I nodded as I put the Bronco in gear. “Oh, yes, sir. That man has no idea what I got in store for him.”
24
I drove home in a daze. Paco’s truck was under the carport, and so was his Harley, but Michael’s car was gone, which meant they’d probably gone out fishing for dinner. I stripped off my clothes and took a good long shower, letting the hot water soothe my aching brain and body. I padded naked into the combination closet-office and sat down at my desk, looking at all the unopened bills I’d let pile up. The last thing on earth I felt like doing now was going through bills, so I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and an old faded T-shirt and tied my hair back in a ponytail.
I stripped the sheets off my bed and threw them in the washer with some dish towels and a couple of pairs of work shorts. Normally I would have checked the pockets to make sure I’d emptied everything out first, but I didn’t this time—either I was too tired or too lazy or both. You’d think by now I’d know better, considering I once washed my cell phone on the delicate cycle. Turns out it’s not so delicate.
While the washer hummed along doing its mindless job, I did the same in the kitchen with a brush and a bottle of bleach spray. I started with the countertops, which are made of some unlikely amalgamation of white marble and plastic that was popular when my apartment was put in, and then I moved on to the metal-faced cabinets on the wall. I scrubbed the stovetop to within an inch of its life, and by the time I had finished with the kitchen sink, it glittered like a cat’s eye in the mirror.
I took a deep breath and let the lingering chlorine vapors fill my lungs and hoped they were disinfecting me on the inside. I collapsed on the bare mattress in my bedroom and stared up at the ceiling. The sun was sinking low in the sky, and the only light was a melon orange glow coming through the long narrow window near the ceiling.
I knew now that it wasn’t drugs that August was dealing. It was birds. Sarasota may have a lot of birds, but we’ve got nothing on Guatemala. There are at least seven hundred species there, and more than twenty of those are rare and endangered, meaning they’re more likely to fetch a pretty penny on the black market. Guatemala was the ideal place for August to get all the fine-feathered merchandise he needed to keep his “shop” fully stocked.
Also, I finally knew for certain why Corina had so much cash in her purse. August had hired her to smuggle the birds into the country for him. He had probably paid for her transportation, tacked on a few thousand dollars per bird for her trouble, and then passed the merchandise on to rare-bird collectors, pet shops, and dealers. With just one or two resplendent quetzals a month, he could make enough money to buy a new Fiero Miyata and have plenty of cash left over to party.
I knew all about the average bird enthusiast, like Joyce, who gets great pleasure and joy from her “collection” of rare-bird sightings, but it was hard to imagine the type of collector who wants more, who isn’t satisfied with mere sightings but will pay thousands and thousands of dollars to hold that rare bird, alive, in his hands—even if it means taking that bird away from its home and stuffing it in a metal cage for the rest of its life. Not to mention risking the total extinction of the species as a whole.
That’s a kind of pure selfishness that I just cannot comprehend.
I could, on some level, come up with a way to forgive Corina. In her case it was a means of survival, of providing for her newborn baby. She was just a cog in the wheel of a much larger, more sinister machine—an important part of that machine, for sure—but I doubted even she knew exactly what kind of damage she was partly responsible for.
August, on the other hand, I couldn’t explain away so easily. He’d had every advantage in life that a person could ever hope for. Wealthy, white, male, educated, with parents to take care of him and put a roof over his head. There was no excuse. With the death of his stepfather, I knew he’d be going through a rough time, and with his mother so distraught, things were certainly not going to get easier for him anytime soon. But I also knew I didn’t have a choice—I would have to report what I knew about him.
I heard a car coming up the driveway to the house, and I recognized it right away. Michael’s car makes a particular kind of sound as it rolls over the crushed shells. I don’t know if it’s the weight of the car or the width of the tires or what, but I’ve heard it so many times I could probably recognize it in my sleep. Then I heard the sound of car doors shutting and their footsteps crunching across the courtyard to the deck.
“Hey, Dixie!”
I hopped off the bed and ran through the apartment to the French doors. Michael and Paco were posed under the balcony, holding up a line of freshly caught fish and grinning up at me, all shirtless and muscled. They looked like one of those racy postcards all the souvenir shops sell that show perfectly tanned, hunky men with bulging muscles, and have cheesy captions like NICE CATCH!
I said, “Hey, nice catch!”
Michael grinned. “We’re firing up the grill. Dinner in twenty minutes.”
I threw my fists in the air and cried, “Yippee!”
It looked as if the day might end on a high note after all. I raced over and turned on my CD player, and while Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” pumped through the apartment, I shuffled into the closet, shucked off my sweatpants and T-shirt, and starting pawing through my sad collection of clothing. I wanted to look nice for dinner, not just because I was excited to have my men back and a nice home-cooked dinner, but because I remembered Ethan had said he might be stopping by for a little bit.
I pulled on a clean pair of faded jeans and a gauzy white dress shirt and finished it off with a cute pair of wedge sandals. Then I bopped my way into the bathroom and pulled out my little makeup kit. I was half surprised it wasn’t covered in cobwebs. I put on a love smudge of eyeshadow and some nearly translucent pink lip gloss. My hair was still a little damp, so I pulled out my hair dryer from under the counter and blew it out.
Just as I was about to sprint out the door, my office phone rang. I ran over and shut the music off so I could hear who it was, but no way in hell was I answering it, unless of course it had something to do with one of my pets.
I jumped a bit when I heard Detective McKenzie’s familiar voice. “Dixie, we just got the report from the medical examiner on Mr. Harwick. I have a couple of questions for you. Can you call me right away?”
As if it had a mind of its own, my hand reached out to grab the receiver, but I stopped it. Detective McKenzie could at least wait until after dinner. There couldn’t possibly have been anything in that report that required some urgent piece of information from me. I waited for the machine to click off and then skipped down the stairs two at a time.
Michael and Paco had laid out a picnic on the outdoor table. On their way home, they’d stopped by Morton’s Market and picked up some of my all-time favorites: a creamy potato salad with fresh dill, crusty sourdough baguettes, and pear and blackberry tartlets. The fish was whole snapper that Michael had marinated in white wine and olive oil while the grill heated up. It was cooked to perfection, crispy on the outside, light and flaky on the inside, sprinkled with coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper and topped with a few aromatic sprigs of fresh rosemary.
It was heavenly.
Paco set a bucket packed full of ice and frosty bottles of beer on the ground next to the table. “Hey, did you hear they found the Harwick girl?”
I stopped with a forkful of snapper poised at my lips. “What?”
“Yep. She was in Miami.”
“Miami? Where did you hear that?”
“It was on the news. They said she went to visit a friend who’s in college there.”
Michael narrowed his eyes and looked at me. “Did you know about that?”
I saw him notice my hair and makeup, but if he thought anything about it he didn’t say. “No, I swear she didn’t say a word about that to me.”