Forever’s Just Pretend: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 2)

by Craig McDonald

  He rubbed the back of his neck. Hector stared into the water, contemplating the cruising tarpon. “I’m thinking on that, still.”

  Rose was coming their way, smiling. She wiped her hands on her apron. “How was it?”

  “Great,” Hector said. “Delicious. Best I almost had. By that I mean Brinke ate most before I got there.”

  Rose smiled. “Dev’s an eater, okay. Still hungry then?”

  “No, but very thirsty,” he said. “Another of these would hit the spot.” Hector lifted the glass and swished around the dregs of his rum drink. “Another daiquiri for Brinke, too.”

  Rose winked. “Done. You thought about this other? About my Louise?”

  “We’ll nose around for a tad,” Hector said. “But let’s keep it our secret, eh, hon’? I’m new on this island and don’t want to get on Sheriff Mel’s bad side. I suspect that’s a mighty treacherous place to be.”

  6

  The man threw down the newspaper, his stomach churning.

  Four had been killed in the fire. One was a child. No way to know if it was the little blond girl, though he’d taken the trouble to rap his knuckles on their room’s door as he made his escape.

  So maybe that tow-headed toddler was okay.

  Maybe. Jesus Christ, he hoped so.

  He’d contracted for three jobs. The next was a private residence on Elizabeth Street and a restaurant at Mallory Dock still remained.

  He’d planned to space the arsons out more, but he didn’t want to hang around the island and hear more about that hotel fire and maybe the kid. He didn’t want to be around for the news coverage of the next two jobs.

  So he decided he’d double-up and finish his hellish contract before morning.

  The man had other job prospects in Miami, work for some bunch of greasy Guinea hoodlums out of Chicago who were angling for a muggy winter beachhead now that John Ashley was safely dead and his gang in tatters, he guessed.

  That was more his line of work than this Key West gig was proving to be.

  Killing kids? Killing children was not his thing. Not at all.

  7

  Hector finished the text of the wire to his maternal grandfather, the man who raised him after his parents’ deaths, and read it over once. As he was about to hand it across the counter to the clerk, Brinke snatched it away. Turning her back to the clerk, she slipped on some reading glasses and read it. Vain, pretty Brinke: always hiding those spectacles and her weak dark eyes.

  Shaking his head, Hector said, “Meet with your approval, darling?”

  Brinke took off her glasses and handed the slip of paper back to the clerk. “Oh, the message is just fine, Hector. I was just seeing what your granddad’s name is. Beauregard Stryder. Can’t be many men with that name.” She folded her glasses and slipped them back into her purse.

  “That’s the drastically shortened version,” Hector said. “His whole name runs Beauregard Ballou Strapp Stryder.” Hector furrowed his brow. “Hell, there might even be another name or two in there I missed.”

  “We’ll stick with Beau Stryder,” Brinke said, putting away her reading glasses. “Sounds quite dashing—that handle, to use one of your terms. Think he’ll give me away?”

  “I’m frankly more worried about him trying to take you away,” Hector said. “He was, and remains, least ways in his own mind, quite the lady’s man.”

  “I can hardly wait.” Brinke hugged him. They kissed. “So now we’re committed, like you said.”

  “Utterly.”

  “So we should look for wedding bands.”

  Hector furrowed his brow. “Not at the same place where you bought that shooting iron?”

  “Lord, no. A proper jewelers.” She took his hand and tugged. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

  ***

  Hector had their wedding bands in a small envelope he’d thrust into his pant’s pocket. He was fiddling with the envelope in that pocket and jingling change in the other, standing under a canopy and waiting for Brinke. She’d ducked into the general store to buy more ribbons for her typewriter. Between the two of them, and given their respective writing speeds, Hector figured to go through many miles of that stuff in the days to come.

  Hector turned and looked into the storefront behind him: a realtor’s office, “Last Key Realty.” Taped to a large piece of cardboard in the front window were photographs of various homes and properties for sale. There was a second sheet that was laid out more as a kind of plat. Hector eyed that rendering and realized it was comprised of an entire block of property, or perhaps even two or three blocks given the haphazard pattern of the island’s streets. The land was being sold in parcels.

