Grounds for Murder

by Tara Lush

  Dad sucked in a breath. “Oh LeLa,” he said, using my childhood nickname, “I’ll be right there.”

  * * *

  Once Dad arrived, I tossed back my third shot of espresso for fortification. There was barely enough time to savor the notes of chocolate and caramel. I grabbed my purse. I was fully caffeinated and on a mission.

  Dad glanced at me, tossing his head to the side so his short silver ponytail swished against his neck. He’d donned a black apron over his gray sweats and white T-shirt emblazoned with a red mandala, and stuffed his iPhone into the apron pocket.

  “You sure you want to do this before you head to Miami? Maybe you should wait a day, after you balance your chakras. Or, I could try my new reiki skills to center you. Or I could have a talk with Fab at yoga. You know how we sometimes see each other at men’s yoga class.” He rubbed a grass-green stone attached to a strip of leather around his neck. “You know what being in Miami does to your energy. Hey, I can get you one of these. It’s malachite. Absorbs negative energies.”

  I ignored his New Age prescription for bliss. He’d gone overboard with the woo ever since Mom died; somehow her casual interest in yoga while alive inspired him to be a combination of Dr. Oz, Eckhart Tolle, and Deepak Chopra after her passing. At first it was endearing because he’d been so comforted by all the trappings, but now? I blinked a few times as I remembered him smudging my kitchen with sage.

  “So, I should hide? Ignore him? Pretend he didn’t jump ship when we needed him the most?” My voice was a sharp hiss.

  “Sometimes you need to live and let live. Maybe Fab had his reasons.”

  I huffed. “I just gave him a raise. He rents the fourth-floor apartment from you. What reasons could he have to go work for the competition? It’s rude not to give notice, especially right before the barista championships. It hurts. We were a team. Or so I thought.”

  Dad shrugged. “People are strange, Lana. It’s something you need to get used to if you’re going to be a businessperson.”

  “It’s Florida. Everyone’s strange. They shouldn’t be jerks on top of it.”

  “I know, I know. Drive safe, sweets. I’ve got everything under control. I’ll try to find out what’s really behind Fab’s sudden departure.”

  I had my doubts about Dad’s version of being in control, considering when I took the café over, the place was teetering on the edge of collapse. It had been Mom’s dream business, after all. At one time, he’d been the quintessential Florida real estate guy, always hustling and aiming to make a buck. He practically had a cellphone surgically attached to his ear for decades.

  Now he handed out cell radiation blockers like candy, and his grief over Mom’s death left him a little scatterbrained.

  But I did have immense faith in his gossip abilities; being Zen didn’t extend to learning all the dirt on people. As a lifelong realtor on the island, he knew more details about folks than most.

  Dad extracted his cell phone, and I knew he was fiddling with the tunes because the volume coming from the café’s speakers went up a notch. I leaned in and kissed his cheek, getting a noseful of an earthy scent. “Patchouli?” I grimaced.

  “One of the ladies at yoga gave it to me,” he replied. Next to Fab and Noah, Dad was probably the most desired man on Devil’s Beach, which was an unsettling fact as his only child.

  The strains of Fleetwood Mac’s “Sara” came wafting through the air. A goofy grin had spread on Dad’s face, and his eyes glistened with moisture. “Your mother loved this song.”

  “I know.” I let out a soft sigh. I didn’t have the time or the emotional bandwidth to reminisce or grieve. “Please don’t be sad. I’ll call you from Miami, okay?” I wrapped my arms around him and gave a tight squeeze.

  “Not sad, dear. I just miss her. I know you do, too.”

  I released him and nodded. “I gotta run.”

  “Don’t forget about my retreat tomorrow. I can’t work at all,” he called after me.

  “Got it.” Crap, I was already running late. This confrontation with Fab was going to be a short one.

  I drove the three blocks to Island Brewnette instead of walking. Normally I loved strolling the island’s historic downtown, taking in the Caribbean-Key West vibe. The island’s Main Street was eight blocks of mostly historic, four-story brick buildings, housing dozens of businesses and boutiques. A handful of buildings were painted white, while others, like my family’s, were untouched. Several of those brick buildings had turned to condo-lofts on the top floors and had shops at the ground level.

