6 Martini Regrets (21 page)

CHAPTER 41

I have no memory of the next few hours. It was Liz who called in the police, leaving me in the house while she went down to the boat.

She told me that she tried to take Clay’s body away from me when she returned, but I wouldn’t release him. She said that when the sound of the first emergency helicopter filled the house, I struggled to carry Clay out of the house. By then my mind had gone somewhere else. It took a long time for it to come back.

It came back to a mess. The man I’d shot clarified much of my story in exchange for a lighter sentence. Digger Jackson and the pilot were found. Digger told the police that Ethan had killed all those people not only for a black orchid, but also for his mother’s orchid collection, which he stole before burning down his brother’s nursery. The cops had a hard time believing the story. How could anyone understand? Greed and obsession make no sense to normal people.

One day when we were in the bar and talking about progress, Ethan had said, “Once things start rolling there’s no going back.” That’s pretty much what had happened when he went out to Osceola Nursery. Events just spun out of control.

I’ve had lots of time to count the ways I could have changed things. But even if I’d told the cops the little I knew as soon as I was out of the swamp, I doubt it would have made a difference to the outcome. Ethan always thought I had the orchid. He would never have believed that my being there was just an accident.

All and all, it feels most times like there was no one right thing, no act that would have left me without regrets. But there’s one thing I could have changed. Deep in the night, I admit to myself that Clay would be alive if I hadn’t stayed for that final martini.

It was the Sunset and its strange family of misfits, people who had accidently washed up on the same beach, who helped me heal.

Life became as simple as someone saying, “The sun’s going down. Looks like it’s going to be a good one. Let’s take a drink outside and watch it.”

Seeing the dying sun explode across the sky, and trusting it would come back in the morning, helped me believe that life would get better.

The End

PHYLLIS SMALLMAN
’s first novel,
Margarita Nights
, won the inaugural Unhanged Arthur award from the Crime Writers of Canada after being shortlisted for the Debut Dagger in the
UK
and the Malice Domestic in the
US
. Her writing has appeared in both
Spinetingler Magazine
and
Omnimystery Magazine
. The Florida Writers Association awarded
Champagne for Buzzards
a silver medal for the best mystery, and her fifth book,
Highball Exit
, won an
IPPY
award in 2013. The Sherri Travis mystery series was one of six chosen by
Good Morning America
for a summer read in 2010.

Before turning to a life of crime, Smallman was a potter. She divides her time between a beach in Florida and an island in the Salish Sea.

Visit her website at
www.phyllissmallman.com
.