Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6) (14 page)

He pulled the cruiser into Paulette Boatwright’s driveway. Both of his passengers, Paulette in the front and Zoe in the back, sat silently after he turned off the engine. Dwight looked into the rear view mirror. Zoe sat very straight and very still, staring dead ahead, until she glanced up and met his eyes in the mirror. Dwight swallowed and opened his door.

Paulette got out as well, and a moment later, Zoe got out more slowly. Paulette dug in her purse for her keys and then her cigarette case, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Zoe stared over the roof of the car at her front door.

Paulette had her back to Dwight, blowing a plume of smoke in the direction of the woods across the street. He cleared his throat.

“Ma’am,” he said quietly.

Paulette started for the door without turning to look at him, and he followed her there. As she unlocked the door, he heard Zoe’s soft steps behind him.

“If you’ll let me just check real quick, I’ll make sure everything’s okay,” Dwight said.

Paulette swung the door open, and stepped aside so that Dwight could go in. He’d already been over there the day before, and he knew the techs had cleaned up any sign of fingerprint dust, but he couldn’t think of anything else he could do to make Zoe feel better about walking in there.

He took a quick spin through each room. Everything was as he’d left it. He opened each closet door anyway, and left them open, so Zoe would know he’d looked. When he got back to the living room, Paulette was opening the windows to let in some fresh air. Zoe stood on the front steps.

“Uh, Miss Zoe, everything is all set in here,” he said.

“Okay. Thank you,” she said.

She looked up at him with those big eyes and he felt obligated, not for the first time, to tell her that there were good men. He just wasn’t sure how to do that, because she wasn’t asking. Instead, he stepped out of her way so that she could come inside.

Once she was inside, she didn’t seem to know where to be. She looked like she was going over to the loveseat, but then seemed to change her mind a few steps in. She stood in the middle of the room, looked around, and then watched her aunt fuss over the two cats that were meowing and gliding in circles at her feet.

“I’ll go get y’all’s things,” Dwight said, and hurried out the door.

He got the two overnight bags and Zoe’s backpack—which weighed more than the other two combined—out of the trunk, then hurried back inside. The two women were right where he’d left them.

“Where do you want me to put these?”

Paulette shook her head and waved at the floor. “Just set ’em down. Everything got to be washed.”

He put the bags on the carpet. “Uh, I guess I’ll be getting along,” he said after a moment. “Unless y’all need me to do anything.”

Zoe glanced over at him, but then looked away, toward the kitchen.

“I don’t guess so,” Paulette answered. “We’ll just wait to hear from Ms. Redmond.”

“I’m sure she’ll be in touch as soon as she’s done over there,” Dwight said. “She wanted to check in on y’all anyway.”

“All right then,” Paulette said.

“Miss Zoe, you take care. You can call me or the lieutenant any time if you need something.”

She looked over at him. “Thank you.”

Dwight nodded, then made his escape, closing the door quietly behind him. He heard someone lock it before he’d gotten off the front steps.

Zoe looked around the room after she’d locked the door. She couldn’t help but look over at the loveseat, and the sense that everything about the world had changed right there gave her a twinge of vertigo. She looked away quickly, and almost started for the dining room table, but the back door was right beyond it and she wasn’t ready to look at that, either.

Her aunt looked at her, the cats at her feet. “Don’t have any other place to go to,” Paulette said.

Zoe swallowed and nodded. “I know.”

Paulette watched her for a moment. Neither one of them knew what to say for a moment. “I’ll get these clothes in the wash,” Paulette eventually said. “Then I guess I’ll fix us some lunch.”

Zoe nodded. “Okay,” she said, though food made her sick.

Paulette walked into the kitchen, the cats trailing noisily behind her. Zoe grabbed her backpack and headed down the hall. As soon as she entered the hall, the air seemed to have more oxygen in it. He hadn’t been there; it was still clean.

She walked into her room at the end of the hall and set her backpack on the floor at the foot of her twin bed. She looked around, and everything was exactly where she left it, but all of it looked different. The poster from her favorite movie, Franco Zefferelli’s
Romeo & Juliet
. Her teddy bear, Benjamin, lying face down on top of the covers. Her papier mache mobile of the planets hanging in front of her window. All of it the same, but she was different.

She sat down on the end of the bed, stared down the hall at the living room, and waited for Aunt Paulette to call her for lunch.

Maggie’s parents lived on Hwy 98, on a stretch just outside of town and right against the bay. It wasn’t the most scenic of roads, or the fanciest of neighborhoods, but it had been affordable bayfront property back in the seventies, and it had been a great place for a water-loving child to grow up.

Maggie pulled off the highway and started down the long gravel drive. She’d picked Kyle up from school after she’d gone home and fed Coco and the chickens and packed overnight bags for Kyle and herself. She glanced over at Kyle in the passenger seat. “Do you have any homework to do?”

“Just some math,” Kyle said.

“Make sure you do it, okay?”

“I will,” he said. “Can’t I go with you and Granddad and Sky?”

“Sorry, buddy. Granddad needs help, but I don’t want to overwhelm Zoe,” Maggie said. “She knows Sky, if she remembers her.”

She parked next to her dad’s old truck in front of the house.

“I feel bad for her,” Kyle said.

Maggie sighed. “Me, too.”

“I’m glad you’re the one helping her.”

Maggie nodded. “I hope I can.”

“You will,” Kyle said.

Maggie blinked a few times and then gave Kyle a smile. “You’re such a good guy, Kyle.

She looked up Gray Redmond came out through the front screen door, and she and Kyle got out as he made his way to them.

