Whispers and Lies (17 page)

“You
are
an idiot,” Bettye McCoy muttered, not quite under her breath.

I couldn’t believe my ears. “What did you say?”

“I said you’re an idiot,” Bettye McCoy repeated brazenly. “First you chase poor Cedric out of your yard with a broom, and now you accuse Corky of pooping on your precious sidewalk. You know what you need, don’t you?”

“Suppose you tell me.”

“Get a man, lady, and stop picking on my dogs!”

“Keep them off my property or I’ll lay them flat,” I countered, our voices bouncing off the trees, echoing through the leaves. From out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alison and her brother walking up the street.

“Terry!” Alison rushed to my side.

“What’s going on here?” Lance asked, trying to keep the bemusement in his eyes from spreading to the rest of his face.

“The woman’s a lunatic,” Bettye McCoy shouted, already in retreat.

“She wouldn’t clean up after her dog,” I said, understanding how hopeless I must sound.

“Her dog did this?” Lance pointed to the dog feces he’d narrowly missed stepping in.

I nodded, then watched in shock as he scooped the offending dog poo into his hands, then hurled it, with stunning accuracy, at Bettye McCoy’s head. It splattered against her blond hair, clinging to the back of her head, like mud.

Bettye McCoy stopped, her shoulders rising around her ears as she spun around to face us, her face mirroring the openmouthed amazement of my own.

“You better close your mouth,” Lance warned. “There might be more.”

“You’re all crazy,” Bettye McCoy stammered, backing up and getting entwined in the dogs’ leashes, almost losing her balance, then bursting into tears. “All of you.”

We watched as she extricated herself from the dogs’ leashes, a small turd dropping from her hair to her right
shoulder, then falling toward the ground, landing on the toe of one red shoe. A final outraged squeal escaped Bettye McCoy’s lips as she kicked off her shoes, gathered one yapping dog under each arm, then ran to the end of the block and disappeared.

“Think she’ll call the police?” Alison asked.

“Oh, I don’t think she’d want to chance this story making the rounds.” I looked at Lance, who was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. Had he really picked up a dog turd with his bare hands and hurled it at my tormentor? My hero, I thought with a laugh. “Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

We returned to the house in silence. “How was dinner?” I asked before I went inside.

“Not nearly as exciting as what was going on here,” Alison said. “God, I can’t leave you alone for a minute. Speaking of which, have you decided about tomorrow?”

I smiled, then laughed out loud. “What time do you want me to be ready?”

L
ance knocked on my kitchen door at ten minutes after noon the following day. He was all in black; I was all in white. We looked like opposing pawns on a chessboard. “I thought you said eleven o’clock,” I said, trying to keep my mother out of my voice.

“Slept in,” he said without apology. “You ready to go?”

“Where’s Alison?”

“Still in bed. Migraine.”

“Oh, no! Is she all right?”

“Should be fine in a few hours.”

A verbal minimalist, I decided, watching his eyes swallow my kitchen whole. “I better go check.”

“Not necessary.” Lance grabbed my floppy straw bag from the kitchen table, slung it over my shoulder. “Alison instructed me to take you to lunch, said she’ll join us as soon as she can stand up straight.”

“I think I should check on her first,” I protested,
remembering how sick Alison had been with her last migraine, but Lance was already ushering me out the door, guiding me away from the cottage and around the side of the house.

“She’ll be fine,” he said, giving my elbow an extra squeeze as we reached the street. “Stop worrying.”

“I just don’t feel right about going.”

“Come on. It’ll give us a chance to get better acquainted.”

I looked up and down the sun-soaked street. Shadows, like puddles, spilled across the road from the high trees. Waves of heat, like ocean surf, rolled up from the pavement. Several houses down, a large snowy egret stood, straight and still as stone, on a manicured front lawn. “Anywhere in mind?”

“The Everglades?”

“What!”

“Just joking. Nature’s not my thing. Thought we’d try Elwood’s. We can walk, and we don’t have to worry about snakes.”

“Don’t be too sure.” Elwood’s was a converted filling station turned biker hangout that specialized in barbecue and Elvis memorabilia. It was located on Atlantic Avenue several blocks west of the Lorelli Gallery. “How do you know about Elwood’s?”

