Wish Upon a Christmas Star (14 page)

Then Kayla got down to the real reason she was there,
explaining how the merchants association had hired her to save the group from
additional embarrassment.

“Wow! So you’re a private eye now.” James grinned at her. He’d
been doing a lot of that. “I’m impressed!”

“Don’t be. If I don’t crack this case, my uncle will can me.
And then it’s back to making bottle art.” Now why had she told him that? Until
now, she’d shared that information only with her mother and Maria.

“I’ve got faith in you,” he said. “You’ll kick the case’s
ass.”

She giggled. “I’m trying, which brings me to my question. Did
somebody tip you off Thursday morning that Santa had been defaced with Magic
Marker?”

“Yeah. I got a text,” he said. “It was the second one about
that statue. That’s how I got the photo of Santa looking like a zombie.”

She was right! But he’d gotten a text and not a call. That was
interesting.

“Who was the text from?” Kayla asked.

“I didn’t recognize the number.”

“Wouldn’t it have to come from someone you know?”

“Not necessarily. I give my cell number out to lots of
people.”

“Why text you, though? Why not call the newspaper?”

“It was seven in the morning. Usually nobody’s around the
newspaper that early,” he said. “Whoever it was must have really wanted me to
get the photo.”

“Do you still have the texts?”

“Nah,” James said. “I get so many, I delete ’em after a few
days.”

“Can you check your bill and give me the number?”

“Sure thing.” He hopped down from the desk, logged on to the
computer and a few minutes later handed her a piece of paper with the number
written on it. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” she said and got up to leave. “You’ve been a big
help.”

“Let me walk you to your car,” he said.

“Um, okay.” She hid her surprise at the offer. Maybe he was
leaving the office, too.

He was strangely silent on the way to the parking lot. Kayla
was never quiet. She filled him in on what some of their former high school
classmates were up to. In no time, they were at her car.

She hit the remote and went to open the driver’s-side door.
James got there first and opened it for her.

“Thank you,” she said and started to duck inside the car.

“Would you like to go out sometime?” James blurted, the first
thing he’d said in minutes.

Kayla paused in the act of getting into the car. If she’d seen
this coming, she’d be better prepared to handle it. But maybe she was reading
the situation wrong.

“You mean, like, on a date?” she asked.

“Yeah.” He rolled his eyes when she continued to say nothing.
“C’mon, Kayla. I’m dying here. I’ve wanted to ask you out since high
school.”

Her jaw dropped.

“Wow. What a question,” she said, stalling for time. The last
thing she wanted was to hurt his feelings. “Not a bad question, don’t get me
wrong. A very good question.”

He shifted from foot to foot. “What’s the answer?”

“The thing is, I can’t. I’d like to,” she said quickly, trying
to soften the blow, “but, well, I’m sort of seeing somebody.”

“Sort of?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t explain without going into great detail
about the subtle signals Alex had been giving her at the bar last night. “It’s
in the beginning stages.”

“No problem,” James said, backing away, not doing a very good
job of hiding his disappointment. “Good seeing you again.”

He was across the parking lot and back in the newspaper
building before Kayla gathered herself to get in the car.

James hadn’t expected her to say yes, she realized. He probably
had insecurities dating back to before he’d lost the weight, although the inside
of a person had always been more important to Kayla than the outside.

The next time she saw James, she’d make sure he knew her
refusal had nothing to do with him. Why, if he’d asked her out in high school,
when he was eighty-five pounds heavier, she might have said yes.

She thought again of the wounded look that had entered his eyes
when she’d refused him and suppressed the urge to run after him and tell him
that now.

CHAPTER TEN

K
AYLA
’
S
U
NCLE
F
RANK
was exactly where she said he
would be, with three of his cronies on the covered back deck of a houseboat
moored at the Key West City Marina.
Cronies
was his
word, not Maria’s. She had expected Frank Knowles to be around the same age as
Kayla’s mother, but he was easily twenty years older. Maria put Frank and his
friends in their mid to late seventies.

