“Your shirt’s inside out,” Adam whispered just as I started walking toward the doorway.
I stopped and looked at him, then down. Yes, sure enough, that’s what I got for dressing myself in the dark. “For Christ’s sake.” I yanked it over my head, not in a state of mind to care if someone besides Jun saw my body bling, before righting the shirt and putting it back on. What was I wearing? A cartoon octopus with a top hat and monocle, holding a cup of tea. Naturally.
“Aubrey…. Get into a fight with a feral cat?” Bob asked as I walked into the main room. He was an intimidating guy, even without the constant bad attitude. Nearly as tall as Jun but with none of the warmth or sense of safety. He hit the gym on a regular basis, judging from the slightly too-bulky muscles that were pulling at the seams of his polo shirt. And he always had a five-o’clock shadow, regardless of how recently he’d shaved. Bob Ricci was the kind of manly man who probably beat up guys like me back in high school to prove his testosterone levels.
“Good morning, Bob,” I said, ignoring the question. “I wasn’t expecting you here.”
“The same can be said about you,” he replied, crossing his arms over his barrel chest in some kind of macho-man intimidation tactic. “But I saw that scooter of yours in the driveway.”
“It’s a Vespa,” I corrected.Be respectful of the Italian wasp.
Bob didn’t respond immediately. “Let’s go talk somewhere.”
“Here’s fine,” I answered, because I wasn’t supposed to be alone—not that Adam as my backup was what Jun wanted.
Bob shook his head and walked to the door that brought tourists into the garden. “Let’s go,” he said again.
What else could I do? I begrudgingly followed. This Friday morning was turning out to be another picture-perfect March day in the Keys. The sun was shining bright through the canopy of trees. Birds tweeted and whistled above us, and butterflies fluttered here and there in the warm air. Bob walked along one of the back paths, away from the home and in the direction of a small koi pond. He stopped once he entered the opening, sliding his hands into his pockets as he stared at the sun’s reflection on the water.
I skirted around him to a tiny case beside the water pump and removed a bag of fish food. “So?” I ventured as I tossed a handful into the water and the otherwise lazy koi began jumping for their breakfast.
“I thought I said you weren’t to be on the grounds until I spoke with Price?”
I calmly closed the bag and put it away. “Yeah, about that…. We had the house closed because of a pesky murder investigation and no one from the board came down to help me. So when I was told I could open today by police….” I paused and looked at him from my crouched position. “Someone had to do their job.”
“Weren’t you supposed to be on vacation anyway?” Bob asked tersely.
I squinted a bit as the sun peeked out from behind a small puff of clouds. It was hard to read any sort of expression on Bob’s face. “Yup. My boyfriend’s visiting.”
His jaw tightened in the corners. Oh, well okay,thatI could decipher. Bob didn’t like the idea of me slobbering on a dick.
“Where is he?”
“Home. Why are you here, Bob?” I stood.
Bob took a step closer, crowding me in ways I didn’t like. I had a flash of imagery—one hard shove to my chest, falling into the pond, held down, water in my lungs….
I stubbornly held my ground. “Here to breathe down my neck? Why’d you come in last night?”
“What?” he asked, taken aback.
“Staying the night at Turtle Bay? Why?” I prodded. “Adam’s naïve enough to believe whatever excuse you gave him—wanting to avoid morning traffic, maybe? Spending the weekend in the Keys after dealing with me? Why’d youreallycome down last night?”
“I’m not here to play twenty questions with you,” Bob growled.
“What’s your relation to Peg Hart?” I asked, hoping saying the name would give me something—a hesitation, a crack in his angry expression—anything.
Instead, all I got was “Who?”
“Where were you last night? Say, around three?” I kept going.
“That’s none of your—”
Somewhere in the recesses of my caffeinated, exhausted mind, I remembered Smith stumbling as he ran away from Jun. That’s right, Jun had shot him! It clearly hadn’t done more than graze Smith, but a nick was a nick. I grabbed Bob’s huge beefy arm, yanked it toward me, and shoved the sleeve of his polo shirt up.
“Nothing,” I whispered. Maybe it had been the other arm? I grabbed his right arm and did the same. No evidence of a bullet wound, and I didn’t think Bob would have healed overnight, no matter how many green juices he drank a day.
“Get the hell off me, you creep!” Bob shouted, shoving.
