Ocean Beach

by Wendy Wax

  Deirdre caught only the tail end of Madeline and Mario’s exchange. It was impossible to miss the blush that spread across the other woman’s cheeks.

  “You’d better be careful,” Deirdre said. “The man clearly hopes that the way to your heart is through your stomach.” She took a seat at the end of the polishing table and set one of the “House” envelopes in front of her. “The Italian has a crush on you.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s just being friendly.” Maddie’s cheeks went scarlet again.

  “Well, he hasn’t offered to cook for me,” Deirdre pointed out, amused. “Or Nicole. Or Avery. Or Kyra.” She glanced down at the paper she’d pulled from the envelope then back at Madeline. “I’ve always thought that a man who wants to feed you is a man who will do anything for you.” Unfortunately, this realization had only come to her years after she’d left the man who would have done just that.

  Her attention turned briefly to the paper in her hands. “Sorry,” she said, after skimming the information in front of her. “I’m still hoping to find something in Pamela Gentry’s notes and sketches that might lead me to the artist who created the foyer chandelier, but there are a million bits and pieces of information in no particular order.”

  She tucked the paper back into the envelope before continuing, “Peter was a good cook, though it doesn’t seem he passed any of that talent on to Avery. I can’t tell you how many times I was out in some fancy L.A. or New York restaurant that I found myself wishing I was sitting over a home-cooked meal with him and our daughter.” Deirdre speared Maddie with a look; after all these years, she was still appalled at all she’d thrown away. “Do you think she’s ever going to forgive me?”

  “Well, I think you’ve made great progress,” Maddie said.

  “But nowhere near what I was hoping for,” Deirdre said. “One minute I think we’ve reached some sort of place we can move on from, and the next she’s telling me off and making it clear she wants nothing to do with me.” She drew in a shaky breath. “I think I scored a few points for not making a big deal about the damage to the chandelier, but I have no idea what to do next.”

  Maddie poured polish on one of the cloths and picked up a doorknob, seeming far more comfortable with this subject than with being the object of a possible crush. “I don’t know,” she said as she began to apply the polish in a smooth circular motion. “I’m not sure there’s anything specific to do at this point. But I wouldn’t keep giving her things. You don’t want her to think you’re trying to buy back her love.”

  “I would if I could,” Deirdre said. “Whatever it cost. Hell, I’d give my life for her.” The words came out in a rush, surprising both of them with their intensity. Deirdre realized as she looked at Maddie that she’d never said, or felt, anything of which she was more certain.

  “So now you just have to stay the course,” Maddie said. “The truth is, nothing you say and no number of hotel nights are going to wipe out the fact that you abandoned her. She’s been clinging to the hurt and anger attached to your leaving for so long that it’s bound to take time for her to let go of it.” She smiled gently. “I’m sure there’s a part of her that’s afraid that just when she lets down her defenses, you’ll up and leave again.”

  “But I wouldn’t,” Deirdre said. “I won’t. I’d never do that again.” She said this with a calm resolve that she hoped Madeline would recognize.

  “Right,” Maddie said. “So you demonstrate that by being here. By being available to her. By continuing to follow through and do what you say you will. No matter what.”

  “I was kind of hoping for something more specific,” Deirdre said. “I’d much rather be proactive than just hang around waiting for Avery to see me in some new light.”

  Madeline buffed the knob with a cloth and set it aside. “I understand that. But you’re not just hanging around. You’re working on a project that’s important to your daughter. And you’re demonstrating that being with her is more important to you than other things.”

  “She thinks I’m only here to get my design career back on track,” Deirdre said.

  Maddie reached for a set of hinges. “Are you?”

  “No. I’ve actually heard from several of my former celebrity clients asking me to do projects for them. And another network approached my agent about doing a new design series.” She looked Maddie in the eye. It figured this would happen now when she was committed to staying in Miami and trying to repair her relationship with Avery. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it.”