“Me and my cronies play poker out here every Friday. Beats
sitting in a dark smoky room.” Frank gestured to the glistening blue water of
the Gulf of Mexico, which contrasted with the white masts of sailboats. Seabirds
soared overhead and the smell of salt water filled the air.

Maria, however, was most aware of Logan’s hand resting gently
on her back.

He’d turned into a distraction—no surprise, considering how
great the sex had been between them. Her mind should be one hundred percent on
finding Mike and not on how her skin tingled whenever Logan touched her. She
should have told him to go back to New York. He’d developed a stubborn streak,
though. There was no guarantee he would listen to her.

“It’s a great setting,” Logan said, “but I guess that’s what
you get when you live on a houseboat.”

“This is a floating home,” Frank said. “Unlike a houseboat,
it’s stationary. I can’t take it out on the water, but I’ve got a million-dollar
view without the price tag.”

The floating home was also surprisingly spacious, with rooms on
two levels leading to the double-decker patio with the killer views.

“We used to play poker at night before Arturo started falling
asleep on us,” a thin man with a craggy voice said. He was one of three men
sitting at a fold-up table, drinking what appeared to be iced tea. All were
deeply tanned with varying amounts of white hair and wrinkles.

“I need my beauty sleep,” retorted a man in a Miami Marlins
baseball hat who looked to be of Hispanic descent. He must be Arturo.

Everybody laughed, with Frank guffawing the loudest. If Maria
had overheard Kayla’s uncle from an adjacent room, she would have guessed he was
a big, stocky man like his brother, Key Carl. In reality, Frank was probably
five feet four and about one hundred thirty pounds. His last name was different
than his brother’s, though, indicating they didn’t have the same father.

“You two want to join us?” the guy with the craggy voice
asked.

“They’re not here to play poker. They’re here to ask questions.
This is Maria DiMarco and that’s Logan Collier,” Frank said in his earsplitting
voice and completed the introductions. The man in the baseball hat was indeed
Arturo. The craggy-voiced man was Pete. The quiet guy was also named Pete, but
his friends had nicknamed him Repeat. “You all know my niece Kayla. She sent
Maria and Logan over. They’re private eyes.”

“Maria’s the private eye,” Logan corrected, still with his hand
on the small of her back. Maria supposed she could move away. She stayed
put.

“What kind of questions? What case? Anything we can help you
with?” Arturo shot the inquiries at her.

“Let the girl speak!” Frank bellowed. “Geez. Anyone would think
you were the private eye.”

“I’d be good private eye,” Arturo retorted.

Maria figured she better cut in before the men got even more
off track. “I appreciate that you want to help. The more people who look at the
image, the better.” She dug the age progression out of her slouchy bag and set
it on the table. “This is an approximation of what my brother Mike would look
like today. He’s been missing eleven years.”

Pete whistled loud and low. “That’s a long damn time.”

“I’d appreciate if you’d pass it around and take a good look,”
Maria said. “I have reason to believe my brother is in Key West, probably under
an assumed name.”

“Let Frank look first,” Pete said. “He knows everybody who
lives here year-round.”

“Almost everybody,” Frank amended. “People come and go around
here.”

Maria held her breath while he considered the image. Logan
moved closer to her, putting a hand on her shoulder. Again, she thought she
should move away. Again, she didn’t.

“Nope, sorry,” Frank said. “At first I thought it might be
Clem. Chin’s different, though.”

“We’ve got that before,” Logan said. “It’s not Clem.”

Frank walked over to the table and handed the photo to Arturo,
who shook his head and passed it to Pete. He put on a pair of reading glasses
and took his time, but ultimately the result was the same. Repeat was the last
to look. He didn’t recognize her brother, either.

“That’s a pretty good approximation, but he might have gained
weight or grown a beard.” Maria repeated what Sergeant Peppler had said when
she’d stopped by the police station.

Logan glanced at her and she imagined she could read his mind.
He thought she was grasping at straws.

