Key West Heat - Alice Orr

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rang in Taylor’s head as haunting accompaniment to her hurried steps. She could almost feel Aunt Pearl keeping pace and whispering, “I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.”

      Taylor didn’t take a full breath again until she was out of the passage. She didn’t slow her pace until she was standing beneath a street lamp where she was forced to stop for a moment to get her bearings. She had studied a Key West street map on the way down here in the plane. She knew precisely where the guesthouse was located in relation to the place she was now headed. Her exit through the backyards had taken her one block closer to her destination. She took a few more deep breaths to slow the tripping of her heart then set out along the cracked pavement toward Duval Street.

      Small, modest houses lined the block on both sides. She was alone on the street—no people, no vehicles parked in possible ambush, no leafy nightmare creatures in evidence. Duval Street was famous for its noisy nightlife, but all was quiet here. She had deliberately chosen an address near the center of things but still at some distance from the hubbub of Mallory Square, with its sunset worshippers and late-night revels. Her guesthouse was only a few blocks from the southernmost point on the island, which the brochures all bragged of as also being the southernmost point in the entire United States. Almost not in the same country with the rest of us, Taylor thought, and wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She was reminded yet again of being out of her element.

      The tropical air caught in her heavy hair. She could feel it there like a gossamer web among the strands. She raked her fingers through it and felt the coolness of that web and the fullness of the waves made suddenly untamable by this place. She pulled the strap of her handbag from her shoulder and began fishing inside for a wide-toothed comb that might bring the honey-colored mass under control. She was still poking around in her purse when she felt a movement behind her.

      “What’s an angel like you doin’ out here on her own?”

      He must have come out of one of the shop doorways that bordered the street. She was on Duval now. The shops were all closed along here, and there was no one else on the street, at least not near enough to be of help if she needed it. He was tall and very thin. His clothes hung loosely on him. His shirt was open several buttons at the neck, and his pants fit more like pajamas than trousers. She thought he might be wearing sandals from the sound of his shuffling along the pavement, but she couldn’t see his feet in the shadowy night.

      She began walking fast away from him, down Duval Street toward the bright neon and the sound of music ahead. She could see that the lighted shop fronts were closer on the opposite side. She would cross the street when she got there, maybe step inside one of the open boutiques till she was sure she wasn’t being followed any longer. She could hear him, still laughing softly behind her. She glanced back over her shoulder.

      “Fluff out your wings and fly away, angel,” he said. “There ain’t no heaven hereabouts.”

      Chapter Two

      “Desiree,” he breathed.

      Des Maxwell was behind the false mirror over the Beachcomber’s long, teakwood bar. This observation post had been here when he bought the place. He’d thought about getting rid of it. He didn’t like keeping tabs on people when they didn’t know he was doing it. Instead, he told everybody who worked for him that from back here he had a clear view of everything, including the cash register. He figured that would keep most of them honest. There’s no such thing as being too careful in the bar business.

      You can’t be too careful about a lot of things. Like letting yourself get blindsided the way he just did when she walked in and sat down. Of course, he knew she wasn’t Desiree. He’d seen Taylor Bissett’s photograph at Netta’s house, and Desiree had been dead almost twenty-four years now. That was just about time enough for him to get used to how much she had meant to him and how much of his life had died with her—like the only chance he’d ever had of anything even close to a family. Now, as he stared through the one-way glass at the woman who was the vision of her mother, he knew there hadn’t been time enough to get over his loss after all.

      Des had half expected the daughter to show up here someday. Then again, he’d half expected her not to. Either way, she’d caught him by surprise tonight. It had never occurred to him that in real life she would look almost identical to her mother. Not even the photograph had convinced him of that. Nothing could have convinced him that anybody could look so much like Desiree. Nobody ever had. He pressed closer to the glass. The hair, especially, was as he remembered, and the skin he knew would be moist and cool in the night air, the way Desiree was cool while being warm and caring at the same time. He couldn’t tell if Desiree’s daughter might be warm and caring too. She was certainly beautiful. She was also subdued and aloof in that white dress, at least a world away from the halter tops and jeans cut off high enough to show some back cheek along the bar. She didn’t flash her body around that way any more than her mother would have done.

      Still, there was something different about her, some way she wasn’t Desiree. Des couldn’t put his finger on it. He felt he needed to know what that difference was. He had to set her apart from Desiree, especially considering what a lot of people suspected about that night twenty-four years ago, and the fire. Taylor was only a kid then, younger than he was by several years. Even if what they said about her and the fire was true, she couldn’t have really understood what she was doing. Knowing that hadn’t kept him from wishing a thousand times that he’d done what he first meant to do that night and saved the mother instead of the child.

      That regret rose in him now. Suddenly, he felt the need, stronger than ever, to set them apart from each other in his mind, these two women who would have looked like sisters, were they standing side by side. He knew he would be able to tell from the eyes. Unfortunately, Taylor Bissett was halfway across the room, and the mirror glass on the other side of here could stand a polish to clear up the view. He would have to go down there for a closer look.

      Des headed for the steps that led to a side door at the end of the bar. He glanced one more time through the back of the mirror. “Damn,” he cursed as he saw a lanky man walk up behind Taylor with a smile on his face that said he intended to get to know her very well, very fast. Des quickened his pace toward the door.

      * * *

      WHEN TAYLOR FELT someone at her shoulder, she thought it might be the person she had come here to find. She looked up to see a dark-haired man of wiry build, attractive in a rawboned sort of way. He leaned over and flashed her a quick smile that told her he was just a stranger trying to pick her up, after all.

      “I bet you won’t believe this, but I know you,” he said, starting out with the most clichéd of pickup lines.

      “I beg your pardon. I don’t think I know you.”

      “It was when you were a kid,” he said. “May I?” He gestured at the chair next to hers and sat down in it before she could say whether she wanted him to or not. His movements were abrupt, like a darting animal’s, so much so that there was no time to react.

      Taylor hesitated. Was this a new twist on an old line? “Are you trying to say you knew me when I was a child here in Key West?”

      “That’s right. I did.”

      Taylor almost laughed at him. She had left here as barely more than an infant, and she hadn’t been back since. How could he possibly recognize her now as an adult?

      “That was so long ago. You probably don’t remember,” he said. “Your aunt used to bring you to my mother’s house almost every day. I’d sneak around corners to get a look at you. You were almost as pretty then as you are now.”

      “Thank you for the compliment. But you’re right, I don’t remember you. What did you say your name was?”

      “Oh, sorry. I was so surprised to see you I forgot my manners. I’m Jethro.”

      He took her hand and shook it briefly. His grip was firm, but darting like the rest of him.

      “Was it my Aunt Netta who brought me to your house

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