Sex in a Sidecar (16 page)

There was no Johnnie Walker on the bar or under the counter. Welcome to the B&T, sucker. Lots of tenders try augmenting their income selling booze to friends. A bottle here and a bottle there can lead to an interesting sideline.

A soft breeze blew faint whispers of laughter through the door to the pool deck. I hoisted my rear up on a stool behind the bar and waited for things to start.

Terry worked the bar with me from twelve until two when I went for lunch. Staff didn't eat out of the kitchen of the B&T but were expected to bring their own food. Fortunately Isaak had either missed this bit of Julian's spiel or chose to ignore it. “I'm making a little seductive morsel for you,” Isaak cooed when I went into the gleaming kitchen.

“What is it?” I asked breathlessly like he'd promised to turn trash into gold.

“Oh, just a little lobster bisque and an open-faced sandwich, cream cheese on thin, thin little triangles of heavenly bread, with fig and prosciutto ham, topped with a tiny sprig of fresh mint.” He kissed the fingers of his right hand. “And then a chocolate sorbet with raspberry sauce in a hazelnut waffle cup.” A silver tray with a single red rose awaited his creation.

Seduction by food was new to me but I've got to say it was working. Everything about the man was working for me. Parts of me were melting while others were salivating, which had pretty much the same result.

The staff room, a small institutional box off the kitchen was hot and stuffy, smelling of fried foods, so the third day I was there I opened the sliding door and went out onto a small patio carrying Isaak's latest offering. The garbage storage was behind a wooden screen at one end but at least the wind was blowing in the right direction to carry the smell away.

I stepped over the sill of the open door and wavered. Tanya Jones, the stunning new manicurist I'd been introduced to earlier, sat at the rough plank picnic table with her head down on her folded arms. She was crying. Do you back up and go inside, pretending you never saw a thing, or do you go out and make polite noises? She looked up. Like me, she was dressed in a white blouse and black skirt. Cute as could be with black hair, black eyes and pale white skin with a hint of roses, she must have made her clients want to puke.

“Shall I leave?” I asked.

“No.” She straightened. “It's okay.” She sniffed in a soft feminine way and dabbed at her nose with a knuckle. I'd shed my share of tears but never once looked this good while I did it.

I set the tray down on the table. “Can I get you something?” I asked, “Tea…coffee…Prozac?”

She didn't smile, but said, “You could get me a gun. I'd like to shoot that old bitch.”

“Which old bitch would that be?” I swung a leg over the seat of the bench and plopped myself down. “There's quite a few around here to choose from. I think you'll need a cannon to get rid of them all. Shall we go up to the war memorial and drag it down?”

“Mrs. Weston. What does he see in her?”

“Who's the guy?”

“Ethan.”

“Ah,” I understood now. Ethan was one of the pool boys. A few women stretched out beside the pool, mostly ladies in their early forties and fifties, liked to flirt with the pool boys. Pool boys were a whole new tribe to me. Pool boys wear white. White tees, tight white shorts, very short shorts, shorts so tight the pockets always gap open. And they wear iridescent white runners. I kid you not. I don't know how they get them that white but they shine. And all of the pool boys are gorgeous. It's a job requirement. What kind of an employment agency supplies these guys? “Hello, please send me a bronzed hunk with an all day smile.” They bring drinks and towels, put out chairs, move chairs for people afraid of breaking a nail and generally hang about looking good.

Terry told me some pool boys offer the ladies, and maybe even the men, a few extra services after hours. From the shadows inside the B&T I watched them operate. They were quick to light a cigarette or pick up something dropped and even faster to palm the folded bill under the empty glass. With a soft compliment or a smile, they made the ladies feel good, made them feel desirable.

Keeping the ladies happy away from the pool wasn't a job requirement but an added bonus of the job of pool boy. Ethan had been the…well, how to put it nicely…the main squeeze of Bunny Lehre. This seemed to be his chief claim to fame and the reason that everyone was talking about him.

At the moment there were only three pool boys at the B&T. In high season, when the resorts closed up north, there would be more. They'd drift on down about Thanksgiving and work the B&T until after Easter and then they'd head north again. It's pretty much the same pattern throughout the tourist industry. Wait staff work the winters in Florida and summers in New England, perfect cover for a murderer.

