Niceville

club district south of Tulip Bend. Ecstasy, OxyContin, Percodan, Demerol—anything prescription, he can get it. Sells it to the carriage trade, when he can. Sells himself too, so we hear.”
    “Okay,” said Kate. “The carriage trade. That’s the connection. Lacy says he’s telling her he was selling Demerol to Sylvia Teague.”
    Nick said nothing, but she could see the words sinking in.
    “For the cancer?”
    “This is what she’s saying.”
    “Kate, Sylvia Teague was a very wealthy woman, and they get the best care there is. She could get whatever she needed from her doctor, up to and including heroin. Before Rainey went missing she had her own morphine drip. She could just press the button on the monitor whenever she wanted and get all the ease in the world. And how would she ever cross lines with a guy like Lemon?”
    Kate hesitated, and then went on.
    “He’s telling Lacy they met two years ago at the Pavilion on Tulip Bend. She was there with some friends—lunch or something—and Lemon Featherlight was walking through—he’s a good-looking man, dresses well—one of Lacy’s friends waved to him and he came over.”
    “Lacy get this friend’s name?”
    Kate shrugged.
    “You’ll have to talk to Lacy about that.”
    “I’m still not getting the point.”
    Kate paused, looked at Nick.
    “Lacy says Lemon got pretty close to Sylvia. Lemon says they became … friends.”
    Nick thought that over.
    “I’m still in the dark. Where does this go?”
    “Lemon Featherlight says Sylvia used to invite him home. Sometimes Miles would be there …”
    Kate let it hang there.
    Nick had some coffee, his gray eyes lowered. She could see his mind working.
    “The
three
of them?”
    Kate tilted her head to the left, gave him a wry look, older than her years.
    “This is not entirely unknown in Niceville, Nick. Or in the rest of the world. Some pretty wild things went on in the twenties, and then again in the eighties. Even in the best families, so I hear.”
    “Not in mine.”
    “Sweetheart, your family’s in Los Angeles. You grew up surfing off Santa Monica pier with your sister. Your father is an entertainment lawyer and your mother runs a hospital and they’re both as frigidly unappealing as banana-flavored Popsicles. How they ever got you and Nora I’ll never understand. They must have been trying out a new yoga move when they fell over and accidentally had sex.”
    Nick had to smile at that. She was dead right. His parents got intensely passionate about the die-off in the delta smelt population, but they really didn’t give a damn about actual humans. They’d had two kids, Nick and his twin sister, Nora, reacted with quiet horror at the brute physicality of the birth process, cutesy-named the results Nick and Nora as if they were a pair of teacup Yorkies. Then they went out ASAP and got themselves vasectomies and tubal ligations, one each, and that was that for that. Kate smiled, touched his cheek.
    “Nick, I keep telling you, Niceville is different, even more than the way the whole South is different. Maybe it’s the heat, maybe there really is something weird in Crater Sink. Niceville has a strange pulse. Remember, I grew up here.”
    “That why your dad lives so far away from it?”
    Kate smiled at him. Ever since she had asked her father about the Rainey Teague disappearance a year ago, he had gracefully but continually managed to avoid talking about it at all, other than to ask her, now and then, in a careful tone, whether she still had “that damned old mirror” upstairs.
    Which they did.
    Kate didn’t answer Nick’s question, which was clearly rhetorical. He had moved on to Lemon Featherlight anyway.
    “Featherlight’s gone to see Rainey maybe twelve times in the last year. I guess you already know that?”
    Kate did, and said so.
    “Yeah, well, Tony Branko looked into it, asked him what the connectionwas. Featherlight just said he felt sorry for the kid. Branko figured there was more, but Featherlight can close down pretty tight when he wants to, and Branko didn’t see the harm in it anyway. What you’re telling me, things get a little clearer, don’t they? Branko’s too damn soft on Featherlight, because he was Corps himself and he thinks Featherlight got royally screwed by the MPs. Wait till he hears this news. Is Lemon Featherlight saying he knows
anything
useful about what happened to Rainey?”
    She shook her head, still watching him to see where he was going to