Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise Book 1) (15 page)

Nesbitt?

“I hired him, at the highest recommendation of another Nesbitt at Bank of St. Marcos. Ms. Nesbitt, the bank officer there in charge of Annalise. Only I didn’t know him as anything other than Junior from her referral.”

Rashidi chuptzed. “The little woman his sister.”

“Did I mess up?” It was all about who you knew. And didn’t know.

“Maybe he straightened out. I got your back. There is a problem, though, a big problem,” Rashidi told me.

My stomach clenched. “What is it?”

“You buying Annalise and all. This mean I gonna have to change up the grand finale of my rainforest tour. Ain’t no big thing if it just another ole rich white folk house.”

I stared at him blankly until I saw he was kidding me, and I laughed.

That night, I moved in with Ava, a process which consisted of me dragging two suitcases, a carry-on full of toiletries, and my laptop bag from the truck to her couch. Or, rather the floor beside her couch. My Rimowa bags in Ultra Violet and Inca Gold stood in a colorful row like soldiers guarding the entryway from the living room to the kitchen.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked again. “I could be homeless for months.”

“I making room for you in there,” she said, pointing vaguely toward her bedroom. I now saw there was a smaller bedroom next to it, one without a bed. And with a lot of boxes stacked haphazardly in the middle of the room. “That OK with you?”

“As long as you’re OK, I’m OK,” I said, and meant it. “I’ll stack the boxes against the wall and get a futon tomorrow.” I’d have to do it before Emily arrived in the late afternoon. Emily. I’d forgotten to tell Ava about Emily. Oops. “My friend Emily is coming tomorrow and staying on-island for a few days. I can’t wait for you to meet each other. You’re going to love her. Where do you think I should book her a room?”

“If you have a futon, she can take the couch. Unless she just made of money.”

That she was not. So we’d sardine together. Cool.

After all that strenuous unpacking, we celebrated at Toes in the Water with burgers. We sat at a picnic table in the sand on a small ledge above the beach proper, not far from where a hammock filled with young children was swinging between two coconut palms. The tiny establishment consisted of a handful of half-filled picnic tables, a roofed patio bar and stage, and three structures in various states of sun-bleached, windswept disrepair. A faded mural of Toes in the Sand was painted on the side of one of them, and I caught a glimpse of the cook when he stuck his head out of another to take an order from the waitress. A communal washbasin inlaid with glitter and shells ran the length of the third building. If Annalise hadn’t already lured me away from Dallas, this place could have. I tingled with delight at the sound of the surf kissing the beach boulders goodnight.

The sight of the ever-hopeful Jacoby was no surprise when he met us there. We’d already taken our seats when he walked in from the parking lot on the west side of the restaurant, carving a black hole in the sun behind him as he made his way over to our table. He expressed no delight at my presence, but it didn’t faze him, either. He stuck out his ham-sized paw and shook my hand. Please don’t hurt me, I thought. Then he sat by Ava and soaked her in as if I didn’t exist. I slid my feet out of my shoes and buried my bare toes in the sand underneath our picnic table, listening to Ava. She had a lot to say.

“Everywhere I look, people still talking about Guy’s murder. It all over the TV, the paper. I can’t get away from it. All of it just make my blood chill. There a killer out there,” she said.

Jacoby was digging his right heel into the sand with heavy thumps as she spoke. He said, “The detectives doing all they can to find the murderer. A lot of people hate that man, though. A lot of suspects.”

“I know. I know. I just so grateful you kept me out of it, Jacoby.” She put her hand on his arm and stroked his skin with her thumb. I could see the goose bumps in his flesh. “It could have all been so nasty, instead of sad. It supposed to be sad when someone die.” Tears pooled in the corner of her eyes but didn’t fall.

“Anything for you, Ava. You know that.”

“Still, I don’t want you to get in trouble,” she said. “You took a big chance, helping me.”

“No one gonna know except us. Everyone believe the call anonymous, and you make it from the hotel phone to 911, just like I tell you. You cover the phone with a cloth, disguise your voice, everything. They couldn’t even tell it a woman. It gonna be all right.”

“He was a good man,” Ava said.

