6 Martini Regrets

by Phyllis Smallman

  “Did he find them?”

  “Nope.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Bad luck. Dad always thought fate had cheated him, but my mom just called him a fool for dreaming. The most practical-minded woman in the world, my mother.”

  “Guess you take after her, huh?”

  He didn’t rise to the jibe, but then he never did. I asked him another question. “So Bricklin would have no reason to hang around the Sunset, or look me up, except trying to find out about his brother’s death.”

  “His brother?”

  “Ben Bricklin, the dead guy at the nursery, was Ethan Bricklin’s brother.”

  Clay looked doubtful, like I’d told him an alien had just landed in the kitchen. “Are you sure these two guys are related?”

  “Swear,” I said, raising my right hand. “Ethan Bricklin came in today and stayed awhile.”

  “Ethan Bricklin came in here today?” he asked in a tentative voice.

  “Yup. He was here for about three hours.”

  “Why?”

  “The cops told him about Tito having my card. He seemed to think I was involved.”

  I watched him push a very fine scallop around the plate. I asked, “Can you think of any other reason he’d hang around except wanting to know how I knew Tito?”

  He tilted his head to the side, thinking. “No, unless it’s the obvious.”

  “And that is?”

  “He wouldn’t be the first man who got ideas being around you.”

  I planted my forearms on the bar and leaned towards him. “You mean the way you get ideas being around me, some real dirty ideas, some ‘let’s get naked and roll in the muck’ sort of things. That’s the kind of ideas you get, isn’t it?”

  He put down his knife and fork again, but this time he pushed his plate away. “Time for me to go.”

  “One day you’re going to break, Adams.”

  He pointed at the sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring I wore, the one we couldn’t afford, and said, “I thought I already had.”

  I watched him walk away. The guy had the best ass in town.

  Later that night, I told Clay I’d made a really big decision.

  He reached up and turned off his light. “Going to come clean with Styles?”

  “God, no. Are you crazy? That business in the Everglades is over.” I stretched my arm across his chest and covered his legs with mine. He pulled me close to his side.

  “No,” I said, “this decision is about us.”

  His body went rigid and he lay still, waiting without speaking for what was to come. It almost felt like he’d stopped breathing.

  I reached up and stroked his cheek. “I was thinking perhaps we should move the wedding up.”

  “What?” He pulled away from me and reached to turn his light back on. Raised on his elbows, he stared down at me. “What’s brought this on?”

  I could have told him it was a reaction to facing death out there on that drainage canal. My life had changed that night, and there was no going back to where I’d been before that night in the Everglades.

  Clay’s brows were furrowed and his piercing black eyes were locked on mine. “You aren’t saying this just to please me, are you? I know I’ve been bugging you to set a date sooner rather than later.”

  “Nope.”

  He still wasn’t convinced. “What changed your mind?”

  I started to lie, but it wouldn’t work. “Fear,” I said. “I didn’t want to die and leave no one behind.”

  He beamed down at me. “I should have taken you out in the Everglades and dropped you there a year ago.”

  It was a busy Thursday the next time Ethan Bricklin came in.

  Saying it was a surprise to see him back again hardly covered it. I picked up a tray of drinks and took it to the wait station, making an effort not to look at him or engage with him in any way, figuring if I ignored him as if he were an unwanted salesman, he’d go away. Turned out Ethan wasn’t easy to ignore and he was more determined than the best aluminum-siding man in the business. He sat down in front of the beer taps, the same as before, crossed his hands on the counter and waited.

  What the hell did he want with me? I was pretty sure it wasn’t my sparkling conversation. Besides, I thought we’d discussed everything we had in common: redneck living in Florida, whose family was poorer and where to get the best grouper sandwich on the Mangrove Coast—besides the Sunset, of course. He waved at me to catch my eye. I nodded to him but went right on shaking martinis and filling the glasses on my tray. I carried the martinis to the wait station and buzzed Jackie and then went to Ethan. I placed a paper coaster in front of him and said, “What’s your pleasure?”

  He gave me a naughty grin and raised his eyebrows.

  “Shit, not you too.”

  He laughed. “I’m still breathing, aren’t I?” A little-boy-in-trouble grin teased his face.

  I pointed my forefinger at him. “You do know that when you waggle your eyebrows like that, your ears wave too. Might want to think about that.”

  He ignored the jibe. “I brought you a present.”

  Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. Gifts from drinkers aren’t a good idea.

  He picked something off the stool beside him, then sat an orchid on the counter.

  “Oh, it’s so cute.” I looked closer at the base of the plant. Yellow and brown, the flowers grew out from a large dried-out clump of roots that didn’t look capable of sustaining life. “Wait a minute. It isn’t dying, is it? The roots don’t look so healthy.” Suspicious and annoyed, I glared at him. “What kind of a gift is a dying plant?”

  “It’s a cowhorn orchid,” Ethan said. “A slipper orchid, native to Florida and tough. It can live in the air or in water and in sun or shade. It reminded me of our conversation about people like us, who survive. There aren’t many of these left in the wild and not many of us left either.”

