Tango Key (6 page)

His pace quickened, but it was too soon, she wasn't ready, she whispered, "Wait, Murphy, wait," and gripped his arms. He was oblivious. His belly slapped hers as he drove into her fiercely, blindly, his thrusts scraping against the walls of her womb. The bed groaned. It banged against the wall as he pushed on and on as if to kill something inside himself. He moaned loudly as he came and collapsed against her. Tears stung her cheeks. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her arms fell to her sides and remained there, stiff, unyielding.

He moved off her, and the moment his head sank into the pillow he was asleep.

Aline turned her head into the pillow and started to cry. Three years had just ended with Murphy emptying himself into her as if she were a receptacle. That was why he'd come here. He knew his little pal Aline would accommodate him. Sure. She always had.

Sniffling, she sat up, groped around on the floor for her T-shirt and panties, scooped them up, and slipped out of the room, resisting the urge to slam the door behind her. She dressed in the dark, clammy hall. She walked out into the living room, her sobs like hiccups, and plopped down on the couch. She lifted her feet onto the edge of the coffee table, pulled the T-shirt over her knees, and cried into it. The goddamn thing smelled like Murphy. She dropped her head back against the couch, gulping at the warm, pelagic air. Over the soft noise of the fan, she could hear the surf. She closed her eyes, and for a few blissful moments she lost herself in its inexorable rhythms.

She finally dropped her feet to the floor and accidently hit Murphy's briefcase. She turned on the lamp and stared at it, a gift from Monica. The leather was dark brown and shiny. It was a full thirty seconds before Aline could bring herself to touch it. Blood pounded in her ears as she lifted it onto the coffee table, as her fingers pressed against the buttons.

The lid popped open.

She glanced nervously over her shoulder, almost expecting to see Murphy standing there. But of course he wasn't. He would sleep long and hard until morning. Sex anesthetized him and shot her full of adrenaline.

She peered into the briefcase, into the private little world Murphy carried around with him. She removed his neatly folded running clothes and set them on the table. She glanced through his files: cases; clippings about boats, races, and engines; current issues of
Newsweek
,
People
, and a copy of Friday's
Wall Street Journal
. She picked up his notebook, and her fingers were so damp, they left imprints on the outside of it. On the first page were two phone numbers—hers and a Miami exchange with "Lisa-616 boat race" next to it. So Murphy was looking. Fine. It wasn't really a surprise, now was it?

Her temple beat like a drum as she continued paging through the notebook. Now and then, she stole an anxious look over her shoulder. Ah. Here it was. His notes on his conversation with Eve Cooper. Every few paragraphs, his neat, meticulous handwriting broke away into a loose scrawl: Monica. Monica's hair. Mouth moves like Monica's. There were at least a dozen other observations in which Eve was compared with his dead wife.

She heard something; her head snapped up. The bed, Jesus, it was the bed. She dropped everything back into the briefcase, heart hammering, adrenaline pumping. She snapped the, lid shut and realized she'd forgotten his running clothes. Nearly blind with panic, her fingers slid over the latches, missed. She tried again. The lid opened. She shoved his clothes inside and closed the briefcase again. She set it down beside the couch. She leaned back, hands curled against her chest, an army of little men pounding bongos in her head. She waited. He was behind her. She could feel it, feel his weight, his bulk. But she would wait for him to speak. Then she would turn her head slowly, nonchalantly, like a woman emerging from a light sleep, and she would yawn and say,
I couldn't sleep and I didn't want to wake you
. And he would say,
Come to bed, Al. I'll give you a back rub.

But when nothing happened, when she didn't hear his footsteps, when he didn't say anything, she looked back and no one was there.

She opened the briefcase again. She refolded his clothes. She tried to remember where everything had been, but couldn't.
Had the notebook been on top of the files or under them? Where were the two pens supposed to go? Just leave it. Don't push your luck. Right.
She put the briefcase back where he'd left it when he'd arrived and hurried across the living room. She climbed the ladder to her sleeping loft and crawled into the hammock.

As she was falling asleep, she heard Wolfe scratching at the wall on the porch outside the window. She sat up, leaned out, and hoisted him in. His nails clicked across the floor. A moment later, she heard him scratching in the litter box. A skunk cannot be housebroken, one vet had told her. You can't expect a skunk to recognize you, so it's best to have it descented.

She'd proven them wrong.

There was a moral to that story, but she was too tired to puzzle through it.

"I
must've hogged the bed, huh."

The aroma of coffee tickled her nose, and she opened her eyes. Murphy stood next to the hammock, holding out a mug of coffee as though it were an oblation of peace. His dark hair was tousled, and the hairs in his mustache went every which way. His nakedness, borne of an immodesty cultivated in marriage as well as his easy familiarity here, in her life, her home, brought a fresh wave of desire that annoyed her. She dropped her eyes, sat up.

"Yeah, you hogged the bed, and that air conditioner was too loud."

Whistling, he strolled off to the bathroom.

She swung her legs over the hammock and poked her head out the window. A nacreous light filtered through the branches of the pines and bled across the scarp that sloped deeply down to Hurricane Drive. A breeze had risen during the night, and it smelled sweetly of pine and jasmine and the sea. Some mornings, if she was up early enough, she sighted wildlife—Key deer, armadillos, green parrots, skunks, toucans that were probably escaped pets, and once, just once, a pair of panthers. There were supposedly four panthers on the island, which the experts—whoever they were—claimed had been trapped illegally in their habitat in the Everglades and then transported to Tango, probably for sale overseas. Aline didn't care how they'd gotten here. To her, they symbolized the island's magic.

