They hadn’t found him, of course. Nor had any of the bar managers who booked live talent recognized the photo.
“Disappointing night.” Logan stated the obvious once they were outside the bar at the renovated historic seaport, better known as the Key West Bight. During the day, the Bight was the place to arrange a day on the water or to peruse the shops and galleries. At night, visitors frequented restaurants and bars that stayed open into the wee hours.
“I might be on the wrong track with the guitar,” she said. “Just because Mike was into playing as a teenager doesn’t mean he still is.”
Logan was silent, letting her talk.
“I still need to check out some local bars on the other side of the island,” she said, lines furrowing her forehead. “And Kayla gave me the names of some more valets and concierges I haven’t talked to yet. She thought they might know of businesses that pay their employees under the table, just in case Mike is flying under the radar.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Logan said. “For tomorrow.”
“But...” Her voice trailed off and her chest heaved. “You’re right. I’ve had about all the frustration I can stand for one night.”
“Let’s take the scenic route back,” he said. “It won’t take any longer if we walk along the water for a few blocks. That way, we can enjoy the Bight before Christmas.”
“The what?”
“That’s what they call the holiday celebration that’s going on down here at the harbor,” he said. “The Harbor Walk of Lights is the main attraction. So far, I’m impressed.”
“I haven’t paid much attention.” She looked around now. Nearest them, tiny white lights covered the trunks of palm trees, with strings of green lights fanning out to the swaying fronds. The effect was festive and tropical all at once.
“Wow, that’s pretty,” she said. “I think I would like walking along the water.”
Holiday lights twinkled all around them, even under the water. Logan knew that the city had hosted a boat parade earlier in the month. Most of the vessels docked at the Bight were still decorated, with their lights shining even though it was after midnight. Lights snaked up masts, encircled railings and formed familiar shapes, wreaths, sleighs, angels, elves and trees among them. Along the shore, some shops and restaurants had gone with an all-white theme. Other lights glowed red, orange, green, yellow and blue.
“This is nice,” Maria said. “Different from the Southern Lights in Lexington but just as beautiful.”
Logan hadn’t thought of the Southern Lights in years, a light display that stretched for miles through the Kentucky Horse Park, celebrating both the holiday season and the Kentucky horse culture.
“Do you still go?” he asked.
“Every year with Annalise and the boys,” Maria answered. “When they were younger, they liked it so much they went twice, once with Annalise’s husband and once with me. I haven’t gotten them out of the car yet, though.”
Most people toured the display by car, although some elected to stroll through it. There was yet another way to see them.
“Remember when we jogged through the display?” He chuckled. “That wasn’t the best way to appreciate the lights, especially when you challenged me to a race the last mile.”
He’d let her take the lead because he enjoyed watching her run. He’d liked watching her, period. He still did.
Maria was smiling. He didn’t know whether that was because of the memories or the supersize garland that was draped around the ferry terminal.
“You only won because you distracted me with those loud kissing noises,” she said.
“Really?” He grinned. “I thought you lost on purpose so you could give me my prize.”
He no longer remembered what he’d bet, only that he had every intention of winning after she’d wagered a kiss. He’d collected it beside a lit-up display of Santa riding a Thoroughbred. They hadn’t stopped kissing until a young father with a bunch of kids in the car had laid on his horn. Then they’d had an attack of laughter.
“We had some good times,” she said.
They approached a trio of live Christmas trees gracing a plaza. Logan breathed in the scent of evergreens, enjoying himself more than he had since arriving in Key West. “We’re still having them.”
“Not for long,” she said. “You’re leaving soon. It’ll probably be another eleven years until we see each other again.”
He stopped dead. Even though the hour was late, couples and small groups of people walked the harbor, their voices and laughter carrying on the sea breeze.
“You really believe I’ll go to New York and forget about you?” he asked.
“Why not? You’ve done it before.”
That was so far from the truth it was laughable. Maria had been already married by the time Logan was a junior in college, but that didn’t stop him from comparing every coed he met to her. All of them came up short. So did the women he’d dated since graduating and moving to the city.
“I wasn’t the one who married someone else.” He hadn’t expected his words to sound so accusing.
“Only because you jilted me,” she retorted.
He’d repeatedly resisted discussing the past with her, but he couldn’t let that comment pass.
“That’s not how I remember it,” he challenged. “I wanted to keep dating you while I was in college. You were the one who broke up with me.”
“Yeah, because you didn’t care enough to take a chance on us.”
“I didn’t care enough?” He heard the volume of his voice rising and tried to tone it down. “How long did it take you to find another guy? Six months?”
“At least Jerry loved me.”
“I loved you!”
