“I was their most upper-crust nightmare.”
“Well,” Deanna said, “most doctors might frown on having a bartender for a daughter-in-law.”
“And social-climbing bitches like Bernice Travis aren’t crazy about the idea either.”
I opened the bar fridge and started refilling the garnish tray with olives and onions.
“I still don’t get it. Why do you work in a bar?” I grinned at her. “Oh man, tell me you’re not another one trying to improve me.”
“Well, you could do better for yourself.”
“Clay thinks so too but I like working in the Sunset. All my friends are there.”
“They’re customers, not friends.”
“Wrong.” I pointed a bar knife at her. “Who knows more about you in Jac than I do?”
“Okay, you win. You probably know more about me than anyone on earth. You know all my secrets.”
“I doubt that.”
“Given time you would. I’ve told you more than I tell in confession.”
“I pour a stronger drink than a priest.” I dried my hands on a towel. “I like being behind the counter.” I ticked off the reasons on my fingers. “First, I know exactly what’s expected of me, know what people want from me. Second, I always know what’s happening in town, know all the gossip, who’s doing what to whom and how many times, guess I’m just naturally nosy. And third, no one’s in a bar that doesn’t want to be there. You have to go to work and have to go to church but you don’t have to come into a bar so people are happy to be here. Bottom line, I like people. I wouldn’t be any good dealing with paper or things and sitting in front of a computer all day sounds like hell. Sitting still and dealing with stuff, accuracy and details, nit-picking details, just doesn’t suit my temperament. I’d rather deal with an obnoxious drunk than a dozen telephone calls. I hate phones. Hate e-mail too. Having to deal with them makes me feel as if fire-ants are trying to get at me, to eat me and carry me away piece by tiny piece, and if I worked a real job that’s what would happen. I’d disappear, piece by tiny piece. Give me a bar every time.”
“So that’s your dream? To spend your life in a bar?”
“Dreams?” I considered the idea for a moment. “Jimmy was the only dream I ever had. His dreams were my dreams. He was special and that made me special. Even when he screwed up Q school and didn’t qualify for the pro circuit because of the drugs, I believed Bernice and blamed myself…thought it was my fault for not keeping him on track.”
“What a bout now?”
“Now? What do you mean?”
“Jimmy’s dead. Now you have to have your own dreams, so what are they?” “I don’t know.”
She blew out air. “Pathetic.”
I could’ve said the same about her. She didn’t seem to be following any quest, except getting the perfect manicure or getting someone to help her off this earth.
Chapter 59
“So Jimmy did you a favor by leading you to your chosen profession?” Deanna added, “A thoughtful and charming guy.”
“But, you see he was.” I folded my arms and leaned on the counter. “That’s why he could get away with so much…that and the fact that his father always paid. One night when he was seventeen, and already drinking, he stole a vintage Corvette from the parking lot of the country club. Wrecked it out on Beach Road. Daddy took care of things, hushed it up. I always wondered if they’d left him, just once, to get out of trouble on his own, would he have turned out different.”
“If they’d kicked him out it wouldn’t have helped. I tried it with my son. He got into even more trouble and it cost me a bomb.”
Two women stepped into the room out of the glaring sun of the pool area. They stood still, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the light. Dressed in Prada suits and high heels, they looked like they’d come for a business meeting, not a drink. “Shit,” slipped quietly from me but Deanna heard.
“What?” She said and swiveled around to follow my stare.
“Who are they?”
The blond, a Wasp Princess with Gwyneth Paltrow good looks and the former president of the Junior League and on every committee for good works on the island, had dated Clay for several years, had expected to marry him and still did. I was just a temporary annoyance. I knew she still called Clay. I’d heard a couple of messages she’d left for him even after I’d moved in, just keeping in touch messages with a heavy undertone of, “You can hop right back into my bed anytime.” Clay told me he had attended charity galas all over the state of Florida with her, charity galas being one of the many ways the super-rich entertain and amuse themselves in Florida. Clay assured me it was his presence in a tux she missed, not his presence in her bed. The woman had to be nuts. He was way better out of the tux.
The darker woman, short, early forties and fighting plumpness, was the owner of a small real estate agency, a rival of Clay’s larger company and a woman Clay detested. He’d advised me to count my fingers afterwards if I was ever forced to shake hands with her.
Their eyes adjusted to the dim light of the bar and found me. No surprise, I was exactly who they were looking for.
They took their time strutting to the bar and settling themselves onto the stools and I took my time sauntering over to serve them.
“Ms. Diamond,” I said, nodding at the blond. Claire Diamond’s perfect little nose curled up as if a sewer had sprung open in front of her. “And Ms. Sloan. What can I bring you?”
Claire Diamond dropped her clutch purse on the bar. “I heard you’d moved down here. Looking for another rich man now that Clay has finally woken up and run for cover?”
I pasted the sweetest smile I owned on my face. “Arsenic, is it?”
Elizabeth Sloan snarled, “Watch it. We can have you thrown out of here so fast it’ll make your head swim.”
