Key Lime Pie

by Josi S. Kilpack

“Yes,” he said slowly, studying the traffic. “I can see where people would get that idea.”

  Sadie just smiled. It was all part of her plan. She’d agreed not to yell, scream, run, or in any other way get him caught, but she’d said nothing about not talking his ear off—especially now that she had the sense he wasn’t interested in hurting her. “I won’t do anything to mess things up if you let me go,” she said. “You have my word.”

  “You’d go to the cops,” he said as Dora told him to make a left-hand turn.

  Sadie shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t.” From the backseat she heard the ascending ring of her phone—it was a Michael Bublé song this week. Sadie wondered who was calling and remembered that she hadn’t listened to Gayle’s message yet.

  Joe spotted a hole in traffic and shot forward to cross all four lanes.

  Sadie’s phone stopped ringing as she grabbed the door handle and was pushed back against the seat due to the forward momentum of the car.

  “If I did let you go, what would you do?”

  Oh, good, he’s considering it! Sadie straightened. “Well, I would call Eric and see if he needed help getting the money together.” Joe ought to like that part. “Then, I would . . .” She trailed off, wondering if she should tell this part, but she couldn’t expect him to trust her if she didn’t tell him the truth. “I would tell him what you’ve told me about Megan so that he’ll be a little better prepared.”

  “Prepare him,” Joe said under his breath, shaking his head slightly. Sadie watched him carefully and replayed his reaction in her head. He cleared his throat. “Look, you were right when you said I wanted Megan to be found. I do, which is why I can’t take the risk of you getting in the way of that—no matter how tempting it is to be rid of you.”

  He checked his blind spot and switched lanes, glancing at the GPS. As if on cue, Dora told him to turn right in one-quarter of a mile. As they were coming up on the intersection, Dora reminded him about the right turn. He followed her instructions.

  “Okay, then,” Sadie said. “We have a couple hours’ worth of conversation ahead of us, don’t we? So, tell me more about yourself. Where are you from? If you were a native of Miami you probably wouldn’t need a GPS.”

  “Spoken by someone who has no concept of how confusing Miami can be, even if you know the city.”

  “But you’re not from Miami, are you?”

  “I’m not telling you where I’m from,” he said blandly.

  “We could play twenty questions for it,” Sadie said. “Is it east or west of the Mississippi River?” Maybe she should have asked if it was north or south of the Rio Grande.

  Jack’s Gumbo

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  12 ounces chicken breast or thighs, diced

  1 small yellow onion, chunked (double onions for Jack)

  1 red pepper, seeded and chunked (double peppers for Jack)

  2 stalks celery, chunked

  6 ounces formed sausage, sliced (Andouille if you can find it, though Kielbasa works fine)

  1 quart chicken or ham stock

  2 bay leaves

  2 cloves garlic, sliced or crushed

  1 1⁄2 tablespoons Creole blend spice

  1⁄4 cup roux (can use other mode of thickening to save time)

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Heat oil in a 4-quart saucepan. When hot, add chicken and brown. Remove chicken and add onion, red pepper, and celery to pan, sautéing until golden. Add cooked chicken, sausage, stock, bay leaves, garlic, and Creole spice. Simmer for 30 minutes.* Add roux with a whisk, stirring constantly till thick. Season with salt, pepper, and additional Creole spice to taste.

  Serve as a soup or over cooked rice.

  Serves 8.

  *I like to add half a pound of shrimp 20 minutes before serving. (If the shrimp is added too early, it gets tough.)

  Ham Stock

  1 ham hock

  2 quarts water

  2 stalks celery

  Combine all ingredients in large soup pan. Simmer for 6 hours. Strain and discard ham bone and celery. This stock also freezes well.

  Roux

  1⁄2 cup butter

  1⁄2 cup flour

  Melt and brown butter in saucepan; the browner you cook the butter, without burning, the richer the flavor of the roux. Add flour; cook for at least 2 minutes. You can store roux in the refrigerator for up to 4 months; use as a savory thickener for soups, sauces, and gravies.

