It was. Dan Carteret, that we’d heard so much about. He was the spitting image of Lucy, and now that he was here, we wondered why Jessie didn’t say he was gorgeous, like, was she was trying to keep him for herself? What was she, sitting down there at the Flordana thinking up ways to lure him into her suite, like, Me first? Well, tough. Instead of falling down with Jessie Vukovich who, sweet as she is, would do it with anybody, he was here among us, and backlit by the cops’ headlights and the smoking afterglow of the Tills’ ruined house, like maybe he’d come to tell us who did what to his mother that we still talk about, but never actually knew.
Somebody turned on Miss Lillian’s burglar light so we could all take a better look. He stood down there on the walk, knuckling his head until Nenna – no, our friend Nenna – turned to see what we were staring at, and didn’t she light up.
And didn’t she trill, all surprised and charmed, ‘Why, Dan!’
We thought he’d bound up the steps so she’d be forced to introduce him but he hung back, swiveling from us to the smoldering remains and back with a baffled squint. Then he said, ‘You called?’
Oh, you clever bitch.
Well, didn’t Nenna rush down the steps like a girl on prom night – and who could blame her, with Davis the rat standing right there, picture of a man asking for it?
For a woman who’s been flattened and tromped on by a slick liar like Davis McCall, it was like landing a karate kick in his whitened teeth: take that. No, better. And why shouldn’t she leave with him, she’s practically single now . . . but, Lucy’s son! We’d give anything to know what Nenna told this lovely man to get him here, and more to know what happened after they got in his car and rolled out of Coral Shores.
Things finally died down but we were all too disrupted to go straight home, so Betsy had us over for toast and coffee in the glossy new kitchen she built with the settlement from Clive. Kara ran home for her banana bread and Cathy went next door for butter and that calamondin marmalade she loves to make. Somebody thought to bring Miss Lillian and she sat among us in her chenille bathrobe, looking thrilled. Nobody saw where Davis went. He knew we didn’t want him here.
We looked at our men, who were sweet and rumpled and ordinary now that we had all come in out of the dark, and we thanked whatever gods take care of us that we were here with them, not Davis. We took turns talking to poor Carole in Paris while our men pestered Buck for details he’d picked up from the fire marshal. Somebody turned on the TV and we waited for video of the fire to show up on the news.
Of course we were upset!
If a thing like that could happen to Carole, what could happen to us?
Being together like this, homefolks getting down in Betsy’s kitchen, made us feel better. It always does. The coffee was good, and worn and frazzled as we were, we felt more or less restored. While we were still debriefing, rehashing everything we knew and guessing at the rest, the sun came up and there wasn’t a one of us who wasn’t thinking: Too bad it has to end. It took us a long time to say good night because we were tired as hell but we didn’t want to let it go. We and our men started home, walking through the early morning two by two, and that weird, weird night ended up in a normal morning way.
33
Walker Pike
Every time a siren sounds the vibration starts, deep in Walker’s belly. It turns him into a tuning fork, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. It’s been this way for longer than he cares to remember. Going in to confront Lorna Archambault at twenty-one, he had no idea what he was, or that it would end in fire. He was young and so in love that he’d do anything. He met the perfumed monster smiling, even though she despised him.
How could he guess that he was the monster?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know!
Tonight he hears the sirens long before Nenna wakes Dan Carteret out of a sound