Читать книгу Wish Upon a Christmas Star - Darlene Gardner, Darlene Gardner - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

THE LOUISVILLE INTERNATIONAL Airport buzzed with activity. Travelers walked quickly along the moving walkway that connected the two concourses, some arriving, others departing, all of them in a hurry. It seemed as if Christmas was hours instead of six days away. A tinny voice over the loudspeaker issued a periodic reminder not to leave bags unattended.

Logan and his parents had gone through the security checkpoint together, since he’d thought to book early morning flights that departed within thirty minutes of each other. The planes didn’t leave from the same concourse, though. When the walkway ended, Logan moved off to the side to get out of the way of other passengers. His parents did the same.

“This is where we part,” Logan said. “I hope you both have a fantastic time on the cruise.”

His mother sniffed, her eyes dewy with unshed tears. In her red coat, black pants and black shoe boots, she was dressed for winter in Lexington instead of in the tropics. “I still wish you were coming with us.”

“Boy’s gotta work, Celeste.” His father slung an arm around her and kissed the side of her head. He was gruff with most people but treated his wife like gold. “Guy I work with, his thirty-five-year-old son lives in the basement.”

“Logan’s only thirty-three,” his mother countered. “And I never said I wanted him to live in our basement.”

“Basements aren’t for me, anyway,” Logan said, attempting to lighten the mood. “We New York types prefer lofts.”

“But you’re not a New York type,” his mother protested. “Not really. You love Kentucky. You’ve always loved it. Don’t you think it’s past time you moved home?”

“Celeste, I thought you weren’t going to bring this up,” his father said.

“I can’t help it,” she answered. “You tell me not to make waves about it when Logan’s home because he’s here for such a short time. But it’s not the kind of thing to discuss over the phone.”

“Whoa,” Logan said. “Where’s this coming from? I’m happy in New York.”

“You wouldn’t have moved there in the first place if Maria DiMarco hadn’t married someone else,” his mother said.

Logan sucked in a breath that felt jagged going down. His mother was right. When he was in college, he’d fully expected he and Maria would get back together again someday. Finding out she’d gotten married had come as a vicious blow. In that instant, he’d decided to look for a job outside Kentucky.

His father removed his arm from his mother’s shoulder and gazed at her with rare disapproval. “Celeste, what are you doing?”

“Saying what I should have said a long time ago.” She took Logan’s elbow. “I think it’s time you and Maria put the past behind you.”

“You’re way off base about this, Mom,” Logan said. “My living in New York has nothing to do with her.”

It had nothing to do with Maria now, a voice in his head clarified. When he’d graduated from college, the state hadn’t been big enough for him to risk running into her and her new husband.

“If you’d seen her when you were home, you could have wiped the slate clean,” his mother said. “You’d either have feelings for her or you wouldn’t.”

Last night Logan had told his parents he was meeting friends for a drink. Now he was glad he hadn’t mentioned Maria by name. He wasn’t up for a postmortem session discussing his feelings.

“Maria and I were over a long time ago, Mom,” Logan insisted.

Then why did he feel as if he was abandoning her? It was ridiculous, considering that in the past Maria had been the one who’d failed to wait for him.

“But—”

“Wish our son a merry Christmas, Celeste,” his father interrupted. “You don’t want him to stop visiting us, do you?”

“Of course not.” She came forward and hugged him tightly, smelling of the familiar light perfume he associated with his childhood. She whispered in his ear, “Forgive a meddling mother for wanting to see her only child happy.”

He hugged her back. “You’re forgiven.”

Then his father was grabbing his hand and pulling him into a hearty hug. He ushered Mom toward the concourse, yet she looked back at Logan three times.

Logan waved, both sad and relieved that it was time for them to part ways. Sad... He wondered why that word had popped into his head. And why had the sentence snagged in his throat when he went to tell his mother he was happy?

An image of Maria’s face floated in his mind. He shut it out, irked at how potent the power of suggestion could be. He wouldn’t dwell on how things might have been. He liked his life in New York just fine, thank you very much.

He started walking toward the opposite concourse from his parents, again moving with the crowd. Though wreaths hung on the walls and Christmas music spilled out of restaurants, he’d seldom felt less holiday spirit.

Logan was halfway to his gate when his cell phone rang. It was Annalise DiMarco. He quickly rolled his carry-on suitcase over to the side, stopped and clicked through to the call.

“Annalise, what’s up?” he asked.

“I can barely hear you. Where are you?” Annalise hardly took a breath. “Oh, my gosh, you’re already at the airport, aren’t you?”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just tell me why you called.”

“Okay, but you won’t believe it. Maria’s in Key West. She’s been there since yesterday.”

“Ah, hell.” He’d had an inkling that telling her about his conversation with Mike on the morning of his death had backfired. Maria had heard only that her brother was thinking about quitting his job. “I’m sorry, Annalise. She told me she wasn’t going.”

