A Time to Swill

by Sherry Harris

  Steve sauntered by me over to the heritage business owners. I wanted to whack him with the tray I was holding, but didn’t really think that would help the situation. I pictured a headline: “Waitress beats man to death in a betray-al.” I loosened my grip on the tray. The man in the suit stood next to me, and his floral aftershave made my nose itch. He had thick lips and deep-set eyes under a prominent brow. He was attractive in a smarmy way.

  “Well, well, the gang’s all here. Did you miss me?” He stood next to Jed Farwell, who leaned away from him. Steve stuck out his hand to shake, but everyone just left it out there. He laughed, then stuck his hand in the pocket of his red-plaid shorts. “What a welcome home.”

  “You’re not welcome here,” Vivi said. Her drawl, pronounced, was a cue to most people to run.

  “Well now, Vivi, you are going to have to get used to me being here as half owner of the bar.” Steve turned to look at me. “I’m sure we can keep you on as a waitress with a little work on your looks and clothes.” He then turned to Joaquín. “And with some additional training, perhaps you.”

  I wasn’t going to let Steve’s comment about my appearance get to me. I looked just fine. However, I was worried about Vivi. Her face had gone from white to pink to scarlet. I went and stood beside her. My tray ready if I needed to use it on someone. Joaquín came and stood behind us. I smelled mint and noticed Joaquín gripped the stone pestle he used to muddle herbs and fruit in his right hand. Tiny bits of mint clung to it. The rest of the heritage business owners crowded around us.

  “Oh, look at that intimidating group, will you, Ted?” Steve said.

  I assumed Ted was the guy in the suit. “If you have a will, let’s see it,” I said. I noticed the people in the bar had mostly gone quiet. Except for the people out on the deck, who didn’t have a clue as to what was happening in here.

  “You all remember Ted Barnett,” Steve said.

  Barnett? That was Rip’s last name. I could see a slight resemblance. Although Ted looked like the used-car salesman version of Rip. Where Rip was muscled, Ted was soft. Ted had the pale looks of someone who was rarely outdoors, while Rip was tanned.

  “I remember him,” said an older man who sat at a table next to us. The man was a local curmudgeon who usually drank whiskey sours, but had the occasional old fashioned. “I was his high school math teacher. Always caught him cheating.”

  Ted turned a bit red at that. “People change.”

  “Oh, let’s not keep them in suspense any longer,” Steve said. He motioned to Ted with his hand.

  Ted reached into an inner pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a thick, legal-size envelope. He handed it to Steve. Steve smiled and extended it to Vivi. I wanted to snatch it out of his hand and read it.

  “Here you go.” When she didn’t reach for it Steve dropped it in front of her. He looked at me. “We’ll give you a week to pack up and move.” He turned to Ted. “Let’s go.”

  “Round of drinks on the house,” Vivi called out after they left. “Chloe, after you help Joaquín with the drinks, please come to my office.” She slipped off her barstool and looked at the heritage business owners. “Thanks to all of you for being here. I hope you’ll understand if I need a moment alone.” She patted Wade’s arm.

  The heritage owners all murmured things like “Let us know what we can do” and “We have your back” as they left the bar. Wade stayed behind. Vivi picked up the envelope and walked back to her office, back stiff, head high. I wanted to go after her. I wanted to find out what was in that envelope, but I started taking orders instead.

  * * *

  An hour later I knocked on Vivi’s office door. Joaquín and I hadn’t seen her since she went in.

  “Come in.” Vivi’s voice sounded strong, firm.

  I slipped in, closing the door behind me. Vivi had documents sprawled across her desk. The envelope they came in lay empty, pushed off to one side.

  “What do you think?” I asked, sitting across from her and gesturing to the papers.

  She gathered them up, tapping them lightly on the desk to align their edges. “It must be a scam, but they look legitimate to me.” Her lips settled in a tight line. An expression I hadn’t seen since June, when I’d shown up. “I made an appointment with a lawyer I know for eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I’d like you to come with me.”