I could see she’d taken a wrong turn in the conversation as Jacoby stiffened and spoke. “He a big man, but he no good. I coulda told you ’bout all his girlfriends before, if I knew about you and he. I’m sorry he dead, but I glad you not with him anymore.”

Now it was Ava who stiffened. “Just please tell me if you hear something, anything, about who did it. Promise me, Jacoby.”

“Yah mon. I promise.”

Just when I was getting seriously uncomfortable, a perky waitress in a threadbare khaki miniskirt and braless lavender tank top diverted our attention.

“Time for sunset shots,” she said from underneath her unfortunate overbite, setting three plastic cups in front of us. “Coconut rum, Cruzan, of course. Watch for the green flash.”

I started to tell her to take mine away, but the words didn’t come out. The bartender counted backwards from ten, and all the patrons held their shot cups aloft.

“Three, two, one,” he shouted.

Jacoby and Ava threw back their shots. I looked around in the fading light, taking in the rolling waves as they broke over the reef twenty yards away, the curve of the shoreline as it folded into the two miles of white sand around Cape Bay, and the green of the palm tree tops extending down the beach toward the hills of the rainforest. I was at peace here. I didn’t have to contend with Nick’s draining presence or flip-flopping witnesses. Here, I could do moderation. I could be smart, be measured. I was in control. I downed my shot and savored the delicious and instantaneous flood of warmth through my body. As I stared westward over the horizon, the sun sank, and I saw a flash of green light.

I jumped to my feet. “I saw it!” I yelled. “I saw the green flash!”

The bartender rang a bell above his head. “Green flash, everybody. She saw it.”

Ava and even Jacoby slapped me on the back. “I only seen it once, myself,” Jacoby told me. “Powerful good luck.”

That would make for a nice change. The waitress showed up again, barefoot like us, this time with a pitcher of margaritas.

“Green for the green flash,” she explained, and handed me a cup. “On the house.”

“Thanks!” I said. “This is what we drink where I’m from. That and Lone Star beer,” I said. “Want some, y’all?”

Ava emptied her water in the sand, and Jacoby followed suit. They both held out their empty cups. I poured. “To the green flash,” I said.

Ava said, “To the singing sensation, Ava and Katie.”

“What?” I asked.

“Just drink,” she said. “Then I explain.”

I drank, swallowing slowly, enjoying the reunion my bloodstream was conducting with its old friend tequila, then refilled our glasses.

“OK, so here what I thinking, and don’t stop me until I’m through,” Ava said. “I have a synthesizer and sound system. I buy it cheap from a continental who drink himself into an island stupor. Same old story. Anyway, I do a couple of solo gigs, getting my feet wet, but solo don’t do so good here. Katie, you and me, we sound goooood. More depth. More range. Plus, two hot chicks better than one. Four breasts, you know.”

Jacoby acted as if she’d said something profound and I spit margarita in a jet-propelled arc that hit the guy at the next table. Oops. But he was pickled, and didn’t notice.

There was no reason not to join musical forces with Ava. The point of studying music in college was the joy of making it. I thought of all the hours I’d spent in tiny soundproof rehearsal rooms with my voice professor at piano, a metronome beside me, and a music stand in front of me. Again, Katie. Round your mouth. Open your chest. I remembered the two best years of my life, of a standing bass, a snare drum, an electric keyboard, and a guitar, my lips against the microphone. It was so long ago. The only time I sang now was after three or four shots on karaoke night.

My throat tightened. The joy of making music. That was the subject of the last good conversation I’d had with Nick, back in Shreveport. I almost smiled as I recalled him talking about his high school garage band, Stingray. I had defended lead singers, a category of musician he defined as egomaniacal. By reflex, I looked for messages on my iPhone. Nope. As if. I was the one who’d deleted his last message, anyway. “Why not?” I said. “Sign me up.”

“Yay! We gonna be the toast of the island!” Ava said, and hugged me.

“Was that we gonna be toasted? Because I think I am already,” I said.

“Oh, hush you mouth,” Ava said.

So I was to be Eliza Doolittle, and Ava my mentor. I didn’t want to be another Ava, though. I could never out-Ava the real Ava. Everywhere she went, her ribald personality lit up the room and a horde of male admirers vied for her attention. I was the awkward one, the redheaded stepchild, too tall, too thin, too many angles. I needed my own shtick. I could do elegant as a foil to her sexy vamp, for instance. I knew my fine-boned features spoke of class, whether I had it or not. So I wouldn’t copy Ava, but I could certainly emulate her confidence and learn about the island music scene from her.