If I had a dollar for every time someone threatened to get me fired I’d have a down payment on a nice little condo on the beach but I was willing to play along. “Oh, please, don’t do that,” I said in a small subdued voice, raising my hands in supplication. A look of satisfaction flew across Elizabeth Sloan’s face.
“I’d so miss all you sweet little old ladies with your frozen faces. How sad I’d be to leave this haven of joy and light.” I dropped my hands. “ Now, would you like a drink or did you just come for the chit-chat?”
Down the bar Deanna exploded with laughter. Tweedle Dumb and Dumber swung their barstools around as one and hit the floor.
“Looks like Clay moved upscale not only in youth and beauty, but brains as well,” Deanna said loudly to their stiff backs marching for the door.
Deanna turned to me. “Now I see why you like tending bar. It’s all the nice people you get to meet.”
“They keep it amusing.”
It was my first night to close. A busy night, with a birthday party for seventy upstairs and the downstairs dining room and bar overflowing — I didn’t think about anything but delivering orders and making sure things flowed. It was after one when I opened the front door to let out the last hangers-on and then locked the huge double doors and slid the security bar in place behind them.
Silence settled around me. The rest of the staff had already left and both Julian and Isaak were away from the property. This was unusual. Julian would normally be passed out in his bedroom by now but tonight he’d fluttered around in the dining room until the guests in the banquet hall sat down to dinner and then he’d told me he was going out and wouldn’t be back until morning. “You won’t have any problems. There aren’t any overnight guests and Isaak is here.”
All very well but Isaak had called down on the house phone about an hour before closing to tell me he was going out as well. I felt I’d been thrown in the deep end, alone, not sure of the system and more than a little afraid of the shadows. I told myself that I was a big girl, that no one was waiting to jump out and
grab me. But the imagination that had been born in Uncle Ziggy’s junkyard was alive and active and still capable of scaring the piss out of me.
The main floor was already in darkness except for the foyer where I stood. In the silence, the building seemed to grow and expand. I rechecked the doors and then started back down the wrought-iron stairs, my heels clicking on the marble risers. At the bottom of the stairs my steps faltered. The beauty salon and manicure room were in darkness. No way was I going in to see if they were empty. I went to the door of the card room but stopped with my hand on the knob. If someone was still in there they could just stay there until morning. I left the hall light on and stepped into the still lighted downstairs bar…hesitating, uncertain. Everything was locked up tight. I was sure of it. Still I was uneasy, tension gnawed at the base of my spine telling me something wasn’t quite right.
Chapter 60
I went to recheck the sliding doors, feeling nervous and edgy. Locked tight. As I turned back to the room, a specter detached itself from the potted palms at the end of the bar.
I damn near wet myself.
The shadow became a person, became a face, familiar body, arms and hands, familiar and known. “Sherri, it’s me.”
“What are you doing here?” Terror still held me. I backed away from him.
He raised his hands to reassure me. “Take it easy.” He came towards me. The man moved like a cat, smooth and lithe and with a sexual grace.
“What are you doing here?” I repeated, still sliding away.
“I came in a half-hour ago and waited ’til everyone had gone.”
“How did you get past the guardhouse?”
“You just need someone to leave your name at the gate,” Clay said. “I called Roger. He’s a member.”
His face was gaunt and hard as if not enough fat lay between skin and bone, giving him a lean and hungry look. His face showed no emotion, not pleasure at seeing me, nor desire.
“Why?”
Now he grinned at me, a rather boyish grin and for a moment his hard-edged features softened. “Why do you think?”
I backed up slightly. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Fear gone, I was playing a new game now.
“I just decided.” He made a wry face, embarrassed by his need.
“Decided? What did you decide?” I asked.
His lips curved up. “I decided I needed…,” he paused and whispered, “a little R and R.”
I laughed. “You’re sure it isn’t a little S and S you need?” He reached out for me, grabbing me and pulling me towards him. “S and S?”
I slid my hands over his shoulders. “Sex and Sherri.”
Maybe he wasn’t the Kevlar Man after all. There was definitely a warm hard response.
Clay tried to talk me into going back to the condo with him. I had a better idea. I gathered up a long white tablecloth and we went out past the pool to the dunes. The full moon laid a golden path across the water to a spot among the high-banked sand and tufted grasses. The air freshened our overheated bodies and night birds called.
In the languid afterglow, we swam in the pool. Playing and kissing and pleasuring each other.
With my legs and arms twined around him, the water up to his chest, I whispered, “Let’s go upstairs.” “I can’t,” he said between kisses. I pushed back from him. “Why?”
“I can’t stay,” he told me.
“Why?”
“I have to leave for Cedar Key at five in the morning. I’ll just go home and grab a couple hours’ sleep and a change of clothes. If I’m late tomorrow the tradesmen will be standing around wasting time.”
“We wouldn’t want that to happen,” I said. Pushing away from him, I splashed from the water, outraged and hurt that I’d come in second once again to his work. I got us towels from the cabana and after dressing in silence we took the elevator up to the main floor and went out the front of the building.
As we went down the front steps to the parking lot, he reached out and took my hand. “Don’t start liking it here too much.”
“As if. I can’t wait to get back to the Sunset.”
