“Sure. Draw up a chair.”
Without being asked, Bruce brought over another beer. “First round is on the house tonight. From the look of the news, you guys need it.”
“Thanks.” Victor took a long swig from the bottle.
“So what have you been doing?” Bethany asked him.
Victor shrugged moodily. “Oh, this and that. Stuff to take care of—you know.”
They all stared silently at the television again. Alex arrived just as an artist’s rendition of the dead woman’s face appeared. He took the beer Bruce offered him. “At least with that picture out,” he said, “they might find out who she is. Someone must be looking for the poor woman.”
“There’s Jack,” Victor said as the interview was shown yet again.
Jack didn’t feel quite the same pleasure he had earlier. He didn’t like the way Victor had spoken. His words had carried a strangely bitter edge.
“Jack, you’re famous,” another voice commented. He looked up to find that Marshall had arrived. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he sounded weary.
“I thought it was better to talk to the woman than piss her off,” Jack said defensively.
“I’m not sure we needed to tell her that Genevieve had spotted the corpse earlier, but then none of us could find it,” Marshall commented.
“Come on. Not even the police divers saw it that day,” Jack told him. “Bruce, get Marshall his beer, huh?”
They were all still staring at the television, even though the anchor had gone on to report an accident in Florida City, holding up traffic in and out of the Keys, when Jay made his way into the bar. He was there, standing beside Jack, for several seconds before anyone noticed he’d arrived.
“Sad day, huh?” Jay said after a moment.
“Do you know anything more?” Bethany asked.
“Preliminary reports. The M.E. said she’d been in the water five to seven days,” Jay told them.
Bethany swallowed. “Was she…drowned? Or…killed first, then weighted down?”
Jay looked at her, wincing. “Weighted down…and drowned.”
Bethany trembled. “She must have been terrified. I mean, she must have known…must have been desperate for breath….”
“Do they have any idea where she was killed?” Victor asked.
“In the water,” Jay said dryly.
Genevieve came in then, and they all turned toward her as she neared the bar. “Gen!” Victor said, raising his beer bottle.
Jack watched her walk in. Jeez, she was something. Casual and elegant all in one. She perched atop a bar stool next to Jay.
“Anything new?” she asked him.
Jack couldn’t hear his reply, because he lowered his head to speak with her. She said something back to him, her expression anxious, but Jack couldn’t hear that, either.
“We’ll talk. We can have dinner some night this week,” Jay said, his tone normal. “You don’t have to hang with this sorry bunch every night, do you?” he teased.
She shook her head. “No. And I really need to talk to you.”
Though she had spoken very softly, Jack was able to make out the words.
Just then Thor Thompson arrived. Jack studied his employer. Thor wasn’t the tallest guy he’d ever met, or the buffest. But he had something. A presence. A way of walking, maybe, or just being. When Thor entered a room, no matter how softly he moved or how quietly he spoke, everyone knew it.
“Hey,” he said simply, taking a seat on a bar stool.
“Bruce, a beer for our northern comrade!” Alex called.
“Northern?” Thor said.
“Jacksonville. You’re practically a Yankee.”
Thor shrugged and laughed, but Jack thought he looked distracted. He noticed as Thor glanced toward Genevieve and seemed relieved to see her sitting next to Jay. He had clearly been anxious about her. Jack couldn’t help but wonder why. Genevieve certainly didn’t look like a lunatic now, in light of the day’s grisly discovery.
The newscaster returned to showing a picture of the murder victim, asking the viewers for help in discovering the woman’s identity.
“Go figure,” Alex said. “I didn’t want another lecture from Sheridan, but I sure didn’t want to get out of it this way.”
“You’re still getting the lecture from Sheridan,” Marshall said dryly. “Monday morning.”
“It won’t be that bad,” Thor informed them all, his eyes on the television. “He’s made a model of the ship. Sounds kind of cool.”
“Hey, has anybody seen Zach and Lizzie?” Marshall asked.
“They decided to play tourist,” Victor informed them. “They were going to do the Conch Tour Train, Audubon house, Hemingway’s place—all that stuff. And then they were going to take a sunset dinner cruise.”
“How romantic,” Bethany said.
“Bethany, if anyone invited you on a sunset cruise, you’d look at him as if he’d lost his mind,” Victor informed her.
“Not true. I don’t care if I’ve been here my whole life. A sunset cruise is still romantic.”
“I’m glad you think so, because we’ll probably stay out a lot later Monday to make up for this,” Marshall said. “It will be a great sunset cruise as we all head back in.”
Jack watched as Genevieve slipped from her bar stool and said something to Bethany, who nodded. Then Genevieve gave them all a wave, saying she was heading out.
Jack noticed that everyone in their group watched her leave. Odd. Everyone still seemed concerned about her or…
Suspicious.
He shook his head and swigged his beer. Genevieve. What the hell was going on with her?
Thor made no pretense of doing anything else. As soon as she left, he followed her.
Okay, he was a stalker. Definitely a stalker. But he was more worried about her than ever.
She stopped a block from the bar, turned and waited for him.
“I’m all right,” she told him.
