by Jane Heller
“I’m falling in love with him, that’s why,” she said defiantly. “If our relationship continues to develop as quickly as it has, I just might marry him.”
“Marry him? Sharon, he’s a snake. What’s the matter with you? I realize that you’re still hurt by what you perceive to be Daddy’s neglect of you and that your knee-jerk response has always been to marry the first man who doesn’t neglect you. But Barry Shiller? Even you can do better.”
“There you go. Criticizing me and my choices in men. As if you should talk.”
“I admit I’ve made mistakes when it comes to my own relationships, but I’m trying to change, Sharon. The disaster with Jeffrey was a wake-up call in a way. I see how important it is to take my time, to make sure the guy is right for me, to make sure the guy has scruples, for God’s sake.”
“Well, while you’re doing all that waiting, I’ll be enjoying myself. With Barry.”
She did an about-face and stormed into the ladies’ room. I decided I could live without powdering my nose. I was heading back to the table when Barry slithered toward me, having just returned from another smoke.
“Deborah,” he said. “Got a minute?”
“I guess so. What’s up?”
He coughed, spraying me with his stogie breath. “I’d like to offer you some free legal advice.”
“Free legal advice? Now there’s an oxymoron.”
“That’s very funny. I’ll have to remember it.”
“Be my guest. Look, you’re Sharon’s lawyer, Barry. I don’t need any legal advice, free or otherwise. I’m kind of going it alone.”
“A bad move.”
“Is that why you took me aside? To convince me to hire you if the police arrest me?”
“No. I took you aside because I think you should stop talking to people about the case.”
I regarded him as he fingered one of his massive gold cufflinks. “Stop talking to people? What people?”
“People in Stuart. Sharon tells me you’ve been asking a lot of questions around town. That could come back and bite you, Deborah. I’ve seen it happen. I’d keep my mouth shut if I were you. Let the police do their job.”
“That’s your free legal advice?”
“Yeah. And you ought to take it.”
I smiled. He was such a thug. “I appreciate your interest,” I said noncommittally. “So. How about dessert?”
He shrugged, as if he thought I were a fool not to listen to him. “After you,” he said, bowing unctuously.
He followed me back to our table. It wasn’t until he was helping me into my chair that I suddenly recalled something Sharon had told me—that Barry had gotten his BA. at the University of Miami, class of ‘63, the same year that Jeffrey had gotten his undergraduate degree from the school.
I faced Barry as he sat down next to me. “Did you know Jeffrey Hirshon?” I asked.
“Know him? What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple question, Barry. Did you know Jeffrey? Were you friends? Fraternity brothers? Acquaintances?”
“What are you nuts? If I knew the guy, I would have told your sister before I took her on as a client.”
“But you and Jeffrey were in the same class in college. Class of 1963.”
“Were we? Miami’s a big school. Hirshon could have gone there, but if he did, it’s news to me.”
“Still, if you both did go there, it would be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t it, Barry?”
He was about to respond—or, at least, I think he was—when Sharon returned to the table, having applied fresh lipstick and run a comb through her shimmering golden hair.
“What did I miss?” she said, gazing into his eyes.
“Your sister’s interested in dessert,” he said.
“My sister’s always interested in dessert.” She smiled. “Judging by her waistline.”
Chapter Twenty
On Thursday morning, I had a phone call from Detective Gillby.
“I’m still innocent,” I said.
“That’s not why I’m calling,” he said. “I’m following up on the vandalism you reported on Tuesday night. I understand there wasn’t any major property damage to the House of Refuge, just a mess to clean up. Is that right?”
I debated whether to tell Gillby about the shaving cream note. Barry Shiller had advised me not to talk to anyone about anything, but was I going to listen to that sleaze?
“Actually, something else happened that I didn’t tell the officers about,” I said. “The person who was responsible for the shaving cream and the beer bottles left a threatening message on one of the windows.” I gave him a full account. “It could have been a kid, having a grand old time with me. Or it could have been the killer, trying to scare me.”
