Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise Book 1) (17 page)

After securing Oso in my bedroom so he would leave Elvis in peace, the three of us struck out for The Lighthouse on the boardwalk in Town, where Ava was booked that night. The Lighthouse was a restaurant and bar with a small stage. The open-air eating area faced a courtyard where anyone could stop for some chat or a dance. The bar was cattycorner to the restaurant. The music varied during the week, but the owners brought in a steelpan band on Sundays, so brunch there was a real treat.

Emily and I chilled with ceviche and Red Stripes while Ava set up and then warmed up the crowd. A Caribbean beer seemed like the choice a controlled drinker would make early in the evening. About ten minutes into her set, Ava motioned me up to join her. Butterflies attacked my stomach, but I lifted my chin and marched to my spot.

Ava wore a fire-engine red tube dress, a good contrast to my zebra-print wrap sundress. Her hair was down, curls gone wild. Mine was scooped into a clip from which it spilled in a waterfall. Ava had matched her nails and lips to her dress; I went for earthier tones that wouldn’t clash with my hair.

“We look like Lil Mama and,” she studied me, “that
Gilligan’s Island
chick, Tina Louise.”

Tina Louise. She was elegant, right? “Who’s Lil Mama?” I asked.

Ava handed me the open songbook. “Never mind. You ready?”

I took it from her. “Not hardly, but I’ll do it anyway.” I gulped air like I had gills.

Ava hit Play on the background music for the next song. The first notes of a Macy Gray number played, and my mind went blank of the words. I read them quickly from the page. I could do this. I’d been singing in front of people since high school, just usually with an entire choir or at least a jazz ensemble to back me.

I came in on the right beat and the right note. A good start. I leaned into the music with Ava, and within seconds I was singing for the pure joy of it, and time flew by. Songs ended, people clapped, and then we’d do it again. The bartender sent free drinks between every song. I opted for a dry white wine, since I was taking it slow and it wasn’t late yet. Moderation in all things, I reminded myself, and  I declined every other offer of a drink. This new lifestyle really worked for me.

Before it seemed possible, it was time for the break between sets. Emily came to the stage to meet us as we came off. She was having a blast, basking in the reflected glory of our modest success. She cornered me, and the glint in her eyes concerned me.

“The good-looking guy over there, see him?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“Don’t be difficult.”

“I’ll try.”

“He wants to meet you.”

“Out of the question.”

“Don’t be a butthead. Come on.”

“Absolutely not.”

Emily pouted, then punched. “So, is your spontaneous combustion enough for you? Do you still have that to keep you company at night?”

Never tell Emily anything you want to forget later.

“None of your business, Miss Nosey Posey.”

And, yes, if I was completely truthful, Nick still visited me in my dreams. Not that I owed anyone the truth. I didn’t answer her.

She pressed on. “Katie, it’s time for you to meet a flesh and blood man. And do a little mattress dancin’.”

“Don’t even go there. I have zero interest. Besides, tourists are looking to get laid and leave. It’s a well-known fact, Emily. I am hereby establishing a strict no-tourist rule.”

I knew immediately from the smug look on her face that I was in trouble. “So if he wasn’t a tourist you’d meet him?”

I wasn’t going to get out of this. Emily was dogged. “A short, supervised conversation with him before we go back on, and nothing more. If he’s not a tourist.”

“He’s not a tourist! He lives here. He’s a chef.” She chortled.

“Gloating does not become you,” I sniffed, but she didn’t hear me. She was off to fetch Chef Boyardee.

I glanced at my watch. Only five blessedly short minutes until I could end the conversation and go back onstage. I busied myself reading Ava’s next set list and marking the songs in my notebook. If I was going to read the words, at least I wouldn’t be frantically flipping pages.