“I’m really worried about you,” he said flatly.
“Don’t be.” Strange, after the day they’d spent, the last thing she wanted was for this man to be worried about her. She didn’t want to like him, but she did. She wanted admiration and respect from him. She even, she admitted to herself, wanted him to think she was cool, savvy and sexy. What she didn’t want was for him to be worried about her.
“You walked off on me all of a sudden,” he reminded her. “You ran away. Great way to end a date.”
“We weren’t on a date.”
“Great way to end lunch and a drink with a friend, then.”
She flushed. “I’m sorry. It was just…well, this hasn’t been a great day.”
She started walking again, not that she really knew where she was going, but just because she felt awkward standing around on the sidewalk. He fell into step beside her, silent for several minutes.
“Genevieve, what did you mean that…the woman you saw in the water wasn’t the woman we discovered today?”
She shook her head. “I must have been mistaken.”
“You really might have been,” he said gently.
“Please don’t tiptoe around my feelings as if I’m really ready to be committed,” she told him.
She saw him half smile, shaking his head. “At the moment, I’m not. Any time you’re in the water, you can be taken by surprise. The water can play tricks and she was, well, she wasn’t in good shape. You might have seen seaweed or fish moving around her, and that might have made her seem alive, hard to recognize when you saw her again later.”
“Right,” she murmured.
“But you don’t believe that.”
“I said you could be right.”
“Then again, maybe you did see a different woman, and that’s a much more frightening and serious thought.”
She stared at him sharply. “What do you mean?”
He sighed. “I mean the killer might have had more than one victim,” he said.
A chill snaked along her spine, and
she shook it off.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
“No, no…you’re right.”
“Actually, at the moment, it doesn’t seem as if anyone in the area is panicking. It’s sad, but it feels distant to people. I certainly hope there won’t be any panic, but I think women need to be careful,” Thor murmured. “Um, where are we going?” he asked.
She paused, half laughing. “Frankly, I don’t know. I guess I just needed to get out of there.”
“Strange day,” he said. “You keep going into bars, then running out of them. It’s as if you don’t want your own company, but you’re not sure you want any other company, either.”
“You’re right. I’m not sure what I want,” she told him, then hesitated. “I’m also certain that either Victor or Alex played a prank on me this morning, and that’s still driving me crazy. There was a mannequin on my porch when I got up, and I dumped it in the water. Then it was gone—and the real corpse was there.”
“Don’t let it bother you,” he told her. “They were talking about it this morning. Victor denied it, but after what had happened, who would want to admit it? The point is, Genevieve, don’t drive yourself crazy. There are explanations for the things that have been happening. You just have to wait and find out what they are.”
“Hey!” someone called from behind them.
They turned. Bethany was hurrying toward them, the others following. Jay had come with them, and he was talking to Jack as they walked.
“We’re going to get some dinner,” Bethany said, catching up. “Do you two want to come with us?”
“We just ate lunch,” Genevieve said.
Thor looked at his watch. “Actually, we ate lunch six hours ago.”
“You two had lunch…together?” Bethany said.
Genevieve felt color threatening to flood her cheeks. “I found him wandering the streets of Key West,” she said lightly. “He’s a northerner,” she added. “He might have been lost.”
“Anybody into Italian?” Marshall asked, breaking into the awkward conversation. “There’s a new place and the owner-slash-chef is the son of one of my first diving instructors. I feel the urge to be supportive. I’ve also heard it’s really good.”
“Is the owner really Italian?” Alex asked.
“No, but he really likes Italian food,” Marshall assured them.
“Sounds like an important factor,” Victor said. “Gen? Sound good to you?”
Bethany fell into step with them as they headed for the restaurant. When Thor paused to say something to Marshall, she caught Genevieve’s arm and whispered, “Are we still on for tomorrow?”
“Meeting Audrey, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I thought maybe you had plans. Which would be fine.”
Genevieve frowned, looking at her friend. “Why would I make plans when I already had plans?”
“Well, you just took off today. I was worried about you. I’m still worried about you. I would have thought you’d be happy—no, not happy, relieved—to find out you weren’t crazy. Or seeing things.”
Genevieve hesitated. The others were too close for her to want to continue this conversation. “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”
“Sure. But…well, I wasn’t even sure you still felt you needed to see Audrey anymore.”
“We’re seeing Audrey because she’s an old friend.”
By then, Marshall and Thor had caught up to them. “The restaurant is around the corner.”
As they entered the restaurant, Victor finagled his way into the seat next to Genevieve. Jack wound up on her other side. As everyone else got settled, Thor’s cell phone rang. Genevieve could hear him speaking with Lizzie, telling her where they were, and saying she and Zach should come over. They must not have been far, because they arrived almost immediately, having apparently decided to forgo their cruise. While they took seats at the head of the table, Jay caught them up on the murder, until Marshall said they were having dinner and it was time to talk about something more cheerful.
The owner was a young man named Bill Breton, who thanked them for coming, and suggested he do appetizers and a family-style meal for them, and they all agreed. Alex, who claimed to be a wine connoisseur, chose a Bordeaux for their table. After that the conversation turned to Zach and Lizzie’s day.
