A Justified Murder Read online

  Jack took a moment as he seemed to be deciding what to do.

  “Is the champagne cold?” she encouraged.

  His eyes let her know that he was aware of what she was doing. “Yeah. It is. Come on, let’s go.”

  They didn’t speak as they walked to his truck and got in. As he drove, she could see a muscle working in his jaw. When he went down Heron Lane, she drew in her breath. Suddenly, she realized what he’d finally accomplished. He’d managed to buy either the house his grandfather had grown up in or Sara’s old house. For years, it had been a dream of Jack’s to buy them, but the owner had refused to sell. “You didn’t!”

  For the first time since hearing Tayla’s phone conversation, his eyes lit up and he nodded.

  “Which one?”

  “Both.”

  Kate laughed in delight. “And who handled the deal? Did—?” She cut herself off. She wasn’t going to ruin this with talk of money.

  “The owner has a cousin who’s a Realtor. Sorry.” He pulled the truck into the weed-infested driveway of a little house that looked as though it might collapse at any moment. Sagging roof, rotting porch posts, broken windows. But she knew that to Jack it was a trophy of triumph. The house had belonged to his grandfather Cal, and through the rampant Florida growth she could see a bit of the house next door. It had once belonged to Sara’s family.

  She got out of the truck. The place was going to take a massive amount of work. So much so that it would be easier to bulldoze the two houses and build from scratch, but she knew Jack would never do that. He’d worked for over a year to get the current owner to sell to him. When Jack came to stand beside her, she said, “Well? Are you going to show me or not?”

  “It’s bad inside. I don’t think—”

  “Oh come on. Couldn’t be worse than parts of Chicago.”

  He gave her a look of challenge, as though to say this was, then shoved on the front door to open it. It wasn’t locked.

  Inside, they heard the scurry of tiny feet as creatures ran to hide. Jack flipped a switch and a floor lamp in the corner came on. “Wiring isn’t to code. It’ll have to be redone.”

  “And the plumbing, and the roof, and the...” She waved her hand. “All of it. Put in new windows and the light in here would be good.”

  She could see energy beginning to return to him as he took her on a tour of the decaying house. There was a living room that opened into a dining room. Behind it was a compact kitchen, a little breakfast room, and a screened-in porch. There were two bedrooms that shared the one bathroom. The house was outdated enough to be used as a display in a museum. What the boys from WWII came home to.

  “What do you think?” he asked when they got back to the front room.

  “Tear out the wall between the kitchen and the breakfast room, make the porch into a full bath, and I can sell it.” She saw him hesitate. “Or not. Thinking of keeping it?”

  “Maybe. I haven’t decided.”

  “Is the floor plan for Sara’s old house like this one?”

  “Identical. There were four of them in a row.”

  “And she never wants to see hers again?”

  “Right,” Jack said. “Are you hungry? I brought food.”

  Whether it was from hearing Tayla or the somberness of the old house, Jack wasn’t his usual teasing, laughing self. “Starved,” she said. “You have anything good?”

  “How about a Cuban feast? I brought a cooler and some drinks and...” He shrugged.

  “How bad is Aunt Sara’s house?”

  For the first time, he gave a real smile. “I thought you might want to go over there, so this afternoon I did a little cleaning.”

  “Made it into a palace, did you?”

  “I wish. Help me get the stuff out of the truck and we’ll eat over there.” He looked at her high-heel-clad feet. “I tossed in a pair of your sandals. Thought you might need them.”

  Smiling, she followed him outside. He seemed to be recovering from his shock. When she saw that he’d brought her dressy gold sandals, the ones coated in rhinestones, she didn’t comment.

  He carried the metal cooler while she got a blanket.

  “We’ll go across the path Sara and Granddad used. It’s still worn down after all these years.”

  In the months that she’d been there, Kate had been able to piece together some of the story of her aunt and Jack’s grandfather. Born the same year, lived next door to each other, best friends from birth, then lovers in high school. But at graduation, there was a breakup. Whatever happened, Sara had left Lachlan to go to college, while Cal stayed behind to run his father’s auto shop. He soon married a local girl and they had a son, Jack’s father.

  They made their way across an old path that could hardly be seen for the encroaching plants. Palm trees and spiky palmettos, with lizards darting everywhere. A tropical jungle.

  Under their feet was a serpentine walkway made of rocks, broken pieces of granite, and—“Are those flattened hubcaps?”

  “Yup. One of Granddad’s first construction projects.”

  “Made so he could get to Aunt Sara.”

  “So they could get to each other. There’s an old concrete slab through the trees. Maybe it used to have a roof and they met there, in the middle. They needed to get away from his father and her mother.”

  “My grandmother,” Kate whispered.

  The Medlar house was in as bad a shape as the Wyatts’. But the rooms had been swept, the cobwebs brushed away. Next to the living room, which had a fireplace, was a dining room with big windows flanking French doors. The doors with their broken glass had been boarded up, but through the windows she could see the rotting framework of a pergola. Rampant growth hid the land. Inside, along the back wall was a table made from a quarter sheet of plywood set on concrete blocks. Big plastic bags were in the corner, pillow edges sticking out.

  “For our dining.” He was looking at Kate for approval.

  “You’ve done a beautiful job. Thank you for inviting me.” She could see that her praise pleased him.

  “Go on, nose around while I set up.”

  When it came to houses, her curiosity was insatiable. As she walked through, she realized that both houses had a forlorn air to them. It was as though she could feel the unhappiness that had been inside them. The two young people had clung to each other in an attempt to escape their lives at home. Aunt Sara had made only a few remarks about her mother. “She couldn’t stand me” had been one of them.

  As for Cal, he believed there was a demon in the Wyatt blood that came out every other generation. Cal’s father had been a raging tyrant who drank too much. The family hex had skipped Cal and gone to his son—Jack’s nasty-tempered, drunken father. Sara once said that Jack believed in “the curse” so much that he was afraid to have kids.

  When Kate got back to the living room, Jack had set it up. A pretty cloth covered the plywood and a long throw rug was on the floor between the wall and the table. Sara’s good china and silver, with lit candles, were on top. Big pillows provided seats. He had done some serious planning for this evening and she smiled at him. “It’s lovely. Really. It’s beautiful.”

  Smiling, Jack opened the champagne and filled their flutes.

  She raised her glass toward him. “Congratulations. I know it was a long, hard struggle to get the owner to sell and I’m glad you did it.”

  “Me too,” he said and they drank.

  For the next hour, they gave themselves over to the feast he’d prepared—with help from his mother.

  There was ropa vieja, beef with olives and capers, and rice made with toasted cumin. Everything was delicious and Jack kept filling Kate’s plate until she ate too much. When he pulled two pretty little molded pumpkin flans out of the cooler, she groaned. But she ate every bite of it.

  By the time they’d finished, it was dark outside,