1 Margarita Nights (14 page)

“You seem very calm about Jimmy’s death. I’m worried about you, Sherri. I hope you’re not in denial.” “You’ve been watching Dr. Phil again, haven’t you?”

I put on my black skin-tight leather pants, the black glitzy sweater that showed a tad too much cleavage for polite occasions, found the big pretend diamond hoops and added a little more makeup. The outfit said, “I’m doing just fine thank you.” I sprayed the air around me with the expensive duty-free perfume I’d treated myself to in the Bahamas.

Before I headed for the Sunset I was going to make a stop.

The phonebook showed the house was in a three-block section of Jacaranda built in the twenties with Spanish-style homes on large lots.

“Shit!” I said, as I pulled up in front of Dr. Zampa’s residence.

It was my dream house, the one Jimmy and I chose out of all the others as we’d driven around Jacaranda playing “What will we buy when Jimmy wins the Masters?” Built of cream stucco, it had a red-tiled roof and arched windows. A cream stucco wall, with a crimson vine growing on it, enclosed a front lawn shaded by a broad old orchid tree. The black wrought-iron gate, set in an arch of the stucco wall, opened onto a rough brick path that led to the front door. Jealousy took a huge bite.

The woman who opened the door didn’t look as if she were enjoying the house I coveted. “Mrs. Zampa? Lara Zampa?” “Yes.” Her highlighted brown hair hung limp and unwashed to her shoulders. Her green eyes were swollen and red-rimmed. But still she was pretty.

“I’m Sherri Travis.”

She stepped back in surprise but I preferred to take it as an invitation and followed her in, closing the door firmly behind me. “I need to talk about Jimmy. I know you were his friend.” She took off to the back of the house. I tagged along.

She’d made a mess of decorating my dream home. Contemporary furniture in the living room gave way to a family room decorated in dark green with a primitive country feel to it. A room that cried out for dark wood floors and Spanish furniture, it ran the length of the house; a kitchen at one end faced out onto a backyard filled with brightly colored plastic toys and a pool. Another huge bite of jealousy.

The air in the room was stale, smelling of family living, forgotten meals and dog. Mrs. Zampa bent one leg up under her and fell into a forest green leather chair. She grabbed several tissues from a box on the end table that was already littered with crumbled tissues. My guess was she’d sat like this since she got the news. There was no need to ask if she thought Jimmy was dead.

She blew her nose and glared at me. “I don’t know why you’re here.”

I let my breath out slowly and jumped into the deep end. “I know you and Jimmy were having an affair.”

A jolt of shock went through her body and I hurried to add, “That doesn’t matter. That isn’t why I’m here.”

But it seemed to matter to her. “How did you find out about Jimmy and me?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter.” Now that I’d pushed my way in here I couldn’t decide what I wanted from her. “You play golf out at Windimere?”

She nodded. “Jimmy was teaching me to play.”

“He taught me to play too.”

“I know. He said you were really good.” She blew her nose again. “He said the two of you were going to own a golf course someday. Said he was going to teach and run the pro shop and you were going to run the clubhouse.” “Old dreams. Did Jimmy teach you to sail? He taught me.” She shook her head. “I already knew—spent my summers on boats. But that’s where we got together, on the
Suncoaster
.” She covered her mouth with her hand to stop the words. Then she said, “I’m so sorry.” She leaned forward and buried her face in her hands. Her body shook with sobs.

“What are you sorry for?” I asked. “Jimmy and I were over.” She shook her head in denial. “I loved him. But it was still you,” she croaked. “He told me that again the day he died.” Her words jolted me like a cattle prod. “Were you on the boat the day it exploded?” She nodded. “I wanted to be with him. Forever. But he said he was waiting for you to come to your senses, to get over whatever was bugging you. It wasn’t important to Jimmy . . . ,” her fingers shredded the tissues as she searched for a way to explain, “. . . what was between us. I was just a way to pass the time for Jimmy, ’til you came back.”

She wiped the back of her hand under her nose. “He said . . . ,” she swallowed and tried again. “He said that you two were starting over.”

“That was never going to happen.” My voice crackled with disgust and anger, bursting a new dam of grief in her.

Ashamed, I said, “You must have cared for him very much . . . loved him.”

She bobbed her head and dropped the handful of sodden tissues on the table before grabbing a fresh batch. Her fingers started making confetti out of the tissues as she looked up from under a fall of lank hair. “I was going to leave John. Jimmy told me not to. He was angry with me, said it would mess everything up.” Tears rolled down her face. “I was nothing to him.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true.” Her pain was hard to look at. “Do you know what kind of trouble Jimmy was in?”

“Trouble?” Her delicate arched brows drew together, puzzled, as if it were a word she’d never heard before. “Trouble?”

“Do you know any reason he might want to go away? Why he’d pretend to be dead?”

“God, no!” And then a bright light of hope went on in her eyes and her body surged eagerly forward. “Jimmy’s alive? It’s okay?”

“No, no. I didn’t mean that . . . don’t know anything. I’m just finding it hard to believe Jimmy is dead.”

The light went out in her eyes and her thoughts turned inward. “I’ve been wishing it hadn’t happen, wishing I hadn’t . . .” She grew silent and still.