She shook her head. “Not as much as Jerry. He had a single red rose delivered to me every day for two weeks until I agreed to go to dinner with him. On our first date, he said he knew I was the one.”
“So you married him when you were only twenty years old.”
“What did you think I’d do? Sit around pining for you?”
“I thought you’d eventually realize that by getting an education I was making an investment in our future,” Logan said. “I thought we’d get back together.”
“We never would have parted if you’d loved me enough.”
“How about Jerry?” Logan had believed he’d come to terms with Maria’s marriage long ago, yet every time he said the other man’s name a shudder ran through him. “If he loved you so much, why aren’t you still together?”
She looked away, out toward the rippling water and the luminated boats. “It’s complicated. There were things about him I wasn’t aware of when we got married.”
No surprise there. She couldn’t have known the guy very well when they’d taken the plunge. Logan felt his hand ball into a fist. If Jerry had mistreated her, he’d hunt him down and hurt him. “What things?”
She shrugged as though it wasn’t a big deal, yet he didn’t buy that for a second. “He was...controlling. I wasn’t about to let him know where I was every minute of every day, no matter how much he loved me.”
“Sounds more like obsession than love,” Logan said.
She seemed about to say more, then closed her mouth and shook her head. “What’s the use of talking about this? What does it matter now?”
It mattered. He wasn’t sure why, just that it did. Now wasn’t the time to discuss it, though, not when she was dead on her feet. He shouldn’t have let himself get drawn in
to the conversation. She didn’t need any more stress tonight.
“Okay,” he said. “But for the record, I’m sorry.”
She tilted her head, her expression unutterably sad. “Sorry about what?”
“Sorry I didn’t fight harder for you,” Logan said. “No matter how much you think Jerry loved you, it wasn’t as much as I did.”
* * *
COULD IT BE POSSIBLE that Maria had been wrong about Logan not loving her enough? Not once in all the years since they’d been apart had she second-guessed herself about the breakup. Until tonight.
He had sounded so sincere when he’d gazed into her eyes and spoke of love.
A half dozen times since they’d left the harbor and started walking back through the tourist area, she’d started to ask him why he hadn’t tried harder to make her understand. She’d equated him not wanting to move in with her while he went to art school in Louisville with not loving her enough. What if she’d been wrong?
She continued to keep her thoughts to herself as they walked side by side down Duval Street, because what she’d said at the dock still applied.
They couldn’t turn back the clock. So what did it matter now, eleven years after the fact?
A fair number of bars were still open, and most of the restaurants and shops that were closed for the night had left on their holiday lights. The moon and the stars shone in the clear night sky, adding natural beauty to the evening.
A streak of light slashed across the darkness above.
“Oh, my gosh!” Maria stopped dead and pointed overhead. “Is that another shooting star?”
“That’s a shooting star, all right.” Logan gazed upward, too. “What do you mean by another one?”
“I saw one that night in Lexington when you showed up at the restaurant to talk me out of coming to Key West,” she said.
“Hmm. I don’t think I’ve seen more than a handful of shooting stars in my entire life.”
Could the star be a sign?
“My mother says if you see a shooting star before Christmas and make a wish, it’ll come true.” Maria wasn’t sure why she told him that unless it was to give her mom’s claim validity. Because, oh, she wanted desperately to believe.
“I never figured you for the fanciful type,” he said, “but I guess it can’t hurt to make a wish.”
Maria’s thoughts, exactly. She shut her eyes tight and mentally repeated the wish she’d made that night in Lexington. She wouldn’t tell Logan what it was, though. Her mother said the same rule applied to shooting stars and the candles on a birthday cake. If you spoke your wish aloud, you’d jinx it.
She’d barely finished wishing when she caught the faint strains of what sounded like guitar music. She strained her ears, trying to determine whether it was her imagination. No. Somebody was playing a ballad on the guitar. Not just any ballad, but one she’d heard Mike practicing in the basement.
“Sweet Caroline,” the Neil Diamond song with the catchy chorus. Mike had been determined to perfect the song after he’d started dating Caroline Webb, although nobody else in the DiMarco family would have labeled her as sweet.
Maria laid a hand on Logan’s arm. “Can you tell where that guitar music is coming from?”
“Sounds like the next block,” he said. “Probably a street performer hoping for some change.”
“I think it might be Mike.” She gripped his arm. Her chest felt so tight with anticipation she could hardly breathe. “That’s one of his favorite songs.”
“Let’s check it out, then.” Logan didn’t hesitate, taking her hand and crossing the street, heading toward the music. It was probably because of what he’d told her earlier, that the less successful she was in tracking down her brother the more open she’d be that someone else was behind the photos and phone calls. At the moment, she didn’t care about Logan’s motivation. She held on to him, glad he was guiding the way, while other thoughts whirled through her mind.