She began instructing me right away on the art of performing for slightly disinterested audiences, starting with the nearest one—Jacoby. She grabbed my margarita-free hand and pulled me to the square concrete stage. We stood under the peaked palm-frond roof and faced the ocean, and it roared its approval. Ava blocked out where she wanted us to stand, demonstrated a few easy dance steps, and explained how she sets the equipment up in relation to the microphones.

A giant of a man with unruly blond curls and effeminate tortoiseshell glasses at another table did a double take at us. His stare wasn’t admiring. He looked as if he was trying to decide whether to swat us with a flyswatter. His companion turned to look in our direction, and this time I was the one who did a double take. The investigator, Walker. He gave no indication he recognized us, just turned back to his basket of fries.

“Did you see Walker over there?” I asked Ava. “He’s with some big guy who was staring at us.”

Ava was singing below her breath and working on a step-ball-change-spin sequence of dance steps. “Just a second,” she said, holding up her hand and working her feet.

I waited five beats, then said, “Ava.”

“Yes, I with you. Now, what you say?” she asked.

“Do you see Walker over there?” I asked, and pointed over my shoulder with my thumb.

“Where?” she said, looking all around.

I turned back to where Walker and his large companion had been just moments ago. Empty.

“Oh, never mind. He’s gone.” I scanned the restaurant and the parking area. No sign of them. They’d certainly split fast. I’d ask Walker about it when I caught up with him, hopefully tomorrow.

Ava was unconcerned. “I giving you a songbook to study tonight, and you can sing a few with me at my gig tomorrow night,” she said.

“That soon?”

“Yah mon, nobody care if you read the words. We all chill here. It be fun.”

I stepped off the stage and put my head back. The sky was a blanket of stars now. I picked an extra bright one and made my wish: that things could always be as perfect as they were right now.

The next day, Ava woke me early. Too early. Wait, make that on time. Woops, I had forgotten to set my alarm. I lifted my head from the too-flat pillow on the couch. I hadn’t bothered to put on a bottom sheet. I shucked off the top one and swung my bare legs to the floor, smoothing with my hands my Phantom of the Opera nightshirt, a treasure from a long-ago trip to New York City with my mother. My head barely hurt. I congratulated myself on my decreased intake the night before. I could do this moderation thing.

Ava said, “We got more to learn, island girl. I gonna teach you things best done before the sun high in the sky. To Annalise!”

I dragged myself out to the truck behind Ava. I had promised to meet the contractors by 8:30 anyway. I drove like a mad thing, and we arrived at 8:40. I parked in the driveway and pressed both palms to my cheeks. The flesh on my face tingled as if it had fallen asleep. That’s what thirty minutes of violent bouncing on a St. Marcos road could do to a girl. I wondered if I could rig up some kind of a face bra so I wouldn’t end up with the jowls of a Great Dane. Still, we beat the contractors. That was all right. I hadn’t expected them to be on the early side of on time.

“So what are you teaching me today, Dr. Doolittle?” I asked Ava as we climbed out of the truck.

Ava reached into the truck bed.

“Close your eyes,” she said.

I did, with trepidation. In my experience, surprises don’t always end well.

“Tada!” Ava said. “Open your eyes. A housewarming present. You very own machete, which every good islander needs. Trust me.”

“Wow,” I said. I had no words. A six-inch black handle joined a two-foot wicked sharp blade, straight on one side and curved on the other. She handed it to me and I gripped the handle with both hands, holding the business end far away from me.

“Learn from the master,” she said, brandishing her own machete.

She crossed the lawn through a stand of trees and headed for the manjack and tan-tan bush my neighbors had come and gone through the day before. She swished the blade through the air and made solid contact on a large manjack. She repeated the move from the opposite direction once, twice, then three times more, and the bush hit the ground. She turned to me. “Just picture the face of someone you really hate, and whack it good. I imagining it the face of whoever cut Guy.”