Emily and the chef returned. At least he wasn’t in a cooking smock and pants, I thought, and patted my cheeks which were surprisingly numb. In fact, he was dressed normally in a moss-green crewneck shirt and matching plaid shorts. Topsiders and a brown belt. He was attractive, if you were into chiseled features, blue eyes, and short blond hair. Emily introduced him as Bart Lassiter, and he was a nice guy, if you were into charming, successful men who went out of their way to flatter you. He was head chef at Fortuna’s. The last place my parents went, before . . . before they didn’t get to go anywhere else.

“Born and raised in Missouri. A flyover state. It took this long to save enough money to fly out of there. I got here less than two years ago,” he explained.

“Texas,” I said. “Just off the boat, two days on-island.”

Emily jumped in. “Katie’s a lawyer. One of the best in Texas.”

Even though I had no intention of dating Bart, I decided to edit Emily’s comment. Collin had explained my mysterious guy-repelling power many times: everyone hates attorneys, especially female attorneys. Plus, there was my McZillion debacle. “On sabbatical. Right now I’m a house remodeler and a backup singer.”

“A big-ass half-finished house in the rainforest,” Emily said, showing the effects of a few too many Red Stripes. “With a jumbie, whatever the hell that is.” I would throttle her later. And Ava for telling her about the jumbie.

“The one up near Baptiste’s Bluff?”

“Yes, that’s it,” I said. Annalise was famous, it seemed.

“Yeah, I know it. I’ve admired it from afar. My dad’s an architect, so I have a genetic fascination with architecture and construction.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back. “Hey, I’m off tomorrow. Could I bring you out some lunch? I’d love to look around, or even lend a hand. It’s an interesting house, at least from afar.”

“Oh, wow, some other time,” I tried to say.

“Perfect,” Emily interrupted. Forget throttle. That wasn’t a painful enough way to die. “We’ll be there. It’s my first time to see it, too. This is going to be great!”

Ava broke in, back from the bar with three fresh drinks balanced between her hands. “What be great?”

I took two of the drinks from her and gave one to Emily. They were light orange, with something brown sprinkled on their surface. I sipped. Yum. I sipped again. Orangey, coconutty, rummy. Which was fine, because it was late enough for liquor now. “What are these, Ava? They’re delicious.”

“Painkillers. Go easy on them. Who this, what I miss, and answer my first damn question.”

Miss Crankypants. What was up with her?

“Ava, this is Bart. Bart, Ava.” Emily used her company manners. “Bart is a chef at Fortuna’s’s, and he’s bringing us lunch at Annalise tomorrow.”

Ava’s forehead wrinkled. “Bart Something-or-Other? Fortuna’s chef? That not what I hear. I hear new guy Bart
own
the place. Am I right?” she asked Bart.

Bart inclined his head. An admission.

Ava steamrolled on. “Who he bringing lunch to? Us? He don’t know no us. If a man bring lunch, there ain’t no us.” She was talking as if he wasn’t there, then addressed him directly. “Which one of us you after, Bart?”

Aha. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? I covered my smile with my cup. So that’s what had her dander up. Ava had a great deal of confidence about men, but it was hard to blame her. She based it on experience. My resistance to Bart had slipped a little, especially now that I realized I had Ava’s goat. The mirror was telling her someone else was fairest in the land, even if only for a moment. I took another slug of painkiller.

Bart’s cheeks splotched with pink. “Nice to meet you, Ava.”

“Nobody giving me a straight answer,” Ava complained.

“He asked me to introduce him to Katie,” Emily said. “So . . .”

“Hunh,” Ava said. She looked over at me. Grudgingly she said, “Well, she kinda cute.” Then Ava grinned. “For a red-haired man-hater. You’re a brave man, Bart. I like that. I gonna be there for that lunch. You be needing lots of help.”

“Avaaaaa,” I said, but the other three were laughing, which turned into chatting, and then into time to go back to the stage, ten minutes late, and only because the manager was standing onstage and tapping his wrist, where he would have worn a wristwatch if he weren’t in the islands.