“Alison pointed it out last night. Thought it looked interesting.”

I shrugged, recalling the last time I’d been to Elwood’s had been with Erica Hollander. I was about to suggest an alternative, but I decided against it, instinctively understanding that to argue with Alison’s brother would be as
pointless as arguing with Alison herself. Taking no for an answer was clearly not a family trait.

“It’s unusual to be this hot in December,” I remarked idly as we fell into step beside one another, the heat wrapping itself around my shoulders like a scratchy shawl. But Lance wasn’t paying attention, his eyes flitting restlessly from one side of the street to the other, as if half-expecting someone to jump out at us from behind a neatly trimmed hedge. “Looking for anything in particular?”

“What kind of tree is that?” he asked suddenly, his finger brushing against the tip of my nose as he pointed to the squat palm tree in the middle of my neighbor’s front yard. “Looks like it has a bunch of penises hanging from it.”

“I beg your pardon!”

Lance bounded across my neighbor’s lawn, kneeling beside the tree in question, and pointed at the numerous protuberances of various lengths that hung from its trunk. “You don’t think they look like a bunch of uncircumcised dicks? Take a good look.”

“You’re crazy.” Reluctantly I rolled my eyes toward the tree. “Oh, my God. You’re right.”

Lance laughed so loud, he startled the nearby egret, who soared gracefully into the air, like a giant paper plane. “Ain’t nature grand?”

“They’re called screw palms,” I whispered.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“Honestly. That’s their name.”

“Screw palms?”

“I couldn’t possibly make up something like that.”

Lance shook his head, grabbed my elbow, picked up the pace of our walk. “Come on,” he said, laughing. “All this talk about screwing is making me hungry.”

“Y
OU SHOULD HAVE SEEN
this city twenty years ago,” I was saying between bites of my hamburger. “Half these storefronts were vacant, the school system was a disaster, race relations were a mess. About the only business that was doing well was the drug trade.”

“Really?” It was the first time since I’d started my verbal tour of Delray that Lance had shown any real interest. “And how’s the drug trade doing these days?” he asked, surveying the line of motorcycles parked outside the large front patio where we were sitting. “I mean, where would a person go if he were interested in such things?”

“Jail, most likely,” I said as Lance’s lips curled into a grudging smile.

“Cute. You’re very cute.”

My turn to smile.
Cute
had never been a word used to describe me.

We watched a middle-aged man whose ragged, gray ponytail extended halfway down the back of his black leather jacket as he wiggled his sagging gut between two chairs. Grandpas on wheels, I thought, taking another bite of my burger, wondering how anyone could wear leather in this heat. “Now, of course, the city’s completely changed.”

“And what changed it exactly?”

I paused, trying to choose between the short and long answers, deciding on the short. “Money.”

Lance laughed. “Ah, yes. Money makes the world go round.”

“I thought it was love.”

“That’s because you’re a hopeless romantic.”

“I am?”

“You’re not?”

“Maybe,” I admitted, squirming under his sudden scrutiny. “Maybe I am a romantic.”

“Don’t forget hopeless.” He reached across the table and peeled several sweat-dampened hairs away from my forehead with a gentle but confident hand, as if he were teasing a bra strap off my shoulder.

I lowered my gaze to the table, the tips of Lance’s fingers lingering on my flesh even after he’d removed his hand. “What about you?”

He lifted a sauce-coated sparerib from his plate to his mouth, tearing the meat off with one neat tug. “Well,” he said with a wink, “I love money. Does that qualify?”

I took a sip of my beer, held the ice-cold glass against my throat, trying to ignore the perspiration trickling into the deep vee of my white T-shirt.

“Wow! Would you look at those babies!” Lance exclaimed, and I saw that Lance’s attention had been captured by the two shiny black motorcycles with chrome-plated monkey-hanger handlebars that had just pulled up in front of the restaurant. “Aren’t they beauties?”

“Harley-Davidsons?” I asked, pulling out the only brand with which I was familiar, trying to sound interested.

Lance shook his head. “Yamaha 750cc Viragos.” He punctuated his sentence with an appreciative whistle.

