At last he went back to the house, locked both doors and made certain that his .38 special was loaded and beneath his pillow.
Still, sleep eluded him.
Someone had been in his house. And they had done a lot more than eat his porridge or sleep in his bed.
Only one thing had been taken.
He told himself he couldn’t be sure. The house was filled with the accumulation of years.
Still, he knew in his gut that there was definitely one thing missing.
And that one thing could damn him.
Kelsey jerked up and nearly screamed at the sound of loud pounding at her door.
She hadn’t wanted to admit it, but going out to Andy Latham’s had spooked her. And Dane had been acting strangely, too. It was weird how life could change. She had adored him so much once; it had almost been hero worship. Then there had been the years when she kept a polite and civil distance at those few social occasions when they were at the same place at the same time. They’d gone from being best friends to stiff acquaintances. Then they hadn’t seen each other at all for…two years, at least. Since the last time she had seen Sheila.
And now…
She could still hear Sheila’s voice in her mind. She hadn’t seen her in a long time, but she had known Sheila well. Known her when she was angry, caustic and careless of the feelings of others. Known her when she was depressed and down on herself. She knew the way Sheila sounded.
And this time, she had sounded…
Scared.
Kelsey had found herself upset when Dane left. And oddly frightened and unnerved when Cindy left—and she was only on the other side of the wall. Face it, she was actually feeling scared, though of what she didn’t know, when she’d locked the door and gone to bed for the night. And she hadn’t really slept. She’d dozed and awakened, dozed, and awakened again. She hadn’t really been asleep when the knocking had sounded; it had just been so loud and sharp against the dark and quiet that it had startled her.
Bolting to a sitting position in the bed, she took a moment to tell herself that the noise was just someone knocking at the door—and thieves and psychos rarely knocked.
She crawled quickly out of bed. Since her night attire consisted of a long, heavy cotton, one-size-fits-most T-shirt with a frazzled duck saying something about needing coffee, she walked through the darkened house to the front door without a robe, not bothering with slippers, either.
Her mom still got mad at her for walking around without shoes all the time. Even in the Keys. Walking around barefoot and getting your feet dirty made you look like white trash, or so Jennie said.
Amazed at the thoughts that came to mind in a darkened house in the middle of the night, Kelsey reached the door and looked out the peephole. The yellow porch light beamed down on two men: Nate Curry and Larry Miller.
She opened the door, no longer at all frightened, but quizzical and irritated. “What the hell are the two of you doing out here in the middle of the night?”
Nate, a true beach boy, tanned to pure gold, blue-eyed, blond-haired, seemed taken aback. “It’s not the middle of the night. It’s just after two.”
“It’s 2:00 a.m.,” Larry said, his expression somewhat rueful. Even when he was standing in cutoffs in the sand, Larry Miller looked like an executive. His dark brown hair always gave the appearance of a neat, fresh cut. Kelsey didn’t think she’d ever seen him anything but clean-shaven—five-o’clock shadow didn’t dare darken his door. He was dressed casually in a polo shirt and knee-length Dockers, but both were pressed and clean. His boat shoes didn’t have a scuff. The overnight bag he carried, which should have looked as laid-back as a duffle, bore a designer name. He had the profile to fit the image, as well. Features chiseled like a classic Greek statue.
“I don’t close the bar on weeknights until 2:00 a.m.,” Nate said. He stared from Larry to Kelsey. “Okay, so maybe to some people that’s the middle of the night.”
“I was just going to go to a hotel,” Larry said, looking at Kelsey, still apologetic. “But I went by Nate’s. He reminded me that this place has two bedrooms. And if Sheila shows, I can just bunk over with Cindy.”
Kelsey stepped back, letting the men enter. “Larry, you’re more than welcome here—as much as I am, surely. You’ll have to take the spare room. I’m in Sheila’s—I know it sounds silly, but it makes me feel closer to figuring out her moves somehow. But what are you doing down here at all?”
