3 Fat Chance

by Rhonda Pollero

  “Still spooked?” he asked.

  Hell yes! “No,” I replied as I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms. “Okay, maybe a little.” I knew all I had to do was lean back and I’d be in his arms. I also knew that was a dangerous idea. Once burned, twice stupid. “So how did you finagle a job out of my new boss?”

  “Tony? He called me. Offered a decent retainer.”

  “He’s paying you to do nothing before he even gets his first client?” I asked as I turned quickly and went back into the less creepy part of the house.

  “Isn’t he sending you to school before he has his first client?”

  How did he know all the comings and goings in my life? I rolled my eyes, and in the process, they fixed on a small, yellowed scrap of paper in the debris pile. Ignoring Liam completely, I went over, crouched down, and examined it from a few different angles. “Looks like it might have writing on it.”

  Unlike me, Liam wasn’t the least bit squeamish about flicking aside the bug carcasses and other disgusting things to retrieve the paper. As he unfolded it, dust rained down to the floor.

  Ragged edges indicated it had been torn from a pad or notebook. “What does it say?”

  “Nothing. It can’t talk.”

  I groaned at his bad joke and took the paper by the edge. In faint, barely legible printing, I could read only a few words:

  Dear Sir: I’m sorry. I should have done this sooner but…

  “What do you think this means?”

  “Could be part of a suicide note,” Liam suggested. “Assuming part of her suicide plan was to move around a lot after she offed herself.”

  I jabbed him in the ribs with my elbow. Not hard, but enough to make my point. “Or…maybe whatever she should have done sooner got her killed.”

  “Or the note was written by any one of dozens of people who’ve lived in this house over the last fifteen years. Or one of their friends. Or one by—”

  “Did I mention you were trespassing?”

  “I’m just suggesting you keep this in perspective. Until we know who she was and/or how she died, it’s impossible to tell what is or isn’t important.”

  “I’m starting with Melinda. I called earlier and I’m having lunch with her tomorrow.”

  If lying doesn’t work, you probably aren’t doing it right.

  six

  I AWAKENED THE NEXT MORNING to the irritatingly happy chirping of birds and a retina-burning shaft of sunlight slicing through my bedroom drapes.

  My modest, rented apartment was on the ground floor of a complex in Palm Beach Gardens. It had a decent-sized bedroom and bathroom, but I chose it mainly for the walkout patio. The walkout wasn’t as impressive, comparatively, now that I owned a house smack on the sugary sands of the Atlantic Ocean.

  On autopilot, I got up, shuffled to the kitchen, and flipped on my coffeemaker. Leaning my elbows on the counter, I listened to the lyrical sounds of water seeping, then spitting, and then finally hissing to let me know the brew cycle was complete.

  I poured a cup, then wandered over to the sliding glass door. Using my bare toe, I kicked free the dowel I used as added security, pushed the silver lock to the open position, and slid the door a few inches. Warm, balmy air caressed my skin and lifted my hair off my shoulders. This was one of those days that convinced people to move to Florida. It was just past nine, little puffy white clouds drifted in off the ocean, and the thermometer hovered somewhere around eighty.

  My place was fairly neat. The throw was balled in the corner of the sofa, right where I’d left it after watching the late news, and the television screen could have used some dusting, as could the coffee table, but my caffeine levels weren’t high enough yet for me to contemplate chores.

  As for most working people, Saturdays were catch-up days for me—laundry, groceries, all the mundane but necessary things that had to be done if I wanted to avoid a public nudity charge and the prospect of garlic-stuffed olives being my main meal of the day.

  I rested my head against the doorjamb and looked critically at my furnishings. Until now I’d been content with my eclectic—definition: affordable—furniture, but I wanted more for the beach house. Closing my eyes, I imagined a casual yet chic blend of white with hints of…other colors. Nothing I could pull off without serious professional help.

  Grabbing my phone, I pressed the speed-dial code to my friend Sam’s place. His apartment was above mine, and I’d noticed his car in the parking lot the night before. He was a professional. He’d help me turn my cottage into a show place.