“Oh, yes,” he freed my hand, “The Sunset.”
“Clay, Brian and Peter were telling me the worst news.” I told him about Jerry Ellington’s problems. “Won’t his insurance make it right?”
“Maybe not. An act of God, no one insures you for those.”
“I just want things to be the way they used to be.”
He took me in his arms and rubbed my back. “What is it about you and that damn place?”
“It’s my job.”
“More than that.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I put my hands on his chest and arched back to look up at him. “It feels like home to me.”
He pulled me close to him, held me for a minute and then said quietly, “Okay.”
I could have just given Clay the code to the lift barrier but I wanted to be with him as long as possible so I went down the lane with him.
When we were parked in front of the barrier saying goodbye, he wrapped me in his arms and whispered, “Come with me.”
“And do what?” I stretched back against the leather seat, taking him along, holding him, smoothing his cheek with mine and drinking in the scent of his cologne.
“Is being bored the worst thing that could happen to you?” he asked.
“No.” I stroked his back and kissed along his jaw. “Losing you is the worst thing that could happen to me.”
He pushed away from me. Braced on straight arms he looked down into my face. Then he pulled away and put both hands on the steering wheel. “I have to go.” He stared straight ahead. “Five will come early.”
I sat up, feeling foolish and not knowing what I’d said wrong.
He leaned across in front of me and opened the door. “I’ll call.”
I walked back up the twisting road cursing softly. The man was crazy. I only had to slip and say the least thing personal and he ran like the hounds of hell were after him. Miserable and lonely already, I hunched my shoulders and wrapped my arms around my chest, unaware of my surroundings until I got to the second to last turn in the road. I stopped and listened. I wasn’t alone. It could be a coon or a possum; the jungle out there would be full of them. There were also bobcats and still the odd Florida panther lurking about.
Or it could be Clay coming back. “Yeah, right,” my brain said, “or it could be none of the above.”
Branches parted. A form moved in the moonlight. It was human. I didn’t wait to see what human. The star of the high school track team took off and for the second time that night I was sixteen again.
Chapter 61
I slammed the door and slid the steel locking bar into its channel. Then a chilling thought grabbed me. What if he got to the door ahead me? What if I was now locked inside with him?
Terror froze me in place, moving was more frightening than standing there perfectly still as if I could shrink unseen into the wainscoting. Slowly I turned and looked over my shoulder, expecting to find a grinning apparition.
Was I safer inside or out? The keys to my car were in my bedroom upstairs. I wasn’t going anywhere without a vehicle and there were no neighbors to run to, no cars still traveling on Beach Road at this time of night. I would be alone out there in acres of thick underbrush, of dense green palmetto thick with thorns and hidden creatures. Screw that!
A phone sat on a small console table. I tiptoed over to the phone — as if I could fool anyone hiding in the shadows by being quiet. Bizarre, but being perfectly silent seemed important. I lifted the handset from the cradle. I wanted Clay. The dial tone filled the air. I punched in the first two numbers. Then I put the phone down again.
Clay would come back, I could count on that no matter how upset he was with me, but he might not believe me, might see it as a ploy and he wasn
’t a man you played games with.
I bolted to the elevator and slid the glass door shut. Upstairs the hall was empty. I dashed for my bedroom and slammed the door behind me, locking myself in the room. Then I dragged a leather chair over in front of the door. I didn’t care who the hell was out there, whoever it was they were welcome to the whole damn place. I was having no part of it. No matter what happened in the building in the heart of the night, I had no intention of leaving my room. Just to be sure I was alone I searched the room. Even under the bed. No thing.
But who was out there? Julian was too fat and lazy to walk around in the night. Clay had no reason to walk up the drive. Besides, wouldn’t he have called out to me? Would I have heard him?
Perhaps it was Eric Schievner. I’d already decided he planned to murder someone and he seemed to have some interest in me. I climbed into bed with my clothes on, rolled over on my side and, pulling the bedcovers up over my head and huddling down in the fetal position, waited for morning and planned what I’d do then.
Clay’s call woke me. We made up for our parting. I didn’t tell him about the figure in the underbrush. No need to give him another reason to be upset with me. If we were really together, a couple, shouldn’t I feel easy about telling him I was being stalked? Why was it something I needed to hide?
After we whispered our goodbyes, I pulled on a swimsuit and my gray sweats and went down to the beach.
I did my run and then swam in the ocean. Stretched out on my back, bobbing in the waves, I watched brown pelicans flap slowly by overhead and thought about the night before. I hadn’t asked about security guys, maybe that’s who’d been out there doing one more check before they left. Yeah, right.
Already the gulf was getting too cool for swimming. It wouldn’t be really comfortable again until late March. Screw this. Scary Lester could ogle all he wanted, I wasn’t going to die of hypothermia! Tomorrow I’d swim in the pool. I rolled over on my stomach and did a lazy crawl to the beach.
When I walked across the sand I saw Lester out by the latticework screen that hid the garbage bins, a cloud of seagulls hovering over him and the trash. He didn’t see the birds. His eyes only saw me.
Sex in a Sidecar Page 20