She turned back around, ferocious, and attacked the bush. I knew she hadn’t loved Guy, but she had cared about him. He was good enough to her, in his own way, a way that was good enough for Ava. Like trying to get her the TV show. I didn’t like him much, but I mourned for her grief.

She wheeled back around. Her voice was tight. “I late getting there, you know, and if I been on time, ten minutes earlier, I be dead, too.”

“My God. I didn’t know.” Out of nowhere, the words came to my lips. “I’d met him, you know. Guy. I sat next to him on a plane. He was very nice. I’m so sorry, Ava.”

She nodded, then swung the machete at nothing, her body gyrating with the weight of the blade as she sliced it from one side of her to the other. Take that, air. And that. And that. I marveled at her physical strength as she exorcized her demons. Ava was definitely not the talk-out-your-problems kind of woman. But maybe her way of dealing with loss had its merits.

I hefted my own machete and went after the next bush. Whack. Whack. Whack. Ava stopped and eyed me critically, staying well clear of my blade. I rested, panting loudly. I was probably going to chop off my leg with the damn thing, and the bush looked no worse for my efforts. Ava nodded, then got back to work. I resumed whacking. We fell into a rhythm of sorts, my one chop to each of her three. Five minutes later, the small tan-tan tree—well, large bush—actually fell over. I set the machete down and beamed. I was the soon-to-be butt-kicking goddess of the St. Marcos rainforest, no doubt.

“Man, you whup that bush’s ass and good, girl,” Ava drawled. Five felled bushes lay behind her.

“Sure, laugh at me, but it’s all about the baby steps. Woman against forest.”

We walked back to the house through a stand of tamarind trees with thick trunks tangled with passion fruit vines. Rashidi had told us on our tour that the tennis-ball-sized passion fruits were pulpy and seedy, and had to be boiled and strained before you could eat them. The Peacock Flower had served sweetened passion fruit juice, and it was delicious. I plucked one and stuck it in my left shorts pocket, then added a few tamarind seedpods for good measure. I would try them both later.

When we got back to the Silverado, Ava said, “Keep that machete under the seat in your truck. Then you a for true island girl. Ready for anything.”

I shoved the machete under the seat, blade side in, handle toward the passenger side. I didn’t want a handful of ouch the first time I pulled it back out. I stood back up, straightening my pleated shorts. My Gap tee had long since come untucked, and I left it that way, but brushed the bugs and mud off my sweaty legs. What I wouldn’t give for a hose.

Ava excused herself to the optimal cell reception of the backyard pool, to call the manager of the club where she was singing that night. I heard the sound of heavy wheels turning fast on the gravel road. I pulled my iPhone from my shorts pocket and checked the time. It was 10:30. I frowned. I exited the garage, all set to meet Junior and discuss his tardiness, but saw Rashidi’s red Jeep instead.

He pulled to a stop, leaned across the interior, and opened his passenger’s side door. Out jumped a large black dog. Then a yellow one. And a brown one. They just kept coming and coming. Rashidi hadn’t just brought the troops, he’d brought an entire cavalry. He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him over the dogs.

The pack of yelping mutts milled around me. I hadn’t owned a dog since I was a child, and now I was counting five heads and five tails.

“My God, Rashidi, did you rob a pet store?” I said. “Why so many? I thought we said three or four?” I crouched down and rubbed the ears of a large yellow lab.

“A friend of mine moving back to the states, and his dogs need a home. I didn’t want to break them up, and they good dogs. But if they’re too much, we can find other homes for a few of them.”

Break up a family? “No, no. They should stay together. I can handle them.”
I think.

Rashidi introduced me to each of them, describing their histories and dispositions with familiarity. The alpha male of the group was Cowboy, a freakishly large yellow lab. The lead female was Sheila, a rottweiler mix who didn’t trust men and was skittish around everyone, but Rashidi promised she was sweet on the inside. There was a crotchety old dog named Jake, an awkward cocker spaniel/Dalmatian hybrid. Cockermatian, Rashidi called it. There were also two young females: Karma, a golden retriever, and Laila, a boxer named after Muhammad Ali’s boxing daughter.

“You sure you all right with them?” he asked.

“I’m sure. They’ll be great,” I said. They were. Great, and really slobbery. This would take some getting used to. Kind of like bugs in leg sweat and carpets of gungalos. But I had asked for this.

