“I think they had something else in mind for Jimmy.” She looked puzzled. Her scarlet lips bowed down in an unaccustomed frown. “But Jimmy loved you.” For Ruth Ann, love was everything. She believed in romance: lived for it, even sacrificed her children for it. While watching her had molded me into a cynic at a very young age, lately I’d found myself admiring her unfailing tenacity and devotion to hope, hope that survived reality and experience. “You were the one Jimmy wanted. Surely that should have been enough for them.”
She honestly believed that there’s a soulmate out there for everyone. Each new love of her life had her trusting absolutely that this time it would work out . . . this time he wouldn’t cheat on her, or beat on her, or leave her. This time her affair would be the culmination of what all those bodice rippers she devoured told her love should be.
Growing up, I’d never had any idea of what I wanted to be. I only knew what I didn’t want: I didn’t want to be like my mother. My life would be more ordered, more controlled and safe. I guess I pretty much blew that plan when I met Jimmy, no one’s idea of any of those things, and now with Clay . . . well, let’s just say I was batting a hundred.
“Never mind, Mom,” I told her. “Let’s go to the Sunset. I’ll buy you a drink.”
“But they never make you pay there, Sherri.”
“I can’t fool you, can I, Mom?” I tucked my arm through hers and took her along with me to find a ride home. I didn’t think Evan was going to remember he’d brought us to the dance. Right now there were bigger events happening to him.
We didn’t go to the Sunset. Instead, Brian dropped Ruth Ann and me off at my place before he went to the Royal Palms. Ruth Ann came upstairs and I made her a drink, telling her about Jimmy’s tape but editing events so I didn’t scare the hell out of her. I told Ruth Ann about Andy hiding the tape.
“I’d like to have it,” I told her, “but all I can get out of Andy is the word Casablanca.”
“Why don’t you just rent the movie Casablanca? Perhaps you’ll understand what he means when you see the movie.”
“Aren’t you the smartie?” I told her. “And I’ve always considered myself the family brain.”
“That’s all right, dear. You can be the brain. I like to think of myself as the family body.” Her mouth tilted up in an impish beam and for once we spent time together and parted still happy with each other.
Even Tony Bennett’s smooth sound in the background couldn’t sooth my jangled nerves as I started my shift. My body was going through the motions while my brain was on other things. Around five o’clock, Brian and Peter came back to the Sunset. According to them there had been no happy stories of Jimmy at the Royal Palms, just hushed condolences and quickly sipped drinks.
“I asked Hayward Lynch if he thought Jimmy was really dead and he almost stroked out,” Brian told me. “After that I was a little more discreet, but as far as I could see, everyone thinks Jimmy went up with the Suncoaster. But why would they tell me if they didn’t?” He stared morosely into his drink. Even the smallest thing could make him feel rejected and dejected. His bitch of a wife had really done a number on his self-esteem.
“There’s one thing,” Peter looked warily over the rim of his glass at me. “I heard Bernice tell the minister that the DNA tests to identify the remains have come back. I couldn’t hear what she said about the results or if she even knows them but if they had a service for Jimmy, surely they know he’s dead.”
“But if there’s no body . . .” I still wasn’t ready to give up my belief that Jimmy could defy or trick even death.
Peter’s normal laughing charm gave way to concern. “Maybe you should ask Styles. That way you’ll know for sure if it was Jimmy.” He was telling me that like Ruth Ann I was gifted at denying reality.
Brian knuckled his glasses into place. “Bernice also said that Andy Crown called, looking for Jimmy. That’s it, that’s all I know.”
About nine o’clock, I called the Crowns to tell them where Andy was.
“Would you call Steadman and ask him to come out? It’ll have more impact if it comes from you.”
A loud sigh blew down the telephone line and Mrs. Crown said, “We can’t help you. My husband told you we are no longer responsible.”
“I’m not talking about responsibility,” I said, interrupting her. “No one is responsible. I just need all the help I can get.”
