I'll Be Watching You Read online

  Nothing in her heart betrayed a longing or regret at her decision, but she checked anyway. He was nice-looking, no doubt, and looked successful and well put together. Comfortable. Safe.

  “Simon, this is a surprise.”

  He glanced around at the bar and the people inside. “This is your bar?”

  She detected the slightest distaste in his voice, but not enough to call him on it. “It’s not glitzy like City Lights, but it’s mine.” She glanced at Zell. Well, mostly hers. “I have plans to fix it up.”

  “Like repairing broken windows?”

  “That was an accident.”

  He gave her his skeptical look. Had he always been this condescending, this annoying?

  “This is Zell Macgregor,” she said before anything more derogatory could slip out. They shook hands and murmured whatever it was that men who didn’t really want to meet each other murmured. Zell seemed to be studying Simon’s reaction to his name, maybe to see if Kim had told him about the Macgregors. “Over there is Zell’s niece, Tullie, and Smitty, also part of the Macgregor family.” Oscar trotted over to check out the new arrival. Simon jumped back, definite distaste on his face when Oscar’s twitching snout touched his pants. “This is Oscar, the pig I inherited.” She gave him a scratch on the head, and Oscar shoved his butt into her. She regained her balance and looked at Simon. “What are you doing here?”

  “I—” He looked over at Zell, who was fiddling with the window, and then steered her toward the open window where the rain continued to pour down. “I stopped by your house first. I remembered where you’d said it was, off the road on the way down tucked in the swamp.”

  “What’d you think?”

  “Well, it’s tucked in a swamp.” He shot another look at Zell, who was still within listening range. “Is that an ex-boyfriend of yours?”

  She almost laughed at that. “No. Simon, what’s this about? Do I owe you money for rent? Just take my part of the last month’s rent.”

  He looked pained for a moment, or maybe she imagined it. “I think…” Another glance at Zell. “I think you’re making a mistake.”

  “That’s why you came? To tell me what I should do?”

  He looked at a loss for words. Finally, he grabbed her hands. “When I was packing up your things…four boxes, plus the three you had in the second bedroom, I saw how little you had and realized why it’s so important to you to have a home. I understand it now. I don’t know what happened when you lived down here, but I do know you haven’t had a home of your own in a long time. I’m sorry I didn’t see that until now. I found a place, Kim. A place we could buy. We could get married.” He glanced at Oscar, whom Zell was petting now. “They don’t allow pigs in the neighborhood, but we could get a dog.”

  Her head was swimming. He was offering her what she’d always wanted, what she’d wanted from him. Zell was listening to all this and hearing way too much about her.

  Simon saw her looking Zell’s way. “Look, I don’t want to discuss this in front of your hired help. Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  A bubble of hysterical laughter escaped at that notion. “He’s not hired help. He’s …helping me out so his niece can play with Smitty. Oh, never mind,” she said at Simon’s confusion. It was probably a good idea to go somewhere else. Zell was distracting her, and his music reminded her of trying to find his soul on that first lonely night back in town. “Let’s go out back. The rain’s lightening up now.”

  She felt a tightness in her chest as they walked outside. The air was cool and damp. Rain dripped from the overhang, adding a steady rhythm. As soon as she closed the door, she turned to him. “Did you ask me to marry you back there?”

  “If that’s what you want, then yes, I did. I didn’t listen to you, Kim. I should have.”

  If that’s what you want? “Why now, Simon?”

  He forced a sheepish smile. “They always say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I liked what we had, and I got too comfortable with it. That’s why I didn’t want to change anything. I see why it means so much to you now.”

  “Because I’m pitiful?”

  “No. That’s not what I meant. I just…Kim, you’re not making this easy on me.”

  She was staring at his beeper. “What?” he asked at last.

  “Isn’t it going to go off? Every time I ever brought up marriage or buying a house, it went off. Strange how it’s silent now.”

