Free Savannah Breeze by Mary Kay Andrews

“He’s…it’s the wrong man. It must be.”
    â€œGood-looking guy, am I right?” Yglesias said. “Five-ten, maybe five-eleven? Pale blue eyes, mustache, brown hair, fading at the front? And a diamond earring. Jesus! What was I thinking? The guy had a diamond earring, for Christ’s sake.”
    A cement-blocklike weight crushed my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I stood up so quickly the boat pitched violently beneath me, and I had to grab hold of the brass handrail to steady myself.
    â€œMa’am?” Stonecipher said. “Did this individual steal anything from you? Are you okay?”
    â€œNo,” I said finally. “I have to go.”
    All the way into town I told myself what I had told that cop and Yglesias. It was a mistake. A misunderstanding. This was not Reddy. Not my Reddy. I had heard all about identity theft. One of our customers at the restaurant had had his identity stolen and it had been a nightmare. That’s what must have happened to Reddy. Some scumbag was passing himself off as Reddy Millbanks, committing crimes under Reddy’s name. I tried calling his cell phone again, but now the recording said the number was no longer in service.
    Where was he? I was past frantic. West Jones Street, I told myself.He was probably at West Jones Street. It was after midnight. He’d be fast asleep in my bed on West Jones Street. Nude, turned on his left side, with his right arm thrown across to my pillow, his clothes folded neatly on the Chippendale chair by the door. I felt a twinge of panic when I pulled into my parking slot in the lane behind the house. No sign of the Jag. But there was a battered, rusted-out blue pickup parked in Reddy’s usual slot. I cursed in annoyance. The Arrendales, a pushy Yankee couple who’d made a killing on dot-coms had bought the town house next to mine a year ago. They had a bad habit of allowing their guests to park in my slot when they thought I’d be away. And I’d been away so much lately, they’d probably just assumed I was out of town. Reddy had probably been forced to park somewhere on the street out front.
    Fuming, I banged open the wrought-iron gate to the courtyard. First thing tomorrow, I promised myself, I would let the Arrendales know in no uncertain terms that I didn’t appreciate them poaching on my parking slot.
    The courtyard was dark. I’d been meaning to replace the bulb in the light fixture over the door, but things had been so hectic lately that the burned-out bulb was only one thing on my long to-do list. I bumped my shins against something hard and metallic and cursed out loud. “Shit!” I groped the item with my hands and finally concluded that it must be my wheelbarrow. Which should have been in the toolshed.
    I picked my way carefully to the back door, groped for the doorknob, and fiddled around with my keys for a minute. But the doorknob wouldn’t turn. “Shit,” I muttered. Add another item to my to-do list.
    I tried banging on the door, to see if I could rouse Reddy from his sleep. But after knocking and calling his name in a low voice, I gave up and walked down the lane and around to the front of the house.
    The light was out on my front stoop too. But the streetlight bathed the street and the front of my brick town house in a cold, unforgiving light. What I saw then froze me in my tracks. A heavy multilock box was threaded through the polished brass door handle. A small but tasteful sign was perched in my front bay window, which should have been draped in the swagged and fringed sea foam green damask drapes I’d paid a small fortune to have made six months ago. But the windows were bare. And the sign said it all: SOLD .
    In a minute, I forgot all propriety. I banged the brass door knocker as hard as I could, then gave that up to pound on the heavy wooden door. “Reddy!” I shrieked. “Reddy! Reddy! Reddy!”
    The Arrendales’