1 Margarita Nights

by Phyllis Smallman

  “I don’t know what Jimmy did.” We’d basically stolen the car and Jimmy had taken it out to the golf course where he worked and parked it. We’d barely spoken when I’d driven him back over to the island to pick up his truck. “Jimmy and I haven’t been on chatting terms lately.”

  “Jimmy always looked out for Andy.” She went back to ironing her pleats. “They met in the eighth grade when we moved here.” Her eyes flicked up to mine. “Did you know that?”

  I nodded. “That’s why I’m worried about how Andy hears. Perhaps it would be better if you called and told him.”

  “No!” Emphatic and final. She straightened in her chair, feet and knees together, hands cupped on her lap. “You can’t know how hard it is to watch your only son live with this disease, never mind the embarrassment and humiliation we’ve suffered, having him rant and talk crazy in front of our friends, seeing him carted off by the police, seeing him on the street like . . . like some vagrant.” She spat out the last word and clapped her palm over her mouth to staunch the flow. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. Her hand settled back on her lap. “It isn’t nice.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “None of this needs to happen if he’d just stay on the Clozapine.”

  “Andy hates feeling sedated all the time.” Plus, knowing Andy, he just flat out forgot to take them. I loved the guy but even on his best day he wasn’t organized enough to have any kind of routine. Even brushing his teeth was probably hit and miss.

  “Nevertheless, Vernon and I have decided that we will have no further contact with Andrew until he gets himself straightened out and stays on the drugs. We can’t help him and it just distresses us to see him that way.”

  She brushed a non-existent stray strand of hair back from her face. “Of course we will continue to support him financially.” Her voice was refined silk, her composure flawless as she made this pronouncement. On the ladder of social climbing, she was right near the top, all that one of Jacaranda’s leading matrons and the wife of a successful stockbroker should be, but at that moment she made my mother, Ruth Ann, look like a queen. Whatever she might be, Ruth Ann would never abandon me.

  I picked up my bag. “If Andy calls, please have him get in touch with me.”

  “He won’t.” The words and the voice left no room to argue. She rose gracefully from the chair and led the way back through the modern art gallery house.

  Betsy had known Jimmy most of his life but hadn’t expressed any feelings about his death. I guess she didn’t feel anything and from the way she was dressed, her day would go pretty much as usual. Hadn’t I reacted the same way? But then, I didn’t think Jimmy was dead, whereas she had no reason to doubt it. Also, Betsy Crown’s eyes were a dead giveaway. With that much stuff in her it would be hard to feel anything but numb.

  Chapter 8

  I live in the mile and a half of Cypress Island that is north of the upper bridge, the least desirable part of the island. It’s mostly small businesses, boat storage, marinas and the like. The Jacaranda Airfield, water purification plant and sewage plant are all up at the north end too. Makes you think, doesn’t it, when the sewage plant and water storage facilities are within a John Daly drive of each other?

  To compensate for this, the north end also has the world’s greatest fishing pier, and fishermen line both sides of it at all times of the day and night. Sticking out into the gulf like a great big concrete finger, the pier is lit at night to keep boats from piling into it. It makes a great place to take a walk when I’m too hyper to sleep after work. There’s always someone there to pass the time with.

  The municipal golf club is also up there, conveniently close to the sewage plant, and the outflow from the sewage plant is used to water the golf course. They call it gray water, as though changing the color alters what it is, and the golf course is covered with signs warning golfers not to kiss their balls. After you’re done laughing at that mental image, the fear of what bacteria might be out there, just lying around and waiting to infect you, can scare the hell out of you. I just keep repeating to myself, “I trust my elected officials. Of course it’s safe. I trust my elected officials.” Whoever heard of elected officials who didn’t have the people’s best interests in mind?

