“All this fuss just for a few flowers.”
“Oh, you heathen,” he said. “Controlling life and creating something new—collecting is an act of a god.”
I drew back in his arms. “Of a goddamn fool, if you ask me.”
He laughed and we twirled again, until I was sure my whole dress was going to slide off my body and end up in a puddle on the checkered floor.
“You dance like Fred Astaire,” I told him.
“It’s all about timing and lightness of touch, just like in business—or making love.” He placed his cheek against mine. “A Carnevale ogni scherzo vale, as they say in Italy: at Carnival, anything goes.” His cheek nuzzled mine. “And life is a carnival.”
Back at the table, Sasha told Martin Faust that he wanted his chair. Martin made a face but didn’t argue. Then Sasha sat down beside me and turned his chair to face me, turning his back on Erin. Wine had been poured. He handed me my glass, and I noticed he wore a gold pinky ring with a crest. How many Russian families would flaunt a crest?
He picked up his own glass and bent towards me, his forearm on the table. “I want to know all about you. How do you know Ethan?” His eyes were fixed intently on my face. He’d picked a strange place to start in my life’s story, but he really seemed to care about my answer.
I shrugged. “I don’t really know him. Clay is hunting for some property for Ethan, or something like that, and I own the Sunset Bar and Grill over Clay’s office.”
“Ahh, that’s right, you’re a businesswoman.”
“More like a bartender with pretentions.”
“So, unlike the rest of us, you don’t spend your life surrounded by orchids?”
“Nope. I spend my life surrounded by a riffraff of drinkers— not very flowery or exotic, but fun nonetheless.” And the conversation at the bar of the Sunset was sure more interesting than any at this table, enough to make me yearn for it, but I kept that thought to myself.
“Ethan told me you knew the boy who worked for Ben Bricklin.”
“No, I didn’t. He had my business card.” I pointed to where a card lay on the table. “Just like that one.”
Sasha didn’t let the subject drop. His questions turned into an interrogation rather than a conversation. He wanted to know all about Ethan. Somehow he was convinced that I was in Ethan’s confidence. I denied it over and over, but he kept digging. His intensity was wearing.
“How did you start collecting?” I just wanted him to stop grilling me, and I’d already discovered that asking an orchid collector about his prize possessions was akin to asking a new mother about her baby. Just ask the question and then have a nap while they blather on. Sasha was no exception.
“I started collecting when I moved to Miami from New Jersey. Florida is the place for orchids. I started my collection late, so I have to hurry to catch up. I want them all, and I want them now.”
“So you bought from Ethan’s brother.”
He gave me a look that said maybe I’d crossed a line.
I shrugged and then grabbed my dress before it slid away. “Ethan told me Ben was one of the biggest breeders in Florida.”
“Ben Bricklin made me an expert on orchids. I was at the nursery in the days before Ben’s death.”
He looked past me to Ethan, sitting on my left side. Ethan wasn’t bothering to hide his interest in our conversation.
“But of course you knew that,” Sasha said to Ethan. “The police must have found my check for fifty thousand dollars in Ben’s desk.”
Ethan frowned. “The house went up with the shade house. There was nothing left to find.”
“Ah.” Sasha smiled. “So I needn’t have explained about the money.”
“What were you hoping to buy for that much money?” Ethan’s voice was light, but his fingers rolled into fists on the table.
“It was just to encourage him to take my offer for the black orchid seriously.” Sasha might have been talking about getting his car detailed. “But really, money was no object.” He gave a brief wave of his hand, dismissing silly ideas of cost. “I would have happily paid him double that.”
Alcohol was making my tongue work faster than my brain. “How did you get to the place in life where money is no object?”
Behind me, Clay said, “Sherri,” outraged at my social gaffe of talking about money.
Sasha wasn’t a bit put out. In fact, he looked pleased. “I did it the hard way: I earned it.”
“But doing what?” I asked.
Clay’s hand dug into my bare shoulder.
Sasha laughed and waggled his hand back and forth. “A little of this and a little of that.”
“Let’s dance,” Clay said and dragged me to my feet before I got any ruder.
When we returned to the table, the conversation had turned to more interesting things. With a table full of Type A personalities, each with an agenda and each out to dominate the others, conversation was fast and deadly, each person trying to win points. Ethan played the game like a master. When I’d first met him, he had pretended to be a good old boy made good. He’d told me he had never been to college, unlike his younger brother, but the cracks that quickly appeared in this simple “just one of the boys” façade grew wider every time we met. He was more erudite and informed than he pretended to be, dropping knowledge like another man might shed dandruff, and when he was interested in something he’d shake it like a terrier until he owned it. That was the thing he shared with Sasha: intensity.
Their discussion was interrupted often, as one important person after another stopped by to say hello to Ethan. If I’d been in any doubt about Clay’s early assessment that Ethan was one of the most important people in Florida, I no longer was.
As Ethan rose once again to shake someone’s hand, I looked around the table and considered the people Ethan thought might be responsible for his brother’s death. He’d brought his list of suspects down to these few, all important in their own right. One of them had killed Ben Bricklin. Oh, none of them would have done it personally. They all had the money and the resources to hire someone else to do their dirty work. Nina Dystra was married to a man who dealt with criminals every day, and Clay’s experience showed Dystra was more than willing to cut legal corners.