She hadn’t heard the song “Sweet Caroline” in years. It was too much of a coincidence that a random street performer would choose to sing it after she’d seen the shooting star, wasn’t it? In case wishes weren’t enough, she said a silent prayer that her quest was coming to an end.
“There’s a guitarist on the corner in the next block,” Logan said, increasing his pace. She lengthened her steps to keep up with him, her heart hammering harder with every one.
“Sweet Caroline” was still playing, its cheerful melody louder now. Could it be that she was a few notes away from a reunion with her brother?
A knot of people clogged the sidewalk ahead. Maria tried but couldn’t see around them. Logan was not only taller, he had a better angle.
“Can you see the guitarist?” she asked breathlessly. “Is it Mike?”
Logan craned his neck. Then he came to a standstill, tugging on her hand to slow her down.
“It’s not Mike, Maria,” he said.
She started shaking her head even before he finished the statement. “You can’t know that yet. Not from this distance.”
She pulled her hand free from his and broke into a jog, weaving through the other people until nothing but sidewalk was between her and the guitarist.
She skidded to a stop.
He was a heavyset black man.
“What’s your hurry, sweetheart?” One of the young men she’d brushed by called to her as he passed. “Things move slower here in Key West.”
“Like a sea turtle,” one of his friends added. The entire group laughed.
Maria didn’t acknowledge their comments. She couldn’t. Her throat seemed to close up. Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them back.
Logan’s arm came around her, gathering her close. “I’m sorry you keep getting disappointed.”
She nodded. No matter how certain he was that Mike was dead, she didn’t doubt Logan was sorry.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, repeating his words from earlier in the evening.
Maria walked beside him back to the hotel on autopilot, her mind trying to think through the puzzle. On an island as compact as Key West, somebody should have recognized her brother’s picture by now. Maybe Sergeant Peppler had been right about Mike not being a local. If he was a tourist who happened to be in Key West when he’d mailed the letter, he could be living anywhere, maybe even on one of the other keys in the island chain. Or maybe he’d gotten wind that Maria was searching for him and had gone underground again.
“What are you thinking?” Logan asked. They were in the hotel elevator, with his hand resting against her back.
“Lots of things,” she said. “Mostly I’m trying to come up with reasons we can’t pick up Mike’s trail.”
Logan appeared about to say something. She held up a palm. “Don’t say anything about 9/11. I don’t think I can bear to hear any of your negativity right now.”
“I wasn’t going to,” he said. “Believe me, I don’t like to think about that day any more than you do.”
She remembered what he’d told her at the restaurant in Lexington, about talking Mike into going to his job that day. At the time, all Maria could hear was verification that Mike had been thinking about quitting, giving her hope that he’d ignored Logan’s advice. Now, however, she identified the guilt in Logan’s voice.
“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” she said. “Nobody could.”
“Yeah, but I did know Mike was an unhappy high school dropout a thousand miles from h
ome,” he said. “I could have talked him into going back.”
“He wouldn’t have come,” she said. “Not after I drove him away.”
“What are you talking about?” Logan asked.
Maria dug into her purse, removing a large key chain imprinted with the hotel’s name. She inserted the old-fashioned key in the lock and pushed open the door to her room. “Perhaps you’d better come in. I have a story you need to hear.”
* * *
AFTER MUSTERING UP the resolve to leave Maria’s hotel room the night before, Logan had vowed not to put himself in the same position again. Yet here he was for the second time, alone with her late at night.
The attraction that still simmered between them, however, was taking a backseat to what she had to tell him. Whatever it was had her on edge. He was surprised to see that her room had a minibar, since the hotel was short on frills. She hadn’t had alcohol all night but went straight there now and removed a small bottle of whiskey.
“I make a mean whiskey and water,” she said. Even her joke sounded strained. “Want to share?”
“Sure,” he said, not so much because he was craving a drink but because he didn’t want her to drink alone.
She poured a glass for him and one for herself before settling in the armchair at a corner of the room. He’d chosen the chair at the desk. He was anxious to hear what she had to say, but didn’t prompt her, figuring she’d tell him at her own pace.
Maria swallowed some whiskey and made a face, telling him she wasn’t used to it. He heard her sigh.
“You shouldn’t blame yourself for anything involving Mike,” she said at last. Lines of strain bracketed her pretty mouth. He’d switched on the lamp at the desk and the light picked up the pain in her blue eyes. “If not for me, he wouldn’t have been in New York in the first place.”
Logan balanced his elbows on his thighs and leaned forward, his mind on the past and what Mike DiMarco had told him about his reasons for leaving Kentucky. “I had the impression Mike dropped out of school because of Caroline Webb.”
Wish Upon a Christmas Star Page 13