  Those grand old structures were interspersed with graceful, old wooden buildings. Some were historic, original shops from the turn of the last century, while others were Victorian-style mansions that had since been turned into bed and breakfasts.

  But today was not a time to soak in the town’s beauty. I was on a mission and past the hour I’d hoped to leave for Miami.

  Miraculously, a car was pulling out right in front of the coffee shop and I parallel parked like a champ. Killing the engine of my ten-year-old Honda, I peered into the large windows. Goodness. It was packed. Just as packed as Perkatory had been all morning.

  A gaggle of customers, mostly women, tapped on laptops, twirling locks of hair while stealing furtive glances behind the counter. Cursing under my breath, I tore out of my car and slammed the door. My mood plummeted with every step, and by the time I yanked open the door to the café, I was good and angry.

  In my mind, I had imagined customers gasping the moment I walked in. I had figured they’d drop their mason jars when they saw the rival coffee shop owner stalk into Island Brewnette. Over pour sugar. Slop creamer everywhere. That kind of thing.

  But no. Instead, no one acknowledged me. The hipster music droned on —it was loud and grinding, an assault to the ear—and everyone continued to focus on their screens. My eyes swept around the minimalist, monochrome décor. I sniffed disapprovingly. Entirely too trendy for me. Where was the homey, cozy ambience? Coffee was a warm drink. This seemed more like a doctor’s office. Or a South Beach club. One of the reasons I fled back to Devil’s Beach was because it was nothing like where I used to live.

  My gaze landed on Fab, who was holding court behind the counter. He’d been here for exactly one morning and already he worked the espresso machine like he owned the place. Goodness, that was a nice machine. It cost a cool thousand more than mine. I knew this because I’d wanted that particular brand, but had been more fiscally responsible when I helped Mom make her final selection.

  I stopped in the middle of the café, fixated on my former employee. He slid a white mug to a redhead in a flimsy white beach cover-up and matching white bikini.

  “Here you go, cara,” he purred in that Italian accent. His English was flawless, but he often sprinkled in some Italian pet names for women. “A foam heart, just for you.” The woman squealed and thrust her ample chest toward him.

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, come on,” I muttered.

  “Oh Em Gee! Thank you! Can I get a selfie? I promise to tag you!” The woman whirled around and extended her arm, phone in hand.

  For a beat, Fab and I locked eyes, and I snorted. Arrogant jerk. He quickly glanced away. I hoped he looked derpy in that photo.

  “Excuse me.” I pushed my way past a couple of customers waiting in line. I ignored their grumbles. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Britt, the woman in pink who’d come into Perkatory hours ago. She was shooting daggers with her eyes at the woman in the white cover-up. Would Fab’s departure cause me to bleed customers?

  “What is going on here?” Maybe my voice was a touch too loud, probably because of the stupid music.

  Fab grinned, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. “Change of plans, darling Lana. I was going to get with you later to explain.”

  I hated when he called me “darling Lana.” It felt so pretentious.

  That’s when I lost it. Gesturing wildly, all my frustrations poured from my mouth. Being laid off from the paper i
n Miami. Returning home to Devil’s Beach, a place that harbored complicated memories. Running my mother’s once-beloved coffee shop. My dismal love life. The fact that Fab’s departure meant that we wouldn’t have a chance of winning the Sunshine State Barista Championship. Everything.

  “You are a traitor. Any reasonable person would have given two weeks’ notice. And you could have told me you were doing this before we entered the barista competition, before I paid the five-hundred-dollar entry fee. We were doing this together. And now, you’ll be competing on their team,” I spat.

  He shrugged. “It’s beyond my control,” he responded. “I wanted to be with my girlfriend.”

  “Don’t pee down my back and tell me it’s raining. You’re being selfish. Why would you do this to me? I thought we got along well.”

