Death By Derby 8 (Josiah Reynolds Mysteries) (15 page)

“Oh no, you can’t do that,” complained Dennis’ attorney. “The house needs to be available by the next several months before the due date.”

Both Eva and her lawyer’s mouth dropped open at the implication of the statement.

Eva began to wail out loud.

Her lawyer stood and helped Eva to her feet. “I assume that Mr. Reardon’s new friend is pregnant then. He’ll meet our demands or I’ll tie up that brownstone for years.”

“Oh God,” whispered Eva, being led from the conference room. “He’s got a new woman and they’re going to have a baby in my house. My house! I painted every room! I installed the tile! I refinished the wood floors!” She yelled, “This just went from bad to the absolute worst. He told me he didn’t want any children.” Eva grabbed a woman in the hallway. “He said he would love me forever.”

“They all say that, dearie. But if they can afford it, they trade us in every ten years or so for a new model. Once the tits start to sag, it’s over,” replied the stranger in sympathy. “We’ve all been there. It’s just your turn now.”

“What happened to true love?” murmured Eva.

Her lawyer snickered. “Surely you don’t believe in that crap, do you? Just get the money and run.”

“But I do. I do believe in true love,” blurted Eva and she cried this mantra all the way home, that night and for the next several days until her body became so dehydrated she couldn’t cry anymore.

T
hree months later, Eva signed the divorce papers and slipped them in the stamped mailer as directed. Licking the flap, she closed the mailer with a large sigh. “Well, that’s the end of that,” she said.

She hurried downstairs so she could catch the mailman whose truck she saw from the window. She caught him coming up the stoop and handed him the mailer.

Giving her a startled look, the mailman grabbed the envelope and hustled down the steps.

“I’m not that bad,” she groused, noticing his reluctance to stay and chat.

A mother pushing a stroller hurried by when the toddler saw Eva and started to cry.

“Oh, come on now,” complained Eva. Defeated, she pulled back inside the brownstone and looked in the hall mirror. “Jeez.” Eva tried to flatten messy hair that would give Medusa a run for her money. Her eyes were sunken, teeth were yellow and dirty, and her skin was sallow.

Her outfit was pajamas that had not left Eva’s body for the past two weeks and were straining at the seams as her new diet consisted of chocolate ice cream . . . and then strawberry ice cream . . . and again chocolate ice cream. With chocolate syrup. For a dessert, she inhaled Reddi-wip from the can.

And she stank.

“I’m in some deep, deep doo-doo,” lamented Eva looking in the mirror and repelled by what she saw. “You’re made of better stuff than this. You’re just forty. Only six months ago you were hot stuff.” She pulled on her belly fat. “Crap. I’m middle-aged now. The bloom has faded.”

She gave the mirror one last pathetic look. “I just can’t stop living. This is just a bump in the road.” She took another hard look at herself. “Oh, who am I kidding? This is a freakin’ firestorm!”

Coming to the realization that she had to battle her depression, Eva climbed the staircase to the third floor. There she took a long shower, washed her hair, shaved her legs and put on some clean underwear. Looking around the bedroom, she found a pair of clean flannel pj’s and a tee shirt. To complete the outfit, she slipped on some beat-up flip-flops.

Hungry, she went to the kitchen, but found nothing in the fridge to eat. Frustrated, she began looking for carryout menus when she spotted the airline tickets to Florida.

Eva bit her lip as tears clouded her eyes. “I’m not going to cry,” she whispered. “All that is over. I’m going to buck up and get over this. I’m going to get a new life.” Staring at the plane tickets, Eva suddenly called her travel agent and ordered a new ticket to be waiting for her at the airport. Then Eva grabbed her coat and purse as she fled the brownstone.

Giving the brownstone one last look, Eva flipped the house key down a street grate.

Dennis would be surprised to discover that Eva had had the locks changed and she had just thrown the only front door key into the New York City sewer system.

Eva felt an immediate sense of relief.

Hailing a cab, she instructed the driver, “JFK please, and step on it.”

I
t took only a few hours to fly to Miami.

Eva stepped outside the airport and greedily soaked in the sub-tropical heat. She hailed a cab and got in.

The cab driver didn’t seem too happy after getting a good look.

Seeing that the cabbie was dubious, Eva threw a fifty dollar bill at him.

“Take me to the Fontainebleau Hotel, please,” she requested. She had always wanted to stay at the Fontainebleau since it was the hotel used in the James Bond film,
Goldfinger
.

“Are you sure, lady? It costs a lot of money to stay there,” he said, eyeing her pajama outfit.

Thankful that she was wearing sunglasses so the driver couldn’t see how ridiculous she felt, Eva pulled her coat close about her. “Remember Howard Hughes wore pajamas during the day and he was the richest man in America.”

“Really? Never heard of him,” the driver replied as he pulled out into the traffic.

“Leonardo DiCaprio played him in a Martin Scorsese movie. You might have seen it.”

“Oh yeah. He was that guy who peed in jars and kept them in his room.” He glanced in the mirror at Eva.

“You don’t do that, do ya lady?”

“Not lately.”

“’Cause that is disgusting.”

“I would have to agree. You don’t have to keep looking back here. I’m not peeing on your seats.”

The cabbie shook his head and muttered, “I get all kinds.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing, ma’am. Be there soon. You’ve missed the rush hour.”

Eva settled into the back seat and stared out the window.

Unlike New York with its cold gray shadows and dark alleys, Miami was flooded with brilliant sunlight that danced off glass skyscrapers. New York was a concrete jungle, but Miami was the Emerald City. Everywhere were vast expanses of deep turquoise water, white sails, expensive cars zooming here and there and sun-drenched mansions.