  I pushed the orchid towards him. “If it’s rare, then don’t leave it with me. It will die for sure.”

  He slid it back towards me. “I told you it was tough, just like you. Now, how about a draft?”

  I brought his beer but he didn’t touch it, didn’t even look at it when I set it in front of him. Instead he said, “I’ve just come back from Redlands.”

  “What’s that, a music festival?”

  He shook his head in despair at my ignorance. “It’s an orchid show over near Miami. Orchidophiles from all over the world show up for it. It’s a big deal. Florida does millions of dollars in legal orchid sales alone every year. If you add in illegal sales . . .” His shoulder rose in a little shrug. “There were hundreds of thousands of people at this show.”

  “God, maybe I should open a bar just for the show. Put little orchids in every drink.”

  He laughed but it didn’t last. “There’s a rumor going round that Ben bred a black orchid before he died, even sent out notices to people offering it for sale.”

  I turned the crazy-colored flower around, studying it from all angles. “A black orchid sounds pretty boring compared to this little darling.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand. No one has ever seen a black orchid. There are some with black petals or black spots, but there’s never been one that’s all black. They don’t exist. It’s a matter of genetics.” He spread his hands wide. “There are thirty thousand species of orchids and more than a hundred thousand hybrids, making it the most lucrative flower business in the world. Can you imagine if you were the only person in the world to own a black orchid, can you see what that would mean?”

  “Money would be my guess.”

  He was leaning forward with enthusiasm, his eyes shining with excitement. “A black orchid is like . . .” He thought for a minute. “Like finding a Michelangelo in your attic. If you had a black orchid, had a new genus, it would
be worth a lot of money, but more important than money would be the bragging rights.”

  “That’s not more important than money.”

  “You’d have the right to name it.” He spoke slowly, emphasizing his words by marking them off with his open palms. “Your name would be on it forever, making you immortal.”

  I moved aside so Mick could pull a pint. “You orchid people are all crazy.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. People will do all kinds of things, legal and illegal, for an exotic plant. At Selby Gardens, up in Sarasota, they had a big problem with an illegal orchid that was brought in from South America. People ended up in court, a really nasty business. If people thought Ben had a black orchid, some orchid collectors would offer him a fortune for it and some would try and get it by any means. Even murder.”

  Fear shivered down my spine. “That’s crazy. People don’t kill for a flower.”

  “I think you’re wrong about that. This gossip about Ben having a black orchid, even if it wasn’t true, would make him a target.”

  “So how did the rumor start?” I asked.

  “Apparently, it started with Ben. That’s what I can’t understand. He knew better than to make a mistake between a truly black orchid and an almost black.”

  “Has anyone actually seen this orchid?”

  “He e-mailed a picture of the orchid to at least a dozen buyers and said he had one for sale.”

  And then it hit me. “Maybe your brother was playing a gigantic practical joke.” Just thinking about him having all these fanatics running around, lustfully panting after something that didn’t exist, gave me a giggle. “Man, that’s my kind of funny. I think I would have liked your brother.”

  Ethan wasn’t smiling. “Ben didn’t have that kind of sense of humor.”

  “Could he have faked the picture?”

  “Why would he do that? These were people he did business with and wanted to stay on friendly terms with. You don’t do that by playing games.”

  “So he must have believed he had one.” A second possibility hit me. “Or perhaps the e-mails didn’t come from Ben.”

  “My tech person at the mine says they did.” Ethan paused, watching me and waiting for me to respond, but I was fresh out of ideas.

  “Well, I’ll take real good care of this flower.” I picked it up. “And when it’s finished blooming I’ll take it out to Clay’s ranch in Independence and reintroduce it to its proper home, but you better tell me how to look after it and keep it alive until then.”

  Ethan hung around, drinking slowly, ordering stone crab he barely touched and waiting for me to come back for more conversation, telling me more than I wanted to know about raising and keeping orchids. He was right when he told me he was obsessed. I knew better than to ask people about their passions. It was always just too boring.

  Over the next hour, drifting back and forth between mixing drinks, I got a college course on orchids. But there was an intensity about Ethan that said he wasn’t idly passing time. I was ready to bet Ethan Bricklin never did anything without intent. But why on earth would anyone talk to me about orchids? And it was definitely orchids he wanted to talk about. For me, they were just pretty things that survived a long time on the bar—lots of bang for my buck. Man, I should put that on a tee shirt, I thought. Lots of bang for your buck . . . but then people might get the wrong idea.

  When Ethan was through talking about orchids, he wanted to talk about the one thing I didn’t want to think about ever again: the night of the fire. Hunting and searching for the words, he told me he had been a bad brother, not keeping in touch and not helping out when Ben needed him. Now he wanted to do one last thing to make things right.

  “You can’t change the past,” I told him.

  “No, but I can see that justice is done.”

  “Justice?”

  “I know he was murdered.” His calmness was chilling. “And I’m going to find out who did it.”

