Riptide

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “Hi, Claire, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, listen. I just got back from a little vacation down in Miami with my sister, and I just saw the paper.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, I’m wondering if it might have anything to do with a guest that up and disappeared on us last week.”

  Maggie sat up a little straighter and forgot the crick in her neck.

  “When last week?”

  “I looked it up on the register. We went to clean his room last Wednesday morning and his stuff was there, but he was gone. It was just an overnight bag and I thought he might have just forgotten it, but he didn’t pay for his last night, either.”

  “What’s this guest’s name?”

  “It’s right here. Brandon Wilmette, from Atlanta.”

  “Where are his things?”

  “Luanne brought them to me last week and I just put them in the lost and found, in case he called or came back. I mean, it could be a misunderstanding. Or he may have had an emergency or something.”

  “Do you have a phone number for him?” Maggie asked, grabbing a pen and paper.

  “Yes, it’s 404-976-2339. Do you want me to call it?”

  “No, I’ll call it. Thanks, Claire. I’ll call you or stop by if I need anything else, okay?”

  “Okay, Maggie.” Clair sighed. “Gee, I hope it’s not him. That would just be creepy.”

  Maggie disconnected the call, then dialed the number Claire had given her. It went straight to voice mail.

  “Hey, this is Sport. I’m doing something more interesting than answering the phone, so leave me a number and I’ll probably call you back,” a man’s voice said snidely.

  Maggie left her name and number and asked Brandon Wilmette to call her back, then hung up the phone and walked down the hallway to Wyatt’s open door.

  Wyatt was at his desk, using two fingers to peck at his keyboard.

  “Hey,” Maggie said. Wyatt looked up. “The Bayview Hotel just called. A guy named Wilmette never checked out last week, and never came back to get his stuff.”

  “You have a number for him?”

  “Straight to voice mail. I’m gonna drive over there and take a look at his belongings, maybe get another number for him.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Wyatt said, looking at his watch. “It’s time to leave anyway.”

  “Okay.”

  Wyatt got up and headed toward the door. “No gossiping, though. I have steaks to marinate.”

  Maggie and Wyatt found Claire polishing the silverware in the dining room of the hotel, one of many riverside warehouses and buildings left over from the years that Apalach had been one of the biggest cotton ports on the Gulf.

  Claire hadn’t remembered much about Brandon Wilmette, just that she knew she’d checked him in and hadn’t seen him much the couple of days he’d been there. She had a vague recollection that he might have been around forty, that he didn’t say much, and that he smoked.

  She took them into the linen room that also served as a lost and found, and left them there to look through Wilmette’s overnight bag, an expensive but worn brown leather case.

  Wyatt unzipped the main compartment and pulled a ball of clothing out onto the small table. Maggie pulled the case closer to her and started going through the smaller compartments.

  “Snazzy dresser,” Wyatt said, holding up a wrinkled teal blazer that was made out of a too-shiny material. He started going through the pockets.

  Maggie pulled out a small handful of papers. A boarding pass from Delta, flight 880, which brought him to Panama City at 11:14 a.m. Saturday before last. Wednesday morning he was gone.

  “He flew into Northwest on Saturday the 20th,” Maggie said. “I wonder if someone drove him down here or he rented a car.”

  “We’ll have to ask Claire.” Wyatt held up a crumpled receipt. “He went to Caroline’s on Sunday. Twenty-six dollar tab and he left a two dollar tip.”

  “Nice.” Maggie pulled another receipt out of the handful of papers. It was from the flower shop on Commerce Street, from Monday the 23rd. “He spent eighty-eight on flowers at The Blooming Idiot. Maybe he was willing to spend for the right reasons.”

  “Maybe a woman.”

  “Yeah.” Maggie pulled out her phone and called the number on the receipt. She got the answering machine and hung up. “They’re already closed. I’ll stop by there on my way to work in the morning.”

