INCE OUR REAL ESTATE AUCTION DID NOT TAKE PLACE UNTIL tomorrow, we had a long afternoon and evening of what Rita called free time, which seemed like a very misleading thing to call something that cost so much. We all followed Rita through the streets of Old Key West buying bottled water—at airport prices—and then ice cream and a five-dollar cookie and sunglasses and sunscreen and hats and T-shirts and genuine Key West sandals. I began to feel like a portable ATM. At the rate I was tossing away cash, we would be dead broke by bedtime.

But there was no slowing down Rita. She was obviously set on forcing us all into a delirium of high-priced bankruptcy, and just to make sure I lost my last inhibitions about saving enough money to buy gas for the trip home, she even dragged us all to a very loud bar that opened onto the sidewalk. She ordered two mai tais and two virgin piña coladas, and when the bill came it was really no more than dinner for eight at a good restaurant. I sipped from the plastic cup, nearly poking out my eye with the little paper umbrella that was shoved into the bright pink slush, while Rita gave Astor her cell phone and made her snap a picture of the two of us standing in front of a large plastic shark with our mai tais raised.

I finished my drink without discovering any actual alcohol in it, and got a brief but blinding headache from slurping the frozen slop too fast. We trudged on up Duval Street, finding ever more ingenious ways to throw away money. Then we hurried back down the other side of Duval Street to Mallory Square and got there just in time to participate in a more free-form style of wasting money, the legendary sunset celebration. Rita handed dollar bills to Cody and Astor and urged them to fling them at the vast collection of jugglers, fire-eaters, acrobats, and other freeloaders—all climaxing when Rita herself dropped a ten-dollar bill into the outstretched hands of the man who forced a collection of domestic cats to leap through flaming hoops by screeching at them in a high-pitched voice with a strange foreign accent.

We had dinner at a charming place that claimed to serve the freshest seafood in town. It was not air-conditioned, so I hoped it really was fresh. Even with the ceiling fans whirling it was stiflingly hot, and after sitting at the large picnic-style table for five minutes I found that I was stuck to the bench. But the food came after only forty-five minutes, and the grease it had been cooked in was only a few days old, so I couldn’t really object when the bill came and the total was no more than the down payment on a new Mercedes.

Through it all the heat never let up, the crowd noise grew louder, and my wallet got much lighter. By the time we staggered back to the hotel I was soaked with sweat, half-deaf, and I had three new blisters on my feet. It was altogether a great deal more fun than I’d had in a long time, and as I slumped into a chair in our hotel room—suite—I remembered again why I really don’t like having fun.

I took a shower and when I came out, clean but very tired, Cody and Astor had settled down in front of the TV to watch a movie. Lily Anne was sound asleep in the crib, and Rita was sitting at the desk with the list of houses for tomorrow’s auction, frowning and scribbling in the margins. I went to bed and slid immediately into sleep, visions of dollar bills dancing in my head. They were all waving good-bye.

It was still half-dark when I opened my eyes the next morning. Rita sat at the desk, again—or still—flipping through the list of houses and scribbling on a legal pad. I looked at the clock on the bedside table. It said five forty-eight.

“Rita,” I said, in a voice that was somewhere between a croak and a gargle.

She didn’t look up. “I have to figure them all at the thirty-year fixed rate,” she said. “But if we finance it through Ernesto’s brother it’s a lower rate? But we pay closing.”

It was a little too much information for me in my barely awake state and I closed my eyes again. But I had just started to slide back into sleep when Lily Anne started to fuss. I opened one eye and looked at Rita; she was pretending she didn’t hear Lily Anne, which is Married Person Code for, You do it, dear. So I bade a fond farewell to the whole idea of slumber and got up. I changed Lily Anne’s diaper and made her a bottle of formula, and by the time I was done she had made it clear that she was awake and that was all there was to it.

The sign in the hotel’s lobby had said that breakfast was served starting at six a.m. If I was going to be awake, I decided I should do it right and have some coffee and an assembly-line Danish. I got dressed and, with Lily Anne under one arm, headed for the door.

But two steps into the living room a small blond head popped up from the tangle of blankets on the foldout couch. “Where are you going, Dexter?” Astor said.