“Maybe it would help if you told us why you believe your
brother’s here,” Frank said.

“He mailed some envelopes that were postmarked from Key West to
an ex-girlfriend,” Maria said.

“What was in the envelopes?” Arturo asked.

Why not tell them?
Maria thought.
It wasn’t as though she was breaking a confidence. Even if she mentioned that
Mike’s ex-girlfriend was engaged to Austin Tolliver, it was the longest of long
shots they’d recognize he was a state senator from Kentucky.

“Nude photos,” she said. “The last one came with what could be
considered a blackmail note.”

“Wait a minute.” Repeat lifted his index finger. “I remember
hearing something about naked pictures.”

Maria tried not to get too excited. Caroline Webb wasn’t the
first woman who’d posed in the altogether for a man. “From who?”

“Not somebody I knew. Somebody I overheard. Now where was
that?” Repeat screwed up his forehead. After a moment, he snapped his fingers.
“I know. It was a couple weeks ago at the Daybreak Café, that Cuban-American
place on Duval. Frank, you were there.”

“I was?” He sounded doubtful. “I don’t remember anything about
naked pictures.”

“It was before you arrived,” Repeat said. “You were late, like
always.”

“Why didn’t you mention it?” Frank demanded.

“My hearing’s not so good anymore,” his friend said. “I thought
I might have it wrong. I didn’t catch much, anyway. Just that this guy had naked
pictures of some woman.”

It was a tenuous connection at best. However, at the moment it
was all Maria had. She wasn’t about to discount the information. “What did the
guy look like?”

“I didn’t see him real good. Couldn’t even tell you if he was
with a man or a woman.”

“You didn’t turn around when you heard the word
naked?
” Pete asked.

“’Course I did,” Repeat said. “But the guy was in the booth
behind me. All I could see was part of his arm.”

“Fat lot of good you’ll do Maria,” Pete said. “You can’t
identify a person from an arm.”

“Shows what you know,” he retorted. “This guy had a
tattoo.”

Maria’s breath caught in her throat as a scene from her past
replayed in her mind. Mike coming home with a tattoo on his forearm when he was
seventeen. Her parents hitting the roof, especially because minors were supposed
to get parental permission.

How had the fact that her brother sported a tattoo slipped her
mind? If she’d thought of it before now, she could have mentioned it as an
identifying mark when she was showing around the age progression photo.

“What kind of a tattoo?” she asked.

If Mike’s had been in a less visible place, her parents might
not have been so hard on him. They hadn’t understood how her brother could
permanently etch a serpent on his forearm. They didn’t care that it was the logo
of his favorite alternative rock band.

“I saw it pretty good,” Repeat said. “It was a snake.”

* * *

A
FEW
HOURS
LATER
M
ARIA
sat with Logan at an outdoor table at the Daybreak
Café, the restaurant where Repeat had spotted the man with the serpent tattoo.
She was peripherally aware of the steady stream of tourists passing by.

Logan had pointed out two young women who’d paired their Santa
hats with red micro shorts and sleeveless shirts trimmed in white fur. A
middle-aged couple with their arms linked belted out a jaunty Christmas tune as
though they were performing on stage.

The constant distractions made it hard for Maria to think.
Logan provided another one, although he seemed to accept that things between
them couldn’t progress any further. Why that annoyed her she didn’t care to
analyze.

“This place closes at two, right?” Logan asked. “It’s almost
that now. Alex Suarez might not make the time to talk to you.”

When they’d arrived at the café more than an hour ago, they’d
been told Suarez was occupied with restaurant business. Maria said they’d wait
around until the owner was free. In the meantime, they’d finished off a lunch of
Cuban-style sandwiches and fried plantains while Maria flagged down servers and
busboys. None of them recognized Mike as a customer.

