Tom nodded and said, "Mr. Harvick."
"How did you know?" I asked, surprised.
"He gave housekeeping a little trouble when he arrived yesterday. Didn't think the room had been cleaned quite well enough. And early this morning he decided he didn't have enough towels."
"I didn't know anything about that," I told Tom with a shake of my head. "I'm sorry."
He waved that off. "Oh, it's nothing to worry about. We're pretty used to guests being picky. Mr. Harvick's not any worse than a lot of others. You know how it is in the hospitality business, you try to make people happy. Some of them are easier to please than others."
"Yeah, of course."
"Maybe he has that, what do you call it, Asperger's Syndrome."
"No," I said, "I think he's just an ass hat. That's what his girlfriend called him."
Tom quirked an eyebrow at me. "Girlfriend?" he repeated. "I didn't realize one of the ladies was traveling with him."
"Well, it didn't start out that way. Just a little tour fling, I think. I shouldn't say any more."
His grin came back. "I understand. That's something else about the hospitality business . . . the need for discretion."
"Amen."
"So, what are your plans for this evening?"
I suddenly wondered if Tom Bradenton wanted to ask me out. Maybe he was interested in a little tour fling. Or maybe he actually liked me. Unfortunately I'd promised Rollie Cranston that I'd have a drink with him at Sloppy Joe's.
"I've, uh, got a date. Sort of."
"Oh." Tom didn't stop smiling, but he looked a little disappointed.
"It's nothing serious, I just promised to have a drink with somebody. I'll probably be back here pretty early."
"All right. Maybe I'll see you then, if I'm around." He paused. "And I'm usually around."
We said our goodbyes and I headed upstairs, wondering if I was making a big mistake by not blowing off that drink with Rollie Cranston. Nothing was going to come of it, I knew that, but I was a whole lot less certain of what the prospects of spending more time with Tom might lead to.
But I'd given Rollie my word, and I like to keep my promises.
Besides, we were going to be here for a couple more days. There was still time to get to know Tom Bradenton a little better.
Chapter 7
The shower and the nap made me feel better, as I knew they would. I was considerably refreshed when I went downstairs for supper in the dining room in the main house. I'd already made arrangements to eat with Luke.
"How's Melissa doing?" I asked him as we sat down at one of the tables covered with a white linen cloth. The dining room wasn't very big, only a dozen tables, a couple of them long enough to accommodate larger parties.
"She's fine," he said. "A little jealous, I think, that I got to come down here and she didn't."
"That's what she gets for bein' so dang good at runnin' the office," I told him with a smile. "Really, though, you ought to consider bringin' her back for a vacation, just the two of you, now that you know your way around the place."
"You think she'd like that?"
"I know she would."
My daughter had been really tolerant about staying home and keeping the business running smoothly while Luke was off gallivanting around on tours with me. Melissa deserved a getaway of her own.
"But how would you get by without both of us around?" Luke asked, apparently in all seriousness.
"I am a grown woman, you know," I said. "And I've run travel agency offices before. Next time we've got a couple of weeks with no tours, the two of you should just take off. Come back here to Key West, or go anywhere else you want. Consider it a second honeymoon."
"That sounds really good," he said, nodding.
"And who knows?" I went on. "Maybe I'll even get a grandbaby out of the deal."
That made him turn red, as I knew it would. He started hemming and hawing around, and I took pity on him and reached across the table to pat his hand and shut him up.
"Don't worry about it, honey," I said. "I'm just jokin'." Then I added, "Sort of."
The waitress came over then to take our orders, and Luke looked mightily relieved at the interruption.
Luke opted for steak, but I knew the fish in the Keys was always fresh and good, so I had the grilled mahi mahi. I thought Tom Bradenton might wander into the dining room and say hello, but there was no sign of him so I had to settle for a delicious meal, and that was fine with me.
