“I wanted to make sure you were up to visitors,” he said. “And then I forgot it was out there.”
“You’ve never forgotten a thing in your life, Nick Dempsey. You already know who it is, and you just don’t want to deal with it.”
He grinned and then leaned down to kiss my cheek. “I’ve got to get to work. Don’t overdo it today.” And with that, he flicked open the umbrella and hightailed it to his truck. He was at the end of the driveway by the time I got my feet in my rain boots and the slicker wrapped around me. I pulled the hood up and then stepped out in the wet, sloshing my way to the cab.
The taxi driver was a grizzled man in a newsboy’s hat with an unlit cigar in his mouth. He was absorbed in a crossword puzzle and didn’t notice me until I was almost at the window. I couldn’t see into the back seat because of the tinted glass.
He rolled down his window. “I was wondering if we were going to have to wait here all morning,” he said. “But your husband said you’d be out so I could be on my way. It’s a long drive back to Port Canaveral.”
“Port Canaveral?” I asked. “Who in the world would take a taxi to Savannah from Port Canaveral? That must have cost a fortune.”
“She paid me a thousand bucks plus my fare,” he said, chortling. “It’d be foolish to turn it down.”
My blood ran cold. There was only one person who would pay a thousand dollars to spend hours in a cab in miserable weather. I peeked gingerly into the back window, expecting to see Aunt Scarlet looking like a wizened prune in one of the fur coats she enjoyed and talking the cabbie’s ear off. Or at least trying to seduce him. Aunt Scarlet never let a younger man go to waste.
But she wasn’t talking his ear off. Her head was slumped down on her chest and she was fast asleep. At least, I assumed she was asleep.
“Is she alive?” I asked, squinting to get a better look.
“Definitely,” he said. “She’s been snoring like a jackhammer.”
Even as he spoke the words I heard a sound like a lawn mower starting, and her snores resonated through the cab and out the window.
“How have you listened to that for hours?” I asked. “I would’ve strangled myself by now.”
“Eh,” he said, shrugging. “I’m mostly deaf, and I just turn up the radio real loud. If you play Black Sabbath it sounds like she’s part of the band.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said. “I suppose I need to take her off your hands.” I was debating whether or not to pay him another thousand dollars to take her back to the boat dock. Having Scarlet in town was a double-edged sword. She was entertaining from time to time, but she almost always brought trouble with her.
I stared at her a few more seconds, continuing my internal debate, when her eyes popped open and her head snapped up. She let out a little scream at the sight of me staring at her through the window, and then she grabbed her chest.
The cabbie decided to be helpful and roll down her window. I shot him a scowl, but he rolled his own window up and went back to his crossword.
“What in the fresh hell is wrong with you?” Scarlet asked. “I could feel you staring at me. I got eyes in the back of my head. You don’t survive the Nazis without having extra eyes. They used to watch me sleep all the time. I could lie still for hours. And then as soon as they’d drift off I’d jump up and snap their necks. I grew up wringing chicken necks. Human necks aren’t much different.”
“Hmm,” I said. The cabbie had stopped his crossword and wasn’t even pretending not to eavesdrop.
“My dad fought the Nazis,” the cabbie said, over his shoulder. “Got his foot shot off.”
“It happens,” Scarlet said, shrugging. “I still got a bullet in my hip. It’s been in there so long I figure it’s holding things together. You sure you’re married?”
“Forty-five years,” he said. He grinned, showing a gap in his teeth.
“Hmmmph,” Scarlet said. “Well, I’d guess you’d best hold on to her. You’re not getting any younger.”
I let out a sigh and opened the car door. “Let’s get inside,” I said. “It’s wet and freezing.”
“I was wondering if you had the good sense God gave you to get out of the rain,” she said. “Pregnancy must be making you dumb. What are you wearing? Are you emo? I read all about them in Teen People. They have sex hanging upside down like bats.”
I pressed my lips together and helped her out of the car. She was ninety pounds of woman and fifty pounds of fur coat. I didn’t know how she was keeping herself upright. Her hair was flame red and covered in a plastic kerchief to protect it from the rain. She was carrying a Louis Vuitton travel bag and she shoved it at me while she said her goodbyes to the cabbie.
“Good luck,” he said to me, and then drove off.
“Strange man,” Scarlet said. “Not what he seems. I’d keep an eye on him if I were you. I memorized his license number just in case.”
“Good thinking,” I said, helping her up the three short stairs and to the front door I’d left open.
“Do you live in a museum? Why is this door so big? How come you don’t have rocking chairs? What kind of house doesn’t have a porch?”
I’d personally wondered the same thing. Nick’s house wasn’t the typical Savannah home. It was a big white elephant of a house—sleek and modern and square—with floor-to-ceiling windows at the front and the back so you could see all the way through.
I wasn’t the sleek and modern type. I made Joanna Gaines look like a city slicker.
