1 Margarita Nights

  MARGARITA NIGHTS

  PHYLLIS SMALLMAN

  www.phyllissmallman.com

  This edition published in Canada in 2011 by

  Phyllis Smallman

  www.phyllissmallman.com

  Previously published by McArthur & Company, Toronto.

  Copyright © 2011 Phyllis Smallman

  All rights reserved.

  The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any

  form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

  otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the expressed written consent

  of the publisher, is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Smallman, Phyllis

  Margarita nights / Phyllis Smallman.

  ISBN 978-1-55278-699-4 (trade paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-55278-763-2 (mass market)

  eISBN 978-0-9878033-0-6

  I.Title.

  PS8637.M36M37 —— 2008 C813’.6—— C2008-900294-6

  Cover and text design by Tania Craan

  eBook development by Wild Element www.wildelement.ca

  To my husband, Lee Smallman, I succeeded because you believed.

  And to my children Shawn Smallman and Ellen Wild

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to my husband, Lee Smallman, and my friend Jim Ordowich for reading the manuscript multiple times and making it better.

  Thanks to everyone who read Margarita Nights in the manuscript stages and offered emotional support through a long learning process. Myrna Hardcastle, Mary Lou Leitch, Margaret Morison, Gwen Morrison, Sharron Orovan Johnston, Elizabeth Turpin-Pulley, Jenny Smallman, and Judy Wood.

  I would also like to thank the Crime Writers of Canada and Louise Penny for instigating the Unhanged Arthur Award which led directly to the publishing of this book.

  Chapter 1

  The Suncoaster blew up at four-thirty on a Tuesday afternoon in late January while I was setting up for the rush hour at the Sunset Bar and Grill.

  I love bars. Like people, each one has its own personality; some are boring, some are stimulating and some are downright dangerous. When you enter a new one it’s always best to stop just inside the door, taking your time until you decide just what kind you’ve got.

  The Sunset is the crème de la crème of watering holes. On the second floor of a pink stucco building decorated with white Bermuda shutters and tall graceful palms, etched glass doors lead from the lobby of the restaurant into the bar. Black-and-white photographs of Key West in the thirties line the Cypress-paneled walls. Overhead, two giant fans on pulleys stir air smelling of old leather chairs, long ago Cuban cigars and expensive perfume.

  Early evening is my favorite time of day at the Sunset. Quiet, but with a sense of waiting in the air—waiting for something that hasn’t quite arrived but you know it’s coming. That day, Sinatra was singing in the background about Nancy with the laughing eyes while the ceiling fans slowly turned.

  Across the bar from me sat the same two guys who were there every day about that time. The three of us, Brian Spears, Clay Adams and me, Sherri Travis, had the bar to ourselves. It was early yet. Things would heat up fast enough, but in the meantime we were doing what we always did, sharing life.

  “Time to feed the kitty, children,” Brian Spears announced and began collecting everyone’s donation for the weekly Florida lottery. A lawyer in his late sixties, Brian would be retired except for an ex-wife, twenty years younger, with a better lawyer. He tells anyone who will listen that he’ll be practicing law until the grim reaper closes his case. The buttons of his dress shirt strained under the load of his paunch as Brian, at least fifty pounds overweight, shoved my contribution to improving Florida into his shirt pocket.

  “Heard from that godawful husband of yours, Sherri?” he asked.

  “Not since he climbed up my balcony Sunday night.” I went back to slicing lemon wedges. “And if I never hear from him again it will be too soon.” I’d married Jimmy when I was nineteen and stuck it out for damn near nine years, but last spring I’d finally left him. It was over but Jimmy didn’t get it, didn’t think I really meant it. For Jimmy, his lying, drinking and sleeping around just didn’t seem to be real good reasons for me to go off him and he was sure I’d be back. My ways of saying no were becoming more and more dramatic.