  I live at the Tropicana Apartments, in an orange-colored, two-storey walk-up with miserly little single-glazed aluminum windows that don’t keep out the heat or the cold. I swear they don’t even keep out the palmetto bugs. There’s no pool, but there is a nice drainage ditch out back for a water feature, provided you don’t mind green slime and the odd gator. And in lieu of landscaping there are scrub palmettos and cabbage palms.

  It’s my guess the place will never make any edition of Southern Living but for me it’s better than living on the mainland and spending half my life waiting for a bridge to go down. Every morning there’s a line-up on the mainland of support staff, gardeners and maids waiting to cross over to the island to keep it functioning.

  I turned into the building’s parking lot, which was made from crushed shells like most unpaved parking lots around here. There was Detective Styles, leaning against his beige sedan with arms and legs crossed and looking like he was settled in to wait forever.

  “Shit!” For a brief second I thought of throwing my car into reverse and peeling out of there, but that’s what the old Sherri would have done. The new grow n-up Sherri pulled into the parking space beside him.

  He uncrossed his arms and pushed away from his car as the Green Puke shuddered and died.

  Most of the middle-aged men I’m real familiar with are overweight and reeking of things. They belch and fart and let things roll, so when a man of this age is scrubbed up and looking serious, he always means big trouble for somebody. My guess was Styles meant trouble for me.

  He leaned a hand on my car door and looked in through the open window at me. Bland and non-threatening, he said, “Hello, Mrs. Travis.”

  I nearly wet myself. Mercy, meek and mild was gonna get me. I tugged on the door handle and he backed away as it screeched open.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions,” he said, all polite and calm. I could deal with drunks, wannabe rapists and drug addicts, but this man just flat out frightened the piss out of me.

  “Come upstairs.” I started for the stairs without waiting for him to say aye or nay, walking fast as if I could outdistance him and get away. I tilted my head to my right. “My unit is at the end.”

  A gecko sunning in the heat scurried off the edge of the concrete steps and disappeared into the dying Pampas grass. I thought about joining him.

  Instead I said, “Being at the end, I can light my barbie without worrying too much if the rest of the tenants get out before the building burns down.” My nervous jokes are seldom funny but that never stops me. My mouth goes into overdrive when I’m panicking.

  I stopped outside my door and asked, “Where you from?’ “Here.”

  I bit back a caustic remark. “I mean before.” “Sarasota.” We waited a heartbeat and then he said, “New Jersey.” He sure didn’t look happy to be admitting this and I could understand his reluctance. “How long have you been here?”

  “Four months. I was in Sarasota five years.” As if that counted. A newcomer.

  I unlocked my door and waved him in. Normally I liked my apartment, liked my two white wicker chairs rescued from someone’s garbage on my way home from work one night. I spray-painted them white and the paint flaked off like dandruff every time someone sat down but I liked the way they creaked and groaned and sagged around my body. Ruth Ann made seat cushions for them in a black material with green palm fronds and pink bird of paradise, amazing both of us.

  But it’s the floor that was my masterpiece. I’d complained so loud and so long to the landlord about the velvet carpet in a rotting-mushroom color with pathways worn into it, that one day while I was at work he came in and ripped it all out, leaving only powdery gray concrete behind. After another war of words, which I also lost, I
painted the floor dove gray, with splashes of green and pink and black, to match the chairs. It’s delightfully cool on bare feet and easy to clean, so when the landlord finally offered to replace the cheap carpet with something even cheaper I said no thanks.

  But none of these decorating achievements caught Styles’ eye. He was looking at the books. The walls were covered with bookcases and books overflow onto stacks on the floor. There are books piled up in pillars to hold boards that make shelves for more books under the long narrow window looking out onto the communal walkway. A surprising number of these volumes have yellow stickie notes of stuff I want to remember and come back to. These yellow flags do nothing for the room’s appearance.

  “I love to read,” I explained, picking up the leftover Styro cups from the morning. The hot room smelled of stale coffee. “I love books and everything about them.” I went to the sliding doors and opened them.