  The properties all seemed to be centered around Whitehead Street. Then Hector remembered what Brinke had said about the 1923 fire that had wiped out more than three dozen houses on the Key in that vicinity.

  A man ducked his head out the door. He was wearing a sweat-stained white shirt, the sleeves rolled up below matching sleeve garters. His hair was parted in the middle and slicked severely down on either side of his head. The man grinned and said, “I’m Denton Stokes. Looking for property, brother?”

  Hector shook his head. “Nope, I don’t think so. Just looking at this sheet here. This place is an island, and pretty densely developed. What, God suddenly make some more coral bed for you all to build on? That looks like a mighty big chunk of the Key for sale.”

  The man wiped his forehead with a ragged handkerchief, the screen door resting against his shoulder.

  “Yeah. That’s from the big fire a couple of years ago. That took out a passel of places.”

  “Most people would rebuild,” Hector said.

  “Thems with enough or any insurance would,” the man agreed. “But some of those places that went up in smoke, hell, most of ’em if you ask me, weren’t worth spit standin’. Best thing that ever happened, that fire. Certainly good for my line of work.”

  Hector looked again at the board with the pictures of still-standing houses for sale. He said, “Looks to be so.”

  The man leaned out a bit further and offered Hector a business card. Hector reached up and took it. “In case you change your mind,” the salesman said. “No better time to get yourself some Florida property than now, brother, and this is the place to buy it. Last Key. Like you said, the Lord ain’t gonna grant us more dirt. Opportunity stops at the southernmost point.”

  “That last sounds like a slogan,” Hector said.

  “It may be now,” the realtor said, clearly proud of himself.

  8

  They were standing on the pier watching the bobbers skim the waves. It was overcast and Brinke was blinking back the first rain in many days.

  Squinting against the light drizzle, she said, “We’re on an island, Hector. We’re surrounded by seafood caught and prepared by others. What is this about? Why in God’s name did you buy this fishing stuff when there are all these others who make their living doing this? Why are we trying to catch fish?”

  Hector recast his line. “I enjoy it for one thing. But I did it mostly because of my granddad maybe coming. Grandpa Beau is an avid fisherman. He made sure I fished, all the time, everywhere we went. It’s been a few years since I’ve done it. And if Pap saw I lived someplace surrounded by water and didn’t own any tackle? Hell, he’d ream me. It’d kill him. Just want to make sure my casting is up to snuff. That and what comes after.”

  Brinke wiped rainwater from her forehead. “With all that tackle and the rods, you could have at least bought a couple of rain slickers. That’s the other thing about this place, it doesn’t last long, but you get rain here nearly every day. Or so they say. I haven’t seen much until now.”

  “Takes off the heat a bit,” Hector said. He nodded at the bobbers. Brinke’s was dipping below the waves. “Think you’ve got a bite.”

  Brinke looked over the rail, suddenly excited. “Hey, it is going up and down!”

  “Wait until the bobber goes under and stays a moment, and the
n tug back, firmly, but not crazy hard.”

  Brinke squealed as the bobber went under and she jerked back, a bit too sharply Hector thought, afraid she’d lose the fish.

  To his surprise, there was still tension on the line. Brinke said, “Okay, what do I do now?”

  “Turn the reel and pull him on in!”

  Hector ended up reeling in his own line and setting his pole on the planks to help Brinke. Whatever was on the end of her line was big.

  They finally got it up out of the water and Hector reached over the rail and hooked a finger through its gill slit and hefted the fish.

  Wide-eye, Brinke said, “What is it?”

  “My lunch that you enjoyed, tarpon. But relatively small for tarpon.”

  “That’s small? So we throw it back?”

  “Hell no. We take it home. You catch it, you clean it. Then you eat it. The rules.”

  Brinke looked worried. “But I don’t know how to clean it.”

  “I’ll show you how,” Hector said.