“And we’ve given it. We’ve had over ten years of this. You’ve only been with him five minutes and you think you have all the answers—I’m really not impressed.”
“Look, I’m not trying to be a hero. I don’t know the right thing to do. It’s Andy who’s important here, not how you feel about me. I just want to help.”
“What about us? Don’t you think we deserve a little peace?”
“But if you could see him . . . I don’t know what to do.”
“Neither do we . . . that’s the whole point. Please don’t call again.”
I left the bar early. At the Tropicana there was a parking place under the deep shadows of the trees. I hurried to get into it before the car following me into the parking lot took it.
The shells crunched under my feet and I was nearly to the steps when I heard the engine rev. Gut instinct and a misspent youth kicked in. I reacted.
Chapter 43
Leaping like a prima ballerina, I sailed into the air, landed momentarily, and then jumped again into the clump of Pampas grass at the bottom of the stairs. The sound of tires digging holes as the car braked and then slammed backwards propelled me forward. I rolled over the railing onto the concrete steps. Landing on my feet and moving, I raced up the stairs without looking to see who was trying to kill me or even if they were coming after me. I just ran.
The taillights of the car swerved out of the complex as I pounded on Evan’s door, screaming, “Help, Evan, help,” at the top of my lungs.
Evan didn’t get a chance to invite me in. I charged through the cautious opening and then swung back to slam the door shut, pressing the deadbolt home before I slid down the door, melting into a puddle of tears, snot and babbling.
Evan stood there in stunned surprise as a confusion of words poured out of me. He listened while I regurgitated the whole nightmare, trying to make sense of it, and when I finally made him understand what had just happened, like any responsible citizen, he wanted to call the police. Not me. I just wanted to hide out and have my nervous breakdown without trying to convince anyone I had a good reason for it.
Always gallant, Evan gave me the bed while he slept on the couch. I came out of a nightmare to find him stretched out beside me, stroking my hair and murmuring soothing sounds. He gently untangled me from the death grip I had on him and rolled me away from him, shushing and comforting me along the way. His right hand went back to stroking my hair as he curled up behind me and held me close, whispering soft comfort.
I didn’t care if he had killed Jimmy, I forgave him everything.
This sleepover was why I didn’t know the cops had come calling early the next morning with more bad news.
Shortly before noon, Evan came back to my apartment with me. I made him barricade the door and promise to keep watch at the window while I showered.
I came out of the bathroom wrapped in a terry robe and with a towel around my head. The red light was flashing on the answering machine but I ignored it, wanting to get out of there as fast as I could.
“You can’t stay here,” Evan said. The look on his face said he was prepared for an argument.
“I know.” I opened the fridge and got out the orange juice.
“I’m about to pack a bag.”
I poured out two glasses.
“I want to talk it over with you. Can I stay on your boat? No one will ever look for me there.”
He grimaced.
“Noble is there.”
Well, there went that good idea.
“Pack a bag and call the cops. They need to know your life is at risk here.”
“They aren’t going to believe anything I tell them.” I handed him juice. “They think I killed Jimmy.”
“Don’t exaggerate.”
My handbag rang. We both stared at it, then at each other. “It’s probably for Marley,” I said as I dug through the junk for it.
“Hello,” I said cautiously. I don’t know what I expected from those things but it was never what I got.
“Sherri, it’s Peter.”
Alarm bells started clanging in my head. This was not going to be good news.
“Sherri, are you there?”
“Yes.”
Now it was Peter’s turn to go mute.
“What happened?” I yelled in the phone. “Why are you calling?”
“The police haven’t been in touch?”
“For Christ’s sake, Peter, what the fuck is it?”
“It’s Andy,” Peter said. “He’s dead.”
I moaned and slid down the wall to the floor, legs splayed out in front of me, the towel on my head listing and then tumbling to my lap.
“How?” I asked and then added, “I should have gone back. I shouldn’t have left him alone.”
