Queen of Broken Hearts (40 page)

I shrug nonchalantly as I tighten the cap on a thermos of coffee I brought along. “What if I put a slug of bourbon in our coffee?”

“You're on,” he says with a grin.

He's right; it's brittle cold on Mobile Bay, the air sharp as crushed glass, but it is a glorious blue day, with winter sunbeams dancing on the rippling water like ballerinas draped in diamonds. I had to beg Lex to take the Catboat rather than a motorboat; he argued that the wind was too still to sail. I couldn't tell him I wanted the smaller sloop so we could explore the shore slowly and silently. Once we get the boat out and it's too late for him to turn back, I'll fess up.

Lex has taught me a lot about boating. I've gotten pretty good at helping him with the synchronized dance of sailing, especially on the Catboat, because it has only one sail in the peak. We motor out from the marina, then cut the engine and hoist the jib. “Hope you're going to be happy rocking around a bit,” he says, shading his eyes to study the mainsail as it flutters listlessly in the slight breeze. “Doesn't look like we're going to have much of a wind.”

“Good.” I give him what I hope is an innocent smile. “Just what I want, a quiet and peaceful day on the bay.”

He continues to eye me skeptically, and I tighten my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering. I'm barely able to move, since I've got on so many layers of clothes, including a knit cap that covers my head completely, and the leather gloves I borrowed from Lex for our outing. Because of the tight-hugging cap and the curved sunglasses I wear to block the breeze from my watery eyes, Lex tells me I look like a grasshopper. A fat one, he adds, laughing every time I move awkwardly in my thick green jacket. When he hopped on board wearing only chinos with a cabled sweater, a nylon windbreaker, and his Red Sox cap, I demanded that he go back for a heavier jacket. “Aw, hell.” He laughed. “Believe me, honey, this ain't nothing.”

“Remind me never to go to Maine,” I mutter now.

“Oh, no, you don't. You said you'd let me show you Bar Harbor, remember? Hey, maybe we can go next summer.”

I steal a glance at him as he adjusts the tiller. When a gust of wind slaps his hair against his forehead, he takes off his cap impatiently and runs his fingers through his thick hair to tuck it under. I'm at a loss to determine where Lex is coming from these days. He's clammed up about Elinor, despite what I consider skillful probing on my part. True to his word, he's continued to help out at the retreat site, but we haven't been seeing each other as we were this summer. The only time I saw him during the Christmas holidays was the night he came over to bring me what he claimed was a small gift. It turned out to be a tasteful and expensive sterling silver fountain pen, which made me glad he liked the nautical clock I'd presented him. We had a really lovely evening drinking eggnog and singing along with carols on the stereo.

Lex and Elinor spent most of the holidays with Alexia, who arrived in Fairhope to stay with her mother. Lex told me both of them were pissed at him because he wouldn't go to Boston with them to celebrate the New Year and take Alexia back to college. He'd gotten angry in return, saying they didn't understand that the marina couldn't be closed down for the holidays like Elinor's shop. They went without him, and he gave his staff the holidays off and ran the marina alone. I'd called to tell him everything that was going on with Haley but hadn't seen him. So why this sudden talk of our going to Maine together, I wonder.

“You know what I'd like, Lex? Let's have our picnic at that little inlet we went to last June.” It's Sunday afternoon; I've talked him into the outing by telling him I put the lentil chili I made yesterday in a thermos and said we'd have a picnic. I also brought along wedges of corn bread, the bourbon-laced coffee, and some of Zoe's brownies.

Again his look is suspicious. “You know how long it'll take us to get there?”

I shrug. “So? Tommy's running the marina all afternoon, you said.” The dockmaster at the marina is on the verge of retirement, part of the reason Lex has been so busy lately. He's planning to promote Tommy to dock-master, and Jasmine is thrilled, convinced her family will come around if Tommy gets a better job. Things are still iffy; Haley told me Tommy had confided to her that he'd wanted to give Jasmine a ring for Christmas but was waiting until things got better with her family.

“I'm not worried about the marina,” Lex says. “I'm worrying about you becoming an ice sculpture of a grasshopper by the time we get there.”

“I'm not that cold,” I lie. “Really. Come on, Lex! We haven't had an adventure in such a long time.”

“Why do I have a feeling that something is going on besides a Sunday picnic?”

From his perch behind the wheel, he studies me as I lean back on the cushions, my jaw clamped shut. If my teeth chatter or I shiver when the freezing air stings my face, he'll turn the boat around and take me back. “Oh, I get it!” he says all of a sudden. “That cove is the place where I put the make on you when we first started seeing each other. Or rather, where I tried to. You've come to your senses and realized what you've been missing all this time.”

“Believe me, if it were seduction I had in mind, I'd pick a better spot than the cockpit of a Catboat. It'd be on a bearskin rug in front of a roaring fire and under a pile of blankets.”

Lex turns the wheel, and we heel left sharply. I grab the rail behind the cushions to keep from falling on my face, and I yell at him, “What are you
doing?
”

“I know just the place,” he says with a grin.

“Okay, okay, I'll tell you everything if you'll straighten the boat up. You know it scares me when we heel over.”

“And I've told you a dozen times I won't let you fall overboard. Maybe I should, though, getting my hopes up like that.” He throws me such a dark look that I laugh.

“Then you'll be sorry, because you won't get to hear why I brought you out here today.”

“Since it wasn't to seduce me, tell it to somebody who might give a shit.”

Rising, I move to sit by him and put my head on his shoulder and arms around his waist. “I've missed you these last few weeks, Man of Maine. I haven't had so much fun since the last time we were together.”