“It’s not your fault, Logan. She told me the same thing. She didn’t want us to know.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing,” Annalise said. “I almost didn’t call to tell you, but I hadn’t thanked you yet.”

“For nothing.”

“For trying,” she insisted.

Had he tried hard enough? Logan wondered after disconnecting the call. He remembered as clearly as though it were yesterday how he’d persuaded Mike to go to work on that fateful morning.

“I can’t let you stay here and freeload off me,” Logan had said. “You’ve got to work.”

“I know it,” Mike had answered. “But I hate being a busboy.”

“Then quit after you find another job,” Logan had told him. “In the meantime, though, there are a lot of things worse than working at the World Trade Center.”

Not on 9/11, there hadn’t been.

Logan felt sick to his stomach. It was bad enough carrying around the guilt that he was responsible for Mike being at the restaurant that day. Seeing the false hope in Maria’s eyes had been worse.

He couldn’t rewind time and take back what he’d said to Mike. He could, however, do something about Maria.

He headed for his gate and got in line at the counter.

“How may I help you?” an airline representative asked when he reached the front of the line.

Logan slapped his boarding pass down on the counter. “I need to make a change. Do you fly to Key West?”

* * *

MARIA WOKE UP WEDNESDAY morning thinking about Logan Collier. She turned over on the lumpy mattress, half expecting him to be on the other side of the bed, his chest bare, his face soft in sleep.

He wasn’t there.

She sat up, pushing the hair back from her face. Images from her dreams bombarded her consciousness. Of Logan kissing her, stripping off her clothes, making love to her. Of Mike bounding down the stairs, bursting into the basement and covering his eyes with a hand. “Whoa. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

She groaned aloud. Part of her dream was actually a memory. Mike had been a fan of Logan’s, treating him like another big brother. On one memorable occasion, he’d come to the basement to say hello to Logan and had barged in on them necking.

That was all she and Logan had been doing. They’d never gone all the way. Annalise had gotten pregnant when she was a senior in high school, then married quickly. Even though things had worked out great for her sister, Maria had been determined not to repeat that mistake. She’d wanted to wait, and Logan had respected her wishes. If she was having erotic dreams about him, seeing him again must have affected her on a deeper level than she’d imagined.

Maria hugged herself and rubbed her upper arms. She’d been right to get rid of Logan by telling him what he wanted to hear. Her entire focus needed to be on Mike.

Although it was almost nine and she hadn’t bothered pulling down the blinds, no sunlight poured into the room. The only window faced a brick wall, which helped explain the relatively low price for a night’s stay. Since she wasn’t getting paid and didn’t know how long the search would take, cost had to be a consideration. She padded to the bathroom over thin carpet and splashed cold water on her face to dispel the cobwebs.

By the time she’d showered and dressed, she was thinking more clearly. She’d been so eager to show around the aged photo of her brother when she got to Key West that she hadn’t done all the groundwork she could have.

It seemed a fair bet that Mike wasn’t using his birth name, but there were other steps she needed to take before she was certain. Examining the Monroe County property records. Checking listings at the local Clerk of Courts office. Accessing the state of Florida’s criminal database.

Maria pulled out her laptop from her bag, called the front desk for the hotel’s wireless access code and tried to log on. After three attempts, she finally connected.

The wireless signal flickered in and out, making what should have taken twenty minutes stretch into two hours. Predictably, she turned up nothing. No property records. No addresses. No vehicles registered to him. No tax liens. The trail simply stopped dead. If Mike were alive, she was even more sure he wasn’t using his real name.

The tone on her cell phone signaled she had a text. It was from Annalise. Again.

Worried about you, it read. When will you call?

Not yet, Maria texted back.

She couldn’t call until she had information that would convince her sister she wasn’t spinning her wheels. Her next step was to visit the Old Town post office, although that was admittedly a long shot. The employees at the branch she’d already checked had been no help.

After that, Maria needed a better strategy. The desk sergeant could be right about Mike not being a local, but she couldn’t ignore the possibility. There were undoubtedly people in town besides Sergeant Peppler who had a finger on the pulse of the real Key West.

She sat up straighter, the name of a Key West P.I. popping into her head: Carl Dexter. Key Carl, everybody called him. A large bearded man in his sixties who came to the workshops at the national P.I. conferences dressed in guayabera shirts, shorts and sandals.

With Key Carl’s help, she had no doubt she could come up with that better strategy.

* * *

INSIDE THE OFFICES OF Dexter Private Investigations later that morning, Kayla Fryburger stood back and admired the beaded white snowflakes she’d strung from monofilament thread in her uncle’s office. The dozen or so snowflakes looked elegant, although making them had been a simple matter of adding beads to corsage pins, poking the pins into cork and applying white glitter.