  “I got nothing else,” Wyatt said, running his hand along the bottom of the main compartment. “You don’t have a rental car agreement in there or anything?”

  “Nope. But it could be in the car.” Maggie tucked the papers back into their zippered compartment. The other one on the opposite side was empty, save for a pocket comb. She gently pulled it out and held it up to the light. “No hairs.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Yeah.” Maggie put it back. “We could probably find some on that jacket, though.”

  “Well, first let’s see if we can make sure this guy didn’t just max out his card on heavy tipping and skip out on his room. I’ll call Atlanta in the morning.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Me, too. Love those guys. Nice Muzak.”

  After returning Wilmette’s bag to the shelf where it had been stored, Maggie and Wyatt found Claire in the lobby and asked about a car. After pulling his check-in information from the computer, Claire gave them the tag number for a rented blue Kia Sedona.

  A quick look around the hotel parking lot determined that the car was as gone as Wilmette. Maggie and Wyatt walked back toward their cars.

  “I’ll call Jeff on my way home,” said Wyatt, referring to their IT guy. “Have him run the plates, call the rental car company.”

  “Okay. I’m gonna go home and take a shower.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Well, it’s just an indication that you’re putting forth some effort for our date. I intend to shower as well.”

  Maggie tossed him a grin and looked at her watch. “It’s almost six. What time to do you want me over there?”

  “Whenever you’ve dried off.”

  “I’m taking the kids over to my parents for dinner and a movie,” Maggie said, opening her Jeep door. “Seven okay?”

  “Sounds good.” Wyatt opened his own door and looked at her over the roof of his cruiser. “Are you nervous?”

  “A little. You?”

  “I’m a little stressed about the marinade,” he said. “By the way, I’m a man and I eat man food, so if you want a vegetable, eat it before you come over.”

  Maggie pulled onto her parent’s property shortly before seven. They lived in an older house out on 98, just before the Apalach city limits. The back yard ran right up to the bay, and her folks had bought it back when middle class folks could afford it.

  Maggie drove to the end of the long gravel driveway and parked, but left the motor running. She popped the trunk as Sky got out of the passenger seat, Kyle got out of the back, and Maggie’s mom, Georgia, came out onto the front porch.

  “Look at you,” Georgia said, smiling.

  Maggie had gone through an extraordinary amount of angst choosing something to wear. She’d finally settled on a long blue skirt with little white flowers on it, a white tank top and sandals. For other women, this would have been something to wear to the grocery store. For Maggie, it was dressing up.

  She shrugged a little and tried to smile. “Is it too much?”

  “No, sweetie, you look great. He’s grilling, right?”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said, as the kids got their backpacks out of the trunk and came around to the front of the car.

  “Then it’s just right,” Georgia said, and Maggie decided to believe her. Her mom had always been a beautiful woman, but beautiful without trying to be. At fifty-eight, she still turned heads.

  Maggie’s father, Gray, came out onto the porch.

  “Hey, y’all,” he said with a bi
g smile. He was almost as tall as Wyatt, but much thinner. He was a strong man, having worked the oyster beds all his life, but he’d had lung cancer a couple of years before and was still trying to gain some weight, though he’d never been stout.

  “Hey there, Sunshine,” he said to Maggie. “I don’t remember the last time I saw you in a dress.”

  “It’s a skirt,” she said self-consciously.

  “It has no legs,” he said.

  “Leave her alone, Gray. She’s nervous,” Georgia said.

  “Nervous? What for? She’s beautiful,” Gray said.

  “It’s their first date.”

  “No it isn’t. They came over here for dinner and Scrabble just a couple weeks ago.”

  “Omigosh, Granddad, that wasn’t a date,” Sky said, hoisting her backpack higher on her shoulder. “That was them serving you notice.”

  “Well, I noticed,” Gray said.

  “You guys, shut up,” Maggie said. “Kyle, did you remember your toothbrush?’

  “Yep,” Kyle said, but he was focused on an Android game.

