“I have,” said Jorge. His eyes studied the sand. “Plenty of times.”
“Lucky you,” the cute cop said, never taking his sea-green eyes off me.
Eye contact with the lieutenant sent a jolt of surprise through me, mixed with something I wasn’t able to define. I’d have been the first to admit that life had worn me down into more of a realist than a romantic. I still had a pretty decent face and good legs. My upper arms, however, were a story I didn’t want to talk about. But considering my age, I garnered my share of attention. Usually unwanted. Until my divorce a year ago, I used to eat right and rarely drank. So far, my body was still surfing along on the momentum of that former health wave.
“Thanks for coming out, Lieutenant Foreman,” I said, trying hard to quit making a mental inventory of my body parts. “Why don’t we go for a walk on the beach? I’m afraid Winky might show up if we stay here.”
“Don’t chew worry, Val,” Jorge said. He bobbed his head like a tortoise in a lustrous black wig. “Goober’s got babysitting duty this morning.”
“Oh. Great!” I was genuinely relieved. “So, should we sit down or should we walk?”
“My vote is for a walk,” said the cop. “Please, call me Tom.”
“Okay, Tom. Looks like you get out to the beach a bit,” I said as the three of us twist-stepped our way through the sugary sand toward the Gulf. Tom’s blond hair shone golden in the sun. His smooth skin was a rich, golden brown. Even the hair on his legs and arms was sun-bleached to a glimmering gold.
“Being a native, it’s in my blood,” he said. His grin activated a fine web of crinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth.
“Yeah. Tom’s a native just like us,” said Jorge. He arched his thick black eyebrows and gave me a rare look directly in the eye.
“Go figure,” I said. “Three Florida natives in a row. Do we get eggroll with that?”
Tom flashed me a grin, then turned to scan the shoreline up and down. The tide was coming in. Low, lazy waves lapped at the sand, making tentative grabs at the coquina and cat’s paw shells stranded by last night’s high tide. “Looks like another perfect day in paradise.”
“Except for the 99% humidity,” I replied. I felt the first trickle of sweat work its way down the center of my back. “I think I’ll test the waters.”
“Let me hold your shoes,” Tom offered.
Tom took my flip-flops and our fingers touched briefly, sending a mild tingle up my arm. The sight of this handsome man holding my shoes suddenly seemed very personal. Intimate even. I probably would have blushed if I could remember how. I wiggled out of my skirt and he held that, too, making something inside me squirm. I sucked in my gut and put my toes in the warm Gulf. I was distracted, looking to the right, when I got sidelined by a blast of seawater from my left. It soaked me from my neck to my waist, causing me to abandon my held-in breath with a gasp.
I looked to my left and saw Tom and Jorge laughing at the culprit. A boy about three years old stood motionless in the water a few feet away. He stared at me wide-eyed, mouth open, still clutching the empty plastic pail he’d used to douse my fledgling sex-kitten career. I fished around and found a smile for the boy.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Miguel,” he answered shyly. Then he dropped his pail and ran through foamy seawater in the direction of a Hispanic woman and a dark-haired girl who looked to be about six. They were both making their way toward shore. “Momma, Momma!” he yelled.
“No, no Miguel!” the woman cried. She looked up at me. “So sorry!”
“It’s okay,” I replied.
“Kids. They’re a blessing and a curse,” the woman said.
I watched Jorge flinch at the woman’s words, then lower his eyes to the sand. The woman herded her brood up the beach toward a big blue umbrella. Jorge watched them for a moment, then said, “Uh, I don’t feel so good. You guys go on without me. I’ll see you back at Caddy’s.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Jes. I think I jus’ need a beer or something.” Jorge didn’t wait for a reply. He turned sharply and walked back toward the beach bar, head down, shoulders slumped.
“Okay, see you soon,” I called after him, trying not to sound sympathetic. Tom and I turned back toward the turquoise water and walked in silence along the shore for a minute.
“He and I used to be partners, you know,” Tom said, breaking the quiet tension between us. “I’ve never seen anyone so devastated as he was when he lost his family. He’s still just a fraction of the person I used to know.”