He shrugged. “Two things. You sounded upset on the phone, and I didn’t want you to go getting all worried about Sheila. She’s been known to take off before. Second…I don’t know. You’d been to see Nate, Cindy was here, Dane had come over…I guess I was seized by a rush of nostalgia and decided I had to come down, too. My nostalgia was tempered with reason, of course—I didn’t want you to be alone and upset.”
Nate made his way past both of them. Unlike Larry, he unmistakably belonged here. His tan was straight from the beach, not acquired in any artificial bed. He had a complete ease of manner in cutoffs or swim trunks, a T-shirt or his bare chest. He could dress well when he needed to and looked like a million bucks. But an hour or so with a tie on, and Nate went crazy. He’d been born in the islands, and he loved them. He’d never had the least desire to leave. He’d gone far enough north to get a degree from Florida International University in hotel and restaurant management, just so he could further improve the Sea Shanty. A vacation to Nate meant taking a boat over to the Bahamas. He had no desire to head for the snow and couldn’t care less if he ever saw a country that didn’t offer a good reef for diving, sun, sand and warmth.
“You got coffee, Kelsey?” he asked, heading straight for the kitchen.
“Yes, I have coffee,” she said, glancing at Larry with a shrug and following Nate. “But it’s 2:00 a.m. You’ll wind up staying awake all night.”
“Nope. I never stay awake all night,” Nate assured her. He was already digging through the cabinets.
She walked behind him, caught a prying hand and said, “If you want coffee, let me make decaf, and that way Larry and I can join you.”
“She’s in her mid-twenties, and already her spirit of adventure has departed,” Nate said to Larry, over Kelsey’s head.
“My dislike of lying awake all night unable to sleep has kicked in, that’s all,” Kelsey said. Giving Nate a little push out of the way, she found the decaf and began preparing the coffee.
“You got anything to eat in here?” Larry asked.
“You just came from Nate’s place—why didn’t you order food if you were hungry?” Kelsey asked. She didn’t want to say that she was actually glad to see them, as annoying as they might be. They were giving her a pleasant sense of security.
“His late-night menu doesn’t offer a lot,” Larry said.
“Hey!” Nate protested. “Conch fritters, conch chowder, snapper sandwich, veggie burger, hamburger. What are you expecting at this hour of the night? A sissy fruit and yogurt salad, or some alfalfa sprouts?”
“Your eating habits will give you a heart attack one day,” Larry said. “I can already hear your arteries choking.”
“You’re going to be one of those health freaks who does marathons and drops dead running down the block,” Nate told him.
“You have cereal?” Larry asked Kelsey.
“Raisin bran. Help yourself.” She was measuring coffee.
Larry had no problem helping himself to food. “Ah-ha! She has yogurt and fruit. I knew it.”
“And beer,” Nate said, taking one.
“You just left a bar.”
“I never drink when I’m working my own bar.”
“You just asked me for coffee.”
“The coffee and the beer will cancel each other out.”
Kelsey shook her head and let the coffee perk. She crawled up on a bar stool next to Larry. “What about work? We’re both gone now.”
“Tomorrow is Friday. I left a message with my secretary that I was working at home. I’ll driv
e back in on Monday sometime,” Larry said. “Don’t worry, I’m a golden boy at work, you know that.”
It was true.
“Um. Let’s hope you’re not so golden that they don’t get the idea to cut my vacation short,” Kelsey told him.
He laughed. “You’re the golden girl. The idea lady. The creative genius. You’re safe.”
“Is that coffee done, Kelsey?” Nate asked.
“Looks like it. Why don’t you pour me some, too?”
Larry jumped when the phone on the counter in front of the coffeepot rang.
“Who the hell would be calling at this hour?” Larry asked.
“Yeah, two o’clock in the morning,” Kelsey murmured. “Answer it.”
Larry did so. Even from where they were sitting, the others could hear Cindy’s voice over the phone. She had recognized Larry’s “Hello?” But she wanted to know what he was doing in Kelsey’s place in the middle of the night.
“Time is relative,” he told her. “Actually when I talked to Kelsey earlier, she sounded a little down, and I thought seeing you and Dane sounded really good, so I decided to play hooky from work and drive on down. For the weekend, at least.”
