The logical half of him had been right, he saw, as he pushed his way through the breezeway doors that opened onto the pool area. She’d donned a light cotton wrap and was sitting sideways on the lounge chair now, smiling as he approached.
“You staying here?” he said, handing her the glass.
She glanced around the lushly landscaped pool area. “It seems like a nice place,” she said.
“You should see the rooms,” he told her.
She stared at him from behind her dark sunglasses. “I have,” she said.
It stopped him for a moment. “I was hoping for something more like, ‘maybe I will,’” he said.
She shrugged, and a trace of her smile came back. “You should stick with guileless, John. It suits you better.”
He gave her a rueful nod and raised his glass as he sat on the chaise next to hers. They toasted, then sat in silence for a moment.
“That was quite some night,” she said after a moment, her gaze fixed out on the water. The sailboat had vanished, he noted, as had the open fisherman. Nothing but the dark smudge of the mangrove island out there pasted against a cloudless sky and a sea that were almost indistinguishable.
“You haven’t heard the half of it,” he told her.
She turned to him, her expression mild. “Perhaps I have,” she said.
He stared at her for a moment. “You know about Dequarius…?”
“How do you think I knew where you were staying?” she said, waving her hand around the pool compound. “Franklin keeps this wing for himself and his friends. It’s empty most of the off-season,” she said.
Deal nodded, his mind traveling back to his lame come-on. He didn’t want to think about her draped on Stone’s arm at some poolside bash, or worse, curled beside him in one of those monster beds.
“It must have been awful,” Annie was saying, cutting into his thoughts.
He nodded and took a sip of his drink. “Yeah, well, after they moved me, I decided to go break the news to the old man—”
“Who had disappeared himself,” she said, finishing his sentence.
He stared back at her. “I knew it was a small town,” he said. “I guess I didn’t realize how small.”
“Franklin keeps in pretty close touch with the sheriff’s office,” she said. “Especially when he’s concerned about his friends.”
“Would that include me?”
She gave him a tolerant smile. “As much as anyone is a friend of Franklin’s,” she said.
Deal nodded. “Maybe he could put in a word on my behalf with Sergeant Conrad,” he said. “One of us is about to stub our toe.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know any Conrad,” she said. “But if there’s a problem, I’m sure Franklin can take care of it.”
Deal had begun to think so, too, but he didn’t say anything to Annie. So Franklin Stone had been given a full account of the previous night’s proceedings, he thought. He supposed it made sense, given what had happened with him and Russell yesterday morning, but still it bothered him to be the subject of such scrutiny. He’d been leery enough of getting involved with someone like Stone to begin with. Now he understood why.
It was the kind of relationship that had never seemed to pose a problem for his old man, of course. If they have money, then take it, was Barton Deal’s motto. He’d managed to do it successfully for the biggest part of his life, Deal thought, and wished his father were here to advise him now.
“I don’t suppose Stone has any ideas about what Dequarius was doing over here,” Deal said to her.
She shook her head in puzzlement. “Why on earth would he?”
“I’m not certain,” Deal said. “The kid worked for him, that much I know.”
“For that matter, so do I.” She shrugged.
He glanced at her. “What are you talking about?”
“Do you think I appear in that lounge for free? I’m a professional, John.”
“Hey,” he said, holding up a hand. “I was just asking.”
“Forget it,” she said. “We were talking about Dequarius.”
“Right,” he said.
“And you were trying to connect what’s happened to Franklin.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Jesus, Annie…” he began.
“It’s all right,” she said, “why wouldn’t you?”
Deal shrugged. “I keep telling myself that the kid was just a small-time grifter and I was the doofus mark.”
“You wouldn’t strike anyone as a doofus,” she said.
“You said I was guileless,” he told her.
“As an ear of corn,” she said. “But that’s different. Dequarius wasn’t seeing you the way I do at all.”
“And how is that?” he heard himself say.
“Whatever he wanted from you, it was serious,” she said, ignoring the question.
“Given what happened, I’d say you are right.”
“He never told you what he wanted?”
“He said he’d found something. That’s as far as we got.”
“He didn’t say what?”
Deal shook his head.
“Or where?”
He shrugged and took a sip of his drink. “I thought he was talking about buried treasure. Our pal Magnum the bartender tells me that was one of Dequarius’ favorite scams.”
“Like I said, it doesn’t make sense that he’d take you for a sucker.”
He gave her a smile. “I’m heartened by your confidence.”
“You should be,” she said. “But why was Dequarius so set on you as his target?”
Deal threw his hands up. “That’s what I’ve been asking myself. He knew I was in town to talk to Stone about his project. I thought he might want to sell me some inside information, some dirt on Stone, but he told me he’d found something…” He broke off, shaking his head.
At about the same moment, Deal noticed that her wrap had fallen open. He tried to keep his eyes from the view of her scantily covered breasts, but it was like telling himself not to breathe. If Franklin Stone knew the thoughts that were racing through his mind, perhaps he’d end up like Dequarius.
