Key Lime Pie (31 page)

She heard a few hurried words in Spanish, and then Larry said, “Hey Max, how’d things go?”

“Fine,” Max said with all the luster he’d used when he’d spoken to Sadie.

“Good.”

Sadie listened to the sound of shuffling paper—money maybe?

“Here you go,” Larry said. “Did the police ask you about having a key?”

“Yeah,” Max said simply. “I said I did, and they went away.”

Key?
Sadie nearly gasped out loud. Had Max broken into Layla’s house and burned the box? If he had a key, the police wouldn’t suspect he’d break in. And Larry put him up to it?

Larry interrupted her thoughts. “Tia’s going to take care of this for me,” he said. Was he talking about the paper box he’d brought from the car? “Can I put them inside?”

Sadie’s heart froze, and she found herself looking around the room again just in case a good hiding place had become available in the last twenty seconds. There were no curtains to hide behind, no large furniture other than an entertainment center, but it was pushed up against the wall. She looked longingly across the doorway at the space behind the front door. If only she’d thought to hide there, she might have had a chance. She heard the screen door creak open and inched herself to the side, pressing against the wall even more while clenching her eyes shut and preparing for a very awkward conversation.

“You can leave that out here,” Max said.

Sadie’s eyes shot open. She looked at the shoe-clad foot poised on the threshold.

“You sure?” Larry said. “I don’t mind taking it into the office.”

“I’ll take it,” Max said.

Oh, bless you, Max,
Sadie thought, but she still didn’t breathe.

“Well, all right then,” Larry said, letting the door shut. Sadie heard him put something down on the porch. “Tell Tia I’ll call her later. Thanks.”

Max didn’t reply, but Larry’s voice immediately picked up in Spanish again—had he not ended his phone call from before? Sadie could hear him getting farther away.

Sadie stayed pressed against the wall until she heard the car engine start and then fade away. Only then did she turn and push open the door a few inches. “Thank you, Max,” she whispered.

He took a sip of his soda while he stared at Layla’s house. He didn’t say anything.

“Why’d you do it?”

“He said he was leaving.”

Sadie pulled her eyebrows together. “Larry said he was leaving?” she repeated. She hadn’t heard him say that—he’d just left.

“He said if I’d get rid of the big box, he’d leave.”

“You mean he’d leave Homestead?”

“Leave Layla.”

Cajun Coleslaw

2 teaspoons sugar

1 cup remoulade

1 (14-ounce) bag coleslaw blend (or equal amounts of green and purple cabbage, sliced thin)

Mix sugar and remoulade. Add coleslaw mix and stir until cabbage is well-coated. Refrigerate until serving.

Remoulade

2 cups mayonnaise

3 tablespoons ketchup

2 tablespoons Creole, Cajun, or deli-style mustard (not yellow)

1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped

1 tablespoon lemon juice, freshly squeezed

2 teaspoons prepared horseradish

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon celery salt

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Mix all ingredients together, adjusting spices according to taste. Refrigerate overnight so that flavors have a chance to blend.

Makes about 21⁄2 cups.

*Tastes great in place of mayo on sandwiches and in deviled eggs.

Sadie glanced at Layla’s house. She could hear the faintest sound of applause coming through the open screen door. Then she looked back at Max, making the connection. “You like Layla?” Sadie asked, wondering how it was that a woman with a brain injury could still be so appealing to so many men. But as she looked at Max, she thought maybe she did understand. Layla was simple. Max was too, and probably lonely. Was it better to sit next to someone than to sit alone?

Max didn’t answer the question, but she noticed him blush, and she suppressed a smile. In Garrison, Judy Bellows and Stan Highland, both of whom were mentally disabled, had gotten married about ten years ago. They lived in Judy’s mother’s basement and walked two miles together every day. Judy was almost sixty, and Stan was thirty-six. They always went to Bingo on Saturday nights, and it was impossible to see them together without feeling that while perhaps not traditional, their relationship worked.

“Did you burn the box I brought to Eric?” Sadie restated, wanting to make sure she understood what had happened.

He didn’t answer, but she noticed that he’d started tapping his foot.

“I’m not mad that you did it,” Sadie said, keeping her voice neutral. “Did Larry tell you to burn the box?”

After a few seconds, he nodded.

Interesting. “Why?”

“I dunno,” Max said. “He said he might get in trouble if I didn’t.”

“And he paid you to do it?”

Max shrugged, but Sadie could see the slight outline in his T-shirt pocket of what looked like it could be folded bills. Sadie wondered how much burning the box had been worth to Larry. But whatever he had wanted hidden was gone. She hated that he’d succeeded.

She looked at the Staples box by the door. “What’s in there?” she asked, nodding toward it.

“Deliveries,” Max said. He actually engaged enough in the conversation to look at the box. “For Tia.”

“Would you like me to take it into the office so you don’t have to get up?” It was a subtle way to push for how much he might offer, but Sadie didn’t know if he would catch it.

He shrugged, and Sadie stepped farther onto the porch so she could pick up the box.