  ***

  Brinke sat back in her chair in their under-furnished kitchen. “Well, if the bottom falls out for my new character, Horace Lester, and for your next novel—if the wolves are baying at our door—at least we know we can survive on what you catch and cook. There’ll be no heating bills here and we don’t need much in the way of clothes. I think we’re set for the poor life, if things go all to hell. We’ll do just fine.”

  “That’s a cheerful thought,” Hector said. “Tarpon was okay?”

  “As good or even better than the one at lunch,” Brinke said, sipping some white wine. She reached across the table and held up the bottle. “Thank God you thought to smuggle in some of this from the civilized world. That’s the one thing about Paris I miss, the readily available legal and proper booze. Outside of Rose’s place, and a couple of rough bars downtown, it’s all speakeasies and codes and wink-wink to get a drink. And mostly rum. I’ve missed fine wine.”

  “Prohibition can’t last,” Hector said. “It’s making too many criminals rich.”

  “And that’s why we’ll get to drink again?” Brinke smiled and shook her head. “It’s certainly a crazy world, isn’t it?”

  Hector poured himself some more white wine. “Another quiet, panting night at home, or what, Brinke?”

  “Thought we might get out a bit. We could see a movie. The theatre is showing Erich von Stroheim’s Greed.”

  Hector made a face. “Isn’t that film something like ten hours long?”

  “They’ve severely edited it, according to the local paper.”

  “What, to a brisk five hours?” Hector shook his head. “How about drinks, dinner and bed instead?”

  “Sold! But first I need to do some shopping. You’re right about stamina and us. Want to get some fresh fruit and some illegal hooch for the in-between times. While I do that, you can wander the island maybe. But not quite yet.” She turned on the radio. “In Shadowland” was playing.

  That look—bedroom eyes. He took her hand, pulled her up to him.

  Brinke said, “Think bed’ll still be sexy when we’re legal?”

  9

  The woman was slender, tall. She was black-haired and pretty. A real tomato. The man searched for a word to best describe her and settled on “coltish.”

  Pulling on a bottle of Coca-Cola, he thought about how he’d drawn himself a winner with this one, okay. One to savor. The last two had been, eh…call ’em plain.

  He’d been spying on the woman for several days, ever since he was given her name and address. He’d learned her routines and picked his time and place.

  The woman paused at a fruit stand. She touched and weighed various bits of produce. She wore khaki shorts and a sleeveless white shirt that tied at the back of her long, tanned neck—a shirt that bared much of her bronzed back. She was leggy and busty. He looked a long time at her legs, those stems without end.

  And Jesus, that chassis?

  Yes, he’d really hit the mother lode with this broad.

  The houses on either side of the woman’s house were empty. The man was responsible for one of those vacancies; a fire had taken care of the other. He smiled, remembering the woman who had lived in the vacant house. The woman he’d killed.

  Veronica Duggan. A dirty blond, just shy of plump. Thick ankles and wide-hipped. A real Mrs. Grundy. She’d fought him to her final breath, for all the good it did her, which was none.

  He smiled, remembering.

  Because there were no immediate neighbors on one side to hear, the man had decided on the raven-haired woman’s house as the site of his attack. He’d already confirmed she was unmarried—no man he’d seen around the house the past few nights that he’d troubled himself to watch. Yes, she lived alone.

  He’d have privacy in her house and the time to savor her before he put out her lights. He’d already hidden the baseball bat in a shrub by her front door. He could hardly risk walking around the island toting a Louisville Slugger. Not since the newspapers had hung that bogeyman moniker on him and the others. The islanders were crazy with fear for a visit from the Clubber because of those scream headlines. Goddamn muckrakers.

  The pretty, dark-haired woman was paying for her produce; a fetching smile for the Cuban clerk. The woman pulled sunglasses down out of her wind-tangled hair.

  The man watched her, smiling. Watching that long brown back, shapely backside and those endless legs.

  They’d be his soon. All his.

  The man followed the woman, pausing just long enough to scoop up a peach and a newspaper, then tossing the fruit monger a couple of coins. Something there about commerce on the cover. A pull quote from President Coolidge: “The business of America is business.”

