by John Clement
I felt pressure beginning to build in the space behind my eyes as I struggled for words. “I just … I don’t believe it. I was at a client’s house, and I saw it on the news. I didn’t … I didn’t know who it was. I thought…”
The idea that somebody might have been stalking me was hard enough to deal with, but it paled in comparison to the idea that someone might have hurt Michael or Paco or Ethan. Michael grabbed me around the shoulders and hugged me tight.
He said, “Yeah, well if you think that was bad … imagine what I thought.”
I pulled away. There were tears in his bloodshot eyes.
“Oh, Michael…”
He hugged me again. “Okay. Alright, we’re fine. Let’s just not think about it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah.” I could feel my body reeling as the adrenaline began to catch up with me. “I think I better sit down.”
We went over to the side of the road and found a spot in the grass opposite the driveway. They were letting a slow trickle of traffic through now, and I felt like a monkey in a cage as the cars rolled by, the passengers inside gawking at us. The sky overhead was bright blue, with two mountain-size white clouds gliding east to west, as if nothing was happening at all and everything was perfectly fine in the universe. We sat there in silence, watching the various officers milling around, coming and going up the lane from our house.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I turned to Michael and said, “Why is this happening?”
He shook his head and sighed. “I wish I knew.”
“I mean, there’s no way, right?”
“No way … what?”
I waved my hand around. “All this. There’s no way it’s a coincidence.”
His eyes stopped on a spot across the road, and I could tell by his face he’d already been thinking the exact same thing. First, Sara Potts, with my name on her body, and now … not three hundred feet from our front door …
Michael said, “Okay. Let’s not jump to any conclusions until we know exactly what’s going on.”
I looked up to see a trio of men coming around the curve of our driveway. It was only then that I noticed the shape in the middle of the lane, about a hundred yards down. It was too far to see clearly, but there were two deputies carefully unfolding a blue tarp, which I figured was meant to protect the body until a forensics team arrived to investigate.
I could tell by his profile that one of the men coming toward us was Paco, and despite the fact that Michael had already told me he was fine, I felt a muscle in the middle of my throat let go at the sight of him. As they passed the spot where the body was, he kept his face turned. One of the men stopped, and now it was just Paco coming up the lane, along with another taller, skinnier man. It took me a second to realize who it was: Matthew Carthage, the blond boy-detective I’d met in front of Caroline’s house, wearing the same faded jeans and white oxford dress shirt. I looked around for Detective McKenzie’s unmarked SUV but couldn’t find it.
Paco had a canvas shopping bag from our local health-food store slung over his shoulder. He walked across the road and straight into my arms, hugging me as Michael mutely patted both our backs. I could tell he was struggling to keep it all together, but I tried not to let on. It’s important for Michael to feel he has things under control, especially in a situation like this.
Detective Carthage was standing a few feet back, typing something into his cell phone.
I scanned Paco’s face. “Who is she?”
He shook his head. “They don’t know yet. I didn’t recognize her at all. Middle-aged, white, nicely dressed. There’s no purse or ID or anything…”
“Where’s Ethan?”
“Looking for Ella. She’s hiding, probably just freaked out by all the activity, or by what happened here. Whatever it was…” His voice trailed away as he glanced first at Detective Carthage, then at Michael.
Michael’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
Carthage stepped forward and cleared his throat, his neck suddenly breaking out in splotches of scarlet as he leveled me with his pale green eyes.
“There’s another note.”
16
When I was a kid, my grandfather liked to tell me bedtime stories about the people who lived here before us. My grandmother would lay my pajamas out while I was brushing my teeth—sometimes posing them on the bed, their arms relaxed over the pillow and their legs all akimbo. Once I was tucked in, my grandfather would come upstairs and slide a chair over to the bed. More often than not, Michael would sneak in and lay on the rug to listen, even though he was older and much too sophisticated for such childish things.
Usually the stories began with the brave Miccosukee or the noble Seminole Indians, descendants of the indigenous people that roamed our shores long before anyone knew there would ever be a thing called Florida. He told stories of mighty battles—struggles with neighboring tribes and clashes with Europeans and Spaniards—all mixed in with woolly mammoths and wild brontosauruses grazing in the fields, cavemen throwing giant parties, and Neanderthals dancing around roaring campfires where giant tortoises grilled in their own shells.
For the longest time, I bought those stories hook, line, and sinker. I took it for granted that our European settlers rode through the dunes on the backs of saber-toothed tigers, and I’m ashamed to admit that I was nearly a teenager before I figured out it was all pure fabrication on my grandfather’s part.
But it didn’t matter. I loved the rich world my grandfather wove for us kids, and even if it wasn’t all factually true, he somehow managed to capture the strange, wild essence of Florida’s character. Sometimes, he’d skip forward a few thousand years and talk about the eccentric family that owned our little stretch of beach right before we came along. According to my grandfather, they were the distant cousins of Nelson Rockefeller, as well as the illegitimate children of a glamorous and beautiful circus performer known as Minerva, who was rumored to have traveled Europe as the “personal assistant” to John Jacob Astor.
