A Timely Vision

table at the Rib Shack. We hadn’t even had a chance to order yet. I didn’t have to be psychic to know why they were here: Kevin wanted me to find the missing key for him sooner rather than later.

“Kevin!” Tim got up and shook his hand. “Hi, Shayla.”

Shayla rolled her eyes and didn’t say anything. She wasn’t part of or happy with this plan.

“Hey, it’s good to see you guys! Mind if we join you?” Kevin didn’t wait for a response as he grabbed two chairs for him and Shayla.

I scooted over closer to the window as Kevin came in next to me. “What a surprise,” I said. “Imagine seeing the two of you here tonight.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t my idea.” Shayla pouted.

“We were here anyway,” Kevin said. “Might as well have dinner together.”

“You’re right.” Tim grinned at me. He didn’t care. He’d proposed once in front of the whole town council.

After we’d ordered, the men started talking about police procedures, the SBI and Miss Elizabeth. Shayla and I excused ourselves to go to the bathroom. “You can’t have Kevin, Dae,” Shayla stated flatly when we were standing in front of the wide bathroom mirror.

“I don’t want Kevin.” I smoothed my hair down and put on a little more lipstick. “What makes you think I do?”

“He came in here looking for you. As soon as he saw you, he made a beeline right for your table. I don’t think he wanted to talk to Tim, do you?” She spritzed on some exotic perfume.

“I know what he wants. He lost a key to a room in the Blue Whale. He suggested we go over there tonight. I said no. I guess he doesn’t take no for an answer.”

“He wants to go over there?” Shayla’s eyes got brighter. “I like that idea. I haven’t been over there in a hundred years.”

“That was your previous life, right?”

“Don’t sound so skeptical. You know what you know. I know what I know.”

“Whatever that means.”

“It means I like the Rib Shack, and I’m willing to go look for an old key, even if it is with you.”

And that was that. We went back to the table where Kevin had cleverly engaged Tim in the hunt for the old key. Everyone looked at me as the last holdout. “All right,” I said, giving in. “But you better be there at eight A.M. tomorrow when the SBI comes to interrogate me.”

“I’ll be there,” Kevin said. “I got your message.”

“But it won’t be an interrogation.” Tim took a gulp of his beer and lounged back in his chair. “They want to corroborate a few things. That’s all.”

“Like whether or not I’m psychic.” I glanced at Kevin. “Chief Michaels said I shouldn’t offer that information.”

Kevin’s eyes narrowed, and his face took on a different personality. I guessed this was his professional law enforcement face. “Why would he say that?”

“I’m sure you didn’t understand what he meant,” Tim said. “The chief would never tell you to lie.”

“He didn’t tell me to lie,” I clarified. “He told me not to go into any explanation about finding Miss Mildred’s watch on her dead sister. He said to tell them I was out looking for her like everyone else.”

“I’m sorry, Dae,” Kevin said. “But they already know. Believe me, it’s not as big a thing as the chief is making it out to be. Maybe he’s afraid it will call into question his investigation skills. No one in local law enforcement likes it when the state or federal government comes in on a case like this.”

That didn’t make me feel any better. “I don’t know what to say now.”

He put his hand on mine where it rested on the red and white checkered tablecloth. “Just tell them the truth. You didn’t do anything wrong. You have nothing to hide.”

The contact lingered and I felt my mind clouding over, exactly as it had when I saw Miss Mildred’s watch. If a person isn’t concentrating on looking for something in particular, I don’t see anything. In this case, Kevin had the key in the forefront of his mind. I saw where it was right away. “It’s in the drawer behind the cash register,” I blurted out.

Everyone looked at me. Kevin moved his hand away slowly. It made me wonder if he’d held my hand to comfort me or to see if I could find the key.

“Are you talking about the key?” he asked.

“Yes. It’s an old skeleton key. And it’s in the drawer behind the cash register in the bar.” I smiled at him and ate a few French fries as our food arrived. I was showing off a little, but it was exciting.

Shayla groaned, and Tim complained, “I wanted to go over there, Dae.”

“Me too,” Shayla added.

“You guys can still come over,” Kevin assured them. “I think Dae might be a little quick on the draw anyway. There’s no drawer behind the cash register. It’s up against the wall. There isn’t anything behind it. I sanded and repainted that whole area. There’s nothing there.” He held out his hand. “Want to look again?”

I realized then that he had held my hand to see if I could tell him where the key was. It made me a little surly, I’m afraid, since I realized something else when he was touching me. I felt more than friendly toward Kevin, despite my protestations to Shayla. “I don’t need to look again. It’s in a drawer behind the cash register in the bar. Take it or leave it. Once I see something, I don’t need to look again.”

“Okay.” He put his hand down. “We’ll all go look after dinner.”

“No thanks to you, Miss Kill Joy,” Shayla hissed across the table.

“No need to be so hard on Dae,” Tim said. “Speaking of which, there might not be anything for the SBI to ask you about tomorrow. When we arrested the boy who took your purse today, we searched his motel room and found a hundred purses stuffed in the closet. He’s been here a few weeks from Virginia Beach. Seems like he has a record there for doing the same thing. The chief and I figure he might have gotten a little rough with Miss Elizabeth when he stole her purse.”

“So you found her purse in his closet?” I asked, hoping he was right and it was an outsider who had killed her.

“Not exactly. Not yet anyway. It’s taking a while to go through all of them,” he explained. “But by this time tomorrow, we could have all the answers.”

I recalled the way the purse snatcher had shoved me against the wall when he’d taken my purse. If he’d done something of that nature to take Miss Elizabeth’s purse, I could understand how she could have been hurt—or worse, in this case.

“And that’s how it goes from a simple purse snatching to armed robbery,” Kevin said. “They find out they can do it, and it escalates.”

“Poor Miss Elizabeth. I hope he killed her dead before he left her out there.” Shayla sighed as she nibbled at a barbecue chicken leg.

“Shayla!” I couldn’t believe she’d say something like that.

“What? I was only hoping she wasn’t left out there, unable to get any help. I’d rather be dead than out there in the dunes barely alive with the gulls and the turtles eating me. You ever see what they can do to a body?”

“Well, we don’t know for sure yet what happened,” Tim said. “I hope we can get a confession from this boy and put it all behind us. The chief and I don’t like loose ends.”

He smiled at me and winked. I’d lost my appetite after Shayla’s remark. The conversation turned to the upcoming dance in the park and other less gruesome things. Everyone was done eating a few minutes later. Shayla and I stepped outside while Tim and Kevin paid for dinner.

“I hope Tim’s right about this kid being the killer,” Shayla said after taking a deep breath of night air, which was sweetly perfumed by the roses blooming near the restaurant entrance.

“So do I. It’s bad enough it happened. I don’t think any of us wants to think someone who lives here did it.”

“I guess it was a close call for you today,” she suggested. “I mean, that boy could’ve killed you too.”

“If he had, I promise I would’ve come back and told you.” I knew Shayla’s one earthly goal (besides money, great boyfriends and everyone’s respect) was to find proof that there was an afterlife. We’d talked about it many times. Shayla and I believed the souls of the dearly departed were never far away. Proving it was another thing.