done in shades of white and ivory, with touches of pale yellow and sky blue. Kate, wearing the sapphire-blue blouse and a skirt just a tad on the racy side didn’t quite fit in. An oil portrait on the wall behind the sofa caught her in an off-the-shoulder white dress. Golden hair curved around her face and fell in gleaming waves halfway to her waist. Sitting in her lap were identical little boys with flushed cheeks and bright blue eyes. The painting of Kate and her twins looked like a portrait of three angels.
Nellie escaped to the kitchen and after making sure that Kate was okay, he followed.
The housekeeper was busily halving lemons as she glanced behind Mac, presumably to make sure Kate hadn’t followed him into the kitchen. When she was sure they were alone, she leveled a steely-eyed gaze at him and said, “Thanks for getting Ms. Katrina home safe. You can go now.”
Mac leaned against the counter. He was suddenly very tired. “Far be it for me to rile the dander of a woman wielding a big, sharp knife,” he said with what he hoped was a beguiling smile, “but it’s not that easy.”
“The doctor warned me that Ms. Katrina might show up with some gigolo—”
This was what wearing expensive clothes did for a man? Make him look like a gigolo?
“I’m hardly that,” he said sternly, trying to look like a hardboiled detective toting a big intimidating weapon, which he wasn’t. He’d locked it in the glove compartment before entering L’Hippocampe, many hours ago. “I’m a private detective. I’m trying to discover what happened to Katrina Priestly nine days ago. I want to ask you a few questions—”
“Now you listen,” Nellie said, using the knife like an extension of her hand. “I work for the doctor. If you think I’m going to stand here and gossip about this family to some stranger, you’re nuts.”
Mac said, “You work for Dr. Priestly, not Kate?”
“Absolutely. And you will never on this earth find a kinder, gentler man than the doctor. I don’t know what kind of scheme you’ve got running—”
“I told you, I’m working for Kate—”
“Then it’s true what the doctor said. Poor little thing, suffering so much after her husband died. She’s gone out of her mind, hasn’t she? She even looks different! What happened to her hair? She’s thin and pale—”
“Nellie,” Mac s
aid, trying to calm the woman down. “Kate is going to be fine. If there’s anything you can tell me about Dr. Priestly to shed some light—”
Nellie interrupted him this time, eyes blazing. “If you think I’m going to stand here and listen to you slander the doctor’s good name, you’re out of your mind.”
“Now what have I said to make you think I want to slander anyone?” he said calmly. “Come on, just a question or two. For instance, do you work here every day?”
Still scowling, Nellie said, “Not every day, no.”
“How about the day Kate took the boys over to her in-laws? Did you work that day?”
“No. Ms. Priestly told me not to come in that day. She wasn’t one to go out to the country club, you see, and with Mr. Danny just deceased, she’d taken to doing for herself and staying real close to her kids. There wasn’t a lot for me to do.”
That meant Nellie hadn’t been in the house when Kate left on foot. “You said the doctor told you Kate was upset when she left his house?”
She looked at him like he was trying to trap her. She finally said, “They’d had a fight.”
“Who had a fight?” he snapped. “Kate and Dr. Priestly?”
“As if it’s any of your business,” Nellie said.
“What about the boys—”
“The boys are with their grandparents,” Nellie said, “and I have to admit that after what I’ve seen here this afternoon, they belong with those fine people. It’s a good thing little Charlie has a grandpa to take care of him when he’s so sickly.”
“The boy is sickly?”
Nellie’s shifting eyes betrayed conflicting feelings. She looked as if she were struggling between disclosing more information to put him in his place, or clamming up to do the same thing. Much to Mac’s relief, she settled on the first ploy and said, “That’s why they took him to Fort Myers, to see a specialist.”
“What kind of—”
“Never you mind.”
“Kate has a right to know—”
“They’ll tell her what she needs to know,” Nellie insisted. “At first, I was kind of alarmed when they mentioned going to court, but now I can see why they have to do it.”
“The Priestlys are going to court?”
“They’ve already been,” she said.
“Then—”
Nellie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a sneaky one, getting me to talk about those fine people.”
He decided not to point out that it hadn’t really been all that hard. He said, “Just tell me—”
“I’ve already said too much,” she said, turning back to her lemons.
He stood there for a moment, but it was clear that Nellie had stopped talking, as witnessed by the lemon halves flying hither and yon. He returned to the living room to find Kate exactly as he’d left her. She must have heard him coming, because she turned her head his direction when he was halfway across the room.
For a second, the portrait on the wall and the woman on the couch gazed at him with the same blue eyes. It seemed to Mac that Kate was in the painting, and Grace was on the sofa. He realized at once that this was a presumptuous conclusion to reach, and he concentrated on the real woman as he sat down next to her. Kate, not Grace.
“I’m going to get a motel and then take a look around town,” he said.
“There are plenty of empty rooms right here,” Kate said. “You don’t have to get a motel.”
“I think I do,” he said, nodding toward the kitchen. “Kate, why is Charlie considered sickly?”
“He has allergies,” she said. “They’re not bad. I’m careful. His pediatrician says he’ll grow out of them.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to mention that her in-laws had started court proceedings, presumably to gain custody of her twins, but he decided against it. Honestly, the woman didn’t look as though she could take another blow. With a wistful sigh, he recalled the way she’d appeared earlier that very day when she’d walked out of the beauty parlor looking like a million bucks, confident and excited and hopeful.
