The Last Maharajan (Romantic Thriller/Women's Fiction)

by Susan Wingate

  “Maybe but just a little.”

  “Really. What are you doing here, Euly?”

  “I was visiting with mother the other night. She’s getting a little weepy and forgiving these days but still has a kick, you know.” She opened the journal. The waiter brought their wine glasses and placed them on the table.

  “Just a sec.” Enaya ordered. She tasted the wine he’d set in front of her. She nodded and he walked away. “She always gets that way when she knows she’s wrong… or she’s dying, I suppose.”

  “Crap, Enaya. Can you at least try to appear sad mother is dying? For me?”

  “Sorry, dear. I forget that mother’s favorite is so sensitive these days.”

  “Good God, Enaya. Do you always have to be such a raving bitch?”

  “And you’re the writer.”

  “Don’t try to intimidate me. I’ve earned the title from years of hard work.” She hated how she always ended up defending herself. “You know what? I’m not so hungry after all. Why don’t you go home to your tidy little house and family and read another book. While you’re doing that I’ll be living, exploring, going on another treasure hunt.” She took a long slug of her wine and set it down, eyeing her over the glass. She knew the treasure hunt comment would bite deep. She wiped her mouth removing all her lipstick and pushed out her chair.

  “Very nice. Nice drama, nice punch at the end. You shouldn’t have given up acting. Really, Eu, you have talent.”

  “Screw off.” She started to leave, and then stopped. She turned and walked back. “First off, this is my hotel. You can leave.”

  “This is my city. You can leave.” Enaya enjoyed riling her sister and she let off a smirk.

  “I was born here, Enaya. You were born in some cow town in the Midwest. You can leave.”

  “Bravo. Now, see? I’m right. You would’ve made a fine actor. I’m always right. I’m your older sister.”

  “That makes you always older not always right.”

  Euly sat down again. “You leave.”

  “No.”

  “Then, tell me what you remember, you hag of a sister.” They were on speaking terms again and it felt homey, like they were kids fighting.

  “Remember what, brat.”

  “About mother and dad. The divorce. Everything. Creep.”

  “Everything could take hours. Fat head.”

  “I’m not leaving until I find out so I guess I have hours.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You have until midnight when you turn into a snake again.” Euly glared out a smile.

  “I missed you.”

  Euly smiled but each knew they weren’t finished. A silly argument had not been settled in the four years since she’d seen her sister. Four years since their grandmother’s death. Things didn’t go as well as they might have with her sister then as Euly recalled. They’d had a stupid fight about who’d get their grandmother’s china. Enaya won when their mother stepped in to decide.

  “How’s my china?”

  “It’s stunning.”

  Euly smirked and settled back into her chair. She re-folded the napkin on her lap, grabbed her glass and drank from it, set it back down and looked at her sister. She pulled out the photo and slid it over to Enaya on the smooth surface of the linen. “Do you remember what led up to the divorce?”

  “Yours or mother’s?”

  “Come on. I’m serious.”

  Enaya was taking her time giving Euly anything. She’d always been like that. She flicked her eyebrows and shrugged. She picked up the photo and squinted for focus, for effect.

  “That’s an old one. Where’d you get it?”

  “Mother. She’s going through all of her photo albums, one by one, and splitting them up between us.”

  “That’s fair.”

  Euly neglected to mention her pile was greater and switched the subject. “Hey, do you remember that little girl who drowned?”

  “What little girl who drowned?”

  “You remember. At the Maharajan.”

  Enaya’s eyes opened in recognition.

  “Oh yeah. Wasn’t that awful?”

  “I remember it in stops and starts. Pieces, you know? I think I’ve filled in a lot that may not be right but, then, maybe not. I don’t know.”

  They stopped talking and both seemed to fade into the vision. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I don’t know why.”

  “Death.” She examined the photo more closely as she spoke then handed it back to Euly.

  “Yeah.”