“A fraction. That’s sad. Tell me, where do our missing pieces go?”
Tom stopped walking and looked me in the eyes. “That’s a damn good question. I wish I knew the answer.”
“Me too.”
His eyes studied my soul for a moment, then shifted back to this mortal plane. “I guess we better stick to questions we can answer, Val. What have you got for me so far?”
“Just a bunch of jumbled up theories, mostly. With the Hawesville records missing, I’m not a hundred percent sure Glad even had a child, or, if she did, that it survived.”
“What does your gut say?”
“My gut?”
“Yes. In my line of work, I’ve learned that facts can only get you so far. You’d be surprised how often it’s intuition – a gut feeling – that fills in the missing pieces. Connects the dots. Solves the case.”
I stopped walking and looked at Tom, incredulous. “Really?”
Tom stopped, too. He turned to face me, and the wind off the Gulf fluttered his golden bangs over his forehead. “Yes, really. I’m going to ask you a question, Val. Don’t think about the answer. Just let yourself kind of relax and float instead. Then say the first thing that bubbles up from your throat. Ready?”
“Uh…I guess.”
“Close your eyes.” He reached toward me and removed my sunglasses, then slid them into his shorts pocket. He touched his fingertips to my cheeks, then gently placed his thumbs on my eyelids to close them. Hot electricity shot through my body.
“So Val, did Tony and Glad have a baby?”
I shivered. “Yes,” I heard my mouth say.
“And did it survive?”
“Yes,” formed on my lips again. Spooky.
“And is it still alive?”
Goosebumps broke out on my arms. “Yes!”
“Boy or girl?”
I overthought it and the tingly feeling evaporated. My gut quit on me. I frowned. “I don’t know.”
“No worries,” he said gently.
I opened my eyes just in time to see Tom wink at me. He pulled my sunglasses out of his pocket and handed them back to me. They were warm from his body heat.
“How about we head back? I don’t want to leave Jorge alone too long,” he said.
I nodded in agreement. We turned around and started the walk back toward Caddy’s. It was barely nine in the morning and the sun was already hot enough to make me sweat without exertion. At least, I think it was the sun. A spike of exhilaration shot through me, and suddenly everything seemed more beautiful, somehow. I watched the Gulf do its diamond shimmy show with the sunlight. I listened as the seagulls heckled out their gratitude for another gorgeous morning. I felt so light I might lift off and float away. Tom’s deep voice brought me back down to Earth.
“So now that we feel pretty sure they had a baby, Val, do you think Tony or Glad would have wanted to harm the child, get rid of it?”
My gut reaction was instant. “No! In my heart of hearts, I have to say no, Tom. The Glad I knew…I just can’t see her being capable of that. And based on Tony’s letter to her back then, I don’t think he wanted anything bad to happen to her or the baby either. You saw Tony’s house. He never let go of anything. He couldn’t even bear to throw garbage away.”
“Fair enough, Val. But hoarding is a sign of psychological trauma. It can stem from a big loss…or a guilty conscience.”
I thought about Tom’s word
s as I watched a black-backed skimmer fly by. It maneuvered so close to the water that its blood-orange bottom mandible touched the surface and made a shallow rivulet in the calm, lazy Gulf.
“I’m sure that’s true, Tom. But now we know Glad and Tony lived together as a couple. I just can’t see her staying with a man who would take her baby from her. She always talked to me about letting go and forgiving as the way to freedom. I’m sure she could have let go of hating the people who did this to her. But I don’t think she’d come back for more punishment by living with one of them. She wasn’t into self-flagellation.”
“Just self-medication.”
I smiled and shrugged. “Hey, nobody’s perfect.”
“But some are more perfect than others.” Tom’s hypnotic green eyes slowly traced my body, beginning with my toes. When they reached my face, they settled in for a long look into my own brown eyes, making me sweat a little more. Tom seemed to sense my discomfort and abruptly switched gears. “So, have you found a marriage certificate for Tony and Glad in all that shoebox stuff?”
“No. Not yet. Is that important?”
“For inheritance rights it is. But if they lived together for more than seven years in Florida, she could be considered his common-law wife whether they were married or not.”
