Ladies' Night (32 page)

Finally, Sweetie skidded to a stop. She sat on her haunches, her ears folded back, a deep, guttural growl rising in her throat, aimed at some unseen enemy lurking in the darkness.

Silvery moonlight revealed Nelson Keeler, sitting on one of the splintery green-painted benches ringing the amphitheater, his shotgun resting across his pajama-clad knees. In the round, chicken-wire-ringed aviary nearby, Cookie, the African gray parrot, hopped agitatedly from foot to foot. “Shots and beer, shots and beer,” the bird muttered.

“Hey, son!” Nelson exclaimed, spying him. Sweetie stayed where she was, on full alert, growling menacingly.

“Dad?” Wyatt sank down onto the bench beside his father. “What’s going on?” He was out of breath, bewildered. “What are you doing out here?”

Nelson pointed into a clump of ferns and bromeliads ringing the aviaries. “I got the sumbitch. One clean shot. The second for insurance.”

Wyatt’s heart sank. For months now, the park had been the target of petty criminals. Twice, they’d managed to break into the gift shop, stealing less than fifty dollars’ worth of cash, some cases of coke, and some stale candy bars. Another time, they’d gone farther into the park and attempted to cut through the wire to steal the parrots, apparently thwarted by the hue and cry raised by Cookie and the others. Although Wyatt viewed the crimes as a nuisance, Nelson had been enraged at the idea of anybody breaching the admittedly lapse security at Jungle Jerry’s.

A dozen years earlier, they’d had the park wired for an alarm system and installed motion-detector cameras. Now, though, the technology was outdated and the cameras were inoperable. And they didn’t have the money to install a new security system.

For a week or so, after the last break-in, Nelson had taken to patrolling the grounds on the golf cart Wyatt used for landscaping, finally growing bored after encountering nothing more than a few errant fruit rats on his nocturnal rounds.

Had his father shot and killed some young punk? Wyatt took a deep breath. “Who’d you get, Dad? Where is he?”

“Over there,” Nelson gestured. “He slunk off into the ferns. See the blood? He’s dead, though. I guarantee you. I nailed the sumbitch.”

Wyatt’s stomach turned as he observed the fine spatter of bloodstains on the crushed-shell walkway. He stood, and Sweetie took that as a signal to advance. She crept forward, her round belly scraping the sand, her nose sweeping back and forth. Five yards from the clump of ferns, she sat straight up on her haunches and growled again.

He held his breath as he played his flashlight over the greenery. Sweetie stayed close to his side on high alert. Finally, he saw where the trail of crimson ended. At first he thought it was a clump of Spanish moss. But as he grew closer, he spied a muzzle in a ghostly shade of gray, and then what looked like the emaciated body of a dog. He turned and glanced back at his father, who’d risen on shaking legs to follow them to the spot.

“What the hell is that?” Even as he said it, he realized what the form was.

“Coyote,” Nelson said grimly. He turned and pointed to an aviary at the edge of the amphitheater. The wire door was ajar and the tree-limb perch was vacant. Brilliant red and yellow scarlet macaw feathers littered the cage floor. “Sumbitch got Heckel and Jekyll. I’m sorry, son.”

The two macaws were the park’s most senior residents, having been bought by Wyatt’s grandfather in the late sixties. At one time they’d been a featured attraction in the parrot show, but now the colorful birds were officially retired from active duty. Wyatt patted his father’s shoulder. “Not your fault, Dad. I’d heard about coyote sightings in and around town, but for some reason it never occurred to me they might turn up here.”

“The hell it wasn’t my fault,” Nelson said gruffly. “I’m the one who fed all the birds today. I guess I must have left the macaws’ cage unlatched. They were so old and lazy, it probably never occurred to them to try to fly away. The damned coyote had already finished ’em both off by the time I heard Cookie screaming and got over here on the cart.”

Wyatt went to Cookie’s cage, unlocked it, and reached in. He extended his hand and the bird gingerly walked up his arm to his shoulder. “Hey, Cookie,” he said. “You’re one hell of an alarm system.” The gray parrot cocked its head and seemed to wink at him. “Gimme a beer,” she said. He fished in his pocket and brought out a bird treat instead. “Performance bonus,” Wyatt said. When the parrot finished chewing, Wyatt placed her back in the aviary and locked and double-checked it. Then, he walked around and checked the other cages. Marilyn and Lana, the cockatoos, were huddled together in the far corner of their cage, and Elvis, the huge blue and gold macaw, improbably, seemed to be sleeping.