  “No. I mean you’re thinking about death a lot.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Well, you’re living with it aren’t you. You visit her daily, right?”

  “Mother? Yes. I see her every day.”

  “Don’t you think that’s why you’re here really, to get away?”

  “No. No, I’m here because I want to find out what really happened between them. Why they Geoff.”

  Enaya lifted her eyebrows. “I didn’t say anything about Geoff.” Euly looked at her lap and played with her napkin but she didn’t broach the subject. “Look, Eu, they split. Why drum it up again? They were miserable together, remember? They fought all the time.”

  “Do you remember that photo?”

  “Not really. I was like, what, twelve?”

  “Yeah, ten, eleven, twelve, something like that. Oh, and not always.”

  “Not always, what?”

  “They didn’t always fight.”

  “Yes, they did. Always.”

  “Not when we were little. Not when that little girl drowned. They didn’t fight then. It was later when we were teenagers, remember?”

  “Maybe you’re right. It felt like all the time to me.”

  The waiter came back to take their dinner order. Euly ordered something light and Enaya, a steak with au gratin. She always had eaten what she wanted and it never seemed to show unlike Euly who was battling to keep her weight at bay through menopause.

  “Where does it all go?”

  “I work out.”

  After the day’s travel, Euly felt a little tired plus the wine was making its way straight behind her eye sockets.

  “Wine’s good, isn’t it?”

  “They fought all the time.”

  “No they didn’t.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t remember it that way. I remember mother singing to me in the rocker and you playing with the neighbor boys. Remember that? Little Phil and Butchy? You guys always played Tarzan.”

  “Wow. I’d forgotten that and when you weren’t sick, you were always Jane, remember?”

  “Yeah.” She laughed at the thought. They both did. “You changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You got all girly. Look at you. You’re nothing like when we were kids.”

  “Neither are you.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “You were always the little feminine princess, remember? Now, look at you. You look like a correspondent in Iraq with that vest and those readers on your head.”

  “Shut up!” Enaya had given her the verbal equivalent of a poke in the ribs.

  “’Here, in Baghdad, the fighting heightens. The hovel behind me looks a lot like my office…’”

  “Cut it out!”

  “’And over here, in my kitchen, a car bomb has exploded, leaving a cabbage dead and hundreds of eggs injured.’”

  “It’s not like that anymore. I’m much neater.”

  “Right.”

  “Really.”

  “Uh huh. You’ve changed. You used to be this tidy, neat-as-a-pin person and now, you don’t care about that.”

  “Not true. I do care. But, there’s not much I can do about it. I’m super busy these days what with mother and everybody, it seems as though dying and obits are constant. Cleaning is about the last thing I can get to. That and dinners.”

  “Ohmygod. The gourmet chef cooks no longer?”

  “W
ill you give it a rest?”

  “We all change, Eu. It’s no big thing. I love everything just so. I used to be a slob. Big deal. There are many ‘used to be's’ in the world. What really matters is who we are today. Are we kind? Are we loving? That’s all that really matters. Did we love?”

  “I suppose.” She used her standard answer when she didn’t have a good comeback for her sister.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After dinner, Euly waved her sister goodbye from inside the lobby entrance. She couldn’t help but laugh when the valet brought around Enaya’s Mercedes. She watched her tip the boy. Enaya stood like Vanna White, winked at her and with a flip of her head she got into her sleek car. Euly laughed and rolled her eyes and they both blew a kiss goodnight to each other, Euly through a glass door of a hotel and Enaya through her glass window.

  A full day of traveling made her eyes heavy as she watched Enaya’s car drive out of sight. She smiled and turned to go to her room.

  Once there, she figured it was time she call her husband. After kicking off her shoes she sidled up onto the bed and leaned against her pillows. She dialed Geoff. After the third ring, she figured he would pick up. After the sixth, she hung up. She tried the number again thinking she dialed wrong and let the phone ring ten times before giving up.

