by Sandra Balzo
Though I wasn’t above stealing the idea and smuggling it back to Wisconsin. ‘What fun. Are you actually having espresso?’
‘Yes. In addition to a full bar, of course.’ She gestured toward the coffee cart. ‘Boyce, the hotel’s coffee vendor, will be onboard providing coffee and cake.’
I didn’t point out that coffee – which could be easily brewed by the large pot – and espresso, brewed by the shot, were two entirely different efforts. Especially when dealing with a crowd. ‘How many people will there be?’
‘Fewer than twenty for tonight, which is a separate, ticketed event.’ Missy frowned. ‘I’d hoped for more, but then this is the first year we’ve done something on the eve of the conference.’
‘That sounds like a very respectable turnout, and it’ll give you a chance to get the bugs out for next year.’ One of the ‘bugs,’ perhaps, being espresso for twenty. ‘I own a coffeehouse in Wisconsin, so let me know if your vendor needs help.’
‘Oh, that is so nice of you.’ Missy gave me an enthusiastic if unexpected hug. ‘This train event was my idea and I really do want to make it a huge success.’
The girl seemed to be starving for approval, something she probably didn’t get a lot of from her boss – especially if Missy was trying to spread her wings a bit. Zoe, as mother bird, seemed more like the type to knock impertinent chicks out of the nest prematurely than to nurture them.
‘Missy?’ Zoe, as if she’d heard, came over with the lanky, bald man in tow. ‘You and I discussed for weeks that Larry would play the role of our detective, Hercule Poirot, tonight. Yet he says you never even asked him to take part.’
Missy’s eyes went wide. ‘But Zoe, you said that you’d take care of …’ Then, probably not wanting to argue the point publicly, ‘I don’t know what could have happened. Sheriff Pavl— I mean, Jake didn’t receive an email, either.’
‘Email!’ Larry actually snorted. ‘I don’t respond to email.’
Even Zoe, trying as she was to calm the waters, seemed surprised by that. ‘But your “PotShots” is an online book review site. How can you not—’
‘Precisely,’ the man interrupted. ‘Which is why I don’t open my email. Do you really think I want to hear all the belly-aching from authors – whether newbies or established franchises – who seem to think I owe them a good review?’
PotShots rang a bell. ‘Why, you’re Laurence Potter.’
I felt Pavlik’s surprise as Potter turned toward me. ‘I am, indeed. And you are?’
‘Maggy Thorsen,’ I said, holding out my right hand. ‘I enjoy your reviews.’
‘Then you certainly can’t be an author yourself.’ Potter enveloped my fingers and drew their knuckles to his lips, a glint in his eye. ‘How refreshing.’
‘As refreshing as your critiques.’ I took my hand back, willing myself not to reflexively wipe it on my pants. A rumored womanizer and sleazeball, Potter might be a nasty piece of work – as were his reviews – but he was also borderline charming and certainly entertaining. ‘You sure don’t pull any punches.’
A modest shrug, though I had a feeling that nothing Potter did was modest, and that what he did to appear modest was nothing like unrehearsed. ‘Too many critics simply don’t bother to review books that are dreadful. Personally, I don’t subscribe to the old saw, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” In fact, I don’t know why words uttered by some rabbit in a children’s animated feature would be so revered in the first place.’
The words were ‘uttered by’ Thumper in Bambi. And it was ‘say nothing at all,’ not ‘say anything at all.’ Sheesh, if you can’t trust a reviewer to get it right …
‘What about the old saw, “those who can’t do, teach”?’ a voice from behind me contributed. ‘Do you “subscribe” to that one, Larry?’
I turned to see a chic woman with short, choppy black hair. She wore a deceptively simple white blouse over designer jeans – and not the department store kind. I’m talking denims that command upwards of a thousand dollars. And have waiting lists.
‘Laurence,’ Potter snapped, his eyes narrowing.
The new addition to our group smiled icily. ‘Oh, Larry, I’ve known you for years. Why so formal?’
‘I’ve grown tired of correcting the hearing-impaired morons who insist on confusing my name with that of JK Rowling’s detestable four-eyed wizard.’
Ah, Harry Potter.
