“She is the same woman, isn’t she?” I asked. Twenty years and a new hair color created doubt in my mind.
Kathleen gathered up Hadley III so that she could view the picture the cat had warmed. She murmured a protest but then laid her head over Kathleen’s shoulder. When I picked her up, she’d squirm until I placed her down—and I’m the one who fed her.
“They are,” she said. “Take the older photo, add a few years—not many pounds, I give her credit for that—change the hair color and style, and presto. See her eyes? Eyes don’t lie.”
“You said they lost their sparkle.”
“They did. The issue is whether it was the result of corrosive years or a couple of hard punches.”
Hadley III leaped from Kathleen’s arms and onto the floor, her green cat eyes tracking a gecko climbing the outside of the screen. Kathleen picked up a recent photo of Elizabeth. She traced her hand over the woman’s eyes. “Look here. See how her eyebrow is arched in the exact same spot as Elizabeth Phillips’s? These two women do their eyes the exact same way. You really doubt they are the same woman?”
I shrugged off my own hesitancy. “Just taking the opposing view.”
Morgan popped through the side door carrying a steaming pot. A French baguette protruded out of his front shorts pocket.
“Same woman or not?” Kathleen said to him. He placed the pot down on a trivet. I grabbed the baguette, broke off the crusty end that had not been deep in his pocket, and stuck it in my mouth.
“No doubt,” he said. “Look how she does her eyes. So precise and delicate, yet in both pictures, her eyes are unsure. She needs to paint on her confidence because it doesn’t come naturally.”
“Exactly,” Kathleen said. “Our insecurities never leave us. This woman has looked into a mirror every day since she was sixteen and prepared herself for battle in the same manner.”
Kathleen and Morgan saw colors I could not see. I went into the kitchen to gather what we needed for dinner and returned to the porch carrying a bottle of right-bank Bordeaux, butter, utensils, and bowls.
“Why the interest?” Morgan asked. His caramel-blonde hair was tied in a ponytail and he wore a black V-neck T-shirt and khaki shorts. No shoes.
I gave him the recap.
Kathleen said, “I find it difficult to believe that Andrew never saw Elizabeth again after she passed out in his arms.”
“It makes you wonder,” Morgan said, “what Andrew left out or what really happened. Stories change over time. Our minds prune some memories and fertilize others. Tell the same story five days straight and you will have five different stories. Imagine what twenty years does.”
I decided to take nothing for granted. To start from scratch and realize that Andrew Keller might have been even more selective in what he told me than I had originally thought.
Or, for reasons unrevealed, he’d purposely misled me.
I HIT THE VINOY hotel the next afternoon. I flashed a picture of Elizabeth Walker to the front desk, flirted with the bartender with pink and white striped bangs, and questioned a waiter with a head cold while he prepared tables in Marchand’s, the dining room. No one recognized Andrew or Elizabeth, although both the bartender and the waiter had worked the night that Andrew purportedly ran into Elizabeth.
It was too nice a day to not take a narcissist chunk out of it. I settled in an outdoor lounge seat under a blue umbrella. A waitress dropped by, and I requested a cigar and a glass of red wine. A gull was next, showing interest in crumbs on the ground. I shooed it away. Harry was the only dirty bird I tolerated. Earlier that day I’d dropped by the convenience store where Keller met his demise. I’d popped some questions, but no answers contributed to the cause. I took a draw from the cigar and puffed the smoke high and to my left so as not to fog a group of women on my right, including one in particular who’d been eyeing me with mounting hostility. I sat there waiting for serendipitous thoughts, assembled by the ageless ingredients of tobacco and alcohol, to drop out of the high, blue Florida sky. They did not. They never do. Yet I felt obligated to give them every opportunity and would not be found guilty of abandoning my post.
It was time to offer my condolences to Andrew’s wife and inquire, discreetly, if she was aware of her deceased husband’s fiery infatuation with a former lover.
I couldn’t imagine that conversation progressing smoothly.
5
Keller’s wife pulled out of her garage at 9:45 the following morning before I even had a chance to engage my truck in park. The calling hours had been a few days ago, and I’d opted not to attend. I should have. In lieu of flowers, as requested, I made a donation to the Coalition for Peace—whatever that was.
She navigated her white SUV to a country club, hopped out with tennis racket in hand, and double-timed it into the clubhouse. I took off to get a cup of coffee I didn’t need. Twenty minutes after I returned, she strode out of the clubhouse and made a beeline to her car.
“Mrs. Keller?”
She turned. “Yes?”
I gave her my name and said I was a friend of her deceased husband. I offered to buy her a cup of coffee.
“Coffee after tennis? I hardly think so.”
“Lunch, Mrs. Keller?”
“Is there an issue?”
“No, ma’am. Andrew came to my house shortly before he died. I hadn’t seen him in years. He had a favor to ask me.”
“What kind of favor?”
“That’s what lunch is for.”
She tilted her head. “Were you at the calling hours? I’m sorry I don’t remember you, but there were so many people. Andrew, as you know, knew everyone, though no one knew him.”
“I couldn’t make it.”
“I see. And this favor he asked—it requires that you buy me lunch?”
“Unless it’s too great an imposition.”
She gave me a rebuking glance. Her black hair, bunched thick on her shoulders, still held moisture from a shower. It had been tied behind her when she’d first arrived. Her feet were planted apart, her head tilted slightly forward. Loose limbed. Alert eyes. Marcy Keller liked to charge the net.
“Did you know him through his work?”
“We met in the army.”
“Reeeally.” She paused as if rebooting her impression of me. “I don’t think he uttered two words about those dark days. All right, I’ll bite. There’s a French café I’m fond of not far from here.”
Over toasted prosciutto and Brie sandwiches and sleepy French accordion music, I relayed my army days with Andrew. I kept it short, for she only pretended to listen. When I finished, she launched into her and Andrew’s time together. She did so with surprising openness and no petitioning on my part. How he loved work and music, but she didn’t want to settle for two out of three, and they would not have lapped another year.
As if registering her own blatant admissions, she said, “I can’t believe I’m dumping on you. Why are you interested in any of this?”
“Did he ever mention a woman named Elizabeth Phillips?”
She plunked her fork down and leaned back into her chair. “Fantastic. Just super. No. Why would he? Are you buying me lunch just to inform me that Andrew was married to a woman in another state, has three children, and they all want a piece of his business? Is that why you’re here, Mr. Travis?”