Denny wasn’t after my money. He just wants us to be happy. He’s so adorable and eager. He hardly ever lets go of me, and I love that. As much as I love the dimples on his cheeks, so boyish, and his dark eyes, and his expression, so appreciative and humorous at the same time, as if he’s enjoying the world’s best joke.
Oh, God. Listen to me. Am I a living romance novel? Is that what I’ve become? No wonder Dad was appalled and refused to be a witness at our city hall wedding.
But so what? Here we were, our arms tangled around each other, leaning together on tall stools at the bar, a wall of dark bottles gleaming in pink light in front of us, and the soft shusssh of the ocean through the open windows. The air felt salty and cool against my burning cheeks, and Denny’s light kiss at the back of my neck sent me shivering back to romance-novel world.
Cameron Cay was my dream honeymoon spot. I didn’t have the nerve to tell Denny the island was named after my father, Cameron Bennett. Yes, Dad was chairman of the partnership that owned it. Mom and I came here every winter of my childhood—until Dad took his profits and dissolved the partnership—and suddenly our winter destination became a resort in Anguilla.
Not bad, either. But Cameron Cay lingered in my fantasies. If you want to psychoanalyze me, you’ll probably drag up something interesting in my wanting to honeymoon with Denny in a place my father once owned. But so what?
The bartender was a slutty-looking young woman with white-blond bangs, dark raccoon-eye makeup, and balloony red lips like everyone in the movies. She wore white short shorts and a sleeveless tee that showed off her blue tattoo of a grinning monkey head. I wanted to ask her why she chose a monkey. But she only looked at Denny (as if my head wasn’t leaning on his shoulder).
He ordered two glasses of Prosecco, and I said, “Come on, Denny, it’s our honeymoon,” and told her to bring a bottle of Cristal. He was pouty after that. He doesn’t like it when I make him look cheap. So I kissed him a lot and ran my hand slowly up and down his thigh, and he got over it pretty quickly.
We carried the bottle and glasses to a table. Except for an older couple staring out at the water in silence by the window and the blue-eyed man in the back booth, the bar was empty. Lovely steel-drum music played from a speaker somewhere above us. The breeze off the ocean made me shut my eyes. I wanted to remember this, remember all of this.
We clinked glasses. “To us,” I said.
“To us forever,” Denny added.
The champagne was perfect. Denny squeezed my hand. He leaned across the small round table, brought his face close to mine. “Maybe we should take the later snorkel boat, Ashli. That way we could spend the morning… in bed.”
I tilted the slender flute and took another long sip. “I like the way you think, Mr. Sparano.”
“Hey, thanks, Mrs. Sparano.”
We clinked glasses again, kissed, and drank. I felt as bubbly as the champagne. I’m not embarrassed to say it. We ordered popcorn shrimp and fried calamari, finished the bottle of Cristal, and ordered another one.
It was late and my head was fizzy, a little hard to focus, when I realized the blue-eyed man had joined our table. The cigar was gone but the martini glass remained in his hand. He raised it across the table to Denny and me. An opal ring gleamed on his pinkie finger. “I just want to offer my congratulations,” he said, a smile creasing his weathered face. “Your honeymoon, right?”
We clinked glasses.
His glassy blue eyes were trained on me. I’m used to men staring. I’m not exactly a loser in the looks department. But his hard gaze made me glance away. The sea air had suddenly grown colder. I shivered.
He slicked down his white hair. I turned back. I liked the way his eyes crinkled at the sides. And I liked the deep crevices down the sides of his face. Made me think of a movie cowboy. He smelled of cigar smoke and a strong spicy aftershave.
He and Denny were chatting about something. The ocean was too loud in my ears. I couldn’t make out the words. Was it the champagne? I was swimming sitting up. I gripped Denny’s wrist. My life buoy.
“Clay Davies,” the man said. “Everyone calls me Davies.” It took me a short while to realize he was telling us his name.
“Where you from?” I asked. I poured the last of the second bottle into my flute.
He shrugged. “Here and there.” He gave me a lopsided smile, almost an apology.