  I glared at him, but he didn’t respond. That only made me angrier. And sadder. Fab was one of the few people I regularly talked with. Even though most of our conversations revolved around Instagram, the beach, and his workout routines with his buddies. He was one of my few lifelines to the world after a difficult few years, and now it was severed.

  His move to the competition left another little fracture in my already splintered heart.

  “Your girlfriend wanted to keep an eye on you because you can’t keep your pants zipped, and so here you are. Well, I hope you realize how you’ve screwed me over. I wish I’d never met you. Wish you never existed, really. You’re a menace to women, you know that? You’re a user.”

  Crap. This was nasty, especially for me. I needed to get a handle on my emotions, and yet I took everything out on him as the crowd in Island Brewnette looked on in horror. I took a deep breath and tried to count to ten.

  “You’re being so extreme in your response,” he said in formal, Italian-tinged English. The kind that made women go gaga. “Darling Lana, let’s talk tonight over Chianti. We’re practically neighbors, after all.”

  “Don’t remind me that we live so close. If it were up to me, you’d be evicted. How can you stay in our building now? Of course, I’m being extreme. You walked out at the worst possible time and went to the competition. You betrayed me. And I hope you fail at the barista competition.”

  Somehow, that was the worst part. Despite his flaws, I thought we were friends. I spat some choice phrases that may or may not have involved a few swear words that I’d learned in newsrooms. Then I stalked out and seethed all the way to Miami, hoping the city would take my mind off all my island troubles.

  Chapter Three

  Spoiler alert: the city did not take my mind off my troubles. Not by a long shot.

  For starters, because I was so late getting on the road, traffic snarled my journey, along with a nasty wreck on I-75 involving what appeared to be a tangle with Lamborghini and a motorcycle. I checked into my cheap motel room, threw on a little black dress and spackled on a layer of makeup. Rolling on deodorant in a bathroom straight out of a 1980s Scarface scene wasn’t how I’d hoped to start the evening, but it fit my mood.

  Grumbling to myself, I called an Uber, which took eons to drive downtown. The early evening ceremony was held at Icon, a downtown hotel where the Florida Society of Professional Journalists’ annual award dinner was held every year. Somehow, despite a downturn in the news industry, the group managed to scrape together enough cash to hold the banquet on the top floor of the city’s swankiest address.

  Obviously, because it was Miami in late August, it was hot as heck. While riding the elevator up, I dabbed the sweat off my face with a tissue and peered in the mirrored door, trying not to think too hard about how this entire evening—celebrating the best of journalism while papers were cutting jobs every other month—was like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

  Futile.

  Oh well. At least there was free booze.

  I stepped out of the elevator and made my way down the corridor to the bar, where everyone would gather before entering the banquet hall. Free drinks made journalists as happy as clams at high tide.

  The bar was packed with folks from papers all over Florida, and I recognized dozens of them. Panic seized my gut. Was I really welcome here? I was no longer a reporter, no longer a part of the tribe. I kept close to the inner wall, not wanting to get too near the floor-to-ceiling windows, with the expansive view of Miami. If I focused on the glittering skyline from this height, I’d get woozy and anxious.

  More anxious than I already was.

  I snatched a glass of champagne off the tray of a passing waiter. It was crisp and fizzy, but I could drink an entire bottle by myself back in my hotel room. There, I could inhale a box of guava pastries, too. A worthy alternative than all this … peopling.

  “You made it!”

  I turned to the familiar, rich male voice. “Erol!”

  I wrapped my arms around his red smoking jacket, pulling him close. He was a features editor at my old paper, and my closest friend there. I immediately felt terrible for letting a few weeks go by without talking with him.

  Erol was a gorgeous Haitian man, who was among Miami’s most eligible bachelors. Women of all ages sought his company, but I was one of the few to know that he was nursing a broken heart after his girlfriend left him to take a job as a war correspondent in Iraq with a wire service.

  We swept each other up in a hug and for a moment, I missed him desperately. Missed Miami. Yearned for everything about my old life. So much that I was a second or two away from weeping.

  “You made it,” he cried.

  “Your hair looks amazing,” I squealed, kissing him on the cheek.