Doris Horton and Julia Dunn ate in the dining room, too, as did the Cleburnes. They paused by our table as they came in, and Jennie said, "I think we'll just stay in tonight if that's all right. We're not as young as we used to be."
"That's fine," I told her, but Doris spoke up from the next table, saying, "Not as young as you used to be? Why, that's nonsense. You're both practically children."
"Tell that to my sore muscles," Frank said. "I guess I'm not used to walking as much as we did today."
"We're not going back out, either," Julia said. "I'm afraid the nightlife here is a little too rowdy for a couple of old ladies."
Doris snorted and said, "Speak for yourself. I could hold my own with those kids . . . if I wanted to."
Somehow, I didn't really doubt that.
After supper, as Luke and I went out into the lobby, Ronnie Scanlon came up to us with a slightly worried look on her face.
"Have either of you seen Walter?" she asked. "I thought we'd go back to Duval Street tonight, but he's not in his room and I can't find him anywhere else around here. I tried calling him, but he's not answering his cell phone."
I shook my head and said, "Sorry. Haven't seen him since he went upstairs earlier. Did y'all make definite plans to get together?"
"Well, no," Ronnie admitted. "I said I'd like to, and he didn't say he was opposed to the idea . . . Maybe I should have pinned him down on it, instead of just assuming that he agreed with me."
Walter struck me as the sort who needed to be pinned down, all right, otherwise he was liable to go off on any sort of tangent. If Ronnie had been counting on his company tonight, she might well be disappointed.
"I'll look around for him if you want," Luke offered.
"Would you?" Ronnie said. "That would be great. Thank you, Mr. Edwards."
"Shoot, call me Luke. Everybody does." He looked at me. "What about you, Miz D?"
"I'm supposed to meet somebody," I said.
His eyebrows went up. "Oh? Anybody special?"
"You know better than that," I told him. "And there's no hurry. I'll help look for Walter, too."
If Rollie Cranston got tired of waiting for me at Sloppy Joe's and took off, that would just be too bad, I thought. I hadn't made any firm promises.
I went on, "Maybe we'd better check his room again first, and if he's not there, we can split up and look around the resort for him."
Ronnie nodded, still looking distracted by worry.
Walter didn't answer Luke's knock on his door. Luke looked at me and asked, "You want me to try the knob?"
I didn't know what to say. Once again those memories of the bad things that had happened on some of my other tours floated to the top of my thoughts. I couldn't help but consider the possibility that Walter Harvick was inside his room, all right . . . dead.
That seemed pretty far-fetched, but I knew it was going to nag at me. I don't like to intrude on my clients' privacy, but I nodded to Luke and told him, "Yeah, go ahead."
If the door was unlocked, we could call out again to Walter before we went in.
When Luke took hold of the knob and tried to turn it, though, it didn't move. He looked at me and shook his head. "Locked."
I thought about hunting up Tom Bradenton or one of the members of the resort staff to see if they could unlock the door. That seemed pretty extreme considering that it had only been about three hours since anybody had seen Walter, and he hadn't had firm plans to go back to Old Town with Ronnie no matter what she had assumed. He could already be there, in
fact, partying hearty, although it was sort of hard to imagine Walter doing that.
"All right," I said. "We'll split up and look around for him. We've all got each other's cell phone numbers, so if one of us finds him, call the other two."
The sun was just setting, which meant the usual festivities were getting underway in Mallory Square. Street performers of all sorts flocked there, along with an abundance of food carts catering to the tourists watching the assorted shows. Walter might be right in the middle of the excitement, although, again, he didn't really seem the type.
I didn't expect Walter to be at any of the guest cottages scattered among the palm trees around the main house, since he wasn't exactly friends with any of the people staying in them, but I suggested that Ronnie walk around among them anyway.
"I'll take the stable and the pool," Luke said. I nodded in agreement. That left the tennis courts and the beach for me.