  Geoff hadn’t mentioned he wouldn’t be home, had he? She racked her brain trying to remember what he had said before she got onto the plane but couldn’t remember him saying anything – not if he was going out, not anything. She only remembered their spat before leaving for Belle’s, about the car door, and how anxious she’d felt. Geoff could’ve been the bellboy for all she remembered of that morning. She remembered her cell phone.

  The display on her cell showed she had one message. Punching in the code she listened. Her face got hot in anger. From what he’d said, he had been trying her most of the day but she had forgotten to turn on the phone. Barely ever using it made it easy for her to forget about the thing. Their home sat in a crater of a dead zone and most often she used her land line. It was rare she bothered with the cell. It was meant for emergencies, really, and travel. It slipped her mind.

  When he was finished firing angry remarks at her, he hung up. She saw the phone in the room was blinking. There was a message there too. It was a similar hateful tirade that she needed to call him fast.

  “Okay. So, I’m calling you back. Where are you this time? And, why isn’t the answering machine picking up?” The words bounced onto the empty walls of her room and fell onto the floor unanswered. It was close to eleven. She was exhausted and would deal with him in the morning.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “I can’t believe you forgot to turn your phone on again. How difficult is it, Euly.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand so he wouldn’t say anything he regretted into his cell. He breathed out hard, “Call me when you get this message.”

  His feet pounded against the concrete walkway outside Belle’s window. He paced in front and gazed in at her watching the doctors and nurses aspirate her lungs. This wasn’t good. She was beginning to go through that suffering-stage the doctors had warned them about before. And, where was his wife? She should be here with her mother not somewhere off in Phoenix for God knows what.

  He jammed the cell phone into his pocket and held it there in his left hand.

  He bent forward to look through the window as his mother-in-law. Her convulsive cough seemed exaggerated to him as he witnessed the nurse insert a tube into her trachea and withdraw any excess fluids that were in her lungs. At one point, she looked as if she were going heave. He felt an automatic reaction to gag when he saw her choke and gasp. Geoff held his hand up to his mouth and looked away. He loved Belle. It wasn’t easy to see her this way.

  The smell of diesel floated in. It hung on the trail of a garbage truck that drove into the parking lot near the dumpster. It seemed late in the day to be picking up garbage. He looked down the walkway where an old man walked his wheelchair with his feet in front as he sat. He looked like a decrepit toddler in some oversized stroller. He smiled a toothless closed grin that sunk into his face. Geoff tipped his head up in recognition.

  “Hello young fella.”

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “Cool tonight.”

  “Yep.” He rubbed his arms across his body using both hands. “Better go in. Night.”

  “Night.” The man rolled slowly off past Belle’s window making his way on his usual route around the building and most likely back to his room.

  Geoff rubbed his hands together. It was cold this afternoon. He headed back in and resolved to stay with Belle. She needed him tonight. It was too cold to be alone.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Mr. Jenkins isn’t in at the moment. He said he had an appointment.” The receptionist at Clive Jenkin’s office looked at Euly with an unconcerned air about her. The busy tapping of typewriters behind her filtered through the room and gave a hurried pace to the small card company’s office.

  “Shoot. I’m in town for only a few days and I need to speak with him.” She paused to see if the overly made-up buxom young red-head would respond. When she only looked with a blank stare back, Euly continued. “Do you know when he might be back?” Euly tried to smile but it felt forced.

  “No. Maybe you can check back around two.” She sat with slumped shoulders. Her low-cut tight jersey top revealed the girl’s smashed cleavage.

  They looked like oversized water balloons and were ready to pop. Euly wondered about her IQ.

  “Okay, here.” Fumbling in her purse she pulled out a card and handed to the receptionist. “Can you give this to Mr. Jenkins, Clive? It’s my business card. It’s rather important.” She hoped the girl would see how much she needed to speak with Clive.

  “You can call, you know.”

  The girl’s comment stopped Euly in her tracks. She felt a surge of heat rise up and into her face but she caught herself when she sensed her body press forward. She wanted to reach out and grab the girl’s blouse, twist it hard and get eye-to- eye with her but, instead, she said, “Okay. Thanks.

