5 Highball Exit (9 page)

“She showed me an article about you . . . about that woman who attacked you.” She was waiting for me to add something. Damned if I knew what.

Finally she said, “She said you two were real close, told anyone who would listen about you.”

“She was exaggerating.”

“She told me that you owned a fancy restaurant and that she’d worked there helping you run it.”

I snorted. “Holly couldn’t run a vacuum.”

Sunny grinned. “I didn’t say I believed her. I thought Holly might have gone to live with you or that you might have taken Angel.”

“Not me.” She nodded. I said, “So where’s Angel?”

Sunny considered the question. When she’d made up her mind she said, “Okay. Before Angel was born, I gave Holly the name of a lawyer I know. He arranges private adoptions. Holly didn’t want it. She figured Daddy couldn’t live without her and would come running back to play happy family. Wasn’t gonna happen, but you couldn’t tell Holly. She was always so naive and certain there was a happy ending just around the corner. She was going to be discovered by a big modeling agency or some big producer, never mind that she was already too old, she still thought it would happen, always having photos taken. Do you know how much those guys charge?” Anger, quick and volcanic, overflowed. “Ripping her off and taking advantage of her.”

Sunny slapped a gray dishrag onto the counter and mopped at the damp rings left by my glass. “When Holly called me, about . . .”

Sunny thought about it a minute, “must have been sometime around Easter, well, by then the fizz had gone out of her. She was just like the rest of us then. Don’t know what destroyed it. Didn’t ask. I did ask about Angel.”

She reached beneath the bar and brought out a pack of smokes. With the bar about to close she was no longer worried about bylaws or health authorities who had never breached the front door. She lit her cigarette and drew deeply before saying, “Holly said she’d given Angel to friends.” She was glaring at me as though she held me personally responsible. “Holly said it was temporary, said she was going to get Angel back in a few months. I don’t know if she believed it. I didn’t.”

Sunny’s permanent scowl was replaced by a flash of pain. “I just know Holly no longer had her baby. I hope she found a good home for Angel.”

“We want to make sure,” I said. “Do you remember anything else?”

Sunny shook her head. “That’s all I know.”

“I’m going to need the name of the lawyer.” Sunny frowned.

“Don’t worry; no one will ever know where we got the name,” I said. “If they insist on knowing, I’ll say Holly told me.”

Sunny stared at the entrance where the old man stood with his hands shielding his eyes and his face pressed up against the glass.

It took Sunny some time to decide. “You see that guy at the door?” She gave a nod in his direction.

“Yes.”

“He used to drive a school bus until he killed a kid. Seems the kid dropped something and stopped to pick it up. The driver saw the rest of the kids had crossed the road and drove off. He killed the boy kneeling in front of the bus picking up the things that spilled out of his backpack. That guy’s a no-account drunk now but Holly was kind to him. Holly gave him money. She was a good person. She . . .” Her face did a funny shift and she looked away for a moment and swiped at her nose.

When she faced us she was strong and defiant again. “Well, in a few days . . . when the Flamingo closes Saturday night, a lot of people will have to find a new place to be miserable, including me and that guy.”

Sunny reached beneath the bar and brought out an order pad. She wrote on it and then pulled off the sheet and pushed it towards me.

I put my hand on the paper. “Do you have a job . . . somewhere to go?”

“Yup, I’m going to swallow my pride and go back to a place I never should have left.”

“Good luck to you.” I picked up the paper and replaced it with a bill. Sunny looked at it and sucked in some more smoke. She didn’t offer change and I didn’t ask for any.

Aunt Kay stopped outside the door and pulled some bills out of her wallet. Handing them to the panhandler, she said, “This is from Holly.”

CHAPTER 20

Even though I was wearing sunglasses, the pounding sun made me squint. We walked slowly towards my red pickup with Aunt Kay leaning heavily on my arm as if she were about to drop dead from the skyrocketing temperature and exertion.

“Let’s have a bite and then I’ll take you home.”

“I’d like something to eat, but we aren’t quitting yet. I’m paying for your time, remember?”

“When you keep mentioning it, how can I forget?” Aunt Kay said, “Let’s go see that lawyer.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I eat.” Aunt Kay gave a huge sigh. “You never change.”

“You either, thank goodness.” We went through our routine to get her in the truck and I promised myself I would watch for a hardware store where I could buy a small step.

I stopped for a traffic light, still feeling for cooler air. “Please don’t stop,” I told the vent. Life without air would be unbearable.