“What do you do, Clay?” Denny asked. I squinted at him. My new hubby was definitely more clear-eyed than me.
“I’m a gambler” was the reply. He watched us for our reactions. But we both just nodded.
“You came here for the casino?” Denny asked.
He shook his head. “No. No casinos for me. I gamble for high stakes. No cards or dice or horses. High stakes.”
I struggled to clear my head. “You mean—?”
He emptied his martini glass and set it down on the table. He twirled the opal ring slowly with his other hand. “I bet on people,” he said. He licked the last of his drink off his lips. The smile had disappeared. The crazy blue eyes moved from Denny to me.
“High stakes?” Denny giggled. Maybe he was as drunk as me after all.
“Do you like to gamble?” Davies asked Denny.
Denny tilted his head. Like when a dog thinks hard about something. One of his cute habits. “Sometimes.”
Davies reached into his white beachcomber pants, then slapped a twenty-dollar bill on the table. He glanced around. “This place is dead.” He climbed to his feet. “Come to my room. I’ll show you what I do.”
I made a face at Denny. I shook my head. I didn’t want to go to this man’s room. I wanted to go to our room. Had Davies forgotten we were honeymooners?
Davies took my arm and helped me up from the chair. His hand felt like dry sandpaper against my skin. “I think you’ll find it interesting. Really. Only take a minute.”
Denny was on his feet. He tugged me aside. “Let’s just see what he wants to show us.”
“No, honey, I really—”
He put a finger on my lips. “Our honeymoon, right? We want to come back with some good stories. This will be a story. I know it.”
I started to giggle. The champagne, I guess. I held a hand over my mouth, trying to stop. I planted a sloppy kiss on Denny’s neck. He gave me a conspiratorial wink.
He held on to me as we followed Davies out of the bar to the elevator. The steel-drum music followed us, and I could still hear the steady rush of the ocean. I realized it must be late. The lobby lights had been dimmed. A white-uniformed woman bent over a vacuum cleaner.
Davies walked with a slight hitch, as if one leg was longer than the other. He hummed to himself as we walked. The back of his neck was crisscrossed like lizard skin. I couldn’t stop staring at it.
As the elevator doors slid open, a young couple in matching blue sweat suits staggered out, holding hands. I guessed they were heading for a late-night walk on the beach. We rode up in silence. I didn’t feel like giggling anymore. Something about this adventure had sobered me. I knew I should try to be alert.
Still humming, Davies opened the door to a suite on the fourth floor. The front room was all white wicker, a sea-blue carpet, and seashell designs on the wallpaper. French doors were open to a balcony that overlooked the beach. My eyes swept past the couch, a few chairs, a glass dining room table.
“Come in, come in.” Davies scurried about, turning on lamps.
“We… can’t stay,” I said, my eyes on Denny.
Davies motioned to a closed door on the right. “That’s my friend’s room. He’s on the mainland tonight.” His blue eyes flashed. “So, while the cat’s away…” He rubbed his hands together.
Weird, I thought. While the cat’s away? What does that mean?
Denny had a blank smile on his face. I couldn’t read his thoughts at all.
A gust of wind made the curtains leap at the open doors. I grabbed Denny’s arm. I saw a tiny lizard scamper across the dining room table. “Let’s go,”
I whispered. Denny waved me away.
“This way,” Davies said with a short bow and a sweep of his hand toward the door on the left. He pushed the door open. I felt a wave of frozen air. He had the air-conditioning on full blast. He clicked on a ceiling light as we followed him in.
I blinked. I saw a king-sized bed piled high with pillows. The same shell pattern on the bedspread as on the wallpaper. A wicker dresser against one wall.
“Whoa.” A low cry escaped my throat when I saw the coffin. It sat on the other side of the bed. The dark wood gleamed under the ceiling light.
Denny burst out laughing. “Davies, do you sleep in that thing? Are you a vampire?”
All three of us laughed. Davies laughed longer than we did. He pressed his hands over the front of his Hawaiian shirt, as if holding himself in. “I hope not,” he said finally. He strode toward the coffin. “Isn’t it the most beautiful wood? Have you ever seen mahogany like this?”