“Why would the killer want to scare you, Ms. Peltz?”
“I don’t know. I have been poking around, as you’re well aware. Which reminds me, I’m pretty sure I can confirm for you that Peter Elkin, the internist in Dr. Hirshon’s medical group, really was with Vicky Walters, Dr. Hirshon’s former girlfriend, on the night of the murder. Talk about sloppy seconds.”
“You asked Dr. Elkin about this?”
“No. My mother asked him. I hope nobody sprays shaving cream on her windows now.”
“I hope not. Is there anything else you want to tell me, Ms. Peltz? I have a hunch you’re not finished here.”
I smiled as I remembered what Ray had told me—that Frank Gillby welcomed my input and that I shouldn’t be put off by his brusque manner. “Well, let’s see. Yes, I spoke to some of the other women Dr. Hirshon was going out with before he died. One of them, Suzie Kendall, is still upset about the way he dumped her. She was so upset when she found out he was dating someone else that she didn’t come out of her house for two whole weeks. I’d call that kind of behavior a little extreme, wouldn’t you, Detective?”
“What did you say her name was?”
“Suzie Kendall. Of the railroad Kendalls. She lives in Sewall’s Point, in Castle Hill. I asked her about her breakup with Dr. Hirshon, but I never got around to asking her if she had an alibi for the big night. Sorry.”
“What? Can this be true? You forgot to ask her if she had an alibi?” he said sarcastically. “Luckily, the sheriff’s office can handle that part of it.”
“Luckily. Oh. Suzie did tell me she was afraid of guns, which would make it unlikely that she shot Dr. Hirshon. On the other hand, maybe she wasn’t afraid of guns until she pulled the trigger on the murder weapon and realized how much trouble she was in. What’s your opinion?”
“Who has time for an opinion?” he said. “I’m too busy listening to yours to have any of my own, Ms. Peltz.”
“Ms. Peltz. Ms. Peltz. Don’t you think it’s time you called me Deborah?”
Silence.
“Detective?”
“I’m sticking to Ms. Peltz, Ms. Peltz.”
“Up to you. Would you rather I didn’t call you Frank then?”
“You can call me whatever you want. You will anyway.”
“Thanks. Have a terrific day, Frank.”
“You too, Ms. Peltz.”
The rest of the day was uneventful, other than a brief spat I had with Sharon when I’d called her at my mother’s before she went back to Boca. I had urged her yet again not to throw herself into a romance with Barry, and she had told me yet again that I was a jealous, spiteful spinster.
Later that afternoon, I wandered into the museum, where Fred Zimsky was winding up his shift and preparing to go home. After we chatted about this and that, I asked him if he had any children and whether they got along.
“I have four daughters,” he said. “Beautiful girls, every one of them.”
“Yes, but do they get along?” I repeated, eager to know if Sharon and I were freaks of nature or if it was common for sisters to carry on the way we did.
“They get along great,” he replied. “Just not with each other.”
“So they fight a lot?”
“I don�
��t know how to describe what they do. They’re on the phone to each other and they’re over at each other’s houses and they watch out for each other’s kids—they’re joined at the hip. And then bam! Out of nowhere, one of them gets crazy about something another one did, and it’s World War Three. Two of them stop speaking to the other two or three of them gang up on the one; it varies. Then, all of a sudden, the war’s over and everybody’s at everybody’s houses again. Who can figure what goes on between sisters?”
“You know what I think?” I said. “I think having a sister means always having to say you’re sorry.”
Fred hugged me. “You’re a sweet girl, Debbie. I’m going to ask your mother for a date.”
I nodded with approval, even as it occurred to me that if Fred and my mother met and fell in love and got married, I’d have five sisters instead of one—a truly terrifying thought.
On Friday, Ray stopped by, but I must have been at my mother’s house when he came. He slipped a note under my door asking if I wanted to go dancing at Conchy Joe’s on Saturday night. “They’ve got good reggae, good grouper, and good atmosphere, and I could meet you there at seven-thirty. You in?” read the handwritten invitation. I left a message on his answering machine, saying I was in.