I held my hand over the vent, trying to decide if the thin trickle of air blowing out was any cooler than what was already in the cab and thinking about what Sunny had told us. “Why would Holly talk about me?”

Aunt Kay fanned her face and looked out the window. “You know Holly—she talked about everyone she knew.”

I saw golden arches in the distance and changed lanes. When I started to turn in Aunt Kay said, “Not on your life. If we’re eating out, I want somewhere nice.”

I started to protest but she stopped me with, “I’ll buy.”

“You just said my favorite words. Where would you like to go?”

“Rosa’s. I haven’t been there in years. We used to come up oncea month for a Saturday night dinner. It would be nice to go there again.”

Three blocks later I pulled into Rosa’s, the best Italian restaurant in Sarasota.

But any enjoyment of Rosa’s disappeared as the door to the restaurant opened and a couple emerged. They were laughing as they turned and walked away from us.

Bernice had put on weight. She’d always been skeletal but now, as she led the way across the parking lot of the restaurant, her ass was doing a rumba. I don’t think she used to have an ass, never mind one that could dance.

And the hand that reached out to pat that dancing round mound of my ex-mother-in-law belonged to my old man, Tully Jenkins.

“Why are we stopping here? Why aren’t you parking?”Aunt Kay said.

“We aren’t eating just yet.”

“What is it, what’s wrong?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

I watched them get into her
BMW
and back out, leaving my dad’s beat-up old pickup sitting there, and then I followed Bernice out of the parking lot. They didn’t go far, just to the Palms Motel. They parked, got out of the car, still laughing like teenagers and holding hands as they went up the outside stairs to a room on the second floor. The door closing behind them was like a kick in the gut.

Aunt Kay pointed at the door. “That’s your father, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s him all right.”

“And the woman, do you know her?”

“Oh, yeah, too well.”

I’d married Jimmy Travis before I was twenty and in the end the whole sorry experience was a good reason to weep. Don’t get me wrong, it started out great but my bliss was short-lived. My idea of marriage didn’t include the groom having sex with a friend of the family after the rehearsal dinner.

And Jimmy hadn’t been the only source of my tears. Bernice Travis, my former mother-in-law, had done her bit. Our hate for each other was deep and everlasting, growing like a cancer throughout my life with Jimmy. And even after Jimmy’s death our wars went on. Now my old man was feeling her up in public.

Aunt Kay said, “Oh,” with shock and surprise in her voice. “I remember her from your wedding; I know who she is.”

“The bitch is just doing this to get back at me.”

“Maybe this has nothing to do with you.”

“You mean I’m having delusions? They didn’t just walk up those stairs and into a motel room?”

“Whatever you believe about her, however much she may wish to hurt you, why is your father with her? He doesn’t want to upset you, does he?”

“My dad never needs any reason to sleep with a woman beyond availability.”

I opened the door of the truck.

Aunt Kay grabbed my arm, holding me back. “Where are you going?”

I jerked my arm away. “I’m going to say hello to my father.” Aunt Kay threw her hands in the air with frustration, or maybedisgust, as I slammed the door.

CHAPTER 21

Bernice opened the door to the motel room but I looked past her to Tully. He was naked to the waist and barefoot.

I looked up from the gray hairs on his chest and I asked, “Why Bernice, why choose her? There are lots of nice ladies about.”

“Oh, honey, whatever would I want with a nice lady?” He laughed a deep belly laugh and came to stand beside Bernice, putting his right arm around her and pulling her close to his side. “We’ll all be in a grave soon enough; there’s no use being bored to death first, and one thing about Bernice, she ain’t never boring.”

I had to agree with him there. She was so interesting, I’d spent many an hour dreaming of her lying in a casket while I smiled down at her.

But my dad wasn’t done with his own joke. He patted Bernice’s rump and said, “She’s like that old pickup of Jimmy’s that you like so well—seen a lot of use but she’s got a few miles left in her yet.” He laughed again. “Now was there something you wanted, sugar?”

Aunt Kay didn’t offer any sympathy, quite the opposite. “You have no one to blame but yourself. What they do isn’t any of your business.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through with that woman.”

“I remember. You and Bernice Travis were like two scorpions dropped in a paper bag, ready to fight to the death and not once thinking of joining forces to break through the sack.”

“I’m not in the mood for philosophy.”

“Well, here’s a little more. If you don’t change your ways, it won’t be over until one of you is dead.”

“As long as it’s Bernice, it works for me.”

“That’s a long useless time to hate.”

I jammed the gearshift into drive. “Bernice is doing this to get at me.”

“Everything isn’t about you.”

