there was another way to be. It was the most significant lesson of his life. But what had he done for her in return? What if she had known that in the end he would leave her in a burning house to die? He knew the answer. She would say, “Thank you for saving my baby,” with the smile that had always made his heart feel full.
Tonight Desiree’s baby had walked back into his life, and he was trying his best not to care. For the most part, Des had kept himself from caring much about anything after the night of the Stormley fire. Now, he could feel the forces of hurt and memory threatening that resolve, and Taylor Bissett was to blame. Why had she come back here, anyway? What was she after? Anger flared. Des gripped the steering wheel hard, as if to choke the life out of that rage so he could return to the safety of coolness again. He didn’t want any of this to be happening. He wanted to go back to the Beachcomber and joke with the customers and the barmaids as he did every other night. Old tragedies, a beautiful woman with a screwed-up past—he didn’t need any of it.
Unfortunately, at this moment he couldn’t seem to stop wondering whether he would ever get to see Taylor Bissett smile. He forced his temper back under control. His guess was that she wouldn’t be smiling right now. She was too far away for him to make out her face, but he was sure about that all the same. Des had seen the cop cars streak past the Corvette and careen around the corner. He’d pulled over to let them pass. When the ‘Vette turned down the same street as the police cars, he thought Jethro might just be rubbernecking, trying to get a peek at the excitement. He was fool enough to do something like that. Maybe she was a thrill-seeker too.
Des saw the car door open on the passenger side of the Corvette. The police were all out of the two cars now. Two officers were on the path leading to the porch, but off to the side, probably to remain out of range of the front door. Two other officers had assumed break-in positions flanking that door. Des returned his attention to the sports car. Taylor was getting out of her side as Jethro’s door flew open and he jumped out, too. He ran around to her side and appeared to be trying to prevent her from exiting the car.
Through the open window of the Jeep, Des heard the police on the porch shout that they were coming in. He heard the thud of the door being kicked open. Des remembered that his field glasses were in the glove compartment. He pulled them out and peered through the eyepiece. A few adjustments brought the front of the guesthouse into focus. He flashed past the police officers on the walk. Something caught his attention, and he flashed back. There was excitement here, all right. Those cops had pistols in their hands.
Des refocused the glasses to direct his gaze back down the street to the Corvette. Taylor was out of the car now and trying to get to the sidewalk, but Jethro was blocking her way. Her back was to Des. She had managed to move onto the sidewalk, and that put her near a streetlight. She turned to say something to Jethro, and Des saw her face. Her expression was intense. She seemed to be explaining something to Jethro or trying to convince him of something. Des was beginning to doubt that her interest in this situation was limited to idle curiosity over some exciting police action. She looked as if she might be more personally involved than that.
Des saw one of the policemen approach Jethro and Taylor. The magnifying lens showed the policeman talking to them, and her answering. The conversation continued for a few moments, during which she grew increasingly agitated. Jethro was merely listening to the exchange. One of the two cops who had entered the guesthouse came out on the porch and called the other officers to him.
Taylor watched the cop walk away. She had one hand clamped over her mouth, as if to hold back a scream or a sob. Jethro was looking very nervous. He moved toward her and gestured as if he might take her by the shoulders, perhaps to comfort her. Instead, he dropped his arms and began to drum his fingers against the sides of his thighs. Meanwhile, she had started walking slowly toward the guesthouse. Her back was toward Des again, but he could see the tension in her shoulders.
One of the officers had gone down the walk at the side of the guesthouse toward the back of the building. The other officer stationed outside had returned to his patrol car and was speaking into the two-way radio. She climbed the steps, getting close enough to look through the front door into the foyer before one of the policemen from inside came out and backed her off. Des thought he saw her stagger against the cop, but the glasses still didn’t give a good view of her face.
The policeman moved her away from the door and let her sit down on the top step. She put her head in her hands, and could have been crying. Des couldn’t tell. Jethro had kept his distance. Now the policeman beckoned him toward the porch. Jethro hesitated, then shrugged and trudged forward. Des stayed out of sight in the Jeep, despite his sudden impulse to help Taylor. He’d given in to that same impulse twenty-some years ago and lived to regret it. Besides, he wasn’t quite ready to become part of the scene he’d been watching through his field glasses, especially not before he knew exactly what was going on.
He continued watching. Eventually, an ambulance arrived, then the medical examiner’s car. A while later, a stretcher was carried out of the house. The figure on the stretcher was encased in a black bag, completely covered from head to toe.
Des sighed and lowered the field glasses to the passenger seat of the Jeep. “What is it about you, Taylor Bissett?” he asked out loud. “Whenever you’re around, people have a habit of dying.”
* * *
APRIL JANE COONEY had been robbed and murdered. According to one of the uniformed officers who knew her, she never kept much currency in the cashbox. She was too savvy for that. Her assailant had taken whatever little there was, anyway. The metal box had been pried open and left near the body. April Jane must have put up a fight. What was left of the lamp from the registration desk lay in pieces on the floor near the opposite wall. The lamp’s base was shattered, as if it had been thrown very hard. A small dent at about head height on the white wall supported that theory.
One of the policemen had taken Taylor into a sitting room off the guest-house entryway. He had left the lace-curtained double glass doors ajar, so she could hear them discussing what might have happened to April Jane. Taylor heard the words and even put them together into sentences in her mind. Still, they weren’t entirely understandable to her. She guessed that she wasn’t letting herself fully comprehend what she was hearing, because then she would have to believe it. She would have to absorb the very scary fact that a woman she had spoken with less than two hours ago was now on her way to the city morgue, the victim of a senseless, violent crime.
What if Taylor had been here when the thief came in? She felt guilty thinking such a self-centered thought, but she couldn’t help it. What if her uneasiness about walking the trellis path behind the guesthouse had actually been some instinct telling her there was a would-be murderer lurking in the shrubbery? She shuddered at the thought and wished someone would turn off the ceiling fan. The sitting room had turned suddenly chilly.
Taylor had overheard the police saying there was only one guest in the house when the attack happened, an older man on the third floor in the back. He had stayed in tonight and taken a pill to help him sleep off a sunburn. He hadn’t heard a thing. The other guests were out on the town, like most Key West tourists at this time of night. Consequently, there were no witnesses. A neighbor across the street had heard glass shattering and saw the vestibule light go out suddenly. She didn’t see anybody run out of the house, but she suspected something might be wrong and called the police. By the time they arrived, April Jane was dead. Her killer had fled, probably out the back way. The police had already begun canvassing the neighborhood, both on Amelia Street and one block north on Virginia Street, to find out if anyone had seen anything.
Taylor had heard Jethro’s voice out in the entryway shortly after the policeman brought her into this room. Her knees had gone weak, and she had asked to sit down. She couldn’t make out what Jethro was saying. Then she didn’t hear him anymore. Next, she heard a policeman talking to a guest who had returned to the Key Westian and
