6 Martini Regrets

by Phyllis Smallman

  After we hit the gulf, Silvio opened up the engine, but it was still a thirty-minute ride down the coast from the end of the state park. Dancing Lady Island was just about as remote as you could get on the Florida coast.

  Clay felt my eyes on him and turned to smile at me. He rose and made his way back to me. “Are you all right?”

  “Better than I’ve been for weeks. Even my cold is better, but that may be from the ton of junk I’ve ingested.”

  “Good. Whatever is making you feel better, I’m grateful.” He bent down and kissed me. “This is going to be a new beginning for us.”

  I nodded and smiled up at him.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Normal, that’s going to be us.” He brushed back the hair whipping around my face. “We’re putting the bad times behind us.” A boyish grin. “We’ve had a few of those, haven’t we? But we got through them.”

  I nodded up at him again and then watched him go back to stand beside Silvio. What spun through my mind was, just because we’d always survived that didn’t mean we always would. Anxiety and panic couldn’t be dismissed as easily as Clay believed.

  I huddled down on the turquoise cushions along the back, arms hugged to my chest and my hair beating my face, and let the rushing air clear my stuffed head. My view of events had taken on a novel twist. Clay’s suggesting there might be people involved that we’d never heard of sent my brain whirling through possibilities. He was right. I’d fixated on Ethan’s guest list. If there was someone else involved that I’d missed, was there any hint of who it might be? I went over every second from the time I left Miami, and then I started going over the list of people I’d already considered, searching for someone, or something, I’d missed.

  Maybe Tito had told someone about me before he died. Scary thought, but a dead end. The big “aha” moment came when I listed all the people who had made me an offer to purchase the black orchid. Only one name was missing. Only one person hadn’t called or come into the bar, thinking that I had the plant . . . Liz. And why was that? Because she already had it.

  We were within minutes of Dancing Lady. I looked at Clay. He’d freak out if I told him what I was thinking. There was no going back.

  The house looked like the prow of an ocean liner, sailing above the mangroves and palms, the sun glinting off the banks of black solar panels across the roof. It demanded attention from those passing by while offering perfect privacy.

  A sixty-eight-foot Predator yacht named Dancing Lady II sat at anchor a hundred feet off the dock. A quarter-million-dollar yacht. You had to be seriously rich to have one of those waiting at your pleasure. I wondered why it was here and not in a marina.

  The weathered gray dock had a large white sign on the end. In bold black letters on a white board, it said, DANCING LADY ISLAND, and below the name were the words NO TRESPASSING. A woman in her early twenties, with bright blue hair and a ring in the center of her bottom lip, stood with her arms folded on top of the sign. She was barefoot and dressed in shorts and a halter. At her feet lay a canvas boat bag. She stood up straight and waved furiously.

  Silvio waved back. “My daughter, Cassandra. She works here with me,” he said, pride and joy on his face and in his voice. He cut the engine and eased along the dock while Clay threw the bumpers over the side and tossed the girl a line.

  She walked along the dock and pulled us in close to the tires lining the edge. Clay, holding the line for the stern, jumped onto the dock and tied it off.

  Silvio left the engine idling and slung our gear onto the dock while Cassandra dumped her bag onto the back seat and jumped aboard, a woman who had spent her life getting on and off boats. “Hello,” she said to me, and then she went to stand beside her father. They both looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to stand up and join Clay on the dock.

  “Aren’t you staying?” I asked Silvio.

  “I’m taking Cassandra over to Boca Grande for a party and then I’ll be back.”

  “How will we get back to Jac?”

  Silvio started to make a joke, but then something in my face registered and he checked himself. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back in an hour or so.” He put out a hand, almost touching me, and then drew it back. “You won’t want to leave before that, will you?”

  I shook my head, but I was thinking a lot can happen in an hour. An excuse to go back to Jac trembled on my lips. Or maybe I could ride over to Boca with them. I wanted to be anywhere but trapped on this island. I looked up at Clay. He held out his hand.