My childhood view of Aunt Kay was undergoing a rapid change. Where was the kind, understanding woman who was always on my side? “You don’t understand.”

Aunt Kay laughed. “The thing is I understand too well. You and Bernice both loved Jimmy and you couldn’t bear sharing.”

My anger shifted from Bernice to Aunt Kay. “I’ll take you home.”

“But we have to see the lawyer.”

“We’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Look here, I’m paying you to do a job.”

“So fire me. We’re going home.”

By the time I’d gone five blocks I’d broken multiple laws and nearly run over an old couple. Washed by waves of violence, I dredged up every mean word and action Bernice had used against me until every injustice was new and fresh. No way I wanted anything more to do with Bernice. She had a way of cutting your pride to ribbons and turning your soul to dust, so if she was in Tully’s life, he was out of mine.

It was a long, silent trip back to Jacaranda.

When we pulled into the driveway, Aunt Kay said, “Feel better?”

“Not if you’re going to fire me.”

She sighed. “Just don’t try this again.”

I headed for the Sunset. At the intersection where I make the left turn to the beach stood the church of perpetual neediness, with a permanent thermometer of donations standing higher than its cross.

I’m not sure why that sign was so infuriating. Maybe it’s because I was always irritated those days. I was glaring at the sign and telling myself to take a deep breath when the door of the church rectory opened and out stepped Zach Maguire, Holly’s former boyfriend. What was he doing coming out of church in the middle of the day?

I thought I’d make sure he knew about Holly and see if he could tell me anything about her I didn’t already know. More than that, now that my anger had cooled, I was terrified that Aunt Kay might drop me and I’d lose my chance to save the Sunset. How could I have risked that? Instead of turning left for the Sunset I followed Zach back to the bank on Main Street, pulling into an empty spot beside him.

The Mexican restaurant next to the bank was sending out heavenly smells, reminding me I’d missed lunch. My stomach growled. “Hi Zach.”

He lifted his head to look at me. A sad, beaten puppy, he barely knew I was there. “Oh, hi Sherri.”

“I guess you heard about Holly?”

It was like I’d struck him. I thought he was going to break into tears. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you were close to Holly.”

He nodded. “Her mother came in today and told me.”

“Had you seen Holly lately?”

He shook his head no and then changed his mind and nodded. “I haven’t seen her in over a year. She called me though.” He turned away.

“Why did Holly call you?”

His eyes flicked to the bank. I hustled around him and blocked his path.

“I should get back to work. I told them I’d just be gone an hour.”

“You went to church, to confession?”

He looked at me in alarm. “What’s it to you?”

“Well, I just thought when someone dies sometimes we feel guilty.”

Zach looked down at the keys still in his hand. “I did something awful.”

I sucked in my breath but Zach wasn’t paying any attention to me.

“Holly said she needed help, needed money. I told her I couldn’t help her and then she killed herself.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding. “Don’t beat yourself up. Holly had no right to expect anything from you. She dropped you pretty quick when it suited her.”

“I wanted to marry her.”

Even I couldn’t ask about the baby now. “Did she tell you why she wanted money?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t seen her since she moved up to Sarasota.”

“Did she tell you anything else?”

Again he shook his head. “She just told me she was in trouble and needed money.”

“Did she mention Angel?” Zach’s head came up and his face flushed. “Who’s Angel?”

“Oh, just someone she knew. Someone she loved. Maybe Angel helped her.”

“I hope so,” he said. “I hope I wasn’t her last chance.”

I went back to the truck and called Aunt Kay to tell her about Zach and to make peace. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know anything about Angel.”

“He still might know Holly had a baby and where she is even if he doesn’t know her name.”

“Damn.”

“You might want to chat with him again.”

“Why don’t you give me a check to put in the bank and then I’ll have an excuse to go back and talk to him?”

She laughed. “Nice try.” She was silent for a bit. “We should have gone to the lawyer.”

“If we had, I wouldn’t have talked to Zach.”

“Maybe we can still see the lawyer. Why don’t you call and see if he’ll see us tonight.”

“I’m a little busy.”

“And I’m a little old with not a lot of time to wait.”

“Some sweet little old lady you turned out to be.”

“Sorry to shatter your illusions.”

“And there were so few left. We’ll have a full day tomorrow, promise. I think you should rest.”

Her noise of complete disgust wiped out all thoughts I had about Aunt Kay being a lady. “Let me worry about my health, about the weather, about everything that distracts you, and just pay attention to what needs doing. I expect a lot more than I’m getting for my money.”

Yet one more disappointed customer in my life.