  Chapter 25

  Joe gave her a withering look, but Sadie felt sure he was starting to warm up to her. Dora told him to make a left turn in point-eight miles.

  “It makes sense that you don’t want to tell me where you’re from,” Sadie said, keeping her tone conversational even though the conversation was distinctly one-sided. “So, let’s talk about something different. How long have you been in Miami?” Obviously not very long or he’d know his way around. But he knew about the car dealership being a money-laundering scheme. “How did you know about Best Buy Used Cars?”

  “You ask a lot of questions you’d be better off not knowing the answers to.”

  Sadie shrugged. “I’m just trying to make conversation. Is there something you’d prefer to talk about? I don’t know much about sports or politics, but I’ll do my best.”

  He chose not to answer. Sadie thought it might be a long couple of hours. Dora piped up to say their destination was on the right. Sadie glanced out the window to confirm that they had indeed reached a park.

  Joe entered the parking lot and headed to the far side, where there weren’t many cars. He pulled into a spot and shut off the car. Without a word, he let himself out, grabbing the sack of food as he stood up and then bent down to look at Sadie expectantly. She nodded her understanding and let herself out. Once she shut the door, Joe used his key fob to lock it.

  As Sadie walked around the back of the car, her eyes were drawn to a small sticker in the lower left-hand corner. It showed a flag of some kind with four red stripes, three white ones, and a blue triangle coming in from the left-hand side like a pennant. There was a single white star in the center of the triangle. Sadie wasn’t sure she’d seen the flag before but wondered if it could be a clue to something.

  Joe headed across the grass for a cluster of trees, under which Sadie could see a single picnic table. She glanced over her shoulder as she followed him to see if anyone was watching them. It felt strange that he was so comfortable having her with him in public, but then she wondered what his alternatives really were. He wasn’t from around here, which meant he was probably staying at a hotel somewhere and wouldn’t want Sadie to see him in his own space. She also realized that he must trust her, at least a little, to not only bring her here but to walk twenty paces ahead. If she chose right now to scream and run he’d be sunk. But Eric would be sunk too, and Joe believed she would do anything to help Eric get the information he needed.

  And he was right, she would.

  By the time Sadie reached the table, Joe was seated and pulling his meal out of the bag. She noticed he had soft hands and strong arms. Not a laborer, and yet he didn’t come across as exactly white collar, what with the ponytail and shaved head. He had nice eyes though. She wondered if he had a wife or children. She found family men so much more trustworthy, though that was a strange word to attribute to the man who had abducted her at gunpoint. Still, she felt he wasn’t a bad guy by nature.

  Sadie was grateful they were in shade; it diffused the heat better than shade did in Colorado, where the dry air exacerbated the heat. She wondered what they would do after the park—go bowling, maybe?

  “How can you wear a jacket in this heat?” Sadie asked.

  Joe looked up at her. “It’s not so bad today.”

  “It’s like ninety degrees,” she said, sliding onto the bench across from him.

  “Nah,” he said dismissively. “It’s barely eighty.”

  “And a hundred and sixty percent humidity,” she added.

  He gave her a half-smile
and shook his head.

  She knew he wore the jacket to conceal the gun, but why did he think he still needed the gun? Hadn’t she convinced him that she wasn’t a threat?

  “You really should have gotten something,” he said, popping off the clear plastic cover.

  Sadie scowled at the fast food. KFC was one of the better ones, but it was still cheap, fast, poor nourishment. “I’m a home-cooking snob,” she said without an ounce of humility. “And my digestive tract is pretty upset with the liberties I’ve been taking since I headed out here. I don’t dare offend it any further.”

  He managed a smirk at that comment, even though Sadie wasn’t trying to be funny. She picked up his utensils and tore off the plastic covering, careful not to touch the eating end of the spork as she put both it and the napkin down in front of him. He didn’t say thank you, but she read it in the strange look he was giving her nonetheless.