“Okay, everybody’s safe and accounted for,” he said finally. “C’mon, Dad, it’s late. Let’s go home. I’ll come back in the morning and bury the coyote.” Wyatt took the shotgun from his father and placed it in the cargo hold of the cart, then climbed behind the wheel. Sweetie hopped up onto the bench seat beside him.

Nelson lowered himself into the cart, looking down at the dog in surprise. “Who’s this?”

“This is Sweetie,” Wyatt said, backing the cart up and heading down the path toward the house. “She’s gonna be staying with us for a while.” He reached over and ruffled the dogs’ ears. “I think she’ll fit in nicely around here, don’t you?”

The old man regarded the dog with a practiced eye. “Got a lot of poodle in her. Maybe some schnauzer or cocker spaniel. Poodles used to be great hunting dogs, before they started being bred as silly show dogs. Did you know that?”

“I didn’t,” Wyatt said.

“Where’d you say you got her?”

“A woman in my divorce-recovery group found her in an abandoned house. She’s living with her mom right now, over in Cortez, but the health regs don’t allow a dog to live in a bar, so I said Sweetie could stay with us until Grace moves into her own place.”

“Cortez?”

“Yeah. Her parents own the Sandbox. You remember that place?”

“Sure. Used to take you there when you were a little kid, after we’d been over at Holmes Beach. You used to love their cheeseburgers. This Grace, is she Butch Davenport’s daughter?”

“Yeah. Did you know him?”

“Everybody in Manatee County knew Butch Davenport. He was quite a character. Is he still around?”

“No, he passed away a few years ago. Rochelle, Grace’s mom, runs the Sandbox now.”

“And what’s your connection to this Grace person?” Nelson frowned. “You going out with her? Hanging out in dive bars like the Sandbox with her? Before your divorce is final? You better hope Callie and her lawyer don’t get wind of that.”

“Callie is living with her boyfriend, and has been for months now, so I don’t think she has anything to say about my personal life. Anyway, like I just told you, Grace is in my divorce-recovery group. The whole group goes to the Sandbox after our meetings, just to sort of unwind. I have a beer or two and come home. End of story.”

“But you like this girl.”

“I do,” Wyatt nodded. “She’s a nice person. You’d like her, too.”

“You sleeping with her?”

Wyatt felt his face burn. “Jesus, Dad! No. Where’d you get an idea like that?”

Nelson shrugged but said nothing else.

Wyatt pulled the golf cart under the carport and switched it off. Nelson unfolded himself from the seat, grunting with the effort, clutching the side of the cart for balance, swaying a little as he stood, trying to catch his breath.

And it struck Wyatt again: his father was aging before his eyes. The vagueness, forgetfulness, especially in the evenings, these had crept up and even accelerated since Wyatt had moved in with him. Nelson had always been strong—even into his sixties; he was fit and used to hard physical labor. Now, though, his gait had slowed and his energy level was diminished. It was all he could do to putter around the gift shop or the office a few hours in the morning before he returned to the cottage for a nap and endless hours of television.

He followed Nelson into the cottage, making sure the old man got safely into his bed before walking around the cramped cottage, switching off the lights and the television. The thin walls seemed to close in on him, choking him with claustrophobia. Sweetie followed close on his heels, seemingly sensing Wyatt’s restlessness.

He held the back door open. “Come on then, let’s go for a midnight ride.”

*   *   *

As the cart jolted along the shell pathway, the headlight picked out the shaggy, overgrown landscape. Just like his father, Jungle Jerry’s was aging, and not gracefully. Even the moonlight did not become it.

In his mind, Wyatt ticked off the unending items of maintenance that needed tending to. The gift shop’s roof was leaking badly. He’d patched it so many times himself that the patches outnumbered the original asphalt roofing. The crushed-shell parking lot was pocked with potholes and washouts, and half the neon in the Jungle Jerry’s sign had burned out.

In the park itself, dead or half-dead trees stood, waiting to be trimmed or cut down. The flower beds were choked with weeds and vines, and the abundant rain-forest plants swallowed whole sections of the pathways. His earlier visit to the amphitheater reminded him that half the benches there were rotted or splintered and all of them needed painting or replacing. The aviaries his grandfather had built decades ago for the tropical birds were rusting and were too small by current-day standards.