‘Be glad your name’s not Dumbledore,’ I said under my breath, winning me a warning look from Pavlik, who knew I liked to stir a cauldron myself now and then.
Meanwhile, the smile was etched on the chilly face of the elegant woman. ‘So now you only need to inform them that Laurence is spelled with a “U” and not the more pedestrian “W.”’
‘As is the case with Olivier and Fishburne, so I’m in rather good company,’ Potter said. ‘And speaking of the company we keep, how nice it is to see you again, Rosemary.’
‘And me, you,’ the woman said. They air-kissed, each of them careful not to engage in any actual flesh-to-flesh contact.
It was obvious both of them were lying respectively through their tightly clenched teeth and suddenly I realized why. ‘Rosemary Darlington. I’ve been reading about your new book, Breaking and Entering.’
And I had, on PotShots. The first book from the legendary lady of romantic suspense in years and Laurence Potter had absolutely eviscerated it. Called it smut, even. Apparently the ‘Breaking’ part referred to hearts. And the ‘Entering’ … well, as Potter had written on PotShots, Do I have to spell it out for you?
Rosemary Darlington had reportedly done just that, explicitly and with quite a few redundant – and occasionally imaginative – variations over the four hundred pages of her erotic suspense novel.
I had the feeling that this was going to be a fun weekend – both in and out of the hotel’s Flagler Suite.
TWO
‘So, if you knew Rosemary’s book would be a sore point,’ Pavlik said as he squeezed shaving cream into his palm, ‘why bring it up?’
‘Potter’s review was obviously the elephant in the room – or lobby,’ I said, inspecting our digs. ‘Best to trot the thing out and let it take a few laps – dissipate the sting.’
‘Mixer of metaphors.’ Pavlik’s reflection in the mirror looked past me to the oversized numbers on the bedside radio alarm clock. ‘We have to be downstairs in thirty minutes.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be ready. What’s this?’ I pointed at a box that had been on the coffee table when we arrived. ‘A welcome gift from your friend Zoe?’
‘Afraid not,’ he said. ‘And Zoe and I are just friends, while we’re trotting out the elephants in the room.’
‘Hey,’ I said, raising my hands in utter innocence. ‘Did I ask?’
‘Of course not. That would be admitting you cared.’
‘But I do care,’ I protested. ‘You know that. I just don’t get jealous.’
An outright lie, of course. But showing jealousy only gives the other person – or persons – power. And, besides, as my now defunct marriage proved, if two people are meant to be together they will be.
Or not.
‘So what is this?’ I asked again, tapping on the box.
‘I shipped a few things ahead for my panel.’
I should have known. ‘Welcome gifts’ rarely arrive in hotel rooms via UPS. And this one was addressed to Pavlik care of the hotel in the sheriff’s own handwriting. Though a forward-thinking man might have shipped a few romantic … toys to surprise his lady friend. Perhaps flavored whipped cream or—
My stomach rumbled. ‘Did Missy say they’ll just have dessert on the train?’
‘Cake, I think. Maybe we can grab a packaged sandwich or granola bar from the hotel’s newsstand on the way out.’
Too much to hope the newsstand carried grilled snapper with lemon butter and capers to-go.
I picked up a glossy hardcover to the right of the UPS box. The cover of the bo
ok showed a steam train chugging over a narrow trestle, water on both sides of it.
‘Flagler’s Railroad,’ I read aloud.
‘Henry Flagler is a legend down here,’ Pavlik said, apparently satisfied with the lathering of his face as he reached for his razor. ‘Flagler’s dream was to build an “Overseas Railroad” extending out from Miami over more than a hundred miles of mostly open water to Key West. And he lived to see it realized, too, but in nineteen thirty-five a hurricane destroyed large parts of it and killed a lot of workers. You can still see long sections of his railbed – mostly elevated – as you drive down the Keys.’
‘He never rebuilt it?’ I was flipping through the book.
‘By then Flagler was dead, the railroad hadn’t paid for itself and people had taken to calling the project “Flagler’s Folly.”’
‘That’s sad.’ A grainy black-and-white picture showed the wooden trestle topped with thick crossties. The metal rail on one side of the track was completely missing. The other was curled like bits of ribbon, I imagined from the hurricane or its aftermath. The photographer must have been standing on one of the ties, shooting down the length. In the distance the trestle just disappeared into the water.