  He ducked his head and ran his hand through his damp hair. “All right, I didn’t make it easy on you either, but I’ve seen the light. Isn’t that what a woman dreams of, for her guy to see the light and give her what she wants?”

  Was it? She let out a long breath and leaned against the back wall. When she remembered the wet paint, she decided to stay there. “You’re offering me a home. Marriage. Dog.”

  “Yes. I’ll even try to work through the after-sex shower thing. I know that really bothered you.”

  He was giving her everything she wanted. She felt his offer tug at her sensibilities. “Did you even think about moving down here?”

  “No.” He glanced around. “This isn’t me. And I couldn’t keep my job. Even you wouldn’t be happy living here, not after living in a city. There’s nothing here for either of us.”

  She watched Oscar, who’d followed them out, as he snurfled in the gravel parking lot. She looked at the backside of the bar covered in brown paint. She took in the mangroves and river.

  “Come on, Kim. Don’t keep me in suspense any longer. Are you coming back with me or not?”

  “Not.”

  His face paled. “Not?”

  “I wanted a life and a home with you in Tallahassee, but you wouldn’t listen when I wanted to talk about it. You didn’t want to hear about my dreams then. You wouldn’t give me what I wanted, so I changed what I wanted. Going back with you would be easy, sure. Would I be happy? Marginally. But I’m tired of taking the easy way. This”—she gestured to include the bar and the river—“is what speaks to my soul. I never belonged in Tallahassee, something you often reminded me of. Well, this is where I really belong. On my own.” When she saw his shoulders slump, she said, “I’m sorry, Simon.” That apology had come easier than usual. Then again, she’d had lots of practice lately. “Now that I’ve come back, I have to stay. I know that now. Maybe I always knew it.”

  He put that impassive look back on his face. “All right, if that’s what you want. I brought your things, just in case.”

  She wondered if he’d really had any intention of talking her into going back to him. Marrying him. If he’d been a passionate man, he would have bought a ring and driven down with no intention of returning without her. Not Simon. He had a contingency plan. She followed him around to the front of the building. Nickelback’s This is How You Remind Me floated from the open window where Zell was preparing to re-hang the window with Smitty’s help.

  Simon opened the trunk of his BMW via remote as they approached the car. He took out one of her boxes and scanned the parking lot. “Where is your car?”

  She took the box he’d handed her and walked to her truck. “What do you think?”

  He shook his head. “You do belong down here.”

  “Guess I do.” She took the next box to her truck. The third box held some of her “tacky” keepsakes like the bar lights. She looked at the four other boarded-up windows and set the box on the steps.

  When the last of the boxes and her clothes had been removed from his trunk, she said, “Thanks for bringing my stuff.” In the end, it was better that he’d had a backup plan.

  “Have you called Becca yet? She left a message for you at the apartment.”

  “No, but I will.” She hadn’t yet told her friend about her crazy decision to move down there. Becca would no doubt applaud her dumping Simon. She met his gaze and tried to ignore the fact that Zell was only a few feet away. She gave him a quick hug that he, as usual, didn’t give back. “Bye, Simon. Good luck.”

  He glanced at the ba
r. “Yeah, you too.”

  She didn’t even watch him pull away. Instead she turned to take the box inside and found Tullie standing on the step. She had that deep look in her eyes again, the one she’d had when she told Kim about searching for the truth.

  Kim laughed, though it sounded hollow to her ears—and probably Tullie’s, too. “That’s true love for you.”

  “It wasn’t true love,” she said. “When people are in love, really in love, it feels different.”

  Kim hefted the box, but paused. “How’d you know I’d be searching for the truth?”

  “I know things. I can’t explain how. Like I know that you’re not going to like the truth once you find it, but that’s not going to stop you from trying find it.” She tilted her head. “Do you believe me?”

  “I don’t know, but the thing about searching for the truth…”

  “Creepy, isn’t it?”

  “No, not creepy. Eerie, maybe.” She took a step to go inside, but Tullie’s next words stopped her.