“We saw Robert, that doll,” Lizzie announced. “That’s one creepy toy. What parent would give that to a child? They had all kinds of letters on the wall about him—one from the mayor, thanking him.”
“Thanking him for what? Being a creepy doll?” Alex asked.
“For taking the blame for everything that’s gone wrong in the area since the turn of the last century.”
“We had something like that at home,” Bethany said. “I was one of five kids,” she explained. “And we all denied doing anything wrong all the time. When my mom couldn’t figure out who had done what, she’d stare us all down and demand to know if we were really living with an invisible jerk.”
“It seems there’s always an invisible jerk around,” Genevieve said, staring at Victor.
He stared back at her. He looked hurt, angry and, she thought, strangely afraid.
“Hey, when I’m a jerk,” he said quietly, “I own up to it.”
“There was a mannequin on my porch this morning,” she told him.
“I believe you. But I didn’t put it there.”
“Hey, will you look at that?” Jack said, breaking the tension by indicating the huge plates of food that were being set before them. “Wow, Marshall, you done good. Look at all this.”
“Calamari,” Bethany said. “That’s for me.”
“These peppers look great,” Lizzie announced.
The platters were passed around; more wine arrived. Gen knew that anyone watching would see what appeared to be a comfortable gathering of friends. And why not? She’d worked with her own group forever. Jack was as much a part of their lives in Key West as anyone, and it was good to have Jay with them. Lizzie and Zach were great. And she had even found herself not just drawn to Thor Thompson but almost painfully attracted to him. Except…
Except she felt Victor’s presence next to her the entire meal. And not as she always had. He really was just about her best friend, other than Bethany. He didn’t say anything about the mannequin again, and neither did she, but the whole time, it was there between them. Someone had put it on her porch, and if not Victor…
“Alex,” he said softly at her side.
“What?” she murmured.
“It must have been Alex. We were talking about it together. And Jack was there, too.”
“Victor, you know what? It doesn’t matter anymore. It didn’t scare me then, and it doesn’t scare now me. Okay, so someone played a trick. Then there was a real corpse and the trick wasn’t so funny. But it’s over, and the stupid mannequin has disappeared, so it can’t really matter anymore, right?”
Victor let out a breath and stared at her. “It doesn’t matter…if you really believe me.”
“I believe you.”
“You want me to believe you believe me,” he murmured.
“Victor, please, I just don’t care.”
“I don’t want you not to care. Don’t you understand?”
She slipped an arm around his shoulders for a quick hug. “You’re like my brother. I care very deeply. Okay?”
He remained tense. There seemed nothing she could do. Across from her, Marshall and Thor were deep in discussion on where they should anchor and how they should extend the search. Jay and Bethany were talking together, and Genevieve was somewhat surprised to see what a close little tête-à-tête they seemed to have going on. At the far end of the table, Lizzie was speaking excitedly about Key West architecture.”
“You should see Genevieve’s place,” Jack advised her.
“You have a historic home?” Lizzie asked her excitedly.
“I do,” Genevieve told her. She leane
d on an elbow, glancing across the table at Marshall and catching Marshall’s eye. “Maybe I should have a barbecue on Sunday at the house.”
Marshall grinned. “You’re asking for my blessing?”
“Your opinion would be fine.”
“I say great.”
“Cool,” Lizzie announced. Then the pasta arrived, lasagna, angel hair with shrimp and pesto, and ziti with marinara sauce.
Genevieve passed a plate across to Alex. He seemed to be studying her strangely.
So had he played the trick with the mannequin? Was he worried she wasn’t going to let it go?
But she already had.
Sometime during the meal, she realized that everyone seemed to be staring at her strangely.
Tonight, the night of her vindication. When everyone had supposedly decided she wasn’t crazy, because there had been a dead woman in the water.
Just not the dead woman she had seen.
She decided she was going home. Not to her cottage, but home. She wasn’t going to sleep where mannequins appeared on the porch, corpses were cast up on the beach—and ghosts came to her, dripping, giving dire warnings in the middle of the night.
It was late when the meal ended. After the pasta, there had been fish, chicken and meat platters, then dessert, coffee and liqueurs. Finally, they ambled out to the street. When everyone else turned toward the water, Genevieve stood still. “Hey, guys, I’ll see you tomorrow. And don’t forget, barbecue at my place on Sunday.”
Thor was staring at her, frowning.
“Gen, you’re going home?” Victor asked; he sounded worried.
“Yeah, home,” she said lightly.
“You all right?” Marshall asked, sounding a bit concerned, and yet not sure himself why he should be.
“I’m fine. My house is just down the street.”
“We should walk you there,” Alex said suddenly.
“Actually, not a bad idea,” Jay agreed.
“There are tourists still out everywhere,” Genevieve said, laughing. “I’m fine. Good night. Go away, all of you.”
But Thor strode past Bethany, Marshall and Jay to reach her side. “I’ll walk you to your place,” he told her. “It’s all right, go on,” he told the others. “It would be ridiculous for all of us to walk her.”