Trespassing(43)

He’s reading my license plate.

I guess I don’t have to explain why I’m dressed for autumn in a place that appears to be bottoming out at near-paradise-degrees Fahrenheit.

Elizabella’s arms now wrap around my thigh.

“I own this property,” I say.

“Okay.”

“Are you a tenant?”

“Naw. Just looking after the place until Tasha comes back.”

“Tasha?” I pry my daughter’s hands loose and lift her to my hip. “Do you mean Natasha? Markham?”

“Tasha . . . I-don’t-know-Tasha. My neighbor. I live . . .” He thumbs in the general direction of things behind him. “Who are you again?”

This time, I offer a hand, which he shakes with a single pump. “Veronica Cavanaugh. And this . . .” I tilt my head to meet Elizabella’s. “This is my daughter. I own this place. I have the deed.” I shift to open my purse, but I can’t risk his seeing the cash—not that he’d ask where I got it, but it isn’t something I want to flaunt—and Bella’s weight makes it difficult to maneuver anyway.

“I’m sorry . . . come in.” He steps aside and opens the door farther.

I shouldn’t walk in while he’s in the house. The shadow of fear looms over me, and I feel as if a target has been painted on my back, just when I was starting to feel safe again. I glance over my shoulder, although I know no one has been tailing me since the Illinois-Wisconsin border. We’re twelve hundred miles from home, and I took a winding path.

No one knows we’re here.

Aside from Detective Guidry, that is.

“And you are?” I raise an eyebrow.

“Christian. Renwick.”

“Mister Renwick, I—”

“Christian. I’m just here to feed the cat.”

“Cat?” I enter the cool two-story foyer, my boots clicking against the pale-blue squares of porcelain. The place looks like something out of old world Capri, complete with a plaster-molded fountain niched into the wall with a copper faucet to supply it. The water isn’t running now.

“Is she not supposed to have a cat?”

“I don’t mind cats,” I say.

“When Tasha left, she didn’t say you’d be coming.”

I didn’t know I was coming, either. “When will Tasha be back?”

“She and the kids are usually back by September, for school.”

“Kids?”

“They leave late June, come back late August. I feed Papa Hemingway, take care of things, you know, until she calls to tell me they’re back. Been a little worried, to tell you the truth. They’re not usually gone this long. They’re almost three months late.”

I’m nodding, as if I understand, but nothing makes sense right now. And my back is killing me, but Elizabella clings to me like a monkey to a tree. I can’t put her down.

“So if you’re here,” Christian says, “I guess you’ve decided to put the house on the market after all.”

“Hmm.” It’s a nice nondescript reply, I hope.

“I would’ve thought she would’ve at least come to pack her stuff. Or . . . or is that why you’re here?”

“I . . .”

“Sorry.” He puts up a hand, as if he’s halting traffic. “None of my business. You’d think she’d at least take her cat, but . . . you want him? Or you want me to take him?”

“I’ll . . .” My eye catches a series of framed photos on a long, narrow table tucked against the wall beneath the staircase. I glance at the photos, which appear to be black-and-white images of island-type sites—palm trees, a shoreline. “I don’t mind cats.”

“Well, if you change your mind . . . Hemingway and I are old buds by now. Never thought of getting a cat. A dog maybe, but—”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“If you need help slapping some paint on the walls, whatever, to help get the house ready, give me a call. You’ve got a crack in that pool that needs fixing.”

Of course there’s a pool with a house like this.

“I’ve got time. I’m retired.”

“Retired?” He doesn’t look a day past thirty-five.

“Semi. I’m a writer now. Well”—he shrugs—“to be honest, I do a lot more paddleboarding and surfing than writing.”

For a second or two, we stand there in awkward silence. I wonder if he’s trying to figure out a way to ask me to leave or maybe if I ought to be asking him. It’s my house. I don’t have anywhere else to go.

Elizabella squirms in my arms and murmurs, “Nini’s hungry.”

“I’d better get her something to eat,” I say. “Closest restaurant?”

“Follow Southard.” He karate-chops the air, demonstrating the straight path I ought to take. “It’ll take you directly to Old Town.”

I freeze in my tracks at the irony of it. For all my recent pining to return to Old Town in Chicago, I’ve ended up here, in Old Town, Key West.

“Plenty to choose from,” he’s saying, “once you hit Duval.”

I nod, hoping I don’t look like a deer caught in headlights.

“I’m heading out in a bit,” he continues, “if you want to tag along.”