Key West

by Stella Cameron

  “Oh, my,” Ena said. “Oh, my. Wimpy. Ι didn’t even give him a thought. He went everywhere…. Oh, no. He went everywhere with Edward. Edward wouldn’t let him out of his sight. He must have…died in the fire.”

  Sonnie faced Ena and started to speak, but she caught Chris’s eye and he shook his head vehemently. Mr. Talon was very good at nonverbal communication, Sonnie thought, vaguely irritated.

  Finally they were outside again, having left by the back door to the porch. “You go ahead and take a look around your gardens if you want to,” Ena said in response to Chris’s comment that Sonnie missed her place and wanted just to sit on the veranda—at least until some officious cop turned them out.

  Sympathetic Ena ushered them toward another space in the shrubbery between the two houses, this one near the very end of the properties.

  Sonnie waved to Ena and followed Chris into her own garden.

  He waited silently and listened. “I think she’s gone inside,” he said at last.

  “Does it matter?” Sonnie said. “She’s so sad, Chris.” This lady who fascinated him so much had a heart soft enough to kill her if he didn’t keep a close watch.

  “She is sad,” he agreed. “And confused. But we have to be careful what we say to her, Sonnie. She wouldn’t mean to, but she’s very capable of repeating what she’s told. Not out of malice. Just because she wants something to say, something intimate enough to draw people to her.”

  Sonnie thought about that. “You’ve probably got great intuition,” she told him, and thought that his intuition was only one of many things that were great about him.

  “We’re not going to find anything here,” he said. “But I still want to look. If I decide to enter, I’ll want you to leave the area.”

  “You still talk like a cop.”

  “Sorry. I’ll work on it.” Some things were harder than others to stamp out. “I’d like to know how he got in. You kept all the doors locked, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. Always.”

  “So there should be some sign of a breakin.”

  “Wouldn’t the cops have found that?”

  “Maybe, but they aren’t going to share their information with Joe Blow, alias Chris Talon. See if you can find some cover where you can watch the guy out front without him noticing you. I want to check the doors and windows at the back.”

  Sonnie’s heart fluttered too hard. “What will they do if they catch us?”

  “This is your house. You want in to get something. You decide what it is, just in case.”

  Keeping close to the veranda, she hunched over and crept forward.

  Scratching sounds brought her fluttery heart into her throat. She caught at a veranda railing and looked for Chris. He was watching her, an unreadable expression on his face. She waved at him, and gestured toward the veranda.

  Quickly and quietly he came to her. “What is it?”

  “Listen.”

  He raised his head and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t hear anything.”

  She caught at his sleeve. “There it is again. Someone’s under the veranda.”

  Chris bent to look under the pilings that supported the structure. “There isn’t room. At least not for someone. I hear it though. Probably an animal.”

  Instantly she knelt down and peered into the darkness. At first there was no sound and nothing to see. Two gleaming eyes appeared quite suddenly, so suddenly Sonnie jumped and almost cried out.

  “Don’t make any noise,” Chris told her. He wished he could stop her from being so antsy. She reacted to anything and everything. “It’s nothing. Probably just a rat.”

  He barely got a hand over her mouth to stop her scream. “I am a fool,” he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “In some ways, I always was. Open mouth, insert foot. Come on. Go keep watch for me.”

  The scratching became a rustling.

  Out from the gloom beneath the veranda popped the round head of a very small black dog. Its eyes resembled bulging golden marbles—only with the saddest expression Chris remembered noting in an animal. The creature’s coat—or what could be seen of it—shone like that of a wet seal.

  “Wimpy,” Sonnie whispered. “Oh, you poor little guy. You must be starved. Chris, he’s been here for days. Come on, Wimpy. Come to Sonnie. I’ll look after you.”

  Dropping his belly close to the ground, Wimpy crawled forward. Slowly he brought all of his ten or twelve inches of length—from nose to tip of tail—into the light.

  Holding out her hands, Sonnie encouraged him to come to her. Wimpy spared her a glance, but went to Chris, who picked him up and sucked in a breath when the dog whimpered.

