Wish Upon a Christmas Star Read online

  He kept hold of her, as though it was perfectly natural for him to be touching her.

  “You can let me go now,” she said.

  “Oh, no, I can’t,” he said. She was summoning the will to wrench her arm away when he added, “Not until that belly dancer goes by.”

  Sure enough, coming toward them was a woman with a long green skirt hanging low on her hips and a red jewel in her naval. She seemed to be rehearsing her act as she walked.

  Logan laughed aloud. “This place is crazy. I like it.”

  If not for his close shave and expertly cut short hair, he’d almost look like he fit in. He’d exchanged his dark slacks and gray shirt for jeans and a floral print shirt he must have bought earlier today. No way could Maria imagine he’d had that shirt in his suitcase. Or as part of his usual wardrobe.

  “It does feel like a different world, doesn’t it?” she murmured. “A place somebody would come to get away from it all.”

  “By somebody, do you mean Mike?”

  “Yes,” she said. “If he’s been trying to lie low, it makes sense that he’d be in Key West.”

  “I’ve gotta say this again, Maria,” Logan stated. “For Mike to be alive, he’d have to go to great lengths to make sure nobody knew it. Stop and think about that.”

  Logan let go of her arm. The night was warm, probably still in the low seventies, but it felt as though a chill swept over her. There was no denying she couldn’t reconcile that piece of the puzzle.

  “I never said I had all the answers,” Maria admitted. “Any good investigator knows not everything makes sense until the case is solved.”

  She expected him to argue with her. Instead, he pointed to one of the indoor-outdoor bars that were popular in Key West. Poised at the edge of its roofline was the likeness of a winged monkey with its teeth bared. “Here we are,” he said.

  An outdoor seating area filled with café-style plastic tables and chairs led to sliding glass doors that were open wide. Inside, perhaps seventy or eighty customers were gathered around a bar with counter space on three sides.

  “The Flying Monkey.” Maria read the sign the monkey on the roof was holding. She shuddered. “That thing looks even more menacing than the monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.”

  “That’s right,” Logan said, a corner of his mouth lifting. “We watched that movie together once. You used to be afraid of them.”

  “Only because they’re terrifying. I’m surprised that monkey doesn’t drive away business.”

  He laughed. “Hardly. The desk clerk at my hotel said this is one of the most popular bars in the city.”

  Logan was staying a block from the Blue Tropics at a boutique hotel that cost easily twice as much as her room. He claimed it was because her hotel had no vacancy. Maria doubted he would have booked a room at the Blue Tropics even if one were available, though. Not when he could afford better.

  “I’m at your disposal,” he said. “If you want to hang out here at The Flying Monkey all night, I’m game.”

  She noticed he didn’t say he’d wait with her to see if Mike showed up.

  “I’m talking to the owner before I do anything,” she said. “Follow my lead, okay? Kayla’s staking out that Santa statue tonight. I might ask him about that, too.”

  “Will you tell the owner you’re a private eye?”

  “Shh.” She placed two fingers against his lips.

  He went still, his eyes darkening as they gazed into hers. A jolt seemed to travel from her fingertips throughout the rest of her body.

  She broke the eye contact and let her hand fall away. “Sometimes it’s smarter not to mention that.”

  It hadn’t been smart to touch him. Her nerve endings still tingled, blurring the boundaries she’d been trying to erect between them.

  “Let’s go,” she said, entering the bar ahead of him.

  On the back wall, Maria counted four posters of Ernest Hemingway, the famous author who’d made Key West his home. Interspersed with the posters were numerous photos of a bald man with a thick black beard posing with the customers.

  The bearded man in the photos was at the tap, pouring beer into a mug. The monkey that was the bar’s namesake decorated his black muscle shirt. The owner, Maria presumed. She asked Logan what he wanted to drink, then ordered a beer and a glass of white wine.

  “Coming right up,” the man said, filling the order quickly and efficiently. He set the drinks on the counter in front of them. “Here you go.”

  “Keep the change.” Maria ignored the money Logan was trying to hand her and paid him. “Before you go, do you know where I can find that Santa statue somebody turned into a zombie?”

  The bearded man chuckled. One of his front teeth had a gold cap. “Corner of U.S. 1 and Duval. Zombie paint’s gone, though. Only the god-awful statue remains.”

  “You don’t like the statue?” Maria had noticed a Key West Merchants Association sticker on one of the bar windows.

  “Have you seen that thing?” he asked. “We’ve got a lot of tacky stuff in Key West. We don’t need no more.”

  “Is that a popular opinion among local businessmen?” she asked.

  “Popular enough.” He had to raise his voice to be heard above the chatter and the music from the jukebox. “I thought Alex Suarez was about to pop a vein when it went up.”

  That was the guy who’d hired Kayla, the one the rookie private investigator had a crush on.

  “How about Mike DiMarco? What did he say?” Maria didn’t expect that the bar owner would recognize the name but watched him carefully for a reaction. Every now and again long shots paid off.