“Missed you, too, Doctor Lady. I'm glad you didn't fall overboard.” He places an arm around me comfortably, and I relax against him, allowing his sturdy bulk to block off the sea spray. Somehow, in the mysterious way of relationships, things have shifted, and we've moved back into our comfort zone. Ever since the night of the anniversary party, things have been off kilter between us, tilting one way or the other like the leeway-leaning sailboat. Evidently he was more aggravated with me about Rye than I realized. Laughing, Dory told me that the next day Lex had called to ask what was wrong with me that I preferred a fop like Rye over a hunk like him. She replied it was obvious that I didn't know how to appreciate a
real
man. It's more than his dislike of Rye, though. Elinor has become bolder in her efforts for a reconciliation, which he doesn't bother to deny anymore. The time we once spent together now belongs to her.

“Could we get a little closer to the shore once we pass Point Clear?” I ask, my voice muffled against his shoulder.

“You say when.”

Lex doesn't question me again as we glide steadily over the blue-gray bay, and I pray the cold wind won't pick up. Along the shoreline are beautiful waterfront houses, invisible from the inland highway but spectacular from this vantage point. We passed Dory and Son's house a few miles back, and I watched Son get in his car, going to play golf. It still amazes me that things are going so well with them, which I don't even pretend to understand. As though reading my mind, Lex asks in an offhand manner, “Did you and pretty boy make it to the Rodgerses' New Year's party?”

I shake my head. “Haley was with me then, and in bad shape, so I didn't go to anything that weekend. Thank God. After Christmas I was partied out.”

“You're not still pissed at Dory for getting back with Son, are you? Seems like he learned his lesson and straightened up after she left his ass this summer. He's not near as big a jerk as he was when I first met him. Or maybe it's just me.”

I poke him with my elbow. “That's not true—you're still a big jerk.”

“Ha ha. Well, are you? Still pissed at Dory?”

I look up at him indignantly. “I was never angry with her, exactly. I was just disappointed.”

“Aw, bull. You were so mad, you could've bitten a ten-penny nail in two, but you'll never admit it. And what's this ‘angry' shit? Nobody but one of your people would say that. Guess you guys don't get pissed. You get
angry
instead,” he mocks.

“Oh, hush. I've been mad, seething, peeved, furious,
and
pissed with you plenty of times, buster.”

“Not as mad as I've gotten with you, I bet.”

I shrug. “How would I know? You're so full of it, I can't tell when you're serious and when you're not.”

He holds the wheel lazily with two fingers as he glances down at me. “You may not be able to tell whether I'm having you on or not, but I can promise you one thing: You'll know when I'm serious.”

“I'll remember that,” I say dryly.

When we get farther down the shore, I reach inside the storage bin and pull out the binoculars. Lex watches me, then sighs, loud and long. “I was waiting for you to tell me, like you promised, but since it appears you aren't going to, what the hell are you up to? Not spying, surely?”

“Actually, that's pretty much it,” I say lightly, putting the binocular cord around my neck.

“
Spying?
”

“Spying,” I repeat.

He stares at me, aghast. “Couldn't you lose your license or something?”

“Yeah, but I'd have to get caught first. Okay, we're almost there now, so get the boat as close to the shoreline as you can. But not close enough that anyone on the shore will recognize us.”

“Disguised as a grasshopper, you should be fine. And I have a brown hooded jacket in the bin that I can put on, and I'll look like a walrus. Guess that's why you're wearing those ridiculous sunglasses, so you won't be recognized.”

“I'll have you know I paid a whole dollar for them at the Dollar Store.”

“They ripped you off.”

“Wait,” I cry, pointing to a neat little blue house on the shoreline. “There's the place I'm looking for. Drop anchor here.”

Adjusting the bill of his cap to shade his eyes, Lex follows my gaze to the blue house. Although it's encircled in towering oak and pine trees, the back part of the house, which is several feet from the shore, is cleared away for a water view. I can see it plainly, even without the binoculars. An open deck edged in white lattice runs the length of the house, with massive baskets of ferns hanging on either side. To the right of the house is a garage, blue-painted and white-trimmed as smartly as the house, and the presence of an outside staircase confirms what I've suspected: There's a room, perhaps an apartment, over the garage.

“You'd better tell it, sister,” Lex says without turning his gaze from the house.

“A young couple live there, John and Wanda Webb,” I explain. “They're colleagues of Austin's. I believe they work for him in the learning lab.”

“So that's where my state tax dollars are going,” he says. “Learning labs must pay damn good.”

“Obviously someone's family has money. Austin told Haley he was staying at the house of a professor who's on sabbatical, but I began to suspect that he was staying with the Webbs instead. Now that I see the room over the garage, I'm even more convinced.”

Lex frowns. “Why wouldn't Austin tell Haley where he's staying?”

“I have a feeling it has something to do with Jasmine and Zoe Catherine threatening to dismember him. How would you like those two showing up on your doorstep if you were Austin?”

“I wouldn't like them showing up on my doorstep, and I'm not him. But let me get this straight—you brought me all the way down the coast just to see if this couple has an extra room?”

“It's more complicated than that. At church this morning, Haley told me that she had a surprise visitor. Wanda Webb came to see her and the kids, claiming to be all broken up over Austin leaving them. Haley hadn't liked her much before, but Wanda was so sweet and sympathetic today that Haley changed her mind. Still, the more Haley told me, the more I wondered. Wanda kept asking if she'd seen a lawyer, stuff like that. Haley's so naive, it never occurred to her, but I suspect Wanda was there to get information. If I find out that Austin's staying here, it proves a couple of things. One, Austin flat-out lied about the professor's house, and two, Haley needs to be on guard with Wanda.”

“You always so suspicious of people?”

I smile. “In my profession, I'd better be.”

“You're in luck. Looks like the lady in question just walked out on her deck. See her? In the orange and blue sweatshirt?” Lex leans over and points to the shore, and I clutch his arm.