  “Well, at least someone has options,” Maddie muttered.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Deirdre said. And then, because she’d heard the envy in Maddie’s voice, she added, “At least your daughter shares things with you and wants to be with you. She isn’t always trying to wiggle out of being in your company.”

  A few hours later, when Kyra stomped in from yet another altercation with Troy Matthews, Maddie had reason to question Deirdre’s assessment.

  “God, he’s insufferable!” Kyra complained. “I never really knew what that word meant before, but I do now.”

  “What happened?” Maddie’s back ached from hunching over the hardware; her fingers felt permanently curled. She glanced at her watch. The workmen had left almost an hour ago. It was definitely time to call it a day.

  “He’s getting all kinds of tight shots that are completely unnecessary,” Kyra said. “I can tell from the way he’s setting up and how he approaches the shots, but he absolutely refuses to show me his footage. I haven’t seen a single frame since the premiere party.”

  Kyra stood directly in front of the air-conditioning vent and shoved her hair back off her forehead. There was a cry from upstairs. “Dustin must be up from his nap,” she said as her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and looked at the screen, then looked quickly at Maddie.

  “What is it?” Maddie asked.

  “Nothing. I just have to take this call.” Her gaze skittered away. But then she looked back with that “I’m completely innocent” look she’d developed at the age of nine and that she’d typically deployed only when she wasn’t. “Would you mind getting Dustin up?”

  She looked down at her phone again, but Maddie noticed that Kyra was waiting for her to leave before she answered it.

  “Sure.” Maddie headed for the stairs, her mother antennae quivering. By the time she’d brought Dustin back down, Kyra had settled on the sofa with a diaper on her shoulder. Madeline handed him into his mother’s arms, and Kyra gave him a kiss on the top of his head, unhooked the cup of her nursing bra, and settled him in her lap.

  Maddie puttered nearby while the baby nursed. When Dustin had delivered a resounding burp, Kyra stood. “I’m going to put him in the stroller and go for a walk,” she said, glancing down at her watch.

  “Great,” Maddie said. “I’m dying to stretch my legs. I’ll be ready in a minute. Let me get my wallet.”

  “Oh.” Kyra looked at her watch again. “I, um, really want to get going. Dustin’s eager to get out.” They both looked down at the baby, who was so sated from milk he could barely keep his eyes open.

  “I’ll be right back,” Maddie said in the tone that she’d mastered right around the time Kyra had first tried out her “I’m innocent” look. When she came downstairs Kyra had already buckled Dustin into his jogging stroller. She didn’t protest Maddie’s presence but she didn’t welcome it either as she set off for Flamingo Park at a pace that had Maddie breaking into a sweat after just a couple of blocks.

  When they reached the park, Kyra didn’t hesitate, but headed straight for the playground. There she scanned the benches until she spotted whatever, or as it turned out whomever, she’d been looking for.

  “What’s going on, Kyra?” Madeline asked. But Kyra was smoothing a hand over her hair and adjusting the strap of her tank top.

  “Let’s go sit over there,” she said, pointing toward a shaded bench right near the baby swings, where a dark-skinned man with dreadlocks and baggy neon-c
olored clothing sat.

  “Okay, but…” Maddie had barely begun to respond before Kyra had pushed the jogging stroller halfway there.

  Once again scurrying to keep up, Madeline could see that the man held an MP3 player in one hand and was swaying and bobbing to an unheard beat. Although he sat in a prime location, the other mothers had given him a wide berth, leaving him alone in the playground equivalent of a no-fly zone.

  As they approached the bench, the man stood and stepped forward to greet them, removing one of the earbuds. “Hallo, mon,” he said with the lilt of the islands. “It be good to be sittin’ in de shade today, dat’s fer sure.” He nodded and flashed an instantly recognizable smile, still bobbing to the reggae music that bled out through the earbud in his hand.