We split up and set off on our various paths. I followed a crushed coral walk toward the tennis courts, which were lit up so guests could play in the evening. As I approached I heard the regular whack-whack-whack rhythm of tennis balls being hit back and forth. I enjoyed tennis, but it had been a while since I played and I didn't figure I'd have time to get in a game while we were here.
The path curved around some shrubbery, and then I could see the two courts. They were well-lit, so I got a good look at the players and the other guests who were sitting on benches to the side with their rackets, waiting for a turn at the courts. Walter wasn't among them, just as I'd expected.
The path led past the courts, through some palm trees, and then out to the edge of the beach. As I stopped where the crushed coral ended, the southwestern sky seemed to open up around me, and without meaning to, I said, "Oh, my goodness."
The sun had already set, but not for long. The sky was still splashed with wide swathes of red and gold and pink and pale blue. It was beautiful enough to take my breath away. The broad sweep of ocean below that colorful vista of the heavens just made the view even more spectacular. A warm breeze caressed my face as I stood there for a minute just taking it all in.
With a little shake of my head, as if I were breaking the spell that Key West had cast on me, I reminded myself that I was here to look for Walter Harvick, not to gawk at the sunset. I lowered my eyes from the brilliant display and studied the people still on the beach. There were maybe two dozen of them, some playing volleyball, others splashing in the water, and others lying on towels or folding lounge chairs. The only ones I recognized were Matt and Aimee Altman, who were playing in the co-ed volleyball game. Aimee was wearing a white bikini so tiny it almost wasn't there.
No Walter.
Something else caught my eye, though. A catamaran was sailing through the water fairly close to the beach. Its sail had alternating stripes of brilliant red, blue, and yellow. The man at the tiller, if that's what the steering thing is called on a catamaran, seemed familiar, and he was close enough that I was able to recognize him as Tom Bradenton. He wore only a brief bathing suit, and for a second I found myself thinking that he was just about as spectacular as that sunset.
Then the catamaran swept on past and the light continued to fade, and I knew I had failed in my mission to find Walter. I didn't feel any real sense of urgency about that. I still thought the most likely explanation for his disappearance was that he'd gone out on the town without Ronnie Scanlon. I wasn't going to let myself seriously consider any more sinister theory than that.
I went back to the main house, where I found Ronnie waiting for me on the verandah. I could tell by the anxious look on her face that she hadn't found Walter, either, and was hoping that I had. But when she saw that I was alone, she sighed.
"No luck?" she said.
I shook my head. "Afraid not. Maybe Luke spotted him."
A couple of minutes later Luke walked up, and he was by himself, too. When he reported that Walter was nowhere around the stable or the swimming pool, Ronnie still looked worried, but she was starting to look a little angry, too.
"He went off without me," she said. "That's the only explanation that makes any sense."
"Why don't you just go on to Old Town?" Luke suggested. "Maybe you'll run into him down there."
"No, if he doesn't want to spend time with me, I'm not going to force myself on him. It's just that I thought we were getting along better now."
I've never led a tour yet that didn't have a certain amount of soap opera involved in it. I said, "I'm going to Sloppy Joe's this evening. If I see him there, I'll read him the riot act."
Ronnie shook her head and said, "No, no, I don't want you to do that, Ms. Dickinson. It's not really your problem."
That was true enough, but I actually did feel a little sympathetic toward her. I had dealt with my share of easily distracted and downright thoughtless men.
"I brought a couple of Hemingway books with me," Ronnie went on. "I think I'll go upstairs and just . . . just read."
She walked off. Luke watched her go and said quietly to me, "I'm sure glad I'm not single anymore. Too much drama." Probably remembering my marital status, he added quickly, "Not that there's anything wrong with – "
I stopped him by saying, "Don't worry about it. I'm not a big fan of all that drama, either."
Which was a little hypocritical considering some of the thoughts that had been going through my head about Tom, but I wasn't just about to get into that with Luke.
He said, "You really think Mr. Harvick is down on Duval Street?"
"He could be. I don't really know."
"You don't think that he . . . that maybe somebody . . ."