He waved us closer and reached to tilt up the lid. The inside was silky and red. I thought of my satin sheets back home.
“It’s actually crushed velvet,” Davies said. He ran a hand along the side. “So soft. Want to feel it?”
“What is it doing here?” I asked. The shrillness of my voice surprised me.
“You sell coffins? You’re an undertaker?” Denny made another joke, but this one fell flat.
Davies’s grin didn’t fade. “I told you. I’m a gambler. I thought maybe you might also be a gambling man, Danny.”
“It’s Denny.” He took a few steps toward the coffin. “I don’t get it. What kind of game—?”
Davies had his eyes on me. He saw me back up toward the bedroom door, but I didn’t care. “It’s quite simple, really,” he told Denny. “I make a bet with people. A high-stakes bet.” He rubbed the bristly white stubble on one cheek.
I could see he was spelling it out slowly, building suspense. Toying with us. “What exactly is the bet?” I couldn’t keep the impatience from my voice.
He gazed hard at Denny. “I bet that you can’t spend a night in the coffin. That’s all. That’s all there is to it.” He tapped the edge of the box.
I knew he wasn’t telling us something. Hey, I grew up in New York City. I’m a Barnard girl. No way I’m going to be taken in by a cheap carnival trick. “You mean—?”
“Most people are too claustrophobic,” he said. “They panic. They don’t last the night. Or the fear overwhelms them, the fear of being dead, of spending eternity in one of these.”
Denny walked up and slid his hand along the smooth wood. “I still don’t understand. Do people run out of air? Is that it? They have to get out or suffocate?”
Davies shook his head. “No. Look. Vents. I put air vents on both ends.”
“You pump in poison gas or something?” I asked. I don’t know where that thought came from. “You put something through those vents and the person has to jump out?”
“No. Nothing like that,” Davies insisted. “You come in at seven or so. You lie down. I close the lid. I lock it. You have a nice sleep. No torture. No tricks. At seven the next morning, if you’re still inside, I pay you a million dollars.”
I rushed forward and tugged Denny’s sleeve. “That’s insane. Let’s go. Good night, Mr. Davies.”
To my surprise, Denny shrugged me away. “A million dollars?” he asked Davies. “Is that the bet?”
Davies nodded.
“That’s wild,” Denny said, eyes on the casket bottom. “Too easy. I mean, I’m not claustrophobic at all. I could sleep in there for a week. You’d totally lose your money, Davies.”
Davies adjusted the bandanna around his neck. “Sometimes I lose. But sometimes I win. Want to try it? We can both go to the mainland tomorrow and get bank checks. Mrs. Sparano, tell you what—you can hold the two checks.”
“Denny, please—” I wanted away from there. But the color on Denny’s cheeks told me he was excited. He was even breathing hard.
He pulled me back into the front room, and we argued about it. My point of view was there had to be a catch. Denny’s point of view was, even if Davies was crazy, it was easy money. No way Denny could lose.
I pleaded and whined. “I don’t want to do this. Even if you want a honeymoon story to come home with. He’s a creepy man, and the whole idea is creepy. Keeping a coffin in his hotel suite?”
“Sure, it’s weird, Ashli. But that’s how the man makes his living.”
Lame.
But then Denny had the clincher. “This money can be my contribution to the marriage, Ashli. A million dollars. Not your money. My wedding gift to you. My contribution. Money I earned for us.”
My head still wasn’t clear. But I could see how important this was to Denny.
I turned and saw Davies watching us from the other room. “Well?” he called. “Do you want to wager with me?”
“Oh, what the hell,” I said. “It’s our honeymoon. Let’s make it two million dollars. Can you do two million, Mr. Davies?”
In the sober light of morning, it still seemed like a crazy idea. But Denny’s excitement hadn’t worn off, and it was catching. I actually felt giddy, totally light-headed, as we took the taxi boat to the mainland to pick up the bank check. And we joked about how making a profit of two million dollars on our honeymoon would definitely make a good story to tell our friends—and even our grandchildren.
“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Denny asked over our lunch of shrimp and crab salads and a nicely chilled Chablis, served in the shade of our beach cabana.