  His tone of voice left no room for argument, but I tried anyway. “Leave it to the police.”

  “But they don’t understand orchid lovers. I do. Ben died because someone thought he had a rare plant. They won’t stop until they get it.”

  “That’s why you think Ben died. It doesn’t make it true.”

  “It’s true.”

  The register pinged, telling me there was a bar order for the dining room. I read the order and pulled a Budweiser, saying, “Then it sounds to me like you should be over on the other coast, where it happened, and not here in Jacaranda.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Clay came in. He leaned across the bar and kissed me. I introduced him to Ethan.

  Two alpha males. Right away I could see them circling each other, sniffing like stray dogs who meet on the sidewalk, trying to decide if they were going to form a pack, fight to the death or head off in different directions. Making up their minds didn’t take long. Soon they were talking about people and places they had in common, but mostly it was money and how to make it out of Florida land deals that set them on fire.

  An hour later Clay watched Ethan leave the bar and said, “A man like that can do me a lot of good.”

  My hands were full of glasses but I hesitated before putting them in the tub and frowned at him. “How?”

  His face was incredulous. “He can introduce me to people.”

  “You know lots of people.” I just wanted Ethan to go away and forget about us.

  “Not the people in his circle. Meeting Ethan may turn out be the most important connection I ever made.” He stood up. “Ethan is optimistic about the economy. Says it’s turning around and is going to start moving again.” It was just what Clay wanted to hear—needed to hear.

  “Still, I’d rather we didn’t have anything more to do with Ethan. Don’t encourage him. He has an agenda, and it isn’t to make you rich.”

  “Don’t let your fears get the best of you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He took his time, picking his way around the minefield. “You’ve had bad things happen to you, starting with Jimmy’s murder, and those things have made you . . . nervous. Even before the Everglades, you saw a killer in every shadow and jumped at every noise. You’re stressed to the max, but you won’t listen to anyone and get some help.”

  He was right about one thing. Since that night in the swamp, any hint of threat, any situation that might turn bad, had me going on high alert. More than one person had commented on how jumpy I was. I bit back my defense, trying to stick to facts. “Ethan’s only interest is revenge. That’s why he’s here—he thinks I know something. I just want to convince him he’s wrong so he’ll move on.”

  “Pushing him away isn’t the way to do it. Give him time and he’ll see you have nothing for him.” Clay shoved the barstool under the counter with more force than necessary. “Besides, this is an opportunity, and I’m not going to miss it because of your paranoia.”

  “Better paranoid than dead.”

  He stopped moving away and came back to the counter. In a voice you’d use for a child frightened by a clown, he said, “No one is trying to kill you.”

  “Maybe not now, but before.”

  “Exactly. Before. But it’s over now. You need to get some help to understand that and put it behind you.”

  I didn’t even take the time to argue with him, just stomped off to the kitchen to make someone else’s life a misery. But there was some truth in what Clay said. The fear flowing out of events from my past had never left me. I always expected the worst-possible outcome from any situation, and sometimes I saw danger where there wasn’t any.

  When had I become so distrustful of the world? It was long before Jimmy died. Our life together had been one treachery after another, and I always looked beneath the surface, searching for the lie. My suspicious ways had begun with Jimmy’s first betrayal and then multiplied
when he was murdered along with Andy, his best friend.

  Jimmy’s death had nearly destroyed me, sent me scurrying away from involvement. Clay had to work hard to overcome my distrust and anticipation of duplicity. I still expected our life together to go wrong sooner or later.

  I felt a connection to Ben Bricklin, a man who had lost more times than he’d won, and I figured my luck was about as lousy as his. Except for Clay. I thought of Ben and his Susan. No good could come from comparisons like that. I shoved the memory of the dead man into a dark corner of my mind, more determined than ever to drive Ethan away.

  I didn’t count on Clay working against me. Two days later Ethan dropped into Clay’s office and said he was searching for more warehouse space for one of his companies.

  When Clay came up to tell me about it, the normal, stoic guy I knew was gone. He was beyond animated, pacing up and down in front of my desk and waving his hands, saying, “It will be worth tens of thousands in commissions, more than I make selling houses in a year.”

  “You do all right now.”

  “I don’t want to just do all right.” Clay planted his hands on my desk and leaned towards me. “I want more than that for you and our kids. I failed once; I won’t fail again.”

  “You didn’t fail, the economy did.”

  His jaw set into a hard rock of determination. “This is my chance to make our lives better.”

  “Our lives are good enough for me.”

  I should have saved my breath. Avoiding Ethan was no longer an option. Every day, Ethan and Clay were together in the bar talking business, but, unlike Clay, I didn’t think it was buying and selling land that brought Ethan through the door. My reaction to his presence was to revert to the good-time girl, always up for a party and never taking anything seriously. Just a dumb-cracker girl who wouldn’t know enough to keep her mouth shut if she did know something about some dead people connected with a nursery. Playing ignorant and tacky is second nature to me—my default mode.