The House on Mermaid Point

Chapter Thirteen

Nicole surfed the Internet looking for water taxis or other transportation. The options were far more limited than one would expect in a place where the landmasses were small and the bodies of water that surrounded them large. But then, most people who were holed up on an island probably either had no interest in leaving or had their own seaworthy transportation. It would be far easier to get a limo to the Miami airport than a boat to the marina a couple of mile markers away.

She was contemplating something called a Nautilimo—a boat that had been designed to look like a pink Cadillac—when a text dinged in. It was Giraldi.

You okay? Where are you?

Islamorada, she typed. Private island called Mermaid Point.

Will Hightower? His immediate response told her he had been well aware of this possibility. Or had received secret FBI smoke signals of some kind documenting their arrival. Loved Wasted Indian. Especially Mermaid in You.

She smiled as she pictured a pre-FBI, possibly long-haired version of Joe Giraldi rocking out to the driving beat beneath William Hightower’s soul-searing vocals.

Hightower doesn’t love us, Nicole typed back.

Hard to imagine, he replied quickly.

Well said, she responded. Where r u?

Hartsfield. En route to Chicago. Home Monday.

Nicole stared at the text. Hartsfield International was in Atlanta, where her brother was incarcerated. But there were a lot of financial criminals besides Malcolm Dyer there. And Joe’s specialty was financial crime profiling.

Oh? It was all she could manage.

The cursor blinked. She could envision Giraldi strapped into the bulkhead seat that would accommodate his long legs, waiting. She wanted to ask if he’d seen Malcolm, but not quite as much as she didn’t want to know. She hadn’t spoken to her brother since he’d tried to use her one last time and she’d finally understood that the closeness she’d believed they’d had had never really existed. That he had, in fact, been playing her, just as he did everyone else, his whole life.

Another text from Joe appeared. Can come down next weekend.

She was grateful that he knew her well enough to follow her lead and didn’t offer information about her brother that she might not be ready to hear.

Living on houseboat. Short on doors and bathrooms. Dreaming of hotel bed and bath. Maybe room service.

I’m there. And then some. Making reservation. Pack light. A toothbrush should do it.

She felt a distinctly sexual tingle even as she typed. Leaving island is complicated.

A little rusty, Joe replied, but have extraction training.

Nicole smiled. A boat would do.

Have that, too, he typed.

My hero. The words might be flip, but that didn’t make them untrue.

Cleared for takeoff, he typed. See you next weekend.

She typed her good-byes and wished the weekend—and Joe—weren’t quite so far away.

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll catch up with you in a little bit. I just want to go through the footage I have so far.” Kyra sat at the banquette, her laptop and a notepad in front of her.

Avery and Deirdre hadn’t yet come back from their walk-through. Maddie hoped they hadn’t killed or maimed each other.

“All right. We’ll be down on the beach.” Maddie wore her bathing suit and another long T-shirt. She would have rather stayed here near the docks, except that on this side of the island most of the beach was mangrove covered and the breeze was a fraction of what came from the east.

She carried Dustin’s speedboat and trailer, along with a straw bag filled with sunscreen, towels, drinks, and sandwiches. Dustin carried his pail and shovel. He’d buckled the tool belt Avery and Chase had given him for Christmas around his hips. Orange floaties surrounded his upper arms.

She took the path to the house, then followed it between the pool and the pavilion, hoping that William Hightower had finished swimming and gone back inside. As they drew closer she spotted him lying immobile on a chaise, the back of his head pillowed on one bent arm, his chin tilted up to the sun. His eyes were closed.

For a long moment she watched his chest go up and down in the rhythm of sleep. She did not let her eyes drop or wander over his mostly bare body, but she did soften her step and moved as quietly as one could with a one-and-a-half-year-old boy in tow.

They were almost past the pool when Dustin shouted, “Look, Geema! Billyum is sleeping!”

“Dustin,” she whispered, “you don’t yell when you know someone’s asleep.”

“Look, Geema,” he shouted. “He waked up!”

Maddie stopped tiptoeing. She turned. Hightower was indeed awake. He raised up on one elbow, his eyes wide open.

“Sorry,” she called, holding tight to Dustin’s hand. “We’re still working on levels of enthusiasm. If it won’t disturb you, I was going to take him down to the beach for a while.”

“No problem.”

She stared back, trying to keep her attention on his face. Not the broad shoulders, the ripple of muscle as he shifted slightly, or the chest hair that triangled downward. It occurred to her that bringing up the use of his laundry and kitchen might be better than staring so stupidly, but she could hardly stand still, given the way he was now studying her, let alone ask for something. Dustin pulled on her hand.

