Hurricane Bay. Heather Graham
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Sheila.”
She started walking away again, taking a circuitous route past the tables. He was tempted to go after her, shake her, tell her to get her nose out of the entire thing. FedEx her back to Miami.
Except that he would wind up getting arrested if he tried that. He was certain that if he so much as put a hand on her, she would call the cops for sure.
So he watched as she walked away through the back door of the Sea Shanty. He had to convince her to go back to Miami and get her the hell out of this. How, he wasn’t sure yet.
But he would. He swore to himself with a vengeance that he would get her out of here if it was the last thing he did.
When she was gone, he clenched his teeth and shook his head, suddenly glad the beer hadn’t kicked in. He walked down the sand-and shrub-covered path to the small spit of salt beach off the back of the Sea Shanty and just kept going until he was immersed. It was the quickest way he could think of to remove the drink she’d spilled on him. And the cool water was good for his head.
He’d wanted to behave completely normally after what had happened. But Kelsey arriving like a cyclone had changed all that.
Now the police were about to get involved, and sooner or later they would find Sheila Warren.
Jesus.
He had to find her first.
Kelsey walked into the right side of the duplex just off US1 in absolute disgust. She threw her purse across the small living room, watched as it landed in a wicker chair, then indulged in a moment’s delicious relief as the air-conditioning surrounded her. Sea breezes be damned. It was hot as hell outside.
Pausing by the door for a moment, she let out a breath of aggravation.
“Well, that went well,” she said, murmuring wryly aloud to herself. Her fault, maybe. Okay, her fault definitely. She could have started out with a, Hi, Dane, how are you? Wow, it’s been ages….
But he had looked like such a beach bum lying there. And Nate, the owner of the Sea Shanty who she was actually married to for a very brief time when they were young, had said he had been drinking all afternoon. And that he’d been seeing Sheila. That they had argued. And that Dane had been strange ever since he’d moved back down from St. Augustine. That he’d taken on a case up there and someone had died strangely and…Nate hadn’t really known all the particulars because Dane hadn’t wanted to talk about them. So something not great had happened, and he’d come home to drink himself to death. Sheila had told her, too, that Dane had been strange. Like a guy ready to throw his life away.
When they were kids, Dane had been like the Rock of Gibraltar. He and Joe had been the leaders of the pack. Even when she had wanted to run away from life and—more than anything in the world—from Dane, she had wanted things to go well for him. It had been upsetting to hear that he had fallen into being little more than a beach bum, with no care for the world, no ambition, no concern for anyone at all—even old friends.
Sheila had been concerned about him.
But it seemed that Dane didn’t give a damn about her.
Kelsey kicked off her shoes and walked into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door, thanking God that she’d taken the time that morning to do a little shopping for herself. Juice, soda, beer and wine. She had a choice.
The heat she’d come from made her opt for a beer. She hesitated, her fingers curling around a bottle, remembering that she’d found Dane swilling the stuff. She moved her hand, choosing a bottle of cranberry-raspberry cocktail instead. No. She wanted a beer, and the fact that Dane had turned into a slug who drank the stuff lying on a lounge chair in the shade shouldn’t keep her from what she wanted.
Why the hell had he made her so mad? Right from the get-go. Okay, she’d been disturbed from the minute she’d talked to Nate, maybe unreasonably angry with Dane before she’d even headed out to speak to him. Why?
Uh-uh, she argued with herself. She wasn’t going to delve into the psychiatry of that one. She hadn’t seen him in years. And still, today…damn, she’d blown it, that was all. She’d meant to talk to him, get information. Everyone knew he’d been seeing Sheila again. Maybe they hadn’t become a twosome, the way they had been when they were young, but apparently they’d still been close. Even Larry Miller, another friend from the early days who she worked with and Sheila’s ex, had apparently known that, because he’d mentioned something about Sheila saying she was seeing Dane again when Kelsey had told him she was heading to Key Largo for her vacation, to spend time with Sheila.
Nate had told her that Dane and Sheila argued the last time he’d seen her. Cindy Greeley, one of her and Sheila’s best friends growing up, had told her the same.
She pulled out the Michelob, twisted off the cap, took a long swig and looked around the kitchen. “Sheila…am I crazy? Are you just being a careless and inconsiderate bitch, the way everyone seems to think? Where the hell are you?”
The air conditioner hummed in reply. No answer there. In the quiet of the early evening, the sound seemed absurdly loud.
She walked to the rear of the living room and opened the glass doors to the patio at the back of the duplex, separated by a small privacy wall from the neighboring side. Beyond stretched the standard-size pool that belonged to both occupants, surrounded by flowering plants and shrubs. The entire yard was surrounded by a rustic wood privacy fence. The backyard was beautiful and peaceful, the high point of the duplex. And actually, on the patio, she could feel a sweet, salt-touched breeze. She was startled to feel suddenly that it was good to be home. And it was still her home, no matter what anyone said—especially Dane.
Not that she had gone so very far. Her section of Miami was only an hour to an hour and a half away, depending on traffic. But life there seemed as different as night and day, even if the temperatures in both places were almost identical and the same flowers bloomed. A short walk from this duplex could bring her to the Atlantic, and she could look straight out from her condo patio and see the waters of Biscayne Bay, heading into the Atlantic, as well. And still, this was so different. She had felt it today at the Sea Shanty, the small-town warmth, the laid-back ease, even with the place crawling with tourists and the main objective among most of the populace being to make money off those tourists. There were other people, as well, retirees, Northerners sick of the snow, and weekenders who had fallen in love with their weekends and made Key Largo their home. She’d always wanted to see more of the world, and she’d gotten to see a lot of it now. Maybe that was why it seemed so good to feel as if she had really come home.
Once upon a time, home had been the pretty white-painted wooden house south on US1 on the ocean side of the island. No more. Her parents had sold the place years ago. They didn’t come back here anymore. In fact, the house no longer existed; it had been torn down to make way for the tennis courts for one of the new hotels. It had bothered her deeply when she’d started driving around today, so much so that she wished she had told her parents she wanted the house when they offered it to her before moving to Orlando.
Too late now.
Like them, at the time she had just wanted to get out of Key Largo.
She knew, of course, that when she’d left, she’d been running away. There had been far too much of Joe here then, and she had needed a new environment. Time could do good things. Now she liked it because there was still a lot of Joe here. Just as she had liked seeing Nate at the Sea Shanty, feeling the sun and the breeze at the Tiki hut bar, knowing that a short walk in bare feet would bring her to the little patch of private beach.
The Sea Shanty was like a bastion of memory. Nate’s dad had run it when they were kids. Now the place was Nate’s. And when she walked in, she really had felt that sense of coming home, of memory, nostalgia and mostly good things. She had felt a sense of poignant pleasure, being there. But then she had spoken with Nate and mentioned how worried she was about Sheila. Nate had started talking, and then she had seen Dane Whitelaw, plastered and vegetating in the sun, sunglasses in place, beer at his side, the picture of total inertia.