“For some reason they kept their relationship secret, Tom. From the people at Caddy’s, anyway. I don’t know if anybody else knew they were together. Could you check public records for a marriage certificate?”
“Sure.”
“In the meantime, I’ll check the shoebox files. If I can’t find a certificate, maybe there’ll be wedding pictures, or something else that might prove how long they lived together.”
“Okay. But make it quick, Val. We need to return all that stuff to Tony’s house by tomorrow.”
“Why tomorrow?”
“Tony’s memorial service is tomorrow. So far, nobody’s turned up to make a claim on his estate. But that could change at any moment. I think it would be prudent to have everything back in its proper place. It’s my neck on the line, you know.”
“Yes. I know. And I’m grateful, Tom.” I smiled at him softly. He returned the favor.
“You think Tony’s relatives might show up at his house?” I asked.
“It could happen. Usually, the only ones that snoop around the property are the ones named in the will. Or ones who hope they are.”
“The newspaper article said that one person was named as sole heir. Thelma G. Goldrich.”
“What’s the “G” stand for?”
“That’s what I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Ah,” Tom said. He nodded and turned toward me with a wry smile on his lips. “I’ll see what I can do. You going to Tony’s ceremony tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you there, then.”
As we approached Caddy’s, I saw Jorge at a picnic table drinking beer and talking to himself. As we got closer, I realized that he was actually conversing with a couple of brown lizards. They’re the descendants of stowaways that arrived from Cuba decades ago without their papers. These little guys quickly made themselves at home and now counted in their millions from Tampa southward – just another subset of Florida’s burgeoning transplant population. The little lizards looked like miniature dinosaurs as they perched on the table, licking precious moisture from a forgotten chunk of watermelon.
“Hey Jorge,” I said.
He looked up from the lizards and smiled. “Nature!”
“I think I’ll have a beer with my buddy,” said Tom, secreting me a sympathetic glance. “Care to join us?”
“No thanks. I’ve got work to do. Shoeboxes and all. What time is the ceremony tomorrow for Tony?”
“Shix aclack,” said Jorge, supporting his drunken head with one hand.
“Okay, then. You guys have fun.” I mouthed the words, “thank you,” to Tom. He just smiled at me and shrugged.
“See you tomorrow,” he said.
***
I stepped out of the shower and slathered some coconut oil moisturizer on my sunburned shoulders. Without a minimum of SPF 25 sunscreen, the sun’s intense rays had turned my olive tan to ripe pink in under an hour. I grabbed the last beer out of the fridge, then cut apart each of the circles of opaque plastic that had held the six cans together. I read somewhere that those things floated, and could loop around the necks of birds and turtles, choking them to death. More bad karma was something I didn’t want or need. I tossed the cut-up plastic in the recycling bin.
It was time to get to work. I flopped on the couch and peeled back the tape on the second shoebox labeled 1974 to 1985. It was empty. Weird. Why was the stuff for those years missing? With no answers at hand, I turned my attention to the box Jorge had been looking through in the bedroom at Tony’s place. It was labeled 1986 to 2009.
The first thing under 1986 was a dried-up pink rose taped together with some brown, crumbly baby’s breath. In better days, it had been either a corsage or a boutonniere. Next was a photo of an older, happy Glad in a long, pastel, Hawaiian-print dress. Tony stood next to her, looking proud in white pants and a Hawaiian shirt that matched Glad’s dress. Both were barefoot, standing in sand at a beach. Then I noticed a pink rose in Glad’s hair. This had obviously been a special occasion for them. A wedding, perhaps? Or maybe someone else’s? The back read simply, October 7, 1989.
The rest of the box was full of vacation mementos and photos. Snapshots of Tony and Glad together, looking happy somewhere in the Southwest. One on a ferry. One in front of a giant redwood tree. The photos of them in Hawaii in 1998 that Jorge had spoken about. The little yellow and blue drink umbrellas. A Route 66 refrigerator magnet. A cruise ship luggage tag. A paper napkin from a restaurant in Oregon.