Back before she remembered who she was…
“You have to believe me,” Kate said so softly he sat down beside her to make sure he caught every word.
He said, “Believe what?”
“Believe that my father-in-law is responsible for what happened to me. That it’s imperative we get the boys away from him.”
He wanted to believe her. He ached to believe her. He wished he could rattle off some glib lines of reassurance but the truth was that he didn’t know what…or whom…to believe.
It jarred him that the doctor had gone to court. It’s exactly what he had expected a law-abiding man to do: rely on lawyers and the judicial system, a system that always favored a mother unless the grandparents were upstanding, influential members of society and the mother…wasn’t.
He said, “Maybe if you get some sleep. Maybe by morning, your head will clear.”
“My head is clear right now,” she protested, but her eyes looked confused.
“Nellie said Dr. Priestly told her that you had an argument with him before you left. Do you recall what it was about?
She shook her head. “I don’t remember an argument.”
“And you still don’t remember the last few minutes of your time there?”
“No.”
He gently took her hands in his. “Kate, I’ll ask around tonight. Maybe I can get wind of what really happened here.”
“You’ll ask around? About me?”
He stared into her eyes, and dissembling, said, “About your father-in-law.”
She nestled her head against his chest and he fought the desire to kiss her forehead, to gather her tightly in his arms and hold her for the next several hours.
“I promise you I’ll figure out what’s going on,” he told her and he meant it. “Don’t give up.”
She gazed up at him. “I will never give up,” she said softly. As seductive as her clinging had been, the conviction he could see burning behind her eyes was downright galvanizing. At that moment, he would have slayed a dragon for her. Instead, he pulled her close and kissed her.
She was a free woman, at least when it came to a husband, and this was the first time he’d kissed her knowing that he wasn’t trespassing, so to speak. It was the first time she’d kissed him with the weight and the richness of her past alive and kicking in her cognizant mind, and he wondered for one split second if it would change things between them.
And in the next instant, as they drew apart and stared intently into each other’s eyes, he knew that nothing was different, not when it came to this primal connection that transcended time and place. He might not trust her memory of the events that had preceded her troubles, but he did trust the truth of what he saw in her eyes. Their mouths drifted together again; this time, the kiss was a tender promise.
“Ahem—”
Nellie.
They split apart like guilty lovers.
Mac swore under his breath as he met the acrimonious gaze of the housekeeper. He’d just confirmed every bad thing she thought about him.
That didn’t matter. What mattered was that she not think badly of Kate.
He stood abruptly and, hoping Kate would understand, said, “I never should have kissed you like that. I’m sorry.”
She looked bewildered. He wished he could warn her that though she seemed to like and trust Nellie, the woman worked for her father-in-law and seemed to think the world of the man. Surely Kate knew that already. Since his back was to Nellie, he tried a quick wink and added, “I’ll call you later from my motel. Goodnight…Kate.”
He could feel Nellie’s gaze drilling holes in his back as he let himself out the door.
Chapter Ten
For the first time since the trip began, Mac registered under his real name. The motel had the feeling of an anomaly in Boward Key. Obviously not fancy enough to be frequented by tourists, it was still a little too respectable to be classified a flophouse. It was moderately pri
ced, reasonably clean and somewhat private. There was no air-conditioning, but a beat-up old fan twirled nicely over the bed. He felt right at home.
He changed out of his Florida Keys “gigolo” clothes and back into his jeans. His cell phone was all but dead, so he plugged it into the wall to recharge, sat down on the bed and plopped the motel phone in his lap. Moments later, he listened to it ring in Billington, Indiana.
Leo Gerald had nothing new to report on Dr. Michael Wardman’s, aka Jake’s, murder investigation, but, in answer to Mac’s next question, took the motel number and promised to call back within the hour.
It was more like two hours later when the phone finally rang, jarring Mac awake. He’d made a few phone calls after talking to Leo and then fallen asleep, sitting up with the phone in his lap. Years of practice had him answering it in a voice no one would suspect was just seconds away from unconsciousness.
“You owe me,” Leo said. “I had to talk to my wife’s brother’s retired father-in-law to get you this name.”
“Glad I could help cement family bonds,” Mac said, reaching for a pencil and a slip of paper.
“You ready? Take this down. Neville Dryer. He’s been on the force down there for two or three hundred years. My retired contact knows this guy from the old days. I get the feeling it’s a cozy little town, the kind of setup where everyone knows everyone else’s business.”
“I think you’re right,” Mac said. “And I hope to bring you home a lead on that investigation of yours.”
“Good. The newspapers here are having a field day with this whole thing. Calling for an investigation, the whole nine yards. Chief Barry is madder than hell. I think he senses his ship is sinking.”
“Maybe if he’d worried more about what was good for the community and the cops who work for him and less about the mayor, he wouldn’t have to worry about getting his feet wet.”
“I didn’t hear you say that,” Gerald said with a nervous laugh.
“Hell, Leo, it’s not like I haven’t said the very same thing right to the man’s face. Thanks for doing this for me.”