Sex in a Sidecar (22 page)

Marley and I went to a movie. It wasn't late when I headed back to the B&T, maybe ten-thirty, but the closer I got to it, the more my stomach churned. I was coming to hate the place. More than that, I was afraid. The feeling of someone watching me, stalking me, had started when I first arrived at the B&T and had grown stronger with each passing day. I tried to tell myself it was all imagination, triggered by the nightmares, but the skulking figure I'd seen in the dunes hadn't been my imagination and the flowers left for me to find weren't an illusion.

The windows were all up in the car and I hit the lock button as I waved to the guy in the kiosk and slowly drove up the winding lane, searching the underbrush for dark figures.

Staff had to park far away from the buildings in a poorly lit place surrounded by dense underbrush. I sat in the car searching the shadows and trying to find my courage. Nothing moved. I inhaled deeply and let it out slowly then I slid out of the car and bolted for safety.

“Ladies don't run,” Bernice had once yelled at me. Thank God I was no lady. They'd get murdered for sure.

My cell rang on the way upstairs to my room. “You forgot someone,” Marley informed me.

I did a quick inventory of my favorite suspect list and couldn't think of anyone I'd missed. “Okay, I'll bite. Who?”

“Chris,” she said. “He was in Jacaranda for Bunny's murder and Gina's. Now he's at the B&T.”

“Only because I brought him here.” I gave it some thought.

“I just can't see him as a killer.”

“Just don't let yourself be blinded by your own prejudices. You don't know what's going on in his head, or anyone else's for that matter. Be careful.”

Deanna hoisted herself onto a stool across from me. The red, polished-cotton halter dress had no back and extreme cleavage.

“Wow. Very Marilyn Monroe,” I told her. “Is that dress legal?”

She grinned. “A little Sex in a Sidecar please.” “You look like you're getting enough sex without needing it in a glass too.” It was true. Whatever the outcome of her affair with Ethan Eames, it had given her a glow that lit up the room. Her face was less frozen, her whole attitude more relaxed, as if some tight elastic bands on her inner core had snapped and freed her.

“No need to ask how your love life is,” I said as I mixed her cocktail. “I'm green.”

She beamed. “He may be better than all my husbands rolled in together.”

“But will he help you off this troubled orb?”

She considered it.

“Don't think so but it's still a good plan.”

She dipped her finger in the pink sugar on the rim of her glass and licked it.

“Find the murderer and get him to make me the next victim. I'm still into it.”

“But you're happy,” I protested.

“Happy?” She canted her head sideways. “Momentarily distracted, but happy?” She shook her head. “This will end. Romances end like seasons do and then I'll be alone and back where I started.”

“But you've given up that idiotic idea of getting yourself murdered?”

“I'd still like to find the murderer.” Her thoughts turned inward for a moment. “I thought it was Ethan. It would have been so easy. But whoever the murderer is, I know it isn't Ethan. There isn't that hard core of anger or hate in him that it would take.” She shook her head sadly, “That plan is bust.”

“Cheer up. You keep up the good work and our manicurist will do the job for you.” I polished the bar in front of her. “Cut your throat with her manicure scissors.”

Her back straightened and the smile disappeared. “She was impertinent.”

I was the hired help again. From warm and friendly to total frost, I filled out her chit, waiting for her to thaw.

It didn't take long. I was the only one she had to talk to. “How about the guy who killed Jimmy?” Deanna said. “Maybe I could hire him.”

“I don't think he's available.” I pointed to her dress.

“What's the occasion, why the outfit?”

“Don't change the subject. You never talk about Jimmy.”

I washed lemons under the bar sink and started prepping them. There's this game I play, trying to see how much of the lemon rind I can peel off in one piece. On a good night I can do the whole lemon. It's kind of like playing solitaire — you're either into it or you're not, or maybe my life is just so petty it comes down to lemon peel. Tonight looked like a good lemon-twirling night.

Deanna asked, “Why don't you talk about Jimmy?”

“Who wants to remember their mistakes?”

The thin blade had spiraled around half the lemon.

“Was he a mistake?” Deanna asked.

