at her. “I’m not alone,” she said into her phone. “Cindy and Dane are here.”
Cindy arched a brow to Dane, but her question was quickly answered.
“Larry says hello to you both,” Kelsey said.
Larry Miller. The weekender who had almost been one of them. Dane had heard that Larry was around now and then, but he hadn’t seen him. Larry’s father had passed away, and his mother had moved somewhere up north. They had sold the condo they kept on the Keys, as well, so even Larry’s little place was gone. Maybe property was what made a place home. He had Hurricane Bay, so perhaps it had been inevitable that he would come back.
Larry hadn’t really been an islander, but he’d still run with their crowd. Good old Larry…
Poor Larry.
He had fallen in love with Sheila, married her, tried to give her the world. A decent guy. Studious, cautious, a talented artist.
“Tell him hello for me,” Cindy said.
“Ditto.”
Kelsey nodded. “Cindy and Dane say hello.” She listened while Larry spoke, staring out the sliding glass door from the kitchen to the patio. “Yeah, I know, everyone is saying the same thing.” She gazed at Cindy and Dane again. Her look said that phone calls should be private. But she didn’t move away, and Dane wasn’t about to be courteous and suggest he and Cindy go somewhere. Kelsey kept talking into her phone. “Maybe she’ll show up, maybe she won’t. Anyway, I’m still going to spend the week at the duplex. With Cindy. Yeah, she’s right next door. Nate’s in good shape—hey, he said he saw you a couple of weeks ago. You didn’t mention that you’d been down here.”
Whatever he said next, Kelsey didn’t answer. “Listen, I’ll call you as soon as I hear from Sheila or find out what she’s up to, okay?”
She touched a button on her phone and returned it to her purse, then slid back up on the bar stool. “Larry is concerned,” she said.
“Poor thing. He never fell out of love, did he?” Cindy said.
“Maybe not,” Kelsey said. “He still cares about Sheila, but he’s certainly gotten over her. He’s been doing all right. He’s great to look at, smart, has a good job. He was dating one of our models. Beautiful girl. But a man can move on and still think of his ex-wife as a special person. He doesn’t get down here that often, but he still thinks of the old gang as his friends. Funny, though. He said he’d been down about a week ago and heard that Sheila was around, but he couldn’t track her down. When I told him what I was doing with my vacation time, all he said was that he’d been down on business and hadn’t had a chance to really do anything or see anyone.”
“Maybe he didn’t think it was worth mentioning. He must have come and gone really quickly. He didn’t see me, either,” Cindy said.
“He said he was down here with a client, just long enough for a drink and dinner,” Kelsey said. “Apparently he saw Nate, though. But Nate didn’t mention to me today that he’d seen Larry. That was strange, don’t you think? Especially when he knows Larry and I work together.” Kelsey had been musing aloud. She didn’t seem to mind that she had spoken in front of Cindy, but when her eyes touched Dane’s, she seemed to stiffen again.
Somehow he had become the enemy. Things hadn’t been right between them for a long time. He hadn’t expected hugs and kisses, but even so, he didn’t want to be the enemy, not when it was so important that she listen to him. But she was in no mood for that now, so he might as well get going.
Dane set down his beer bottle. “Gotta go,” he told Cindy, giving her a kiss on the cheek.
“You have to go? It’s early,” Cindy said.
“I have an appointment.”
“A date?” Cindy asked hopefully.
“An appointment,” he repeated.
“At night? Does it have anything to do with an exciting investigation?”
Dane laughed. “Cindy, so far I have surveillance cameras looking for disappearing bait and a few other jobs that are equally mundane.” Well, that was both true and not true. He had taken a job with the principal of a local private school to tail a few of the rich teenagers who seemed to be getting their hands on a fair amount of drugs.
He was pretty sure he had the answer to that one. It had been at the top of his list of jobs to pursue…until this morning.
“Wow, Dane, you’re just full of fire and energy,” Kelsey said. She was speaking to him but studying her beer bottle as she peeled the label from it.
“See you, Kelsey,” he said.
“Sure.” She looked at him at last. “It’s been great.”
“Hey,” Cindy said thoughtfully, as if she were totally oblivious to the last exchange, “you know, I’ve got a great idea, Dane. Why don’t you have us over for a barbecue?”
“Cindy,” Kelsey protested. “That’s rude. We can’t just invite ourselves over. And think about it. Dane likes his mundane lifestyle. I’m sure that’s just what he wants to do. Get out of his lounge chair and cook for a group.”
Dane had the feeling that he could turn into Emeril and Kelsey still wouldn’t want to show up at his place to eat.
But Cindy was persisting. “Remember in the old days, when you and your dad had those great cookouts. Maybe Larry can come down for the weekend, and maybe Sheila will even have shown by then. Nate can get another bartender on and come, and who knows who else might be around.”
“We’ll see, Cindy,” he said.
He was startled when Kelsey suddenly seemed to rouse herself and let go of her hostility. She slid off her bar stool, approaching him, but pausing a distance away. “Actually, Dane, you know, it would be nice if you had a barbecue and had us all over.”
“You want to come visit ye olde town drunk?” he said, staring at her.
Cindy must have felt as if lightning were crackling around her, because she suddenly seemed anxious to get away from the two of them. “I’m going to wash the dishes,” she said.
Kelsey stared at her. “We used paper,” she reminded her.
Cindy gave Kelsey a little shove that almost sent her into Dane. “Look, you two, I don’t know what’s going on here, but good friends are hard to come by. Both of you, shape up. Kelsey, you’re being a real bitch. Walk Dane to the door and tell him you don’t think that he’s a washed-up, inebriated has-been. Go on.”
There was something going on in Kelsey’s ever-calculating little mind, Dane knew, or else she would just have turned away with that air of superiority she could don like a cloak, walk herself into the bedroom, and shut the door.
“I’m being a bitch?” she said.
“Oh, yeah,” Dane said. “Beyond a doubt. You’re being a super bitch.”
“And Dane is Mr. Nice Guy?” she said to Cindy.
“Actually
