Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise Book 1) (7 page)

The next morning, I luxuriated in my 1000-thread-count sheets, savoring the decadence of getting up late and eating a room-service breakfast in bed. Not to mention tucking in early and waking up without a headache begging for an emergency glass of water with Alka-Seltzer Plus. My tummy was getting full, but I didn’t let that stop me. I cut another bite of Eggs Benedict and speared it from the top with my fork, dragging the layers of goodness through creamy hollandaise before I placed it in my mouth and let the flavors sink into my tongue. I chewed slowly, reverently. If I’d been a dog, I would have rolled in it. When I was done with it, my plate looked sparkly clean.

I’d saved the parfait dish of mango and papaya for dessert. It reminded me of the trees I’d seen the day before. As I scooped fruit into my mouth, I took stock of my trip so far. While I’d struck out with the police, I’d hired Walker to look into my parents’ death. I hadn’t had a drink in more than twenty-four hours. I was holding my Nick pining to a minimum. I’d had fun and made friends. Truly, by anyone’s account, I was pulling myself together. Collin would be pleased.

Probably it would be best, then, if I didn’t call and tell him I was bewitched by a big jumbie house named Annalise, right?

I picked up my phone and dialed.

“Island Realtors, Doug speaking, may I help you.” He made a statement rather than asked a question. The fast voice and heavy New Jersey accent surprised me.

I introduced myself, then got right to it. “I saw a property with your company’s For Sale sign. I want to take a look at it,” I explained.

“OK. Which property interests you here on our fair island?”

“It’s one I saw on a rainforest hike. It’s called Estate Annalise.”

“Well, certainly a spectacular place,” he said in the same tone he would have used if I’d just told him that little green men from Mars were taking over St. Marcos. “Will your husband be joining us?”

“It’s just me,” I said. Asshole, I didn’t say.

“Have you considered any other properties? We have some lovely condos on the east end of the island. Very popular with the continentals. It’s a real community out there.”

This man rubbed my fur in the wrong direction. He also was steering me, without saying it directly, to the white end of the island, something I’d learned from Ava’s commentary as we drove across the island to Baptiste’s Bluff. All roads to Annalise went through the listing agent, though, so I tamped down my irritation.

“Annalise is the only property I want to see. When are you available for a showing?”

“I’m rather flexible today,” he said. The hunger of an island realtor in off-season was lurking below the surface of his comment.

“Great, I’d love to go as soon as possible.”

Since I’d “met” Annalise the day before, I couldn’t quit thinking about her. I woke up again and again during the night, my circadian rhythm thrown off tempo by the unforgettable house, the tropical Wuthering Heights. In one of my middle-of-the-night wakeups I had a vivid dream that was more like a memory. It was my own Heathcliff in Annalise. He seemed right at home as he cooked pasta in a finished kitchen that was a far sight from the current dung-filled shell. The woman I had seen on the front steps of Annalise sat on a stool at a breakfast bar, as if waiting for Nick to serve her. I was frustrated. What was Nick doing at Annalise in my dreams? I didn’t want the house tainted with thoughts of him.

But Nick was nowhere in my thoughts today. Just Annalise. I promised myself I was simply going to take another look at her. A harmless excursion. Something to fill my empty vacation day. I was delusional like that sometimes.

Doug the realtor picked me up at the Peacock Flower at one o’clock, greeting me like a long-lost best friend. His brown hair was still wet from a shower, and he had a speck of shaving cream on his cheek. This man lived alone. I climbed into his dented Range Rover, adjusted my floppy straw hat and brand-new Sloop Jones short tank dress, and pulled the shoulder strap across my body, pausing before I buckled. What in the name of God was that noise coming from the stereo speakers? Kenny G? I shuddered delicately and decided it would be too rude to ask him to turn it off. I would soldier on.

Doug pointed us toward the rainforest and started to talk about his relocation to the island from “Jersey.” “Are you considering a permanent move here, Katie?”

“I haven’t decided,” I said.