I rubbed my forehead, searching for words to make her continue. “Did you do something to make Jimmy’s boat blow up?”

No answer. She’d forgotten me and slid down into a hell of her own.

“When the
Suncoaster
blew up, I thought he might want to disappear . . . to use it as an excuse to walk away.”

No response.

I tried again. “Was there anything different about Jimmy lately?”

She roused herself. “He said he’d come into some money. He bought me this.” She pulled out a gold chain from beneath her crumpled cotton blouse. A small diamond slide hung from it. “He said there was more coming, his luck had changed.”

“Was he talking about gambling?”

She shrugged. “He wanted me to find out if any of the investors out at Windimere wanted to sell their share.”

“He wanted to buy in?”

She nodded.

“Then he was talking big money. A lottery ticket, an inheritance?” I turned my palms up, questioning. “What? I just don’t understand.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. He was as excited as a kid.” Her lap was full of white fluff and she went back to watching her fingers work on it. “Jimmy was so alive, so impulsive and . . .” The sound of a child crying came from a red plastic intercom on the wall, interrupting her.

She looked towards it and said, “I have to go. My nanny is off this afternoon.” She swept the mess of tissues out of her lap and dumped it on the side table where stray bits floated to the floor.

Reluctantly, I followed her to the front hall, sure that there was something I hadn’t asked.

She stopped at the foot of the curving stairs to look up, and said again, “I have to go.”

The banister was made of intricate black wrought iron that wrapped along the edge of tiled steps and jutted out in a small balcony in the hall above. It looked like delicate black lace— just the way I always knew it would.

“Do you know where Jimmy would be if he’s still alive?” I asked. “No.”

The crying was getting louder and she mounted the first step.

“My number is in the book. If you think of anything . . . why Jimmy might go away, where he might hide, anything, please give me a call.”

She nodded. “And if you find Jimmy, tell him I love him and want him to come back for me.”

At the Sunset, Billie Holiday was singing about the man that got away, and doing nothing to cheer me up. I signed on the till and was wiping down the gleaming mahogany bar when Styles came through the door. Some men work hard at making you think they’re tough. Not Styles. He was way beyond caring. I watched as he looked around him, hands easy at his sides, taking it all in. Now this man knew how to enter a place. When he’d made up his mind what he had, he walked slowly towards the bar.

“Detective Styles,” I nodded at him. “What can I pour you?”

“Nothing.” He placed a hand flat on the bar and hoisted his behind up onto the edge of a stool. Turned sideways, one foot still on the floor, his body language said he wasn’t staying. “I just came by to tell you that we’ve been in touch with the police in the Bahamas.”

I got this sinking feeling in my gut. “You haven’t come here to brighten my day, have you?”

“The boat is in Bridgetown all right but the only people on board are two crew, neither of which is James Travis, and two of the owners from New York,” he ticked the names off on his fingers, “a Howard Cooperman and a Paul Zeller, and their wives.”

I let my breath out. “Maybe he took off before you got there.”

“Perhaps it’s time you stopped playing games, Mrs. Travis.”

“Tony Rollins . . . out at Windimere.” I shook my hand holding the bar towel at him. “ He had this thing going on with false invoices for merchandise. And he was selling drugs. Jimmy was giving him a hard time. Check him out.”

“And your new theory is . . . ,” he waved his hand in lazy circles as if trying to capture the thread of my thoughts “. . . what? Rollins killed your husband? Your husband was running away from Rollins?”

This man had a way of making me feel really stupid, something I don’t need any help with. “I don’t know. I just wanted you to know that there are things going on out at Windimere that could account for Jimmy’s boat being blown up and for his disappearance.”

“You mean you weren’t the only person who didn’t cry when your husband came up dead?” He slid off the stool and walked out of the room.

Why hadn’t I told him about Lara Zampa? She was just as likely to have done it as Tony Rollins. Right, and Styles was just as likely to believe me about her as he’d believed me about Tony Rollins.

“Stick to pulling beer, girl,” I told myself.

The crowd rolled in behind Styles and in a short while the three stools at the end of the bar were occupied by two of the usual crew and Brian was telling another story about marriage gone wrong as I set a dry vodka martini in front of him. Somehow these stories made Brian feel better, as if his marriage hadn’t been the disaster he really knew it was.

“Do you think we should worry about this obsession of his or is it something he’ll grow out of?” I asked Peter Bryant, the third guy who made up the three amigos.

“Don’t worry until he stops coming up with new ways to get rid of a spouse. Then we’ll know he’s found the perfect one. That’s when we’ll worry.”

Brian pushed his wire rims up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger. “It’s the creativity I admire. So many ways to off your lover. ”

“He’s still shopping. No worries.” Peter said, tilting his glass at me. Looking sharp as always, Peter was wearing his normal floral shirt and crisp dress pants. The smell of Polo filled the air around him.

On the wrong side of fifty, he looks like early forties; at six two in his snakeskin cowboy boots and about 190 pounds he still scores with the women. Peter adores women. He always sits on the end stool by the waitress station so he can chat them up when they come out of the restaurant to pick up their drink orders. Plus, he faces lengthwise down the bar so he can check on any new game entering his territory.