Gray Redmond was a tall, lanky man with sand-colored hair that tended to fall into his eyes when he let it go too long between cuts. He was a quiet and gentle man, a bookworm who used his words sparingly and considered them well before he spoke. Maggie watched him as he rolled up the sleeves of his old denim work shirt, revealing arms that were deceptively sinewy. There was an old saying that only an oysterman picked a fight with an oysterman, and it was true of anyone who had any sense. Decades of working those tongs had made Gray far stronger than he looked.

“Hey, Daddy,” Maggie said.

“Hey there, Sunshine,” he said. “Hey, buddy.”

“Hey, Granddad.”

Kyle reached into the back to get his backpack and overnight bag, as Gray gently grabbed Maggie’s face and kissed her forehead.

“How are you, Daddy?’ Maggie asked.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Hey, Kyle, why don’t you go on in the house and let me talk to your mother a minute? Your Grandma’s got some lemon bars waiting on you.”

“Okay,” Kyle said. “I’ll see you later, Mom.”

“Hey!” she called, as Kyle started to head for the house. He stopped, walked around the front of the Jeep, and gave her a hug. “I love you,” Maggie said.

“Love you, too, Mom. See you tomorrow.”

Maggie and her father watched him until he reached the front door, then Gray turned to his daughter. “Where’s Sky?”

“She’ll be here in a minute.”

“Do they know why they’re spending the night?”

Maggie looked away. “I just said I was working all night,” she admitted. “I’d rather lie to them than ask them to lie to Mom.”

Gray tucked his hands in his front pockets and looked over Maggie’s head at nothing in particular. “Your mama worries about you,” he said.

“I know. But I can’t really handle her panic over me staying at Boudreaux’s,” Maggie said. “And I can’t really see her being reassured about it, either.”

Gray looked down at Maggie. “Did you tell Wyatt?”

“Yes.” Maggie said. She tried to crawl out from under her father’s steady gaze by focusing on the keys in her hand. “He’s angry with me.”

“I expect so,” Gray answered.

“Are you angry with me?” she asked once she got up the nerve to look at him.

Gray regarded her a moment. “No, baby. But I am worried.”

“He’s not going to corrupt me, Daddy.”

“I’m not worried about you being corrupted, Maggie,” Gray said. “I’m worried about you being confused. And I’m worried that this’ll get in between you and Wyatt.”

Maggie swallowed hard. “I love Wyatt, Daddy.”

“I know you do.”

“Maybe more than I loved David. Or differently,” she said. “It’s not that he’s insecure about Boudreaux—”

“Aw, Maggie, don’t kid yourself,” Gray interrupted. “No man who’s in love is secure.” He looked toward the highway. “And Bennett Boudreaux is one magnetic son of a gun. But dangerous.”

“He’s not dangerous to me.”

“There’s more than one kind of danger, Maggie.”

“He saved my life.”

Gray nodded and looked at the ground. “That he did.”

“And you’re the one that sent him,” Maggie said, trying not to sound as nervous as the statement made her.

“I did,” Gray said. “We went over that then. I knew he hadn’t evacuated.”

He looked up and met her eyes, Maggie’s heart rate picking up just a bit as they stared at each other a moment.

“Something you want to say, Margaret Anne?” he asked her quietly.

It took Maggie a moment to answer. “Did you and Boudreaux used to be friends, Daddy? Back before I was born?”

“No, Maggie,” he said after a moment. “We were never friends.”

He seemed to wait for her to ask him something else.

Were you his alibi in ’77, Daddy?
To her relief, she chickened out.

Gray looked up at the sound of a vehicle coming up the drive, and Maggie was grateful to see Sky approaching in her father’s old Toyota truck.

“Well, Sunshine,” Daddy said. “Let’s get this boat in the water.”

M
aggie pulled into the driveway first, and Gray and Sky pulled up next to her in Gray’s truck. Paulette came out of the front door and looked at Maggie curiously as Gray pulled his red toolbox out of the bed of his truck.

“Hey, Paulette,” Maggie said as she walked toward the front steps.

“Hey,” Paulette answered.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I brought my father and my daughter over to help install some motion sensor lights for you outside.”

“I don’t have the money to pay for that,” the woman said.

Maggie stopped at the bottom of the steps. “It’s okay, these were leftovers,” Maggie said, though they weren’t, and she had no idea what she was saying they were left over from.

Zoe appeared behind Paulette, and Paulette got out of the way, stepped down onto the small front stoop.

“Hey, Zoe,” Maggie said.

“Hey, Coach.”

Maggie heard Gray and Sky’s footsteps on the walkway, and glanced over her shoulder before looking back at Zoe. “Do you remember my dad?”

A faint smile appeared on the girl’s face as she looked at Gray. The little girls had always loved Gray, who had helped Maggie coach the softball team for several years.

“Yes, ma’am,” Zoe said. “Hey, Coach Redmond.”

“Zoe. Look at you, so grown,” he said with a smile.

“Hey, Zoe,” Sky said from beside him.

Zoe seemed to think for a moment before remembering the older girl’s name. “Hey, Sky.”

“Man, you’re taller than I am,” Sky said, though that wasn’t saying much. She and Maggie were both 5’3.

Zoe gave Sky a polite smile.

“Is it okay, Paulette?” Maggie asked.

“I guess,” Paulette said, her flat tone more from embarrassment at charity than it was from apathy. “I appreciate it.”

Maggie shrugged. “No problem.”

Paulette stepped onto the grass and lit a cigarette.

“Do you mind if I use your restroom?” Maggie asked.