  “I had a bad feeling about Elva, too. I told her to be careful, but it didn’t help her.” Her grief over that shadowed her face. That shadow contrasted the baby fat around her cheeks and chin, both wizened adult and child.

  Kim set the box down. “What kind of feeling?”

  Tullie shrugged. “I had the feeling about her. I knew something bad was gonna happen, but I didn’t know what.”

  “You said you had a feeling about me and Zell. Was that a bad feeling, too?”

  Her mouth tightened and she nodded.

  The door opened, and Zell stepped out. He’d donned his tropical shirt again. For a moment their gazes locked. She wondered what he’d heard.

  He averted his gaze to Tullie. “Ready to go home, angel? I’ve got to get back to work.”

  For some reason the word angel tickled through her. When Kim also looked at Tullie, the girl was shifting her gaze from her to Zell and back again. A sly grin replaced the shadow. She looked at Zell. “She’s your match, Uncle Zell. Not like those other girls.”

  Zell blinked but recovered and ruffled the girl’s hair. “You must mean the boxing kind of match. Let’s go. Say bye to Smitty and Oscar.”

  Tullie ran inside.

  “You believe her?” Kim said. “In general, I mean, not about us being a match.”

  “She’s been right about a lot of things. Besides, it’s not my place to disbelieve her.” When Tullie rushed to the door, he said, “Got the one window in. It’s a start anyway.”

  “Thanks for your help. I…well, I didn’t know Simon was coming. I didn’t mean for you to finish the job by yourself.”

  His mouth quirked. “The course of true love never did run smooth, isn’t that what they say?”

  “You’d know, I suppose.”

  He full out smiled at that, probably remembering their earlier conversation. “They do call me the Sage.”

  “What would you have advised me to do, oh, great Sage?”

  “Just what you did.”

  Tullie said, “It wasn’t true love.”

  “Course it wasn’t,” Zell said in his know-it-all way. He turned to Tullie. “One of them would have been on their knees, either him begging her to come back or her begging him to stay. Somebody would have said the word love. It would have been much messier”—he gave her a pointed look—“and much more interesting.”

  Let’s go, angel. Your mama said you could come by for a game, not open a seer shop.” He nodded his head at Kim and guided Tullie to the truck.

  “What’s a seer?” she asked him.

  “It’s someone who sees things and has feelings about them.”

  Tullie gave her uncle a smile that tweaked Kim’s heart. “I like that. Seer. It’s better than ‘freak,’ isn’t it?”

  He helped her into the truck. “That it is, angel. That it is.”

  Before the happy hour crowd started arriving, Kim drove over to the Watkins Funeral Home and House of God. One Watkins brother had gotten into the business of death, and the other had gotten into the business of saving souls to assure eternal salvation. In an odd way, it made sense. Though she probably ought to be attending services—she could use all the help she could get—today she was there to see Len, the non-Reverend brother. He also doubled as the Cypress coroner.

  “Ya did get your granny’s ashes, didn’t ya?” Len asked after they’d exchanged greetings. “Wharton picked the cheapest of the urns, but if you intend to keep Elva around, ya might want to upgrade to one of our finer models.” He gestured to a wall of urns.

  “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the ashes, but I’ll keep that in mind. Actually, I’m here about her cremation. Who gave you the authority to do that?”

  Len stuck his finger in his ear and worked it for a few seconds. His wrinkled face was scrunched up, from thinking, the ear scratching, or maybe both. Finally, he said, “Well now, that was confusing. See, with you being next of kin, you should have been the one to advise us on how to proceed. But Wharton couldn’t find you at first, and then we got a call saying to go ahead and cremate her. The wife said it was from Wharton, but he said he never called, so I dunno. I hope it’s not a problem. Elva was a practical woman, and she would have preferred cremation, I’m sure.”

  Kim was running what he’d said through her mind. Someone had wanted Elva cremated before an autopsy could be done. She merely nodded. “You did the autopsy, Len. Was there anything at all that struck you as odd?”

