I nodded. “Okay, but there’s one more thing. Inside the book is one of Mr. Hoskins’s drawings. It’s a woman … and she’s nude.”
“Okay … go on.”
“Well, doesn’t that tell you something?”
“Dixie, what does it tell me?”
I sighed and shook my head, defeated. “I have no idea.”
She thought for a moment. “You’re sure it’s one of Mr. Hoskins’s drawings?”
“I’m not positive, but I think so. It’s not signed or anything, but the woman looks a lot like the woman in a couple of other drawings in the store.”
“Alright. Just to be on the safe side, I’ll send an officer over first thing in the morning to pick it up. For now, keep it someplace safe. Though I must say, it’s not exactly earth-shattering that you’ve got a book from Mr. Hoskins’s bookstore with a drawing by Mr. Hoskins in it. Even given the strange circumstances of where you found it, there are a lot of reasons why someone might hide a nude drawing.”
Half whispering, I said, “I know…”
I was thinking about Janet. If I was going to turn her in, now was the time. If I didn’t tell McKenzie what I knew right away, it would be pretty hard explaining why later … but I just couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t shake the notion that, even though what Janet had done was completely wrong, I knew with all my heart that in her mind she felt there was no other choice.
“Was there something else you wanted to tell me?”
McKenzie’s voice snapped me back to the present. I shook my head. “Um … no, that was it.”
“You’re sure?”
I could tell by the sound of her voice she knew there was something more, but I held firm. “Yep.”
After we hung up, I laid the phone down on the coffee table and just stared at it. I was beginning to wonder if maybe Detective McKenzie didn’t have a few psychically gifted ancestors of her own.
* * *
For the next half hour or so I managed to keep my mind off everything by straightening up the apartment. I got out some glass cleaner and my trusty bottle of bleach-and-water mix and cleaned the heck out of anything that was glass, porcelain, or chrome until all the accumulated grime was a distant memory. Then I took a long hot shower until all the accumulated grime in my head was a distant memory, too. Feeling completely renewed, I toweled myself off and padded naked into my closet to see if I could drum up a date-worthy outfit to wear.
I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fashionista. It’s not that I don’t like nice clothes, I do, but unlike most women I just don’t like shopping for them. In fact, I’d be tickled pink if I never had to see another mall for as long as I live, even if it meant wearing the same clothes every day until they fell off in tatters and I had to go around stark-raving mad and naked to boot—which may very well happen one day. Standing in the middle of my closet and surveying my measly collection of outfits, though, I wished I had a slightly better attitude.
There were only a few viable options, one of which was a beautiful plum-colored evening dress, but I’d worn that the first time we’d gone to Yolanda and it didn’t seem right to wear it twice in the same place, so instead I decided on something a little less fancy. I laid out a white silk blouse with mother-of-pearl buttons, a low-cut yellow cotton camisole, and a pair of cream-colored linen capris.
Looking in the mirror over the desk, I applied a little makeup, with just enough blush and eyeliner to make it look like I hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. That took me a good ten minutes. Then I pulled the hair dryer out from under the sink, blew off the dust, and coaxed my hair into a state of natural, windswept fluffiness—as if I’d just come in from a fun, carefree day at the beach. That took another ten minutes at least. Then I got dressed, which took another half hour because I changed my mind about what to wear ten times, and just when I’d given up and settled on my first choice—with a resolution to go to the mall as soon as possible—I heard Ethan’s car rolling up the driveway. I knew I had just enough time to slip my bare feet into a pair of nice low-heeled sandals before he could climb the steps and knock on the door.
As I checked myself one last time in the mirror, I had a momentary lapse. I think it was the mother-of-pearl buttons on my blouse—for a second I saw the shiny brass buttons of Mr. Hoskins’s shirt staring back at me in the darkness, but I closed my eyes and chased the image away before it had a chance to take over my whole brain. Then I just stood there and waited.
There was no knock. I went into the living room and looked through the window, thinking Ethan was waiting for me in the hammock, but he wasn’t there. I grabbed my pocketbook and opened the French doors. Nothing. I looked over the balcony, and sure enough there was his car, parked just behind mine, but he was nowhere in sight. I went down the steps into the courtyard.
The tiki torches were all lit, except they’d been rearranged. Instead of surrounding the deck like they usually did, they were in a line leading all the way down to the beach. I looked in the kitchen window. It was empty. Drying on a rack next to the sink was a pile of copper pots and pans, but Michael and Paco were nowhere to be seen.
I went over to the edge of the deck and followed the line of torches down to the beach, where my eyes finally landed on Ethan, illuminated by the golden glow of the last torch. He was at the water’s edge, standing next to a small table and two dining chairs. There was a white cloth spread across the table with a glass hurricane lamp in the middle, sending a flickering light over a sparkling arrangement of silverware, wineglasses, and gleaming white china.
He called out, “Hemingway, party of two?”
27
Every life has its milestones, those perfect moments that feel entirely right and familiar, as if you’ve been dreaming about them your whole life. Ethan was standing in the sand with the waves gently lapping over his bare feet, wearing a fitted black dress shirt and tan chinos rolled up to his calves. I immediately felt like I’d wandered into some kind of photo shoot for Foxy Man Magazine—and the theme was “World’s Most Eligible Bachelor.”
Most women presented with such a stunning tableau would have felt like a queen at her coronation, or at least Snow White waking up to her handsome prince, but not me. Both of my hands started to tingle, as if they’d fallen asleep, and my vision went a little blurry. I’ve only fainted once in my whole life, but I was a little worried it was about to happen again. It took all the strength I could muster just to make the rest of the trip down to the water—I distinctly remember making a conscious effort to put one foot in front of the other. As I came up to Ethan, my legs quivering and my head on spin cycle, he silently took me in his arms and kissed me.
I said, “What in the world is happening?”
He was beaming. “I decided we’d do something a little more special, and the food’s much better here at Chez Ethan.”
“Are you kidding me? Whose idea was this?”
“Well, yet again I’d like to take full credit, but it was a group effort. It’s a good thing Michael and Paco are around or I’d be the lousiest boyfriend ever. We figured you could probably use a nice dinner at home after, you know, after everything that’s happened this week.”
There was only one word I could think of that was appropriate for this particular moment: Whew!
I’d just been on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. Tiki torches leading down to a beach, a beautifully appointed table, candlelight, romantic dinner for two, waves gently lapping at our feet … the only thing missing was Ethan getting down on one knee and then maybe some fireworks over the ocean and a harp player. Once I realized there was no ring involved, I felt like a fool, a very lucky fool, but a fool nonetheless.