  He frowned, his brows knitting together. “Can’t say I know anybody by that name.”

  Maria pulled out the age progression and placed it on the bar. “He’s probably going by another name. Do you recognize him?”

  The bar owner looked down at the photo, then back at her. “What are you? A reporter?”

  This was one of those times Maria wouldn’t gain any ground by telling him she was a private investigator. “I’m his older sister.”

  “The family’s lost track of him,” Logan interjected. Until now he’d stood silently by, heeding Maria’s instructions to follow her lead. “She’s worried.”

  “I hear you.” The bearded man addressed Logan. “I’ve got a big sister, too. She’s always checking up on me. Says she can’t help it.”

  Maria pushed the paper toward him. “Somebody told us he might be one of your regulars.”

  The bar owner studied the image intensely. “This isn’t a photo. What is it?”

  “An age progression,” Maria said. “My brother’s been missing for a while.”

  His mouth twisted. “Kind of looks like Clem.”

  “Clem?”

  “Don’t know his last name. He shows up a couple times a week. Offers to play his guitar for beer. Sometimes I let him.”

  Maria’s heartbeat quickened. This dovetailed with the tip Logan had received. Not only that, Mike had taken up the guitar during the last year he’d lived at home. Sometimes he’d even jammed with friends. Once he’d claimed he was getting good enough to play in a band.

  “Does Clem come on any particular night?” she asked.

  “Not Friday or Saturday,” he said. “I’ve already got live music scheduled then. He usually comes in on Wednesday or Thursday.”

  Today was Wednesday.

  “What time?” Maria could barely contain her eagerness.

  T
he bar owner thought about it. “Sometimes early, sometimes late, sometimes not at all.”

  “Hey, barkeep! Shut your trap and fetch me a beer,” yelled a large, broad-shouldered woman a few seats away, thumping the bar for emphasis.

  “Hold your horses,” he yelled back. To Maria and Logan, he said, “That’s my big sister.”

  He left them to get her a beer, a smile on his lips. Another time, Maria might have been amused at their interaction. Not now. Excitement bubbled in her chest. Very soon she could be face-to-face with the brother she thought she’d never see again. It was almost too much to process.

  “I hope you didn’t mind my stepping in like that and backing up what you said.”

  She should. It was the second time he had done something like that, the first being with the clerk at the post office.

  “I didn’t mind,” she said. “Surprisingly, you’ve been a big help.”

  He laughed. “Surprisingly, huh? Well, I’ll take the faint praise wherever I can get it.”

  She felt her lips curl into a smile. Maintaining coolness toward him was too hard when her hopes were so high. “Enjoy it while it lasts. I can’t promise praise will keep coming.”

  “Noted.” He tipped back his mug, his throat muscles working as he drank the beer. He set the glass down on the bar. “What now?”

  “Now,” she said, “we wait.”

  * * *

  TWO HOURS LATER LOGAN sat across from Maria at one of the outdoor tables adjacent to the street as a waitress from The Flying Monkey served them slices of key lime pie with dollops of whipped cream.

  He’d suggested they have dinner while waiting for the guitarist to show up, but Maria had barely touched her cheeseburger and fries. He hoped she’d get something into her stomach, not only to soak up the wine she’d drunk but to fortify herself for the blow that was coming.

  He had little doubt that a guy named Clem in Key West resembled the age progression. No way, however, was that guy Mike.

  After the waitress left, Maria took a bite of key lime pie. “This is actually good. I was starting to think I could be eating filet mignon and not tasting it.”

  Her gaze darted from the people walking by on the sidewalk to those entering the bar, as it had since they’d sat down at the table.

  Logan chewed a piece of pie and swallowed. “This is fantastic. But then, I’ve always thought key lime pie was one of life’s great pleasures.”

  “The waiting’s still interminable,” she said.

  A jukebox blared from inside the bar, the tune spilling out the open doors to where they sat, loud but not loud enough to drown out conversation.

  “Talk to me,” he said. “It’ll pass the time.”

  She popped another piece of pie into her mouth. Good. As long as she was eating, he was happy. But then, maybe it was even less complicated than that. She was dressed as casually as he was, in jeans and an ordinary blue shirt, yet it was hard for him to not stare. He’d forgotten how stunning her combination of black hair and blue eyes was.

  No, correct that. He hadn’t forgotten. He’d blocked the mental image from his mind.

  She flipped her long hair over her shoulder, calling attention to her eyes, small, straight nose and bow-shaped lips. The combination sometimes made her look delicate, when he knew she was anything but.

  “What should we talk about?” she asked.

  A neutral topic, he thought. One that had nothing to do with the guy she’d married or the brother she was fooling herself into believing was alive.

  “Tell me how you became a private investigator,” he said. “Back in high school, you weren’t sure what you wanted to do.”