Bart sat with Emily the rest of the night. Two other men joined them, presumably his friends. I sensed Bart’s eyes on me, and I kept mine anywhere but on him. He was likeable. Handsome. His sparkly eyes were cute when he looked at me, as if he were interested. In me. Maybe he would be good for me. For my self-confidence. I didn’t have to fall in love with him to let him bring us lunch.

So what was this resistance inside me about? It felt almost like guilt. Like I was cheating on my own feelings, feelings for someone dark, sensitive, and difficult, someone far away that I couldn’t have.

I let Bart catch my eye, and he smiled at me. It was a nice smile. I’d come to St. Marcos to escape the feelings that were sabotaging my life. I told the reluctant Katie to damn well smile back at him, and she did.

Emily’s moaning woke me up. Her first morning on St. Marcos was painful because of all the painkillers she drank the night before. She had stumbled from her temporary sleeping quarters on the living room couch and into my bedroom, all of ten steps away, her face white as the powdery sand on Turtle Beach. It was my first night on my new futon, and I’d hoped to sleep a little while longer. I turned toward the wall.

“Help,” she said, and flopped onto the futon beside me. “Someone poisoned me.”

“Her name is Emily. I’ll beat her up for you, if you’d like,” I said, my words muffled by the pillow I partially buried my face in. Waves of pain were pounding my head like a mallet to a bass drum.
Yeah, right, painkillers.
“I think she’s the same Emily who was too drunk to figure out how to get out of the back seat of my truck last night.”

Emily ignored my comment. “Is it safe to drink the water?” she croaked.

“Ugh. Ava,” I yelled. “Ava!”

“Ain’t no Ava here. Go away,” Ava’s voice answered.

“Ava, did you get that frog problem fixed? Emily wants some water.”

“If Ava here, she’d tell you to hush your mouth. Drink or don’t drink. If you hurtin’, frogs don’t matter.”

“Frog problem?” Emily asked. “What does that mean?”

“Infested cistern. I recommend bottled water. Which we don’t have.” Bottled water meant waking up and driving to the store. Oso whined to go out. The whole universe had aligned against me. Might as well give in to my fate. “Shit.” I shoved Emily toward the edge of the futon. “Uppy uppy.”

I met Ava coming out the door to her bedroom, and Oso ran into the back of my legs.

“I make eggs. It the only cure,” she said.

“I’ll run out for bottled water. Do we need anything else?”

“Probably. My head hurt too bad to think,” Ava said.

“Serves you right for giving us painkillers.”

Half an hour later, Ava and I tag-teamed Emily, who was sitting with her face in her hands at the dining table, her shellacked bed head sky-high and flattened on one side. She had changed from her drawstring Easter-plaid sleep pants and matching white sleep shirt into more plaid, this time darker blues and reds, on her walking shorts. The shirt appeared to be the one she’d spent the night in.

“Eat the scrambled eggs. I not feeling sorry for you this afternoon when you puny,” Ava said. How Ava had managed to pull herself together and cook breakfast while I was gone was a mystery. She had her false eyelashes and black eyeliner on, and she was working what the good Lord gave her in a stretchy blue denim miniskirt and matching vest that snapped up the front, opened strategically down to there while the skirt rode her thighs up to there, and nipped in at the waist to emphasize her barely contained bana. I was worn out just looking at her.

“We’re not stopping for food,” I warned Emily.

“I can’t,” she wailed.

Ava tsk-tsked. “I told you go easy on the painkillers.”

“I should have listened.” Emily put her head down on her folded forearm. Her voice was muffled. “It was worth it, though. Sort of.”

I set her breakfast down in front of Oso, who had already polished off his kibble. He wolfed the eggs down and wagged his tail, snuffling around the kitchen floor looking for more.

