Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [19]
The first thing I noticed was that instead of the green duffel I’d seen him with, Peter was now carrying a much larger black leather knapsack.
A feeling of desperate, last-ditch hope floated in my chest. Did that mean there really had been some kind of DEA work? I wanted so badly to believe that what I had just seen was Peter working undercover.
The Mazda Z pulled onto Duval and rolled to the red light where I sat idling. Spanish music began to blare out of it as its tinted passenger window zipped down. I listened to horns and bongo drums racing each other as I laid my wide eyes on the two people inside.
I squinted in surprise and shook my head. That couldn’t be right, I thought.
I knew them both.
Teo, the skeevy bartender with the frosted hair, was behind the wheel doing what he seemed to do best, rubbing at his nose.
Even more surprising, beside him, my boss, Elena, sang along to the salsa with her eyes closed as she drummed on the dashboard to the beat.
Then the light turned and the tricked-out Mazda peeled off and disappeared into the traffic of upper Duval.
Still sitting on my buzzing moped, staring at its red running lights, I tried to piece together what I had just seen. For a moment, the fact that I knew everyone involved in the odd encounter gave me a feeling of relief. I actually wondered for a silly second if they were doing all this sneaking around for my benefit, as if they might be planning some kind of surprise party for me.
Then reality took hold. There was no party. Quite the opposite.
My husband is a bad cop? I thought.
No, I realized. It was Elena! Elena was the bad cop. Peter was working a case against her and Teo. I knew for a fact that Teo did coke and he probably dealt it, too. That had to be it!
That’s when the car behind me laid on its horn.
I turned the handlebars and throttled to get out of its way, but I must have given it too much gas. The back wheel spun out, the bike tipped, and I went down hard. I lay there for a moment, my elbow and knee in agony, my head in the gutter. Then I scrambled out from underneath the moped and sat on the curb.
I stared fascinated at my torn-open knee. A thin line of blood rode down the ridge of my shin and took a left as it reached my ankle.
As I watched myself bleed, the Rick James song “Super Freak” floated out into the street from the crowded bar behind me.
“When I make my move to her room, it’s the right time,” the drunken crowd sang along. “It’s such a freaky scene.”
“Hey, you OK? Can I help you?” called a beery male voice from somewhere on the sidewalk behind me.
I shook my head as I lifted the bike, got back on, and headed home.
Chapter 22
IT TOOK ME TWENTY MINUTES to get home. I took a shower and bandaged my knee. When I got into bed, I lifted the remote off the night table and turned on the TV. I was determined to stay up until Peter came home, but after only a minute or two I found myself nodding off.
The sky outside my bedroom sliders was the dark gray of predawn when I woke up. The TV was showing an aerobics program: thin young women with too much makeup, smiling like Miss America as they counted off toe touches.
Then the doorbell rang.
I stumbled out of bed. Was it Peter? Did he forget his key?
I was even more confused when I saw a squad car in the driveway outside the living room window.
I opened the door. It wasn’t Peter. It was a short female officer in a Key West PD uniform. I thought I knew all of Peter’s fellow cops, but I’d never seen her before.
“Jeanine Fournier?” she said.
Even in a dazed fugue, I could tell by her demeanor, by the intense look in her eyes, that something was seriously wrong.
I suddenly felt tired and powerless, thoroughly unprepared for whatever I was about to be told. Staring at the woman’s hard face, I felt like going back into my bedroom and