“Does Stone have a big interest in wine?” he asked her abruptly.
She looked at him. “He keeps a wine cellar, if that’s what you mean. I wouldn’t call him a collector. What’s that have to do with anything?”
Deal hesitated, wondering if he ought to continue. Annie Dodds was living with Stone, after all. What would keep her from sharing anything he told her with the man? On the other hand, why should he care? he told himself. He was simply trying to make sense of all that had happened.
“I found some things, that’s all,” he told her.
“Where?” she said, shaking her head. “What things?”
“It’s probably nothing,” he told her. “Just a series of coincidences, but still…” He waved his hand in the air as if he were trying to bring shape to something.
“You’re being pretty mysterious,” she said.
“It is a mystery, isn’t it?”
She held up her glass. “Maybe we could have another one of these?”
“Sure,” he said. He stood and held out his hand for the empty. “I’ll be back in a flash.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said, taking his hand to pull herself up.
“Sure,” he heard himself saying. “Why not?”
***
She stood behind him in the long and silent hallway as he pulled his key card from the pocket of his running shorts and inserted it in the slot. He jiggled the door handle but the tiny electronic dots blinked obstinately red.
“I think it goes the other way,” she said, pointing at the card slot.
He nodded and withdrew the card, then turned the thing around. This time the tiny lights turned green and a click sounded somewhere inside the mechanism. “I knew that,” he said, ushering
her in ahead of him. “I was just testing you.” As she passed, he smelled a hint of lemon blossom mixed with the tang of perspiration. Oh my, he thought. Oh my.
“I’ll be right out,” he heard her call as the door to the foyer bathroom closed.
He went to the bar and found another can of mixer in the fridge, then pulled out the last of the tiny trays of ice. Ice in the glass, he told himself. Vodka. A little mixer after that. Why did his fingers seem numb?
“Quite a place they’ve given you,” he heard.
He glanced up to see her coming around the corner of the bar. She’d taken off the cotton wrap, he noticed, and had hung it over the back of one of the stools. As he handed her the drink, she removed the broad-brimmed hat and tossed it onto the granite bar top.
“That’s good,” she said after she’d taken a long sip of the drink. She gave a toss of her hair, then gathered it in one hand, twisting it back from her shoulders. “It was getting hot out there.”
“I thought so,” Deal said, taking a sip of his own drink. His voice seemed to echo in his ears.
She put her drink down on the countertop and moved quickly against him. He felt her arms go around his waist and back, felt her pull herself hard against him.
What he felt inside seemed tidal in its power. He managed to get his glass down somehow and then his arms were around her, pulling her even closer, if that was possible. She yanked her sunglasses off and buried her mouth at his neck. He felt exquisite jabs of pain where her teeth nipped at him, and thought he might go down in a swoon.
His hips were backed into the bar sink now, and hers were writhing against his. If he’d ever been more breathless, he couldn’t remember when.
“You’re okay with this, aren’t you?” she said, her breath coming in gasps, the words scorching at his ear. “Tell me you’re okay.”
“Way okay,” he managed, and forced his lips toward hers.
***
He tried to get them to the bedroom, but they made it only as far as the couch, where, in another life and time, he had sat while Rusty Malloy read him the riot act. This time, however, it was Annie Dodds who was with him, and the riot was of a markedly different character.
She’d lost the minuscule bottom half of her suit somewhere behind the bar, about the same time that Deal felt his T-shirt go over his head with what sounded like a ripping sound. He was tumbled back against the plush white cushions, his hands on her breasts, which had tumbled free from her top. She was astride him, her hand under the hem of his running shorts, caressing him through the thin fabric liner.
“If you keep that up…” he managed.
“Then what?” she said, wiggling herself higher up his lap.
In the next moment, her hand was all the way under the fabric, squeezing him, pulling him toward her writhing hips. He thrust himself up to meet her, felt a moment’s resistance as they met, then the exquisite slipperiness as she rode down hard upon him with a groan.
Their movements became galvanic then, a coupling that seemed intent upon restoring every pleasure denied over the course of twenty years. Deal felt his consciousness recede to some Pleistocene level, all ooze and scrapes and nips and scratches, all nuances of equilibrium gone. Up, down, and sideways became synonymous.
Everything was wetness, pink and black and bone on bone. At some point, he realized he was atop her, that she lay atop the spine of the couch’s back, her legs straddling the sides. He had one foot sunk in the cushions, the other struggling for purchase on the shell-stone floor as he drove himself deep inside her and she pounded herself back against him with every beat.
When he came, it seemed as painful as it did glorious, as if he might not ever reach such heights again. She was off the couch entirely, her arms wound around his neck, her legs clamped to his back.
“I’m going to stay just like this,” she told him. “I’m not going to move, ever.”
“You don’t have to,” he told her. Then managed to carry them, locked together like that, all the way into the bed.
***
The second time was far more measured, almost stately in its pace, and ended with her astride him, collapsing onto his chest as she came. She lay panting for a bit before she finally glanced up at him. “I didn’t mean to take so long,” she said.