“You obviously know a lot about motorcycles.”

“A bit.” He raised another barbecued rib to his lips, then slowly and meticulously stripped it bare.

I thought of Alison. She would have polished off those ribs in a heartbeat. “Maybe we should call Alison. See how she’s doing.”

Lance patted his cell phone, which lay on the table next to his plate. “She knows my number.”

“It’s been over an hour.”

“She’ll call.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, the sweat coating my fingers like shellac. “Has your family been very worried about her?”

He shrugged. “Nah. They pretty much know what to expect by now.”

“Which is?”

“Alison’s gonna do what Alison’s gonna do. No point arguing. No point getting in her face about it.”

“But you obviously felt concerned enough to fly down here and see for yourself.”

“Just checking to make sure she’s okay. I mean, she comes to Florida, doesn’t know a soul …”

“She knew Rita Bishop,” I said, recalling the name of Alison’s friend.

“Who?”

“Rita Bishop.” I wondered if I had the name correct.

Lance looked confused, although he tried to hide it by tearing into another rib. “Oh, yeah, Rita. Whatever happened to her anyway?”

I realized I’d forgotten to ask personnel to find out where she’d gone. “I don’t know. Alison couldn’t locate her.”

“Typical.” Lance released a deep breath of air. “It’s hot,”
he said, as if noticing the temperature for the first time.

“I think it’s sweet that you were concerned about your sister. I didn’t think you were that close.”

“Close enough to worry.” He shrugged, an increasingly familiar gesture. “What can I say? Maybe I’m a romantic after all.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I liked Lance for worrying about Alison’s welfare. “It’s nice you could take the time off work.”

“No problem when you’re self-employed.”

“What is it you do?” I tried to remember if Alison had ever mentioned her brother’s occupation.

Lance looked surprised by the question. He coughed, ran his hand through his hair. “Systems analyst,” he said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.

My turn to be surprised. “They teach that sort of thing at Brown?”

“Brown?”

“Alison said you graduated summa cum laude.”

He laughed, coughed a second time. “Long time ago. A lot of beer under the bridge since then.” He hoisted his mug into the space between us, finished what was left in his glass, and swiveled around in his chair, looking for the waiter. “You ready for another one?”

My own mug was still half-full. “I’m fine for the moment.”

“Another draft,” Lance called to a bald and heavily tattooed waiter resting against the far wall. FEAR was stamped in large blue letters along his right forearm; NO MAN was imprinted on the other. Charming, I thought, noticing a man nursing a beer at a small round
table in the corner, a red bandanna wrapped around his forehead like a blood-soaked strip of gauze. Long, calloused fingers stroked a beard that was dark and scruffy. The man was staring at me, I realized, thinking there was something disturbingly familiar about him, trying to remember if and when I’d seen him before.

“How’s your burger?” Lance asked, swatting a buzzing insect away from his head as he squinted into the sunlight.

“It’s fine.”

“Just fine? My ribs were fantastic. I’m thinking of ordering another pound.”

I glanced at his empty plate. “Are you serious?”

“I’m always serious about what I put in my mouth.” His tongue lapped some errant sauce from his upper lip.

Was he flirting with me? Or was the heat starting to affect my brain?
Should have worn a hat
, I could almost hear my mother say.

I looked away, my eyes pulled back toward the man with the red bandanna. He cocked his head to one side, then raised his beer mug in a silent toast, as if he’d been expecting me to look his way again. Where had I seen him before?

“So, tell me what you think of my baby sister,” Lance instructed as the waiter approached with his beer. Lance gulped at its large head, chewed it as if it were solid food.

“I think she’s great.”

“She involved with anyone special these days?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“She tell you about her ex-husband?”

“Just that he was a mistake.”

Lance laughed, shook his head.

“You don’t agree?”

“Seemed like a nice enough guy to me. But, hey, what do I know? She’s the one who lived with him. Although Alison doesn’t always know what’s good for her,” he added, his face darkening as a cloud passed by overhead.

“I don’t think I agree with that.”

“I don’t think you know Alison as well as I do.”

“Maybe not,” I conceded, deciding to shift the focus of the conversation away from Alison. “What about you? Any sweet young thing on the horizon?”