  “That man has made you bitter,” Brian complained, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “He’s spoiled you for the rest of mankind. What good is a woman who doesn’t believe in love?”

  “I believe in love,” I protested. “I love lots of people. Even you guys. It’s romance that took the fall. For me, Cinderella is dead and the prince is gay.”

  They made rude sounds so I tried again. “Moonlight and roses hide muggers and thorns.” Again with the raspberry chorus.

  “Well, I tried to enlighten you,” I told them. “It’s hard to see grown men who still believe in Santa Claus and fairy tales.”

  Brian began to tell a story about some other woman’s godawful. Seems she fed him to the gators in little pieces. Stories of revenge are the only joy Brian takes in life these days. He collects them, weighs them and considers them for the qualities of revenge and suffering they inflict on the errant partner. I was beginning to worry about the mental health of this friend of mine but I paid close attention to this story for future reference. Such drastic action was not only beginning to seem necessary but also downright attractive if I wanted the man I’d married to stay gone.

  When Brian finished his story of extreme spousal abuse, Clay Adams said, “Have you thought anymore about selling real estate for me?” His handsome dark face was real serious, but then it always is when he talks about money. Accumulating wealth is his reason for breathing, the altar he worships at. “You’d make real money. You know everyone in town and have more friends than God.” “Ah, but when would I play golf?” Clay looked as if his beer had gone off.

  I pointed a paring knife at him. “If I was in an office, working regular hours, I’d only be able to golf six months of the year. Winter it’s too dark to play after work. Where’s the fun in that? This way I get to golf every day and work at night.”

  He pointed at his empty beer glass, frowning at my nonsuccess ethic.

  I grinned. “A man of your position should drink Scotch, Balvenie at least. Beer doesn’t have the same image as a twelve-year-old single malt Scotch.” “I like beer,” he replied.

  “What you like is the price.”

  “We’re talking about you. Don’t change the subject.” I sat a sweating mug down on a cardboard coaster in front of him. “Of course you could ask me to marry you. Take me away from the Cypress Island Municipal Course to the Royal Palms.”

  His broad forehead wrinkled in a frown. “You’re just crazy enough to marry someone for a golf membership.”

  “I’m going to consider that a maybe,” I told him and went off to serve some newcomers.

  It was nearly nine when Cordelia Grant slipped in. She was dressed in a crisp white blouse and navy skirt, probably on her way home from choir practice. She stood just inside the door, holding her pocketbook in front of her with both hands. She looked a round, about as wary as a virgin at a Hells Angels reunion. For a Fundamentalist Baptist like Cordelia, stepping over the threshold of a bar was like crossing the town line into Sodom or Gomorrah.

  Everything about her was pale—pale gray-blue eyes, pale eyebrows, pale face and hair so blond it was almost white— and this lack of accent lent her face a strangely naked look. Her eyes locked on me. She walked stiff-legged to the bar, ignoring Jeff when he tried to serve her. She hadn’t come in for a drink.

 
; Chapter 2

  “I have to talk to you,” she said in her breathless, childlike voice. I led the way down the hall, past the washrooms, to the emergency exit where I held the door open for her. Nudging a wooden block into place with my toe so the door wouldn’t lock me out, I stepped out onto the metal grill into a balmy Florida night smelling of asphalt, fried food and garbage. I leaned back on the metal railing and waited.

  Cordelia took a deep breath and said, “Please let him go, Sherri. The children and I need him.” This was not what I expected.

  “He’s all I’ve got,” she whispered and lowered her face onto her hands. She started to cry.

  “You think I’m having an affair with Noble?” I asked just to be sure I hadn’t misunderstood.

  Her shoulders spasmed and there was a soft meowing sound.

  “Cordelia?”

  She raised her face and her tears shone in the dim light from the Exit sign.

  “You came here because you think Noble and I are having an affair?” She nodded.

  “Why? Why do you think it’s me?”