Martin Faust had been arrested for smuggling orchids into the country—again, someone who wasn’t hung up on right and wrong, someone who would do anything to get his name on an orchid. And then there was Sasha. If he was part of the Russian mob, there wasn’t anything he would stop at.
Liz . . . I couldn’t go anywhere with that. I just couldn’t see how she could kill a lifelong friend, but then, going on my past experience and tendency to trust the wrong people, my not suspecting her could be a strong indicator that she was guilty.
It was a strange situation to find myself in, glamorous and exciting on one hand, and terrifying on the other. But then, maybe none of them had anything to do with the deaths at the nursery or with Tito’s death. Across the table from me now, Liz had her eyes on me, cold and calculating. Damn, but I needed more wine. I looked for a waiter.
After the prosciutto and melon with fresh figs came a salad with thin slices of nearly raw tuna. When the plates were cleared for the next course, all the gentlemen rose to change places. Clay now sat beside me. We held hands under the table, like teenagers.
Willow laughed, a sound like rippling water that caught the attention of everyone at the table. We all turned to look at her. Man, she was beautiful! Just shoot me now. She held up her gold mask with one diamond tear below the left eye. It was mounted on a gold stick that rhinestones twirled around. She turned to show Martin Faust. I looked at Clay, followed his eyes to Willow and elbowed him hard.
Clay gave a humph of pain and then said, “Shall we dance?”
“Perhaps we’d better.”
The orchestra was playing an old Whitney Housto
n hit. I turned to face him and said, “I’m so pleased you’re enjoying the view across the table.”
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”
“Of course not, but did I ever tell you about Tully shooting up our trailer when Ruth Ann brought home a new man?”
“Many, many times.”
“Good. Just remember I share some of my father’s finer characteristics. I catch you with another woman, you won’t be able to run far enough or fast enough.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He drew me to him. We swayed together as the band played, and he sang softly along to the song, “I will always love you.” When his hand settled on my behind, I smiled. It isn’t often in life that you’re totally happy.
When the next song began, Clay held me close and said, “Just one more.” Then he added, “Do you notice a bit of tension in the air around our table?”
“Tension? I’m just glad there are no steak knives on the table.” I gave a dramatic quiver, well aware of what it did to the thin material grazing my body. “I wish I’d worn a Kevlar vest instead of silk.”
“I enjoy this so much more without the vest.”
“You start enjoying this much more and we’ll be asked to leave.”
He pulled me closer. “Being kicked out would suit me just fine.”
CHAPTER 23
When the song ended I went off to the ladies’ room, and there was Willow, sitting on a wicker chair before a long mirror-lined vanity. Elegant beyond belief, she was using a straw made of gold to sniff up the white powder on the counter.
Shocked, I glanced quickly around. We were alone, but I still whispered, “What are you doing?”
She blocked one nostril and sniffed deeply before she answered. “Well, I’m not dancing.” She held her forefinger under her nose to keep herself from sneezing.
I took a deep breath, trying for a sophistication I didn’t feel. “Don’t you know that coke is so yesterday?”
“I’m an old-fashioned girl.”
I laughed. You just had to. She so didn’t care. Right out in the open, she was doing a line of coke and daring the world to do something about it, telling the rest of the human race to piss off.
She wiped her nostrils delicately with her fingertips. “Sasha likes you.”
I waited, knowing something else was coming.
“Are you and Clay and Ethan . . .” She wiggled three fingers in the air.
“No . . . hell no.”
“Pity. I thought you two might like to party with Sasha and I. Clay is very fine.”
“And so is Sasha. Have you known him long?”
“A bit.” She tilted her head to the right and then to the left, checking herself out in the mirror.
I opened my bag and started fixing my face. “Where did you meet?”
She licked her long, glamorous finger and wiped up the remains of the coke, then put her finger in her mouth. “Paris.”
“Ah, Ethan said you were a model. Is that what you were doing in Paris? Were you actually walking down a runway? That’s so exciting.”
She was unimpressed with my keenness, just stared up at me and said, “Honey, don’t go pumping me for information. I know nothing. It’s safer that way.”
“I was making friendly talk . . . you know, a little change from talking about the weather.”
“Yeah, it sure is hot down here. How do y’all stand it?”
“Y’all? Your roots are showing.”
She laughed. “I must get them touched up.” She lifted her hair and let it cascade back down over her shoulders. “People are always pumping me for gossip about Sasha. When it comes to Sasha’s life, I don’t know and I don’t care. All I care about is surviving, and the way to do that is to stay deaf and dumb.”
“Yeah, I know what you’re saying.” I ran my fingers through my own hair and patted it in place. “I used to be brave. That was before I found out how much it costs.”
She smiled and wagged a finger at me. “Girl, I think we hoed some of the same rows and know how to stay alive.” She smiled at me and said, “We’re just two girls looking out for themselves.”
I pointed at the faint powder residue. “We all have different ways of doing that.”