  “Are they spending the night?” Gray asked.

  “I told you that this morning, Gray,” Georgia said. “Come on, kids, I made you some barbecued chicken.”

  Maggie kissed and hugged Kyle, then opened her arms for Sky. She was relieved when Sky leaned in for a hug, despite her sour mood earlier.

  “Have fun with Wyatt Earp, Mom,” she said with a grin.

  “Ugh. So snotty,” Maggie said.

  “Dude. I told you, I like him. He’s hot,” Sky said as she headed into the house.

  That left Maggie standing there by her open door and Gray standing on the porch with his hands in his pockets. They looked at each other a moment.

  “Are you figuring you’ll be out late, hon?” he asked.

  “Not really,” Maggie answered. “Mom wanted the kids to stay.”

  Gray nodded. “Well, have a good time, Sunshine. Maybe I’ll stop by there later, see how things are going.”

  “Dad.”

  “Okay, we’ll kid around later, then.”

  Maggie sat in the driveway of Wyatt’s sage green cottage, just off Lafayette Park, in a neighborhood that was part working-class and part historic district. She’d gotten there two minutes prior, but had stalled by checking what little makeup she wore, adjusting the air that wasn’t on, and blowing into her hand to smell her breath.

  Her personal cell phone rang on the console, and she answered without looking. “Hello?”

  “Would you like me to bring your steak out to the driveway?”

  Maggie sighed. “I’m coming.”

  “The door’s open,” Wyatt said.

  “I don’t think anyone should see me just opening your door.”

  “Well, I don’t think anyone should see me opening it for you in my boxers.”

  Maggie felt a twinge of alarm. This was her boss. Her friend. “Why are you in your boxers?”

  “Because I am not yet in my pants. Are you coming or not?”

  “Don’t you have a robe?”

  “No, I don’t have a robe,” he answered indignantly. Maggie could hear him struggling with something.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not eighty-three years old.”

  “Geez, Wyatt. You don’t have to get snappy,” she snapped.

  Twenty feet away, Wyatt opened his front door, his phone to his ear.

  “There,” he said through the phone. “Now the neighbors can see that I opened the door for you and that I’m wearing pants.”

  Maggie disconnected the call and took a deep breath, then got out of the Jeep and headed up the driveway. Wyatt was wearing khaki pants and a white button down shirt, untucked, with the sleeves rolled up. Chest hair peeked out above the first fastened button and his wavy brown hair was still a bit damp. As she walked toward the front door, it occurred to Maggie that, aside from the fact that he was a good man, everything about Wyatt was completely different from David.

  Maggie stopped at the top step and watched him look at her.

  “You’re wearing a skirt,” he said.

  “So everybody says,” she said, managing a smile.

  He took in her dark brown hair, loose and curling around her shoulders, the touch of makeup. “You look really nice,” he said quietly.

  “So do you,” she said.

  They looked at each other a moment, then he seemed to remember where they were. He stepped back. “Come on in.”

  Maggie walked into the living room, cozily furnished with rattan furniture, a turquoise surfboard propped up in one corner. It was a surprisingly warm room for a single man. Maggie had only been there once before, but she’d been too nervous to notice, really.

  “Let’s go out back,” Wyatt said, as he shut the door.

  Maggie followed him through the living room and into the kitchen/dining area. An open pair of French doors made up the back wall, and Maggie could see the bay just beyond his back yard. Wyatt walked out onto a covered back patio and Maggie followed.

  It was just thinking about becoming dusk, and the palm trees, on either side of the house and throughout the yard, rustled with the evening breeze. Eight-foot tall hibiscus hedges shielded the back yard from the neighbors on either side.

  There was a large stainless grill at one end of the patio. Two large ribeye steaks sat on a built-in cutting board. Maggie hadn’t realized she was hungry until that moment. There was a table and four chairs near the grill, a few other chairs scattered about, and at the opposite end of the patio hung a white porch swing.