The best-looking and most popular of the pool boys was Ethan Eames, down from a resort in Vermont where he worked from May until September. The season ends early there for pool boys.

Ethan, fair, blue-eyed, bronzed skin, only needed the screen test before he left for Hollywood. And he wasn't a boy. None of them were, but that's what they were called anyway.

Ethan was at least twenty-nine or thirty but there was a juvenile air about him that made the word fit him more than the others. And there was something arrested about him. Oh, not that he was slow, not by any means. It was just that he was so cheerful and eager. No normal human being could live thirty years and still be that goddamn positive about life. But Ethan just oozed a willingness to please, a hopefulness about every human contact and a puppylike eagerness to share. Even a dog smartened up, but not Ethan. His undaunting good nature set my teeth on edge, but my, he sure did look good. And the ladies loved him.

Tanya wailed, “She's at least forty!”

“Well,” I tasted the soup, “she may have more miles on the chassis but I bet she's got more gas in the tank.”

Tanya dug a crumpled tissue out of her skirt pocket and dabbed at her tears, careful to avoid smearing her artfully applied makeup. “She has everything. Now she wants Ethan. Why is she so mean?”

“Probably 'cause she can be. It's a habit. She's rich, not paid to be nice and to smile like we are. She can demand whatever she wants, no guarding her tongue and being pleasant.” I took a big sip of lobster bisque. Perfect bliss. “People like you and me have to be nice, have to smile when we don't feel like it and keep our opinions to ourselves. Being nice becomes a habit and people think that's who we really are. Maybe we are or maybe it's just a front. Who knows? Anyway, politeness like meanness becomes a habit.”

I stopped with my spoon in midair, Gina's words echoing through my thoughts. Was this what she had been talking about, acting out of habit more than out of carefully thought out choices? And could murder become a habit? Surely it had to be more than that, something a killer was compelled to do.

I took the pristine linen napkin from the gold-trimmed porcelain napkin ring and wiped my mouth. “Besides, do you really want a guy that's for sale?” I asked. I could hear the disgust in my voice.

“You don't understand,” she wailed and in a fresh flood of tears she jumped to her feet and ran inside.

Too right I didn't understand. I like men that do the chasing. This led me to think of Clay and his millions. Did everyone see us the way Bernice did? I loved the man. Oh, not in the obsessive mad way I'd loved Jimmy. My feelings for Clay were more constant, more comfortable and far less dangerous and all-consuming. But did Clay think I was like Ethan, only there because of his money? Too depressing.

I turned my attention to the chocolate sorbet. Oh shit, I was going to get fat, really really fat, because there was no way of resisting food like this.

A woman slipped onto the barstool in front of me and ordered a Sidecar. No one ordered Sidecars at the Sunset so I had to look them up in the battered paperback under the bar. Cognac, Cointreau and lemon juice…look out headache, here I come.

I got down a cocktail glass, twirled it from my right hand to my left and practiced flaring for the lady customer. Flaring, twirling shakers and bottles and generally showing off, is the stuff bartenders do to increase tips. I wasn't quite as good as Tom Cruise in
Cocktails
but I held her attention. Course, I was all there was for amusement, so maybe I was overrating the effect I was having on her. She didn't smile, didn't look impressed, just waited for her drink.

I shook the cocktail shaker, blending the booze, filled the glass and set it down in front of her. She picked it up warily as though she thought I might be trying to poison her, and delicately sniffed the drink before she took a cautious sip.

I couldn't decide if she was beautiful or if it was just the total package. Nothing about her had been left to chance and she probably didn't look anything like nature intended. My guess was she'd blown out at least forty-five, fifty candles, but it was hard to tell. She probably admitted to no more than forty.

Slim, but slipping, just a little thickening around the waist, she was draped in pink Prada with contact blue eyes and hair a perfect ash blond helmet. She could break-dance on that hairdo without disturbing it.

“Very nice,” she said in appreciation, high praise indeed. “Sherri Travis,” she read off my nametag. “Welcome aboard, Sherri. I'm Deanna Weston.” She sipped her Sidecar. “You'll do. Just keep them coming. I'm drowning my sorrows and my guess is they'll prove to be pretty good swimmers.”