Evan was beside me on the floor, cradling me in his arms and asking, “What is it, what is it?”
I turned to him, pushing wet strands of hair off my face. “Andy’s dead. It’s my fault.”
He took the phone out of my hand and talked into it but I was sobbing too hard to hear what was being said.
When the first wave of emotion had flowed over me, I heard what Evan was repeating over and over like a mantra. “It isn’t your fault. You couldn’t have helped him.” I leaned away from him so I could look into his eyes as if that would help me understand. “How did he die?” In my head I was counting the ways: hanging himself, pills or opening his veins. It had to be one of those. “Did he kill himself?” “No. He was shot. Murdered at the Pelican Motel.” All Andy’s delusions and nightmares had come true. I started sobbing all over again.
Evan hadn’t told me quite everything yet. “Peter overheard the cops talking. Someone was in the motel with him, beating him, before he was killed.”
I pushed away from him, onto my knees and then onto my feet. Staggering into the bathroom, I closed the door behind me and threw up.
When I came out of the bathroom the rich smell of coffee assaulted me. I hovered in the doorway to see how it would affect me, but the worst was over.
“Sorry.” I leaned on the counter and buried my fingers in my damp hair.
“It’s shock.” Evan got out two mugs and poured milk into each of them. He put the milk back in the fridge. “I had nothing to do with Jimmy’s death, Sherri.” His eyes were fixed on the coffee carafe and I watched Evan move the handle from the right side to the left side.
“I know,” I said. “I guess I always knew it. Things have been a little weird for me lately.”
He looked over his shoulder at me and smiled. “No kidding.”
Evan was finished waiting for the coffee. He poured the brew into the mugs, letting the last drops splatter on the hot burner, then he carried the mugs around the bar and handed me one. “What are you going to do?”
I set the mug on the counter and searched my bag for cigarettes. “I just want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head ’til this all passes.” I handed him the cigarettes and picked up my mug.
“But not here,” Evan said. “And you’ll have to call Styles now.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But what if they think I killed Andy too?”
“Oh Jesus, you’re as crazy as Crown. Besides, you were working, remember?”
I went to the police station as reluctantly as a nine-year-old boy going off to dance class. They didn’t keep me waiting this time. I was shown right into an interview room and had hardly settled my behind when Styles shot through the door.
His eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep and his hair was uncombed. His bland suit was wrinkled. “I’ve been trying to reach you.” The tone of his voice was somewhere between angry and accusing.
I was betting this wasn’t a good time to tell him I’d spent the night with Evan. I slumped down in the chair. “You know about Andrew Crown?” Styles asked.
“Yes. A friend called me this morning.”
He leaned on the wooden table, towering over me and watching me intently. “Do you know who killed Andrew Crown?”
I shook my head. “If I knew anything I’d tell you. Don’t you think I want you to get the guy who killed Andy?” “He was shot with a small-caliber gun. Do you own a gun?” I sucked in air and tried to keep from screaming. “When my apartment was robbed, my gun was stolen.” “You didn’t report it missing.”
Why hadn’t I? “I didn’t know it was missing until later.” “You reported a break-in at Andy Crown’s apartment too.” Once again the movies lied. The name I’d given was Sherri Jenkins. How had they gone from Jenkins to Travis and what had happened to all the stupid cops?
“Yes.” I nodded in agreement. “I did call the police. It was a mess. Someone was searching for something.” “It’s time you told me the truth, Mrs. Travis.”
“Truth, what truth? I don’t know anything I haven’t told you. Jimmy is alive. Maybe he’s trying to scam the insurance company and it went terribly wrong. I don’t know. You’ll have to find Jimmy and ask him, but you must believe he wouldn’t have anything to do with Andy’s death. He wouldn’t hurt Andy.”
Styles pushed violently away from the table and left the room. Stunned, I sat there waiting. Was he coming back?
Could I go now? I tried to decide. I picked up my bag, waffling. Was it against the law to leave the police station without permission?