Suddenly it was too much for Eva. She felt overpowered by the immense glass city, which resembled a mirror. It made her feel raw inside, too exposed. “Listen,” she said, throwing a hundred dollar bill into the front seat. “I’ve changed my mind. Get me out of here.”

“Where you want to go?”

“I’m not sure. All this glass and sun. It’s too hectic. I need something calmer.”

“The Everglades?”

“God, no! The last thing I need is to encounter an alligator. I just got rid of one reptile in my life.”

“Depends on what you’re looking for. How about the Keys?”

That was a possibility. Things were slower in the Keys, weren’t they? And she didn’t know a soul in the Keys. Not a one.

“I just want to rest. Relax.”

“Then Key Largo.”

“Key Largo,” murmured Eva, thinking of the Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart movie. “Yes, take me there.”

“Where in Key Largo?”

“Just a nice hotel.”

“How nice?”

“A hotel with a nice pool. I like to swim.”

“Motel okay?”

“No. I want a hotel. One that will have a concierge.”

“You got more money?”

“YES! Just get me to Key Largo.” Exhausted, Eva fell back against the seat. “Please, no more talk. Just drive.”

Sulking, the driver changed lanes and made his way to Highway 1 heading for the Keys.

Two hours later, the driver stopped in front of an expensive chain hotel. “This okay, lady?”

Eva looked out the car window and nodded. “It will do for now.” She paid the driver the exorbitant fare plus a two hundred dollar tip.

Eva looked out the car window and nodded. “It will do for now.” She paid the driver the exorbitant fare plus a two hundred dollar tip.

He no longer thought Eva was crazy, but merely eccentric. Rich people were never crazy, just different. She would make a great story for his family over dinner.

Eva motioned for the hotel valet to open the cab door and help with various packages.

She had stopped at a mall on the way and had purchased some casual outfits. As soon as she stepped out of the cab, the silky breezes of the Keys enveloped her.

Eva took a deep breath.

The salty air smelled like home.

She felt the pain in her broken heart dull a little.

Eva no longer felt that she was going to die.

Perhaps with a little luck, she just might recover . . . even flourish.

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Q
ueen Abisola and her consort, Iasos, sat numbly by the fire.

The shadow of the flames danced on Abisola’s troubled face, eerily reflecting in her worried eyes.

She was dressed in a foot soldier’s battle attire, her long dark hair braided and tucked down the back of her tunic. The Queen wore no insignias of any kind to note her rank. She waited, deep in thought, wondering how her life could have come to such a pass. She waited and waited, this being the fourth day and night of waiting.

Her Consort, Iasos, gently rocked the baby he held, cooing if the girl child stirred. This was the child he had sired with his Queen. As Iasos gazed at his child, he did not wonder at the events he knew were to come, but at his luck at having been chosen as Royal Consort. It was more than luck. The stars had decreed it to be his fate, for he truly loved his lady and had since the day he first met her.

Iasos had been sent by his father, Duke Enos, to further his education at the university in O Konya, the royal city. As he was of noble blood and his older sister was soon to inherit the Duchy of Enos from their father, the boy was entitled to live at court during his stay in the city.

Duke Enos wanted his only son to make a grand impression at the royal court. Knowing the Queen was fond of beautiful clothes, he gave his son shimmering cloth made by the nimble hands of the desert men of Siva as a gift to the monarch.

A nervous Iasos presented bolts of turquoise, iridescent white, and gold with river pearls for fringe. They had cost his father a year’s profit from the duchy, so rare were they.

“These are from my father, Duke Enos,” boasted young Iasos, waving his hand over the expensive bolts, “but this is from me.” The handsome boy took a slim volume from his breast pocket.

The Queen’s personal guards suddenly surrounded him.

“Oh, dear,” he piped, as he handed the Queen’s Consul the book.

After inspecting the volume, the Consul placed it on a gold platter and handed it to the amused but wary Queen.

“I composed these poems myself in honor of our most beautiful and illustrious Queen.”

“You honor me,” responded Queen Abisola. “I will certainly entertain your poems before I retire tonight. I hope I do them justice.”

“You are most kind, Your Majesty,” answered Iasos flushing. He bowed very low and the Consul waved him back into the court audience.

Queen Abisola spent the rest of the afternoon meeting with impatient ambassadors, fawning nobility, wealthy merchants seeking charters, anxious artists needing patrons and weary messengers from the far-off corners of her vast country.

As she listened to the speeches and announcements drone on, she occasionally glanced at Iasos, who stared sheepishly up at her. Something about him pleased her very much.

She gestured to her Consul, Rubank. “I want Duke Enos and his family investigated. Find out everything there is to know, but do it discreetly.”

Her Consul nodded in reply, such was the custom as he could not speak – his tongue having had been cut out voluntarily when he became Consul to the Queen.

The Queen stood and left the throne room without glancing back, but she was smiling. She was still smiling when she entered her private quarters. Handing her crown, jewelry, and official robes to her maids, she quickly stripped and laid down on a table for her massage.

A woman in her late autumn years entered the room with a basket of herbs and oils. After selecting perfumed oil, she heated it by rubbing it between her hands and began massaging Abisola’s shoulders and back. “You seem pleased tonight, Your Majesty. The cats seem almost at rest.”

The masseuse was referring to the two tattooed jungle cats facing each other on either side of the Queen’s back starting at her shoulders and extending down the back to the buttocks. They looked as though they were springing in mid-flight with their extended paws crisscrossing each other. Inside the figures of the cats were ancient symbols and words.

The cats, called uultepes, were the personal mascots of the Hasan Daegian royalty. By modern times, however, the great cats had been hunted to extinction. Many believed that the cats had existed in myth only. But still the images of two springing uultepes were tattooed on every Hasan Daegian Queen or King as dictated by tradition, the meaning of which no one could fathom any longer.