Judy looked around to make sure nobody was listening, and leaned closer. “See that man at the counter reading the paper? That’s Dr. Coffey. He’s a heart surgeon. He and Marilee Doerring were engaged a couple of years ago.”
A bell dinged from the back to get Judy’s attention, and she got up with her coffeepot to go pick up an order.
I studied the man at the counter. He was lean to the point of boniness, with sharp shoulder blades jutting from his back like mountain ridges. His dark hair was shorn high, with a longer shock flopping down to meet the shaved part. It was a cut for a much younger man, a cut meant to be cool and mellow. It made him look like the nerdy kid in high school who never quite fits in, the one who’s always on the sidelines watching the popular kids. He was wearing the Siesta Key male uniform—khaki shorts, short-sleeved knit shirt, and docksiders, which exposed a lot of straight black hair on his arms and legs. For a quick second, I imagined running my hands down his bare back and felt my fingers tangle in a thicket of hair. Ugh.
Somehow I couldn’t imagine him with Marilee, but if they’d been engaged, he must have known where she went on her business trips. Before I could talk myself out of it, I got up and went to the counter and took the stool next to Coffey. He turned his head just enough to give me a quick glance to reassure himself I wasn’t anybody he knew, and turned back to his paper. He had a smooth rectangular face like a department store mannequin, with a high forehead and long cheeks. His sallow skin was perfect as plaster, and his dark eyes were velvety and dull, like ripe olives that have set out too long and lost their sheen.
I said, “Dr. Coffey, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I’d like to ask you something.”
He looked at me again, this time with a furrow of distaste forming on his unlined forehead.
“I’ll be quick,” I promised him. “My name is Dixie Hemingway, and—”
Looking flustered and anxious, Judy came trouncing to us bearing his order and her coffeepot. He moved his paper out of the way so she could set his plate down. Scrambled egg whites, dry rye toast, sliced tomatoes. I guess if you’re a heart surgeon, you eat like that.
Judy topped off his coffee and looked warningly at me. “Something for you?”
“No thanks, I’m not staying,” I said.
She gave an emphatic nod of her head and stomped off with her coffeepot held in front of her like a lancet.
Ignoring me, Dr. Coffey picked up his fork and cut into his egg whites. His fingers were hairy, too, with black hair sprouting between his knuckles. I watched his fork with a kind of repelled fascination. There’s something unnatural about eating just the white of an egg.
I pushed Ghost’s velvet collar higher on my arm and said, “The thing is, I’m a pet-sitter, and one of my clients left town and didn’t leave a number where she could be reached. There’s been something of an emergency at her house, and I was thinking you might have some idea where she might have gone. Like where her business takes her, or where her family lives.”
He looked toward me again and then stood up so fast it seemed like his knees had suddenly gone stiff and he couldn’t sit anymore. “I know nothing about this! Do you understand me? Nothing! If you bother me again, I’ll have you arrested. Do you understand?” His voice was venomous, and he was shaking.
I said, “Well, actually, you can’t have me arrested just for asking you a question. I’m sorry if I bothered you, but don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
He extended his arm with his skeletal finger pointing at me like Abraham cursing the Philistines. “Stay away from me!”
Stomping to the front door, he charged out of the diner so fast that several people in the front booths looked around.
Judy came over and leaned on the counter. “Thanks a lot,” she said. “You just chased off one of my best customers. Not to mention the fact that he stiffed me for his breakfast.”
“All I did was ask him if he knew where Marilee might have gone. He was going to marry her, he must know something about where her job takes her.”
She groaned. “He hates her. She dumped him practically while the organ was playing the wedding march. I mean, people were in the church and everything. She just up and left him standing there.”
“Well, that’s sort of brave, don’t you think? It must have been embarrassing, but if she realized she didn’t love him—”
“No, you don’t understand! She had got him to put a million dollars in her name just before the wedding. Gave him some big song and dance about how she didn’t want to be dependent on him after they were married, and how she didn’t want to live in fear that he would dump her one day and she’d be out on the street without a dime. How she wanted to be able to look him in the eye as an equal so they would both know she was with him because she wanted to be and not because she had to be. You know, like she was a poor little match girl out on the street getting taken in by a prince or something. The poor schmuck fell for it and transferred a million bucks to her account. In her name. Hers to have no matter what happened, like love insurance.”
“And then she dumped him?”
“Like a rock. He sued her, I think, but the doofus had given her the money, so she got to keep it. He hates her guts now. It was just two years ago. I can’t believe you didn’t hear about it.”
I didn’t remind her that two years ago I’d been doing well to get out of bed and find my way to the bathroom. I wouldn’t have known if they’d declared World War III.
She said, “He’s got a live-in bimbo now. I saw her early one Sunday morning coming out of cocaine alley.”
I knew the place she meant. Everybody on the key, including the Sheriff’s Department, knows the areas where drugs are sold. There’s a drug bust every now and then, but mostly it’s small-time stuff not worth the time and expense to fight, especially when you know the dealers will be back on the street before the ink is dry on the arrest warrant.
“Do you think she was getting it for him?”
“Maybe, but he’s never seemed coked up. She does, though. You look at her and expect her feet to be a few inches off the floor.”
I looked at my watch and said, “Listen, I’ve got to run, okay? I’ll see you later.”
“Let the police handle this, Dixie.”
“It’s not the police, it’s the Sheriff’s Department.”
“Whatever.”
I knew she was right, but it bothered me that I didn’t know how to get in touch with Marilee. I had a responsibility, and I wasn’t at all pleased with how I was handling it.
Six
Before I left, I ducked into the ladies’ room, where two very large black women were at the sinks. One of them I recognized as Tanisha, a cook in the diner, but I didn’t know the other one. I whipped into a stall, and they went dead silent, the way women in a rest room do when they’ve been interrupted mid-conversation. When I flushed, the sound seemed to release them.
“So I says to him, I says, ‘You can kiss my big fat black ass.’”
“Uh-huh, that’s good.”
“I told him, ‘You can start in the middle and kiss your way thirty-six inches to the right, and then you can go back to the middle and kiss your way thirty-six inches to the left. You can just kiss my big fat ass.’”
I went out to wash my hands, and they went silent again. I kept my gaze directed toward my hands, but I could feel them watching me. I pulled a paper towel from the holder and turned around and leaned my butt on the counter.
I said, “I absolutely cannot leave here without knowing what happened next. What’d he say?”