“You mean Levi?”
She nodded. “You said you’ve known him since grade school?”
“Right. We had a few classes together, but we weren’t really that close.”
I realized I was still holding my indignant Enough pose, which consisted of my fists pressed firmly into my ribs and my head cocked to one side. Somehow, without my even realizing it, McKenzie had charmed me right back into submission, but apparently my body hadn’t caught up yet. I tried to relax my arms and slid my hands down into my pockets as nonchalantly as possible.
I said, “After graduation I didn’t see him again except on his morning paper route. We’re both up early, so our paths cross every once in a while, but that’s about it.”
“And how did you know where to look for him?”
“My friend Tanisha. She’s the cook at the diner. She lives in this neighborhood, although I’m not sure which place is hers. She might be able to tell you more about him.”
“Okay, that’s helpful. So, you were about to knock on Levi’s door…”
“Right, I was just about to knock and I was trying to figure out what I would say to him, and then all of a sudden his fiancée was there. She said this was private property, and I told her I was just checking on Levi.”
“And where did she come from?”
“I don’t know. I turned around and there she was, just to the left of his car.” I pointed at the driver’s-side door of Levi’s LeSabre.
“And what were her words, exactly?”
“She was pretty upset right from the start. I think she said, ‘Can I help you?’ or something like that. I tried to tell her I was a friend of Levi’s and I just wanted to make sure he was okay, but she was hell-bent on getting rid of me. Apparently, Levi came home last night with another woman, and she thinks it was me.”
McKenzie flipped a page over in her pad, and without looking up said, “She says you and Levi came home last night around 11:30. Does that sound right?”
I shook my head slowly. “No. That does not sound right. Detective McKenzie, I don’t know who that woman was, but it definitely wasn’t me. I was not here last night.”
“Well, then, you’ll forgive me, but I do need to ask … where were you?”
“I was home.”
“And were you alone or was there someone with you?”
I felt my ears turning red. “Yes.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes, you—”
I cut her off. “Yes, there was someone with me, and no, I was not alone.”
“And you don’t by any chance happen to know where we might find someone in Levi’s family … his parents, or a sibling perhaps?”
“No. I’d think that would be a good question for his fiancée.”
She nodded and then leaned in slightly. “Just between you and me…” She looked over her shoulder and lowered her voice. “Sasquatch—I believe that’s what you called her—is a bit unstable.”
One of the deputies stepped up and whispered something in McKenzie’s ear. She nodded curtly and put her hand out. “Thanks for your time, Dixie. I think I’d better go have a talk with her now.”
I nodded mutely.
“In the meantime, I need to ask that you not talk about this to anyone, at least not until we’ve had a chance to locate the next of kin.”
Just then, a black and white van pulled in behind the row of cars. I figured it was probably the department’s new mobile forensics unit, which they’d been able to purchase recently thanks to an anonymous donation. A woman in dark navy pants and a white lab coat stepped out with a bulky black briefcase. It looked very official and high-tech, like something you might keep the nation’s nuclear codes in.
The woman was exquisitely beautiful, with jet-black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, and almond-shaped eyes that were a deep obsidian-brown. She looked like a Chinese movie star, or—I’ll admit it—like a part-time model from one of those TV crime shows. As I made my way back to the Bronco, I heard her say, “Detective McKenzie? I’m Megan Granda.”
In a daze, I got behind the wheel and backed up slowly until the nose of the Bronco was pointed out, then I headed toward the stretch of grass along the shoulder of the dirt road. I was wondering if I’d be able to make it through without making everyone move their cars when I looked up in the rearview mirror to find Detective McKenzie trotting along behind me and waving a finger in the air. I slowed to a stop as she came around to the window.
“Dixie, sorry.” She put her hands on her hips and paused to catch her breath. “I just remembered one more thing. About this morning, are you absolutely certain it was Levi parked outside your driveway?”
I said, “I just assumed it was him because that’s usually about the time the paper arrives, and it definitely looked like his car…”
“But you’re not sure.”
I shook my head. “It was so dark and foggy.”
“It might help pinpoint the time of death…”
I don’t think the reality of what had happened had actually sunk in yet, because the idea that there was a “time of death” sent a tremor down my spine.
I said, “I wish I could say for sure, but he’s the only person on the island I can think of that would’ve had a good reason for being there, right?”
She turned and looked in the direction of the trailer. For a second I imagined all those cogs and wheels in her head spinning in slow, deliberate circles, then she turned and for the first time looked me directly in the eye.
“Define good.”
12
The whole way home, I left the windows in the Bronco rolled down, and eventually—I’m not sure when—my little fly friend escaped back into the wild. The warm breeze felt good blowing through my hair, and the sound the wind made as it rushed through the car helped dampen the melee of thoughts that were spinning around inside my head. I could barely hold on to one before another would swoop in and knock it out of the way.
I kept seeing Levi’s face, the way I remembered him from high school, the way he always smiled and gave me a wave whenever our paths crossed, but then the image of his body lying on the floor of the trailer would rush in, and then Sasquatch’s angry maw would appear, telling me to get the hell off her property, and then Dick Cheney’s scary eyes and gnashing teeth bearing down, and then Levi’s car outside my driveway and candles and curtains and red-toed Buddhas, all bouncing around in my brain like ping-pong balls in a front-load washing machine.
I shook my head and tried to clear it all away. It had probably been a bit of an understatement when I told Detective McKenzie I was in shock, because as soon as I turned out of Grand Pelican Commons and headed up Tamiami Trail, my whole body started shivering slightly, despite the fact that the sun was straight overhead and it was easily ninety degrees in the shade.
The copper pod trees along Midnight Pass Road were all blanketed with their yellow orchidlike blossoms, filling the air with the scent of crushed grapes, and following along in the clouds over the treetops to the west was a lone osprey, its wings spread wide, coasting on the breeze. For a while I pretended he was my own personal escort, assigned to make sure I got home safe and sound. It felt good to think I wasn’t alone.
Poor Levi.
I couldn’t get the image of his lifeless body out of my mind. In spite of our brief encounter outside Mrs. White’s ninth-grade history class (or maybe because of it) we hadn’t really talked that much in the years following. Every once in a while we’d wind up in the same class or study period, and one of his buddies on the baseball team was the brother of one of my best girlfriends, so we often found ourselves at the same parties or sitting together at football games, but that was about the extent of it. He was tall, blond, good-looking, and he always seemed like a nice enough kid, even if, as Judy had said, he did have a bit of a wild streak in him … but in the era before cell phones and computer games, every teenager with half a pulse went through a wild stage. There wasn’t much else to do in a sleepy beach town like Siesta Key.