Still, Wanda wasn’t sure playing the field, so to speak, was a bad idea. So far she’d gotten a lot of fun out of it. And that third part? Well, she didn’t have a friend in Palmetto Grove who would care if she found true love or not. The women she worked with at the Dancing Shrimp were all caught up in their own love lives. Most of them were actually young enough to have them. Only Lainie, the waitstaff supervisor, still made Wanda feel like a hot young chick, because Lainie was closing in on seventy. She was the only person, too, who knew that Wanda was one inch from kicking Ken out of the cottage.
More accurately, of course, Wanda was ready to turn over this lease to Ken and buy a place of her own. A condo, something modern and easy to keep clean. Maybe one with a real view of the gulf, and a swimming pool, so the grandkids would fight to visit.
Something lumbered down the road. When she heard the squawk of a two-way radio, she frowned and folded the paper beside her cereal bowl. Nothing ever happened here. Sometimes fishermen drove out to the point near to where the ill-fated marina had been planned, but this time of day anybody who wanted to fish anchored offshore. Spring was the best season for tarpon, but tarpon were fish for a boat, and there was no good place to launch one at this end.
She crossed the cottage, which didn’t take all that long, and opened the door, peering into the sunlight for a glimpse of whatever was taking place. Her eyes took a moment to adjust; then she saw a black minivan with no windows disappearing down the road toward town, followed closely by what looked like a sheriff’s vehicle.
She pondered the possibilities, none of them pretty. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who was likely in trouble. The Indian couple was young, and so was the Deloche woman. They looked healthy, if a little thin for her taste. No, chances were the unfortunate passenger in that van was either Herb Krause or Alice Brooks. Heart attack, most likely. Or maybe pneumonia. Pneumonia could take an old person fast. One minute they had the sniffles, next they were pushing up daisies.
She wondered if she ought to do something. If Alice was in the ambulance, that son-in-law of hers could tell Wanda what was up. But if it was Herb…
She’d seen Herb last week when she made Key lime pie. She’d grown up in the “real” Keys, and she knew what a real pie tasted like. None of those grocery store crusts in tin foil pans. She made her own, like her mama had, crushing the best graham crackers she could buy, mixing the crumbs with melted butter, real butter, not some diet substitute. Then squeezing her own limes—Key limes, of course. What point was there to making a Key lime pie with Persian limes? Who ate Persian lime pie? Nobody who would admit it.
She had her very own secret, also learned from her mama. She grated a fine layer of lime rind on top of the crust before the filling went in; then she garnished the finished product with cream she whipped herself and a few curls of dark chocolate, along with thin slices of lime. When her son got married, he had asked her to make a dozen pies for the wedding reception instead of a cake, and they’d built a special tiered stand to hold them, with a plastic bride and groom at the top in shorts and flowered shirts. Of course the bride wore a veil and the groom a top hat, just so people would understand.
She realized she was standing at the door thinking about pie when she ought to be thinking about Herb or Alice.
Nope, cancel the Alice part. Wanda caught a glimpse of Alice’s silver hair just in front of her cottage, then the granddaughter who had taken up residence at her side. As she watched, they both went inside.
“Herb, then.”
She was sorry if Herb was heading to the hospital or worse about now. And sorry, too, that on the day she’d made that Key lime pie, she’d eaten almost half of it in one sitting. Then, in a fit of anger, because even though it was his day off, Ken hadn’t come home to share it, she had wrapped up