Now, this should all be taken with a grain of salt, because as I understand it, they traveled from country to country in a convoy of hot-air balloons, held aloft with the breath of fire-breathing dragons … In other words, don’t sue me if any of this turns out to be less than accurate. But apparently Minerva and John Jacob Astor had twenty children, all of whom spent their later years living together not far from here in a giant mansion made of imported Italian marble. The eldest, Paolo, was a botanist. His particular field of interest was the Talauma plumieri, or what you and I know as the magnolia tree.
He planted them all over the island, and, if my grandfather is to be believed, all the existing wild magnolias on the Key are direct descendants of those very trees.
I was thinking about that as Michael and Paco and I followed Detective Carthage down the shelled lane that leads to our house. Before we even got close, I could feel the heady nectar of the magnolia’s cupped blossoms on the back of my throat, and for a brief moment, something about the smell of it, the thickness of it, combined with the idea of a dead body nearby, made my head swoon. I put a hand on Michael’s shoulder to steady myself. The whole thing didn’t feel real … more like a bizarre, fever-induced nightmare.
When Detective Carthage had said there was “another note,” I’d just stood there, staring at him in silence. All kinds of questions started bouncing around in my head like ping-pong balls in a lottery machine, but I didn’t say a word. For one, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answers, and, two, I could tell by the bewildered expression on Detective Carthage’s face that there were still a lot of details he hadn’t figured out yet. He was probably waiting for Detective McKenzie to show up before he made any further decisions.
The body had been covered with a blue tarp, the four corners pinned down with metal spikes, and as we walked by I took my cue from Paco and kept my head turned away from the mounded form in the middle. Instead, I focused on the magnolia tree, where Paco had seen the rabbit’s nest that morning
. There were a few fan-leafed palms jutting out at angles from its base, and nestled among them was a dense collection of dried grasses and twigs with a dark hollow near the center. I wondered why a mother rabbit would choose to raise her babies so close to the edge of the driveway.
After we were well past the body, I realized I’d been holding my breath and gulped for air. Detective Carthage’s shoulders were slumped forward, like he was trying to compensate for his tall, lanky frame, and with every step his blond bangs swept across his forehead like windshield wipers. It was only then that I noticed he was mumbling to himself—or at least that’s what I thought—but then I realized he was actually talking to Michael, who was walking next to him on the other side.
I moved in closer to listen.
Michael said, “But … are you sure?”
Carthage said, “Not a hundred percent, no. Obviously, we’ll have a better idea when we see what’s written on that note, if anything, but I don’t want to touch it until the body’s been examined.”
I noticed the bright blue fingertips of a rubber glove peaking out of his back pocket, so I wasn’t totally sure I believed he hadn’t already looked at the note, but I decided to play along for now. I was about to ask if he knew when Detective McKenzie would be here, especially since I was beginning to worry about all the pets I still had to take care of, but Carthage interrupted. “So how long do you think you and Paco were gone?”
Michael thought for a second. “Not even an hour. Probably no more than half an hour, actually.”
Detective Carthage nodded. “So you went for a walk down the beach, and you left together?”
“Yes.”
“And which direction did you go?”
“South, down to the end of Turtle Beach. There were some kids flying a kite, so we went down and watched them for a little while, and then we headed back. That’s when the cops showed up.”
“A little while?”
“Maybe half an hour or so.”
“And before you left, you didn’t hear a car coming up the driveway or anything like that?”
Michael shook his head. “No, definitely not.”
“And was there anyone else on the beach?”
“Nobody. Just us and those kids.”
Suddenly, I stopped dead in my tracks. “Wait a minute! Where’s Gigi?”
Paco stepped over and slid the canvas shopping bag off his shoulder. “I figured you’d think of that eventually.”
He opened it up to reveal Gigi huddled inside, his little head and ears poking out of a tumble of underwear and mismatched socks from my top dresser drawer.
Paco shrugged meekly, “We knew you’d freak out if we left him in the house alone. I grabbed whatever was nearby.”
I almost burst out laughing, but instead a sob come rushing up my throat. I took a deep breath and reached in to give Gigi a reassuring rub between the ears, but he tensed at my touch and burrowed further into his little bed of underwear. I took the bag from Paco and lifted it gently over my shoulder.
I said, “I know, buddy. I’ll be glad when this is over too.”
Detective Carthage continued. “The main thing now is to figure out who this woman is so we can at least tell her family and see if they know anything. I’m hoping they might be able to explain the connection to the other body.”
I stopped again. “What other body?”
“Sara Potts? Remember her?”
“Sorry. I thought you meant another body here.”
Carthage shook his head almost imperceptibly, like he’d already considered that possibility. He said, “We ran the plates. Now we’re just waiting to see if they can identify a cell phone number.”
I could feel pressure building behind my eyes, and a throbbing pain was slowly creeping its way across my shoulders as all the muscles in my neck started to tighten.
Michael said, “Dixie, what’s wrong?”
I said, “Can somebody please explain to me what the hell is going on? What cell phone? And what do you mean you ran the plates? What plates?”
