“Who is he?” I waited while Karl-Heinz went to ask.
“He says he wants to talk to you about your friend, Gina Ross.”
Chapter 56
The black cherry convertible pulling up in front of the clubhouse had a North Carolina vanity license plate that read SAM.
The man getting out of the car was in his early fifties and immaculately turned out. Well-trimmed silver-gray hair and a toned body in a lightweight suit of gray silk, with perfectly matched powder-blue shirt and pinstripe tie, gave him the look of a model in a glossy ad for single malt scotch. He smiled, exposing great dental work, and then climbed the stairs to join me at a leisurely pace.
“I’m Eric Schievner,” he said as he held out his nicely manicured hand with a small gold pinky ring, “Gina’s cousin.”
“Let’s talk in the dining room.” I wasn’t taking this refined man to the disgusting office downstairs. I led the way through the open double doors. It was a Florida day where temperature and humidity were just about perfect. The doors were open onto the gallery overlooking the beach as well as at the front of the building, letting a balmy breeze float in one side and out the other.
The tables in the formal dining room were draped with immaculate white tablecloths to the floor, waiting for place settings for a retirement party later that night. I pulled out a gilt chair from a table and asked, “How did you know my name?”
He held the chair for me as he replied, “Gina told me about Sherri, the bartender at the Sunset.”
“That must have been a short conversation,” I said. “I didn’t know Gina all that well.”
“Gina felt you two had a lot in common, told me you’d both lost someone to violent death.” He smiled. “She also told me you were beautiful.”
Charming, but charm doesn’t work on me. Jimmy vaccinated me against it. “How did you find me at the B&T?”
“I went to the Sunset.” He pulled out the chair facing me and sat down, relaxed and at ease. “There were workers all over the place. One of them knew you, knew you were working here.”
“The joys of a small town. You can’t have secrets in Jacaranda.” Not unless you were very clever and very discreet. “When did you last talk to Gina?” I asked.
“Sunday. The Sunday before the hurricane hit. I called to tell Gina to leave before the storm got any closer and then Tuesday night when I saw it headed up the gulf, I called again. Thought she would be on her way north but she was still on Cypress Island.” He looked directly into my eyes and I became the center of the universe and for one crazy moment I felt his only reason for being in Florida was to see me. It was disarming.
“Why didn’t she go; why did she stay? I didn’t understand it then and I don’t now. She was planning to leave on Tuesday morning, promised me she would, but she had read about some woman being murdered and was all upset.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Gina came into the Sunset just after it opened on Wednesday. All she talked a bout was Bunny Lehre’s murder. I’m guessing she thought it might be connected to Sam’s.”
His hand on the table curled into a fist. “She was obsessed with Sam’s death,” he said. “I couldn’t convince her to leave it to the police and go on with her life. She loved teaching, but when September came she was still here in Florida.”
“Really? I thought she just arrived here in late September.”
“No. She’s been traveling since July.”
“Traveling?”
“Moving about, traveling south.”
“Following Sam’s killer?”
He lifted his shoulders. “Maybe, I don’t know how real it was — how much Gina really knew or how much she was guessing.”
“But she thought Sam’s killer was somewhere on Cypress Island, didn’t she?”
“More than that.” He crossed one leg over the other, smoothing down his trouser leg as he formed a reply. “Not only was she convinced she knew who murdered Sam, she had it firmly in her head that the police were never going to stop him.” He drew his thumb and forefinger along the crease in his slacks. “She believed there was another murder in Georgia in August that he was responsible for. She thought because he moved around, the police were helpless and this guy was going to just go on doing it over and over. She was desperate to stop him and felt responsible to see it was done.”
“How?”
He looked up at me. His eyes neither wavered nor blinked. “She never said so, but I think it was possible she was considering killing him.”
Chapter 57
I let out the breath I’d been holding and nodded. “It seems likely. But I still don’t get what Gina wanted from me.”
“Gina said your husband had been murdered.”
“When did Gina tell you about Jimmy?”
Eric shrugged. “Soon after she came down. Maybe a month ago.”
That would make it just before she started coming into the Sunset. She’d come into the Sunset because I was there, because of the way Jimmy died. Making friends with me was something she planned.
“Gina told me the woman murdered on the beach came down here every year and that she had a friend working here,” he said. “Was that friend you?”
“No.” That would be Julian, but that wasn’t any of this guy’s business. “Did Gina think I knew Bunny Lehre?”
“Yes.” Eric leaned forward. Our faces were only a foot apart. “Tell me about Gina and the day she died.”
“I have no idea why she went back out to the beach house, do you?”
He sat back on the chair. “No.” His voice was full of hesitation, as though he really felt he should be saying yes.
“Give a guess.”
Instead of answering he asked a question of his own, “Do you know if she had a gun?” He read my surprise. “Sam’s gun was missing. I looked for it but it wasn’t in her house.”
“You think Gina had it?”
He nodded. “She must have taken it with her when she left Sam’s house in North Carolina.”
