by PJ Parrish
“I’m glad you’re helping Reggie,” Yuba said, lowering her voice. “Reggie’s a good guy. He’s real. That’s not easy to find in this town.”
“I’m beginning to understand that. How well do you know him?”
She shrugged. “He comes in here almost every night. I’ve been here two years. We’re not friends or anything, but in this business, you get a pretty good feel for people.”
Louis looked at her skeptically over the rim of the glass.
“I went to a party at his place once,” she said. “He has a nice house up on the north end.” When Louis didn’t respond, she added, “That’s where the real people live.”
“Ah,” Louis said.
Someone called to her. Yuba waved to the customer to wait. “Reggie wouldn’t hurt a fly,” she said.
“You sure about that?” Louis asked.
She gave him a hard stare, then left to serve the guy at the other end of the bar.
The second beer went down more quickly than the first, and he suddenly wanted a third badly. But the bar was now three-deep, and he couldn’t get Yuba’s attention. He kept his eyes trained on her back, willing her to turn. No dice. That’s when he felt the weight of someone’s gaze and turned.
It was hard to miss her, even in the crowd. Turquoise silk. Milk-white skin. Carrot-red hair that could never be natural. And eyes below the soft sweep of her bangs that were trained on him like lasers.
A bare hint of a smile, and then it disappeared behind the rim of her martini glass.
Suddenly, Yuba stepped in, blocking his view. She set a frosty glass of beer in front of him. “From the lady in blue,” she said with a half-smirk before leaving.
Louis found the redhead’s eyes again, raised his glass in a salute, and took a drink.
The woman smiled back. Then she touched the arm of the man sitting next to her to draw his attention away from the conversation he was having with another couple seated nearby. She whispered something, and he gave her a quick peck on the cheek and turned away. She slid off the stool and picked up her drink and purse. Louis watched as she made her way toward him.
There was no vacant stool, so she wedged herself between him and the bar. She was tall, her body lush in the silky dress. A necklace of twisty turquoise glowed against her skin. Her face was taut, but as she smiled, a fine spray of lines at the edges of her eyes sprang into relief.
He couldn’t guess her age. He couldn’t even think of anything to say.
She leaned toward him and extended a perfectly manicured pink-nailed finger to the wet surface of the bar. She traced something in the spilled beer, a question mark that quickly faded.
The laser eyes found his.
“Louis,” he said.
She traced another question mark.
“Scorpio,” he said.
She smiled and traced another question mark.
“Democrat?”
She laughed. “I’m Sam.”
The man sitting next to Louis tossed a fifty onto the bar and left. Sam slid onto the stool.
“Thank you,” he said, raising his glass. “For the beer.”
“You looked like a man in need,” she said. When she crossed her bare legs, the front of the silk dress parted, revealing her thighs. Louis struggled to keep his eyes on her face.
“You’re the detective I’ve been hearing so much about,” she said.
“Word gets around quick here,” Louis said.
“How’s the investigation going?”
The last thing Louis wanted to do was talk about Reggie right now. He wanted—what? To take away the sting of Joe’s words? He glanced over the redhead’s shoulder and caught Yuba’s eye. There was something in her expression, like she could read his mind, and for a second he thought of settling his tab and going back to the hotel.
He looked back to the redhead, looked right into her eyes. “I can’t talk about it,” he said. “Client privilege, code of ethics, and all that.”
The redhead smiled, then caught Yuba’s eye and motioned for a refill on her martini before she turned back to Louis.
“Do you know Reggie Kent?” Louis asked.
“Of course. I live here.”
He wanted to ask her if Reggie had ever been her escort but then realized it might insinuate that she was, what? Desperate? Alone? Or, worse, old? Reggie had said he never lacked for the company of widows. Up close, he could see she was maybe in her late forties. Beautiful, for sure, but not young. He snuck a glance at her left hand. She was wearing a wedding band of diamonds.