  Dustin’s chubby hands reached out toward the man in the too-colorful clothes and Maddie’s heart sank. Because despite the dark makeup, Rasta wig, and island clothing, Daniel Deranian was already slipping an arm around Kyra’s shoulder and reaching out to his child.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Nikki chose a pale blue 1960s Gigliola Curiel sleeveless linen dress with decorative curved seams and an Empire waist for her appointment at Parker Amherst’s home on Star Island. It had three knot buttons centered on the scoop-necked bodice and a narrow skirt that ended just above the knee. She’d bought it in the early days when she’d been building Heart, Inc. both for its cut and its pedigree and because she loved the band-collared, three-quarter-sleeved jacket that made it appropriate for everything from a business lunch to a cocktail party.

  She’d lost weight since she’d last worn it, and as she assessed herself in the bathroom’s least wavy mirror, she saw that she was not just thinner but tauter and more subtly muscled from the year of hands-on renovation than she’d ever gotten as a result of expensive personal training. Perhaps if things didn’t work out with Do Over or a return to matchmaking, she’d write an exercise book using renovation as its base. Surely Home Depot or Lowe’s or even one of the do-it-yourself networks could get behind that.

  Nicole added an Art Nouveau lavaliere necklace, a silver cuff bracelet, and a favorite pair of Maud Frizon high-heel sandals then practiced her sincerest smile in the mirror, pitifully glad that the mirror was too cloudy to reveal the deepening lines around her eyes and across her forehead.

  Tonight was do-or-die night for Parker Amherst. She’d do all that she could to convince him to sign the contract she’d tucked into her bag, but if she left empty-handed, her pursuit of him would be over. She might be desperate, but she knew from experience that anyone this difficult to sign would be impossible to please.

  The gate at Star Island proved little more than a formality. After a quick look at her and the Jag, and without even asking whom she was visiting, the guard waved her through. The palm-tree-covered island was an interesting combination of old, original, and funky pressed up against spanking new and expensive. The streets were old and narrow and the lots far deeper than they were wide. Just like the houses, whose thick walls, high gates, and tropical foliage blocked all but the smallest slivers of water from view.

  Parker Amherst’s home ate up every inch of its lot, and from the look of it had tried to gobble up portions of those on either side. The walled gate was so high that only the angles of the barrel-tile roof and some toothpick round palms showed above it.

  She parked on the brick driveway, rang the bell on the gate, and when the gate clicked open she walked into a bricked courtyard, dominated by a gurgling fountain and a lush tropical garden from which the plentiful plant life had gone forth and attempted to conquer.

  The house was an impressive Mediterranean Revival that resembled a wedding cake and had all of the style’s bells and whistles, including a columned loggia, wrought-iron balconies, and an impressive run of floor-to-ceiling windows. Two bell towers and a chimney poked up above the multigabled roof. The home’s fortress-thick walls were an ocher-stained stucco outlined in white icing trim. In square footage it appeared considerably larger than Bella Flora but not so large as Bitsy Baynard’s estate in Palm Beach.

  Nicole pressed the doorbell beside the massive wooden door and heard it peal melodically inside. Several minutes passed before she heard the echo of footsteps. When the door swung open, Parker Amherst stood framed in the doorway. A marbled foyer stretched out behind him.

  “Hello.” He studied her for a moment then stepped back and motioned her inside. “Thank you for coming.” His manner was stiff and he did not extend his hand; Nicole responded in kind. Parker Amherst was not an air-kiss kind of guy.

  The entry was beautifully decorated, with highly polished surfaces that glinted in the stray rays of sunlight that filtered through high clerestory windows. But each sound echoed loudly, all the more noticeable for the vacuum of silence it pierced.

  “Come in,” Amherst said. “I thought we’d have drinks in the study.” He led her down a central hallway past darkened rooms on either side and into a heavily paneled room with a long row of arched windows that overlooked Biscayne Bay. Miami Beach lay in the distance; she could make out several of the high-rises that lined South Beach’s western edge.

  “Can I fix you something?” Amherst asked, motioning her to a seat as he moved to a drinks cart. “I’m afraid the staff is off tonight, but I make a passable martini.”

