by Lynn Story
“You okay?” Jared asked.
“Yeah.” I went back to combing through tips on the computer. I couldn’t get the woman in the green dress out of my mind. Could it have been Kay? I really couldn’t tell, the hair was shorter, of course, but that didn’t mean anything. She could have had it cut. There was nothing else to make me think it was her other than the way I felt. Kay was the only woman who had ever made me feel the way I did right now, and I couldn’t imagine there could be two women like that in the world. And what if it was her? Why hadn’t she looked me up? She knew where I worked. In fairness she had no way of knowing I was divorced; I just needed to find her and tell her myself.
I had been staring at the same screen for fifteen minutes. I got up and walked around.
“Everything alright?” Jared asked.
“Yeah, I just need some air.” I walked outside and stood taking in the morning air. It was warm and the promise of summer’s heat was coming off the bay riding the breeze.
“Ethan?” Logan stepped out the door to stand next to me.
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Did I say you did?”
“No,” I shook my head.” Sorry, no you didn’t.”
“Just the same, you seem like something is really bothering you and I know it isn’t this case.”
“Yeah, no. hell I don’t know.” I shuffled my feet and look off in the distance.
“Only one thing can get a man tied up in knots like this.”
I knew where he was going with this, so I let him say it.
“What’s her name?” Logan asked.
“Why do you think it is a woman?” I glanced over at him.
“If it’s not a woman then I am going to have to assume you’re terminally ill or something and you better start talking.”
I chuckled. Leave it to Logan to take to the next level.
“Yeah, alright fine. I’m not talking about this at work.”
“Fair enough.” He turned and walked back inside.
I didn’t want to talk about it. I knew it would sound crazy and I didn’t need that right now. I also didn’t need pity stares from my agents.
We worked until about nine o’clock and then we called it quits. Logan hung back.
“Wanna go grab some roasted oysters and beer?”
I thought about saying no but what good was it going to do to go home and stare at the wall. “Sure, why not?”
“I’ll drive.”
I climbed into Logan’s truck and didn’t ask where we were going. I just let my mind wonder for a while. We stopped at a little house near the water back off the road. I hadn’t been paying attention to where we were, and I was surprised when we stopped.
“What’s this place? I asked getting out of the truck.
“My place.”
“I’ve been to your place and it is bigger than this.”
“This is my weekend place.”
I surveyed the area. It was well screened by trees. There were lights on all corners of the house that I could see and very discreet cameras. I suspected for every security measure I would see there were five more I couldn’t. Logan was very cautious.
I followed Logan inside. It was surprisingly light and airy. I expected something darker from his man cave.
It was masculine and took advantage of the southern exposure and allowed the windows to pick up the breeze off the water.
“This is a nice place.”
“Thanks.” He said with his head in the fridge.
“You come here every weekend?”
“Most weekends if we’re not working.” He handed me a beer.
“Thanks.” I said accepting the icy beer. I held it up and gave him a salute and took a swig.
He took two pulls from his bottle. “Okay, oysters.” He announced pulling a jar from the fridge.
“Looks good. Anything I can do to help?” I offered.
“Stay out of the way.”
“Copy that.”
We walked outside. Logan had an impressive outdoor kitchen setup. I stared off across the water at the lights on the far shore while he did his thing.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.” I sat down at a wooden table. Logan put a shallow pan of roasted oysters between us. There was a large bottle of hot sauce and a fresh beer.
“You’re a good host.” I said. Logan shrugged.
We ate and drank way too much. It was getting late and the bottles were filling up the trash can on his deck.
“So, what’s her name?” Logan finally asked.
“Kay.”
“Kay, what?”
“I don’t know her last name.”
“What?” Logan laughed. “I didn’t have you pegged for the love ‘em and leave type, Ethan.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I went to the Ironclad one night. I was still married then and I had gone to listen to Charlie Pickens.”
Logan nodded. He was a music lover as well.
“And I saw her sitting there alone. So, I went over and started talking to her. We sat listening to Charlie and drinking. Then we went for a walk along the river and talked for hours.”
“Just talked?”
“Yeah we just talked.”
“Okay.” Logan raised an eyebrow in my direction. I wasn’t sure if Logan believed me, but it didn’t matter, though.
“I went back to the Ironclad the next night and she was there again. So, we sat and listened to music and drank bourbon. This time we walked to the place she was staying in the Garden District. We were talking and I told her I was married. She said she wouldn’t be the cause of a marriage breakup or anything and that if we were meant to be together, we would meet again.” I shrugged. “And I left.”
“That’s it?” Logan looked disappointed.
“Yeah.”
“How long ago was this?” He asked holding a beer to his lips.
“Almost six years.”
Logan almost spit out his beer.
“You’ve been holding onto this for six years and you never tried to find her?”
“No.”
“You care about her?”