  “What?”

  “Good morning to you too,” I said, sipping coffee.

  “It isn’t morning, Finley. It’s the middle of the night.”

  “On the West Coast, but now you’re home. Time to readjust your internal clock and welcome a new day.”

  “Screw you, Mary Poppins.”

  “Fine,” I said as I twirled a lock of hair around my forefinger. “You go back to sleep and I’ll go shopping for furnishings for my new house all by my lonesome.”

  “Did you say new house?” Sam’s voice no longer sounded foggy and distant.

  “Yes, I did, but you obviously need your rest. Sorry I bothered you.”

  “I’ll be down in five minutes.”

  It was more like twenty, but that suited me fine. It gave me enough time to brush my teeth, apply makeup, and knowing that I had a lunch with Melinda Redmond, pick out a casual but fun white Betsey Johnson dress accented all over with tiny cherries. I had one white cork-soled wedge on when the doorbell chimed.

  I hopped over to the door, checked the peephole, then let Sam in. I managed to get the second shoe on just before he grabbed me in a big hug and swung me around the room. Of course my shoe left a scuff on the wall that I knew would be deducted from my security deposit, but I didn’t care.

  Sam was about five-foot-six, with brown eyes—tweezed brows, of course—and brown hair always styled perfectly with product. This morning, he’d chosen pale blue and green madras plaid shorts and a pale blue collared shirt. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess his sexual orientation. Not that I cared. Sam had been my neighbor for years; long enough to know that neither one of us was any good at picking men.

  He sat at one of the three mismatched stools at my bar while I told him all about the house, pausing only to refill his coffee mug or to eat a handful of Lucky Charms cereal right out of the box. One of the advantages of living alone is the freedom to eat what you please when you please. Lucky Charms pleases me.

  “But all the remnants of the dead girl are gone now, right?” he asked uneasily.

  I nodded. “Liam and I were there until almost ten. Not a bone in sight.”

  His brows arched. “With Liam? Until ten?”

  “In the kitchen? With the wrench?”

  “C’mon, Finley. A guy that hot and all you do is drink wine and break bread? Way to wuss out.”

  I leveled him with a glare. “I won’t hire you as my decorator if you don’t stop mentioning Liam.”

  Sam clapped his hands with excitement. “What’s the budget, and when do we start?”

  “Jane’s working on a budget for me. You know better than to expect much, but we can head over there now and have a look around. You’ll have to follow me, because I have a lunch date with the woman who used to rent the place.”

  Sam’s fingers gripped my upper arm. “But she could be a killer. You can’t meet her alone.”

  “Who said I was going to be alone?”

  Sam sighed. “With hot, chivalrous—”

  “I thought we just agreed we would not mention Liam’s name.”

  He tossed me one of those childish superiority looks that was often accompanied by sticking out his tongue, but apparently he contained the urge. “I wasn’t the one who mentioned him. Is this new too?” he asked after I pressed my keychain and made the BMW chirp.

  “Yes. See all the stuff you miss when you go out of town?” As we were about to get into our cars, the FedEx truck zoome
d into the parking lot and stopped right behind my car. The logo alone was enough to reignite the anger inside me. I’d probably associate FedEx with my breakup with Patrick for all time. However, the smiling face of the deliveryman quickly doused my irritation. He handed me a flat nine-by-twelve envelope, and I signed his bulky computerized thingy with its tethered pen.

  I zipped open the tab and carefully removed the photograph from the envelope. It was much clearer than the one I’d seen on the Palm Beach Post’s website. This larger, eight-by-ten version made it possible for me to read the names typed neatly at the bottom of the photo.

  Sam looked over my shoulder as I read. Unfortunately for me, Melinda Redmond was the only name listed. The others were simply identified by initials. “Crap.”

  “Maybe she can tell you herself at lunch,” Sam suggested.

  “Maybe,” I murmured.

  Just in case we got separated, I gave him directions to my cottage on Chilian Avenue. I still liked saying “my cottage.” So much so that as I drove the twenty minutes from West Palm, over the bridge to Palm Beach proper, I must have said it a hundred times. I had homeowner’s Tourette’s.

