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Catholic charities in Miami, organized a secret airlift to whisk kids out of Cuba. Castro was closing schools and churches and confiscating privately-owned property. If the kids had no relatives in America, parents sent them to Catholic orphanages until they themselves could escape Cuba and reunite with them.
    “Mother spent a year in an orphanage before Gram’s family managed to reach Miami by rowboat and claim her. My grandparents rowed ninety miles between Havana and Key West through shark-infested waters. Since then, our family has called Key West home. Mom married, but I never knew my father. He died when I was a baby. Then years later, Mom died at the hand of a killer. That’s my story—all twenty-seven years of it.”
    I wished I had a longer story. The prospect of showing this detective around my office unnerved me. I suspected that in his mind he was accusing me of either murdering Margaux or of having some part in her suicide. You know the person finding the body is always of special interest to the police. His words replayed in my mind. Could he search my office without my permission? Didn’t such searching require a warrant of some kind? What if he saw the gun in my desk drawer? Would he take it? Could he pick up whatever he wanted without my permission just because I found Margaux’s body?
    Scary questions raced through my mind and I wanted to get this man out of my office and on his way to wherever detectives go once they’re through making body finders nervous. But I could see getting rid of him wasn’t going to be that easy. He settled more comfortably into his chair, eyeing my account book and my calendar that lay on my desk beside the computer.
    Did he really want an appointment? Or was he playing it cool—trying to put me at ease so I would reveal something incriminating?

Four
    I HAD RECENTLY painted my office walls white and now the sun shining through the front picture window highlighted the whole room. Detective Curry studied the floor-to-ceiling shelves that held a few books, a stack of clean towels, colorful bottles, and jars of lotions. When his eye fell on my adjustable patient’s chair, he rose and studied it carefully.
    “This’s where your patient sits during treatment?”
    I joined him standing beside the chair. “Yes.” I pushed a lever on the velvet-covered recliner that brought the footrest up to waist height and lowered the headrest. “This chair will accommodate a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound person and it’s quite comfortable. It places the client’s feet at a height that makes it easy for me to do my work.”
    Curry ran his hand over the soft fabric of the chair before he turned away.
    “I place a pillow under the patient’s head in case he doesn’t enjoy having his feet higher than his head.”
    “I can see how a pillow might be needed.”
    With another glance around, Curry’s eye caught my temporary living quarters only partially hidden behind a folding partition. He walked to the back of the office.
    “You live in this office space, too?” His gaze took in my tiny living area, dining table, kitchen, bedroom. I wondered if he’d check out the bathroom to be sure I wasn’t hiding more dead bodies.
    “I used to live here full time, but now I’m only in the apartment one month of the year.”
    His gaze formed a question, but I said nothing until he asked. “Why only one month of the year? This’s the address you gave me. Where do you live the other eleven months?”
    “I house-sit for a couple from North Dakota who rent a vacation place in an old established neighborhood on Georgia Street. They bought an ancient house they intend to modernize, but they only come down during March, so the modernizing is progressing very slowly. I sublet the house from them for the rest of the year. I’m pleased with the low rental price they offer, and they’re pleased to have someone occupying their place—keeping it looking lived-in. It’s a good deal for both of us.