  She didn’t have to think about it. “Because when we go out with you and Evan he’s different. More animated. And you and Evan are the only people he really wants to spend time with anymore.”

  “Cordelia, the only person I’m sleeping with is Mr. McGoo.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. McGoo, my teddy bear. Noble . . .” How could I tell her that Noble Grant was the last person I’d ever go for, even if he wasn’t gay? “Noble and I have never done more than peck each other on the cheek with you standing there. There’s less than nothing between us.” It was true but still I felt like a liar.

  “Then who is it?” she wailed.

  “You should be asking Noble. Not me.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  “If we talk about it and it’s out in the open there’s no going back. He might leave me.”

  “Is that the worst thing that could happen?”

  “Yes,” she said and started to cry again.

  I reached out tentatively and patted her shoulder before I slid my arm across her sharp-boned back. She was a grown woman of thirty-two, three years older than me, with two kids of her own, but her fragility awoke protective feelings in me.

  Her body felt small and delicate beside mine; her head barely reached my shoulder but there was a correctness about Cordelia that would soon turn matronly, taking her from girlish straight into middle age.

  Her stiff body relaxed and sank into my side for only a few seconds before she pulled back and began tucking in the starched blouse and smoothing down her skirt, putting her temporary weakness behind her. “You must think I’m being silly.” She brushed the tears off her cheeks with long white fingers, then searching through her bag for a tissue before dabbing at her nose and sniffing delicately.

  From down the alley came the raucous laughter of a boisterous group leaving the Sunset. I glanced out to the mouth of the alley before shaking my head in denial and saying, “Being cheated on isn’t silly. I know. I’ve got the T-shirt. It must have been hard for you to come here tonight.”

  She opened her bag and put away the tissue. “I don’t like scenes.”

  I laughed. “Trust me, Cordelia, this is no scene. I’ve been at the center of too many of them to be fooled.”

  “Don’t tell Evan,” she pleaded. “I don’t want him to know.”

  That was something I wasn’t going to promise. I had rather a lot to say to Eva n. You see, I was the skirt that Evan hid behind, the woman he dragged along on those social occasions where he couldn’t go stag, the female he used to keep other women away I was the way he socialized with his lover so his lover’s wife didn’t suspect. It hadn’t bothered me before but now I felt dirty, conspiring in Noble’s betrayal of Cordelia.

  Two hours after Cordelia left, the cop arrived to tell me that Jimmy, my godawful husband, was dead—blown up with his boat, the Suncoaster.

  Chapter 3

  I looked at Detective Styles as if he’d told me it was raining outside. Actually, rain in southwest Florida in January is rarer than violent death, but the thing is, I’d always waited for this news, knew it was coming sooner or later. Jimmy was never meant to die easy . . . or old. He was probably dead drunk when his boat went up and thought it was fireworks. “Hee haw,” as Jimmy always said.

  Detective Styles asked, “Would you like me to drive you home, Mrs. Travis?”

  Did I need to go home? Was I going to fall apart? I didn’t know. There was just a great big void of nothing: no pain; no feelings; no nothing; just Peggy Lee singing in the background about the final disappointment.

  Jeff said, “Go on home, Sherri. Leave me the keys. I’ll get someone to follow me with your car.” Middle-aged and chronically tired, Jeff was always the first one out the door and the last one in, so this was a sacrifice for him.

  I nodded, relieved to have someone else make the decision.

  In the car Styles said, “Fasten your seat belt, please.”

  I asked, “Do Jimmy’s parents know?” This worry was running round and round in my head.

  “We only notified you as the next of kin.” Next of kin was a strange way to hear myself described. “Would you take me out to Indian Mound Beach to tell them? I can’t do it alone.” I clicked the belt into place. “And even my shaky knowledge of deportment says this isn’t the kind of thing you announce over the phone.”