I went into a cubicle. When I came out she was still sitting there, relaxed and at ease, floating in a dream all her own.
As I dried my hands, she smiled and stretched lazily to her feet. “We gonna be good friends.” She linked her arm in mine and we left the ladies’ room.
Strolling down the brick path, under the trees and across the end of the dance floor, each of us tried to out-slink the other.
When we passed Clay, talking with someone at the entrance to the tent, he grabbed my arm, stopping me in mid-stride. He said, “Your daddy would call you two Heartache and Trouble, and he wouldn’t be wrong.”
If he only knew; heartache and trouble was only the start of it.
At the table, Sasha sat talking earnestly to Liz. Neither one of them took any notice of us, but they were the only ones in the room who didn’t.
Twilight came, and with it, the fairy lights in the garden twinkled, lighting up this enchanted world and making anything seem possible. The smell of perfume and flowers and food filled the air with promise, and even the guests from hell seemed tolerable.
Ethan called the waiter and had him bring glasses of champagne for everyone. He stood and said, “Let’s raise our glasses to my brother, Ben Bricklin. I wish he could be with us tonight.”
“To Ben,” we said and drank, but before we put our glasses down, Liz piped in with, “And here’s to the black orchid, wherever it may be.”
“There’s no such thing as a black orchid,” Martin Faust said. “I’m beginning to think Ben was just playing a nasty trick on us all.”
Across the table from me, nerves jumped beneath the skin of Ethan’s jaw, like snakes roiling in a gunny sack. He said, “My brother didn’t play tricks, nasty or otherwise.” He caught himself, straightened his jacket and said, “C’mon, everybody, let’s all dance.” He turned to Liz on his left and offered her his hand. She took it and they started for the dance floor.
No one followed.
“Please,” she said. “This is a party. Let’s dance.”
Clay put his glass on the table and took my hand.
The Fausts protested. They’d already sat down. “We don’t dance,” Martin said. Of course not—dancing necessitated being close to each other.
Liz said, “Ethan has gone to so much trouble to make this a special night.” She held out her hand to them. “Please. Humor me.”
Martin’s mouth pursed and then stretched into a straight, hard line, but he got to his feet.
Erin followed like she’d been asked to clean the urinals.
Two by two we left the table. Clay and I followed Sasha and Willow. Heads turned as Willow sashayed by.
On the dance floor, Clay said, “My, my, that woman . . .”
I waited while he searched for a description.
“Walk,” he said. “She sure can walk.”
“Sex on the prowl,” I agreed, but I was thinking of food and watching a masked waiter place something on our table. Beyond booze, my one true love is food, and so far we’d just played at dining.
When the music ended and we went back to the table, the world had been revolutionized and even I forgot about eating.
CHAPTER 24
All hell broke out. There was a moment of shocked silence, followed by a collective gasp, then an eruption of noise from guests babbling and even shouting over one another, arms flailing and hands raised. The excited voices drew attention from all around, attracting more people to our table. There were lots of questions but no answers.
Martin Faust could deny the existence of a black orchid no longer. There was a fresh new orchid among the white
ones. This one was totally black.
People were jostling us, shoving and pushing, to try and see what was on the table. The entrance to our tent turned into a bottleneck. Hands shoved me from behind, and elbows dug into me. There was no way to escape. The edge of the table was cutting into my thighs. Desperate to keep my dignity, I held the bodice of my dress tight against my chest to prevent it from being ripped off in the melee. The cloying scents of dozens of perfumes were increased by the heat of the packed bodies. I started to sneeze.
Across the table I saw Ethan. He’d frozen in the act of pulling out Liz’s chair. Pale and shaken, he looked like he was having a stroke. He was going down, except bodies were packed so tightly around him there was nowhere to fall. And then I saw Liz’s face. She was watching Ethan. I couldn’t read her expression. Delight or horror? Her eyes left him and swept the table, checking the reactions of the other guests. Her eyes reached me, saw my face turned to her and smiled. Delight, that’s what I was seeing. She was enjoying watching the emotions the orchid was causing. Her eyes went on by me, assessing the others. I did the same.
Richard Dystra displayed the least passion, while Nina’s face was flushed with an emotion I could only describe as lust, desire and ecstasy to the point of orgasm.
Erin Faust was pressed up against me in the crush. “It should have been mine,” she growled through clenched teeth. Her face full of rage and resentment, she pushed roughly past me, trying to get closer to the orchid.
I leaned toward her and whispered, “Looks like you were wrong.”
She pulled her stare away from the orchid and looked up at me. “Wrong?”
“You were mistaken when you said no one would drop by our table.”
It took her a moment. Her eyes changed, meaner now.
I said, “Martin won’t be lonely after all.”
“Did you do this?”
“God, no.”
She studied me with her hard stare, judging me. Finding me wanting, she turned back to gaze with naked longing at the flower, dismissing me from her sphere of interest.
Behind me, a woman elbowed her way into the scrum like a linebacker, fighting her way closer to the table. When she burrowed past me, I tugged on her sleeve. She paused and looked up.
6 Martini Regrets Page 13