1 Margarita Nights (27 page)

“I told him I didn’t think you were coming in, seeing how late it was.”

“Sorry,” I said, but I wasn’t. Missing Styles made Jeff’s frown bearable. Then I pissed Jeff off even more by hanging out with the amigos while he ran up and down the bar trying to keep the customers happy.

“I haven’t got any good news for you, Sherri,” Brian told me. “I faxed a strongly worded letter to Dr. Steadman. I took the liberty of telling him I’m your lawyer. You owe me a retainer of one dollar for that. And as your lawyer, I told him you would hold him personally responsible if anything happened to Andy Crown.”

“Thanks, Brian. I take back all those bad jokes about lawyers.”

“Don’t do that.” He adjusted his glasses and smiled. “What will we have left to talk about?”

When I told them about my night on Elm Street, Clay barked, “Enough.”

We’d never heard him raise his voice before, so he had our full attention. “You’re not going back there,” he said.

The other two turned to look at me, waiting for me to put Clay straight.

But his words gave me an odd little feeling of joy: I was pleased he was worried about me rather than annoyed to be told what to do. “Relax. I’ve already decided I’m not spending another night with Andy.” I could feel the laughter bubbling up inside me but with the other two as an audience I couldn’t tell Clay how I planned to spend the night—visions of sugarplums were dancing in my head, erotic and sensual honeyed treats.

Clay wasn’t done playing alpha male. “Don’t spend another minute with the guy.”

“Come on,” I coaxed, “you’re exaggerating. Andy won’t hurt me.” But was it true? He was no longer the person I’d known and I no longer knew what Andy was capable of.

“Besides,” I told him, “He’s the only one with evidence that there was more going on in Jimmy’s life than our domestic battles.”

I followed Clay into the body of the apartment—three enormous iron chandeliers were suspended from the eighteen-foot arched ceilings that were ribbed with heavy beams like the upside-down hull of a ship.

“Holy shit.”

He was grinning at me and for once the normally guarded face was alive with pleasure.

“Who knew?” I said, spinning around and around. Opulent oriental rugs floated on cream marble floors. One wall, overlooking the gulf, was all glass. “I thought places like this only existed in the movies.”

“Come on. I’ll show you the rest.” He was as pleased as a boy with a new toy and taking my hand, led me through an apartment bigger than most houses. Nothing had been spared, every detail, every luxury added. Trust Clay to do it up right.

“Wow,” I said.

“Is that all I get? You’re never at a loss for words.”

“Until now. It’s fantastic, Clay”

“I had a decorator down from Tampa. I told her what I wanted and opened my wallet and there you have it,” he said with a wave of his arm. His joy was palpable. Mr. Cool was way over the top here as he showed me every nook and cranny of his opulent three-thousand-foot penthouse.

Clay didn’t notice my silence, didn’t notice I was edging for the door as he finished the tour. The beauty and elegance overwhelmed me, making me feel awkward and off balance. “What is it?” he said at last.

My soft shrug didn’t satisfy him.

“Tell me.”

“I so don’t belong in a place like this.”

“Oh you belong all right.”

With light kisses and velvet caresses he beguiled me and seduced me until I felt just fine. It seemed I’d been missing him. Later I could deal with being a donkey at a tea party.

We were already naked when he pulled away from me and asked, “What about Evan?”

“Why? What do you mean? What’s Evan got to do with us?”

His eyebrows were drawn together in worry. He was thinking hard, trying to see where the quicksand was in this conversation. “I thought . . . you know.”

“Evan and I were never together. This is for your ears only. Evan is gay. He and Noble are lovers.”

At first he was silent, his body rigid with astonishment. And then he began to laugh. A rumble that started deep in his chest under my head and rose until it shook the whole bed.

When I opened my eyes he was gone.

“Of course,” I told the ceiling, “today is the weekly meeting with all his salespeople. You didn’t really think he’d miss that, did you?” I headed for the kitchen, and there was Clay, barefoot, in jeans and wearing a T-shirt even. A black shadow showed along his jaw; his raven hair was still tousled from sleep. Being unkempt made him look youthful and endearing . . . and sexy. Even more appealing, he was cooking.

I started to smile. “You’re going to be way late for that weekly meeting you hold so dear.”

He grinned broadly over his shoulder at me. “They’ll have to get by without me.”

“Is there anything here you can’t leave?” I inquired as I undid his silk robe and let it fall off my shoulders and down to the floor.

With one hand Clay reached to turn off the stove while the other hand tipped the frying pan into the sink.

Clay couldn’t skip out on all his meetings, that would just be asking too much of him, so here I was, dressed again in his silk robe and alone in fantasyland. I was going to enjoy it.

Everyone has to be good at something. Snooping is something I excel at. I walked through the apartment, opening closets and drawers. Clay must have had twenty suits hanging in a walk-in closet and double that number of shirts, neatly laundered and hanging exactly the same distance apart.

In the den the walls were covered in a material that looked like men’s gray pinstripe suiting and although the other rooms were more glamorous, this room was most like him.

