feet and lapped water out of the pan. She shooed him away, but not vigorously. She’d been a lot harder on their kids.
“I’ll see what I can find,” Ken promised.
She knew he preferred to come home with a movie of the Lethal Weapon variety, but she was hoping he’d compromise on something in between. That had been her aim, and she’d given it her best shot.
After he left, she dried and bandaged her feet and slipped into flip-flops. She and Dr. Scholl’s would have some date tomorrow. She might just go into work in sandals and let the chips fall where they may. Right now, though, she was more interested in going somewhere else.
Outside.
Through the window, in the beams of Ken’s headlights, she’d seen her landlady, Tracy Deloche, prowling around on the road beyond the house. She didn’t know what Tracy was doing. The houses in Happiness Key were set fairly far apart, on account of the ones in between having been bulldozed some time in the past. Tracy had no good reason to be over here poking around.
Wanda’s instincts for gossip were finely tuned.
She decided the soak and the soft rubber flip-flop soles were helping. She could make it outside, if Tracy didn’t disappear before she got there.
“You just hold on now, Ms. Deloche,” she said. “You just hold on, and don’t you go running off.” She hoped the real entertainment of the evening was right outside and waiting for her to join in.
Okay, she was imagining things. Tracy had walked up and down the road twice after Marsh’s departure. No car had passed—although possibly she hadn’t gotten outside in time—and there were no signs anybody had been recently parked along the road beyond her house, no tire tracks, no crushed vegetation.
Of course, she lived on sand, and they hadn’t had rain in the past few days. And, admittedly, she was not a detective by trade. Stalking up and down the road looking for CJ, who was probably in California trying to dig his way out of Victorville with a plastic spoon, was the act of a madwoman.
So what was up with that?
“Hey, you!”
Tracy jumped and slapped a hand over her chest. A word she rarely uttered slipped out at high volume.
“Well, cover my ears. I’m just so happy to see you, too,” Wanda said.
“I’m sorry! You scared me to death.”
“A little jumpy, are we? What do you think you’re doing strutting back and forth in the dark? You lose something? See something that frightened you? Ken’s gone, but I can get him back.” Wanda whipped out her cell phone.
Tracy tried to imagine how she would explain this particular vision to Ken Gray, one of the most logical men she’d ever met. “No. No! I just thought I saw somebody prowling around, that’s all.”
“I see. And so, unarmed and unprotected, in stiletto heels, you came outside and started prowling around on your own?”
“Okay, it makes no sense. I get that.”
“Want me to help you look?”
“No, whoever it was, they’ve gone.”
Another voice came out of the darkness as Janya joined them. “If there is a party, somebody forgot to invite me.”
Sometimes Tracy forgot that nothing was private in Happiness Key. She rolled her eyes as Wanda explained.
“Tracy’s just losing her mind, that’s all. Looking for somebody who was never here, and doing it alone in the dark, just in case she was right and he wants to snatch her and throw her in the trunk of his car.”
“There was somebody,” Janya said. “I saw them, too.”
Tracy was filled with relief. “You did?”
“Yes, just a little while ago.” Janya paused. “I was on the telephone. With my mother.”
“Your mother?” the other women asked in unison. For a moment that bit of news eclipsed the prowling stranger.
“She telephoned me. To tell me she is sending a gift. And she asked if I was happy.”
Tracy wanted clarification. “As in, ‘Well, are you happy now, you miserable loser?’ or ‘Janya dear, are you happy, because, you know, I want you to be, more than anything.’”
“I think it was somewhere between those extremes. But as our conversations have gone, this one was pleasant.”
“Well, there’s something to celebrate,” Wanda said.
“My mother called this evening, too,” Tracy said. “She ranted and raved about CJ. I heard bits and pieces of her particular thunderstorm from the other room.”
“I’m sorry.” Janya put her hand on Tracy’s arm. “She is still chained to the past?”
“Yeah, knowing Mom, she swallowed the key. I don’t think she’s going to recover any time