There was a little of the concoction left in the shaker so I topped up her glass. “I didn't think there was any need to be unhappy anymore,” I said.

Deanna flicked her tongue delicately at the sugar on the rim of her glass. “That's what these are for.” She lifted her glass to me and we grinned at each other. “I think we're going to be seeing a lot of each other, Sherri Travis.”

I hoisted a nice water with lime, “To the start of a beautiful friendship.”

She had a long elegant neck, even if its skin was a little loose in contrast to the tight skin on her too perfect and frozen face. I decided that she was indeed beautiful.

Her conversation was bright and witty, entertaining me as well as herself, but there was a hard-edged bitter cast to her mouth which said she'd found life a trifle disappointing. And there was an autocratic air about her that said, “Keep your place or I'll put you there.”

As the drink mellowed her I learned that she had had four husbands and many more lovers, none of whom had lived up to expectations. She had one child, a son, also a disappointment. “But then,” she said, “aren't all males, my dear?”

At twelve o'clock, with things heating up behind the bar and Terry working beside me, Deanna ordered another Sidecar. But even with the second one in her, she never slumped or relaxed. It was as if she was posing for a portrait, aware of herself and controlled, “I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.”

About one, she ordered a salad, picked at it, and than went off to have a French polish put on her already perfect nails.

“What brings you to Jacaranda?” I asked Deanna when she drifted back from her manicure.

“A little body sculpting.”

“Really, but you look great.”

She smiled. “I should. I've had more work done on me than Michael Jackson.”

“But with better results.” I set an iced tea down in front of her as she waved at a woman coming in from the pool. The smile she offered with the wave barely stretched her lips and never reached her eyes. She swiveled the stool back to me. “I was going to have some work done on my breasts.”

“Did you have it done?”

“No. The storm was coming, didn't want to evacuate with stitches still in me. Now I've lost interest.” This led to hurricane stories and my tale of Gina. “I knew her,” Deanna shrieked. “We met on the beach, both outsiders and alone, we got to talking. We went out for dinner a few times, although to tell you the truth I didn't like to be seen with her because she looked so old. She was older than I was. Well, maybe not, but she never looked after herself. Crazy. She didn't mind being fat or old.” “That was Gina all right.”

“I like to hang out with younger people — people just assume that you're younger too. But Gina was fun, wasn't she?”

My last experience with Gina definitely hadn't been fun but I nodded.

“It was such a long time since I'd met an honest to god person it was like a breath of spring air. She didn't make judgments. Didn't say you should do this or that. I hate when people tell you what you should do as if they really knew.”

“Did Gina talk about her sister?”

“Yeah. Gina said she was a lot like me.”

“What did she mean?”

“I'm not sure. She married a lot, was rich and spoiled.” She grinned ruefully and said, “ Like me,” not at all put out by this bit of honesty. “Gina even said she looked like me.” Deanna asked, “You know that Samantha was very rich? She left all her money to Gina. Not that Gina needed more. Her parents left them both well provided for.” “I wonder who gets it now.”

“She said something about a cousin being her only remaining relative. He's a stockbroker up in Chicago. Gina was worrying about him. He was in some kind of trouble. Guess he'll get it all now.” The phone behind the bar rang and I went to answer it.

Deanna slid off the stool. “I'll see you later,” she promised. “Hold on a minute, Marley.” I put my hand over the receiver. There was more I wanted to ask Deanna about the cousin but it was already too late. She was leaving, her backless mules slapping her bare feet and clattering on the terra cotta tiles as she went off, giving me a little fluttering wave of her fingers over her shoulder.

She'd be back. I could ask later.

“I know what color I'm going to have the bridesmaids' dresses,” Marley said. David hadn't actually asked Marley to marry him yet, but she'd already planned the wedding and named their first-born son. It was only the color of these damn dresses that she was having trouble with. “How do you feel about orange and lime green?”

“Lime and orange? My god, it's going to look like a Mexican train wreck.”

“The Mexican train wreck was your marriage, remember?” So it was. I couldn't deny it. And I was the piñata.