3 A Brewski for the Old Man (24 page)

It was a sight I’d hoped never to see, the elevator opened and out stepped Dr. Travis and his wife, Bernice, my god-awful husband’s god-awful parents. My shock and outrage must have showed on my face because Bernice actually smiled, a gloating winner’s smile. I guess she thought if I could walk into the Royal Palms and turn her world upside-down she should return the favor.

Beside me, Gwen smiled and said, “Good evening.” They ignored her. “Dr. Travis, Mrs. Travis,” I said, and I swear I even gave a little bow of my head. What in the freaking world would ever possess me to do that? “How nice to see you.” This proved that all Clay’s gentlemanly manners were finally rubbing off on me — but I didn’t kid myself, I knew my festering emotions might turn septic, gangrenous and nasty, at any second.

“We thought we’d drop in for dinner,” Dr. Travis said. In his late fifties, Dr. Travis was still handsome. There was only a wisp of grey at his temples and his fine square jaw was still firm. “We’ve missed your chef’s wonderful cooking.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him that.” Right after I told him to lace their dinners with arsenic. For the nine years I’d been married to Jimmy, these two people had gone out of their way to make my life miserable. “Give the Travises the next window table to come up, Gwen.”

“But…” she started to say and quickly changed it to, “of course.” She picked up a pager. I took it from her before she could hand it to them.

“Would you like to wait in the bar?” I asked and led the way. Back at the hostess station Gwen asked, “Are we comping them?”

“Hell, no,” I said. “In fact, charge them double so they don’t make a habit of it.”

Before I could even curse them out good and tell Gwen my tale of woe, the elevator opened and out stepped Tully Jenkins — just to keep life from getting boring.

“Is Uncle Ziggy okay?” I asked, sure his being there meant new and possibly fatal disaster had struck.

“Far as I know.”

“You haven’t killed anyone, have you?” I inquired, and held my breath while I waited for his answer.

He pushed the black straw cowboy hat off his forehead with his thumb, giving it some thought. “Don’t think so.”

“So, why are you here?”

Beside me, Gwen gasped, but then she’s always been nicer than I am.

“Why, I just got to missing you, sugar.”

“Bullshit.”

He laughed. “Wasn’t it you that left messages all over town telling me you needed to see me?”

“Oh right, I forgot.” I’d called all his favorite bars and most of his friends, trying to find him before he did anything foolish, “Unless you have another daughter, that was definitely me.”

“Nope, you’re the only pretty thing I recollect that occasionally calls me Daddy.”

A wonderful brilliant idea hit me. “Come with me,” I said, heading for the bar. “I’ll buy you a brewski.” I took him to where the Travises were huddled together at a round table. Bernice looked up and saw Tully, denim from shoulders to ankles, with his straw cowboy hat pushed to the back of his head, and started gasping for air.

I turned to Tully. He was grinning, enjoying this way too much. “You sit,” I ordered. “I’ll grab you a beer.” “Anything you say, honeybunch.”

The conversation was stilted when I got back with Tully’s beer. I left them to it and went to tell Gwen I didn’t think the Travis party would be waiting for their table. I was wrong. Forty minutes later when their electronic pager went off they came out of the bar together, Bernice hanging onto Tully’s arm and talking earnestly to him. They didn’t see me as Gwen led the three of them to the window where the sun was slowly setting over the gulf.

And then, while I was lending a hand behind the bar, the Charters family, Thia and Anita, came in. Thia was dressed in tight blue jeans and a startling white tee-shirt with a small Nautica label over the left breast. She was wearing red high-heeled sandals that matched a shiny red bag from Dooney & Bourke. Simple right? Nothing to get excited about, right? Except this was Thia. Conversation halted in the bar and everyone, man and woman alike, stared. Her lavender eyes coolly assessed the room.

Beside her, Anita looked like a sack of potatoes. How could a beer keg give birth to a six-foot glass of champagne? Anita teetered on stilettos with her feet puffing over the sides, painful to see, her black leather skirt, sitting below her hips, was too short and the leopard-print top was so tight her belly button showed. I felt embarrassed for her, wanted to run over and wrap a blanket around her. That woman just wasn’t doing herself any favors, trying to compete with her daughter.

