Vicious Carousel (Suncoast Society #25)(58)

More waiting.

“There’s no ID on them,” Tilly said. It’s definitely not Siesta Key or Longboat Key, though. I can tell you that. If I had to guess, it’s Venice, maybe? No, wait, the public beach there doesn’t look like that.”

An epiphany struck. “Manasota Key?” Kenny asked. He remembered Betsy mentioning something about it.

“Fuck. Hold on.” More tapping. “I can’t find an exact match of the pic, but yeah, it could be. Either the north or middle parks. I don’t think it’s the southern one. My money’s on the middle park. I can’t remember what it’s called.”

He would have to remember to give her a hug and kiss of gratitude next time he saw her. “Thank you!”

“Hey! You find her, you call me before you f*cking call Ed, got it?”

“Deal.” He hung up on her and grabbed Nolan. “Talk in the car. Tell Bill I think they’re on Manasota Key.”





“Why do we bring yoga mats if we’re not doing yoga?” Betsy asked June as they trudged back to the car.

“In case we want to sit. They don’t blow around like towels do. Do you need your purse?” She opened the trunk and tossed her rolled mat in.

“No.” Betsy added hers to it. “We’re just getting back out again in a few minutes, right?”

“Yep.” It was after seven, and a gorgeous morning. With the windows down and the radio cranked, they drove south, the tangy salt breeze filling the car and lifting Betsy’s spirits. Earlier, she’d felt an odd sensation she couldn’t shake. June had teasingly assured her it was Betsy’s aversion to early mornings.

But now…now she felt alive, awake. She held her hand out the window and surfed the wind with it, flowing up and down, smiling.

“You know,” Betsy said, “I think maybe tonight when the guys come over I’m going to have a talk with them.”

“Yeah?” June asked. “And?”

“Maybe it would be better to face the trial with them than without them. I mean, living with them. I know they’re going to be there with me for the actual trial.”

“I think that’s a very smart idea, lady.”

They pulled into the small parking area for Stump Pass Beach State Park at the far southern end of the key. Somewhere to the north, they heard several sirens blaring as deputies or fire trucks or something blasted from the mainland, over the Tom Adams bridge and onto the causeway, heading toward the key. In the still, early morning air, the sound traveled for miles. They could also clearly hear outboard motors of boats in the Intracoastal making their way toward open water.

“Holy shit,” June muttered, listening. “Something’s happened.”

“Are we going to walk or stand here?” Betsy swatted at a noseeum. “We stand still too long, we’ll get carried away.”

“It’ll be better by the water,” June said as she led the way after locking the car and tucking the keys into her pocket.

They were on the trail when Betsy tsked. “I should have brought my phone and taken pictures for Tilly.”

“You want to go back and get it?”

“No, that’s okay. I don’t want to walk back. Let’s keep going.”

They headed south along the trails. There were a few people, but most of them walked along the shoreline, heads down and looking for shells.

“Thank you for this,” Betsy told her. “I needed to clear my head.”

“Duh.” June smiled at her. “You’d sort of gotten yourself stuck in a different kind of rut,” she said. “You needed to be shaken out of your routine again.”

“I don’t know what the hell I’d do without you guys,” Betsy said. “I love you.”

“Love you, too. We all do. That’s why we’ve been so heavily vested in not just you, but the guys, as well. The three of you are perfect together. You have to be the one to make the call, though.”

“Yeah. I got scared again.”

“Afraid to take another chance.”

“Isn’t that stupid?” Betsy paused to take a deep breath. “I was stuck in Hell, then I ended up in Heaven, and then I stuck myself in Purgatory.”

“I wouldn’t look at it like that. You needed to decompress for a while. The guys were your safety net when you crashed. You needed to recalibrate your wings, or some pilot shit like that. You have. Now you can go fly again.”

“Some pilot shit like that?”

“I don’t know. I’m a gymnast, not a pilot.” They started walking again. “In training, you get these peaks and valleys. Sometimes, you hit plateaus. You might have something nailed and then, suddenly, something stops working, and you couldn’t nail that flip or stick that landing to save your life. That’s when a good coach will make you stop and do something different. Either try it from the other side of the bar than you’re used to, or reversing your routine direction on the mats, something drastically different, even if it’s technically wrong to do it that way, to see if that makes any changes to what’s not working.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“You try something else. But the point is, once you do get your mojo back, you go back to doing it the way you’re supposed to.” June shrugged. “I think the way you’re supposed to be doing things is living with Nolan and Kenny. If they were two guys I didn’t know from Cheech and Chong, obviously my advice would differ greatly. But we all know them and trust them.”