  “Of course,” I said. “May I?” I pointed to the documents.

  “Yes, I made a copy for you,” Vivi said. “But let me warn you, he has an alleged email exchange between him and Boone. It’s not easy to read them. But they sound like Boone, and I’m not sure Steve could pull that off.” She folded the documents, put them back in the envelope, and gave it to me.

  That didn’t sound good. “I’ll read them at home tonight. It’s still busy out there.” I stood. “What do you know about Ted Barnett?”

  “I don’t trust him,” Vivi said. “He takes after his grandmother.”

  I nodded, but maybe Vivi wasn’t the most reliable source on the topic of the Barnett family.

  “Chloe,” Vivi said as I headed toward the door, “if the worst happens and this somehow turns out to be true, you can come live with me at the big house.”

  Vivi called her home “the big house.” Before Boone died she had dreamed of a future when Boone’s family would live in it and she’d move to the house I lived in now. I was shocked. I’d thought if things turned out to go Steve’s way that Vivi wouldn’t be sad to see the last of me. “Thank you.” I could feel the pull of tears behind my eyes. “That means a lot to me. I’ll get back to work and see you later.”

  Vivi stood. “I think I’ll go home. I’m a bit tired after all Steve’s drama.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you in the morning, then.” I glanced at my copies of the will and emails, wishing I had time to read them now, but they would have to wait.

  * * *

  At nine thirty I was finally sitting on my back porch with a beer. The weather had cooled off enough that I’d thrown on a sweater over my T-shirt and shorts. Maybe I did need to up my wardrobe a bit for work. Vivi always looked like she’d walked off the pages of a magazine. But I also didn’t want to give Steve the satisfaction of knowing he was right. So shorts and T-shirts it was for now.

  Wade had left jambalaya for Joaquín and me, so I’d eaten more of it before I came home. The water sparkled and swooshed gently. I took a sip of my beer. If I didn’t get some exercise, I wouldn’t get any sleep tonight. And I wasn’t ready to face the documents Vivi had given me yet. I needed a clear head for them.

  After I changed into a one-piece swimsuit and board shorts, I went outside. Boone had stashed toys—boogie boards, surfboards, a kayak, paddleboards, and oars—under the porch. I’d started to drag out a paddleboard when I heard footsteps coming up the walkway. I dropped the board and grabbed a paddle. It made a better weapon.

  CHAPTER 17

  “It’s only me, Chloe,” Rip said as I turned.

  I relaxed the paddle, which I held like a baseball bat. Rip wore a T-shirt and running shorts. “I guess I’m a little on edge.”

  “I heard what happened at the bar today.”

  Not surprising. The good people of Emerald Cove loved to talk. “I’m sure you did, and you know my propensity to want to work off my worries, so you showed up here to either stop me or save me.” I turned my back to him and pulled out a paddleboard. “I don’t need to be stopped or saved.”

  “Actually, I just thought you might want some company.”

  My shoulders slumped. Some days I could be such a witch. I turned to Rip. “I’m sorry. It’s been a bad few days.”

  “Apology accepted. I’ll go.”

  “Or you can come paddleboarding with me.” When I went on my own at night I stayed on this side of the first sandbar, where the water was only inches deep.

  “I’d like that, if you really want me to.”

  I didn’t answer. Of course I wanted him to. I just tossed him a paddle and dragged out a second padd
leboard. We carried them down to the Gulf. The water was dark, and the half-moon was playing hide-and-go-seek with the clouds. I confess I was glad for the company. We didn’t talk, but stood on the paddleboards next to each other, paddling west along the shore. I snuck glances at Rip. If I didn’t have the paddle in my hands, I’d probably be fanning myself, because he looked really good on a paddleboard. Really good.

  The third time he caught me staring, I figured I had to say something. “Race you until we’re even with that tall pine.” I pointed to a tree that was about thirty feet ahead and then took off. Ugh. I couldn’t believe I’d said, “race you,” like I would have to one of my brothers when I was eight. But it was too late to take it back. Rip chuckled, and while I’d shot out ahead of him at first, he caught up easily.