“Breakfast.”

“We wanna come, too,” she said, and she and Cody both exploded up out of the bedding and onto the floor as if they had been loaded into a torpedo tube and waiting for me to swim by.

By the time they were dressed, Rita had come out to see what all the fuss was about, and decided to come with us. So ten minutes after I had taken my tentative step toward the door and coffee, the entire troupe was on the march for the dining room.

There were only two other people there: a couple of middle-aged men who looked like they were on their way out to go fishing. We sat down as far from the TV as possible and tore into a surprisingly good buffet, considering it was just $19.95 per person.

I sipped a cup of coffee that tasted like it had been made at my office last year, frozen, and shipped down to Key West in a barrel of bait. Still, it definitely got my eyes open. I found myself thinking of Brian and what he had almost certainly finished by now. I was a little jealous; I hoped he’d taken his time and had a little fun.

I thought about Hood and Doakes and wondered whether they had followed me down here after all. I was sure they’d want to—but technically that would be a little bit outside the rules, wouldn’t it? Still, Doakes had never let regulations dampen his zeal. And I didn’t think Hood could actually understand the rules, since many of them had words in them with more than one syllable. I was pretty sure they’d turn up sooner or later.

My train of thought was derailed when Rita slapped the list onto the table and spoke very definitely. “Five,” she said, frowning heavily and tapping one of the entries with a pencil.

“Excuse me?” I said politely.

She looked up at me blankly. “Five,” she said again. “Five houses. The others are all …” She vigorously shook her hand, the one with the pencil, and went on in a brittle and rapid voice. “Too big. Too small. Wrong area. Bad zoning. High tax base. Old roof and maybe—”

“So there are five possible houses to bid on that might work for us?” I said, because I have always believed that both people in a conversation should know what they are talking about.

“Yes, of course,” Rita said, frowning again, and then smacking the paper with her pencil. “This one, on a Hundred and Forty-second Terrace, this would be the best, and it’s not that far from the house we’re in now, but—”

“Do we have to talk about all that boring house stuff?” Astor interrupted. “Can’t we go to the aquarium, and then just buy a house later?”

“Astor, no, we can’t—don’t interrupt,” Rita said. “This is extremely important and I— You have no idea how much we still have to do, just to be ready by three o’clock.”

“But we don’t all have to do it,” Astor said in her very best reasonable whine. “We wanna go to the aquarium.” She looked at Cody, and he nodded at her, and then at his mother.

“That’s impossible,” Rita said. “This is one of the most important decisions— And your future! Because you will be living there for a very long time.”

“Aquarium,” Cody said softly. “Feed the sharks.”

“What? Feed the— Cody, you can’t feed the sharks,” Rita said.

“You can so feed the sharks,” Astor said. “It says in the brochure.”

“That’s crazy; they’re sharks,” Rita said with emphasis, as if Astor had used the word wrong. “And the auction is only— Oh, look at the time.” She began to flutter in place on her chair, stuffing the pencil into her purse and waving the list of houses to summon the waiter. And I, sensing that there are certain forms of tedium that are best endured without me, looked at Cody and Astor, and then turned to Rita.

“I’ll take the kids to the aquarium,” I said.

Rita looked up at me, startled. “What? Dexter, no, don’t be— We have to go through this whole list, let alone the five—and then register with the— No, there’s too much,” she said.

Once again, my extensive background watching daytime drama told me the right move to make, and I reached across to put my hand on top of hers—not an easy thing to do, since the hand was in constant motion. But I snared it and pinned it to the table and then, leaning over as close to her as I could get, I said, “Rita. This is something you know more about than the rest of us combined. More important, we trust you to do it right.”

Cody and Astor are not slow, and they knew a dramatic cue when they heard one. Cody nodded rapidly and Astor said, “Totally, Mom, really.”

“Besides,” I said, “they’re kids. They’re in a strange new place, and they want to see new and exciting things.” “Feed the sharks,” Cody said stubbornly.

“And it’s educational!” Astor almost shouted, which I thought might have been overkill.