  For better or for worse, I was sticking with Clay. I stepped up onto the seat and then onto the dock. Clay picked up our bags while I watched with trepidation as Silvio and his daughter motored away. And then Liz was there, hugging us and leading us up a boardwalk into the mangroves. About five feet into the mangroves, a steel gate was built across the walkway. When it was closed and locked, the tangled branches on either side formed a living fence, impossible to pass through, protecting the house from intruders. The top of the gate was finished in decorative spikes. It would be as hard to get out as it would be to get in.

  But for now the gate was unlocked, the key still in the mechanism. We continued along the walkway, scaring tiny lizards off the planks ahead of us. We stepped out of the tunnel of vegetation at the base of the building. An unholy racket broke out. A giant wire cage was built half under the stilt house. Inside the cage a red parrot, perched on a bare branch, screeched at us.

  “Buddy is our guard bird,” Liz said. “No one gets in here without Buddy warning us.” She took a nut still in the shell from the pocket of her baggy shorts. “They just have to drive down the lane at the ranch or pull up to the dock and he tells us they’re coming.” She pursed her lips and made kissing sounds. “Keep your fingers away from him or you’ll lose them.”

  “Seriously?” Clay said.

  “Yup. Macaws and parrots have more pressure per square inch in their beaks than alligators do. Watch.” Holding an almond by one end, Liz stuck it through the wire. Buddy snapped at it. Grasping it with his talon, he cracked the almond shell like it was nothing more than a peanut, dropping bits of the casing and gobbling up the nut. Then he stretched his wings wide and began bobbing his head.

  Liz made more kissing sounds at Buddy. “Sweet boy.”

  She plucked a feather out of the wire and handed it to me. Red. I turned the feather over to expose the underside, blue with a thin line of green. “Get real.” I turned it back and forth, blue to red.

  She grinned at me. “Amazing, isn’t it.”

  Buddy grabbed the wire with his beak and turned upside down before he swooped back to his perch.

  “Take a bow, Buddy.” Liz bowed low. “Take a bow.” Buddy bowed, ran forward on his perch and bowed again. We clapped. A mad string of bows followed on Buddy’s part.

  “Show-off,” Liz said.

  Finished with Buddy’s entertainment, Liz darted for the broad steps leading up to a deck at the front of the house. Caught off guard by her sudden exit, we ran to catch up as she jogged up the stairs.

  CHAPTER 35

  In a way, the mansion’s architecture was rooted in Florida history. Like a Seminole chickee, it had a steeply pitched roof and was constructed on cantilevered stilts to allow storm surges to sweep under it without damaging the structure above. From the dogtrot house of the early Florida settlers, the design sported a gallery that ran around the building, providing outdoor living space and natural cooling.

  All similarities to those modest structures ended there. A house with attitude, it was built in the shape of a pentagon, with one of the points facing towards the north and Jacaranda. The roof rose higher as it went from the south end to the north end, where the floor-to-ceiling windows were eighteen feet high.

  The roof was uneven, with the west slope rising several feet above the east side, allowing for a chain of windows the full length of the house. Wide, whitewashed plank floori
ng and a white handrail atop glass panels wrapped around the house.

  Standing on the huge deck at the top of the stairs, you could see nearly three hundred and sixty degrees, see sailboats on the horizon eleven miles away. Black wicker lounges with white cushions, lined up along a sisal area rug, looked out over the Gulf of Mexico. It was a beautiful day and the gulf was busy with boaters on holiday, but Liz was in no mood to relax and watch the world go by. “This way,” she said, already on the move.

  Off the deck was the living room. There were windows on three sides of the room, making it almost like being outside. Three large couches surrounded a fieldstone fireplace. The white couches had an abundance of blue and white cushions. Oversize blue-and-white Chinese vases, so big you could hide a small child in them, stood on either side of the fireplace. All the tables in the room were made of gray driftwood and glass. On the plank ceiling above us, a giant palm-frond fan turned slowly.

  Clay dropped his bag and turned in a circle, taking it in. “Beautiful. I need to come back with a photographer and take pictures.”