  When we were almost even with the tree I used my paddle to splash him, trying to throw him off, but he just laughed and worked harder, winning the race.

  “You’re a cheater, Chloe,” Rip said, laughing. “Haven’t you heard that cheaters never win?”

  “That so isn’t true.” I shrugged. “If you grew up with brothers like mine, you would cheat too.”

  “I hear you about the brothers,” Rip said.

  We turned our paddleboards back toward my house. I still didn’t know much about Rip’s family. I didn’t quite know how to bring up his father disappearing on the Fair Winds. “Are you related to Ted Barnett?” Maybe the name Barnett was common down here.

  Rip continued to paddle. One stroke, two, three. I kept up with him, waiting for an answer.

  “He’s my cousin. We practiced law at the same firm in Birmingham. Green and Long.”

  That was interesting.

  “He’s a year older than me. His family moved to Birmingham after he graduated. We saw each other a lot, growing up at my grandmother’s house.”

  “Did you hear he’s Steve’s lawyer?”

  Rip nodded. Now I wished we were in a well-lit room so I could see his expressions more easily.

  “Is he a good person?”

  Rip went back to paddling. I worked my arms hard, trying to keep up.

  “I want to believe he is,” Rip finally said. “He was always good to me. He’s the reason I ended up at the firm after law school. Ted got me the job.”

  “But you left. Why?”

  “Did you ever see that Tom Cruise movie, The Firm?”

  “Yes. Of course. I read the book too. John Grisham wrote it.”

  “I don’t think this firm was too far off from the one in the movie.”

  As I recalled, when Tom Cruise left his firm they went after him to kill him. I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder to see if gunmen were on the shore waiting for Rip.

  “It took me a few years to figure out that wasn’t the place for me. That being a criminal defense lawyer wasn’t for me.”

  We had something in common with drastic changes in our lives—children’s librarian to waitress and lawyer to volunteer firefighter. It made me wonder how he could have such a fancy new boat without a job. But his family came from money, so maybe he had a trust fund. It really wasn’t my business.

  “That being said, I can’t imagine Ted taking Steve’s case. The firm usually only deals with very wealthy clients. The five percenters.”

  So something was up, but how to find out what? My body was physically tired, but my head didn’t feel any clearer. I paddled back to shore.

  “I read that your father was on the Fair Winds when it disappeared. I’m sorry. That must have been very difficult.”

  “It was. The not knowing what happened has always been the worse part. People were cruel in their speculating that the four of them ran off together. I never believed that.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “It’s why I left for Alabama when I was eighteen, and why my mom moved to Tampa.”

  We carried the boards and paddles back up to the house, and Rip helped me stash them under the porch.

  “Thanks for keeping me company,” I said as I walked to the door to the screened porch. It was hard to see his expression.

  “Any time, Chloe Jackson.”

  His voice was soft, deep, caressing. The slight drawl caused tingles to zap around my nervous system. Why did he have this effect on me? I wanted to invite him in, to find out what those firm lips would feel like against mine. But the timing was terrible. I had to get ready for the meeting with Vivi and her lawyer in the morning. For once, good sense won out. This must be what it felt like to be a grown-up. I waved a goodbye, went into the porch, locked the screen, and watched Rip walk off with a sigh.

  I clicked on a lamp, picked up the papers, and read. The will itself was straightforward, brief, and unemotional, as one would expect a legal document to be. It was dated three months after mine. Everything Steve had said was here in black and white. I bolted up when I read the emails.

  CHAPTER 18

  They got to me. The papers shook in my hand. The first one was written right after Boone had arrived in Afghanistan. The language sort of sounded like Boone, but they also felt a bit off to me. That could be wishful thinking on my part. I looked out at the ocean. Leaving this slice of paradise would be difficult, but if this will was legal, Vivi would be destroyed by Boone’s betrayal.