But apparently the shot went home, because Rita no longer seemed so certain when she said, “But the list, and Dexter, really, you ought to … you know.”

“You’re right,” I said, which was at least possible. “But, Rita—look at them.” I nodded at the kids, who both instantly put on beaten-puppy faces. “And I really do trust you to do the right thing. Completely,” I added, giving her hand a little squeeze for emphasis.

“Well, but really,” Rita said feebly.

“Pleeeeeeeeeease?” Astor said, and Cody added, “Sharks, Mom.”

Rita looked from one to the other, chewing rapidly on her lip until I was afraid she would chomp it right off. “Well,” she said. “If it’s just …”

“Yay!” Astor called out, and Cody nearly smiled. “Thanks, Mom!” Astor added, and she and her brother both jumped up from the table.

“But you brush your teeth first!” Rita said. “And, Dexter, they have to put on sunscreen—it’s on the desk up in our room, our suite.”

“All right,” I said. “Where will you be?”

Rita frowned and looked around the room until she found the clock. “The auction office opens at seven—that’s ten minutes. I’ll take Lily Anne over there and ask them— And Brian said they have pictures, too, better than the ones— But, Dexter, really …”

I reached across and patted her arm comfortingly.

“It’s going to be fine,” I said again. “You’re really good at this.”

Rita shook her head. “Don’t let them get too close to the sharks?” she said. “Because after all.”

“We’ll be careful,” I assured her, and as I walked out to join Cody and Astor, Rita was lifting Lily Anne out of the high chair and wiping apple sauce from her face.

Astor and Cody were out in front of the hotel, watching in dumbstruck awe as several clusters of stocky bearded men headed past, hurrying down Duval Street and glaring suspiciously at each other.

Astor shook her head and said, “They all look alike, Dexter. They even dress the same. Are they gay or something?”

“They can’t all be,” I said. “Even in Key West.”

“So then what’s up?” she said, as if it was my fault that the men looked the same.

I was about to tell her it was a strange cosmic accident, when I remembered that it was July and this was, after all, Key West. “Oh,” I said. “Hemingway Days.” They both looked at me blankly. “The men are all Hemingway look-alikes,” I told them.

Astor frowned and looked at Cody. He shook his head.

“What’s Hemingway?” Astor said.

I watched the crowd of look-alikes milling around on the sidewalk, jostling each other and slurping beer. “A man who grew a beard and drank a lot,” I said.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to look like that,” she muttered.

“Come on,” I said. “You have to brush your teeth.”

I herded them in and over to the elevator, just in time to see Rita heading out the door. She gave us a big wave and called out, “Don’t get too close— I’ll call you when I— Remember, be there at two o’clock!”

“Bye, Mom!” Astor called back, and Cody waved to her.

We rode up to our floor in silence, and trudged down the hall to our room. I put the key card into the lock on our door, pushed the door open, and held it for Cody and Astor. They hurried inside and, before I could follow them in and close the door, they stopped dead in their tracks.

“Whoa,” Astor said.

“Cool,” Cody added, and his voice seemed louder and sharper than normal.

“Dex-ter,” Astor called in a happy singsong tone. “You’d better come look.”

I pushed past them into the room for a look, and after one quick glance, looking was all I could do. My feet would not move, my mouth was dry, and all coherent thought had fled me, replaced by the single syllable “but,” which repeated itself in an endless loop as I just stared.

The foldout couch where Cody and Astor had slept was pulled out and neatly made up, with pillows fluffed and blanket turned down. And nestled snugly onto the bed was a rigid lump of something that had once been a human being. But it didn’t look like one now; where a face should have been there was a shallow, flattened crater with a smear of crusted blood around it where some large, hard object had come in contact with flesh and bones. A few stubs of gray teeth showed in the middle, and one eyeball, popped out of its socket by the force of the blow, dangled down one side of the mess.

Somebody had hit that face with appalling force, with something like a baseball bat, crushing it out of shape and probably killing it instantly, which almost seemed too bad. Because even without a shape, and in spite of the fact that I was shocked nearly thoughtless by finding it here, I recognized the cheap suit and enough of the squashed features to know who this scabby lump had once been.

It was Detective Hood.