I nodded. “What else?”
She fidgeted with the catch of one of the bracelets. “I think his hair was dyed. Again, you see a lot of that down here.” She made a face. “Men who think if they put a little dark color in their hair, it makes them look like Enrique Iglesias. As if! I noticed the hair on his arms was sort of golden. It didn’t match up. And I was wondering why he was dying it. Certainly not to cover gray. He isn’t old enough, is he?”
Now I made a face. “I’m not certain how old he really is. Everything he told me turned out to be a big, fat lie.”
“Honey, I feel your pain. If I had a dollar for every lie my ex told me…” She laughed. “Hey! As it turns out, I do have a dollar for every lie he told. And that comes to a little over twelve million, so you know the kind of bastard he was.”
“My lawyer said you two had lunch together?” I prompted.
“Right here at the Binnacle,” Sabrina said. “It was his suggestion. Which isn’t surprising. There are at least a half dozen marinas within a few miles of here. It’s kind of a hangout for the yachting types. And not just the owners.” She gestured at a group of people milling around at the end of the bar. They were all in their twenties, sun browned, the women dressed in revealing little sundresses or T-shirts and midriff-baring shorts, the men in shorts and collared golf shirts. “Those kids are all probably crews from some of the bigger yachts. A lot of them live aboard, so this place is sort of a clubhouse for them when they’re in town or in between jobs.”
“Hmm,” I said, glancing quickly around the room, halfway hoping I might spot Reddy.
“He’s not here,” Sabrina assured me. “I would have called you on your cell phone if I’d seen him.”
“What did you talk about at lunch?” I asked.
“The boat. Maintenace records, specs, all of that. I had a folder full of information, otherwise I couldn’t have told him diddly about the Pair-o’-Docs.”
“You didn’t spend much time on it?”
She hooted. “Yeah. On a deck chair. Honey, I am just a city girl from Atlanta, Georgia. The yacht was my husband’s play toy. To tell you the truth, I get a little queasy when I get too far from land. I mean, I love to cruise around and all, but I am not somebody who wants to spend a week cooped up in that dinky little stateroom. I mean, if I want to travel, get me a room at the Ritz-Carlton or the Breakers, you know?”
“I hear you.”
“And that bitch Cissy Owens! They haven’t made the yacht big enough for me to spend another minute with that horse-faced heifer. We took the boat over to Bimini one weekend with her and Chip, and that was enough for me. I told Adam, you two might be all buddy-buddy, but this is one partnership you can count me out of.”
“Chip Owens?” I said. “Is that the plastic surgeon who was the partner in the boat?”
“Ah-huh,” Sabrina said. “He’s a boob man. That’s all he does. And you ought to see the set he put on Cissy, that’s the wife. Little tiny skinny-ass white girl like that and here she comes with a pair of double Ds. The child could hardly walk upright. And he had the nerve to tell Adam he could tweak me up to a C if I wanted. For an anniversary present! I told Adam, if you wanted big tits, you shoulda married Dolly Parton. Not Sabrina Daniels.”
The bartender flitted past and Sabrina held up her empty martini glass. “Again,” she said. “And for my friend too.”
I was beginning to like Sabrina Berg.
She picked up her handbag—it was from the new Kate Spade spring line; I may be poor, but I can still read Elle and Vogue—took out a gold compact, and touched up her apricot lipstick in the mirror.
“He’s sorta cute, in a plastic kind of way,” she said, putting the compact away.
“Who?”
“Rodolfo, or whatever his name is. I can see how he hooked you. He’s one of those men who just understand women. I mean, he actually noticed my shoes the day we had lunch. But he doesn’t do it in a faggy kind of way, right?”
“Right,” I said ruefully.
“He loooved the Pair-o’-Docs,” Sabrina said. “Said he liked the classic lines, better than the latest models. He couldn’t believe the price I was asking. I mean, he was amazed. I thought he was gonna write out a down payment right here on the bar.”
“What happened?” I asked. “If he was that crazy about it?”