  “He’s burned,” Sonnie said, barely remembering to keep her voice down. “All over his tummy.” Never mind if he’d shunned her attentions; she didn’t blame him for trusting Chris. “It must have happened when…” She looked upward at the house.

  “I think our troubles are over,” Chris said, confusing Sonnie completely. “Let’s get out of here and think a few things through. I need you to remember exactly what happened that night when you called me over. After the nightmare.”

  He put Wimpy inside his shirt, held a hand out to Sonnie, and pulled her to her feet. “It’s going to be okay. This could have turned out to be really nasty, but I think we got lucky. If I’m right, you’re safe now.”

  Eighteen

  Café Orange occupied a three-story house with an outlook that promised there could be no better sunset view on the island. Not that there was likely to be a visible sunset tonight. Sonnie eyed the purplish afternoon sky and the shadows cast by sullen clouds upon an eerily calm sea. Α storm would be a relief, a long, cleansing cloudburst complete with lightning and the satisfaction of great thunder to follow.

  She thought of her house and the holes that were not yet permanently sealed. By tomorrow they would be; the contractor had promised. On this coral rock one hundred and fifty miles to the south of its motherland, yet only ninety miles north of Cuba, devastating storms that changed even the shape and size of the land were accepted, expected. Those who called Key West home took its capriciousness in stride, including repeated threats to their own safety and the safety of their homes. No matter how long it took, Sonnie was only passing through, and the prospect of a hurricane—and all that would mean—ripped at her nerves.

  She sat at a table on the second-story veranda, nibbling at the straw in her daiquiri, and contemplated possible reasons for painting a restaurant called Cafe Orange pink.

  Chris had done everything short of ordering her not to accept Billy’s invitation to meet her—alone—to stop Sonnie from keeping this appointment. “Why,” he’d asked, “if she has nothing to hide, would she be so insistent that you leave me behind?”

  Sonnie had told him, “She didn’t even mention your name. She wants us to be together and feel free to talk. We’re sisters. Family. Is that such an unusual request?”

  He’d shaken his head, but there was anger in his eyes, and tension in his flared nostrils and the white line that formed around his mouth.

  Billy should have arrived by now, but she was invariably late.

  A tree of purple orchids rose halfway up the veranda railings. This, too, was still, as was a mass of hauntingly sweet-smelling frangipani. Sonnie’s cold drink frosted the outside of her glass, and wherever she touched it, another rivulet of water wound its way downward to the stem and, eventually, the pink tablecloth.

  She wished Chris were with her.

  She wished she never had to go anywhere without him ever again.

  She was, in fact, in a hopeless mess.

  And brilliant Mr. Talon was all wrong in his optimism about her future. What he didn’t understand yet was that the events that had happened since her return didn’t impact her reason for coming. Tonight she would tell him the truth, all of it, and if he told her, as had already been suggested, that she had a form of post-traumatic stress syndrome and needed therapy, she’d have to find a way to make herself tell him goo
d-bye.

  “Sonnie!”

  She half turned to see Billy approach. Billy with Dr. Jim. He looked abashed, as he should. Sonnie faced the view again and seethed. At least if it had been Romano there might be an excuse.

  “Darling,” Billy said, bending to plant a kiss on Sonnie’s cheek, “this place is so hokey. In fact this entire island is hokey. I can’t understand why you and Frank came here in the first place.”

  Sonnie didn’t say, Neither do I, but, “He loved the climate and the atmosphere. It may not be your thing, but it’s unique. You never know for sure what you’ll encounter next.” That was true, and there were times when she enjoyed the madness.

  Billy sat on Sonnie’s left, and Jim Lesley walked around to take the chair at her right. Something close to suffocation assailed her. “Family chat, hmm, Billy?” she said. “Since you’re making a party of it, where’s Romano?”

  “He’s gone for a couple of days. Up to the course at Marathon, evidently. Filling in, he said.” She made much of smoothing her short blue skirt over her bare thighs. “Jim is my friend. I asked him to come because he’s such a voice of reason, and I’m hoping you can come to trust him as much as I do.”

  Sonnie averted her face from Jim and gave Billy her entire attention. “Chris is my friend. I find him very reasonable. At your request I asked him not to come today.” She turned to the doctor. “Please forgive me for saying these things in front of you. My sister has left me no choice. My argument is with her, not with you.”