  “I wrote it all up on the death certificate.”

  “I know, but I was wondering if there was something else you may have remembered after the fact that seemed off. Did it look like she’d fallen out of a skiff and hit her head?”

  “Sure. What else could have happened to her?”

  No one was willing to look beyond what was convenient, that Elva had died accidentally. “Thanks.”

  As she walked out, he said, “Think about that urn upgrade, okay? I got some overstock I can give you a discount on. They play the funeral dirge every time someone walks near ’em.”

  She waved her answer and stepped out into air so heavy, she could feel the water in it. The storm had passed and the sun was turning all that moisture into a steam bath. She was covered with a sheen of perspiration by the time she reached her truck. She got into the truck and headed back to Southern Comfort. Who had called to have the body cremated? This was like one of those mystery puzzles where you don’t know what the picture is and you have to blindly put the pieces together. Why was every piece pointing to something foul?

  “Because it is,” she said. Or was she looking for trouble again? The best thing for her to do was to let it go and try to earn her place in town again. Except that she’d put everything on the line to get justice for Rhonda Jones, a woman she’d known only peripherally. If she’d done that for Rhonda, she had to do it for Elva. It was only fair. Besides, she’d promised not to let Elva down again. Where did she go from here, though?

  Was Kinsey involved or did he want to take the easy route? He’d been more than happy to chalk up Rhonda’s vicious murder to some wanderer. He hadn’t wanted to look too closely into her father’s death either. While Kim didn’t think Winnerow had shot her father on purpose, he still should have been prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter. Instead, he’d volunteered for a life sentence with Kitty and her angry daughter. Maybe going to jail would have been easier after all.

  Kim spotted Rhonda Jones’s younger sister walking out of Tiger’s Grocery Store and pulled into the parking lot. Kim and Grace were the same age and had been friends through most of school. Once Kim had moved in with the Macgregors, it had put her in a strange place with many of her previous friends. She wasn’t one of “them” anymore. She wasn’t a Macgregor either. When she testified against Winnerow, people gave her a wide berth.

  Grace had one barefoot child in tow, a girl as far as Kim could tell. When Grace saw Kim, she paused almost warily.

  “Grace, it’s good to see you. You loo
k great.” She looked years older than Kim.

  In an automatic gesture, Grace smoothed her bright blond hair. “Good to see you, too. Heard you were in town. Sorry ’bout your grandma.”

  “Me, too. Why don’t you come over to the bar sometime? I’ll buy you a drink.”

  She glanced at the black-haired child who was fussing. “Don’t have time with this one. This is Martha Lee, named after my mama.” Martha Lee hid behind her mama’s faded dress. “I married Tommy Osceola. ’Member him from school? I’m a hairdresser at the Everglades Hair Salon on Tilapia Street. Come on over if you need a trim or something.”

  “I sure will. How’s Ernest? I still think about him from time to time.”

  That was an understatement. She’d never forget that little boy who looked so lost at the funeral. Rhonda’s son had been five at the time of her murder. If Kim had had any thoughts about backing down, he had sealed her decision. She knew that feeling of being lost, of losing someone you loved in a sudden and wrong way.

  Grace shook her head. “My mama did her best by him, but he never was the same after Rhonda’s death. Acted up in school, got himself arrested for stealing a swamp buggy with some friends, you name it, he was into it. I think he’s into something even bigger, but he won’t say. The family won’t tolerate him being into anything harder than marijuana.” She laughed nervously. “We’ve had enough trouble over the years with the law. We don’t know what to do with him.”

  Kim hated hearing that. “Maybe I’ll visit him, see how he’s doing.”

  “Whatever he was into, you ought to know that your granny was into it, too.”

  Elva and Ernest into something? “Are you sure?”

  “Sure as I can be. All right, little ’un,” she said to the fussing Martha Lee. “We’ll be going in a minute.” To Kim she said, “I think Elva was buying something from him. She came once a month for a few months ’til she died.”