Cindy said something Kelsey couldn’t quite catch. Larry hung up the phone.
Kelsey and Nate both stared at Larry.
“She’s on her way over,” Larry said.
“Why not?” Kelsey said. “Time is relative.” She got off her bar stool to walk to the front door and let Cindy in when she appeared in just a minute’s time. It didn’t take long to get from one side of a duplex to another.
“Hey!” Cindy said when Kelsey opened the door. She swept on in. Larry had come from the kitchen and greeted Cindy with a big hug.
“Wow!” he said as she hugged him back. “Little but powerful. I feel like I just got a hug from an anaconda.”
“Sorry, too tight?” Cindy said.
Larry shook his head. “Hugs are never too tight. I just never realized before how powerful you are.”
“It’s a short thing. Being small, I work out a lot, so the big guys can’t push me around. Kelsey, you should come to the gym with me tomorrow. I have a membership over at the new hotel. They’ve got all kinds of machines, a pool, a sauna…. If you work out, you’ll feel better about everything.”
“If Sheila shows up, I’ll feel better about everything,” Kelsey said.
Nate had joined them in the passage between the living room and kitchen. Along with Cindy and Larry, he stared at her. They were all looking at her as if they were adults and she was a child still convinced there was a Santa Claus.
“She’s gone off for more than a week before,” Cindy said.
“She left me for lots more than a week,” Larry said. There was no pain in his voice. He was matter-of-fact about Sheila.
“She acts on whims,” Nate said softly.
They still had that look in their eyes as they watched her. Kelsey shook her head. “Come on, now, we’re her friends. We’ve got to be concerned.”
Larry cleared his throat.
“Okay, so I was barely in touch with her for a couple of years. But you know what it’s like. We all grew up together. We have a bond. At first Sheila just e-mailed me, and I e-mailed back. Then we talked. Then she said that she really needed to see me, because I knew her so well, and she could trust me with her deepest, darkest secrets. Then she told me she was feeling desperate, and please would I make arrangements to spend time with her. So, you see, don’t you, why I’m so worried?”
Larry groaned softly. “Kelsey, don’t you remember how pissed off Sheila was when you took my side during the divorce?”
“I didn’t take your side. Larry, I don’t take sides in the breakup of a marriage, which is always a very sad thing.”
“Okay, you didn’t take sides,” Larry said. He stood staring at her for a moment, then groaned. “Well, great, I’m glad we’re all best friends because it’s still kind of embarrassing to admit all this. Don’t you remember? She cheated. I was hurt. Really hurt. You were cool to her. I remember her standing in your office, and you telling Sheila that she had owed it to me to say the marriage wasn’t working, that she shouldn’t have hurt and humiliated me the way she did. She said you were her friend, so you should have understood whatever she had done. And you told her that she was a grown-up and could live the life she wanted, but she needed to start watching out for crushing other people.”
Kelsey remembered the day well. Larry had just found out about what his wife had gotten up to. He’d blown an important presentation because of it, and she’d been worried about his job.
And it was true. Sheila had been angry with her, and she’d flounced out of the office. Next time they had made a date—at Sheila’s insistence, because she had wanted to tell her side of the story—Sheila hadn’t shown. The next time Sheila had tried to see her, Kelsey had still been angry herself. She’d come up with an excuse. And that had been it until just about six months ago, when Sheila started e-mailing her, and then the phone calls began.
“Sheila is our friend,” Nate said quietly. “But she’s kicked us all in the teeth.”
They were all silent for a minute.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Kelsey said.
“You went to the police, right?” Nate said.
Kelsey nodded.
“Then we let them handle it. What else are you going to do?”
“Track her down,” Kelsey said.
They all continued to stare at her. She let out a sigh of exasperation. “We follow her footsteps, talk to anyone she might have seen.”
“Great,” Nate said. “That would include the entire populace of the Keys. And let’s not forget Miami.”
“Dane has an investigations firm,” Cindy said with impatience. “The smartest thing is to let him handle it.”