“More than any other living creature on this planet,” I paused, “it’s hard to explain as I was leaving that night she reached up and kissed me. As soon as her lips touched mine. I knew in that moment why I had been put on this planet.”
“That’s pretty serious. I’m confused why you didn’t try to find her.”
“Well, okay, I did try after Diane and I split up. I didn’t have much to go on, but I did have her cell number. When I called it was no longer in service. She said she was from here but didn’t live here at the time. She was just home visiting, and she was staying in a guest house. And I never got her last name.”
“Well Kay isn’t that common of a name so how hard could it be to find her?”
I shrugged. “Harder than you think.”
“Okay, that was six years ago, and databases have improved so what else do you know about her?”
“She was working with the military, a journalist, I believe she said and was just home to take care of some family business.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. We can look through the DOD database for anyone named Kay. How many could there be?”
“I don’t know, I keep thinking about what she said that if it was meant to be, we would meet again.”
“So, you just going to sit back and wait for her to walk through the door?”
“I don’t know.” I wasn’t a superstitious kind of person, but there were those locally that belong to the older generation and they believed in such things as fate, karma and other powers. My grandmother had taught me about such things. I was pretty good with a divining rod too, so I knew there was some truth to what the older generation believed. And I thought about the old woman’s words outside of the night club a few weeks prior.
“Dude, this woman has you this messed up and you are wi
lling to sit around just waiting for her to fall in your lap?” Logan shook his head.
“I don’t know man. I don’t know what to do.”
“So why has she come up all of a sudden. You haven’t thought too hard about her until lately.”
“I thought I saw someone that looked like her at the Mayor’s dinner. I never got a good look at her face. So, I don’t know if maybe I just imagined it. I’d had a couple of drinks that night.”
“Okay, well we can work with that too. If we can get the guest list maybe, we can find her on it that which is a much smaller list than the DOD database.”
“Yeah, I can ask John for the list.”
“The vice mayor?” Logan raised his eyebrows, “You know him for real?”
“Oh yeah, we go way back.”
“Well there you go. Now all you have to do is sober up.”
I laughed and then passed out. I woke up on Logan’s deck in a chair with my feet propped up in another chair. The smell of something bitter and strong had interrupted my dreams.
“Wake up sleeping beauty!” Logan kicked the chair out from under my feet.
“Ah!” I rubbed my stiff neck.
“Coffee.” He pointed to the mug on the table and then disappeared.
“Shit.” My neck hurt. I tried to rub the muscles into a more relaxed state. I drank some of the coffee. I coughed and sputtered.
“Holy shit, what is that?” I yelled towards the house.
Logan stuck his head out the back door. “Coffee.”
“Bullshit.”
“Chicory coffee with a little hair of the dog.”
“Good god! That is terrible.” I said walking into the kitchen.
“Yeah, it will cure what ails you.”
“I don’t know.” I eyed the mug suspiciously.
“Stop your whining and drink it. We’ve got to go to work.”
“I need a shower.”
“Yeah, you do.” Logan laughed “I’ll drop you by your place.”
“Okay.”
“Drink your coffee.”
It was nearly nine o’clock when I got to the office.
Stephanie and Jared refrained from making any comments about Logan and I coming in late. Our case load was stacking up. We had the missing schoolteacher which was a priority. We also had a fraud case and a possible misconduct case of a police officer. I put Jared and Stephanie on the missing teacher while Logan and I focused on the rest of the workload.
After Stephanie and Jared left for the night, I got up to stretch. Logan had barely moved from his computer all day.
“Logan, you’ve been at it all day. Go home.”
“Yeah, I am. I’ve just been tracking down this lead.”
“It can wait.”
“If you saw a picture of that woman Kay, you’d recognize her right?”
“Sure, I’ll never forget her. Why?” My heart leapt into my throat.
“Well, I think I may have found something. I’m not sure it’s the right person, says her name is Kennedy Dandridge.”
“Okay, well let’s see it.” I remembered something about her telling me her name was Kennedy and her friends called her Kay.
Logan tapped a few keys and then swiveled his monitor around.
Kay was staring back at me. Her hair was indeed shorter. She was just as beautiful as I remembered. I wanted to reach out and touch her cheek. The photo was professional.
“Where did you find this?”
“It took some deep digging on the web, I found it on a business news page.”
“Business page? What kind of business page?” I was curious.
“It would appear that your mysterious woman is in fact the owner and CEO of Port City Industries.” Logan raised his eyebrows at me.
“What?” I laughed.
“Kay Dandridge, Port City Industries.” Logan smiled. “You always were one lucky bastard.”
“That’s ridiculous. I mean not that it matters as she never said anything about the family business. She said she was working in the Middle East or something.”
