Wreckers' Key (22 page)

I had one more stop this evening, and since it was getting late, I drove over the Davie Bridge a little faster than I should have on the rain-slicked streets. When I tried to brake at the bottom of the incline, my brakes felt soft and mushy. Old Lightnin’, my trusty Jeep, must be feeling her thirty years of age tonight, I thought as I stomped on the pedal to make the turn into Shady Banks. I noticed in the rearview mirror that the car behind me, the only one I’d seen on the road since leaving the Downtowner, did not turn into Shady Banks, and I relaxed a little more.

Luckily, lights were still on when I pulled up in front of the Sparks’ house. I knocked on the door lightly, hoping not to wake Sarah, but trying to raise someone inside. After a couple of minutes, Catalina opened the door.

“Thank God,” she whispered as she opened the door wider to let me in. She threw her arms around my neck.

I peeled her arms off me. “What’s wrong?”

She held her finger to her lips and made a shushing noise.

She showed me down the hall into her small bedroom and closed the door behind us. “Mrs. Sparks is sleeping.”

“Where’s Arlen?”

“I do not know. He left after we returned from the market and I have not seen him since.” She motioned for me to sit on the small twin bed. “He was here,” she said.

“Who?”

“The man who killed my husband.”

“What?”

“Look. There.” She pointed to the box we’d retrieved from the Dean Lopez Funeral Home – the white cardboard box that contained Nestor’s ashes. It was resting on top of the dresser; hanging off the front was a Saint Christopher’s medal on a silver chain.

“What am I supposed to see?”

“The medal. When I left to go shopping with Mr. Sparks, it was not there. I have not seen that medal since the day I kissed my husband good-bye. I come home today and it is there, just as you see. Someone was here, in this room.”

“No, Cat, that’s crazy,” I said, but I was picturing the tightly made bed in my own bedroom. “There’s got to be another explanation.”

“It was not Mr. Sparks—he was with me. Nor she— she cannot walk. And it was no ghost. It was flesh and blood.”

“Catalina, what the hell is going on?”

“I tried to telephone you but I got no answer. I think he is warning me. Telling me to be quiet.”

“Cat, I’m sorry. I thought you’d be safe here.” I hadn’t noticed before how much she had changed in the past week. Her face looked less rounded, more gaunt, and her big brown eyes had hollows beneath them. “Are you okay?”

“I am fine, Seychelle. I will not leave this house. I like her very much. And she needs me. I will not be frightened away.”

“One thing at a time. What about your doctor? When do you go next?”

“I canceled the appointment. I have a little money we saved to get an apartment, but it will not be enough to pay the hospital. We thought we would have insurance for the baby through Nestor’s job.”

“You have to see the doctor. You’ve been through tremendous stress.”

“But I am very healthy.”

“You’re a nurse. You know what can happen.” I also knew—too well. “Don’t worry about the money. The baby and you come first. We’ll figure out a way to pay.”
 

She opened her mouth as though to argue again, but then closed it. After several seconds she said, “You are right. Thank you. I will do this for her.” She rubbed her hand over the top of her belly. Then she reached out to me. “Give me your hand.”

I reached out. If I had known what she intended to do, I never would have done it, never would have let her take my hand. I would have changed the subject, rushed to the bathroom, done just about anything to avoid it.

She placed my hand palm-down on the side of her belly. “There. Can you feel it?”

Something small and sharp pushed into the center of my palm.

“I think it is her elbow,” Cat said.

It pushed again, this time at the base of my fingers. The muscles of my throat tightened and my eyes blurred. I saw the tiny arms, hands, fingers. The closed eyelids, the petite mouth. The bluish gray skin. It was so long ago, but once loose, the memory was bright with detail. I pulled back my hand as though her belly was charged with electric current and I’d just been shocked.

“It is frightening, yes? I feel the same. It is a real person inside me.”

It took me a few seconds to calm my breathing, to shake off the mental pictures. “I’m certain you’ll be a great mother,” I said and I thought,
unlike me
.

“Thank you. It will not be easy to do this alone. I never imagined I would not have my husband for help.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke. I worked at pushing back the unwelcome images. I had come here for a reason.

