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a gray plastic box, hard and flat like one that a tool set might come in. I was surprised by how heavy it was as I grabbed its handle and slipped it out. I sat on the cabin steps, set it on my lap, and popped its clasps.
    My entire body went slack with a sharp intake of breath as I stared down at what was inside it. I pulled off my bandanna and wiped the sweat out of my eyes.
    I’d been expecting some sort of first aid kit, but sitting inthe gray foam padding was a gun. It was matte black, greasy with oil, a little larger than a pistol. A nasty-looking hole-filled tube surrounded the barrel, and there were a few wraps of gray duct tape around its grip.
    The words “Intratec Miami 9mm” were stamped in the metal in front of the trigger. In the foam beside it were two thin rectangular magazines, the reddish copper jackets of bullets winking at their brims.
    Being the daughter of a cop, guns didn’t faze me. I actually used to duck-hunt with my dad, so I knew how to use the shotgun and two nine-millimeters Peter kept in the locked gun cabinet in our bedroom closet.
    But wasn’t it a little strange to have a machine pistol on the boat? Wouldn’t a shotgun make more sense? Why hadn’t Peter told me about it?
    I tightly closed the lid of the box and put it back where I found it before heading back into the house.
    Inside, I was startled to find Peter by the kitchen sink in his police uniform home early.
    “Peter?” I said.
    Then he turned around, and I saw the scowl on his face. I covered my smile with my hand as I saw that his entire front, from chest to crotch, was covered in the residue of white, rank-smelling puke.
    “Go ahead. Laugh it up,” he said with a wide grin. “Look what a nice drunken lady tourist gave me over by the La Concha hotel. Nice of her, wasn’t it? Smells like she had the clam chowder for lunch, don’t you think? Did I ever tell you how much I love being a Key West cop?”
    I quickly decided that now probably wasn’t the mostopportune time to have a sit-down about Peter’s choice of firearms. It was probably just a rah-rah-cop gung ho throwback to his bachelor days anyway. He probably used it to shoot beer cans with his buddies when they went fishing.
    “Let me get a garbage bag,” I said as the puke stench hit me. “On second thought, I’ll get some lighter fluid and a match.” I laughed.
    “What are you talking about, Jeanine? I thought you said I look hot in my uniform,” Peter said, mischief gleaming in his blue eyes.
    I knew that look.
    “Don’t you dare,” I screamed, running as he came quickly around the kitchen island with open arms, puke emanating from his shirt front.
    “Come here, Brandy. Where are you going, Mermaid?” he said, laughing as he ran after me into the backyard. “Time to give your husband some sugar, baby doll. Stay right where you are. We need to hug this thing out.”

Chapter 16
    ON THE EDGE of the manicured lawn, I sighed as a cello, flute, and violin trio played Pachelbel’s Canon in D with perfect, aching precision.
    Work, work, work, I thought, filling another long-stemmed glass with two-hundred-dollar-a-bottle Krug brut champagne. The aristocratic wedding guests at the reception we were catering seemed every bit as elegant as the crystal as they laughed and hugged around billowing, white-draped tables arranged on the emerald grounds.
    Even to a jaded veteran caterer like me, the wedding on the sprawling front lawn of the Hemingway Home was breathtaking. The famed Spanish colonial in the background had its hurricane shutters flung wide, as if Papa himself might come out at any moment onto the second-story veranda with a highball and offer the lucky couple a toast.
    The bubbly that I dispensed in perfectly folded linen was’92 Krug to be exact, the year the sleekly beautiful, dark-haired couple, a convertible bond arbitrager and an art dealer, both from New York, had met. Between refills, I watched them as they smiled, hand in hand, on the western