Key Lime Pie (11 page)

Layla!” Sadie shouted, throwing the car into park with her right hand while shoving the car door open with her left, running up just as Layla reached the porch. “Don’t go in there!” As soon as she’d left the car she could smell the smoke as well as see it.

Layla turned to look at Sadie mere moments before Sadie reached her and grabbed Layla’s arm, pulling her back down the cracked sidewalk. Her eyes weren’t on Layla stumbling alongside her; they were glued to the top of the house, where tendrils of smoke reached for the sky—tendrils that now looked too small to be a house fire. She looked through the screen and front door. There wasn’t any smoke coming from inside, but she noticed the wood around the door frame had split and when she looked at the top of the porch, she could see splinters she hadn’t been able to see from the car. Someone had broken into the house while they’d been gone. And something was burning.

Sadie continued pulling Layla away from the house until they reached the gravelly shoulder of the road near Sadie’s car that was still running with the driver’s side door open. Layla followed without complaint or question.

“Wait here,” Sadie said. With her eyes still on the smoke, she ran toward the side of the house, noting right away that the grass didn’t feel as solid as grass in Colorado did. It was a strange sensation, giving just a little bit beneath her feet.

Forcing herself to ignore the weird texture, she followed the pillar of smoke to an old oil drum that sat in the middle of the bricked patio behind the house. There were holes punched around the bottom edge of the drum, and enough soot hiding the original blue paint that Sadie recognized it as what she would call a burn can at home. She had one herself—the holes at the bottom allowed air to circulate and the can itself created a handy way to contain burning weeds and twigs.

It was a relief to know the
house
wasn’t on fire, but Sadie’s senses stayed on high alert as she scanned the backyard, which touched five other backyards. She saw no one as she approached the oil drum, which seemed to be smoldering rather than in the middle of an active burn. When she reached it, she found it half full of an indecipherable mess. The smoke certainly didn’t help her identify any of the contents, and Sadie pulled back, her eyes stinging. She looked around, blinking quickly to get the smoke out of her eyes, and spotted a hose wound up against the side of the house. Moments later the contents of the oil can were wet and stinky, but no longer on fire. She looked into the can again and realized that whatever had been in there was beyond saving.

She lifted her head and looked through the sliding glass door of Layla’s house. She could see into the kitchen and part of the living room. Nothing seemed out of place—no drawers emptied, no furniture overturned—but something had been put in this can and lit on fire, and since whoever had done it had broken into the house, it made sense to assume that whatever was in the can now had been in the house when she and Layla had left.

Her hand was mere centimeters away from the handle of the sliding glass door before she pulled back as though it too were on fire. What was she doing? Entering a crime scene? Putting herself right in the middle of the action? Again? Shaking her head, despite the fact that there was no one to see her, she stepped away from the patio.

I’m done with this kind of thing,
she said to herself when she reached the grass. She turned around, leaving the fire can and the patio behind her as she made her way back around the house.
I’m going home.

Even as she declared it in her mind, she knew it wouldn’t be that simple. She had to call the police and at the very least give a statement about what she’d seen.

She groaned low in her throat at the thought of staying here longer, creating more opportunity for Eric to catch up with her. In addition to that, she worried about her own ability to keep her curiosity at bay. She was embarrassed right now, and that was enough to drown out her hunger for finding answers, but how long would it last? It felt a little like how she imagined an alcoholic felt when they went into a bar. The longer they were there, the better the chance of them having a drink. The reasonable solution, then, was to avoid the bar. But she had to make a statement. What dumb luck.

When she rounded the front of the house, Layla was standing in exactly the same place Sadie had left her. The driver’s door to Sadie’s car was still open, and the slight hum in the air reminded her that she hadn’t turned off the engine.

Sergeant Mathews had said that people looked out for Layla, and Sadie wondered why exactly. Was Layla ill? Had something happened that kept her from reacting to things the way normal people did? Sadie wished she’d asked Mathews more questions, but the timing hadn’t been right and it really wasn’t any of her business. She was going home.

“We need to call the police,” Sadie said when she reached Layla.

Layla looked from the house to Sadie’s face, confused. “Why?”

Why?
Sadie repeated in her own mind. Wasn’t it obvious? But this was Layla she was talking to.

“Someone broke into your house and then put something in the fire can out back,” she explained.

Layla turned her head to look at the front door. “Oh,” she said simply.

Sadie paused another moment, then pulled out her phone and the card Sergeant Mathews had given her. Mourning the disruption in her plan to return home as soon as possible, Sadie dialed the number and waited.

“This is Sergeant Mathews,” he said a moment later.

“This is Sadie Hoffmiller; I just left your office.”

“Yes, Mrs. Hoffmiller. How can I help you?”

Sadie took a breath and began her explanation. “Well, it’s like this . . .”

The officer explained at length how Sadie was to fill out the statement form. She nodded politely, but in her mind she was recalculating her time frame. If she flew out of Miami before 2:00, she could be home in time to make some good biscuits and gravy—thus redeeming the Southern food she’d been so horribly denied—and could pretend the last twenty-four hours had been a mere blip of unreasonable thought on her part. At some point she’d have to face Eric, but the longer she could put it off the more time she’d have to come up with a plausible explanation for her behavior.