She showered in the bathroom downstairs, dressed, and was in the kitchen starting breakfast when Murphy came down. She expected him to say he had to run, had to take care of things. But instead he walked outside for the morning paper, then set two places at the counter.

For a little while it was like old times. It was just the two of them ensconced in their private little world, an illusion which living on this island nurtured. If you remained here long enough, the magic of Tango Key imbued you completely, effaced your awareness of anything beyond its shores. And that, she thought, was its appeal. It was why so many of its residents worked two jobs to remain here.

After breakfast, they went outside so Murphy could check out the air conditioner. It was off the carport, and there wasn't a breath of air. Aline hooked up a floor fan in the doorway and hovered nearby as Murphy worked. Whenever he puttered with machines, his hands moved with a deft, almost gentle certainty, as though he were making love to it. His absorption was total.

"Hey, Murphy," she said after a while. "Are you seeing someone else?"

He was frowning, trying to loosen a screw when she said it, and now he stopped and gazed at her over the top of the air conditioner. "What kind of question is that?"

"One I need an answer to."

"Christ, Aline."

"That's not an answer."

He looked back at the air conditioner. "The answer's no." It disturbed her that he didn't look at her as she said it.

"Oh . . ."

A few minutes ticked by. "Why'd you ask that?"

She shrugged. "Well, last night was the first time in five or six weeks that we've slept together so it seemed like a reasonable assumption."

"It hasn't been six weeks." He wiped his arm across his forehead.

"It's been six weeks since it was your idea."

He knew better than to argue with her about the time; he had seen her calendar. "I haven't been with anyone except you since Monica was killed."

"Then why is it things between us have changed so much?"

He'd worked the screw loose and held it up. "Here's the culprit, Al. A seventy-nine-cent screw. And somewhere in here"—he rifled through his toolbox—"I've got a screw that should fit."

A ball of emotion had risen in her throat. She wanted to repeat her question, but couldn't. She waited. He finally said, "I'm not avoiding your question. I know that's what you're thinking. I'm just trying to figure out how to answer it." He twisted the screw into place.

"The truth would be nice."

"It's not that simple."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want you to misinterpret what I say."

"Just say it, will you?"

"I need more space, Al. That's all."

Ah. Space. And after space comes distance. And after distance, comes separation. And after separation
. . . "Space." And in a softer voice, she added, "Space. The last fucking frontier. Neat."

"I knew you wouldn't understand." He replaced the siding on the unit, dropped his screwdriver back into his toolbox, and got up. "I'm sorry I said anything."

"How can I understand if you don't explain it? Why do you need more space? We've hardly even seen each other since May."

"I don't know why. It's just something I feel."

Great. She looked down at the motes of dust that skirred from the storage area like fat roaches. He came over to her, put his arms around her, hugged her, and the ball in her throat swelled.

"It isn't you," he said. ''It's me."

She did the unforgivable. She started to cry.

"Please," he said softly. "I don't want to hurt you. You're my closest friend, you're . . . if it hadn't been for you, for everything you did when Monica was killed, I wouldn't have made it."

She stepped away from him. "I suppose you always screw your friends, huh, Murphy."

"Don't, Allie. It isn't like that, and you know it."

"Then what is it like, Murphy? Isn't that why you came over here last night if that's not how it is? Didn't you come over here because Eve Cooper is Monica's twin and I'm your last real tie to Monica? Isn't that how it is, Murphy?"

The moment the words were out, she regretted them. He looked as if she'd slapped him. Twisted his balls. Done something horribly cruel. He opened his mouth, but the sound of a car door slamming silenced him.

"It's Dobbs," he said, and stepped around her as though he couldn't get away fast enough. "Hey, Jack, we're back here."

Aline followed. Dobbs strolled up the driveway from his black Firebird. He wore jeans and a peach-colored Izod shirt. The hot light burned away the gray in his khaki hair, which was slightly damp. Aline guessed he'd just come from the Tango Health Club, where he worked out every morning. Here they were again, three-quarters of the detective staff, clustered in her driveway. They made their own hours during the summer, and in their free time Dobbs became Charles Atlas, Murphy raced his boats, and she tried to paste her life back together.

Dobbs held out two books, the first in a sci-fi series. He was addicted to science fiction; Murphy hated it. Dobbs was laid-back; Murphy was intense; Dobbs was a spendthrift, a collector of everything; Murphy was thrifty and accumulated very little in the way of material goods; Dobbs was a profligate womanizer; Murphy was essentially monogamous. The only thing they really had in common, except for police work, was boats, but even there they differed. Murphy preferred fast boats; Dobbs loved sailing. And yet their differences seemed complementary and created a friendship that was like a finely tuned instrument or a mathematical equation: it sought balance.

"I've got the last in the series upstairs," Aline said, "if you want to borrow it."

"You carry them at Whitman's?"

"Sure. Just ask Mark Finley." Finley managed the bookstore, kept it functioning, made sure it turned a small profit; she merely owned it. "We've got it in paperback or hardcover."

"Great." He glanced at Murphy. "You ready, buddy?"

"Let me go get my stuff."

When Murphy was out of earshot, Dobbs said, "You okay?"

"Don't I look okay?"

"No."

"You're so subtle, Jack."

"Hey, you asked."

"It's my allergies."

"Don't shit a bullshitter, Al."

She shrugged and changed the subject. "Where're you and Murphy off to?"

"The marina. He's got to take his boat over to have it worked on."

"Not Cavello's marina, I hope."

"Fuck, no. Old man Jones is the only guy on Tango who knows how to work on Scarabs. Actually, Murphy could probably do the work himself, but old man Jones is the expert. Any word on Cooper's autopsy yet?"

"Bill said he'd have something today."

"What time are you going to be in the office?"