  Liz waved his words away. “Don’t worry about that today. I just want to give you an overview so we can start sketching out a marketing plan.”

  “How many acres are there on the island?” Clay asked.

  “Ten. It’s completely self-contained for fresh water and sewage, and totally private.”

  Not good. Alone made you vulnerable—a target—like food fish cut off from the school by a shark.

  Liz pointed at the fireplace. “The stone goes all the way down to the concrete pad below and has two more outlets there; three fireplaces in all.”

  I looked up at the mammoth structure and asked, “Is Ethan coming by?”

  Beside me, Liz’s body jerked away from me. “Good god, no.”

  “Oh,” I said, still staring at the fireplace.

  She grabbed me. Her nails dug into my arm. “Why did you ask that?”

  I turned my face to her. Her angular features were locked in anger. I noticed that the roots of her caramel-colored hair were growing in gray. “I thought maybe there would be a repeat of the party.” I looked down to the arm grasping mine; ropy muscles stood out along the powerful forearm of an expert tennis player.

  “Ethan isn’t coming.” She let go of me and stepped away. “Once was enough.” She planted her fists on her hips and added, “You told him the island is for sale, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t realize it’s a secret.”

  She frowned. “He showed up here three days ago in a company helicopter with his chief of security to look the place over.” She gave a snort of disgust. “Chief of security? Digger Jackson is just a no-account bully from back home who’s learned some fancy tricks. He and Ethan were always thick as thieves and rotten as hell. They came here with no warning, hoping to surprise me.” Her annoyance with me was gone now, and she grinned like a naughty girl enjoying herself. “They looked this place over real good, every corner. Ethan said he might be interested in buying Dancing Lady.”

  I watched her closely and asked, “But you don’t think they were island shopping, do you?”

  Again she snorted. “They were looking for Ben’s orchid.” Liz pointed at Clay. “Which reminds me, if he actually offers on the island, you don’t get a commission.” She was on the move again and talking over her shoulder. “He viewed the place before you became the agent, Clay.”

  Clay, following at Liz’s heels, frowned back over his shoulder at me.

  “Sorry,” I mouthed, but somehow I didn’t think that was going to cut it if I’d screwed up Clay’s commission.

  She showed us around the rest of the house, rattling off facts and figures at warp speed. “There are five suites off this central hall.” Liz stopped and pointed up to the ceiling of the hall. “The windows above the hall can be opened by a remote control.” She pulled a remote out of a holder on the wall and demonstrated. A window silently opened above us. “Opening a window creates a giant chimney that sucks air in from the outside and sweeps it out here.” She tossed the remote back in its holder and trotted off down the corridor.

  Waving at each open guest door we passed, Liz said, “Of course, the house comes fully furnished.”

  I peeked into each room as we went along and then had to speed-walk to catch up.

  She stopped at one of the entrances. “This is your suite.”

  In gray and sea green, with a bathroom in white marble and black granite, the suite contained every luxury a houseguest could desire. “I could get used to this,” I said, turning around in circles.

  Liz was already on her way out the door, a tiny dynamo on a mission. We dropped out bags on the floor and followed.

  “My bedroom is at the end of the hall.”

  Both bedrooms in our rental home could be put in Liz’s with plenty of floor space left over for dancing. Her suite contained an office, a bedroom, a dressing room and a bathroom. It ran the full width of the south end of the house. The house tour was calming my anxiety—until we got to her bathroom. A cheap plastic curtain partitioned off part of the shower—which was weird, because the walls and floors were made of travertine marble. A faint glow came from behind the plastic. I took a hesitant step towards it, curious.

  Liz’s voice was sharp and insistent. “Come on, Sherri.” She turned and walked away.

  I didn’t follow.

  “Hurry up,” Liz ordered, waiting for me at the bathroom door with her hand on the knob. When I stepped over the sill she closed the door firmly behind me.