Doug kept talking. My resistance to him grew. I should have called Rashidi and asked him to meet us out there. I tried to tune Doug’s voice out, but when I did it made me more aware of Kenny G. I knew my aversion to Doug and Kenny was absurd. My mother’s teachings haunted me. I dug deep for my Southern charm and put it on a cheerful autopilot, muttering “uh huh” and “you don’t say” whenever he took a breath. But seriously, this could drive me back to rum punch. No wonder he didn’t have anyone around to tell him to wipe the shaving cream from his face.

We took a different route to Annalise than the ones I’d driven with Ava and in Rashidi’s tour shuttle, and it was eye-opening. At the base of the rainforest, we passed through a low-rent area where families lived in one-room masonry homes, which Doug explained were made of cement-filled cinder blocks covered in stucco. Sometimes stone, in other places, but not here. Curtains hung over the doors and window openings. The houses stood side by side next to run-down bars. I looked at the name above the door on one of the bars as we passed: the Christmas Bar. Were they only open one day a year? It didn’t appear so. Patrons were lounging in the doorway and it was late August. And one o’clock in the afternoon.

Past the neighborhood was a sleepy little cement factory, fully operational, it appeared. As we left it behind us, the road inclined steeply into the mountains. The twists and turns were harrowing. The thick trees crowded in from both sides of the road, their leafy branches reaching for us and pushing us toward the middle. On hairpin turns, I couldn’t see if another vehicle was careening dead-center down as we climbed dead-center up. My heart beat with hummingbird’s wings every time we rounded a blind left-hand curve. I closed my eyes and prayed silently.

We slowed to a near halt as we came upon a dumpy-looking restaurant, a dilapidated shack under a palm-frond-roofed patio. The chairs and tables were flimsy white plastic. Several filthy dogs lounged among them. On the other side of the patio, the roof extended further to the elevated bathrooms, which made them almost a focal point for the diners. Nice.

“That’s the Pig Bar,” Doug explained. “Great food, and they serve a local drink with exotic herbs called Mamawanna. Supposedly, if she drink it, it make mamawanna. You know?” He winked.

Yuck.

“Do you want to stop and check it out?” he asked.

“No, thank you.” I was itchy to get to Annalise. Still, I was curious, and asked, “Do they serve pork, or what?”

“Huh? Oh, the name? No, the owner named the bar after the giant beer-drinking pigs that live next to it. For two bucks, you can put a non-alcoholic beer into the mouth of a smelly, slobbery three-hundred-pound swine. Quite a spectacle.”

“Why non-alcoholic?” I asked.

“They used to give them Budweisers, but the pigs were dying of liver disease.”

Ah. I suspected this was more an economic than an animal rights decision, based on the stories Rashidi had told yesterday of dog- and cock-fighting on-island, recreational events he urged us to avoid. The whole Pig Bar thing was odd, yet curiously appealing. I filed it in my list of places to check out later as we turned onto another road.

“We’re almost there,” Doug said. He dodged, as best he could, potholes the size of the Rover. The craters made it even harder to stay on the correct side of the road.

But the stressful drive was worth it. To our left, Annalise burst into view. She was not quite as isolated as she had appeared yesterday when we hiked to her from the other direction. There were a handful of houses within a mile of her, respectable homes.

Then, just yards before her driveway, we passed a cluster of ramshackle huts. Dogs and kids ran between the dwellings. I saw a few adults, all with long dreadlocks, the women wearing theirs wrapped in low figure eights on the backs of their heads. Oh my.

Doug caught my expression and grinned. “Rasta village. They’re squatters. The owner of the property doesn’t seem to mind. They’re the closest neighbors to Estate Annalise.”

“Interesting,” I said. And then I laughed aloud.

Doug shot me a look.

“They add to the charm,” I told him.

He raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He pulled into the driveway leading to the house and parked the Rover, and I shot out of the car, a runner from her starting blocks. There was a charge in the air, as if Annalise was thrumming with excitement, too. I checked for a connection, and my iPhone again found a signal. Annalise perched atop a high hill, and when I did a 360-degree inspection, I spotted a cell tower. Yet another comforting sign of civilization in this remote location.

I texted Collin and Emily. “Abt to spend my inheritance on a house here & never come back.”

Collin replied, “Be sure it has a guest room for me & my lady friends.”

Emily responded, “Liar. You’d miss me too much.”