“Catalina, there is something else. I went to see Ted Berger today.”

A twitch pulled at her mouth. “What did you learn?”
 

“I don’t think he had anything to do with it, Cat. It’s not him.”

She stood and walked the short distance across the room and stared at the white box on the dresser. “But I have to be certain.”

“I’m not saying I don’t believe that something or someone killed Nestor. I just don’t think Berger had anything to do with it.” I went ahead and told her all of it, from the photos that the young man had shown to Ben and me to Berger’s story about his Danish lady friend. She paced the room as I talked.

“And you believed him,” she said, settling into the small wicker chair next to the bed.

“Cat, it’s too easy to disprove. I don’t think he would have made the whole story up.”

“With him, anything is possible. There is something I have never told anyone. But perhaps you will understand if I explain. When Nestor first went to interview, I went with him. Mr. Berger had invited us both to lunch in his offices. We sat at a conference table and a gentleman served us. At the end of the meal, when he agreed to hire Nestor, he sent my husband to another floor for papers. While Nestor was gone and I was still in Mr. Berger’s office, he touched me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked the question even though I was pretty sure I knew.

She picked up a scarf off the arm of the chair and began twisting the fabric as she spoke. “He said things to me. Said I was the reason he was hiring Nestor—because I was so beautiful. Then he came over and tried to kiss me. He put his hand under my blouse and touched my breast.” Her face screwed up in a grimace of disgust. “His hand squeezed my arm so hard it left a bruise. I was struggling, pushing him away, when he heard Nestor coming and stepped back. My husband walked in looking so happy to have the job of his dreams, and I could not say anything. I felt dirty and ashamed.” She looked up from the mangled scarf and tears streaked down her face. “Every time he comes near me, he touches me, and it makes me feel so filthy. If I was the reason—do you see? I have to know.”

I remembered that morning in the restaurant in Key West. Berger had leaned down and kissed her on the cheek and it had been obvious that the gesture was unwelcome. “So that day, with Jeremy on the boat. Berger had been in your cabin?”

She nodded without raising her head.

“Did he do anything to you?”

Lifting her head she said, “No, he is not interested in me now.” She held her hands on either side of her belly. “He was there to tell me that later, after the baby is born, if I need money, he will pay. He treated me like a whore and he enjoyed it.”

“I’m sorry, Catalina. You should have told me.”

She nodded at the white box, the medal, and the chain. “He would do something like this. He takes pleasure in others’ pain.”

“I’ll see if I can find this Danish woman. I’ll check out his story. But you know, even if it does turn out that Berger had something to do with this, that would mean it was him—not you. You can’t take this on yourself. You’re not in any way to blame for what happened to Nestor.” I stood up, preparing to go, and she looked up at me with those huge dark eyes sunk so deep into her face.

“You will find out for me, yes?”

I took her hand and squeezed it. “Yes, I promise.”

I turned the key a third time and listened to the Jeep’s engine struggling to catch. I clicked the key off and sat in the front seat feeling the street’s quiet settling around me. I didn’t need this just now. I stared at the silhouette of the Jesus statue on the dash. In daylight, the thing was bleached nearly white, but now, on this unlit street, only the black outline was visible against the white hood. Time had changed the look of it. In fact, most people who rode in my Jeep no longer recognized what it was. But me, I still saw the familiar features that time had long since worn away.

Come on, Lightnin’, you can do it. When I gave it one more try, she coughed to life. Fearing she was going to stall again, I revved up the engine and let out the clutch, making my tires squeal on the pavement as I took off.

Fortunately, at this time of night Davie Boulevard had little traffic and I nursed the Jeep down the deserted street, coughing and sputtering all the way. I kept my eyes on the few cars around me, watching for a tail; while in the rearview I could see the smoke coming out of my exhaust, the streets were almost empty.

It wasn’t until I’d crossed into Rio Vista, my neighborhood, that I saw a pair of headlights in my rearview mirror. Because I expected the engine to stall, I slowly coasted through the stop signs, fearing what would happen if I came to a halt. The lights behind me did likewise, keeping a distance between us of just over a hundred feet.

