“What’s happening in her life right now?”
“Look. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to talk to Becca first.”
“Miss Hemingway—”
She stopped herself and took a deep breath. There was suddenly a very distant look in her eyes. She glanced down at the floor and then absentmindedly smoothed away one of the numerous wrinkles in her drab skirt, which was sprinkled here and there with short white cat hairs.
She looked up and leveled me with her gray eyes. “Dixie, Becca never came home last night, and she didn’t show up at her school this morning. At this point we have no idea where Becca is.”
I stared at her blankly.
“If for any reason you feel that Becca might have been involved in the death of her stepfather, I need you to tell me right now.”
I had no choice. I really didn’t think it was possible, but if Becca had anything to do with what happened to Mr. Harwick, I needed to tell everything I knew, even if it meant betraying Becca’s confidence.
I told McKenzie how I’d found Becca in a ball on the bathroom floor sobbing hysterically, how she was terrified about what her parents would do if they found out she was pregnant, and how Kenny seemed to have gotten cold feet and was leaving town ASAP. Detective McKenzie listened patiently, occasionally nodding and making notes on her clipboard. If she was disappointed that I hadn’t been completely up-front about Becca and Kenny from the beginning, she didn’t let on.
She said, “When was the last time you talked to Kenny Newman?”
“A couple of days ago. He was dog sitting for me on an overnight job, and he called because a neighbor wanted to walk the dog, and he wasn’t sure if they had permission.”
McKenzie nodded but didn’t say a word. She could tell there was more.
I said, “Okay. He left a message on my answering machine yesterday. I didn’t want to say anything because I wanted to talk to him first, but I’ve been calling him ever since and he won’t answer.”
“What was the message?”
I sighed. “He told me there was something that he was about to do, and that he was sorry, and that it was big.”
“He didn’t say what it was?”
“No, I assumed he was skipping town. He said by the time I heard the message he’d be gone.”
She nodded. “Had he ever mentioned any kind of tension with the Harwicks before? A dispute about money, perhaps, or anything else?”
She was doing it again. “No. Like I said, I didn’t know he worked for the Harwicks until two days ago.”
“Right. You did say that. Do you know where he lives?”
“Detective, there’s just no way he could be involved. I haven’t known him for very long, but I just can’t imagine he would do something like this.”
“I’m sure there’s nothing to be worried about. I just need to talk to him. Can you give me his address?”
I sighed again. “No. He doesn’t have one. He lives on a boat, and sometimes he sleeps in his car.”
She nodded as if that was the most normal thing in the world, but I knew exactly what she was thinking.
“Do you happen to know where he keeps this boat?”
“Down at the dock behind Hoppie’s Restaurant. They let him stay there in exchange for doing odd jobs.”
As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew deep down inside that I might have misjudged Kenny, and now I was beginning to see him from Detective McKenzie’s point of view. What I saw was not pretty. An itinerant worker, a drifter basically, who lived on a houseboat and slept in his car, who disappeared with his pregnant teenaged girlfriend after her domineering father was found fully clothed at the bottom of the family swimming pool.
McKenzie said, “Okay. You’ve been very helpful.”
I said, “I just need to feed the fish and then I’ll be out of your way. Do you know how long it’ll be before I can bring the Harwicks’ cat back home? I have her in a kennel now.”
“Mrs. Harwick is staying in a hotel for the time being. I’m not sure she’s going to be able to come home anytime soon.”
Her tone was unmistakable. The words spilled out of her mouth like dice on a game board, completely devoid of judgment or drama. I’ve grown to recognize that tone almost immediately. It’s like a secret code, or a song that only people who’ve lost someone they fiercely loved can hear. She didn’t need to tell me that Mrs. Harwick was distraught. More than likely she was in shock.
She murmured, “We’ve called a doctor in.”
I nodded. We both knew how unprofessional it was for her to include that little detail, but I understood her need to tell me. After Christy and Todd were killed, I couldn’t get out of bed. There was no doctor or sedative or antidepressant strong enough to bring me back to real life. I just needed time. I stayed wrapped in sheets for months, like a blithering lunatic in a cocoon. I barely ate or bathed.
And now here it was again, that crazy urge to pour my heart out to this woman, to tell her my whole tragic story. What in the world was happening to me? I had always been the silent, brave type, the one that held everything in, that did all the listening but none of the talking. Now all of a sudden I was chomping at the bit to open myself up to someone I barely knew, and all because she had lost her husband as well.
We stood there for a couple of awkward moments; then I grabbed my backpack and pulled Mrs. Harwick’s fish-feeding instructions out of one of the side pockets.
Detective McKenzie cleared her throat and handed me her card. “I’ll see you downstairs when you’re done here. In the meantime, let me know the minute you hear anything from Kenny Newman, and please ask him to call me.”
I slipped the card in my pocket. “Okay, I will.”
“And Dixie, it would be helpful if you could be as brief as possible with him.”
I knew what she meant. She didn’t want me to tell Kenny what had happened or ask him any questions about the case. A good detective can learn a lot just by observing the way people handle themselves. Kenny’s first reaction to the facts of the case could mean the difference between being a witness and a suspect, and McKenzie wanted to be there when he was given the news.
As she walked out I glanced over at the mermaid, who was staring off blissfully at some distant horizon. Stupid bitch, I thought. How nice it must be to sit on your porcelain treasure chest throne, encased in a silent wall of water without a care in the world, while fish serenely circle around your empty porcelain head.
I slid open one of the big panel doors on the side of the tank and shuffled around to the back, trying to focus in on Mrs. Harwick’s tiny handwriting. The instructions for the evening feeding were simple enough, six tablespoons each from two different cans of dried fish food. The first looked like tiny multicolored snowflakes, and the second were BB-sized pellets, half of which sank to the bottom of the tank the moment they hit the water. The fish seemed to know right off the bat which food they preferred. A few dove directly for the sinking pellets and ignored the floating flakes completely, while the rest shot straight to the surface and splashed around like a frenzy of man-eating piranhas.
I didn’t check the chemical balance in the water as Mrs. Harwick had directed me to do occasionally. I felt a little twinge of guilt about that, but I figured I’d performed my duties and then some for the Harwick family already, and frankly I was physically and emotionally spent. I wanted to get out of that house as soon as possible.
Plus, the sun was setting, and I had one more item on my to-do list before I could throw my exhausted bones into bed and put this whole day out of its misery.
15
When my grandparents moved here, the Key was a completely different world. First of all, there weren’t nearly as many houses as there are now, not to mention condos and high-rise apartment buildings and restaurants and shops and chic hotels. It was just a quiet fishing village, and what few houses there were certainly never made it onto the cover of Fancy-Pants Mansion magazine. Secondly, there was no such thing as a “private” beach. Even when Michael and I were kids, we would roam for hours on end exploring every inch of the island, and not once did we ever encounter a NO TRESPASSING sign. Back then most of the island was covered in sea grape and sugarberry trees and live oaks that towered over jungles of saw palmetto, wild olive, and creeping moonflower vines. It felt like our own personal jungle for two.