“Time to head out, hangover or not,” I said. I didn’t feel so hot either, truth be told. I had pulled out all the stops before I went to the store just so Emily wouldn’t notice. My hair was in a high, bouncy ponytail. My makeup was light but sufficient to camouflage the dark circles. And my outfit was perky cute: a white sundress with a narrow waist, and some white thong sandals. I wanted Emily to see that the new me had myself in hand, that she wouldn’t have to cover for Katie anymore. Hopefully she’d pass that nugget of information along to Collin, too. Plus there was always the chance that Bart would show up today with a hammer and a picnic basket. Meanwhile, this homeowner had work to do. “I have to see if Junior Samples and crew got to work at a decent hour.” It was nearly ten.

“I gonna catch up with you later,” Ava said.

I turned toward her. “But you don’t have a car.”

“No big t’ing,” she said. “I see you soon-ish.”

Ava somehow got around just fine bumming rides. What she did not do was walk. Anywhere. Not that her house was close enough to Town to make it feasible, but still, she didn’t use her feet to cover the one mile between one end of downtown and the other if she could help it. It got in the way of her sexy, impractical footwear. Her cork-bottomed white platform sandals were a case in point.

Emily did a mini push-up as she stood, leaving her head and torso on the table as long as she could. She grabbed her purse.

“You have a swimsuit, towel, and sunscreen?” I asked her.

“No, why? Do I need it?”

“Always. You’re on vacation. On an island. I’ll get you a towel.”

Ava grabbed sunscreen off her kitchen cabinet. She had informed me the first time we walked the beaches together that she never went out without it. “I black, but I still burn, and I sure don’t want no skin cancer like my grandmother had. Or pruney skin before my time.”

“Here.” Ava tossed it to Emily.

Emily bobbled it, but managed to hang on. “Thanks.”

She walked stiff-legged out of the room, groaning as she did, and returned seconds later clutching a bikini. She stuffed sunscreen and the bathing suit into the beach bag I held open for her. I’d already packed hats and bug spray. We were so prepared we were practically Girl Scouts. If Girl Scouts slammed endless painkillers until two a.m.

Off we went. Or, at least, off Oso and I went while Emily fell asleep in the truck with her head bouncing against the window. Ouch. I had loaded a cooler of bottled water in the back, and I would make sure Emily drank a lot of it. Weren’t the tables turned between us today, though, I thought.

I had to give Emily a little shoulder shake to get her attention when Annalise came into view. She rubbed her eyes and swayed, then leaned across me to get a better look out the driver’s side window. She gazed at the view across the valley of mango trees and up the manjack-covered hill to Queen Annalise at the summit, surrounded by her royal court of fruit trees.

“Holy shit. I can’t believe you live there.”

“Just a couple of months and I totally will.”

“It’s stunning. Wild and beautiful.” She turned to me. “And isolated. Are you scared, city girl? I mean, to live out here by yourself?”

I knew that Emily had grown up on a ranch, and I doubted living alone at Annalise would have fazed her. But was I scared? I probed and found no traces of fear. “No, I don’t think so. I’m more scared of missing this chance, if that makes sense. I think this place and I are meant for each other.”

“Good for you. This isn’t at all what I expected. You’re going country like me, and I love it. Very courageous.”

For some reason, I shrank from her praise. An image of every drink I’d had in the three days since I’d come back popped into my head. My conscience whispered to me, “You’re still hiding from something, courageous one.” Still, I had kept myself under control. This was the new me, and I was doing fine.

I just said, “Thanks, Emily,” and left it at that.

We rounded the corner to the long driveway and pointed the truck’s nose toward the house, which from this vantage point looked two-story, her third level carved into the hillside and hidden from the front and side-approach views. Her multi-leveled red metal roof absorbed the sun. The windows on the near side ranged from finished white-paned double glass, to broken versions of the same, to empty concrete squares like the doors. A sheet of plywood covered the middle window to a bathroom in the upper story. Four vehicles were crowding the dirt parking area that would someday soon be a real concrete driveway on the near side of Annalise. Junior’s truck was not one of them. I didn’t recognize any of the cars, for that matter.