  He smiled and some of her irritation dissolved. Jim Lesley had a really nice smile and such kind eyes.

  “Don’t suggest there’s any similarity between Jim and that man,” Billy said. “I don’t need to point out the differences. You know them. And you also know that I don’t have a husband. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be involved with a man who means a great deal to me.”

  Jim reached across the table, narrowly missing Sonnie’s glass, and wound his fingers around Billy’s.

  “I am delighted for both of you,” Sonnie said. “Let me know when you’re ready to name the day. I’ll look forward to that. Chris and I are just friends. Obviously, even if we wanted to be something more, that isn’t possible. Please don’t be insulting enough to remind me of my marriage again.”

  “Oh, God,” Billy said, letting her head fall back. Her hair was gelled close to her scalp. The style showed off her beautiful features. Her enjoyment of her own physical drama was visible. “Sonnie, you’re making a fool of yourself. I’ve told you already that even if he is an unemployed drifter who likes to mooch off of people, he’s gorgeous and he’s the type who goes for flashy women. No disrespect, but you aren’t flashy. You’re pleasant to look at the little-girl-next-door type. Don’t you think there’s something odd about—”

  “Billy,” Jim said, and when Sonnie glanced at him she was surprised to see that his face had become pale, his posture stiff. “There’s no need to continue with this. Sonnie’s a lovely woman. I don’t think she cares what I think about her but, for what it’s worth, Sonnie isn’t the obvious type, and there are many men who really don’t want what you call flash. Shall we order something? Late lunch? Early dinner?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Billy said, pouting. “I want a Grand Marnier over ice. Make it a triple. It goes down so quickly in this ghastly heat.”

  Jim didn’t look happy but he signaled a waiter.

  Billy stared at Sonnie until she said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Can’t you wear your hair over the scar?” Billy said. “And make sure your neck’s covered?”

  “They’re just scars,” Sonnie said, but her heart beat harder. “It’s too hot here to cover up.”

  “Exactly so,” Jim Lesley said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Billy told him. “I don’t want to sound unkind, but most people who are disfigured try to disguise it. They don’t want everyone who looks at them to be disgusted.”

  Sonnie’s sister disgusted her. “Drop it,” she said. “If it bothers you to look at me, don’t look.”

  “You’re impossible,” Billy said. She peered at the sky. “I think there’s going to be a hurricane. They keep saying the two that are way south won’t hit here, but they’re cutting down the coconuts and clearing away any fallen ones. They don’t do that unless they’re afraid a hurricane will turn them into projectiles, do they?”

  “I don’t know,” Sonnie muttered. And she didn’t care.

  “The sooner we all get out of here, the better. I suppose you’ve noticed that half the population’s gay. And other things. Honestly, who wants to watch men prancing around in drag?”

  Sonnie detested bigotry. “It’s a free country—supposedly. You don’t have to watch, and you’re certainly not the audience they’re looking for. I find it works for me if I don’t judge what I don’t understand.”

  “Well, I think they’re all scary.”

  In spite of her annoyance, Sonnie laughed. “If they did notice you, they wouldn’t find you scary. They aren’t interested in you at all.”

  “I like it here,” Jim said, and pretended not to notice Billy’s scowl. “Diversity’s good for provincial souls. I wouldn’t even mind a hurricane. At least it would be different.” He wrinkled his nose. “As long as it’s really mild and no one gets hurt.”

  Billy’s Grand Marnier arrived, and Jim’s gin and tonic. He told the waiter they weren’t ready to order a meal.

  “Enough small talk,” Billy announced. “This isn’t a discussion. I’m taking you home, Sonnie.”

  As usual, Chris had been right: she shouldn’t have come—at least not alone.

  “Do you understand that I mean what I say?” Billy said.

  “You’re making a fool of yourself,” Sonnie said. “You have no right to tell me what to do, and you know it. Thank you for caring about me, and I believe you do, but if you want to help me, allow me to work my way through a difficult time the best way I can.”

  “I told you,” Billy said to Jim. “She isn’t rational.”

  That heated Sonnie’s blood. “I think I’d better go.”