  Glass doors along the south wall of the bedroom had been pushed back and stacked so that twelve feet of the room stood open to the outside. A brown pelican sat on the balcony railing. Liz crossed the carpet to the balcony, saying, “Wait until you see this.” With a wave of Liz’s hand, the pelican flew away.

  Clay followed her halfway out the door and then, seeing me lagging behind, turned back to me and said, “Coming?”

  “Yes.” I glanced back towards the bathroom once before I followed.

  Clay and I joined Liz at the rail. Below was a raised pool and patio deck. The bottom of the blue pool was covered in a mosaic mermaid.

  Liz said, “I swim every morning.” This was the first time on the tour that she’d been inclined to linger. It didn’t last long. On either end of the deck, stairs curled down to the pool. Liz headed for the flight of steps on the left, saying, “You’ve got to see the physical plant, Clay. We have two cisterns for the water we save from the roof, and our own purification system.”

  Clay and I followed along like puppies. On the broad lawn beyond the pool, she tapped her foot on the turf and said, “The septic bed is here, under the grass.”

  She pointed to the far left side of the green space. “That part, the bit screened off, is the physical plant that keeps this monster of a house functioning.”

  They walked across the lush grass, me still trailing behind as they talked of sewage and generators and other exciting stuff.

  Beyond the lawn, nature had been left to her own devices. A six-foot-wide brick path had been cleared through the jungle. Through the shadowy tunnel of undergrowth we came out on a tennis court. Liz explained that on the other side of the tennis court, the path led through a tangle of palmetto scrub to a helipad.

  Back at the house Liz showed us the cool and pleasant tiled area under the house, with its huge outdoor kitchen and sitting areas. The block walls were painted a bright lime green.

  The white pillars holding up the house had been strung with brightly striped Peruvian hammocks.

  “This is also the living quarters for the staff, two small apartments. We won’t go in.” She pointed to the hammocks. “When the bugs let him, Silvio likes to sleep outside.”

  “There don’t seem to be any insects here,” Clay said.

  “I think it’s because we have more wind than the mainland.�
� She shrugged. “Whatever it is, I’m grateful we can open things up without being eaten alive.”

  When the tour was over, Clay and Liz talked strategy while I spread on coconut sunscreen. Just the smell makes me think of good times and holidays. Out on the airless tennis court, I set the ball thingy firing yellow orbs at me while I swatted at them like they were annoying mosquitoes. I didn’t last long. After forty-five minutes I wandered off to see what else there was, leaving the court littered with missed objects.

  I went for a swim in the pool and sunned and waited. I didn’t even know what I was expecting, but there was a small lump of dread in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t listen to reason and go away. A couple of appalling years, filled with death, had left me feeling like prey, a sensation that no amount of explanation could erase.

  I told myself nothing bad was going to happen and things were just what they seemed. But the realization that Liz was the only one who didn’t try to buy the orchid from me, plus the fact that we were trapped on this island, had my nerves humming.

  And then there was the fact that Silvio hadn’t returned.

  CHAPTER 36

  Dancing Lady Island was as close to paradise as most of us could ever imagine. Sitting on the dock and waiting for the boat to return, I watched a pelican fold its wings and dive-bomb for dinner. Later, a pod of dolphins fished off the end of the pier. While I watched the dolphins, a passing cruiser came about, turning towards the small dock. I got to my feet, prepared to run if the boat wasn’t what it appeared to be. But the boaters were there to enjoy the gleaming creatures arching out of the water again and again, putting on a show for us while they fed.

  When the small yacht cleared out I searched the horizon over towards Boca for the runabout with the Bimini top. Why wasn’t Silvio back? He’d said he was only going to be gone an hour. It was now closer to two hours.

  I had to do something besides sit there and drive myself crazy. I’d seen a trampoline on the outside of the house, beside Silvio’s patio. It had to be Cassandra’s. I couldn’t see either Silvio or Liz bouncing on it, but maybe I was underestimating Liz. A woman like that, who had survived what she had and moved at a clip that left a thirty-year-old in her wake—there was no telling what she was capable of.