Mike Jastrzebski - Key Lime Blues

***

My cell woke me a little after ten. My mouth tasted sour and felt like it was stuffed with a bag of rotting cotton balls. My eyes were dry, my head ached, my stomach burned, and a nasty kink was developing in my neck. My night hadn’t gone much better than the previous day.

I didn’t remember undressing, but I was lying in bed naked. It took me a moment to find the phone among my clothes piled next to the bed. I didn’t recognize the number, but I hoped it was Destiny.

“Darling here,” I said.

There was a little giggle on the other end. “Well, Darling, this is Cat. Don’t you return your calls? I left three messages for you last night.”

“It was a real bad night,” I said as I tried to place her. “You’re Elvis’s assistant or something?”

“Something like that,” she said. “Elvis asked me to call you. He said he needs to see you, sooner rather than later.”

“I don’t need my fortune told.” I climbed out of the bed and tried to stretch the kink out of my neck and hold onto the phone at the same time. It wasn’t easy.

“He warned me you wouldn’t want to come,” she said.

“If that’s one of his predictions, he’s right.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment and her tone was short and clipped when she continued. “Elvis wanted me to tell you that Gail visited him last night, and again this morning. He wanted me to tell you she’s going to try to kill you.”

“I don’t need a psychic to know that. She’s the reason for my bad night.”

“Look, Mister Darling, I’m just the messenger. As far as I’m concerned, you can drop dead, but Elvis says he needs to talk to you. I understand that you don’t believe in psychics, but what’s it going to hurt for you to stop by and listen to what he has to say? Are you afraid of him, or are you so closed minded that anything he says will be wasted on you.”

I found her reasoning hard to resist. I didn’t believe Elvis had any earth shattering predictions for me, but if Destiny had gone to see Elvis the previous night and that morning, it was possible she’d let some information slip about where Tanya was. I couldn’t afford to ignore his call.

I stopped stretching and walked over to the window. The sky was gray and a fine misty rain was falling over the yard. This was the first time it had rained during the day since I’d arrived in the Keys, and I already missed the sun.

“When does he want to see me?” I asked

“He said you set a time, he’ll see you. This must be important, Darling. He told me to cancel his appointments this morning so he’d be free to see you. He’s never done that before.”

I looked at my watch. The first night I had been here, Tanya told me she owned a gun. I calculated how long it would take me to search the house. “Tell him I’ll be there at noon.”

“I’ll let him know,” she said.

I stood by the window until I was sure she’d hung up, and then I closed the phone and walked back to where I’d left my clothes. As I dressed, I couldn’t help but wonder how Tanya was holding up. She had to be afraid, and maybe hurt. I felt helpless, and I didn’t like it.

I spent a few minutes in the bathroom where I washed the sleep from my face, combed my hair and brushed my teeth. Next, I headed down the hall to Tanya’s room. I figured I could use any little edge I could get, and a gun would do a lot towards evening the playing field in the coming confrontation with Destiny and Willie.

Tanya’s room was like a hard copy history of her life to date. There was a six-drawer dresser with a mirror, a bookcase, and nightstand that were all part of a set. They were white, perhaps French provincial, and there were enough dents and scratches to make me believe they’d been around for a while. The king size walnut bed was covered with a purple bedspread, and a half dozen stuffed elephants of various sizes and colors were arranged on the pillows. A desk and a second bookshelf matched the bed and I suspected they came with her when she moved back into the house after college.

When I examined the bookshelves, they seemed to confirm my suspicions. The white one contained a copy of The Black Stallion, several old Nancy Drew books, a dozen teen romance novels, and her high school yearbooks. The top shelf was filled with Barbie and Ken dolls, and an old teddy bear.

The newer bookshelf held a Steven King book, three Janet Evanovich novels, a jewelry box, and several pictures. One was a recent picture of Tanya and a sickly looking man who I assumed was Alvin. The other was of Tanya and a good-looking guy with a shaved head and a toothy smile. I didn’t know if it was an old boyfriend, but I felt a twinge of jealousy.

A computer system took up most of the space on the desk. It was an older model, with a large monitor and an out of date printer. There was also a stapler, a tape dispenser and an empty pencil holder sitting on a desktop calendar.

I started with the dresser, and almost missed it. Tanya had tucked the gun into the back of the bottom drawer, wrapped in a pair of jeans.

I felt a flush of exhilaration when my fingers brushed the cold metal of the gun, but my excitement dimmed when I pulled it out.

It was a beautiful gun, a Taurus Titanium 9 millimeter Millennium. My mother owns one exactly like it.

One of the features the gun offers is a side mount key operated safety lock. A quarter turn of the key freezes the firing pin and deactivates the gun until unlocked.

Considering the trouble Tanya had gone through to hide the gun, I knew before I looked what I’d find. Sure enough, it was locked, and a quick search of the drawer assured me the key was hidden somewhere else.

I stood in front of the mirror studying the rest of the room through the reflection, thinking. I needed to find the key. Without it, the gun was useless and my chances of rescuing Tanya were greatly reduced.

If I were Tanya, I asked myself, where would I hide the damn key? I was concentrating so hard on the key that I almost walked right on by the vase. It was blue, sitting on the corner of the dresser, and filled with six silk roses.

I started to turn away, stopped, and took a closer look at it. Somewhere, I’d recently seen one like it. It took a moment for me to realize that it was an exact twin to the one in which Destiny had hidden half the diamonds.

My hands shook when I reached over and plucked the flowers from the vase. They were cut short, and after I tossed them onto the top of the dresser I grabbed the vase and tipped the lip into my hand.

I wasn’t all that surprised when thirteen near-perfect diamonds rolled out into my palm. Surprised, no, but my heart raced and felt as if it were missing every third or fourth beat. I found myself thinking the unthinkable. Was Tanya more involved with Destiny than it first appeared? Had the two of them been playing me for a sucker?

I knew Destiny had spent time in the house, and she could very well have placed them there at any time. She could have given the vase to Tanya as a gift. Those were only a couple of the innocent possibilities.

Then there were the possibilities that turned my thoughts dark. Was Tanya involved from the start? Was she using me like Destiny had? Was she really in danger?

I couldn’t answer any of these questions to my satisfaction, and I had a heavy heart when I tucked the diamonds into my jeans pocket. Despite my fears, I turned back to my search for the key to the gun.

While I moved over to search the desk, I forced my thoughts away from the diamonds. Instead, I asked myself why someone would buy a gun and render it impossible to use in an emergency.

If the closeness of the gun gave Tanya comfort, she’d set herself up for a big fall. I’ve found that anyone who owns a gun and isn’t prepared to use it might as well give it away. It’s better to run at the first sign of trouble than to falsely believe you can get to a hidden or locked gun fast enough to save yourself.