Michaela Thompson - Florida Panhandle 02 - Riptide by Michaela Thompson Read Free Book Online

sighed. “Miss Merriam would get mixed up and say, ‘Here’s your banana, Isabel,’ or ‘That’s a mighty pretty drawing, Isabel,’ and I’d say, ‘I’m
Kimmie Dee!’
and we would laugh. That’s all.”
    That wasn’t all. Isabel could tell by looking at the girl’s face. She didn’t want to push much harder, though. “There wasn’t any other time?”
    Kimmie Dee shook her head. Her hair fell along her cheeks.
    “All right, then.” Isabel half-turned to leave.
    “Just that day,” Kimmie Dee said.
    Isabel stopped. “That day? What day?”
    “The day I saw her down yonder.” Kimmie Dee pointed in the general direction of the lighthouse. “The day she got sick.”
    Isabel tried to remember what Clem and Dr. McIntosh had told her about Merriam’s accident. Merriam was found wandering on the beach, dazed and incoherent. Nobody ever said who found her. “Were you the first one to see her?”
    Kimmie Dee nodded. “Yes’m. I had been practicing my routine, and I saw her. She was holding her head. Walking funny. I said to her, ‘What’s wrong, Miss Merriam?’ and she looked at me like she didn’t see me at all. And that’s when she called me Isabel.”
    Isabel’s throat was tight. “What did she say?”
    Kimmie Dee squirmed, as if trying to wriggle away from the memory. “She said,
‘Help me, Isabel! Help me, Isabel!’ ”
She shivered. “I tried to tell her I wasn’t Isabel.”
    Isabel stared down the beach at the lighthouse.
Help me, Isabel.
Kimmie Dee went back to stirring the wet sand. Toby, meanwhile, had pulverized several sand cakes and was depositing their remains in his wispy brown hair.
    Isabel smelled cigarette smoke. Standing inside the screened back door of the Burke house, a cigarette in his hand, a man stood watching her.
    She was embarrassed, as if she had been caught intruding. She said, “Hello.”
    “Hidy.” The man was about fifty, with graying blond hair and a weathered face. He wore an open-necked shirt that exposed white chest hairs. On his wrist was a complicated-looking black watch.
    “I’m Isabel Anders. I’m staying across the road at my aunt’s place.”
    “Ted Stiles.” The man turned and called, “Joy! You got company!”
    Isabel glanced at Kimmie Dee. The girl seemed intent on her sand cakes.
    A woman with tousled bleached hair appeared beside Ted Stiles. She had an attractive, sulky face and a well-formed body shown off by pink-and-white-checked shorts and a matching halter top. She came out the screen door, looked at Toby, and said, “My God, Kimmie Dee! Look at the mess you let him make.”
    Ted Stiles said, “Joy, this is— um—”
    “Isabel Anders.”
    “Isabel Anders. Looks like she already met Kimmie Dee.”
    Joy Burke said, “Hi,” and returned to Kimmie Dee. “Turn on the hose this minute and rinse him off. You know better than that.”
    Stiles said, “Would you like a beer or something, Isabel?”
    “No, thanks.” Isabel felt a need to explain what she was doing there. To Joy Burke, she said, “I’m Merriam Anders’s niece. I was just talking to Kimmie Dee about Merriam’s accident.”
    “Oh, yeah,” Joy Burke said. “Give me a cigarette, would you, Ted?” When the cigarette had been donated and a light provided, Joy said, “Kimmie Dee found her. She sneaks out early in the morning to practice her baton. I’ve told her not to. She’ll get a whipping for it one day.”
    The prediction didn’t seem to faze Kimmie Dee, who had turned on the hose as requested and was dribbling water over a delighted Toby. “I’m going to be in the talent contest July Fourth,” the girl said.
    “Hush up. The lady doesn’t care about that.” Joy Burke expelled smoke. “Kimmie Dee came running in all upset and got me. Poor Miss Merriam wasn’t making any sense at all. I called the ambulance and they took her off.”
    Stiles, leaning in the doorway, said, “May I ask what you all are talking about?”
    Joy Burke smiled at him, teasing.