Eddie Hawthorne pulled up in his Mercury Marquis as soon as they stepped from the terminal in Fort Myers. He got out and gave Nikki a big hug, and as they parted and looked at each other, Nikki’s eyes gleamed as they hadn’t in a long, long time.
He took them to a fish taco place two exits west of Interstate 75 off the Daniels Parkway. “It’s local, it’s good, and it’s close enough to the airport so you don’t have to sweat making your return flight this afternoon,” he said.
They ate at a patio table shaded from the sun blare by a Dos Equis umbrella. The first part of the lunch conversation was reminiscence about their lost friend. “Charles and I were partners so long people didn’t see us as two people after a while. I walked by our sarge once—all by myself, you see—and he looks right at me and says, ‘Hi, fellas.’ ” The old cop laughed. “That’s the way it was. Hawthorne and Montrose, the thorn and the rose, that was us, man. Damn, that was us.” Eddie Hawthorne seemed more interested in talking than the food, which was excellent, and so Heat and Rook just listened, enjoying fresh grilled fish and shirtsleeve weather while he reminisced. When the subject turned to Montrose’s wife, the laughter over glory days faded. “So sad. Never saw two people so close as he and Pauletta. It’s a stunner for anyone, but man . . . It hollowed Charles out, I know it did.”
“I kind of wanted to ask you a little about that, I mean the past year,” said Nikki.
The ex-detective nodded. “Didn’t think you flew all the way down here for the horchata.”
“No,” she said, “I’m trying to make sense of what went on with the Cap.”
“You won’t be able to. Doesn’t make any sense.” Eddie’s lip quaked briefly, but then he sat up, willing some steel into his body, as if that would help.
Rook asked, “Did you have much contact with him since his wife was killed?”
“Well, you could say I made a lot of attempts. I flew up for her funeral, of course, and we sat up talking most of the night after the service. In truth, maybe more sitting than talking; like I say, I made attempts, but he went to stone in there.” Eddie poked his heart with two fingers. “Who couldn’t understand that?”
Nikki said, “It’s not uncommon to sort of slide a rock over you for a time after you suffer a trauma like that. But after a period of intense grieving most people come out of the funk. And when they do, it’s sort of startling, the new energy.”
Eddie nodded to himself. “Yeah, how’d you know that?” Nikki felt Rook’s hand touch hers under the table briefly. Hawthorne continued, “It was out of the blue, like three months ago. He calls and talks awhile. Old times small talk, that kind of stuff. More conversation than I’d heard from him in ages. Then he says to me that he’s been sleeping poorly, tossing thoughts all night. I told him to join a bowling league, and he just says, ‘Yeah right,’ and keeps on about his insomnia.