“And she was going to use it to shoot the guy who murdered Sam?”
He nodded. “Yes. She wanted to avenge Sam. She had herself convinced that she had to do something, not as a violent act of rage but as a civic duty to prevent more deaths.” He read my reaction. “Extreme, I know, but that’s what Sam’s death did to her.”
“So she was going to be his executioner?”
“I tried to talk her out of it.”
“But you didn’t call the police and get them to stop her?”
“What could I tell them? What did I really know?” Still I felt he’d been negligent, leaving her on her own and showing up way too late.
“Don’t think too harshly of Gina.”
“Who am I to judge her? Only, she drew me into it. Why? If she was going out to kill someone, why did she want me along? To witness it? That doesn’t make sense. And then she left me in the car and ran.”
Two women entered the dining room pushing trolleys loaded with plates, goblets and silverware. They hung back when they saw us and then went quietly about their business of laying the tables around us.
I lowered my voice, “Who did Gina think murdered her sister? What’s his name?”
His eyes did a shift. “She wouldn’t tell me.” His forefinger rubbed a circle on the table, around and around. “At first she was afraid of accusing the wrong person. Later I think she was trying to protect me. Didn’t want the police to think I had anything to do with his death if she decided to act. She said what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.”
“Did she choose that particular house on the beach or just rent what was available?”
“She really wanted that house. I think in some way she thought it was connected to Sam’s killer.”
My nightmares about the little beach house got a whole lot more real. “Is there anyone else Gina might
have talked to up north? A friend? Anyone that might have another piece of the puzzle?”
With a shake of his head he denied it. “There’s just us…was just us.” His mouth worked silently and then he said, “I loved Gina…Sam too, but with Gina…well there was always something extra.” He looked into the past while I waited.
“Our mothers were sisters. As kids the three of us spent every Christmas together and every summer at a cottage up on Lake Michigan. None of us had any children. I suppose we would have drifted apart if we had been parents and made other connections but it never happened. We still went on the occasional holiday together and spent every Christmas in Aspen.”
His face slumped into sadness. “Her proper name was Regina.” He lifted his eyes to me. “Did you know that? But she liked to be called just Gina.” He smiled. “Regina was too…” he lifted his shoulders then let them fall. “I don’t know, just too something for her, royal maybe.” His arms dropped down between his splayed knees. “I’m alone now.” It was a bald statement of fact, not a bid for sympathy, as if he was saying he was at an end.
I looked away, out towards the gulf and the sun.
One of the servers said, “Excuse me,” and sat down a plate on a gold charger in front of me. Its surface was covered with painted monkeys and palm trees. Matched with the bright orange bird of paradise flower arrangements in the center of the table, the party would have a real tropical theme. But paradise had something dark and evil festering in it.
“You must go to the police,” I said when the woman moved off. “Detective Styles is in charge. Gina didn’t have much faith in him but I know he never gives up and he’s smart. He’ll know the right questions to ask. If Gina could find this guy, he can too.”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’ll do that.” He got abruptly to his feet. “But first I needed to find you and hear about Gina.” I rose with him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you more.” “It’s good to talk about her.” He straightened the chair to the table, neat and tidy and final.
“Why are you driving Sam’s car?” I asked.
“I flew from Illinois to North Carolina. I picked up Sam’s car and drove the rest of the way.” He moved towards the door and I followed.
He had a key to Samantha’s house. He could have let him self in and killed her. But of course he didn’t need a key. Sam would have let him in, fulfilling the profile of her murderer. On the front steps he held out his hand. “Why did you look for Sam’s gun?” I asked.
Eric Schievner lowered his hand. “Thank you for seeing me, Ms. Travis.” The charm had been replaced by steel.
Even before the car slipped around the first bend and was hidden by the dense vegetation, questions were piling up in my head. Why had he come to see me before he had gone to the police? Surely the first thing he would want to do would be to claim Gina’s body. Gina and Eric Schievner had been in close touch so she must have given him some clues about the murderer, which would help the police find him. I stopped dead at the entrance. I hadn’t asked the name of the private detective. I also hadn’t asked Eric Schievner where I could get in touch with him.
“Shit.” It must be the foreign food slowing down my brain. It worked better on burgers and fries.
Then the big question jumped up and bit my behind. Was he going to finish what Gina started? He was looking for Sam’s gun. Maybe he knew as much as Gina did about the murder; he hadn’t asked about anyone in particular but he’d definitely been pumping me for information. My bet was he knew everything there was about the murderer except where to find him and where to find Gina’s gun. I had to talk to Styles.
He wasn’t in. I left a message. I wonder if we’d connected sooner if things would have worked out differently, if three fewer people would have died.
Chapter 58
Marley and I went to a movie. It wasn’t late when I headed back to the B&T, maybe ten-thirty, but the closer I got to it, the more my stomach churned. I was coming to hate the place. More than that, I was afraid. The feeling of someone watching me, stalking me, had started when I first arrived at the B&T and had grown stronger with each passing day. I tried to tell myself it was all imagination, triggered by the nightmares, but the skulking figure I’d seen in the dunes hadn’t been my imagination and the flowers left for me to find weren’t an illusion.