The bartender came back with our new round of drinks and Sabrina took a big slurp of hers. Alcohol did good things for her. Her eyes sparkled, her face was animated. She exuded good times.
“He wanted to take it out for a shakedown,” she said. “Alone.”
“And you said no?”
“Oh hell yeah,” Sabrina said. I had noticed that the more she drank, the less cultured she sounded. “Some guy walks in off the street, thinks he can flash a little money at me and stroll away with a yacht like the Pair-o’-Docs? Uh-uh. I told him, ‘Have your mechanic look at it. I’ll get my lawyer to put together a crew, and you-all can take it out for an hour or so, see how it runs. But no way are you stepping foot on my boat until I see a cashier’s check for fifty thousand dollars in earnest money.’”
“How did he take that?” I asked.
“Said the money wouldn’t be a problem. He needed to get with a guy he knew who could take a look at the electronics, and he’d call me back and set up a time.”
“But he didn’t call back?”
“No,” she said. “The very next day after we had lunch, I showed the boat to a couple from Maine. They were wild for it. Didn’t even want to check the mechanicals. They looked at it on a Thursday, left, and then called me on their cell phone to say they’d decided to take it. We met at my lawyer’s office the next day and finished the deal within an hour. All cash.”
“Lucky,” I said. “I’ll bet Rodolfo was planning to scam you out of the boat.”
“Maybe,” she said. “He sure looked like he could afford it. I mean, aside from those wacky sunglasses, he looked like he was made of money. Nice clothes, driving a Jag, beautiful manners. Honey, he was wearing a gold watch, I swear, it looked like something Cary Grant would have worn in one of those old movies.”
I winced. “That was my daddy’s watch. He stole it from me.”
“Oh, honey,” she said. “He does need killin’.”
I took a sip of my martini, then pushed it away. It was lovely, but I needed to keep sober and pick every bit of Sabrina’s brain before she got any more wasted.
“The phone number he gave you,” I said. “Do you still have it?”
She reached into her bag and brought out a business card. The card stock was heavy, and the lettering engraved. “Rodolfo Martinez,” it said. No address, no business affiliation. Just a phone number with what I recognized as a Fort Lauderdale area code.
“You can have that,” she said. “But it’s been disconnected. I called to tell him the boat was sold, and left a message. Later, when I tried it again, I got the recording saying it was no longer in service.”
“You tried a second time? Even though you’d already sold the boat? Why?”
She giggled. “You want to know the truth?”
“Absolutely.”
“Shhhh,” she said, holding her finger in front of her lips, smearing the lipstick in the process. “Don’t tell my lawyer. He’d kill me if he knew. Adam is just looking for an excuse to rewrite our child-custody agreement. See, I knew this Rodolfo of yours was up to something. But I was just bored enough, I thought I’d try to figure out what it was. Let him make his play and see how far he’d take it. And hey, I don’t have to tell you. There’s something about the guy. I thought, What the hell. I’ve never fucked a Cuban before. Maybe it’s something I ought to try, just this one time.”
“Lucky you didn’t,” I told Sabrina. “Or that ring of yours would be history. Along with everything else you own, right down to your gold fillings.”
She grinned and winked. She really was hammered on those lemon martinis.
“Who says I didn’t?”
“What? My lawyer said you never saw him again.”
“Shhh,” she repeated, leaning so far forward she was almost in my lap. “Lawyers don’t know everything.”
“Are you telling me you slept with him?”
Sabrina licked the rim of her martini glass. “Mmm-hmm. And, girlfriend, if I wasn’t way too smart for my own good, I’d do him again too, that’s how fine he was.”
I was momentarily speechless.
“Look,” she said. “My ex was doing hookers right and left. He took one of ’em to Eleuthera for a week! And the whole time, I’m living like a nun, ’cuz my lawyer says, ‘Sabrina, don’t give him anything he can take to court.’ So, all during the divorce proceedings, the custody shit, everything, I was pure as the driven snow. And afterward, you know, I got a shitload of money, yeah, and full custody of our daughter, but when was the last time I had a little fun?”