“Is it safe to swim in the shallows off the beach?” she asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t strike out for the lighthouse or anything, but as long as you’re not flashing diamonds or other shiny objects, the barracuda probably won’t bother you.”

“Twim!” Dustin raised his floatie-ready arms in excitement.

There was a surprising flash of white teeth from Hightower. “Nothing like a good swim,” he agreed.

“Thank you,” Maddie said, waiting for him to tune them out and lie back down, or at least close his eyes. He did none of these things. In fact, he seemed to be looking at her legs with what appeared to be an appreciative gleam in his eyes.

“Come on, Geema.”

There was no help for it. Trying to blank her mind so that it would not dwell on the view Hightower would now have of her less-than-pert behind, Maddie nodded and turned. She felt his eyes on them all the way to the spot where Dustin threw himself down, pulled out his shovel, and started digging in the damp white sand.

Because she couldn’t help it, Kyra Googled Daniel Deranian then forced herself to look at picture after picture of him, his equally famous movie star wife, and their children, who seemed to be together on some extended tour of European capitals to promote Daniel’s latest film. They hadn’t really spoken since January, when Kyra had called him out for buying Bella Flora and turning it over to the one person she couldn’t bear to picture setting foot in it.

The child support payments continued on an automatic deposit schedule set up by one of Daniel’s financial people, and she in turn sent him the periodic photos of Dustin that their agreement stipulated. But ever since she’d refused to allow Dustin to visit when Tonja Kay was present, there’d been little contact between Dustin and his father, aside from the playhouse-sized version of Bella Flora that had been delivered to Pass-a-Grille on Christmas Eve.

She continued through the pictures, her attention focused on the smile on Daniel’s face, the adoration with which his children looked up at him, the close-ups of Tonja Kay’s angelically beautiful face, which totally camouflaged the angry, ugly person who dwelt inside. All of these were important reminders of why both she and Dustin were better off several steps removed from Daniel, who could so easily suck both of them back into his orbit. Reminders she couldn’t allow herself to forget.

After he completed both a sand castle and parking garage for his speedboat and took numerous dips in the ocean, Dustin looked at Maddie and asked for a “hand-witch.”

Certain that Hightower must have abandoned the pool deck long ago, Maddie smiled down at her grandson and helped him rinse the sand off his hands and face. “Come on, let’s gather up our things and have a picnic.”

After the bright midday sun, the pavilion was dark and cool. The ocean breeze streamed through it. Her eyes were still adjusting when Dustin yelped, “Billyum!” and raced toward a nearby table. Maddie looked up and spotted William Hightower, his long legs crossed at the ankles in front of him.

“Oh, no, Dustin. We don’t want to disturb Mr. . . .”

But Dustin was already settling in the chair next to Hightower, the sandwich she’d allowed him to carry smashed in his fist. He pried the plastic wrap off it and offered a mangled half to William.

“Billyum hand-witch?” Dustin held a smooshed, drooping triangle up to Hightower.

Surprisingly, Hightower was smiling. His eyes lit with amusement. “I hate to eat your lunch,” he said to Dustin before turning to Maddie. “I don’t suppose you have another one of those hand-witches in that bag?” He motioned her to the vacant chair across from him.

She sat. Pulling the beach bag onto her lap, she rummaged through it.

“Here you go,” she said, handing the rock star the equally battered second sandwich, followed by napkins for both of them. “What kind of juice box would you like to go with it? I have apple and grape.”

“Duce,” Dustin said.

“Which one do you like best?” William asked Dustin.

Dustin gave this some thought. “Gwape.”

“I’ll take the apple, please,” he said to Maddie. “My friend here will have the gwape.”

They drank their juice boxes companionably while Maddie tried to process William Hightower’s easy warmth toward Dustin, the unfeigned interest with which he listened to her grandson’s chatter, the way he consumed the mangled peanut butter and jelly sandwich as if he’d never tasted anything better.

“So, does your husband have a problem with you being gone all summer?”

Surprised, she looked up to find William studying her, his dark eyes more intent than his tone.

“Oh, no. My husband doesn’t . . . I mean, my husband has no . . .” Good grief. She stopped talking. The man was just making conversation; there was no need to read anything into it. “What I meant to say is I’m recently divorced. So it’s not really my ex-husband’s concern where I go or for how long.”

William nodded, his expression giving no hint of anything more than idle curiosity. Bemused, Maddie drank in the extraordinary sight of William Hightower chatting easily with her grandson as they finished off their PB&Js and drained every last drop from their juice boxes. A sight she could never have imagined and would most likely never forget.