The windows were all up in the car and I hit the lock button as I waved to the guy in the kiosk and slowly drove up the winding lane, searching the underbrush for dark figures.
Staff had to park far away from the buildings in a poorly lit place surrounded by dense underbrush. I sat in the car searching the shadows and trying to find my courage. Nothing moved. I inhaled deeply and let it out slowly then I slid out of the car and bolted for safety.
“Ladies don’t run,” Bernice had once yelled at me. Thank God I was no lady. They’d get murdered for sure.
My cell rang on the way upstairs to my room. “You forgot someone,” Marley informed me.
I did a quick inventory of my favorite suspect list and couldn’t think of anyone I’d missed. “Okay, I’ll bite. Who?”
“Chris,” she said. “He was in Jacaranda for Bunny’s murder and Gina’s. Now he’s at the B&T.”
“Only because I brought him here.” I gave it some thought.
“I just can’t see him as a killer.”
“Just don’t let yourself be blinded by your own prejudices. You don’t know what’s going on in his head, or anyone else’s for that matter. Be careful.”
Deanna hoisted herself onto a stool across from me. The red, polished-cotton halter dress had no back and extreme cleavage.
“Wow. Very Marilyn Monroe,” I told her. “Is that dress legal?”
She grinned. “A little Sex in a Sidecar please.” “You look like you’re getting enough sex without needing it in a glass too.” It was true. Whatever the outcome of her affair with Ethan Eames, it had given her a glow that lit up the room. Her face was less frozen, her whole attitude more relaxed, as if some tight elastic bands on her inner core had snapped and freed her.
“No need to ask how your love life is,” I said as I mixed her cocktail. “I’m green.”
She beamed. “He may be better than all my husbands rolled in together.”
“But will he help you off this troubled orb?”
She considered it.
“Don’t think so but it’s still a good plan.”
She dipped her finger in the pink sugar on the rim of her glass and licked it.
“Find the murderer and get him to make me the next victim. I’m still into it.”
“But you’re happy,” I protested.
“Happy?” She canted her head sideways. “Momentarily distracted, but happy?” She shook her head. “This will end. Romances end like seasons do and then I’ll be alone and back where I started.”
“But you’ve given up that idiotic idea of getting yourself murdered?”
“I’d still like to find the murderer.” Her thoughts turned inward for a moment. “I thought it was Ethan. It would have been so easy. But whoever the murderer is, I know it isn’t Ethan. There isn’t that hard core of anger or hate in him that it would take.” She shook her head sadly, “That plan is bust.”
“Cheer up. You keep up the good work and our manicurist will do the job for you.” I polished the bar in front of her. “Cut your throat with her manicure scissors.”
Her back straightened and the smile disappeared. “She was impertinent.”
I was the hired help again. From warm and friendly to total frost, I filled out her chit, waiting for her to thaw.
It didn’t take long. I was the only one she had to talk to. “How about the guy who killed Jimmy?” Deanna said. “Maybe I could hire him.”
“I don’t think he’s available.” I pointed to her dress.
“What’s the occasion, why the outfit?”
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“Don’t change the subject. You never talk about Jimmy.”
I washed lemons under the bar sink and started prepping them. There’s this game I play, trying to see how much of the lemon rind I can peel off in one piece. On a good night I can do the whole lemon. It’s kind of like playing solitaire — you’re either into it or you’re not, or maybe my life is just so petty it comes down to lemon peel. Tonight looked like a good lemon-twirling night.
Deanna asked, “Why don’t you talk about Jimmy?”
“Who wants to remember their mistakes?”
The thin blade had spiraled around half the lemon.
“Was he a mistake?” Deanna asked.
“Most of the time.” Only a bit of lemon left now. “There were times that he was more fun than pain but he would soon work real hard at screwing those times up.” I paused and looked up at her. “He drank too much, ran around on me, gambled and lied. Other than that he was a swell husband.” “But you still have a soft spot for him, don’t you?” The knife slipped and sliced through the rind. I swore softly. “Clay thinks so.”
“Not a good thing,” said Deanna, her voice light and sympathetic.
“Jimmy certainly has put a damper on our relationship.” I juiced the lemon. “I got married right out of high school. Jimmy was still in college. After that, I followed him on the pro golfing tour for a couple of years, carrying his bag, looking for laundromats and trying to keep him out of trouble.”
“How come he didn’t make it big, not enough talent?”
“Not enough discipline.” I threw the exhausted remains of the lemon at the trash can and tried to explain. “Jimmy was a big party guy. I began working bars to support us when he started putting every cent his parents sent him up his nose.”
“So he would’ve made it big except for too many good times?”
“Or if you listen to his folks, too much Sherri.” I grinned at her. “Marrying Jimmy was almost worth it just to make them miserable.” “They didn’t like you?”
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