Undeniable Proof

“How about you?”

“You mean what I do for a living?” she asked, giving herself time to come up with an answer. “I’ve been a waitress, a barmaid, a receptionist, a grocery clerk. Right now I’m just taking a break to figure out what I want to do.”

“Been there,” he said. “You’re still young. You’ll figure it out.” He cocked his head at her. “You look like an…artist to me.” He must have seen her shocked expression because he laughed. “No, I’m not psychic. The box lid came open and I saw all your art supplies.”

The box had come open? Not with the amount of tape she’d used. “It’s just a hobby.”

“Yeah, that’s how my writing is. I just hope to turn it into something more,” he said, and looked toward the Gulf. “This would be a great place to paint.” He turned back to her. “I’d love to see your work.”

“I don’t let anyone see it,” she said too quickly. “It’s just…embarrassing at this point.”

He laughed. “Probably the same reason I don’t let anyone read my work.” Another song drifted on the breeze. He glanced toward the third floor where the elderly woman was dancing again. “If you weren’t crazy when you came here, you will be.”

“I’m sorry. How long did you say you’ve been here?”

“Just since this afternoon, but long enough to go stir-crazy, although not as crazy as some people.” He made a face and cocked his head toward the tower, making a circle with his finger next to his temple.

Since this afternoon? So he’d arrived only a little earlier than she had. She felt a chill at the thought that someone had found out where she was going and Odell had been sent to wait for her.

“Thank you again for your help.”

He smiled and nodded. “My pleasure.”

Almost apologetically she turned away from him. She picked up her suitcases and stepped inside the apartment. As she started to close the door, he called from the stairs, “Hey, I never caught your name.”

“Will—Willie.” It was out before she could call it back. She was tired and just wanted to be left alone and she hadn’t thought before she’d spoken or she would have given him the name she’d planned to use. Too late for that.

“Short for something?” he asked turning on the stairs.

She was forced back out on the balcony to keep from yelling her answer. “Actually, it’s a nickname. My real name is Cara Wilson. My friends started calling me Willie and it stuck.”

“Cara,” he said. “That’s a pretty name. But Willie suits you.”

She smiled nervously and gave him a nod as she stepped back into her apartment and closed the door, leaning against it, feeling like a fool.

She concluded Odell was more lonely than anything else. Nosy and lonely. Unless she was wrong about him—the way she’d been wrong about Landry Jones. To think she had almost gotten in the car with Landry.

She shivered at the memory, her gaze skittering over the rooms where she’d be living until Landry was caught. The apartment wasn’t bad. If you liked living in a monastery. The walls had once been painted white, the ceilings were cracked and ten feet high at least. The temperature was nice and cool, though, so that meant the walls were thick.

That was a plus and the place was furnished. Kinda.

Not that any of that mattered. She would be safe here. At least she prayed that was true.

Dragging her suitcases into the bedroom, she was excited to see the wonderful light coming in through the window. She felt a sense of relief. She would be able to paint in here. In fact, she couldn’t wait to get started.

She dragged the box in. As she started to open it, she noticed that the tape was open on one corner and the flap turned back. She ran her finger along the edge of the tape. It had been cut.

Chapter Four

Willa’s heart began to pound a little harder. Someone had cut the tape to look inside the box. Odell? Was it possible he had a knife in the pocket of his shorts? A lot of men in South Dakota carried pocket knives. But in Florida?

Or could it have been someone else? The box had been on the dock unattended for some time while Odell had brought her suitcases up to her room. But who else was there?

She glanced toward the third floor. The music had stopped again. She recalled it stopping before, a break between songs before she saw the elderly woman dancing once again. Was it possible the woman had gone down to the dock to look in Willa’s belongings?

What harm could a curious old woman do anyway? Willa liked that theory better than thinking Odell had purposely cut the tape to see what was in the box. The man was nosy, but whoever had cut the box was looking for something. Looking for her?

But if whoever had looked in the box was here to kill her, then that person already knew she painted. And not even her changed appearance would fool him.

She tried to put the incident out of her mind as she unloaded her painting supplies and set up an easel by the window.

Painting relaxed her, let her escape for a while from the reality of her life, the reality that Landry Jones was still out there on the loose and she was the only witness to the murder.

Until the police captured him, she wasn’t safe. Even when he was caught, she wasn’t sure she would feel safe, possibly ever again.

She stacked up all of her art supplies on the top of the chest of drawers, hoping they would last until she got to leave here. Eventually she would run out of rent money and be forced to leave and get a job.

She moved to the window by the bed and peered out. Through the palms she could see the Gulf of Mexico. It looked endless. How odd not to be able to see land on the horizon. Just water as far as the eye could see. No wonder early man feared sailing to the edge and falling off.

Turning back to the room, she considered making the bed and taking a nap. She’d been running on fear for so long, she felt drained. She needed her life back. All she had to do, she told herself, was stay alive until Landry was caught.

She stared at the empty canvas on her easel. She had to paint. It had been days since she’d gotten the opportunity. She itched to pick up a brush.

Painting had always been her survival. When her father was killed in a tractor accident. When her first love married someone else. When her mother remarried and sold the farm, hacking away the roots that had held Willa in South Dakota.

Willa hurried to catch the last of the day’s light coming in through the palms. She never knew what she was going to paint until she had a brush in her hand and the white empty canvas in front of her.

To her, painting was exploration. A voyage to an unknown part of herself. Her work was a combination of what she saw and what she didn’t. It was a feeling captured like a thought out of thin air.

She set up her paints and went to work, the evening light fading until she was forced to turn on a lamp. It wasn’t until then that she really looked at what she’d been working on—and felt a start.

What had begun as an old building along a narrow street had turned into the street where she’d witnessed the murder. A thin slice of pale light at the back illuminated what could have been a bundle of old rags but what she knew was a body slumped against a stucco wall, the dark BMW sitting at the curb.

She stepped back from the canvas. She’d been so lost in the physical joy of painting, she hadn’t even realized that she’d been reliving the murder.

From this distance, she saw the face behind the windshield of the BMW. It was subtle, almost ghostlike, but definitely a face. Landry Jones’s face. The same one she’d drawn for the police. She remembered the investigators’ strange reactions. When she’d asked if they knew who he was, the detective who’d been questioning her assured her they knew Landry Jones only too well.

Just her luck that a known criminal had taken an interest in her. She had wanted to ask what other crimes he’d committed but didn’t want to know. Wasn’t murdering a man in cold blood on a St. Pete Beach street enough?

In the painting, Landry was peering out of the darkness not at the body of the man he’d just killed—but at her. She could almost feel the heat of his dark eyes.

She stumbled back from the painting, bumping into the sagging double bed and sitting down on the bare mattress, suddenly exhausted and near tears.

Had she been foolish to think she would be safe anywhere—let alone on this island? She would always be haunted by what had happened that night, would always see Landry Jones’s face, if not in her paintings then in her nightmares.

A tap at the door startled her. She didn’t want to answer it but knew she couldn’t pretend she’d gone out. Another tap.

“Cara? Willie?”