Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

“How long can all that take?”

“I don’t know. Sammi says there’ll be hearings, so I’ll have to be there for that. And a judge may want to interview me, and Maya.”

“Sammi?”

“Tanya’s lawyer. She’s the one who drew up the will for Tanya. And of course, Tanya didn’t bother to tell Sammi that Evan wasn’t Maya’s biological father.”

“Fine. So you guys live here, but you fly back up there for the legal stuff.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “I can’t keep ping-ponging Maya from place to place. She’ll start kindergarten in the fall. I told you before, I need some stability in our lives. Especially now that we know she actually saw Evan kill her mom. I need to find her a good child therapist.”

“We’ve got kindergartens right here in Treasure Island,” Joe said. “And therapists. Letty, do you really want to raise Maya in a place like New York? C’mon? Where would you live? You told me before your old apartment was the size of the efficiency. Can you honestly tell me you want to go back to that?”

“I’ll have to find a new place,” she said.

“And what’ll you do about a job? How are you gonna afford living in New York with a kid?”

A breeze had kicked up, and she suddenly felt chilly. Maybe it was the thought of spending another winter in the city. Of bundling Maya into a snowsuit, mittens, socks, and boots. Or maybe it was just the wind blowing off the Gulf. She had to keep reminding herself that it was technically still winter, even in Florida, in late March, when the nighttime temperatures dropped into the low sixties.

Letty crossed her arms and rubbed them to keep them warm.

“Tanya had a pretty big life insurance policy,” she said slowly. “Of course, Maya is the primary beneficiary, but I’m the secondary. Sammi says the money will go into a trust to provide for Maya, but it’ll be more than enough to provide for her housing and education and welfare. She says it’ll also be enough to hire lawyers to make sure Evan never gets near Maya again.”

“What about us?” The question hung there in the jasmine-scented air.

Letty wouldn’t allow herself to go to him. If she did that, he’d pull her into his lap again, draw her into his plans for their future. She wasn’t sure she was strong enough to resist the temptation.

“I don’t know. I can’t think about us right now. I want to, Joe. I want to want all the things you’re offering. But the timing is all wrong.”

She couldn’t see his face in the dim light, but from the tone of his voice, which dripped icicles, Letty knew he was hurt.

“So that’s it? You’re leaving? How soon?”

“I’ve already told your mom about my plans.”

“You told her, but not me?”

“Earlier today, while you and Vikki were at the hospital. I felt like I owed her. Fortunately, I don’t have that much stuff here to pack up. I’ll find an apartment for Maya and me, someplace that’s month-to-month, no lease, so I don’t have to make a long-term commitment.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t want to make a commitment now, would you?”

His words sliced right through to the bone, but she wouldn’t let on to him that she was hurt.

Joe stood up abruptly. “I’d better go. I’m meeting with the district attorney in the morning, and we’ve got a conference call with that sheriff down in Immokalee, and there’s a shit ton of paperwork to do.”

Letty pressed her lips together to keep from begging him to stay. Instead, she gathered up the pizza box and the glasses and followed him inside. He picked up his keys and opened the apartment door to leave.

Vikki Hill stood there, her hand raised to knock. Her hair was mussed and her gym shorts and T-shirt looked like they’d been rescued from the dirty-clothes hamper. “You gotta come see this,” she announced.

They followed her over to the efficiency. She unlocked the door, and pointed inside, where glittering heaps of gold and silver jewelry, sterling candlesticks and candy dishes and flatware, and gold and silver coins were scattered across the unmade bed and the floor, like a modern-day pirate’s treasure chest had been dumped in the middle of a run-down motel room. Necklaces and watches dripped from the nightstand, where a nearly empty tequila bottle stood beside a pair of juice glasses.

“What the hell?” Joe asked incredulously.

“This is what Rooney was looking for when he broke in here,” Vikki said. She held out her wrist, around which was draped a heavy gold men’s wristwatch. “Is this the watch you said one of your regulars sold him?”

Joe slid it off her wrist and examined it. “It’s a Rolex Daytona, kinda like the one Paul Newman owned, and it’s monogrammed. Gotta be Trudi Maples’s watch. How did you even find this stuff?”

With her index finger, Vikki pointed upward, at the ugly water-stained dropped acoustic-tile ceiling. One of the square tiles was missing, exposing part of the aluminum framework, and shards of it were scattered among the pieces of jewelry on the bed.

“It’s the damnedest thing,” Vikki said. “I was in bed reading and out of the corner of my eye, I looked up at the ceiling, and I noticed one of those square things up there was sort of bulging. I was afraid maybe there was a leak in the roof and the whole thing might cave in on me. I stood on the bed and tried to move the tile, but I couldn’t reach it, so I went outside to look for a pole or something. I found one of those shuffleboard stick things, poked around, and dislodged the tile. When I did, all this stuff just rained down on me.”

Joe was kneeling on the floor, examining the treasure. He stood up and held out an iPhone. “Did this fall out of the ceiling?” He tapped the phone’s screen. “It’s locked.”

Vikki reached for the phone. There was a short knock on the door, and then it opened. “Hey Vikk, I think I left…” Alex Garcia, the FBI agent from Tampa, stopped short when he saw the other occupants in the room. His face reddened. “Well … shit.”

Joe DeCurtis struggled to keep a poker face. He held out the phone. “Is this is what you’re looking for?”

Garcia shoved the phone in the pocket of his jeans. “This is awkward as hell, so I am going to back out of here now, and we are all going to act like this never happened. Agreed?”

“Absolutely,” Joe said affably. “See you around.”

Garcia nodded at Vikki and left.

Joe waited until the threesome was alone again. “Not that it’s any of my business, but that cockamamie story of yours was never going to work anyway.” He pointed at the bottle of tequila, and the used glasses. With his toe, he nudged a torn foil condom wrapper that had been tossed on the floor beside the bed. “You forget I’m a trained law enforcement officer.”

“You’re a horse’s ass is what you are,” Vikki said. “Okay, it doesn’t matter who else was here at the time, or how it happened. I noticed the ceiling tile looked weird. We, I mean, I found the shuffleboard stick, poked it around, and all that jewelry and stuff fell out.”

Letty was peering up at the ceiling. “You know, when I was cleaning this place out so that Maya and I could move in, along with all the old television sets and mattresses and crap, I found an aluminum ladder. I didn’t question it much at the time, but it makes sense now.”

The door opened again and Garcia strode over to the nightstand, picked up a pair of Oakley aviators, nodded to the others, and started to leave. He paused at the door. “See you around.”

Vikki Hill waited until she heard his footsteps echoing in the breezeway outside. “Not one word from either of you,” she warned.

“Chuck was staying here, in the efficiency, after Mom kicked him out of her place,” Joe said. “I’m guessing he hid the stuff in the ceiling, where he figured his ‘partners’ Tanya and Rooney would never find it, because he was probably planning on ripping them off.”