“Davies could be a penniless fraud and not have his half of the bet?”
Denny shook his head. “I checked him out online, Ashli. He’s loaded. He owns diamond mines in South Africa. I’m serious.”
It took a few seconds for that to soak in. I stared out at the ocean and watched a white, skyscraper-tall cruise ship inch by, out where the water met the sky.
“The only downside,” said Denny, “is it’ll mean I’ll be separated from you for so long.”
That tender line won him a delightful afternoon of lovemaking. We took a short break for one phone call. I called the bank and asked about Davies’s bank check. At first, they refused to violate his privacy, but I finally managed to wangle them into saying that the check was good.
Okay. So, by the time seven rolled around and we made our way up to Davies’s suite, we were both happily exhausted, even a little dazed, and Denny assured me he’d have no trouble at all sleeping through the night.
Davies met us at the door. He was dressed entirely in white, a crew-necked white sweater, very fleecy and luxurious-looking, over white cargo pants. He had shaved, exposing his crinkled and creased tanned face. He shook hands solemnly with both of us. Very businesslike now. No offers of a drink or chitchat about the weather.
We compared bank checks. Davies folded the checks together, then handed them to me. “I know you’ll keep them safe till tomorrow morning.”
“No worries.” I tucked them into my bag.
Davies squeezed Denny’s arm as we walked into the bedroom. “Nervous?”
“Not at all.”
“You shouldn’t be. It’s easy. An easy two million. Unless you panic.”
“I won’t panic,” Denny told him.
The coffin lid stood open. I gazed into the red interior and suddenly felt queasy. I guess from thinking about Denny lying like a corpse all night. Not sure if I could do it. I need a lot of room to roam around in. Always have.
A lingering kiss, and then Denny hoisted a leg over the side of the coffin and lowered himself to the red velvet. “See you in the morning, Ashli.”
“Sweet dreams.” The words sounded stupid, like I was making some kind of joke. But Denny smiled and stretched out on his back.
Davies carefully closed the lid. He clicked the silver latch and locked it. “You okay in there?”
“I’m enjoying it immensely.” Denny’s muffled voice from the air vents on both ends. “Ashli, go ahead and
deposit his check. We’ve already won.”
Davies uttered a humorless chuckle. He led me to the door. “I admire his confidence. Really.”
I didn’t know how to reply to that. So I just said, “See you tomorrow morning,” and strode quickly down the hall to the elevator.
The sun was red but still high in the sky. I took a walk along the ocean, letting the spray cool my face. The water churned with high waves, and whitecaps frothed onto the shore. I took off my sandals and let the cold water wash over my feet.
I felt more tense than I’d expected, all knotted up and unable to think of anything else but that crazy-eyed Davies and Denny flat on his back in that narrow box. Two tall white cranes stared at me from a flat rock ledge. The air grew cooler as the sun lowered itself over the water.
I returned to the room for an hour or so and tried to take a nap. But I couldn’t get comfortable. I realized I was hungry. We hadn’t had dinner. I walked down to the coffee shop, slid into a sea-green booth, and ordered a grilled cheese and a glass of Pinot Noir.
I was sipping the wine, still waiting for my sandwich, when a young man burst through the restaurant door, his eyes taking a fast survey of the nearly empty room. He had scraggly blond hair over a pink-cheeked face. He was short and pudgy and had a red-and-white-striped polo shirt half-tucked, half-untucked over baggy white tennis shorts.
His eyes stopped on me. He nodded, his lips moving, and hurried over to my booth. “Mrs. Sparano?”
I set down the wineglass. “Yes?”
“Is your husband with you?” He had a hoarse, almost comical voice. His cheeks had darkened to red.
I gestured across the table. “Obviously not. Actually, he’s lying in a coffin right now.”
I expected him to show some surprise at that. But his face showed only alarm. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said. He slid into the seat across from me. “Mrs. Sparano, my name is Kyle Jeffrey. Did your husband make a wager with Clay Davies? Did Davies make him lie down in a coffin?”
I nodded. “Yes. Is something wrong?”
Mystery Writers of America Presents the Mystery Box Page 32