“Most of the time.” Only a bit of lemon left now. “There were times that he was more fun than pain but he would soon work real hard at screwing those times up.” I paused and looked up at her. “He drank too much, ran around on me, gambled and lied. Other than that he was a swell husband.” “But you still have a soft spot for him, don't you?” The knife slipped and sliced through the rind. I swore softly. “Clay thinks so.”

“Not a good thing,” said Deanna, her voice light and sympathetic.

“Jimmy certainly has put a damper on our relationship.” I juiced the lemon. “I got married right out of high school. Jimmy was still in college. After that, I followed him on the pro golfing tour for a couple of years, carrying his bag, looking for laundromats and trying to keep him out of trouble.”

“How come he didn't make it big, not enough talent?”

“Not enough discipline.” I threw the exhausted remains of the lemon at the trash can and tried to explain. “Jimmy was a big party guy. I began working bars to support us when he started putting every cent his parents sent him up his nose.”

“So he would've made it big except for too many good times?”

“Or if you listen to his folks, too much Sherri.” I grinned at her. “Marrying Jimmy was almost worth it just to make them miserable.” “They didn't like you?”

“I was their most upper-crust nightmare.”

“Well,” Deanna said, “most doctors might frown on having a bartender for a daughter-in-law.”

“And social-climbing bitches like Bernice Travis aren't crazy about the idea either.”

I opened the bar fridge and started refilling the garnish tray with olives and onions.

“I still don't get it. Why do you work in a bar?” I grinned at her. “Oh man, tell me you're not another one trying to improve me.”

“Well, you could do better for yourself.”

“Clay thinks so too but I like working in the Sunset. All my friends are there.”

“They're customers, not friends.”

“Wrong.” I pointed a bar knife at her. “Who knows more about you in Jac than I do?”

“Okay, you win. You probably know more about me than anyone on earth. You know all my secrets.”

“I doubt that.”

“Given time you would. I've told you more than I tell in confession.”

“I pour a stronger drink than a priest.” I dried my hands on a towel. “I like being behind the counter.” I ticked off the reasons on my fingers. “First, I know exactly what's expected of me, know what people want from me. Second, I always know what's happening in town, know all the gossip, who's doing what to whom and how many times, guess I'm just naturally nosy. And third, no one's in a bar that doesn't want to be there. You have to go to work and have to go to church but you don't have to come into a bar so people are happy to be here. Bottom line, I like people. I wouldn't be any good dealing with paper or things and sitting in front of a computer all day sounds like hell. Sitting still and dealing with stuff, accuracy and details, nit-picking details, just doesn't suit my temperament. I'd rather deal with an obnoxious drunk than a dozen telephone calls. I hate phones. Hate e-mail too. Having to deal with them makes me feel as if fire-ants are trying to get at me, to eat me and carry me away piece by tiny piece, and if I worked a real job that's what would happen. I'd disappear, piece by tiny piece. Give me a bar every time.”

“So that's your dream? To spend your life in a bar?”

“Dreams?” I considered the idea for a moment. “Jimmy was the only dream I ever had. His dreams were my dreams. He was special and that made me special. Even when he screwed up Q school and didn't qualify for the pro circuit because of the drugs, I believed Bernice and blamed myself…thought it was my fault for not keeping him on track.”

“What a bout now?”

“Now? What do you mean?”

“Jimmy's dead. Now you have to have your own dreams, so what are they?” “I don't know.”

She blew out air. “Pathetic.”

I could've said the same about her. She didn't seem to be following any quest, except getting the perfect manicure or getting someone to help her off this earth.

“So Jimmy did you a favor by leading you to your chosen profession?” Deanna added, “A thoughtful and charming guy.”

“But, you see he was.” I folded my arms and leaned on the counter. “That's why he could get away with so much…that and the fact that his father always paid. One night when he was seventeen, and already drinking, he stole a vintage Corvette from the parking lot of the country club. Wrecked it out on Beach Road. Daddy took care of things, hushed it up. I always wondered if they'd left him, just once, to get out of trouble on his own, would he have turned out different.”

“If they'd kicked him out it wouldn't have helped. I tried it with my son. He got into even more trouble and it cost me a bomb.”

Two women stepped into the room out of the glaring sun of the pool area. They stood still, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the light. Dressed in Prada suits and high heels, they looked like they'd come for a business meeting, not a drink. “Shit,” slipped quietly from me but Deanna heard.