  Wyatt stopped at the table and opened a bottle of deep red wine, poured some into the two glasses waiting there. “So, I was working on a plan while I was in the shower.”

  He held a glass out to her, and she stepped over to the table to take it, gratefully.

  “A plan for what?”

  “For getting through the first five minutes of our first date.”

  Maggie chewed the corner of her lip. “What do you mean?”

  “Take a big gulp of that wine first,” he said, and took his own advice. Maggie did as instructed and felt the warmth move down her throat and into her stomach.

  “See, we’ve got all the usual first date uncertainty stuff, but we’ve also got the fact that we’ve been together nearly every day for about six years. That we work together.”

  “Okay.” Maggie took another healthy swallow.

  “So, on the one hand, we know each other really well,” Wyatt continued. “You’ve watched me move out of the grieving process with my wife. I’ve watched you go through it with David. We’ve handled some pretty scary cases together. I’ve damn near died of a stroke seeing you lying under the body of a dead tweaker who’d been about to blow your face off.”

  Maggie detected a whiff of cordite and meth sweat in the air, chose to ignore it. “Yes,” she said.

  “We’ve had our year or so of playful flirtation, and we even had our first kiss, which I have to say was exceptional, and now here we are and we’re actually going to pursue this thing.”

  Maggie swallowed hard.

  “Right?” he asked.

  “Right,” Maggie said, nodding.

  “So let’s get all of that first date weirdness out of the way right off the bat so we can actually relax and enjoy ourselves.”

  “Which weirdness?’ Maggie asked, as Wyatt set down his wine and reached out and took hers, too.

  “Well, for instance, let’s check this out,” he said, and took her hand and led her over to the swing.

  He held out a hand, indicating she should sit, so she did. He sat down next to her, very close, and put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Okay, so this is what this is like,” he said. “You’re still comically short, but you feel really good, and my arm is probably heavy, but I bet I smell good.”

  “You do.”

  “I put it on special, just for you,” he said, wagging his brows at her, and his face was so close that she cou
ld see gold beams radiating out from the pupils of his brown eyes.

  She was just about to need to kiss him when he grabbed her hand and stood up again. He pulled her to him, wrapped his arms around her.

  “And this is us doing this,” he said, and his chest was hard and seemed to go upward forever. His voice rumbled through her chest and his thighs were warm against her waist.

  “This is nice,” she managed to say into his shirt.

  “Yes. Yes, it is,” he said. “And now I don’t have to wonder what it will feel like if your boobs actually touch me, and I can focus on having witty conversation.”

  Maggie swallowed hard and was suddenly extremely conscious of the fact that she had breasts. Wyatt bent his head and gently buried his nose in her hair.

  “And now I know what your hair smells like,” he said more quietly.

  “Does it smell good?” she asked, for something to say.

  “Yes.”

  After a moment, wherein she breathed in the scents of fresh cotton and bar soap, Wyatt bent back a little and she looked up into his face.

  “See, now we can go ahead and get that second kiss over with,” Wyatt said, and his face was more serious. “Then we don’t have to waste all night wondering if we should do it, or when, or what it’ll be like the second time.”

  “We should,” Maggie said, and Wyatt bent down and put his mouth on hers.

  She remembered him instantly. She remembered the way he had felt and tasted the first time, and this kiss was partly a return and partly a venturing further into something completely new, something that wasn’t a test, but a testament. It was sweet and it was commanding, it was gentle and it was firm, it was new but it was immediately recognizable as right.

  It was, she realized, exactly what and who she wanted.

  When Wyatt finally straightened up and looked at her, his eyes were serious and frank, but then the familiar twinkle returned.

  “Now that we’ve got all that worked out, how do you like your steak?”

  Maggie smiled, partly in relief. “I don’t actually require that you cook it at all.”

  Wyatt kissed her forehead and let go of her, made his way to the grill. “My kind of woman,” he said. “But let’s put on a show, just to be socially acceptable.”