He allowed himself a small, wry smile.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s just not my night.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Again, he met those eyes. They were dark, maybe blue. He couldn’t tell in this light.
Yuba brought the fresh martini. Sam plucked out the toothpick and ate the olive, her eyes never leaving his. Then she picked up the martini and, with one quick flourish, drained it.
She slid off the stool, taking her purse. When she leaned close to Louis, he caught the scent of her perfume for the first time—cloves and something smoky.
“My Jag is parked in front of Tiffany’s,” she whispered. “Wait ten minutes before you come.”
She left, swallowed up in the crush of bodies. He was so stunned it was a full minute before he finally took a drink. He sat there, staring at the yellow fish swimming in the aquarium behind the bar as he finished the beer.
Yuba wandered over and ran a towel over the bar in front of him. There were questions in her eyes, but Louis understood suddenly that she wasn’t going to ask them. Palm Beach’s weird code of discretion extended even to bartenders, maybe especially to bartenders. It was okay for a married woman to pick up a stranger in a bar. It wasn’t okay for anyone to notice it had actually happened.
“Last call. Another beer?” Yuba asked.
Louis hesitated. Until this moment, he hadn’t decided what he was going to do.
“No, just the check, please.”
Outside, a cool breeze was blowing in from the ocean. The street was deserted. Louis paused, then headed away from South County Road. There was a black Jag idling in front of Tiffany’s. As he approached the passenger side, the tinted window whirred down.
Sam leaned over. “That was fifteen minutes.”
“My watch runs slow,” Louis said.
“Get in,” she said.
He slid into the cocoon of leather and orange dash lights. The door shut with a soft shood sound, and the tinted window went up. It was quiet, the outside world gone.
“Where are we going?” Louis asked.
“For a ride,” Sam said.
The Jag pulled away from the curb. A couple of turns and a detour through a residential area, and they were on the road that ran along the beach, heading south.
The condominiums soon gave way to mansions set on sweeping lawns on one side of the road, private beaches on the other. The farther south they went, the bigger and more isolated the huge estates seemed to become. Greek temples gleaming white in the moonlight, mini–Versailles palaces, sprawling Spanish villas glowering behind gates.
Louis strained to look back as they passed a huge place that looked for all the world like that onion-domed cathedral in Russia.
“So, where are you from?” Sam asked finally.
“I live on Captiva,” Louis said.
“Really? Do you know where Marco Island is?”
“Over by Naples.”
“I have a little beach house over there.”
Louis had been to Marco Island years ago on a case. It was a rich playground, gated-community kind of place. He wondered what her definition of a little beach house was.
“This part of the island looks different from the north end,” Louis said.
When Sam glanced over at him, her surprise was there to read in the soft glow of lights. “How do you know that?”
The lie came easily. “I’ve b
een to Reggie Kent’s house.” A pause. “Have you?”
She smiled as she shook her head. “No, I don’t have much reason to go up there.”
The car slowed, and she turned right. The headlights lit up an high iron gate. “We’re here,” she said.
“Where?”
“My place.”
He didn’t even see her push a button, but the gates were slowly opening. He could see the lights of a small house on the left. But it was a looming structure far down the driveway that drew his eye. It was high and turreted, that much he could see. There were only a few feeble lights on inside and no outdoor lighting at all. Louis could only stare as one image came to his head: an old Spanish castle, like the one in the movie El Cid.
The car came to a stop.
“Yes, it’s awful, I know.”
He looked over at Sam.
“It’s the oldest home in Palm Beach, a real Mizner, and we’re restoring it,” she said. “I’m staying in the guesthouse.” She nodded to the house on the left.
There was no point in pulling punches at this point. “Where’s your husband?” Louis asked.
“Rome.”
She put the Jag in gear, pulled left into a gravel driveway, and cut the engine. The guesthouse was Spanish in style and looked new. To Louis’s eye, it looked like it could comfortably house a family of ten.