I nodded my head in sympathy. And anyway, who was I to judge Sabrina Berg?
“Can you tell me about it?” I asked.
“You want the juicy stuff?” she asked, her eyes glittering.
“No,” I said quickly. “I know the juicy stuff about Roy Eugene Moseley. Just tell me about the, uh, date. Where did he take you? Whose car did you take? Did he talk about his private life at all? Do you know where he’s living?”
“Whoa,” Sabrina said. “Slow down. That’s a lot of questions.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Just tell me about the date, if you would, right from the beginning. And how long ago was this?”
She took another sip of her martini, which was almost empty. The bartender started to glide over, but I gave her what I hoped was a discreet head shake. I didn’t want Sabrina to pass out before I got the story of her date with Reddy.
“Hmm. Last week?”
“That recently?” I said eagerly.
“Let’s see. It was maybe, oh, a week ago Thursday. Yeah, that was it, because Chantal had a birthday party to go to on Saturday, and I took her shopping for a new dress Friday morning.”
“Chantal’s your daughter?”
“Most gorgeous five-year-old you have ever seen,” Sabrina said proudly. “If nothing else, Adam does make precious babies. The shit.”
“So you went out with Rodolfo Thursday a week ago.”
“Yeah.”
“How did that happen? I thought you said his cell phone had been disconnected.”
“He called me,” Sabrina said, preening a little. “He said he was just double-checking to make sure the Pair-o’-Docs really had been sold, but we both knew he was calling to see if I was still available.”
“Where’d he take you?”
“To Mark’s, on Las Olas. You know the place?”
“Afraid not.”
“Incredible food,” Sabrina said. “You really should try it while you’re in town.”
“Did he pick you up in the rented Jag?”
“Oh no,” Sabrina said quickly. “I didn’t want him going anywhere near my house, or Chantal. Adam has his little spies, and he’d know in a minute if I was being picked up for a date—especially in a Jag. No, Rodolfo suggested Mark’s, so I met him there.”
“What did you talk about at dinner?” I asked.
“The usual. The food. He seemed pretty knowledgeable about food and wine. Insisted on ordering for me. I had the most fabulous Hudson Valley foie gras with these huckleberries. I never even heard of huckleberries before. I thought that was a cartoon dog, you know? And then I had crab-crusted black grouper with some kind of mushroom sauce. Divine! And he knew all the right wines to go with everything, of course. And then he wanted to talk about me. He asked a lot of questions about my ex-husband, what kind of doctor was he, where did he practice. I’d already told him about how Adam cheated on me on the boat, and he was real sympathetic about that. Said it was a good thing I got such a nice settlement. Of course, he wanted all the juicy details about the settlement, but I just told him I’d done okay. He’s a big hand-holder, isn’t he?”
“What? Who?”
“Rodolfo. He held my hand all through dinner, and then afterward…”
“Probably trying to get that fatty diamond ring off,” I said.
“Uh-uh,” Sabrina said promptly. She held her hand out to admire the ring. “I had to work hard for this sucker. I knew what he was up to. It was like a game for me.”
“Did he talk about himself?”
“He laid a line of bullshit on me, if that’s what you mean. Said his family made their money in the sugarcane business. Dropped some fancy Spanish words. Look, I took four years of Spanish in a Catholic high school. And my teacher was Cuban. Besides which, I’ve been living down here in Havana North for the past eight years. So I know how it’s supposed to sound.”
“What did you do after dinner?”
“Thought you said you didn’t want to hear the nasty stuff,” Sabrina said, grinning wickedly.
“You can leave that part of it up to my imagination,” I said.
“Like I said, all during dinner, he was putting the moves on me. You know, holding hands, brushing my thigh with his. Very sexy. And, girl, I was not saying no. Of course, he thought we should go back to my place. But there was no way. I was up for a little sex, yeah, but no way did I want him coming around to my house, around my child. Finally, he invited me back to his place.”