  “Remember my uncle Jim, the cop?” She continued when he nodded. “He told me about an opening to be a police dispatcher. I applied and got the job. I liked it, but after a few years it wasn’t enough. I went to the police academy and hooked on with the county sheriff’s department.”

  “Why didn’t you stay on the job?”

  “Too much red tape.” She twirled the stem of her wineglass. “You know me. Sometimes I have a hard time playing by the rules.”

  “I’m sensing a story.”

  She lifted her eyes to his. “Not a happy one.”

  “I’d like to hear it,” he said.

  For long moments, she said nothing. Then she started to talk. “One night about midnight a woman came into the station, frantic because her twenty-five-year-old daughter hadn’t come home and she couldn’t reach her on her cell. The woman had already called all her daughter’s friends and every hospital in town and come up with nothing. She begged me to search for her.”

  “Can’t you only do that if someone’s been missing for twenty-four hours?”

  “That was the department’s policy. People check out for a day or two for all sorts of reasons, young adults especially. Most of the time they turn up on their own. But there was something about the woman’s story that told me this wouldn’t be one of those times. If I hadn’t been on desk duty, I would have checked into it. But the two patrolmen working that night were sticklers for the rules.”

  “Was the daughter ever found?” Logan asked.

  “Yeah, the next morning.” Maria’s voice was steeped in sadness. “Her car had crashed through a fence and ended up in a junkyard. Nobody realized the car didn’t belong there until the owner was opening up and noticed her slumped over the wheel. The impact might have killed her, but maybe not. Maybe she would have been saved if we’d started looking for her when the mother asked us to.”

  Maria fell silent while Logan digested the story. It didn’t take him long to figure out what the accident victim had to do with her becoming a private eye.

  “So now when someone asks you to take a case,” he said slowly, “you don’t have to check with anyone else.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  He already knew she’d been a private investigator almost as long as she’d been divorced. Logan wondered if the two events were connected. He wouldn’t ask, though.

  “How about you?” she asked. “What’s life like in New York?”

  “Busy,” he said.

  She took another bite of her pie. “I bet you work all the time.”

  “Not all the time.” He managed to run in the park or get to the gym some mornings before his workday started. A few nights a week, he shoehorned drinks with friends or dinner with a revolving cast of women. He wasn’t about to tell Maria he went into the office on Saturdays and the occasional Sunday.

  “I bet your place is spectacular. Where do you live? A loft in SoHo or Tribeca?” she asked, naming two of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city.

  “Neither. I like green space, so it’s Central Park for me.” His one-bedroom apartment had a view of the park. The place was both expensive and spectacular, thanks to the interior designer he’d hired.

  “I’m sure Central Park is pretty,” she said, “but it can’t compare to the bluegrass of Kentucky.”

  “You’re right. You can’t compare the two places. They’re entirely different, each with its positives and negatives.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, a challenge in her voice. “You used to love Kentucky. What are its negatives?”

  His mother had brought up the same subject at the airport, complete with her theory that Logan wouldn’t have left the state if Maria hadn’t married someone else.

  “You can’t make as much in Kentucky as you can in New York.” He immediately wished he
could take back the words.

  As he could have predicted, she pounced. “That’s what’s most important to you, isn’t it? The almighty buck.”

  He refused to rise to the bait. He’d watched his parents struggle to make ends meet for so many years that there was no shame in wanting something different for himself. “Making a good living is important to me. Not so different from you, when you think about it.”

  “My job doesn’t consume me,” she said.

  “Neither does mine.”

  “Oh, no?” She raised her eyebrows. “I remember how much you loved being an artist, how happy it made you. Do you still paint?”

  He hadn’t picked up a brush since he’d discovered she’d sent some of his paintings to that art school in Louisville and the director had invited him to apply. The only way Logan could get through to her that he’d chosen a more stable career path was to stop painting. He’d never started again.

  “No?” she guessed. She shook her head as she studied him. “I didn’t think so.”

  “You can’t really want to talk about this,” he said.

  She tilted her head, her expression closed. “Talk about what?”

  “The past and why we broke up,” he said. “What purpose would that serve?”

  “I don’t...” Her voice trailed off, her mouth hanging open, her gaze fixed on a point somewhere beyond his shoulder. “Oh, my God. There he is.”

  Logan turned around. A man about thirty years old, dressed in worn jeans and a T-shirt, was walking into The Flying Monkey. He had straggly black hair, a sinewy build and a pronounced limp. He was also carrying a guitar.

  * * *

  MARIA’S HEART FELT AS IF it was slamming against her chest. Her palms grew damp and her head felt light.

  Was the man with the guitar the brother she’d loved and lost? Was she within moments of finding him again?

  He passed through the open doorway and disappeared in the sea of people inside the bar, but she’d seen enough to know why somebody had tipped them off. The guy was the right height, the right age and had the right coloring. The limp didn’t fit, but something could have happened to cause it in the years that had passed.