He felt a flush of heat. He was out of his element. And Joe was suddenly there with him. What the hell was he doing here? Was this some stupid revenge thing?
“Is something wrong?”
He looked over at Sam. Sam with no last name. Sam with a husband somewhere in Italy. Sam with the soft white skin and smell of cloves.
Suddenly, very suddenly, it hit him. He felt off balance, out of place, off his game. And where that sort of feeling normally put him on guard, now he felt only…
“Louis?”
… liberated.
He leaned over the console and kissed Sam. Her lips were soft, the clove smell strong. The dart of her tongue into his mouth surprised him.
When he drew back, it took her a moment to open her eyes. “Let’s go in,” she said.
The details of the house registered in a blur. A beamed ceiling, living room of plush furniture, dark wood, and thick carpets. Paintings on dark green walls with dim lights over them. She led him down a hall and into a bedroom. Soft lights, odd straw wallpaper, dark furniture out of a rich man’s safari dream.
A huge canopy bed dominated, ripe with white pillows and topped with a meringue of a comforter. Silky netting hung from the canopy, stirred by a paddle fan overhead.
She saw his expression and laughed softly. But she didn’t say anything. She just came to him and kissed him deeply. Then she pulled his shirt from his pants and raised it over his head. Her lips were hot on his chest, and he closed his eyes.
Joe was suddenly there again.
It had been so long.
Her hands were urgent now at his belt. He started to help her, but she pushed his hands away. He let her do the rest, and when she stepped back to look at him, he didn’t move.
“You’re beautiful,” she said.
Then, slowly, with a smile, she reached behind her back. He heard the zipper, then the turquoise dress puddled at her feet. She gave him only a moment to look at her—cream white skin, full breasts, long legs that met at a carrot-red thatch.
He laughed softly as his eyes lingered there.
She read his thoughts and laughed. Then she came to him and pressed her body against his.
Joe was there again for a second, then vanished.
It had been so long. It had been too long.
Her lips were hot at his ear. “Forget her,” she whispered.
And he did. For the next hour, there was nothing but the feel of engulfing warmth, the smell of sweat and salt spray, the tangy taste of her skin, the sounds of her cries in his neck.
Then, suddenly, the game changed. She turned him onto his back and straddled him, taking control. Each time he was at the brink, she would pull back, teasing him, her hair damp with sweat on his chest, her mouth devouring him.
When he could stand it no longer, he threw her on her back and entered her with a ferocity he had never felt before. She clung to him.
“Die with me,” she whispered.
Her body gave a final shudder that triggered his own. He collapsed on her, panting. It was a moment before the room swirled back. Another moment before he realized her arms had fallen from his back and she was not moving.
“Hey,” he whispered.
Nothing.
He slid onto his side. Her body glowed with sweat in the candlelight, her head to one side, her eyes closed.
“Hey,” Louis whispered. “Are you—?”
Her chest wasn’t moving. He scrambled to his knees and gave her cheek a tap. “Sam, wake up!”
Nothing.
“Jesus,” he whispered. His eyes darted to the phone on the night table, then back to Sam. Without thinking, he slapped her hard.
Her eyes sprang open, and she gasped, drawing in a ragged breath. She seemed dazed, and then her hand came up to her cheek as her eyes locked onto his.
“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “God, I’m sorry, Sam. You were out cold, and I had to—”
Her eyes had gone as dark as a night sky. She turned her head away as she rubbed her face. “I think you’d better go,” she said.
Louis didn’t move.
“Just go,” she said.
He was so stunned he didn’t know what to say. Hell, what could he say? She had just ordered him out of her bed. He slipped out of the bed and found his clothes. When he was dressed, he looked back at the bed. Sam had turned on her side, away from him.
He went out to the living room and let himself out the front door. It was only when he saw the black Jag parked in the driveway that he remembered he had come there in her car.