Paco said, “When we got back from our walk, there was a car parked in your spot in the carport. We looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find anybody, and that’s when the deputies showed up and said a jogger had reported a woman in the driveway.”
Carthage said, “The plates are registered to a rental company here at the airport. They gave us the name of the people that rented the car and their phone number too, except it’s a landline. They didn’t leave a cell phone number. That means unless they check their home messages, we won’t be able to reach anybody … at least until they figure out somebody’s missing.”
I said, “What about the note … where is it?”
“It’s pinned to her blouse.”
I could feel myself starting to get a little light-headed again. I mumbled, “It’s pinned to her blouse…”
Carthage said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Let me guess … with a hat pin.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. With a black pearl at the tip.”
I paused for a moment, suddenly filled with an overwhelming desire to turn around and walk right back up to the main road and drive away. First of all, there were pets all over the Key depending on me to take care of them, but also, I didn’t want to know what that note said. It couldn’t have been anything good.
I tried to keep my cool. “So, when does Detective McKenzie get here?”
Carthage said, “She doesn’t.”
“Huh?”
Michael glanced at Paco as Carthage turned and headed for the house. “She’s out of town for a couple days. New Orleans, I think.”
Michael and Paco both followed him, their eyes on the ground and not saying a word. Detective Carthage kept on talking, but his words floated over my head without registering, as if my brain had taken in all the information it could handle for one day and had hung up an OUT TO LUNCH sign. I caught a few words here and there, like “old friend” and “wedding,” but that was about it.
As we turned the corner of the lane and our house came into view, I saw Ethan standing at the bottom of the steps to my apartment. He had Ella Fitzgerald cradled in his arms, and now I really did feel like I would burst into tears … until I saw the car parked in the carport behind him. It was a giant SUV, and even at this distance, I recognized it right away.
Just then, one of the deputies trotted up to Detective Carthage. He said, “Sir, we found this.”
He was holding out a small plastic bag. Inside was a cigarette, the tip of which was smudged with pink.
Detective Carthage said, “Okay, hold on to that. We’ll see if it matches the lipstick on the body. Where’d you find it?”
He started to answer but I interrupted him. I’d seen the woman throw it in the driveway myself.
I said, “Reed.”
Detective Carthage turned to me. “What?”
“Reed. That’s the name on the rental car, isn’t it?”
His brow furrowed. “How do you know that?”
I could feel a dark, sinking feeling settling into my body as an image flashed in my mind: Edith Reed, rising out of her car the morning she and her husband had wandered around our property. I could still see the gleam of the tennis bracelet on her wrist, with its matching diamond pendants dangling from her ears.
I said, “Because they were here. Two days ago.”
“Who was here?”
“Garth and Edith Reed.” I tipped my chin at the green SUV parked in my spot. “That’s their car.”
Michael’s jaw dropped open, and for a split second I wondered what my grandfather would make of the story that was currently unfolding on the very spot where he and my grandmother had built their lives … and whether or not he’d buy it.
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the little piece of yellow paper I’d found wedged under my car seat.
“And here’s their cell phone number.”
17
It was her.
Mrs. Reed.
Detective Carthage wanted me to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was the same woman I’d seen the other morning, and I knew it would have been ludicrous to refuse. The woman’s face had lost the smoothness I remembered when I’d spied her from my hiding place in the hammock. Now, it had loosened and sagged, the skin of her left cheek almost melting into the crushed shell of the driveway, her silvery blond hair flattened on one side. I nodded quietly, and then Detective Carthage pulled the tarp back over her face.
I didn’t want to be there when her husband arrived, but, still, it was hard to drive away. Except for Ella, I was the only female left on the scene. Silly, I know. Such a small thing. I hadn’t known Mrs. Reed. I couldn’t have saved her.
Still, it felt like a betrayal, to leave with all those strangers stepping around her body. Less than three hours earlier, she’d been touring the Key without a care in the world, scoping out potential sites for her future home, and now she was on her side, under a blue plastic tarp littered with fallen magnolia petals, while a crowd of technicians, deputies, photographers, and investigators milled about, talking quietly and making notes. Sipping at their coffees. But mostly, and I’m ashamed to admit it, I didn’t want to see the look on her husband’s face when he saw her—really saw her—for the last time.
I know what that’s like, and it’s no fun.
In exchange for letting me get back to work, Detective Carthage had asked that I meet him later, which I readily agreed to at the time, but I was already trying to come up with ways to get out of it. I didn’t much feel like talking to anybody, at least not any humans.
Luckily, I had a stable of cats waiting to help distract me …
* * *
Betty and Grace Piker are two retired sisters who’ve come to a mutual agreement. If one of them finds a cat that needs a home and wants to adopt it, the other is to do everything in her power to prevent it, including physical force if necessary. Fortunately, at least for homeless cats everywhere, the Piker sisters’ resolve is as weak as their hearts are large. They have ten cats, all rescues, and they’d recently added yet another feline to the family: an elderly calico named Lucy.