Had a train been on that trestle when the storm hit it? And if so, would we know it or would all traces of it – of them, the poor workers – simply have been swept away?
‘Don’t feel sorry for Flagler,’ Pavlik said, nearly finished with his razor. ‘The man was a highly successful industrialist and lived to see his dream come true. How many people do we know who can say that?’
‘Very few.’ I flipped to the title page of the book. Published by Florida History & Tourism and written by … ‘Zoe Scarlett,’ I said aloud.
‘Zoe?’ Pavlik repeated. ‘I’m not sure she has dreams.’
I wasn’t going to touch that one. I put the tourist book down, thinking it explained what Zoe did for the remainder of the year.
The man of my dreams set down his razor and inspected the closeness of his shave in the mirror. ‘Not bad.’
‘Not bad at all,’ I agreed, unzipping my jeans. It was a shame we wouldn’t be staying in tonight.
Based on my inspection, the Flagler Suite was large and luxurious, featuring a king-sized bed, ocean-view whirlpool and granite-countered kitchenette, should one need to grab sustenance traversing between the two.
Still, I told myself, if the room had romance written all over it, tonight’s event promised more in the way of melodrama. Apparently the plan for the evening’s loose re-enactment of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express featured Rosemary Darlington and Laurence Potter in the lead roles.
‘I think you’d make a much better Poirot than Potter,’ I said. ‘Except for the mustache, of course.’
‘Laurence Potter – and Rosemary Darlington – are the guests of honor. I’m just the lead forensics guy. Sort of the …’ Pavlik’s eyes followed me as I stepped out of my pants, ‘… working stiff.’
Thankfully, more like stiffy. Thus encouraged, I started to take my time, doing a bit of a striptease, unbuttoning my blouse to expose what I thought of as my ‘good’ red bra. Though, truth to tell, I intended it for no-good. ‘Appropriate, then, that you’re playing Ratchett.’
I slipped off the shirt and tossed it onto the bed, which had been turned down to expose the gazillion thread-count linens. ‘You know, the stiff. So to speak.’
‘So to speak.’ The eyes in the mirror caught mine. ‘I’m hoping we can get back here early.’
It wasn’t so much Pavlik’s words as the way he said them. Experiencing a little thrill down my spine, I sidled up behind him and wrapped myself around his bare torso, resting the palms of my hands on his flat abs. I’d forgotten how good he felt. ‘Early would be great for me, too.’
Pavlik’s eyes, usually blue against his tanned face and dark, wavy hair, could change to slate gray – nearly black – when he was … well, let’s say ‘agitated.’ We should also acknowledge that this color transformation could come from anger as well as lust, and I had unfortunately seen more of the former than the latter.
Not tonight, though.
His mood-ring eyes were deliciously dark as he turned and tipped my chin up so my mouth met his.
‘We’re going to be late,’ I said in a ‘convince-me’ kind of voice, tasting the lovely combination of residual soap and current sheriff.
‘They’ll wait,’ he said, edging me toward the bed. ‘The Orient Espresso isn’t going anywhere fast. At least not without a corpse.’
As it turned out, Jake Pavlik was right.
In – oh, so many ways.
THREE
Luckily for our breach of punctuality, it turned out that wrangling mystery writers was akin to herding the proverbial flock of cats. When we arrived outside the lobby door ten minutes late, people were still milling about on the sidewalk.
It was dark, landscape lights illuminating the hotel’s palm trees and tropical plantings. A tiny, nearly transparent gecko scurried past my foot and up the trunk of a— ‘Whoa, what’s that?’
The tree I referred to was shaped like a gigantic bunch of asparagus, thick multiple stalks topped by a wide green canopy.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Pavlik said. ‘I asked about it the last time I was here for Mystery 101.’
‘Impressive’ was an understatement. The thing looked like it had been there for decades, if not centuries, a hunch borne out by the fact the tree seemed to have earned a spotlight and plaque of its very own. ‘Incredible. And very southern-looking. Is it a mangrove?’ I asked, pulling out the only tree name I could remember from the Florida guidebook.