When I made the offer on Annalise, Doug had told me that I needed a contractor with “the right connections.” That roughly translated into someone who knew how to get people to approve government permits, come to work, stay at work, work while they were there, and not steal. Usually, anyway. So far, Junior had failed to get people here on time and to be here himself, and we were only on day two. But he could be on Annalise-related business elsewhere. Maybe.

“So does this jumbie thing Ava told me about mean your house is haunted?” Emily asked.

I readjusted the neckline of my sleeveless white sundress. “Not haunted in the Amityville Horror sense of the word. I think she has a jumbie, like Ava told you. It’s kind of a voodoo thing here.”

Emily laughed. “Voodoo? The tropical sun has fried your brain.”

I rubbed the soft spots behind Oso’s ears. I’d thought the same thing a few weeks before.

I parked fifteen feet from the row of cars and we disembarked into the middle of a canine convention. They sniffed Oso, soaking in the scents of his adventures from the road. Emily’s painkiller pale had subsided and she crooned to the dogs. I knew this because I saw her lips move. I didn’t actually hear her. Music coming from inside the house was drowning her out. The sound of men’s laughter rose above the music.

Emily and I walked through the side door and into the future kitchen, which of course didn’t look anything like a kitchen yet. We were met by the sight of the workers—who were supposed to be plastering the walls with bleach and water—lounging on the kitchen floor smoking ganja. They were the ones plastered, not the walls. They jumped up and stubbed out their joints when they saw me.

Several of them mumbled at once, “Good morning, Ms. Connell, good morning,” pronouncing my name with an emphasis on the second syllable. Then they fled.

I saw red, and yellow, and orange. So this was what I was expected to pay for when I wasn’t here? Obviously, they hadn’t heard me pull up. Not a surprise in the state they were in, and with Sean Paul’s “Temperature” blaring out of the boom box.

Emily turned to me and whispered, “They’re stoned out of their minds.”

“Yeah, and it’s only their second day,” I said.

Day two! I was getting madder by the second. I knew I should take this up with Junior, not these guys. But where the hell was Junior?

“I’m sorry, Em, but I need to handle this. Would you mind taking a look around by yourself while I make some calls?”

Emily’s hair had fallen a bit and no longer had the side-heavy look from the morning. She was again the picture of competence and aplomb. She agreed, already unsnapping her camera case. She would probably tile my patio and still have time to train all my unruly dogs to fetch and roll over. I knew I didn’t need to worry about her.

I stalked off and fumed. Junior didn’t answer either number I had for him. I left a voicemail on his cell. I kept it brief, but colorfully clear. As I had asked of him, I followed it up with an abbreviated version by text.

I walked back into the kitchen. Emily had moved on, but the workers were back, standing together. The oldest-looking one, who was probably only twenty-five, stepped forward.

“We got a problem with the work, Ms. Connell,” he said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Bees dem in the big room, where we put the scaffolding yesterday. We can’t clean there or bees dem get us.” He added, “We told your friend not to go there.”

“Bees?” I’d heard it all now. I didn’t like bees, either, but these were grown men.

“Yah mon, for true.” He looked sincere. Or maybe he just looked stoned.

“Show me,” I said.

His eyes widened. “You don’t wanna go in there, miss.”

Yes, yes I did. “We don’t have to get close. Just show me. What’s your name?”

“Egbert,” he said. “People dem call me Egg.”

“Lead the way, Egg.”

I followed Egg around the corner and into the great room, which had been partially transformed by scaffolding that went thirty feet into the air, its pipes extending in all directions like circuitry in a supercomputer.

“Where are the bees?” I asked him.

“In the fireplace,” he said, nodding to the far side of the room. I started toward it and Egg grabbed my arm. He shook his head. Good grief.

“Egg,” I said. But he leaned over and picked up a horse puck. As in manure, with his bare hand, and we had no soap and water. I stifled my urge to hurl. He threw it at the fireplace and stepped back quickly.

A horrible humming sound erupted from the fireplace, followed by first a few, then hundreds of bees. Big bees. Loud bees. A swarm of bees moving as one toward us.