“I’m not leaving until he makes time.” Maria picked up her
water glass, only to find it empty. Their waitress had cleared their lunch
dishes away about fifteen minutes ago. She hadn’t come by since to refill their
glasses, a strong hint that it was time for them to leave. The restaurant was
closing. It was already a few minutes past 2:00. “You heard that waitress. She
said Suarez goes from table to table, making sure the customers are happy. He’s
the man to talk to.”

“Just keep in mind that a tattoo of a snake isn’t that unusual,
Maria,” Logan said. “Lots of people have them.”

A prickly sensation skittered up her spine. “What are you
trying to say, Logan?”

He was wearing sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes. His
mouth, however, turned down at the corners. “I don’t want you to get your hopes
up, okay?”

“You don’t think a guy with a tattoo of a snake talking about
naked photos is worth getting excited about?”

“Look, none of the people who work here recognized Mike,” Logan
pointed out. “I’m just saying Suarez probably won’t, either.”

She picked up the water glass again, found it empty again and
set it down. She crossed one leg over the other, although she felt anything but
relaxed. “What’s it like to be so pessimistic?”

“I’m not a pessimist,” he insisted. “I’m a realist. And look
who’s talking. If anybody’s a cynic, it’s you.”

“Me?” She uncrossed her legs and pointed at her chest. Nobody
had ever called her a cynic in her life before now. “I believe Mike is
alive!”

“I’m not talking about Mike,” Logan said. “I’m talking about
what’s between you and me. You’re the one who thinks it can’t work out.”

He sounded grumpy. Good.

“Because it can’t.” Only three little words, but they were so
difficult for Maria to say it felt as if they were wrapped in sandpaper. “I live
in Kentucky and you live in New York.”

“Why should we let distance stop us?” He reached across the
table and took her hand, sincerity practically pouring off him. Awareness
skittered through her, the way it did any time he touched her. “Don’t try to
deny there’s something between us. I know you feel it, too.”

If she tugged her hand away, she’d only prove his contention.
She almost laughed aloud at the thought that she was attempting to hide her
feelings from him. After last night, he already knew how much his touch affected
her.

“We’re attracted to each other,” she admitted slowly. “That’s
nothing new, though. We’ve always been attracted to each other.”

“It’s more than that.” Logan gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
“It would have fizzled out years ago if it was that simple. We can’t just ignore
what’s between us.”

“Oh, I see.” She pulled her hand from his. Her voice was heavy
with sarcasm. “Since you’ll be here another night, you’re trying to talk your
way back into my bed.”

“No.” He actually sounded offended. “That’s not it.”

“You don’t want a repeat of last night?” She felt hurt at the
prospect. What was wrong with her?

“Of course I do,” he snapped.

“Aha,” she said, her mood lightening. “I knew it!”

“That’s not all I want.” He blew out a breath. “I think we
should give a long-distance relationship a try.”

Something bright flashed inside Maria before her brain
processed the operative word. “A
try?
”

“Yeah, a try,” he said. “I couldn’t get to Kentucky more than
one weekend a month, but you could visit me in New York, too. You wouldn’t have
to worry about the expense. I’ll pay for the tickets.”

Of course. He made a lot more money than she did. Wasn’t that
part of the reason he lived in Manhattan?

“You really think that would work?” Maria asked.

“Lots of couples make it work. Why not us?” he asked. “We could
see how it goes.”

Her heart dropped like a boulder rolled off a cliff. “You
haven’t changed at all.”

He leaned closer to her. “I don’t know what you mean by
that.”

“Of course you don’t,” she retorted.

He waited a few beats in silence. “Are you going to explain it
to me?”

“Let me put it this way.” She crossed her arms, inwardly
scolding herself for sleeping with him. It had taken her years to get over
Logan, and now she’d made herself vulnerable to him again. A stupid move. He’d
done nothing to indicate he’d changed. “You’re a look-before-you-leap kind of
guy.”

His brows knotted. “And?”

She was formulating a reply about the importance of taking
chances when a tall man with dramatic dark coloring strode up to their table. “I
heard you two were waiting on me. I’m Alex Suarez, owner of the Daybreak
Café.”