‘No, this is a banyan,’ Pavlik said. ‘You’ll see mangroves mostly in coastal areas like the Bay of Florida and also in the sawgrass marsh of the Everglades. Mangroves can grow in salt water – even form islands. They’re amaz—’
‘And the banyans?’ I reminded my own personal Mr Wizard.
‘Glad you asked,’ Pavlik said, grinning. He took my arm and hooked it around his to stroll closer to the tree. ‘Banyans, too, are amazing. A type of fig or ficus, they’re actually epiphytes.’
‘Gosh,’ I said, running my hand up and down his bicep. ‘That is amazing. What’s an epiflight?’
‘Epiphyte,’ he corrected. ‘And it’s a plant that lives off another plant.’
‘A parasite.’ If so, this was the Tyrannosaurus Rex of parasites. The canopy looked to be able to fill a city block and the gnarled trunk had to be eight feet across at the base.
‘Technically, yes. Birds drop the banyan seeds, which germinate and grow in the cracks and crevices of other trees. As the banyan grows, its limbs drop these supporting roots you see and they eventually become the multiple trunks that wind around and envelope the entire original host tree.’
We were under the wide branches now, and I squinted up, trying to differentiate the leaves. ‘So you’re saying there’s another tree in there?’
‘Most likely just a hollow core where it once was. A banyan this old probably strangled the poor host tree long ago.’
‘So the “guest” repays the host by smothering it to death and then taking its place like the poor host was never there in the first place.’ I stepped back. ‘Nice.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Pavlik said, slipping his arm around my waist. ‘I’ll protect you from the mean old—’
‘Excuse me,’ a voice called. ‘Can we please get everybody on the bus?’
Zoe Scarlett was standing under the hotel’s marquis with a clipboard. She was showing even more cleavage than earlier, which I judged to be her idea of transitioning the look from daytime to nighttime.
‘Thank God I can depend on you at least, Jacob.’ Her gaze passed right over me to Pavlik in his black dress shirt, open at the neck, and black pants. ‘Perfect.’
‘I was afraid it telegraphed bad guy,’ Pavlik said, flashing her a smile.
‘Stiff bad guy,’ I reminded him. Pavlik’s smile grew broad
er.
Zoe swiveled to survey the floral sundress I’d chosen for its vintage feel. Besides, it was quick. Not a small consideration since Pavlik, bless him, was not. ‘Megan, you’re going to freeze in that.’
‘It’s “Maggy,”’ I corrected. ‘And as for freezing, the sun is down and the temperature still has to be close to eighty degrees.’ I’d heard Floridians’ bodily thermostats were set a bit differently, but Zoe’s prediction was borderline crazy.
‘Only for now.’ Missy Hudson had come up behind us. ‘A cold front is coming through tonight bringing storms, wouldn’t you know it? An unfortunate last hurrah for our hurricane season.’
‘Hurricane season?’ I repeated, thinking of Flagler’s ill-fated railroad.
Missy waved her hand. ‘Hurricane season, wet season, rainy season – it’s all pretty much the same. May through to October, typically, though, Mother Nature doesn’t always observe the calendar. November first, and we’ll be lucky to reach seventy-five tomorrow.’
Brr, seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit. Fifty-five was considered balmy in Brookhills this time of year.
‘Besides, it will undoubtedly be cold on the train. Everything in South Florida is way over air-conditioned.’ Missy was pawing through a bag of clothing. She pulled out a black shawl. ‘Here, take this.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, taking the lacy wrap, though I doubted the train could be air-conditioned to the point that this Wisconsinite would feel a chill. ‘But won’t you need it?’
‘Oh, not to worry – I have my fur.’ She struck a pose. ‘Can you guess who I am?’
Not surprisingly, Missy had gotten into the spirit of her event and the role she was to play. A wide-brimmed hat sat on carefully finger-waved hair and a white fur coat partially covered a long silver dress that pulled a bit over surprisingly voluptuous hips before stopping just short of her glittery silver shoes.
‘Well, I …’
‘Mrs Hubbard,’ Missy continued, sparing me the need to answer. ‘Though I have to admit, I opted for Lauren Bacall’s version from the movie rather than the plainer “American Lady” in the book. Such fun to get really dressed up, don’t you think?’