  I don’t know whether it was the midday light or the fact that I’d accepted the condition of the house, but for whatever reason, I felt excited as I pulled into my driveway. From the outside, and only because of city ordinances, the place looked darling and pristine. I made a mental note to ask Jane how much it would cost to add a pool. Something small that could be heated during the winter months, when it often dipped below seventy.

  Sam arrived even before I closed my car door. He grinned, then his bottom lip quivered, then tears started streaming down his cheeks. “I can’t believe you’re going to move. What if they rent your apartment to some old hag, or worse, homophobic frat boys?”

  I patted his shoulder. “Or they could rent it to some incredibly hunky gay guy. Or a nice girl with an incredibly hunky gay brother. You never know.”

  He sniffled once, then regained his composure. “This is happening way too fast for me, but okay. Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”

  As soon as I opened the front door, Sam gasped. “It looks like pictures I’ve seen of cells for Tibetan dissidents.”

  He started to turn away, but I spun him around and gently shoved him inside. “Look. Look at that beautiful view.”

  “Look,” he said, pointing up, “look at that rotted ceiling joist. Geez, Finley, this place should be condemned.”

  “I think it was, but that’s irrelevant now. Just give me ideas. You know my taste.”

  “Such as it is,” he said without bothering to cloak his censure. Taking a notebook and pen out of his man purse, he strolled though the kitchen, shaking his head and making some sort of tsk-tsk sound while I followed along like an obedient tracking hound. He wrote as he walked.

  A few times he stopped to make a frame with his hands, then moved along. It wasn’t until we were on our way back to the kitchen that he opened a door I assumed was another closet.

  Stink billowed out of it. Moldy, musty, humid stench. Feeling along the wall, I found a switch and flipped it. It wasn’t a closet but a small garage partially filled with trash bags, scraps of wood, and an old gas grill minus the propane tank. I put that tidbit in the plus column. A single cement step led down to the garage floor. Next to the step was the rusted outline of a rectangle. I had no idea what had caused the stain, and quite frankly, I didn’t care.

  I was about to turn off the light when a piece of green and black striped fabric sticking out of one of the bags caught my eye. As I walked toward it, I heard Sam say, “Don’t open anything. There could be raccoons or snakes or God only knows what in those bags.”

  Okay, so fear threatened to overtake my curiosity. But I figured there couldn’t be a second body in here. Could there? Carefully, using my forefinger and thumb, I was able to tug the fabric free from the rusted twist tie holding the bag secure. Out popped a worn and torn T-shirt in a junior size 2. While it wasn’t from one of the pricey shops that defined Worth Avenue as the Rodeo Drive of south Florida, it wasn’t from a superstore either. It was vintage Abercrombie and Fitch.

  “Stop playing in the trash, Finley.”

  Using the tip of my toe, I stabbed at a few of the two dozen bags, and it felt to me as if they were all full of clothing—or, at the very least, soft stuff. No bones, thank God. “I’ll have Harold open these and sort them.”

  “What on earth for? It isn’t like you’d wear vagrant people’s castoffs.”

  If he only knew. But he didn’t. I kept my eBay and outlet shopping habits to myself.

  “There might be a clue in here.”

  “What kind of clue?”

  “I don’t know.” I shivered. “Let’s go back inside the house.”

  Sam went out to get a large sketch pad from his car while I wandered out onto the beach. I’d gotten within a few feet of the surf line when I saw a flash of light out of the right corner of my eye. Turning in that direction, I shielded my face and thought I caught a glimpse of something or someone crouched down in the three-foot-high sea grass that separated my house from my neighbor’s. But after I blinked and my eyes refocused, I didn’t see anything. Probably a bird or one of the sacred, federally protected turtles that lay eggs on the coast. I shook my head. It was probably nothing but the play of light against the foliage and my own fears screwing with me.

  When I rejoined Sam, he was busy pacing off the size of each room. I helped by writing the length and width as he called out the dimensions. It was nearing eleven, and I had to meet Melinda Redmond at Bimini Twist just west of the Turnpike at noon. “We need to move this along.”