  “I’ve never been to Miami before,” Sadie said, folding her arms on the tabletop and looking around. “Parts of it are really pretty.” She waved toward the trees. “I like how green it is. Colorado hasn’t greened up much yet, even though it’s been raining a lot.”

  “You haven’t been to the beaches, have you?” he said, scooping up a bite of coleslaw with a spork. “They’re the real draw.”

  Sadie shrugged. “I’m not much of a beach person. I gave up swimsuits around the age of forty, and the ocean stinks.”

  He paused and looked over at her. “The ocean stinks?”

  Sadie nodded and wrinkled her nose for emphasis. “Stinks bad.”

  He took a bite of food, shaking his head. Sadie didn’t mean to offend him, but not everyone liked the beach. Give her mountain breezes and a campfire any day of the week over sand in her toes and salt water drying out her skin. She watched him take another bite of the coleslaw and felt her mind turning toward food again.

  She still hadn’t come to terms with her disappointment over the biscuits and gravy. Tia’s pasta salad, while delicious, wasn’t really Southern, and now Joe was eating coleslaw from KFC—the exact same coleslaw Sadie could get in Garrison.

  “Is Florida even considered Southern? I mean, other than geographically?” she asked, reflecting on her woefully lacking education of her country. “They talk about Louisiana and Georgia, even Texas, and call them the South, but all this”—she waved her hand to encompass the park—“doesn’t really feel Southern at all. It’s more like California but with more humidity, heat, and bugs.”

  Joe shrugged and picked up one of his two pieces of chicken. “I’ve never really thought about it.”

  “Never mind that this trip hasn’t turned out to be anything like I expected it would,” Sadie said when he didn’t add anything else. “But it’s somewhat disappointing to find Florida so . . . lacking in personality.”

  Joe pulled the chicken away from his mouth and grabbed his napkin to wipe at the grease left behind on his lips. The look on his face showed a little more interest in her than she was used to seeing from him. “Most people say Miami has too much personality,” he said. “So many cultures, classes, and interests clashing together in one of the smallest big cities in the world.”

  Sadie looked around. “Small?”

  “Compared to most large cities, yes. But it makes up for it in the fact that it’s surrounded by ports, which means industry and tourism. You’ve only been in the city so you haven’t really seen Florida. Ever been to Key West?”

  Sadie shook her head. Megan had, though; she’d disappeared from there. Was it a coincidence that Joe had brought it up?

  “Key West is awesome. I’d live there if I could.”

  “Why can’t you?” Sadie asked.

  “It’s pricey, really remote, and—” He stopped himself, but she could read in his eyes that he’d been about to say more than he wanted to. He went back to his food without finishing his thought.

  “I hear they don’t even grow key limes in the Florida Keys anymore,” Sadie said, resorting to her comfort zone of food once again and hoping to keep him talking.

  “I have no idea,” Joe said. “But I’d be surprised if any farming was being done down there. In answer to your question about Florida being Southern, though, I think it is up in the panhandle, but down here—nah, it doesn’t have the same influences. It’s more diverse.”

  “That fits what I’ve seen so far,” Sadie said. “I bet they have good Cuban food here though. Cuba’s pretty close, right?” She was trying to subtly ease into topics that might lead her to answers.

  “Ninety miles or so from Key West, I think,” Joe said.

  Sadie nodded. “I heard that if a Cuban makes it to American soil he’s a citizen.”

  “He gets a green card,” Joe said. “As a refugee. North Koreans get one too.”

  “Hmmm,” Sadie said. “So we can’t buy their cigars, but we can take their people?”

  Joe shook his head. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “Have you ever been to Cuba?” she asked innocently, hoping he didn’t pick up on how she was deftly steering the conversation.

  He looked up at her as though puzzled by her question, then went back to his food and took a bite of mashed potatoes. “So, did you come down with Megan’s dad?”