“Good. Because I got one more surprise for you.”

This was my day for surprises. Rashidi turned back to his Jeep and opened the driver’s door. He untied something, then made a huffing sound and snapped his fingers. He stood back and I saw that he was holding a leash. He gave it a tug.

A gorgeous black and tan German shepherd sprang out of the Jeep. He was a puppy, but a big puppy, with alert ears and ginormous paws. He held his head and tail high and trotted toward me in that singularly shepherd prance, a miniature show horse.

“This here Poco Oso. We going to make him your personal guard dog. A woman traveling about alone on the island need a big dog with her. He nine months old. A beaut’, isn’t he?”

I was on the ground by then, my hands deep in Poco Oso’s fur. “Oh, Rashidi, he’s perfect. I love him. Thank you. Thank you for all of them.” Oso was sniffing my hair and neck, and I let him take his time imprinting on my scent.

“Good, so where you go, he go. Get him used to his job. The rest the dogs dem stay here.”

“You’re awesome, Rashidi.” I meant it.

“So put in a good word for me with Ava now and then,” he said, his voice softer than before.

“Oh, Lord, Rashidi, not you, too?” I asked.

He shrugged and chuptzed himself.

Ava appeared from around the back of the house. “Good God, where all these wild animals come from?” She waded into their midst and rubbed one head after another. “Ah, I know you guys. These here were John Beillue’s dogs.”

A line of trucks came barreling up my driveway, as many as there were dogs. Lord have mercy, where would they all park? Junior was in the first truck, his snazzy midnight-blue Silverado again. A short wiry local man exited the passenger side. Junior bounded out to greet me.

“Ms. Katie, good morning, good morning, and a pleasant good day to you.” Junior’s smile stretched from ear to ear.

Mine didn’t. I couldn’t even choke out a fake good morning. “I’ve been out here for two hours waiting for you, Junior.”

“Oh, yeah, I sorry. I call to tell you we late, but no answer.”

I held up my iPhone. “No messages, no missed calls, and I’m in cell range. Maybe you should check the number you dialed. Or text me. It’s important to me that we can count on each other.” I put on my witness cross-exam face. “Next time, either be here when you tell me, or let me know. Then we’ll be fine.”

I trusted him less the further his grin spread across his face. “Yah mon, for true, we be fine.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it briefly. “I get the cleaning crew started while this mon look at the ’lectrixity and the plumber see to his business.”

Not great, but good enough.

Ava broke in. “We haven’t been introduced.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Ava, this is Junior. Junior, this is Ava.”

“Very nice to meet you,” Junior said. His eyes gleamed, of course, as he took Ava in.

“Pleasure,” Ava said politely.

It was time for me to leave if I was going to track down Walker before I picked up Emily.

“I’ll see you later, then, Junior,” I said. Farewells rang out from all sides.

Ava and I walked to my truck, Rashidi behind us, Oso behind him. Rashidi leaned in the passenger side once Ava and I were seated.

“Don’t forget your guard dog,” he said.

Ava opened her door and Oso climbed in. He snuggled down between Ava and me on the bench seat and Rashidi handed Ava his leash. I stroked Oso’s luxurious fur, loving how soft he was.

“Good boy, Oso,” I said.

“I stay out here just to keep an eye on t’ings for another hour or so. I see you ladies later.” Rashidi saluted and backed away.

Oso had already put his head down on the seat. We drove out slowly, honking the rest of the dogs out of the way. I made a right turn out of the dirt driveway onto the gravel road, and we passed the ramshackle wooden shanties in the village of Rasta squatters a few yards down the lane from Annalise. All the times I’d passed it before, the old patriarch and at least a few of his kids or grandkids and their pets were milling about. Today, it was quiet. A woman’s flowered housedress still hung on the line. Plastic Coca-Cola bottles and Cheerios boxes littered the ground and the stink of garbage still hung in the air. But no people, no animals.

Ava teased, “White lady move into the mansion down the street, and old Rasta man say, ‘There go the neighborhood.’”

“That was pretty funny, Ava.”

“Yah mon,” she said. “I funny.”

Actually, for across-the-street neighbors, I would rather have a shanty village of peaceful Rastas than empty shacks. It was definitely something to keep an eye on.