  Right-o. Some other item about new FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.

  Folding the paper under his arm, the man bit into the fuzzy, succulent peach.

  Delicious.

  He looked at the fruit where he had bitten into it: pink, glistening. Reminded him of a woman.

  10

  Hector realized, standing at their locked front door, he hadn’t yet been given a key to their new home.

  Not that a doorkey would have helped him now: the screen door was fastened from the inside with a catch-and-eye hook. Hector called out to Brinke once, twice. No answer. Not to his knock, either.

  The seam between the screen door and frame was a crude one, a fair amount of gap there. Frowning, Hector pulled out his notebook and edged its cardboard cover into the crack in the door and eased it up, popping the hook. Too damn easy. Right there, Hector promised himself a cool, early next morning re-hanging the door to prevent anyone else getting in the way he had just done. Brinke was cautious enough in some ways, yes. But in others?

  Hector slid into the shade of the living room. The room was cool from a cross breeze through the open windows, front and back. He heard the palm trees creaking in the wind.

  Discarded clothes lay on the floor: a white blouse, some sandals. Scraps of clothing were dropped along the path to the bedroom. Shorts and bloodstained panties, crumpled on the floor, set Hector’s heart beating faster and left him wondering if Brinke had undressed herself. His suitcases were still sitting in the middle of the room, mostly unpacked. Hector frowned and slipped his hand under a stack of shirts and pants and shook loose his ’73 Peacemaker. He hefted the long-barreled Colt revolver and then edged into the darkened bedroom. The shades were drawn and the fans going. Hector’s eyes were still adjusted to the harsh Florida sunlight, so the interior room was all but black to him. He stood there a moment, waiting for his eyes to adapt to the dark.

  Hector saw that Brinke was sprawled faced down on the bed, nude.

  Softly, he said, “Brinke? Are you okay?”

  No answer.

  Frightened now, he walked softly to the bed and pressed two fingers to her throat; felt a pulse. Her head turned. Groggy, Brinke said, “Hector?”

  “What’s wrong sweetheart? I was very worried.”

  Bri
nke rubbed her eyes and looked at his Colt. “I guess you were, worried, I mean. You can put that gun away, Hector. It’s not like that.”

  “You okay?”

  “I—well, it’s that time of the month. Never had it hit me so hard, before. A migraine, cramps. Sorry about the mess, but I just had to get cool and to bed. Sorry for scaring you, darling. But I was so sick, so hot. And I hurt.”

  Hector saw now that Brinke had spread a towel under herself to protect the chenille coverlet. She clutched at her lower abdomen and groaned. “Oh, God, this is awful.”

  “Cramps again?”

  She shook her head and said, “The worst. And this is so embarrassing. Having you see that…this.”

  He waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t be silly, darling.” He uncocked his Colt and placed the revolver on the nightstand. He stroked her hip, curving around her pelvic bone to massage her belly. He began unbuttoning his shirt. “Those cramps, I expect I can help with those.” He unfastened his belt.

  “Not now,” she said. “Not with me like this. You can’t want to.”

  “Hell I can’t,” he said, kissing her forehead and kicking off his pants.

  ***

  Her eyes shone in the light through a crack in the blinds. Brinke said, “Sorry again for the mess.”

  He smiled and said, “Quiet now. It’s nothing.”

  She kissed his shoulder. “You’re right, though. It did help with the cramps. Headache’s gone, too. So I guess in addition to all your other fine qualities, you’re medicinal, too.”

  “Sure I am.” Hector brushed the black bangs back from her forehead.

  “This thing may be the death of me,” she said, stroking him there, then frowning at the sticky blood on her hand.

  “Given your passionate nature, it’s more likely to be the death of me,” Hector said.

  “You regretting my passionate nature, Hec?”

  “Heaven forbid.” He slipped his arm under her head. He softly massaged her belly with his other hand. “Any good restaurants on this island? By that I mean joints with linen table cloths and waiters in jackets or ties?”