Thia saw me and headed for the bar, while her mother reached for her arm and pointed to an empty table. Thia jerked her arm away and then ignored her mother as she floated to the bar. You could hear men sighing all over the room. Behind Thia clomped Anita.

Thia pulled out a stool and said, “I’ll have Scotch on the rocks.”

“How ’bout a soda?” I replied.

She made a face but didn’t argue. Anita struggled to climb onto the stool and said, “Why are barstools always so high?” “Why are you so fat?” Thia shot back.

“My theory is, barstools are designed by men,” I told Anita.

“They like to see us struggle, makes them feel all macho. Or maybe they just like the view. What would you like to drink?”

Anita’s first vodka martini disappeared and the second one was mostly gone before Thia was halfway through her soda, and the kid’s nasty streak got worse with each sip her mother took.

“Have you heard any news about the murder?” I asked as I came back to set a red wine on a coaster in front of Anita. I wasn’t sure her plan of changing drinks was going to slow down her growing inebriation but hell, it was her choice, and her hangover, not mine.

“Has there been any more news about his shooting?” Anita leaned across the bar. Her grin was lopsided. “Shot three times.” She struggled to flip up three fingers to show the number just in case I couldn’t count. “Must have been someone who knew him well.” She giggled, amused by death.

“I heard that the police were talking to all sorts of people out at the Preserves. Have they interviewed you yet?” I was looking at Thia when I said it but Anita answered.

“Uh huh, told them I barely knew him, just the hired help.” Anita smiled, pleased to be clever, then abruptly changed the subject. “Say, why we have to talk about him.” She added an exaggerated wave, dismissing Ray John. “Thia’s going to New York. She’s got a contract to model for a big New York agency. She was supposed to go before but she wouldn’t leave, wanted to finish high school. But she can do that in New York and still model. She’s going to be famous, be on the cover of
Vogue
and
Elle
, television even. Goin’ straight to the top.” She set the empty wineglass down carefully on the bar. “I gotta go,” she said and tried to slide off the stool, taking it with her. The guy standing next to her grabbed the stool and righted both it and Anita. “Thank you,” she slurred, patting the man’s chest. He moved quickly away and she tottered off to the ladies room.

“New York sounds pretty exciting,” I said to Thia.

“Nothing to stay here for now, is there?” Thia said. Her beautiful features were blank. Hard to tell how much she was missing Ray John.

“Were you staying because of him?” I asked.

She raised an eyebrow, “I would have got bored eventually and moved on, but I was having a blast.”

Were the fun and games restricted to Ray John or had other people been involved as Sheila had hinted. Prurient curiosity made me want to ask for details. “I hope you didn’t start your modeling career out at the Preserves. Pictures have a way of coming back to haunt us.”

“You sound like the voice of experience,” she made a guess that hit too close to home.

“Where are the pictures?” I asked.

“I’ve got them.”

“All of them?”

A small shrug said she really didn’t care. “I think so.” “Didn’t happen to retrieve them the night Ray John died, did you?”

“Are you accusing me of killing him?” Her lavender eyes had turned into ice but her voice didn’t change.

Was I accusing her of killing Ray John? I was sure of one thing: this was a young woman who was capable of just about anything. “Can you use a gun?” I asked.

“Sure, but not as well as my mother. She’s the family sharpshooter. Grandpa was a diamond merchant and made all the family learn to shoot. They all carry.”

I laughed. “That could make family get-togethers real interesting.”

She smiled. “Mainly we just snipe at each other with words. We save the bullets for outsiders.”

Ray John would have been the perfect outsider for target practice.

Two hours later Gwen said, “I wish your family would quit with the yack yack and free up that table.”

With all the fun I’d been having in the bar I hadn’t realized that the Travis party was still going on in the dining room. They’d been there longer than they’d ever spent together through all the miserable years of my marriage, including the wedding. What on earth were they finding to talk about and why hadn’t my red-necked old man given Bernice a cerebral hemorrhage like I’d hoped? I went in to have a look. They were laughing. Bernice was hugging herself and rocking back and forth with laughter. Had I ever seen her laugh before? Not that I could remember. Against my better judgment I sidled over within sniper range.