The first door on the right in the hallway was definitely Tia’s room—it was floral and tidy. The bedroom on the left had to belong to Max—a queen bed topped with rumpled sheets. She pushed open the third door and scanned the home office, taking in the plastic table that served as a desk, a couple of filing cabinets, and a bookshelf. A certificate of appreciation from the Salvation Army hung on the wall with the name “Tia Gerald” written in as the recipient. And there were a few more photos of Tia posing with people holding medals. Special Olympics?

She pulled her attention away from the photos and scanned the room to see if anything stood out, but quickly realized the box she was holding was the main topic of her interest. She hurried to the desk and set the box down, then pulled off the lid. Inside were several letter-sized manila envelopes. At least eight. Max had said they were deliveries. But deliveries of what? She picked up an envelope and turned it over so that the metal brad was facing her. The envelope wasn’t sealed, and she pinched the metal prongs together and opened the flap.

Inside, she could see two sheets of paper, one letter-sized and one smaller. She dumped the envelope upside down on the desk, then turned the papers over. The larger one was a birth certificate from Louisiana for someone named Sonia Maria Hernandez, and the other was a social security card for the same name.

Sadie replaced the papers and opened the next envelope. It held the same kinds of documents, but for a Reynaldo Miguel Hernandez. The third envelope had documents for another person, including a driver’s license. The fourth envelope was similar—birth certificate, social security card, driver’s license—but the state of issue was Colorado.

Sadie stared at the papers for several seconds. She was very familiar with Colorado’s documentation, and if not for the fact that she was looking in a box full of various identifications from various states, she would assume these were legitimate. However, she could not think of one legitimate reason why Larry would be bringing a box full of this stuff to Tia.

She was replacing the envelopes when she heard a car engine. Leaning forward, she could see through a space in the partially closed slats of the mini-blinds as a green sedan pulled into the gravelly driveway of the house. The sun reflected off the windshield so that Sadie couldn’t see who was inside, but she could only guess it was Tia.

Moving fast, she put the lid on the box and hurried out of the office, pulling the door shut as quietly as possible before heading for the front door. Realizing she wasn’t going to make it outside in time, and being extremely curious about this woman, Sadie went left toward the kitchen instead of right toward the front door.

She heard a woman talking to Max on the front porch and took a deep breath. She needed to be peppy and act as though her being here was completely reasonable. The hinges on the screen door creaked, and she turned on the water in the sink, rinsing dishes she’d already rinsed just to have something to keep her busy, as well as to let the running water warn Tia that someone was in her kitchen, giving her time to prepare. Not watching the entryway, Sadie picked up the washcloth, ran it under the water, and then rung it out. When she turned as if to wipe the counter, she found the woman from the photographs standing by the table, looking at her.

“Who are you?” the woman asked, putting her purse on the table and a hand on her hip. The other hand held two white plastic grocery bags. The woman’s dark hair, slightly gray at the temples, was pulled into a knot at the back of her head. She was dressed in light blue scrubs and a lanyard around her neck held some kind of ID badge. “And what are you doing here?” Her face was tight, her eyes narrowed, and her tone not the least bit inviting.

Sadie forced her smile to stay despite being thoroughly intimidated. She’d hoped Tia was sweet, soft, and meek.

“Oh, hi,” she said, putting the rag in the sink and drying her hands on a dishtowel. “I’m Sadie, a friend of Layla’s.” She reached her hand across the counter that separated them. Tia looked at it, and then looked back at Sadie expectantly, seeming to let her gaze linger on Sadie’s hair, which likely looked as though it was coated in paste by now. Tia didn’t wear any makeup and probably didn’t know what an eyebrow wax was, but was quite pretty in an understated way.

“You’re no friend of Layla’s,” Tia said darkly, still staring Sadie down as Sadie lowered her hand, giving up on the handshake. “I ain’t never seen you before.”

“Well, I guess I’m more of a friend of Eric’s,” Sadie said. “You know Eric, right?”

By the further tightening of Tia’s expression, Sadie suspected that Tia
did
know Eric, and wasn’t necessarily a fan. “What are you doing in my home?”

“I made Max a sandwich,” Sadie said in her most confident tone, as though it was perfectly normal for a complete stranger to make Max a sandwich. “And I made some coleslaw with your remoulade.” She paused and clicked her tongue. “It was amazing. Would you like me to get you some?”

“No, I would not like you to get me some,” she said, putting the bags of groceries on the table next to her purse and crossing her arms over her chest, which made her seem even more imposing. Lucky for Sadie, Tia was rather short—not more than five feet, which meant Sadie at least had the advantage of being the taller of the two. “What are you doing making Max a sandwich?”

“Just trying to be a good neighbor,” Sadie said, feeling a tremor in her voice. Being taller than Tia wasn’t giving her the confidence she’d hoped it would. “I came over to . . . introduce myself. When I asked if Max would like a sandwich, he said I could come in. I didn’t mean to upset you . . . Tia, isn’t it? You keep a lovely home.”

Tia continued to glare, but Sadie kept the smile up and reminded herself that she’d charmed people even pricklier than this woman before. Hadn’t she?

“I had some of that pasta salad and the chicken you made,” Sadie said, grasping at anything to release some of the tension and hoping that food could build a bridge. “They were both wonderful.”

“At Layla’s?” Tia asked.

Did Sadie note the smallest softening in her tone or was she looking too hard?