  “Yours does, too. So full and curly. Lana, you have some guts coming here,” he said with an admiring grin while plucking two glasses of champagne off a wandering waiter’s tray. He handed one to me, and I took a gulp.

  “Hey, I’m up for an award.” I shrugged. “I was invited just like everyone else. Even though the paper laid me off, they can’t stop me from attending. Plus, I could win, and it would be sweet, sweet revenge.”

  “Hell yeah, it would be. And once a journalist, always a journalist. I think you’re going to win. Screw the editors. Especially Ellis.”

  James Ellis was the managing editor of the paper. The guy who’d fired me and a dozen others six months ago. Oh, he’d been appropriately apologetic, even allowing his icy lizard eyes to glisten for a second. He’d blamed it all on corporate. On the new owners, a private equity group. On Craigslist, the Internet, Republicans, Democrats, life itself. Whatever.

  “Is he here?” I tried to appear bored, as if news of my old boss’s presence didn’t faze me.

  Erol rolled his eyes. “Yeah, somewhere. I saw him slithering around the appetizer table.”

  “Naturally. I’m over it. I’m in a way better situation now.” I waved my hand dismissively.

  “Of course you are. You’re a business owner. Loved that write-up on Southern Living.”

  I shot him a coy smile. That had been my first and only triumph since leaving the paper, convincing the magazine to visit the café in the second week I was on the job. The two-hundred-word write-up in this month’s edition was worth its weight in gold. “I’ve got lots up my sleeve. Perkatory’s going to be the best-known coffee shop in all of Florida. In all of the South.”

  That sounded so breezily confident. I wish I believed it myself.

  The lights in the bar area flickered, which meant the organizers wanted to herd us into the banquet hall to eat rubbery chicken and overly sweet chocolate cake. “Showtime,” Erol said. “I already saved you a seat at our table. I want to be there when you win your award so we can rub it in Ellis’s stupid corporate face.”

  “Or club him over the head with it.”

  Locking arms, we cackled and went inside. Of course he’d chosen a table in the center of the room, because Erol adored being surrounded by people. Wouldn’t have been my choice, but being near him made me feel invincible.

  At least I knew the people seated with us: three copy editors from the paper and
a guy from a Miami lifestyle blog. We all hugged, and the editors launched into a diatribe about how awful things had gotten at the Tribune. Typical newspaper stuff. Stories were shorter, budgets were smaller, there was no staff to cover important news. Someone covered a court verdict by following a TV station’s twitter feed because they didn’t want to spend the money sending a reporter to Orlando. Mold had sprouted in a stairwell. The company sold one of the parking lots.

  I nodded along sympathetically and drank a second glass of champagne. If there was one thing newspaper people were good at, it was complaining about work. No, I didn’t miss this. Not really. My earlier yearning had been a fleeting emotion from the rush of all the glitz and familiar faces.

  I listened to someone talk about how they bought their own notebooks and pens, only to have the losers in sports steal their stash. Yikes. As lonely as my life was in Devil’s Beach, I was better off without this negativity.

  “See? You’re not missing anything here in Miami,” Erol said, finishing his champagne. “But we’re missing another drink.”

  “Amen to that,” I murmured. Okay, this wasn’t so bad. I could handle this. This was no longer my world. No biggie.

  I was telling the lifestyle blogger about my café and inviting him to visit—hey, why not promote my business a little—when Erol emitted a low groan. He poked me in the ribs with his elbow. I turned toward him, and he pointed with his eyes toward the stage.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “Look who it is,” he said through gritted teeth.

  My gaze went to the stage, where a tall, dark-haired man in a deep blue designer suit stood on the podium. He had exceptional posture and the carefully cultivated beauty of a TV news anchor. Not a hair was out of place, not a blemish on his spray-tanned skin.

  I sucked in my breath. Well. Wasn’t this awesome. It was my ex-husband, Miles Ross. He grinned and pointed at someone in the front row. I rolled my eyes. He’d become such a slick jerk, almost a caricature of a TV newsman. Maybe he was auditioning to be a game show host or something. He sure gave off the appearance of one.