  We stared at each other for a few seconds. His features were even, not remarkable or memorable, unlined and pale as if he spent too much time indoors, but it was a face I was never going to forget. Mercy, meek and mild, Grandma Jenkins would say. If I’d met him on the street, I’d bet he sold insurance.

  He sighed, a dry exhausted sound. I guess he was hoping to ditch me quick and get home to bed. Or maybe he just hated the thought of delivering one more piece of bad news to more next of kin.

  He put the car in drive. “Where are they?”

  I gave him the number on Spyglass Court and asked, “How did it happen?”

  “Best guess at the moment is he didn’t turn on the exhaust fan to clear out the fumes in the bilge. The boat exploded when he hit the ignition.” He glanced over at me before going on in that same dry, level voice. “We didn’t find much. The tide was going out. We’ll search the mangroves along the shore in the morning.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense. Jimmy was always warning me to hit the exhaust fan before I turned the key. Even dead drunk it’s hard to believe he’d forget something as basic as that.”

  Unmoved he asked, “When did you last see your husband, Mrs. Travis?”

  Jimmy’s mom, the Wicked Witch of the South, was Mrs. Travis, I wasn’t—but it didn’t seem like a good time to complain.

  “Sunday night,” I said.

  “When officers Mackle and Reese were called to remove him from your apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you threaten to kill him, Mrs. Travis?”

  “Jimmy just didn’t get it. Our marriage was over. I came home and found the idiot asleep on the old steel lounge on my balcony. He must have stood on the railing of the balcony underneath mine and pulled himself up,” proving that he was still fit and still out of control. That he was still stupid was proven by the fact he fell asleep on the bare metal lounge. I never left the cushion out because the guy living below me fed the scrub jays. They perched on my railing and shit all over the concrete of my balcony while they waited for their turn to dive down for dinner. It was just one damn big birdcage with dying plants, the hot afternoon sun and bird shit. Come to think of it, it was the perfect place for Jimmy.

  “Tell me about your husband,” Styles said.

  “I’m the wrong person to ask about Jimmy—too much history and I only remember the bad stuff.” If I started talking, it might all pour out. How could I explain to this neat bland man that Jimmy could make you want to do all kinds of crazy things, including kil
l him?

  But he wouldn’t leave it alone. “How did you meet?” I searched for pitfalls before I answered. “I first saw Jimmy the summer I turned twelve. He did a pike off the high board at the public swimming pool and flowed out of the water right at my feet. He was blond and beautiful and shining like a god. I fell in love with him instantly. It was an illness that took a long time to run its course.” It felt good to be talking. Good and dangerous. “I’ve no idea what Jimmy was doing at the public pool that day, probably the one and only time he was ever there. Jimmy spent his summers playing golf and tennis at the Royal Palms Golf and Country Club, where he was club champion at eighteen, the same year he was the star of the high school track team and captain of the basketball team when Jacaranda High School won the state championship. High school sports are a real big deal around here, which made Jimmy a really big deal. After high school Jimmy went to Florida State on a golf scholarship, although his parents wanted him to go to Harvard or Yale . . . anything Ivy League with a good Northern address. His parents also didn’t want Jimmy to marry me. I mean, really, really, didn’t want him to marry me, which is probably why he did.” I told myself to shut up.

  Styles drove in silence for a while and then asked, “What was he like?”

  “He’s charming. My god, is he charming.” He could charm the birds out of the trees or his playing partner’s wife out of her underwear.

  “Is that why you were having trouble?” His voice sounded almost bored.

  I wasn’t fooled. I kept silent.

  After a bit he asked, “What can you tell me about your husband’s death, Mrs. Travis?”

  I searched the pocket of my black leather jacket for cigarettes. I already knew there weren’t any but I needed a cigarette bad and addiction, like hope, dies hard. “Are you sure he’s dead?”

  He let out a big frustrated breath. “Your husband’s truck was in the parking lot. The Suncoaster went up in a huge ball of orange flames. It could be seen for miles. Plus we found clothing.”