  “Decorating is an art. You can’t hurry art,” he said as he continued to sketch.

  “Okay, then lock up when you’re done.”

  “You’re leaving me here alone?”

  “Sam, we’ve opened every door. No bonus skeletons. Besides, Happy Harold is coming by, and you two should probably get together regarding any interior walls you want taken down.”

  “How about all of them?”

  “How about you remember that I’m already hemorrhaging money?”

  “I will use all of my decorating genius to turn this place into a seaside palace. But Finley, there are some serious structural issues that have to be addressed.”

  I kissed his cheek. “I trust you.”

  “Do you trust Happy Harold?”

  Liam does. “Jury’s still out on that one. I’ll call your cell when I’m done with lunch. Thanks,” I said, waving over my shoulder, walking down the steps and disarming my car alarm at the same time.

  I was already contemplating macadamia nut crusted sea bass as I turned left on Okeechobee Boulevard and eventually crossed the bridge connecting Palm Beach to the mainland. Like it is in most subtropical locales, as soon as you cross the railroad tracks, estate homes give way to more humble abodes. The crisp smell of the ocean is replaced by the choke of car exhaust, and bus and truck diesel, and it’s occasionally relieved by the smell of freshly mowed grass.

  Pockets of abject poverty coexist side by side with manicured gated communities. The telephone listing for Melinda had a North Palm Beach address. Probably one of the tidy small homes off A-1-A. I felt for her. A home in North Palm was not exactly a step up for her.

  Eventually Okeechobee turns into a ribbon of strip malls, payday loan offices, liquor stores, and auto dealerships. The area west of Florida’s Turnpike is more sparsely populated, thanks in large part to the number of private ranches and corporate orange groves. The ranches are slowly evolving, moving away from beef cattle production to more lucrative, swanky equestrian centers.

  Bimini Twist is a large restaurant that serves good food. Me? I’d have picked one of the zillion or so restaurants with a water view, but that’s just me.

  My heart skipped a beat when I spotted Liam’s car as I pulled into the lot. Hard to miss the 1964 Mustang, with its putty quarter panels and mismatched
tires. I didn’t recall inviting him to join me for lunch. However, it was five after twelve, so I grabbed my purse and the news photo and went into the dimly lit restaurant.

  My mouth watered at the smells as a polite twenty-something hostess led the way to where Liam sat with a woman. Her back was to me, so all I could really see was shoulder-length dark brown hair and a few inches of a strapless Shoshanna ivory and white sundress. That sucker retailed for somewhere in the vicinity of three hundred fifty dollars, so either Melinda was a closet outlet shopper like me or the foster mother thing paid more than I thought.

  As I approached the table, Liam stood, looking calm and casual in his chino cargo shorts and faded tropical shirt. I plastered a smile on my face but glared at him. My irritation didn’t seem to phase him.

  Melinda just turned her head, and the minute I saw her dark blue eyes I felt an instantaneous sense of recognition.

  She smiled up at me. “I’m not sure I would have recognized you after all this time, Finley. You’ve turned into a stunning woman.”

  Talk about a passive-aggressive greeting. I was tempted to respond, “Really? You look the same except for all those wrinkles.” Instead, I answered with a polite “Thank you,” as the hostess helped push my rattan chair close to the square, glass-topped table.

  “How is your mother?” Melinda asked.

  I was cataloging every inch of her face. I remembered her as a young woman, but clearly she was over fifty, and, as far as I could tell, she hadn’t had anything done except an eyelid lift. An unusual thing in Palm Beach. Most women start plastic surgery in their midthirties. “Fine.” I switched, trying to get a personality read on the woman, but I couldn’t. Other than the questionable greeting, which in all fairness, I could have taken the wrong way, she was open and polite and, well, likeable.

  “I was horrified when I heard what they found at the house,” Melinda said as she shoved a paper umbrella away from the rim of her glass to take a sip of what I guessed was some sort of tropical rum concoction.