“The problem with Dane is the same problem with you all,” Kelsey said. She didn’t know why she was reluctant to point out to Nate the fact that he had been the one to tell her he was pretty sure Dane and Sheila had been seeing each other as more than friends, and that then the two of them had argued at the bar, and that Sheila had implied she was heading out to Dane’s place the last time he had seen her. “No one seems to be really worried,” she said.
“Except you,” Larry pointed out.
“All right, here’s the deal,” Cindy said. “Kelsey, tomorrow morning you come to the gym with me. I swear, it will make you feel better. Then we’ll all go to see Dane. We’ll have that barbecue at his place.”
“He didn’t exactly invite us for a barbecue tomorrow,” Kelsey said.
Cindy waved a hand in the air as if being invited was entirely immaterial. “We’ll bring all the stuff. We’ll just show up at Hurricane Bay in the morning with all the fixings. He won’t mind.”
“Wait a minute,” Nate said. “What time?”
“I don’t know. Sometime in the morning,” Cindy said.
“Morning is relative. It’s morning now. Closing in on three,” Nate said. “I wasn’t planning on waking up too early.”
“How about one?” Larry suggested. He yawned. “I’ll sleep, Cindy and Kelsey can go get buff, buy the food, come back, then we all meet here and head over at one.”
“There. We have a plan,” Cindy said. “Good night. Kelsey. Will nine be too early for you?”
Kelsey had the feeling the last thing she was going to want to do in the morning was go to the gym.
“Sheila came with me sometimes,” Cindy said. “You can ask around and find out if she said anything to anyone.”
“Nine, then,” Kelsey agreed.
“Night, guys,” Cindy said. Walking past them, she let herself out.
“I should go, too,” Nate said. He looked at Kelsey. “This seems strange,” he told Larry.
“What’s that?”
“Leaving you in a house, sleeping with my ex-wife.”
“He’s not sleeping with your ex-wife,” Kelsey said.
“She
won’t sleep with me,” Larry told Nate.
“No?”
“I’ve asked her,” Larry said, winking at Kelsey. “She rebuffed me kindly, but with determination.”
“She’s like that.”
“Hell, she married you.”
“She married me because she was a friend who liked me. It was a mercy marriage, and that was all.”
“She likes me, and she still won’t sleep with me.”
“Nate,” Kelsey said firmly, “let’s face it, you’re just too pretty to be tied down by one woman. And, Larry, you’re sleeping with one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and she seems to be nice, on top of it. Nate, go home. Larry, the extra bedroom is right there. Cindy is going to get me up in a matter of hours and make me do painful things to my body, so go away, both of you.”
She pushed Nate toward the door. He protested playfully, “I can do painful things to your body, if that’s what you want.”
“Out!”
She shoved Nate out the door.
“Lock it,” he told her from the outside.
“You bet,” she said.
She knew that Nate was waiting to hear the sound of the bolt sliding into place. She obliged him. “It’s locked.”
“Good girl. Good night.”
“Good night.”
She turned around. Larry laughed, putting up his hands. “I’m on my way into the spare bedroom this minute.”
To prove it, he turned and walked through the doorway and across the living room.
Kelsey returned to the kitchen for a moment and unplugged the coffee machine. She decided to set it up for the next morning. She’d gotten Cindy and Nate out, and Larry off to bed. She could go back to sleep.
Except that now she was restless.
The day had been busy. She was really exhausted. She wanted to lie down, close her eyes and black it all out.
But now, in the silence that came in the wake of the others’ departures, she felt wired.
So tired, but wide-awake.
She gave the kitchen a thorough cleaning. When that was done, she looked around the living room. It was already clean. Sheila wasn’t the type to keep bric-a-brac lying around. Nor did she pile up magazines or bills. Of course, she would have to have some kind of paperwork lying around. Utility bills, if nothing else. Kelsey made a mental note to go through every drawer in the place the next day and really start prying into Sheila’s business. With that determination made, she returned to the bedroom at last. Sheila’s room.