I laughed. If they knew I was really with a realtor looking at a house, they’d flip. More so if they could actually see
this
house. I snapped a quick picture from an angle that included the dilapidated Island Realty sign and included it with my next text.

“I can get this one for a steal.”

“Just don’t be calling me for cheap labor,” wrote Collin.

“Very funny. Call me later. I want to hear abt the spa, beach, & men,” Emily said.

One quick text to Nick? To break the ice between us, perhaps? No, no, no. I would not falter. Maybe before I would have included him, but not anymore.

Doug gave me my second grand tour, but Rashidi’s had been much better. I picked Doug’s brain as we walked the grounds.

“What would it cost to finish a place like this out?” I asked.

“Depends on whether you go Fifth Avenue or Harlem. Whatever you do, take your estimate and double it. It’s hard to get anything done here, even worse if you’re not local.”

This jived with Ava’s Island Success101 speech.

We continued our tour. I think Doug expected me to pack it in when the walk-through was over. No such luck for him. I clambered through the house and grounds with Doug in my wake three times over the next hour and a half. Doug glanced at his watch and checked his phone.

“Do you mind if I step to the driveway to make a call?” he asked.

“No problem,” I said. In fact, I preferred it.

I wandered around to the backyard, where the butt of the concrete pool jutted out of the earth and ten feet into space. I decided to rough out what it would take to finish Annalise’s build-out. Searching my purse for scratch paper, I pulled out the envelope from my last expense reimbursement check. That would do. I straddled the slanted concrete pool coping with the envelope in front of me on its grainy surface. I scribbled cramped notes in pencil on the work needed to make Annalise livable. The pencil traced the bumps of all the pebbles under the paper, making my writing wavery and old lady-ish.

The notes turned into a work list. My thoughts ran toward flooring and wall colors, although I did my best to step back further to the necessities of plumbing, electricity, and Sheetrock. My parents had built a house fifteen years ago, and they had talked enough about it around me that some of it stuck. Then, beside each item on the work list, I summed up rough cost estimates. I multiplied by two, then crossed it out and replaced it with a multiple of three.

It was a lot of work, but doable. For someone. Maybe even for me. One advantage of my workaholic life in Dallas—partner in a successful law practice, no kids—was my big, fat stash of cash. Add to that the life insurance I received when my parents died, and, well, I was in good shape. One and a half million dollars’ worth of good shape. If money were the only issue, I could do this. But did I want to? Could I leave Dallas and everyone there behind and start over here, at Annalise?

Thump.

A perfect mango rolled to a stop at my toes, which were bare in the Reef sandals I’d stolen back from Ava. I leaned over and snatched it up. The backyard was treeless. I looked around. No humans. No animals. No other mangoes on the ground.

What the hell? “If that was you, Annalise, do it again.”

Thump. Mango number two.

The second mango came from the direction of the house, but up high. I whipped around and saw her standing on the partial balcony outside the master suite. Her. The woman I had seen yesterday and in my dream of the house last night. She was crouching, one knee down and an elbow on the other knee, her skirt loose and puddling the ground around her. She held a mango in her right hand.

I whispered, “Holy Mother of God. You’re real. Or I’m delusional. Or both.”

I heard Doug on the phone, his voice growing louder. I glanced in his direction. When I returned my eyes to the balcony, the woman was gone.

“I am delusional,” I said.

Thump. Mango number three.

This one seemed to drop straight down from thin air at waist height. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. The air quickened in a light way, a joyous way. Was I making the jumbie happy? It seemed so. But I wasn’t going to buy this house to please a spirit.

“I can’t do this, Annalise. This isn’t my real life. It’s not logical. I like you and all, but you’re kind of pricey for a delusion.”

Except that my real life wasn’t all that great. I worked in a profession that didn’t thrill me. I desperately needed to sever my emotional tether to Nick, and I craved an escape from the lingering humiliation I’d carried with me since Shreveport. My parents weren’t in Dallas anymore. In fact, I felt closer to them here than I had in the last year. And I hadn’t had so much as a sip of alcohol since I stepped foot on this piece of property. What was keeping me in my old life, then? I couldn’t come up with one damn thing other than the comfort and familiarity of habit. My life as an old fuzzy house slipper. How appealing.