  “And Jimmy brought me books from all over Florida and any other state he played golf in. He used to walk into libraries in every town he passed through and help himself. It was never any use telling him not to do it. Jimmy never listened.”

  The words “receiving stolen property” floated into my head. Is there a statue of limitations on book theft? Holy shit, of all the things I could be done for, how come I never worried about this one? “I really did try to stop him,” I pleaded, getting my defense lined up. “He’d come home with the trunk of his car filled with books, golf clubs and dirty laundry.” I filled the coffeepot with water and put a fresh filter in the basket as I watched this white bread cop turn full circle, taking the room in.

  “Those years on the tour meant a lot of towns and a lot of libraries.” I’m a cracker born and bred, although from the size of my butt there was more bread than cracker involved and though I try to hide the drawl and drop the Piney woods talk, in times of stress it comes back in spades. It was back now, thick as year-old honey.

  Styles’ eyes took in all the signs of not so gracious living before they settled on my vibrator. Lying on a pillow on the floor, Evan’s anatomically correct present for my last birthday caught his attention. At the end of a shift it’s exquisite to roll it back and forth under my feet but why spoil the fun for Detective Styles?

  He blandly raised his eyes to me, giving nothing away, and asked, “Was Mr. Travis living on his boat full-time?”

  “Yup.” Was this a crime? “People like me move into their cars when they hit bottom. People like the Travises move onto their boats.”

  “You lived on the Suncoaster with you husband for a few months, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I got two mugs out of the cupboard.

  “So you know the boat well?” His hand described a hazy circle, “Know all about bilge pumps and things like that?”

  The cups thunked onto the counter as I stared at him, knowing the important bit was coming.

  “You know about boats, don’t you, Mrs. Travis?”

  “My grandpa was a shrimper. I know about boats.” My drawl passed Scarlett O’Hara’s.

  He waited a heartbeat before he said, “Your husband’s death wasn’t an accident.” He said just that and no more, waiting for me to jump in.

  The coffee maker gurgled into the silence.

  Finally he said, “The exhaust fan had been tampered with. It’s a murder investigation now.”

  I sucked in my breath, my hands curling into fists. “We found enough wreckage to tell that the blades weren’t attached to the fan. It would sound like it was working when it was turned on but it wouldn’t exhaust the fumes.”

  “Maybe they fell off.” A silly suggestion even to my ears— he shook his head in denial.

  “Are you sure someone was on board?”

  “Yes.”

  How did they know? Human remains obviously, but how could they tell that from bits of raw meat left in the fridge and blown to bits? Bad thought, bad thought.

  We stared silently at each other before he added, “We’ve asked Mr. and Mrs. Travis for DNA samples. It will take a while for the tests to confirm that it was your husband onboard.”

  My stomach rolled over, but he wasn’t done with the good news. “There’s one other thing. One of the residents along there was motoring by in his boat about three o’clock yesterday afternoon.”

  Jimmy didn’t have his boat in a marina. He anchored it in Hidden Pass just down beyond a public boat-launching ramp at the foot of the south bridge. The ramp was at the end of a white-shell parking lot with a long boardwalk out along the mangroves where Jimmy left a small runabout, against all regulations, under the boardwalk so he could get out to his boat. If the runabout was stolen, well, no worries. Hell, he probably stole it in the first place.

  Squatting on water this way was cheaper than paying for dockage and, besides, Jimmy was at the mouth of the Intracoastal Waterway, his idea of heaven. Jimmy had been cruising up and down those waters his whole life and most of the people who went by in their boats had known him since he was a kid and didn’t make a fuss.

  “This witness saw someone aboard the Suncoaster,” Styles told me. “The person on the Suncoaster ducked back down the companionway when the witness waved.”

  “That is strange. Everyone waves at you on Cypress. If they didn’t wave back, they were definitely from away.”

  “The witness thought it was a woman on the Suncoaster.” Why do my chickens always come home to roost so much faster than anyone else’s?