“You’re apologizing for that,” he said.
“I didn’t want to take more than my share,” she said.
“You can have my share anytime,” he assured her.
“That was something,” she said.
“Keep it pent up for twenty years, something’s going to happen,” Deal said. “What’s that on your cheek?”
She turned and lay her head back on his chest. “Nothing,” she said, her voice muffled.
“Did I do that?” he asked, tucking his finger under her chin for a better look.
“Don’t,” she said, pushing his hand away. She rose to a sitting position, her back to him.
“Hey,” he said, an awful premonition sweeping over him as he recalled the dark glasses. He started to reach for her, then stopped, his hand inches from the flesh of her upper arm.
Three dim finger-sized bruises were striped horizontally there, just above her elbow. He shifted his hand to her shoulder and drew himself up at her side.
“What happened?” he said, struggling to keep his voice under control.
She gave him a neutral glance. There was a mouse under her left eye, a pale yellow bruise rising in a half-moon above it. He felt light-headed suddenly, a queasiness growing in his stomach, along with a rise of anger at himself for having missed it earlier. “I walked into a door,” she told him.
He felt his hands clench into fists. “Stone did this…?”
“Get a grip,” she said, her voice almost angry. She stopped and drew a breath. She put a hand to his chest, forcing a smile. “You should see the other guy.”
Deal was shaking his head. “No,” he managed. “No way he can do this—”
“John,” she said, her voice rising again. “You weren’t there. You don’t know what happened.”
“I don’t care what happened,” he said. “He can’t hit you.”
“I hit him, all right?” she said, her eyes flashing. “He grabbed my arm to stop me from nailing him again and I jerked away, right into the edge of the door.”
He stopped, trying to digest it. “You hit him?”
She nodded.
“Why?”
“I’m not sure how much of this I need to get into with you,” she said.
He blinked at the words, feeling as if he’d been punched himself. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get so personal.”
She glanced at his damp chest, then down at her own sweat-glazed body. “That’s pretty good,” she said, then gave him a rueful smile. “Imagine what it would feel like if we really let ourselves go.”
He nodded, then glanced back at her eye. “You sure you’re okay?”
She nodded. “I didn’t mean to sound so hostile,” she said. “Franklin was waiting up when I came in. He was worried, that’s all. I told him to go to bed and he said something. That’s when I lost it,” she said. “I just wanted him out of my way.” She gave him a contrite look. “It was more like swinging my purse at him than a punch.”
“I’m glad you kept your gun put away.”
She nodded, then gave him a smile. “I’m glad you didn’t,” she said. She leaned into him, sliding her hand between his legs. “Look who’s still awake, would you?”
Deal glanced down, surprised at himself. There might have been a time in his distant, hormone-filled youth when he’d made love three times in an afternoon, but he couldn’t really be sure. All he knew for certain, watching her head descend to his lap, was that he was surely going to do so this day.
Chapter Twenty-two
Deal woke to a pounding that seemed like it was coming from somewhere near the base of his skull. But by the time he managed to
pull himself out of the tangled sheets, he realized that it was someone at the door of his suite. He also realized, with a certain hollow feeling in his gut, that he was alone in the bed.
The knocking came again, accompanied by a muffled voice that sounded familiar. He forced himself to his feet and moved groggily into the bathroom to wrap one of the oversized towels around his waist, then padded through the living room, noting glumly that Annie’s things had disappeared as well.
“Yo, Deal,” he heard the familiar voice outside his thundering door.
“I’m here,” he called, moving to open up.
“Whoo-eee,” Russell Straight said when he opened the door and gave Deal’s bare chest the once-over. “You look like a flesh-and-blood cat post, my man. What you been doing in here anyway?”
“None of your business,” Deal said, retreating into the living room. He collapsed on the couch while Russell paused to take in the new surroundings.
“I heard what happened to Dequarius,” he said finally. “How come you didn’t call?”
Deal gave him a look that sent Russell’s hands up in surrender. “Forget I asked,” the big man said. He glanced at his watch. “You remember we had a dinner engagement?”
Deal considered the concept of “dinner engagement” for a few moments until it finally sank in. Though it seemed a vestige of another existence, he could not deny the memory of Stone’s invitation. In another dimension, or so it seemed, there lived a building contractor named Deal who had come to Key West to discuss a business proposition with a high-rolling developer his father had known.
Undeniable facts, indeed. But they seemed to have so little to do with life as he now knew it.
“What time is it?” Deal asked Russell finally.
“Limo o’clock,” Russell answered. “The man’s ride is sitting out front, waiting on us.”
Deal nodded slowly. Somewhere there was a proposal he’d been asked to study. Perhaps a packet waiting for him at the front desk. Or perhaps Dequarius Noyes had bled out on it, and it was now bagged up in the Monroe County sheriff’s evidence room.
No sooner had he thought it, than he remembered what he’d left beneath the ironing-board cover in his former room. “Sonofabitch,” he blurted.
Bone Key Page 16