Conchy Joe’s is one of those big, raucous, honky-tonk places on the water for which southern coastal towns are famous—part Tiki bar, part restaurant, part “scene,” the Florida equivalent of a New England lobster pound. Housed in an unprepossessing building between a couple of bait-and-tackle shops along Indian River Drive in Jensen Beach, the next town north of Stuart, Conchy Joe’s is the kind of joint where you take your out-of-town guests to show them the “real Florida.” In other words, if you go inside and survey the customers, you’ll probably find more tourists than locals. As an example, in all the years I’d been coming to Stuart, I’d never eaten there.
Ray was waiting for me by the door when I arrived.
“God, it’s packed,” I said, having circled the parking lot three times before finding a spot.
“It’s Saturday night, in season,” he reminded me, raising his voice in order to be heard over the din. “They told me it’ll be a thirty-to-forty-minute wait. We can have a drink at the bar and they’ll call us when the table’s ready. Is that okay?”
“Sure.” He looked cute, I thought. Sexy. He had nicked the side of his neck, shaving, and, as ghoulish as this must sound, the tiny cut on his otherwise smooth, lightly tanned skin was a turn-on—a hint of the teenager inside the macho man.
I followed him past the hostess’s station, past the shelves filled with Conchy Joe’s T-shirts and Conchy Joe’s sweatshirts and Conchy Joe’s fishing hats, into a dark, noisy bar room, complete with big-screen TVs, hanging buoys, and giant marlin mounted on the wall.
“What’ll y’all have?” asked a waitress as she wiped down the small round table Ray had commandeered, the only one that was unoccupied.
“I’ll have a nice, cool margarita,” he told her. “Cuervo Gold, lots of lime juice, salt on the rim.”
I smiled. “I thought you said you were a beer man.”
“Yeah, but when in Rome. This place cries out for something a little more Jimmy Buffet than a plain old beer.”
“You’re absolutely right.” I studied the specialty drinks menu. Listed were alcoholic concoctions with names like Guana Grabber, Goombay Smash, Latitude Adjustment, and Hemingway Daiquiri (this one was described as “Papa’s recipe as served in the Floridita Bar in Havana”).
“Have you decided?” the waitress demanded in a tone that suggested I was taking sixty years instead of sixty seconds to make up my mind.
“I’ll have a margarita,” I said.
“Atta girl,” said Ray. “It’ll put hair on your chest.”
“Just what I’ve always wanted,” I said.
“How about an appetizer while we wait?” said Ray as he perused the Bar Menu. “They’ve got conch fritters, buffalo shrimp, alligator tidbits...”
“Alligator tidbits?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never had alligator, Deborah. With all those swanky restaurants in New Yawk?”
“The ‘swanky restaurants in New Yawk’ are into elk and venison and wild boar, not alligator. In New York, people have alligator shoes and handbags and belts, not tidbits.”
“Their loss. Alligator’s good eating.”
“Please. Now you’re going to tell me it tastes like chicken.”
He laughed. “The truth is, I’ve never had it. I was planning on ordering a shrimp cocktail.”
“Make it two,” I said.
The margarita gave me an extremely pleasant buzz, which, in turn, made the shrimp taste extremely fresh and the cocktail sauce extremely tangy. It also enabled me to ignore the cigarette smoke that was coming at me from the next table and the fact that the waitress bumped the back of my chair every single time she passed.
“So here we are on a Saturday night,” I said. “A couple of dateless wonders.”
“I could have had a date tonight,” said Ray. “My friend at work wanted to set me up with someone named Laurel.”
“‘Laurel’ is certainly a step-up from ‘Willow,’ as far as names go,” I said. “But what is it with your friend? Are all the women he fixes you up with named after trees? The next thing I know you’ll be going out with someone named ‘Elm.’”
“I already have. It was short for ‘Elmira.’”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m joking.”
I reached across the table and tussled his thick, auburn hair. “So why didn’t you go out with this Laurel tonight?”