  “No,” Sadie answered, frustrated by the change in subject. She wished they’d have stayed on the Cuba topic long enough for her to see what he knew about the illegal selling of boats. Still, she was glad he was asking questions. Maybe they’d get back to it in a little while. “I came after he said he needed money and the box.”

  “The box?” Joe repeated.

  Sadie nodded, wondering how much she should tell him. Then again, there hadn’t been anything important in the box. “Eric had a box of Megan’s things at his house in Colorado. He needed it, so instead of shipping it, I brought it down myself. I thought he might need my help.”

  “Why did he want the box?”

  “The police wanted it,” Sadie said. “For hair samples and things. I guess they don’t need it though, since the body wasn’t Megan. But you know all that, right? I mean, you are the one who called the police with the coordinates.”

  Joe’s hand slowed, but he continued eating, trying to pretend that he wasn’t bothered by her bringing up the body again or revisiting a topic he’d already refused to discuss.

  “Who is she, Joe?”

  Joe swallowed and looked away from her.

  Sadie jumped in, sensing he was wavering. “You said you’re one of the good guys. If that’s true, tell me who that girl was so she can be laid to rest properly. Can you imagine how her family is feeling right now? Not knowing where she is?”

  Joe looked back at her. “They know where she is,” he said with a spurt of anger. “They put her there.”

  Sadie couldn’t understand what he was saying. “What do you mean?”

  Joe stabbed his spork into his potatoes. “When Megan is back in the picture, you can tell the police that she knows who it is. They can make her tell.”

  Megan knowing the dead woman’s identity was not good news. “I don’t get it,” Sadie said. “You want Megan found, and yet you’re implicating her in something very serious at the same time.”

  Joe looked up from his food and held her eyes for a few moments. She could sense him struggling to decide how much to say. He finally dropped his eyes back to his food, apparently choosing to say nothing. Sadie moved past her frustration, not wanting to belabor the conversation to the point where he’d stop talking. She’d come back to it later.

  “Is that what the fifteen thousand dollars is for?” Sadie asked. “To get away? How far do you think you’ll get on it?” She quickly shut her mouth when she realized she could be giving him the idea to ask for more money.

  “The money won’t last long,” Joe said, meeting her eyes again. “But like I said, there are lots of places to run to.”

  Run, Sadie repeated. “And lots of things to run from.”

  He nodded.r />
  “And what if they catch up with you?” Sadie asked, having no idea who they were but hoping he’d give something away.

  “They will catch up.” His voice was low and serious. “But until then I’ll have a little time to live with a clear conscience. It’s been a long time coming.”

  Sadie held his eyes, trying to see past them to the core of this man. “You’re telling me that you believe helping Eric find Megan will lead to your own death?”

  Joe smiled as though trying to lighten the mood. “A hero’s death doesn’t sound so bad, does it?” He chuckled, but without any humor. “Look, I haven’t necessarily lived a life I’ve been proud of, and Megan gives me the chance to do something right for once. The money gives me a chance to get away and enjoy the freedom for a little while. What happens after that is anyone’s guess, and I’m willing to take it as it comes.”

  Sadie felt her respect for this man swell up in her chest, assuming what he told her was the truth. “Just tell me where Megan is, Joe,” she said sympathetically. “Tell me everything you plan to tell Eric, and then let me go. I’ll tell him for you, and you can get a head start.”

  “And how would I get my money?”

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that part,” Sadie admitted, lacing her fingers and putting them on the table. “What about Western Union? They can send money anywhere.”

  Joe gave her a half-smile as he scooped another bite of potatoes. “Too risky,” he said after he swallowed.

  “I’m worried about Megan,” Sadie said. “I’m worried she’s in trouble. The sooner we can reunite her with her father, the better, right? I mean, you’re trying to help her, so why wait any longer than you have to?”

  “I’ll tell you this much. Right now,” he pointed his finger and jabbed it at the table, “Megan is safer than she has been for a long time. I am trying to make sure she doesn’t go back, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen, but I can’t do it without that money—cash.”