"A private island, actually," Kate said, turning her attention out the window. The sky outside was no help for her mood, the glorious golden tones of a Pacific Northwest autumn having given way to the gloomy gray rains of late October. It was the season of SAD lights and short days, a constant drizzle in the air that ruined your hair and turned your socks squishy. How was she meant to imagine the sunny, saturated beach vibes of a Florida Keys summer in this drab gray existence? Normally she loved a rainy day—the perfect excuse to curl up with a hot mug of coffee, a cozy oversize sweater, and the latest Loretta murder. But Loretta was playing as coy with her as the sun behind the clouds, frustratingly out of reach.
"I didn't realize there were private islands out there," the driver continued. "Which one are you headed to?"
"Hempstead Island," said Kate, never one to offend someone who might keep her pinky toe as a memento. That was the problem with being a woman in the real world; not all men were murderers, but you couldn't tell the difference between the ones who were and the ones who weren't just by looking.
Maybe in the new book, Loretta could track down a murderous rideshare driver who asked too many questions and blew through one too many red lights. Kate opened a new note on her phone, typing away furiously.
"Where you headed?" asked the driver, making suggestive eyes at Loretta through the rearview mirror.
"What business is it of yours?" Loretta asked, making hard eyes right back at the nosy driver as she pulled out her lipstick case shaped like a knife and ran the color over her lips for emphasis. Shocking Red, the tube promised, but on Loretta it looked natural.
* * *
Of course, there were currently only two rideshare drivers on Big Pine Key, and one of them was Loretta's aunt. The other was the hot British mixologist who worked with Loretta at the Key Lime and had already been accused (and acquitted) of murder in book one. So maybe not a rideshare murderer, then.
"Hempstead?" the man said as Kate deleted the note, his eyebrows rising in surprise. "That got anything to do with the Hempstead building downtown?"
"And Hempstead Park, and the Hempstead Arts Center, and Hempstead Dormitory at the University of Washington," Kate went on. "Those Hempsteads."
The man let out a low whistle. "That's old money. You a Hempstead?"
Kate sighed. "No, I'm just attending a wedding."
"Yeah, I didn't figure you were," the man said, shaking his head. "Money like that, you don't take rideshares. You just buy the car and the damn driver."
When Spencer took Kate to Orca Island for their last anniversary, it was a full-day trek of walking to the bus stop, wedging herself in with a shirtless man in old army fatigues on the last remaining bus seat available, and riding the public ferry with gulls screaming and children wailing, before walking more than three miles from the ferry terminal on Orca to their Airbnb because Spencer didn't want to spend forty dollars for a taxi. And now Kennedy probably helicoptered both of them to Hempstead Island for the weekend without a second thought.
"Pier 66," announced her driver as he parked the car and stepped out. He squinted toward the docks. "That your boat down there? Sheesh, looks expensive."
It did look expensive, the sleek white boat waiting below. Probably a yacht, if Kate knew anything about boats. Which you would think she would, considering she wrote a whole successful series set in the Florida Keys. But her knowledge didn't extend very far beyond "they float in water." She'd gotten dinged in more than a few online reviews on that front. She once put Loretta in the ocean on a pontoon during a storm, which apparently was not a seaworthy vessel, according to DanSeaLife4376.
"I'll get your suitcase," said her driver as she stepped out. He squinted in the direction of the dock where the possibly-a-yacht waited. "You sure that's your boat? Looks like it's pulling away."
Kate had been too busy rating him five stars—at least one of them out of guilt for briefly assuming he was a murderer—to pay attention to the boat. But now that he'd mentioned it, there was a thin sliver of ocean water between the edge of the boat and the dock. A man stood on the aft deck in a puffy jacket and a thick beanie, watching as another man cast off their dock lines (that, at least, she'd learned from her research).
"I think you're gonna miss it," the driver said.
"Like hell I am," Kate said, hoisting her rolling case under one arm. She took off for the stairs, waving her free arm. "Hold the boat, please!"