Louis glanced up at the moon. It was probably only about three miles back to the hotel. He went down the driveway and scaled the gate. He turned north on the beach road, and started the walk back.
Chapter Seven
The roads narrowed, the lots shrank, the towering hedges disappeared. As Yuba had said, the north end was different from the rest of the island.
This was where Reggie Kent’s home was, up on the far part of the island where the “real people” lived. The people who ran the bookstore, the florist, the dry cleaner, the people who might not have inherited their millions but had socked away enough to stake a small lot in one of the modest neighborhoods of older bungalows that made up the north end.
Two days ago, Louis might not have been attuned to the difference. To his eye, the homes they were passing now as the Mustang drove along North Ocean Boulevard were pretty damn nice. But after being in Sam’s bedroom last night—lying in her soft Egyptian cotton sheets, sated and sticky with salt spray, listening to the ocean hiss in the blackness—Louis understood with a sensory clarity that there were two worlds within this larger Palm Beach one.
“I heard you banging around in the dark last night,” Mel said. “Where did you go?”
Louis glanced over at Mel, then back at the road. “I couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk on the beach.”
“At four in the morning?”
“Yup.”
Louis was glad Mel let it go. He didn’t want to have to tell him about Sam. Or about the phone call with Joe. He didn’t even want to think about it too much, because he knew if he did, he would overthink it and overanalyze it. He would maybe start listening a little too closely to that voice gnawing at his ear.
You cheated on Joe.
Screw that. She’s the one who ended it.
You love her.
I’m not a fucking monk.
None of this had been in his head last night. Sex with Sam had been just a white heat of need, not just of physical desire but to cauterize the wound Joe had left.
“What road am I looking for?” Louis asked.
“Re
ef Road,” Mel said. “Reggie said to look for a white house with portholes.”
Louis spotted the white house on the corner by the small round windows. He pulled into the circular drive and cut the engine. Reggie came out through the front door. He was wearing crumpled white linen pants and a loose shirt the color of the ocean. He was barefoot and holding a tumbler of what looked like lemonade.
“Welcome to my humble little castle,” he said with a smile. “Come on in. I hope you haven’t eaten lunch yet. I’ve set out a little snack.”
Louis followed Mel inside. It wasn’t a big house by any Palm Beach standard, and though it had none of the overwrought luxury of Sam’s guesthouse, it was a place designed for comfort and with great taste. The living room of white tile and walls opened up to a small dining room with a rattan dining table and chairs. Beyond that, the open sliding-glass doors offered a view of the ocean. The furnishings looked slightly dated—a light blue sectional sofa and Danish modern chairs and teak tables. The place smelled of salt spray, mustiness, and French cigarettes. The walls were covered with paintings, gaudy Technicolor tropical landscapes.
Reggie noticed Louis staring at a painting of two panthers surrounded by fruit trees.
“Do you like it?” Reggie asked.
“Yeah, it’s very… colorful,” Louis said.
“It’s by Jean-Claude Paul,” Reggie said. “He’s Haitian. These are all Haitian. I’ve been collecting them for years.”
Mel was standing close to a painting of a nude, squinting. “Nice,” he said, turning back to Reggie.
Reggie shrugged. “People here wouldn’t be caught dead with this sort of thing on their walls. But I love them.” His eyes lingered on the panthers for a moment, then he smiled. “Let’s go out on the lanai, shall we?”
Reggie led the way out onto a small patio. It was surrounded by orange bougainvillea hedges and crowded with potted flowering plants. Over the top of one hedge, Louis could see a construction crane and the skeleton of a three-story mansion.
“What are they building over there, a bank?” Louis asked.
Reggie turned back from the buffet table, a pitcher of lemonade in his hand. “Oh, that,” he said. “It’s my new neighbors. I think they are Russian. They bought four lots, tore down the houses, and are putting up that monstrosity. What can you do? Some people have all the money but absolutely no taste.”