  I’ll check back later.” When she turned to leave, Euly rolled her eyes and pushed out though the door.

  “Yes. I came by earlier looking for Mr. Jenkins.” Euly’s voice trailed off into the phone and she paused expecting more disappointment but this time when she got legitimate helpful information she was happily caught off guard. “Oh! Oh, well, great. Where is that again?” Euly scratched the address onto a scrap of paper the hotel provided for its guests. “Great. Thank you.” She looked at the address again and the name of the establishment where she could find Clive. It was Benny’s.

  She closed the door of the rented car. Euly could make out a faint trail of cigar smoke seeping out the seams of Benny’s. Spotty gravel that covered the bar’s parking lot crushed under Euly’s boots. She walked forward on her toes to avoid abrading the leather heels. Between the concrete doorstep and the gravel weeds grew up in dry yellow clumps. There were cigarette butts and wrapping papers strewn about outside of the door. A concrete pad showed the shape of an etched-in fan on it from years of sustained use. The name of the bar was hand painted on its iodine metal door in black marker. Nothing looked different. Low on the heavy metal door was a dent. Directly next to the dent on the block outside were new bricks where old ones had been replaced. Two high windows in the front were painted out in light yellow which gave an eerie strobe-like effect on the inside. Euly yanked at the door and when it opened it scraped hard against the pad adding another moment in time to the fan in the concrete. Euly noticed the stench first – a farrago made up of urine and vomit, beer, whiskey and tobacco. As if protecting herself, she raised her hand to her mouth.

  The dim insides made it feel like walking into a crypt. She realized she’d stopped breathing. The temperature was at least twenty degrees cooler than outside and she felt her nipples knot almost instantly. She pulled her purse strap over her shoulder in an attempt to hide h
er chest. She hadn’t worn a sweater over her red-striped jersey shirt and she hoped the red striping concealed her tightening breasts. The days in Phoenix were still reaching close to the 90s and being from the northwest, she didn’t expect to be cold there but she was never prepared for Benny’s.

  While her eyes adjusted, voices that had once been talking slowed and stopped as people inside the place took note of her. She made out the bar to the right and several grizzly men gathered at the far end, a couple sitting around Formica tables and a few more bodies standing near a solitary pool table.

  “It’s like seeing a ghost.”

  She barely remembered the smoky voice that spoke but looked in the direction it came from and asked, “Clive?”

  “Who else, kid?”

  “I can barely see you.”

  “We like it that way. Come on over to the bar and sit down.”

  She could still turn around and leave. No one in there but Clive knew her. She could still get away.

  Clive was one of the group of men at the end of the bar.

  She tugged at the hem of her blouse pausing for a mere second then stepped forward and walked over to him. His hair was still the curled mess she remembered but the gray had completely confiscated the black it used to be. He looked his age and Euly figured he must now be in his late sixties. Still he was the first to comment.

  “You sure got old.”

  “Gee, Clive. You still look the same.”

  He chuckled at her apparent sarcasm. “Want a drink?” Euly nodded she did. “What’ll it be?”

  “Dalwhinny’s.” She needed to appear sure of herself and ordering the expensive scotch was the first thing that came to mind.

  “Damn. Your father taught you right. One Dalwhinny’s for the lady, and I’ll have another.” Euly wondered how many “another” was for Clive but he seemed to be holding his own. The man could drink she remembered that about him.

  “Wow. How long has it been?”

  “You want to play guessing games, Euly? Is that why you came to see me after all these years, for guessing games?” A couple of the men moved out of their stools away from the bar and took up seats farther away from them around an empty table. Euly followed their movement through the length of the mirror on the backsplash until they sat. She realized Clive was watching through the mirror also but he was watching Euly. Her eyes connected with his for a second and then darted off in a different direction. She noticed his body jerk as if he’d chuckled.