“ . . . then sign here and return it to me.”

Sadie smiled at the officer and put her hand out for the form he’d already attached to a clipboard. “Thank you,” she said. It looked nearly identical to the forms she’d filled out in Garrison. Piece of cake.

She leaned against the hood of her car—which she’d turned off right after calling Mathews—and began filling in the blanks. Layla was a few feet away, speaking to Mathews, who had arrived after rescheduling his other meetings. If Sadie slid a little closer she’d be able to hear what they were saying. Instead, she stayed right where she was, allowing their voices to remain indecipherable.

The squeak of the screen door tricked her into looking up as an officer came out of the house and headed toward Mathews. Mathews ended his conversation with Layla and took a few steps forward to meet the officer. They were close enough that Sadie could hear what they were saying even though she didn’t want to. Well, she
did
want to, but she didn’t
want
to want to.

“Nothing seems out of place,” the officer explained. “We’ve been through every room. It’s clear and undisturbed.”

But the door was kicked in,
Sadie said to herself. Someone had a reason to get in there. And the timing was impossibly coincidental—the very time Sadie and Layla were at the police station.

She commanded herself to stop it.
No more questions!

“What about the fire can?” Mathews asked. “Have we identified its contents?”

“Clothes,” the officer said, shrugging. “And what’s left of some three-ring binders; the papers inside are unsalvageable, I’m afraid.”

Sadie’s hand slowed.

He continued. “Officer Kerr is laying everything out, and the fire chief is on his way over to help, but so far there doesn’t seem to be anything all that important.”

Sadie’s mind went back to her explanation to Mathews about the contents of the box.
Nothing important.
For the second time in twenty minutes she growled low in her throat and threw a mental tantrum about having to step even further into this whole situation. Mathews moved forward as though to go to the back of the house and Sadie was tempted to let him, but she was the only person here who knew what had been in the box. She couldn’t withhold that kind of information.

“Sergeant Mathews,” she said, tucking the pen beneath the clip of the clipboard and moving toward him. He turned and waited for her to catch up with him, watching her with careful expectation. She looked at the grass, wondering if she wanted to do this. Her experience with police officers hadn’t necessarily built trusting relationships. Would Eric want her to tell? Did it matter? Was it fair to distrust every police officer she ever met simply because she’d run into a couple difficult ones?

“Mrs. Hoffmiller,” he said when she reached him.

“That box I brought from Colorado,” she said. “It was in the living room when Layla and I left for the police station. Is it still inside?”

“You said it was a Sunkist box, right?”

Sadie nodded. Mathews looked past her and got the attention of another officer. He told the officer what to look for and the officer went back to the house. Before speaking again, she took a breath. Hoping she was wrong about what else she had to say. “It would fit in that oil drum, I think.”

Mathews had been watching the door and turned back to face her. She held his eye, but neither of them spoke. A few seconds later the hinge of the screen door squeaked again and moments later an officer approached.

“No Sunkist box, Sergeant,” the officer said. “Want me to check the other rooms?”

“Sure,” Mathews said, but Sadie knew that he knew as well as she did that it was a fool’s errand. He nodded to Sadie. “Shall we head out back?”

Sadie fell in step beside him. As they walked, she tried to write on the statement form some more, eager to complete the paperwork even though she knew that yet one more thing was now standing in her way. Walking and writing at the same time resulted in horrible handwriting so she tucked the clipboard under her arm.

They rounded the house and Sadie crinkled her nose at the wet cinder smell of the backyard. A sheet of plastic had been laid out on the patio and several black mounds were spaced every few inches upon it. She stopped when Mathews did, just in front of the dissected mass and pointed at the item that first caught her attention. “That’s the red sweater,” Sadie said. “It was at the top of the box.” Parts of the red yarn were still visible, probably where the sweater had been folded. She pointed to another clump of blackened fabric. “I’m assuming that’s a pair of jeans—there were two of them.” The three-ring binders were easy to identify since they were now metal rings attached to melted lumps of plastic, and what she assumed was the music box was still the right shape, only black. She imagined the ballerina inside was melted. It had seemed to be a memento of Megan’s childhood, and Sadie was sad to see it destroyed.

“I’m going to need a list of everything you saw in that box,” Mathews said, his eyes fixed on the burned items and his tone grim. “Every detail.”

“Okay,” Sadie said dryly. Every minute that passed made her more antsy to leave. “Do you have an inventory form handy or are they back at the station?”

Mathews looked at her strangely, and she realized that normal people didn’t know the proper form for something like this. Even when she
tried
to be normal it didn’t work.

“The station,” Mathews said. “We’ll take Layla with us. I’d like to make sure she’s okay.”

“All right,” Sadie said, defeated. She pulled the clipboard out again. “Let me just finish this statement. The officer who gave it to me is expecting it.” His name was Newman but Sadie didn’t like the way Mathews was looking at her so she chose to be vague. Normal people were vague all the time.

“Sure,” Mathews said, but she heard his tone and didn’t like it. Until now she had been on the sidelines; now she’d somehow moved closer to the nucleus. Her trip home was getting farther and farther away, which made meeting up with Eric more probable every minute. Without saying anything else to Mathews, she began heading back to the front of the house. Mathews stayed in the backyard to talk to Officer Kerr.