“What?” She said and swiveled around to follow my stare.

“Who are they?”

The blond, a Wasp Princess with Gwyneth Paltrow good looks and the former president of the Junior League and on every committee for good works on the island, had dated Clay for several years, had expected to marry him and still did. I was just a temporary annoyance. I knew she still called Clay. I'd heard a couple of messages she'd left for him even after I'd moved in, just keeping in touch messages with a heavy undertone of, “You can hop right back into my bed anytime.” Clay told me he had attended charity galas all over the state of Florida with her, charity galas being one of the many ways the super-rich entertain and amuse themselves in Florida. Clay assured me it was his presence in a tux she missed, not his presence in her bed. The woman had to be nuts. He was way better out of the tux.

The darker woman, short, early forties and fighting plumpness, was the owner of a small real estate agency, a rival of Clay's larger company and a woman Clay detested. He'd advised me to count my fingers afterwards if I was ever forced to shake hands with her.

Their eyes adjusted to the dim light of the bar and found me. No surprise, I was exactly who they were looking for.

They took their time strutting to the bar and settling themselves onto the stools and I took my time sauntering over to serve them.

“Ms. Diamond,” I said, nodding at the blond. Claire Diamond's perfect little nose curled up as if a sewer had sprung open in front of her. “And Ms. Sloan. What can I bring you?”

Claire Diamond dropped her clutch purse on the bar. “I heard you'd moved down here. Looking for another rich man now that Clay has finally woken up and run for cover?”

I pasted the sweetest smile I owned on my face. “Arsenic, is it?”

Elizabeth Sloan snarled, “Watch it. We can have you thrown out of here so fast it'll make your head swim.”

If I had a dollar for every time someone threatened to get me fired I'd have a down payment on a nice little condo on the beach but I was willing to play along. “Oh, please, don't do that,” I said in a small subdued voice, raising my hands in supplication. A look of satisfaction flew across Elizabeth Sloan's face.

“I'd so miss all you sweet little old ladies with your frozen faces. How sad I'd be to leave this haven of joy and light.” I dropped my hands. “ Now, would you like a drink or did you just come for the chit-chat?”

Down the bar Deanna exploded with laughter. Tweedle Dumb and Dumber swung their barstools around as one and hit the floor.

“Looks like Clay moved upscale not only in youth and beauty, but brains as well,” Deanna said loudly to their stiff backs marching for the door.

Deanna turned to me. “Now I see why you like tending bar. It's all the nice people you get to meet.”

“They keep it amusing.”

It was my first night to close. A busy night, with a birthday party for seventy upstairs and the downstairs dining room and bar overflowing — I didn't think about anything but delivering orders and making sure things flowed. It was after one when I opened the front door to let out the last hangers-on and then locked the huge double doors and slid the security bar in place behind them.

Silence settled around me. The rest of the staff had already left and both Julian and Isaak were away from the property. This was unusual. Julian would normally be passed out in his bedroom by now but tonight he'd fluttered around in the dining room until the guests in the banquet hall sat down to dinner and then he'd told me he was going out and wouldn't be back until morning. “You won't have any problems. There aren't any overnight guests and Isaak is here.”

All very well but Isaak had called down on the house phone about an hour before closing to tell me he was going out as well. I felt I'd been thrown in the deep end, alone, not sure of the system and more than a little afraid of the shadows. I told myself that I was a big girl, that no one was waiting to jump out and grab me. But the imagination that had been born in Uncle Ziggy's junkyard was alive and active and still capable of scaring the piss out of me.

The main floor was already in darkness except for the foyer where I stood. In the silence, the building seemed to grow and expand. I rechecked the doors and then started back down the wrought-iron stairs, my heels clicking on the marble risers. At the bottom of the stairs my steps faltered. The beauty salon and manicure room were in darkness. No way was I going in to see if they were empty. I went to the door of the card room but stopped with my hand on the knob. If someone was still in there they could just stay there until morning. I left the hall light on and stepped into the still lighted downstairs bar…hesitating, uncertain. Everything was locked up tight. I was sure of it. Still I was uneasy, tension gnawed at the base of my spine telling me something wasn't quite right.