And that was just the physical plant, Wyatt mused. With only three employees—him; Joyce, his bookkeeper, ticket taker, and gift-shop manager; and Eduardo, who helped out with maintenance and landscaping—there were never enough bodies or hours or funds to get everything done.

Probably, Wyatt thought, he should have been smarter about all this. Six years earlier, not long before Bo’s birth, a developer had offered to buy the park from the family for what seemed like a stunning amount of money—three million. His parents had considered taking the money and making the deal, but Wyatt, young and stupid and full of plans and dreams for the family business he intended to nurture for his unborn son—had urged them not to sell. How could they let a shopping center and yet another condo complex erupt on this gorgeous garden his grandparents had worked so hard to create?

Even then, Jungle Jerry’s was struggling. They weren’t losing money, but they weren’t making much money either. Wyatt was certain he could turn things around. He’d taken marketing classes in college, had all kinds of ideas to drag the park into the twenty-first century. Callie had been furious with him. How could he be so stupid? All that money would have set them up for life! She’d raged at him for weeks after his parents turned down all that delicious money.

And then, before he could even get a Web site designed for the park, the economy tanked. Their attendance figures plummeted, and developers quit calling. Every month, the aging park went deeper into debt.

Wyatt steered the golf cart through the empty parking lot, hanging onto Sweetie’s collar to keep her from flying off as the cart jounced through the potholes.

He fought the urge to surrender to the melancholy mood of the evening. Not everything in his life was crap. Earlier in the day he’d won one tiny battle against Callie. Starting tomorrow, he would have Bo for the weekend. He glanced over at Sweetie, sitting erect on the golf cart beside him. And maybe, just maybe, he would find a way to convince the dog’s real owner that he wasn’t such a total jerk after all.

33

She’d set her alarm for 6:00
A.M.
Her to-do list for Mandevilla was long and getting longer, and she was eager to get to work. Grace opened her laptop and clicked on the comments section of TrueGrace.

This was her favorite part of blogging. Styling, photographing, writing, editing, and coming up with new ideas fed her creative soul, but hearing from readers was what kept her motivated. When she’d first started writing Gracenotes, she would stay up for hours after publishing a post, clicking and refreshing, anxious and nervous to see if anybody out there in the darkness was reading her work.

Now, she gasped. More than three dozen readers had left remarks about her last post. She clicked over to her dashboard and saw that over two hundred readers were now subscribing to the blog feed, meaning they would be automatically notified whenever Grace posted a new article.

A typical post on Gracenotes, where she had 239,000 subscribers, would have generated a couple hundred comments. But she was starting over now, from scratch, and each and every one of these readers and commenters were like gold for TrueGrace.

“Yay,” she said, in a small voice. Then, louder. “Oh hell yeah, yay!”

Scanning the comments, her smile grew wider. “Go, Grace,” said Justamom32. “Love your new blog. So much more approachable and attainable,” commented Wild4Style.

Of course the naysayers showed up for the party, too. “I liked your old blog better.” Or, “Why don’t you take some photography classes and get yourself a decent camera?” And, “Not much new or original here. All your ideas are tired and clichéd.” All of the negative comments, not to her surprise, were anonymous. Her finger hovered over the delete button for a moment, but then she read a note left by Rinquedink. “Hey, Grace, don’t let those bitches get you down. Haters gonna hate, taters gonna tate.”

Ben had always monitored the comments on Gracenotes, deleting anything that even smacked of criticism. No, Grace decided, she would only delete comments that were obscene, libelous, or obvious spam. She’d let her readers make up their minds themselves on what was spurious.

The final comment made her laugh out loud. “I’ve deleted that fraud, faux Gracenotes, from my feed. You really are the one, true Grace. Wishing blessings for you and the ex-husband genital herpes.” It was signed CindyLouWhoo.

When she got out of the shower, Grace checked her e-mail and saw that she had responses from six of the bloggers she’d contacted to request a place on their blog roll. The first message she clicked on was from a lifestyle blogger who called herself Eleganza.

Eleganza’s real name, as everybody in the blogosphere knew, was Kennedy Moore. She’d been a contributing editor at several of Grace’s favorite, now-defunct shelter magazines, including
House and Garden
and
Southern Accents
.