“We were just talking about a fishing trip Jimmy and I took,” Tully said when he saw me. Of course they were talking about Jimmy, the one thing they all had in common. Jimmy had been everything Tully had ever wanted in a son and sometimes it seemed he loved Jimmy better than he loved me. Jimmy and Tully had fished and hunted and gone diving together, two sides of the same coin.

I smiled at the happiness on their faces and nodded in understanding.

Tully went right on with his Jimmy story. “We fished all day and didn’t catch anything. Cold as a witch’s tit out there and enough wind to give us a chop all day so you never really got comfortable, rocking back and forth for hours. After three hours of that misery Jimmy reeled in and declared the whole goddam Gulf of Mexico was fished out. Blamed it on the tourists, said there was nothing left and someone should do something about it, stop them from overfishing.” Tully wheezed with laughter. “Just as he made this little speech a lady fish jumped right out of the water and landed in the middle of the boat.”

The three of them went into gales of hilarity. Bernice’s face was full of joy — for one fleeting second Jimmy had come back to her.

“Did you try the pot roast?” I asked Tully.

“Yup, best I ever had, better than Grandma Jenkins’ and that’s saying a lot.”

I went to tell Gwen it would be a while yet before the table was free.

Tully came into the bar and looked around. “Jeff, I’m going out,” I said.

“Okay,” Jeff replied without looking up from the mixer. I went to join Tully.

“I just came in to say goodnight,” Tully told me.

“I’ll walk out with you.”

We went outside to the railed landing with the broad steps down to the parking lot. I never take the elevator, that tiny little thing scares the life out of me, but when I led the way outside it occurred to me that maybe Tully shouldn’t be using the stairs, even going down. I still hadn’t read the pamphlet on angina I’d swiped from his truck. Damn, I didn’t even know where I’d left it, bad daughter, horrible child that I am.

Out on Soldaat Lake I’d seen a side of Tully, a tender side, I’d never seen before, and decided he was sick, maybe even dying. Nothing else could explain it. “Do you want to take the elevator?” I asked.

“Why?”

“It’s late, you’ve had a busy day, no matter that you’ve just survived Bernice.”

“She’s all right, you know, just wanted to talk about Jimmy, listen to stories. I guess that’s all she has left. Horrible thing to lose a child. I don’t think Jimmy was going around to see them much at the end. They bought dinner, they were just so grateful to talk about Jimmy and so was I.” Tully laughed softly. “I loved that boy, more fun than a sack of monkeys.”

“And more trouble.”

“Ease up now, girl. He wasn’t all bad.”

“Just mostly.”

“Well, time to forgive him and get on with your life.” I didn’t even ask what that meant. I only said, “How’s Uncle Ziggy making out? I didn’t go see him today.” More guilt to pile on guilt.

“Doing okay, stronger, but still the pain is bad.”

“When can he come home?”

“Few days yet.”

“The den will be ready. There’s a TV and he can sit on the lanai and watch the beach. Someone will have to come in everyday to do the medical stuff. I’d be dead awful at that.” “Well,” he said, “if you want to do it.”

“I do. That’s what families are for, isn’t it, to help each other through stuff in the best of times and the worst of times?” “It’s hardly that,” he said. “Hardly the worst of times.”

“Bad enough, but we’ll get through it, one way or another.” I didn’t think either of us was talking about Uncle Ziggy. He reached out and patted my shoulder and then ambled over towards the stairs.

“Are you sure you don’t want the elevator?”

“Not dead yet, even if I’m not the man I once was.”

“Daddy, I’m thinking you never were the man you once was.”

“I love you too, baby.”

I had to do something about this annoying habit of sweet names real soon — he was beginning to take them for granted.

He started down the stairs and I called out to him, “Did you find the guy who hired the Ohio goons?”

“Yup.” He turned on the step and looked back up at me with a grin on his face.

“Anyone die, anything burn up?”

“Nope.”

“So everything turned out fine?”

“Well, enough so’s an anonymous donor paid Zig’s hospital bill today.”

“Good for you, Daddy.”

“Told you I wasn’t dead yet.”

When I went back inside, Styles was waiting for me. Seems he wasn’t afraid of confined spaces.