“She wasn’t lying. She was a photojournalist and it looks like she mostly worked with the military, in the Middle East, Africa and a few other places. Logan looked distant for a moment and while I thought there was something more he was thinking on that front, I was more focused on Port City Industries. They had a huge building on the other side of town, and you could see it from our office. I started thinking that all this time she could have been that close, and I wouldn’t have even known it. And again, I felt a pang in my chest that she hadn’t looked me up.
“You said she told you she was home on family business six years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Well, apparently six years ago her mother passed away which left the company to Kay.”
“So that was the family business she was home to take care of, then.” I moved to stand behind Logan looking at the obituary over his shoulder. “She was home that weekend to bury her mother.” I felt sad and a bit ashamed that I had flirted with a woman who was grieving in her own way. I felt like a total jerk.
“She seems to be a complicated woman.” Logan said reading my thoughts.
I went back to my desk and sat down. “I don’t want to know any more about her from a computer. I want her to tell me. I want to learn about her over a cup of coffee or a walk along the river. I don’t want to read about her in a file like a suspect or a victim.”
Logan nodded. “Fair enough. What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” And I didn’t know. I had so many thoughts running through my head that I couldn’t answer a simple question.
“Okay. See ya tomorrow.” He turned off his desk lamp for the night.
“Okay.” I said not looking up. I heard the door close behind Logan and I just sat staring at the ceiling. I knew what I wanted to do. I knew what I had to do. The question now was how to do it.
Chapter Nine
Ethan
I drove home, allowing the thoughts of Kay to fill my head. Before I had tried to push them aside but tonight, I couldn’t do that anymore. I had to think about her. I had to remember her, and I wanted to find her. I tried to remember our conversations all those years ago, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember the words; I just remembered her eyes. I remembered how they looked when she was angry at the guy that had hit on her. How she looked in the moonlight along the river. How close her face had been to mine when we were sitting on the sofa in the guest house.
I drove without thinking about where I was going. When I looked up, I realized I was at the address where Kay had been staying. The same house I had walked to after the Mayor’s dinner. I wondered if the larger house had been her mother’s house and she had stayed in the guest quarters. It made sense. The larger house was fitting for the CEO of a large company based here. The Garden District was home to several such people. I sat staring the dark house. I wondered if she had sold it. Maybe the house wasn’t her style. I leaned my head back for a moment. I needed to find her. I wanted to tell her that I was divorced, and I wanted to ask her to dinner.
I woke up with the sun shining in my face. I sat up with a start. I was still parked in front of the house I believed to belong to Kay. I looked around. I was surprised no one had called the police. I rubbed my hand through my hair. I looked towards the house one more time. Nothing seemed to have changed. No movement. I started the car and drove home for a shower and a change of clothes.
Kay
I left the office late. I wasn’t sleeping at night and figured I might as well be productive. The traffic getting home was better at that time of night anyway. The house took up the block and had a driveway on the back, which made it was easy to drive straight into the garage and go straight to the house.
Eddie, my company driver and self-appointed bodyguard, didn’t like that I drove myself to and from work. He said it was undignified. My father had always had Eddie drive him. Lately I had been keeping such odd hours it didn’t se
em fair to Eddie or his family. I had hardly been able to shake Eddie since I had gotten home from the hospital over a year ago. He had taken on the role of my personal bodyguard. He was at least sixty, and not the type to work out, so I’m not sure what he had in mind should I actually be attacked. We had fallen into a comfortable routine; he would drive me if I was going somewhere on company business but to and from work was out of the question.
The house was dark, and I left it that way. I knew my way around I didn’t need the lights. I looked in the fridge. There wasn’t much there to speak of and I didn’t feel like cooking this late. I opted for a yogurt. I was restless. I thought about walking across the street to the cemetery and hanging out with the souls that didn’t sleep at this hour.
When I looked out the front window there was a car parked out front with someone inside. I instinctively pulled away from view. Was someone watching the house? Or were they watching the graveyard? I stood to the side and watched to see if there was something illegal about to happen. If someone thought, they were going to deal drugs on the street in front of my house they were going to get more than they bargained for, but nothing happened. I stood there so long my legs started to go numb. Finally, I decided I was being paranoid. The car could have belonged to a guest of one of my neighbors, or someone else who liked visiting cemeteries at night or any number of legitimate reasons. I left my window and went to bed.
I woke up early and showered. I checked out the front window and the car was gone. I decided that my imagination was running away with me caused by too much work and too little sleep.
“Morning!” Sherry, my all too happy secretary greeted me as I came into the office.
I’ll be the first to admit I am not a morning person. And bless Sherry for never letting that thwart her in her efforts to start my day off in a cheerful manner. Today it was less inspirational.
“Morning.” I regretted the look on her face when I didn’t pause at her desk and continued into my office. I tapped my computer back to life and settled my cell phone in its cradle.
Sherry came in quietly and set a cup of coffee on my desk. I had told her repeatedly she didn’t need to make me coffee every I didn’t want her to feel like she was ‘serving’ me. She insisted. Today, I didn’t protest.