Uncle Carl had nixed her Christmas tree idea so the snowflakes would have to do. Kayla only hoped someone besides herself saw them.

Since Uncle Carl had left with his girlfriend earlier in the week to visit her family in Chicago, nobody had stopped by the office. That was partially due to Uncle Carl spreading the word that he was out of town until after Christmas. Still, a girl could hope for walk-in traffic.

Dexter Investigation’s normal office hours were 9:00 a.m. to noon. Even though Uncle Carl had suggested she take some time off this week, Kayla had shown up each day just in case somebody stopped in.

Granted, she wasn’t a skilled investigator, but she could make up for in enthusiasm what she lacked in experience.

The past six weeks had been some of the most exciting of her life. Considering her previous line of work had been producing and selling bottle art with her mother, that wasn’t saying much.

Kayla had come up with the idea of learning the ropes from her uncle a couple years ago. After much resistance, he’d finally agreed to an eight-week trial, providing she worked for a pittance.

She’d messed up a few times, including on surveillance duty when it didn’t occur to her the subject might leave his house via a back window. She was getting better, though.

If a client would walk through the door, she’d get a chance to prove it. Kayla stared at the entrance, willing somebody in need of help to materialize.

Five minutes later, she sank into the orange-and-teal-striped sofa in the waiting area, wondering how to fill the time. In previous days, she’d tidied up the magazines on the coffee table, fluffed the pillows and swept the floor. All that was left to do was clean the baseboards.

Minutes later, with a wet paper towel in hand, she gazed down at the short yellow skirt she’d paired with a white top. Not the best outfit for baseboard cleaning. She balanced on her haunches but almost toppled over on her wedged-heel sandals.

“Forget that.” She got down on her knees and went to work.

The swooshing noise was so unexpected it took her a moment to realize the door had swung open. Kayla got to her feet with as much dignity as she could muster and turned to greet the arrival.

Alex Suarez. She fought not to sway. It was Alex Suarez, the object of her unrequited crush. A charming smile split his tan, handsome face. He was wearing sunglasses with silver frames and black lenses. He slid them off slowly and she noticed one of the lenses had a slight scratch. No surprise. She noticed everything about him and had for years.

“Well, hello,” he said.

She smoothed her skirt the best she could, terribly afraid the first thing he’d seen upon entering the office was her yellow rear end. This was why people didn’t take her seriously. Such things were always happening to her.

“Welcome to Dexter Private Investigations.” Her voice cracked on the name. “How can I help you?”

He walked deeper into the office, the smile still present. With his thick dark hair, high forehead and angular cheekbones, he looked almost exotic. She’d heard his given first name was Alejandro but that he’d started calling himself Alex after he emigrated from Cuba with his parents when he was a child. The name had stuck. An accent hadn’t. He sounded quintessentially American.

He studied her. “I know you from somewhere.”

She would have been flattered if she hadn’t been stopping by his restaurant regularly for nearly a year. The Daybreak Café operated from 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. daily, serving both American and Cuban specialties for breakfast and lunch.

“I’m a fan of the Cuban sandwiches at your restaurant,” she said. “I get one for takeout a few times a month.”

He snapped his fingers. “That must be it. I didn’t know they let you leave school for lunch, though.”

“Excuse me?”

“You go to Key West High, right?” he asked.

He thought she was in high school? She felt her face flame. “I graduated from there a long time ago. I’m twenty-five.”

“Really?” His eyes widened. They were such a dark brown they were almost black. “I never would have guessed it.”

She stood up to her full height of five feet two, taller if you took into account the heels of her chunky sandals. “I look younger.”

“You look great,” he said, his smile widening.

She hoped she wasn’t blushing. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-five.”

“Well, then, you look younger, too,” she said. “I wouldn’t have guessed any older than twenty-nine.”

He laughed. “I’m Alex Suarez, by the way.”

As if she didn’t know.

“Kayla Fryburger.” She waited for him to make a crack about her name. Almost everybody did.

“Okay, Kayla,” he said, “now that we’ve established you’re out of high school—”

“Years out of high school,” she interrupted.

“Many, many years out of high school,” he said with the smile still in place. “That must mean you’re not just helping out over the holidays?”

“I work here,” she verified. “I’m Unc— I mean, Mr. Dexter’s assistant.”

“Is that right?” He nodded. In light-colored slacks and an off-white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, he appeared cool and confident. If he bottled some of that confidence and sold it, she’d be first in line.

“It is.” She tried to remember what Uncle Carl said to potential clients. “Tell me what brings you here today.”

“I’d like to tell both you and Carl,” Alex said. “He’s a friend of mine. Is he around?”