  In that case I might have to move in with her just to make sure she was okay. The letter Boone had sent to me with his original will had said I’d figure out why he wanted me down here. Was all this what he’d been alluding too? No, he never would have manipulated us so cruelly.

  I stared back down at the papers. The emails started with Steve writing about what a lousy father he’d been and apologizing. Steve wrote that a couple of health issues had made him rethink his life. I wondered if that was true, because Steve looked like a photo you’d see next to a definition of good health. Was there any way to check that out? I made a note on my phone to follow up.

  Boone’s first few replies sounded stiff. A quick glad you’re okay. As Steve’s emotional pleas for a reunion got longer and more intense, Boone—if it was Boone—started writing back longer messages. I knew Boone’s time in Afghanistan had been rough. I could see how he might want to settle things in his life. But the email that bolted me up was when Boone wrote Steve and started talking about them reuniting and running the Sea Glass together when Vivi retired. He said he’d been rethinking his life too, and that it was time to leave Chicago and return to Florida.

  The following emails were them discussing their plans. Boone had never told me any of this in all the times we’d video chatted while he was in Afghanistan or in any of our email exchanges. But then again, Boone had never told me he was in love with me, or that he was leaving me anything. I found out in the letter he’d written before he left for Afghanistan. The one that was with his will. However, not telling me he was in contact with his father was a stretch.

  Although, when I thought about it, Boone never talked much about his life down here—that Vivi had left him a house and he was part owner of the bar. The boat I knew about, but not much else. I’d never pressed him because he’d clam up or change the subject. I always figured he’d talk when he was ready to, though that chance had been snatched away.

  In the end I didn’t know what to make of all this. I wanted it to be a scam. For Vivi’s sake. For mine. And so Boone would remain the same man I thought he was.

  * * *

  At eight fifteen Friday morning I sat next to Vivi in her lawyer’s office. George Colton’s desk was larger than most kitchen islands and, like kitchen islands, had a massive slab of marble as its top. The only things on the desk were a mahogany pen holder with an expensive-looking pen in it, a closed laptop, and the papers Vivi had handed him when we had arrived at eight.

  The office had the usual shelves of law books, but instead of vanity photos of him posing with people, there was a massive oil painting of the Gulf. Vivi wore a Lilly Pulitzer, long-sleeved dress and I’d worn a blue, polka-dot sundress. Maybe Steve’s remark about my looks ha
d gotten to me more than I realized.

  George looked over his reading glasses at us, holding the will in his hand. He had thick, gray eyebrows and a pleasant, rounded face, and his tie was covered with sailboats. Vivi and I took turns filling him in on the original will and Boone’s background with his father. How unlikely it was that Boone would do something like this to Vivi.

  George shook his head. “I don’t like this. Green and Long has a reputation for shady dealings.”

  I knew more than I wanted to about shady lawyers from an experience last summer. What was with the lawyers down here?

  “They’ve been sued more than once,” Vivi said. “Nothing ever sticks, though. They pay people off to make things go away.”

  “They don’t make people go away, do they?” I asked, thinking back to Rip comparing the place to the lawyers in The Firm.

  George and Vivi looked at me as if I was daft.

  “I’m sure they’ve paid off their share of people,” George said.

  That was better than making them disappear.

  “Our problem is proving this isn’t legal,” George added.

  “What about the emails?” I asked. “I think they might be fake.”

  “The emails won’t have any bearing on whether the court declares this will to be the legally binding one.” George leaned back in his chair.

  “I can’t figure out why Green and Long would help someone like Steve,” Vivi said.

  “He doesn’t sound like the kind of man they usually represent,” George replied.

  “Maybe he has something on them,” I said.

  Vivi and George looked at each other.

  He started nodding. “Now, that makes sense.” He made a note on the legal pad in front of him. “I’ll have someone start digging into the emails to see if they are legitimate. I can hire a private detective to look into Steve.”

  “No need to hire a private detective. I have someone I trust.”