  “Your limp is worse,” Billy said, loudly enough to get the attention of other patrons. “Don’t tell me you aren’t aware of it. You were told you might need more surgery, and you do. You must be in pain. That foot—oh, dear. Why not admit it and throw yourself into getting well?”

  “I am well.”

  “You walk like a cripple.”

  Sonnie swallowed. “I am a cripple.”

  “Yes, but why not minimize the obvious?”

  “Billy,” Jim said. “You sound so cruel, and you’re not cruel at all. Be careful what you say, and how.”

  “I didn’t ask your advice,” was Billy’s prompt reply. “This is harder on me than on anyone. I’m the only one with the guts to tell the truth and do something about it. Look at her face. It’s awful. You’re a doctor. Don’t pretend you don’t see that it’s past time for more plastic surgery.”

  “Apart from the initial wound closure, I haven’t had any plastic surgery,” Sonnie said through lips that had turned numb. “There’s plenty of time. The more healing that takes place beforehand, the better.”

  “Jim?” Billy said, her eyes wide. “Help me.”

  “Don’t do this to him,” Sonnie said. “I intend to get some opinions soon. Just as soon as I feel I can leave Key West.”

  “You can leave now,” Billy said. “Why wouldn’t you be able to? There’s nothing keeping you here, is there?”

  Only a need to look for the reason why I lost control of my car. I’m not the panicky type. When I was told that Frank had been abducted, I’m sure I felt bad for him, but it wouldn’t have upset me for myself. I wouldn’t have had an accident because of the news. I didn’t love him anymore. He made sure of that. I don’t love him now, and I don’t know why I ever thought I did.

  “Sonnie? Answer me. Is there anything keeping you here?”

  “Don’t interrogate y
our sister like this,” Jim said.

  “I’ve got to look after the dog,” Sonnie said. “He isn’t well enough to travel right now.” Desperation could make a person say really dumb things, Sonnie thought, and turned hot.

  “Dog?” Billy said. “Dog? What dog?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you I got a dog, didn’t I? He’s such a dear little thing, but he hurt his stomach and needs to heal. He needs a lot of attention right now.”

  Billy leaned close and patted Sonnie’s cheek. “Dear little Baby,” she said, “dear, wounded little sister. I’ve got to help you face up to the truth. You just want something to love, and a dog is the closest you can get to what you want most. Your baby died, Sonnie. You can’t replace a dead baby with a dog.”

  Darkness edged into Sonnie’s mind. She stared, but the scene faded. Billy was talking again but from a great distance. All feeling had left Sonnie’s body.

  Α gentle shaking—Jim shaking her shoulder very carefully—slowly dispelled the protective shield she’d closed around her. He was smiling at her again.

  “You’re frail,” he told her. “Why wouldn’t you be? You’ve been to hell and back and you’re doing so well. Will you allow me to say a few things to you?”

  Sonnie stared at him and nodded.

  “Your sister is a sweet, gentle—completely undiplomatic woman. I’m a man who doesn’t make decisions easily, but I’ve fallen in love with her.”

  Billy said, “You say dreadful things, then make me cry. You’re a beast, Jim Lesley.”

  “Try to sit quietly,” Jim told her, “until I’ve finished telling Sonnie what I see here. Or maybe until I tell her something about myself that could help her. I’m not your doctor, Sonnie, but I am a doctor. A psychiatrist” He gave a breathy laugh. “I don’t know much about scheduling plastic surgery, but it seems you should probably get an evaluation soon. Does your leg hurt?”

  “Yes. It probably always will. My tolerance for the pain increases, though.”

  “Brave girl,” Jim said. “Anyway, regardless of my medical training, I’m not your doctor. I can’t advise you as a practitioner unless you ask me to, but I can speak as a friend, and as a man. I’m on R and R, Sonnie. I’ve got a private clinic. It’s very successful, and it demands almost everything I’ve got to give. A day came when I knew that if I didn’t get away and regroup, I was likely to be occupying one of my own beds. The task I’ve given myself is to decide what’s really important. That means I’ve got to face up to where I am in my life, and why, and if the answers add up to a situation that’s injuring me, I’ve got to change course. Scary as hell, but no scarier than risking burning myself out.”