  “Thank you.” Nicole took in her surroundings as her would-be client began to assemble the drinks. She was surprised and not at all happy to learn that they were alone. “Your home is beautiful. How long have you lived here?”

  “My grandfather built it in the twenties. I was born here.” His answers were straightforward, but there was something in his tone that was not.

  “It’s quite large,” she said, striving to stay conversational. “How many people does it take to run it?”

  He smiled, his lips turning in a wry twist of amusement. “We used to have a staff of ten. But now that it’s just me, I’m down to a skeleton crew. Our housekeeper retired when my father died last year. She wasn’t the only one; several of the others were quite old. They’d been with the family since before I was born.”

  It was an answer, but it wasn’t. Nicole felt the hairs prickle on the back of her neck as she contemplated the silence and recalled that no one but the disinterested guard at the front gate even knew she’d come anywhere near this house tonight. If in fact he’d paid attention to anything but the Jag.

  “Here you are.” Amherst handed her a glass and raised his to it in toast. “Salud,” he said, taking a chair across from her. “To happier times.”

  Nicole took a sip. It was too heavy on the vermouth and far stronger than she liked. She looked up to find him watching her. “It’s very good,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He took a sip of his own then looked at her appraisingly. “I’m sure things were ‘happier’ for you before your brother’s theft was discovered.”

  Nicole stopped drinking, but took her time swallowing. It was the first time he’d mentioned Malcolm, though after the premiere party pilot she could no longer fool herself that he didn’t know all the gory details. “Yes, of course,” she said. “What he did was unconscionable.”

  “At the least,” Amherst said, taking a taste of his drink, but continuing to stare at her as if he might glean some bit of information just by looking. “It’s always so hard to believe that family members really didn’t know in these kinds of situations.”

  She remained silent under his regard as long as she could. “So why did you ask me here?” Nicole finally asked. “And why did you contact me in the first place? You certainly don’t seem in any hurry to find a wife.”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out whether you really were duped,” he said. “It occurred to me that you might have been in on the whole thing.” He paused as if waiting for her protest. “And that you might know where the rest of the money your brother stole is. I mean it’s not like the FBI got all of it back.”

  She almost laughed
at the absurdity of the notion, though the way he was studying her—and the fact that they were completely alone—robbed the situation of humor. “More experienced people than you have tried to figure that out.” She thought of Giraldi and wished he were here.

  Amherst continued to study her and she wished she’d let Giraldi do a background check on him. She let several long moments go by and still Amherst didn’t speak. Which made her wish she’d given up trying to get him to sign a contract as soon as he’d started jerking her around.

  The silence became louder and more ominous. Her heart skittered in her chest. The guy and his Roman numeral were really starting to creep her out.

  “I did my best to get him to turn himself in,” she finally said, fighting the urge to stand and turn and make a break for the front door.

  “But he didn’t, did he?” Amherst said quietly. Not that he had to speak up to be heard over the mushroom cloud of silence. “And he hasn’t admitted where big pockets of money went.”

  She didn’t know what he wanted from her. For the briefest of moments she wondered if maybe this was a bid to get her to find him a wife for free, but when she looked into his eyes, which were definitely not fully focused, she knew this was one more case of wishful thinking.

  Leave. The word reverberated in her brain and caused her gut to clench with urgency.

  Nicole set the martini aside and stood. “I’m afraid I really have to get going. But I promise you I did not collude with my brother. In fact, he stole everything I had.”

  “So you say.”

  “Believe me, if I didn’t need the money I wouldn’t be sweating on national television over a house that’s not my own. And I certainly wouldn’t have come here hoping to sign a client who’s been so reluctant to pay even a nominal retainer.”

  She shrugged as if these things happened and stepped out from behind the cocktail table, half anticipating a sudden lunge or move on his part. But although his eyes dilated slightly, he didn’t get up or move toward her. His expression remained veiled.