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.
Dane Whitelaw, of all people.
Wasting his life. She’d seen it so many times. People who used this little corner of Eden to escape all responsibility, to drown themselves in beer and couch potato themselves into early graves.
And he was lying, to boot. He had seen Sheila, talked to her…done a lot more than talked, by his own admission. Why not? They’d been off and on for years. The worst of it was that he should care, be concerned. Even Larry, whom Sheila had hurt, had been concerned, insisting that she call him if she needed anything, if Sheila needed anything, if there was anything he could do…Sheila wouldn’t even need to see him. If she needed money, he would be happy to help her out. Nate had been concerned, too, shaking his head and telling her that they all worried about Sheila, but hell, what could they do? She was a grown-up.
Nate had told her, too, that Sheila often made dates with her friends—lunch, dinner, drinks, coffee, breakfast, whatever—and forgot to appear. She always had an apology, of course. Even so, Nate had seemed concerned, even as he tried to tell Kelsey that she shouldn’t be. He hadn’t seen Sheila in a week, and she never stayed away from the Sea Shanty that long.
Only Dane seemed indifferent. Crude. It appeared that he had come home just to drink himself into oblivion, and he didn’t give a damn about Sheila or anything else.
And, of course, there was that last page in Sheila’s diary, which she had found beneath the pillow on Sheila’s bed. At first she had shoved the book back under the pillow, surprised that Sheila had kept a diary, then determined that a diary was private and she had no right to read it. But when Sheila hadn’t appeared, she had skimmed through, and then gone to the last page.
Have to see Dane tonight. Tell him I’m afraid.
Private or not, she was going to read every page in the diary. Maybe she should have mentioned it to the police.
No. Not yet, anyway. Not until she knew what was in it herself. She wasn’t airing Sheila’s life to anyone, unless it became absolutely necessary.
There was a knock at the door. For a moment she clenched her teeth, wondering if Dane had decided to follow her back from the Sea Shanty. A man wouldn’t need to be a P.I. to find out where she was staying.
And he undoubtedly knew the way to Sheila’s place.
She marched barefoot to the front door, grateful that the owners of the duplex had done away with the old-time jalousie and put in solid wood doors. She looked through the peephole. Cindy Greeley, now her official next-door neighbor in the duplex where she herself was an unofficial guest, was standing on the porch with a tray of something in her hands.
Kelsey opened the door.
“Did you find out anything?” Cindy asked her.
Kelsey stepped back, letting Cindy enter. Even in her bare feet, she was almost a head taller than the other woman, five-nine compared with Cindy’s petite five-two. The smaller woman was compact, with sun-bleached hair, huge blue eyes and a tiny frame. She looked as if she should be heading off to high school, but she’d always had a terrific head on her shoulders, had made it nicely through college, and now owned eighteen T-shirt and shell shops throughout the Keys