Photos hung on the walls. There were pictures of a teenaged Clay riding in rodeos and another of him accepting an award. On a table were family pictures, smiling and happy pictures. I studied them. His father was like Clay—dark with high, flat cheekbones that said somewhere in Clay’s background was an ancestor who didn’t come over on any
Mayflower
. Those hard angles were native grown.

Clay was raised on a cattle ranch east of Lemon Bay that had been started back during the Civil War by his family. They’d shipped boatloads of cattle north to the Confederacy, and the Union navy had sailed up the gulf to stop those ships from feeding the rebel army. Since then, Clay’s family had fought to survive in the Piney woods off the mangrove swamps of Florida’s west coast. They’d overcome hurricanes, disease and snakes, but in the end it was the cancer of development that spread inland and ate into their holdings, taxing and zoning them out of business. When Clay realized there was more money in houses than food, he’d joined the development side with a vengeance, turning the last hundred acres of the thousands his family had once owned into homes for the people pouring into the state, and becoming a rich man.

I sat down in his huge leather swivel chair behind the desk, twirling to take in the room. I reached out my hands to stop the spin. My flat palms landed on a spiral-bound folder. Gridiron Developments was printed in gold on the cover. I opened the cover and Hayward Lynch smiled up at me. I started reading.

The project was big, really big. Over a thousand acres. In the back of the prospectus were some loose sheets with calculations in Clay’s handwriting. There was also a letter on Hayward Lynch’s financial situation from an investigating firm. What it came to was Lynch was going to lose the whole development if he didn’t get new funding, so Lynch was willing to sell half of his share to Clay for about a third of the real value. I closed the folder and pulled open the lefthand drawer. It was full of files. The first files, all blue, were household and personal financial files. I hurried on by. The next files in red were about the ranch Clay still owned east of Sarasota. Snooping through his private papers was even too much for me and I was going to close the drawer, honest, but at the back was a single buff folder.

I took it out. Jimmy’s name was on the outside. A maggot of fear gnawed at me.

I opened the folder. It was a report from a private investigator.

There were pictures of Jimmy—Jimmy on the
Suncoaster
and pictures of Jimmy with women. There was even a picture of Jimmy coming out of my apartment. Wrapped in a white towel, one bare foot resting on top of the other, I leaned in the open door to my apartment, watching Jimmy walk away.

There wasn’t much doubt what had being going on there.

And there were pictures of Evan and me—pictures of us out sailing, shopping and eating on the deck out at Big Daddy’s Oyster Bar. It looked like a romance. And I looked like a busy girl. The truth was, other than Clay, Jimmy was the beginning and ending of my love life, but that’s a secret I’ll defend until death. I’ve worked hard for my reputation and I’m not willing to give it up. Like the ladies always say, “The only thing a girl has is her reputation.”

Why had Clay hired a private investigator to take pictures of Jimmy? I read the written report carefully. All of Jimmy’s tricks were laid out there, chapter and verse, it could have been a book called
Cheating and Other Sins
. Some of it even I hadn’t known about.

I shoved the pictures back in the folder and into the drawer, slamming it shut.

In the car I started to cry. Tears dripped off my chin and the cars coming towards me blurred and shimmered. I pulled off the road at Heron Point Beach and gave into bitterness and anger and hurt. I’d got it wrong again. I’d thought Clay was the last of the good guys. Fool that I am, I thought I was too wise to be taken in but my passion had turned into this disaster.

Why had Clay checked up on Jimmy? Jimmy had said he was in a land deal. Was it with Gridiron Developments? And what was Clay to Gridiron Developments?

The cold winds coming down from the north had been pushed away by a sweep of southern air giving us another sunny day. I watched a shrimp boat, with its nets held out on each side like graceful arms, dance up the Dresden-blue gulf and I dreamed of running away.

The librarian showed me how to go through back newspapers, searching for anything I could find on Gridiron Developments. There were lots of articles on Hayward Lynch—he hadn’t exaggerated about his face being all over the papers. One picture showed him appearing before the municipal board for a zoning change.

“Bingo,” I said aloud. I had it.

There, over Lynch’s shoulder, was a face I recognized from Jimmy’s tape. The face belonged to one of the county commissioners.

One thing was certain, I needed the video. I went back to the motel where Andy still watched TV. He was calm and quite rational but I didn’t want to be alone with him. “How about going for a burger?” It would be fine. Sure it would.

Three blocks away at the hamburger joint everything changed. He stopped just inside the door and looked around. A low keening noise began. I pushed him into an empty booth. “Wait here,” I said and ran for the counter.

“Make it very fast food, will you?” I told the plump server in the too-tight navy uniform. “My friend isn’t doing so well.” I figured it was just having people so close to him that was freaking him out, but things would be better soon. Tables were emptying rapidly on all sides of him.

I got the order, grabbed a bunch of the packets of condiments and ran to Andy. “Do you want to eat in the truck?”

He reached for a burger without answering and began piling on the ketchup and mustard, ignoring the other diners. They, on the other hand, were all too aware of him.