It figured Alex knew her uncle. The local business community wasn’t terribly extensive. But apparently Key West was big enough that the man she’d been swooning over for years hadn’t noticed her. “No, I’m sorry. He’s in Chicago until December 27.”

Alex grimaced and sucked in a breath. “That’s not good news. I need to hire somebody today.”

Kayla’s heartbeat sped up. “You can hire me.”

He looked dubious. “I thought you assisted.”

“That’s right.” Assisting was all she’d ever done. “But I can do more than assist. I can take on a case. That’s why I’m here in the office. I’m ready and willful. Uh, I meant ready and willing.”

She shut up. She sounded like a total amateur, which she was. It would be best if he didn’t know that, though.

Alex scratched his smoothly shaved jaw. “Perhaps I should tell you why I’m here and we can go from there.”

“Sounds good.” She tried to contain the excitement coursing through her. “Go ahead.”

“Can we sit down?” he asked.

“Sure. Come this way.” She led him to her uncle’s office and got behind the big desk. Uncle Carl was a large man, more than a foot taller than she was. The desk seemed to swallow her so that she felt like a little girl playing house.

To compensate, she said in her most professional voice, “Please proceed.”

“Have you seen this?” He was holding a rolled-up newspaper, which he unfolded and handed to her.

It was a copy of the Key West Sun. The headline above the fold read “Baring It All.” The story was about a councilman proposing a referendum to allow nude sunbathing along a narrow strip of beach, a move championed by naturists who embraced the anything-goes Key West culture.

“I have seen it and I’m for it.” Kayla grimaced as it occurred to her how he could misconstrue her support. “Not that I would sunbathe naked. I mean, I would if nobody was around. It’s not like I’m a prude or anything. Although I’m not an exhibitionist. Not that I’m saying these people are.”

She had to press her lips together to stop her stream of words. Why couldn’t she stop talking?

“Not that story.” He leaned across the desk and pointed to a photo below the fold. “That.”

She’d seen the life-size fiberglass Santa that was pictured at the intersection of Duval Street and U.S. 1. He held a fistful of money in one hand. In his other was a sign that said “’Tis the Season to Spend in Key West.” Someone had painted the statue’s face white and added black rings around its eyes and red streaks trickling from its mouth. “Zombie Santa,” the caption read.

Kayla giggled, covering her mouth to stop it from becoming an unladylike guffaw.

“That reaction is exactly why I’m here,” Alex said. “As a representative of the Key West Merchants Association, I’m authorized to hire a private investigator to save our group from further embarrassment. So far a prankster has dressed Santa like the Grinch and now a zombie.”

“Somebody has a sense of humor,” she said.

“The Merchants Association doesn’t think it’s funny,” he said. “They’re taking this very seriously.”

“Then why not just retire the statue?” Kayla asked.

“That was my suggestion,” Alex said. “But it’s not the way these things work. The group paid a local artist a pretty penny to create that statue. Santa has a lot of fans.”

“But it’s so...” Kayla’s voice trailed off for fear of insulting him.

“Crass?” he supplied.

That was exactly what Kayla had been about to say. By emphasizing materialism, the statue focused on the wrong side of the holiday.

“Don’t worry about offending me,” he said. “I spoke out against the statue from the beginning. Nothing would make me happier than to get it off the street.”

“Then why are you in charge of hiring a private investigator?” she asked.

“Just because I was against the Santa doesn’t mean I want to see our group embarrassed,” he said. “We need to find out who’s doing this. Or at the very least, make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Then you came to the right place.” Kayla injected confidence into her voice even though she was already wondering how a one-woman operation would manage twenty-four-hour surveillance on the statue. “Let me tell you our rates.”

She had to go to her uncle’s file and rummage through a sheaf of papers before finding a listing of costs. The hourly rate seemed high to her. Alex didn’t blink.

“That intersection with the Santa is a pretty high-traffic area,” she said, referring more to the cars that passed by the spot than the pedestrians. “You said Santa’s already been messed with twice. It seems likely somebody saw the prankster in action.”

“I’m sure that’s something you’ll look into.”

She planned to do exactly that. She just wasn’t sure how to go about it.

“It’s settled, then.” Alex stood up and reached across the desk, offering his hand.

Kayla took it, the warmth of his grip seeming to travel through every inch of her body. She almost cried out in protest when he let go of her hand.

“Here are my numbers.” He took a business card out of his wallet and laid it on the desk. “I’d like to be updated daily and whenever there’s a new development.”

“Certainly.” She hoped she sounded sufficiently professional.

“I’ll look forward to hearing from you.” He strode toward the exit, pausing to turn around before he reached it. The grin that made him even more handsome was back on his face. “I forgot to tell you. Nice skirt. Yellow never looked so good.”

With that, he left. Kayla brought her hands to her hot cheeks, not sure what disconcerted her more: Alex Suarez or the prospect of conducting a solo investigation.