“You went to his place?” I felt my pulse quicken.
She shrugged. “Why not? Okay, I’d been drinking all that wine. And I knew what he was up to, but I didn’t care. He didn’t seem kinky, or violent, nothing like that. And I had a condom in my purse, so I thought, why not? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?”
“Where does he live?” I asked quickly.
“In one of those new high-rise developments overlooking the intracoastal,” Sabrina said.
“Does it have a name?” I asked.
“Beats me,” she said. “I just followed him over there in my car. It’s about ten minutes from the restaurant, I can tell you that. On, like, the seventh floor maybe.”
Great. I wondered how many hundreds of new high-rise condo developments there were along the intracoastal waterway in Fort Lauderdale.
“Maybe you’ll think of the name later.”
“Probably not,” Sabrina said, chewing on a strip of lemon peel, all that was left of her martini. “It was dark. I was interested in getting laid, not in getting his address.”
“Sorry,” I said. “What was the condo like?”
“Fancy,” she said. “Swanky. Lots of modern furniture, great art. Lots of accessories. No way was it his place.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I could just tell. It had been professionally decorated. You know, with elaborate window treatments. Okay, here was one thing. The dining-room table was this smoked-glass deal, with chrome legs. Real modern. It was set! Dishes, napkins, silver, everything. Right down to a silk-flower centerpiece. You ever know a single guy who leaves his dining-room table set—with a centerpiece and everything?”
“No. Most of the guys I’ve dated had piles of dirty sweatpants as a centerpiece.”
“Exactly,” she said. “I figured it was maybe the furnished model. And then, later, when he wouldn’t even let me take a shower in the bathroom—which, come to think of it, also had a silk-flower arrangement—I knew for sure it wasn’t his place.”
“He wouldn’t let you shower?”
“Nope. I really did not want to go home smelling of some guy’s essence, you know? I mean, a lot of nights, Chantal climbs in bed with me. But he made this lame excuse that the hot-water heater was broken. I mean, talk about a born liar!”
“He is that,” I agreed.
“Anyway, the whole night got cut short, after he got that phone call.”
“Did he say who was calling?”
“He said it was his stockbroker. Which was another crock. But I’d gotten what I wanted, he’d gotten, well, not exactly what he wanted proba
bly, since I made it clear this was strictly a one-time thing, so I figured, call it a night. He walked me to my car, kissed me good night. He does have pretty manners, doesn’t he? And I watched to make sure he wasn’t following me. He wasn’t. And that’s the last time I saw or heard from Rodolfo Martinez. Or whatever his name is.”
39
After calling Harry to pick me up, I walked Sabrina out to the restaurant’s entry. “Are you okay to drive?” I asked, as she swayed gently before grasping a thick rope handrail. “Can I call you a cab?”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “Anyway, my girlfriend’s gonna pick me up. And then I’ll buy both of us a ’spensive bottle of wine and a great dinner. And then I’ll go home alone, to my kid.” She brightened then. “Did I tell you about my Chantal?”
“The most precious little girl in Broward County,” I said.
“Forget Broward, she’s the cutest thing in the whole damn state of Florida,” Sabrina said, waving her arms expansively.
A little, red Miata convertible with the top down pulled through the drive then, tooting its horn, the driver, an attractive blonde, waving her arms wildly.
“There’s my friend M’Linda,” Sabrina said. “Hey, why don’t you come with us? We can have a lot of fun. M’Linda knows all the good clubs.”
“Sorry,” I said, meaning it. “I’ve got a friend picking me up, too.”
“Boyfriend?” she said, giving me a broad wink.
“Well, he’s a man, but we’re not romantic,” I explained. Just then the burgundy Electra turned into the driveway and glided to a stop behind the Miata. Harry was at the wheel, and he was alone.
“Come with us and we’ll get you a boyfriend,” Sabrina said, struggling to open the passenger door of the Miata.
“Maybe another time,” I said. “Thanks so much for talking to me. You were a big help. I hope everything works out.”
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