I fixed him with a firm stare. "Don't say it," I warned him. "Don't even think it."
"Sure, Miz D. It's just that it's been a while, and – "
"No, there you go again. Everything's fine, Luke. Take my word for it."
"Okay. You said you were going to Sloppy Joe's. You want me to run you over there in the van and drop you off?"
"No, I'll just take the resort shuttle. You don't mind stayin' here in case anybody needs anything this evening?"
"Not at all. Actually, George and Frank said something about getting together with Phil Thompson for a poker game. They invited me to sit in."
"Don't let 'em take your shirt."
"Hey, I'm a good poker player!" he protested. "Maybe Matt Altman would want to join us."
I thought about how Aimee had looked jumping around in that itty-bitty bikini while they were playing volleyball and said, "I doubt it."
Chapter 8
The resort's shuttle van dropped me off at the corner of Duval and Greene Streets, right in front of Sloppy Joe's. The sidewalks were crowded, despite the fairly early hour, and music pounded inside the bar and spilled out through the open doors. I was a little leery of going in there again, but actually nothing that terrible had happened the night before. Even the confrontation between Walter and Rollie hadn't really amounted to much.
I went inside, showing my ID to the gatekeeper at the door.
I was wearing capris, a lightweight blouse, and sandals. My hair looked about as good as anybody could reasonably expect in this humidity. I kept my little purse tight against my side and made my way through the throng toward the bar.
On the way there I happened to see one of the bouncers who'd been involved in the previous night's altercation. In fact, I almost literally ran into his broad, t-shirted chest. He moved aside, saying, "Sorry, ma'am," obviously with no memory of me. That wasn't surprising, considering how many people went through here every day and night.
He knew Rollie, though, I recalled, and had referred to him as one of the bar's regulars. So I raised my voice above the rock music and asked him, "Do you know if Rollie Cranston is here tonight?"
A grin stretched across his face. "You're one of Rollie's tourist ladies?"
It sounded like Rollie had a habit of making dates with female tourists who showed up at the Hemingway House. I would bet he was pretty success
ful at it, too, given his rugged good looks and – I agreed with Walter on this, to be honest – slight resemblance to Ernest Hemingway.
"Can you just tell me where he is?" I said to the bouncer.
"Sure." He pointed to a corner. Through narrow gaps in the crowd, I spotted a table there, under a big fake palm tree. Or maybe it was a real palm tree, I wasn't sure. But Rollie was sitting there, wearing a different shirt with bright tropical flowers on it.
"Thanks," I told the bouncer, then started weaving a path across the room.
Rollie had some sort of bright green drink in front of him. He saw me coming and stood up. He was a gentleman, anyway. A grin wreathed his whiskery face.
"Ms. Dickinson!" he greeted me. "I didn't know if you'd show up or not. Welcome! I'm glad you're here."
"You might as well call me Delilah," I said as I sat down on the other side of the small table.
He resumed his seat and said, "That's a beautiful name. It suits you. You won't cut off my beard, will you? I wouldn't look like Papa without it."
He didn't look that much like Papa with it, I thought, but I said, "Delilah in the Bible cut off Samson's hair. The Good Book doesn't say anything about her givin' him a shave."
"I'll bet you've heard plenty of jokes like that, though, haven't you?"
"More than my share," I admitted.
"What'll you drink?" He pointed to the glass in front of him. "This is one of the specialties of the house. Pretty potent, though. Think you can handle it?"
Some of the women Rollie cultivated probably felt like they had to accept that implied challenge. I wasn't one of them. I planned to keep a clear head tonight. I said, "I think a light beer will be fine."
He signaled to a young woman in shorts and a t-shirt who came over. He told her to bring me a light beer, and off she went to fetch it.
He leaned forward, resting his bare, brawny, deeply tanned forearms on the table, and asked, "Any more problems with that pipsqueak?"
"You're talkin' about one of my clients," I reminded him.
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