Free Key Lime Blues by Mike Jastrzebski

refused. She swore she was going out to take care of the trouble she’d gotten herself into. She said she didn’t want to involve you anymore. I didn’t know anything about your money. Why were you carrying twenty-five hundred dollars in cash anyway?”
    I shook my head and let out a sigh. “It’s a long story. I guess I should be glad all she took was the money and the gun. At least she left my wallet and credit cards.”
    “I think I have a right to know what the hell’s going on between you and Gail. And I want to know why she thinks she needs a gun.”
    I wasn’t quite sure what I should tell her, but if I was going to have any chance of finding Destiny, I needed her help. I decided the best way to get her on my side was to scare the hell out of her about her friend’s situation. So I laid it all out to her. I told her about the stolen diamonds, Frank Szymanski, and Bob and Willie. When I finished, I shut up and waited for her response.
    Refusing to meet my gaze, she picked up her coffee cup and walked over to the window. She stood there for several minutes staring outside, then she moved back to the sink, picked up a half-empty coffee pot and asked, “You want coffee?”
    I nodded and she grabbed an empty cup, filled it, and carried it over to the table. When she sat down she handed the cup over to me and spoke so softly I was forced to lean forward to hear her. “I guess nothing Gail does surprises me anymore. She’s always been involved with one wild scheme after another. To hear her talk, every one of them was going to make her rich.”
    She picked up a piece of toast, tore it in half, but tossed it back onto her plate without taking a bite. “To tell you the truth, it doesn’t surprise me she got involved with gangsters. But I would have thought she was smart enough not to steal from them. She’s a member of Mensa. She even won a scholarship to Michigan State University.”
    “She acts and speaks like a ditz.”
    Tanya laughed. “She’s been using that shtick on men since she was fourteen.
    “Still, she wasn’t smart enough to keep from being expelled for prostitution,” I said.
    Tanya blew on her coffee. “It was an escort service. All she did was arrange for some of her fellow students to have a date with good-looking women. She may be a stripper, but it doesn’t make her a whore.”
    “It’s a matter of semantics, isn’t it? She was charged with prostitution.”
    Tanya nodded. “True. I guess I want to believe the best of her. Like I said, we grew up together.”
    “Were the two of you close?”
    “When we were teenagers.”
    “Tell me about her.” I leaned back in my chair. “The better I understand her, the better chance I have of finding her again. I’m a little surprised she doesn’t seem concerned about a killer wandering around out there looking for her. Probably one or two others I haven’t met yet.”
    “Do you think they’d hurt her?”
    “Hell yes,” I said. “I’m afraid of Frankie Szymanski right now, and I didn’t steal any diamonds from him. All I did was make it a little harder for him to get them back.”
    “Great.” Tanya jumped up and carried her cup over to the sink. “I’m gonna need another hit of caffeine.”
    She let the water run for a minute, rinsed out the pot, and filled it before taking a bag of coffee from the cupboard. She ground the fresh beans and there was a gentle rhythm in the way she moved that made me feel at home.
    Maybe it was the rich smell of the coffee. Maybe it was the sense of shared danger. Maybe it was only my imagination, but I think we both felt comfortable with the other’s presence. It was a quiet moment and neither of us spoke until she switched on the coffee maker and leaned back against the counter.
    “Way before ‘Alvin’s’,” she began. “Dad was part owner in a strip club. Gail’s mother, Shelly, was a dancer at the club and Dad fell in love with her. He moved her and Gail into the house here. For the two