As abruptly as Styles left, he was back. He had a zip-lock bag in his hand with a white label on it.
He handed it to me. I didn’t waste time reading the black printing on the label because I recognized the object inside. It was a gold wedding band. I rolled it over in my fingers and through the bag I read the initials J and S with our wedding date in between.
Tears slipped down my cheek. “But maybe . . .” He didn’t let me finish. “The tide was going out when the Suncoaster blew up. It took most of the wreckage out with it but we found his hand with the ring on it caught in some mangrove roots.” He took the baggie away from me. “We have DNA evidence. Even the insurance company is satisfied that James Elliot Travis is dead.”
I couldn’t deny it anymore. There would be no second chance for Jimmy.
Chapter 44
When I told Styles I was going home I didn’t know that I was talking about the Shoreline.
I wheeled off the highway and went east on a secondary road for about a mile until a weathered plywood sign announced that I’d arrived at the Shoreline Trailer Park. There wasn’t a shoreline within miles but none of the inhabitants were complaining. If you ended up in one of these aluminumclad boxes, you had more than the view to worry about.
Along the road the property had been left to nature until the future development of some long-ago dreamer could kick in. The trailer park itself was another two hundred yards beyond this wilderness fronting the road. I turned onto the narrow rutted track where trees met overhead and made it into a long dark tunnel. The truck rocked through potholes deep enough to lose a small child in. At the end of the line, about fifty rusted-out single-wide mobile homes huddled together under a dark canopy of live oaks and Spanish moss.
The Shoreline had been a trash heap for people, old cars and drunks when I left at sixteen, and time had not improved it.
I parked beside Ruth Ann’s twelve-year-old Toyota, switched off the engine and sat staring at the green vines and mold that grew over the sagging trailers. In the sharp clear air of a cold January day they huddled together, so close to each other that if you spat out your kitchen window you’d hit the lady doing dishes at her sink next door.
A poem we’d had to read in junior high floated into my head, “The Death of the Hired Man” by Robert Fros
t. I’d always remembered one line from it. It said home was the place that when you had to go there, they had to take you in. I looked out at the sad depressing refuse heap and said, “Welcome home.” I’d come full circle.
Ruth Ann’s door wasn’t locked, but then her door was never locked. Some human disaster might need a place to land and she wouldn’t want to seem inhospitable.
The aluminum door with the six-inch square window at eye level opened directly into the kitchen. I stood there a minute while my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The trailer was twelve feet wide and each room ran directly into the next; the kitchen led into the living room, which led to a narrow hall with a bath and tiny bedroom on one side and then down to a second bedroom across the end. Dark plywood paneling, low ceilings and small windows made it claustrophobic and oppressive, never mind that Ruth Ann had managed to cram a lot of junk into this small space. Each and every piece of crap us three kids had ever given her was proudly displayed and all the flat surfaces held dollar-store plaster figurines along with gap-toothed school pictures. We’d all grown up to be pretty decent-looking but you’d never have bet on it looking at these early shots.
I locked the outside door, not that it would keep out a determined seven year old. I also locked the door at the back of the trailer on my way down the passage, needing any tiny feeling of security. Then, in the back bedroom, all pink and fluffy like the inside of a Pepto-Bismol bottle, I kicked off my runners and climbed into my mother’s pink satin bed where I gave in to defeat and despair.
After wishing the bastard dead a thousand times I’d finally got my wish only to discover it wasn’t exactly what I wanted after all.
The thing was, I’d always been Jimmy’s girl or Jimmy’s wife. My identity had been tied up with Jimmy for so long, I no longer knew who I was. It was stupid but that’s what it all seemed to come down to. His dreams had been my dreams. I had seen so clearly how life was supposed to be for Jimmy and in many ways I’d cared more about his success than he had, and even though I’d walked out I still hadn’t forged a new life, hadn’t found my own dreams. Maybe I didn’t have any.
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