Strangely, not a single picture had anyone else in it besides Glad and Tony. Didn’t they have any friends or relatives? Or did they keep their relationship a secret from everyone? Maybe it was just a coincidence, and these were just normal “couples” pictures. They were mostly travel photos, after all.
I was putting the photographs back in the shoebox when a green glint from the bottom of the box caught my eye. I turned the box over and a little piece of jewelry about a half inch long fell into my hand. It was a silver oval about the size and shape of a pinkie nail. Tiny green stones dotted the entire front surface of the oval. From the rough edge I could tell it must have broken off a larger piece. A brooch or a necklace charm, perhaps. One thing for sure, though. If it was in this box, it must have meant something important to Glad. Why else would she have held on to it? Or could it have been just another travel memento?
The phone rang. It was Tom. “Hey Val. Any luck with the marriage certificate?”
“No. Just the one for Bobby. But I think there’s plenty of evidence to show that Glad and Tony had been together for more than seven years. Probably since the late 1980s.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“Photos, mostly. One even looks like it could be an informal wedding. On a beach in 1989.”
“Interesting. It’ll take a few days to check public marriage records. In the meantime, I ran the name Thelma G. Goldrich through the DMV database.”
“Yeah? And?”
“I got three hits.”
“Any in Kentucky?”
“No.”
“Any born between 1963 and 1965?”
“Yes. All three, actually. But Val, we don’t even know if this Thelma person named in the will is Glad’s child. Tony could have left his estate to anyone. It’s more likely Thelma G. Goldrich is a niece or a cousin of Tony’s, not their long lost love child.”
“Crap. You’re right,” I said, deflated. “I really hadn’t considered that. I guess I was just hoping that it could be that simple.”
“If it was, don’t you think Glad and Tony would have found her themselves?”
“Maybe they did. Maybe…. Hey! You said her!”
“What?”
“You said t
hey would have found her themselves.”
“Yeah. I guess I did.”
“Does that mean you think their child is a girl?”
“One better. It means my gut is telling me she is. See? There I go again. She.”
“I hope you’re right, Tom. I’d like their child to be a girl. A woman just like Glad. The world could use more people like her.”
“I didn’t know Glad myself, Val. But if you vouch for her, that’s good enough for me. See you tomorrow, then?”
“Yes, tomorrow. Goodnight Tom.”
“Goodnight Val.”
I hung up the phone and drifted off to sleep on the couch, the gentle whisper of Tom’s “Goodnight Val,” tickling my ear and making my lips curl upward.
Chapter Fourteen
Garbage man Tony’s memorial was being held at Caddy’s in the afternoon, and I didn’t want to drive out to Sunset Beach twice. Shabby Maggie sucked down the juice like a remorseful bride – about 12 miles to a gallon – on a good day, going downhill. So I decided to trade a beach stroll for my alternate walking route, the downtown waterfront. I stepped outside at 6 a.m. sharp. The air was already as wet and stale as a day-old puddle of beer. Not a flicker of a breeze. The moist air clung to my body thick and soggy, like a wet hamburger bun.
I resigned myself to becoming drenched in sweat and power-walked along the sidewalk skirting Beach Drive. At Seventh Avenue I crossed the street by the Episcopal Church and headed east toward Tampa Bay. Immediately, my nose was assaulted by the smell of shit from the dog park, still a full city block away. It hung in the air like a portent of some giant pile of crap to come.
When I reached the waterfront and saw the sky over the bay, I knew this sunrise was going to be something special. An inverted pyramid of creamy white shone like a searchlight from the water’s horizon line. Reaching heavenward, the off-white cone widened to encompass half the sky before it dissipated into the misty blue of the stratosphere. A zigzag of blue-grey clouds flanked the right side of the conical beam of light, stair-stepping upward like seats in a theater. And in the center, rectangular clouds of differing heights formed skyscrapers in a mock cityscape backdrop. The overall visual effect was one of a city rising from beneath a spotlight under the sea. Amazing! As I walked along the open water, the sun began to rise behind the blue-grey cloud-buildings, backlighting them with a molten orange crust of fire. My mood lifted, as if a fantastic stage was being set for a fabulous day to come.
Glad One: Starting Over is a %$#@&! (Val & Pals Book 2) Page 9