  “Down here, women wave too. It was a tourist for sure.”

  “Where were you yesterday at three, Mrs. Travis?”

  “Here, getting ready for work.” And inspiration struck me.

  “But it didn’t need to be yesterday. Everyone knows that Jimmy moves his boat once a month—not far, just enough to give his neighbors a change of scene. If the fan was messed with, it could have been anytime since he last moved the Suncoaster.” This was good stuff, really saving my ass here.

  “The witness also said the only car in the parking lot was green.”

  I swung away and poured myself a cup of coffee. The drops falling on the heating element made loud pinging sounds.

  I turned back to Styles and held up the second mug to him. He shook his head. “Tell me about . . . ,” he paused and took a small notebook out of his inside pocket. We both knew he didn’t need to refresh his memory. “. . . Ray-John Leenders.” He drew the name out slowly, pronouncing it carefully.

  I went to the fridge and got the milk, trying to give my stomach time to stop doing back flips. Then I started pulling out the kitchen drawers, searching for cigarettes. I knew that I wouldn’t find any, but I looked anyway. I’d picked a very bad time to try yet again to quit smoking.

  “Tell me about Mr. Leenders.” His voice was soft and polite, encouraging me to hang myself. Oh sorry, in Florida I think it’s the electric chair; either way you’re just as dead.

  I gave up the hunt. “Ray-John Leenders is just someone the world would be better off without.”

  “I understand that you threatened him with a shotgun.”

  “The son of a bitch was beating up on my mamma.” I hadn’t used that word since I was six. I was regressing real fast here.

  “First you take a shotgun to your mother’s lover and then you threaten to kill your husband in front of witnesses. I’d say you have a little problem with anger management, Mrs. Travis.”

  I made a rude sound.

  He stood quiet, hands folded in front of him, waiting. Well he could wait ’til hell froze over as far as I was concerned.

  I turned away. Maybe there were still cigarettes in the utility drawer between the fridge and stove. I’d hidden them everywhere for emergencies, telling myself if I only had one cigarette it wasn’t really smoking. “How old were you?” he asked.

  “Fifteen.” No cigarettes in that drawer either. I turned back to face him and planted a fist on my hipbone. I stared at him hard, waiting.

  “It must have been upsetting for you to see your mother beaten.�
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  Routine would have been the way I’d have described it.

  We did some more of the waiting and then he said, “So first you threaten Mr. Leenders and then your husband. You don’t learn, do you?”

  “Yeah, I learned. I learned I should have shot the bastard the day before when he tried to rape me instead of waiting and telling Mamma. I would have saved her a tooth and a fractured skull. He’s probably still out there somewhere beating up women and abusing their kids.”

  He changed tactics. “I’ve been told your half-sisters were taken away from your mother.”

  “Their grandma didn’t take to my daddy when he came along. The twins went to North Carolina to live but I’m sure you know more about that than I do.”

  “You don’t have the same father? And then your mother took up with Mr. Leenders.”

  “So I come from a family that’s Jerry Springer’s wet dream, what’s that got to do with the Suncoaster?” “You know, Mrs. Travis, your attitude doesn’t help you.” It was my first good laugh of the day. People had been telling me the same thing my whole life, but without my attitude I would have been curled up somewhere in a corner sucking my thumb.

  “Tell me again where you were yesterday about three, Mrs. Travis.”

  “Here, getting ready for work.” Little did he know how much time it took to perfect my white trash look, long straight hair, too tight clothing and too high heels, with more makeup than was wise or necessary.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, unfortunately.” I had a question of my own. “Was anyone with Jimmy?” “What do you mean?”

  “Jimmy has a friend, Andy Crown. I’m worried that Andy might have been on the Suncoaster.”

  “His death would bother you, would it, Mrs. Travis?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than your husband’s?” Outside on the communal walkway someone slammed a door.

  “I haven’t been able to reach Andy. His parents haven’t heard from him either.”