I was about three blocks from home when the engine stalled and I drifted off the road onto the swale to allow the vehicle behind me to pass. I sat still, eyes on the mirror, watching the lights that did not move. I unzipped the side window and stuck out my arm, waving him past. Still the lights did not move. I couldn’t see anything behind the glare, but judging from the height of those lights, it was a big, high vehicle, like a truck. The idling engine rumbled softly as the driver tapped lightly on the accelerator, and I reminded myself to breathe as my heartbeat doubled its rate.

Moving slowly, I took the strap of my shoulder bag and slung the bag diagonally across my chest, shoulder-to-hip. I gauged the distance between my Jeep and the cul-de-sac ahead where I could cut out to the seawall and follow it through the two lawns that would eventually lead me to the Larsens’ place. I figured I could cover the distance in less than thirty seconds at a dead run. My hand closed around the door handle lever.

I hit the street running and heard the squeal of the tires spinning on the pavement behind me as the driver failed to release the brake before the engine’s RPMs had climbed the dial. When the tires caught, I was halfway there, watching the familiar homes on either side of me pass in a watery-eyed blur. My breath felt like sandpaper in my throat as I pumped my arms and heard the big engine growing louder, eating up the few hundred feet that separated us like a crazed Pac-Man.

I hurdled the hedge that rimmed the Martinez property and threw my body at the wooden fence surrounding their backyard. It’s amazing what adrenaline can do. These arms of mine, which usually struggled to do a single pull-up, grabbed the top of the fence and pulled my body up with them. I got one leg over the top, rolled over the edge, and fell to the ground on the other side, crushing a bed of impatiens. Dusting the dirt and flower petals off my hands, I put my eye to the gap between the boards. The vehicle was gone.

I made my way out to the seawall and walked across the backyards of the Larsens’ neighbors. The houses were dark, and other than landscape lighting, they looked abandoned. When I got to the Larsens’ yard, I whistled softly for my dog. She came running, surprised and delighted to find me arriving from the wrong direction.

I squatted in the bushes, scanning the yard, looking for anything out of the ordinary. What had that been about? I hadn’t actually been trying to look at the vehicle—I’d been intent on getting over the fence—but from the periphery of my vision, I had the impression that it had been a dark-colored SUV. A vehicle very much like the one that had tried to run Cat down in Key West.

Relieved as I was to make it home, I was reluctant to enter my cottage alone. Did the owner of that vehicle out there know where I lived? Had he followed me from the Sparkses’ house? I hadn’t seen a tail, but then it would be easy for someone who knew where I was going to follow on parallel side streets.

Someone had already been inside my home, and I didn’t know who. How’d they get in? Like lots of people, I hid a spare key to the place not far from the front door. It was a bad habit I’d picked up from my parents—they so rarely locked the house at all that when they did, we kids often didn’t have our keys. They hid a spare key under a flowerpot. I wasn’t quite that bad. At least I’d graduated to one of those plastic fake rocks and I kept it hidden under a bougainvillea bush. When I’d checked it this morning, the key had been there, but there was no way to tell if someone had used it the night before.

Nothing looked disturbed as I crossed the yard, Abaco trotting at my side, nosing my hand and asking me to pet her. My cottage looked unchanged. I squatted down and saw that my fake rock was resting there, looking as real as ever. After unlocking the front door, I sent the dog inside first. She disappeared and didn’t make any noise, no barking, no sound of running doggy nails on the Dade County pine floors.

I pushed open the door and reached in for the light switch. The lamp on the end table switched on. The place was so small, I could see it all from the doorway, since the bedroom door was standing open. Unless he was hiding in the bedroom closet, there was no bogeyman in my place. The living room, kitchen, bedroom— all looked just as I had left them that morning. Abaco was sitting on the couch smiling her doggy smile, her tongue hanging out one corner of her mouth.

I dialed the nonemergency number of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department and was greeted with the robotic voice telling me that if I knew my party’s extension I could dial it at any time. If I wanted the detective bureau, please press one, if I wanted robbery, press two, homicide, press three. I tried several numbers, hoping to get a human being. Finally, I did.