“I thought it would be more fun hanging out with you: No pressure. None of that Does-she-like-me? stuff.”
“In other words, you don’t wonder if I like you?”
“Nope. If you didn’t like me, you wouldn’t keep going places with me.”
“Unless I was desperate for company.”
“If you were desperate for company, you wouldn’t live way out there on the beach by yourself, without another house in sight.”
“Point taken. I feel the same way about being out with you tonight, by the way. None of that Does-he-like-me? stuff. It’s obvious that you’re mad about me.”
He laughed. “You must have been great at that soap opera writing. You can make almost anything sound dramatic.”
“It’s in the blood, I guess. I’ve only been away from the show a few weeks and I miss it already. Not the behind-the-scenes politics and not the people who are running the show now. I miss Woody Davenport, the former head writer, and Helen Mincer, one of the other writers, and, mostly, I miss the work itself. It feels weird not to be grinding out an episode per week.”
“Uh-oh. I hear a little homesickness in that speech. But I’m warning you: You can’t move back up there. Not after I’ve invested all kinds of time and money in you.”
“What money?” I said. “We split the check the one and only night we went out for dinner.”
“Yeah, but I’m thinking ahead to tonight’s tab. I’m treating, or didn’t I mention that in my note?”
“You didn’t mention it, but it doesn’t matter, Ray. I’m perfectly glad to pay for myself.”
He shook his head. “It’s my birthday and I’ll pay if I want to.” He sang the line, taking off on the old Leslie Gore song.
“Your birthday?” I said, surprised. “Today?”
He nodded. “My forty-fifth. A biggie.”
“And you wanted to spend it with me?” Ray had lived most of his life in Stuart. He had to have zillions of friends in the area, zillions of pals to celebrate with. So what am I doing here? I wondered.
Not for the first time, I was wary of his interest in me, suspicious of it. But then I reminded myself that his old friends knew him when he was married to Beth, knew him with Beth, as half of a couple. Maybe he felt comfortable being with me precisely because I was new in town; because I hadn’t lived his history; because he sensed that when I loo
ked at him, the first thing I saw wasn’t a man in pain.
“Your table is ready, Mr. Scalley,” said the waitress, handing him the check for our drinks and appetizers.
“To be continued.” He winked at me, then paid the bill.
We were seated at a table in the “band room”—i.e., the room in which the establishment’s long-time house band, a Jamaican group called Rainfall, entertained the customers.
Soon after we sat down, Ray pointed out that our table was wobbly.
“Oh, good,” I said, relieved. “I thought it was the margarita.”
“No, it’s the table or the floor or both. When you go to Conchy Joe’s, you take it for granted that you’ll have to bring a matchbook with you.”
He pulled a matchbook out of his pants pocket, bent down and wedged it under one of the table’s legs, and then rocked the table to see if he had solved the problem. He had.
“Done,” he said, sitting back in his chair. “In the carpentry trade, the matchbook would be known as a shim.”
“A shim,” I repeated. “I’ll make sure I’ve got one with me the next time I come here.”
We ordered grouper sandwiches, as well as beer for Ray, white wine for me. While we were waiting to be served, the band started up with a Bob Marley tune.
“How about it?” he asked, motioning toward the small dance floor.
“It’s your birthday,” I said. “You want to dance? We dance.”
Ray led me onto the floor, where we were quickly joined by a half dozen other couples, most of them my mother’s age. Reggae music can be danced to any number of ways, most of them not involving touching one’s partner, but Ray had other ideas. He took me in his arms and steered me side to side, back and forth, as if we were doing a combination waltz-tango-fox trot. I didn’t have a clue what he was doing or how to follow him, but I did my best, managing not to step on his toes fewer than three or four times.
As he held me, I remembered the feeling I’d had on his motorcycle, when our bodies had conjoined atop the bike’s leather seat. This was even nicer, this sensation of being enveloped by him, of being wrapped inside his grasp, of timing our footwork to the pulsating, base-driven rhythm of the music.