Surface Tension - Kling Christine - Страница 34
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“You said he used to work here?”
“Yeah, he quit about six months ago. I haven’t seen him around here since.”
“I wonder what the two of them are talking about.”
“It can’t be good. If your friend is a buddy of Cesar’s, be careful, Seychelle.”
“B.J., my ‘friend,’ James Long, is the director of a very reputable charitable organization. He wouldn’t be in that position if he was a lowlife or crook of some kind. This man’s in the limelight. They write stories about him in the newspaper for crissakes.”
“And you say I’m the one who is naive. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Okay, okay.” I wondered if his distrust of James could have anything to do with his having seen James’s hand on my shoulder.
He placed a quick peck on my cheek. “Tomorrow, we need to talk.”
For an instant I felt a kind of hope rise inside me, a hope that maybe things could be different.
“You take care of yourself.”
He turned and passed through a side door into the backstage area.
When I returned to the table, Cesar Espinosa was halfway across the dining room, headed for the exit. “Sorry I took so long,” I said, settling into my seat.
“That’s all right.” James smiled. He looked completely calm; there was no trace left of the wildly animated speaker of a few moments ago.
“That man you were speaking to. Was he a friend?”
He looked surprised. “Him? No way. He’s an unsavory character who has dated some of the girls at the Harbor House. I try to warn them, but some young girls are just attracted to bad men. You know the saying ‘Good guys can’t win.’ ” He flashed those perfect white teeth and shrugged.
I nodded and grinned back at him like a smitten teen.
“Apparently he wants to see one of our girls now, and Minerva won’t put his phone calls through. Sometimes I can’t help feeling paternal about the girls. I want them to get their lives back on track. He’s not going to help them out in that direction.”
I nodded. It made sense. For now.
The night was cloudless when we left the Mai Kai, and James asked if he could put the top down. I told him I would have asked if he hadn’t, that I wasn’t exactly the sort to mind wind-whipped hair. We drove down to A1A and along the beach, and I felt like purring, nestled into that buttery leather admiring the few stars that could overpower the city lights and the velvet night wind that was teasing my face with loose wisps of hair. He put a Louis Armstrong CD in and we cruised to “What a Wonderful World.” I felt more than a little woozy from the wine, and it was only when we cruised past Bimini Lane and I looked down at the darkened outline of Harbor House that I started to sort through my confusion about what I was doing in a Jaguar cruising the beach with James Long.
James left me to my thoughts, and I added that to the list of things I liked about the man. For more than twenty minutes, we cruised along and reveled in another spectacular Florida night, the waves breaking in plankton-lit foam in the background, the parade of tourists with their sunburned glow in the foreground. Louis launched into “La Vie en Rose.” I was trying hard just to empty my mind, to let the cleansing breeze blow the events of the past couple of days away, but Collazo’s words kept coming back to me. Why were so many people connected to me turning up dead?
“Would you like to stop and walk awhile?” he asked as we approached the most populated stretch of the strip.
“Sure, that would be nice,” I said.
To my surprise, instead of heading for the beach, James turned up Las Olas Boulevard, away from the beach, and drove inland into the ritziest little shopping district in Fort Lauderdale. For a stretch of less than a mile, this quaint street was lined with old buildings— old by Fort Lauderdale’s standards, anyway—that had been turned into galleries, cafes, and boutiques. Big old oaks grew up in the street’s median, creating a canopy over the sidewalk eateries, and the homes just a block to the south were riverfront mansions. The area reeked of money, which is why it wasn’t exactly high on my list of frequently visited shopping spots.
James parked in the lot behind the Riverside Hotel and walked around to my side of the car to open the door. I always feel like a complete incompetent sitting in a car waiting for a man to open my door, but I was trying hard to be socially correct. Why, I wasn’t exactly sure. I had agreed to go out with this man in the belief that I would find out something about Harbor House that would provide some answers, and I found myself not doing a bit of interrogating, but rather wanting him to like me.
After a short stroll, James turned into an art gallery and walked over to a group of oils all clearly painted by the same artist. He didn’t say a word and didn’t look at me, in fact, he seemed to have forgotten I was there. He just stared at the paintings with a half smile.
From a distance, they looked like photographs. All five paintings were done in shades of black and white and gray, and they depicted very realistic objects against stark backgrounds: a single black enameled vase in an all-white room, a white sickle moon in the black sky, a black hand reaching for a silver knife on a white tablecloth. Two paintings hanging side by side were of matching eyes, huge eyeballs nearly a foot across, one in white skin, the other in black. Though you could not see the expression on the face in either painting, there was something disturbing about the eyes. I felt a chill looking into them. I knew the features outside the frame included raised brows, flared nostrils, and a mouth in an open scream. I had to look away.
“You did these, didn’t you?” I said, turning to look at him, waiting for his answer, but he hadn’t heard the question, apparently. He just stood there with that odd little smile.
When we pulled into the driveway at the estate, James was out of his door and opening mine before I’d collected my shoulder bag from the backseat. Oh, hell, I thought, I’m a big girl, and it’s not all that late. Besides, I really hadn’t learned anything from him yet.
But as I stepped from the car, I knew it was more than that. I could make all the excuses I wanted about how I was really inviting him in only to pump him for information, but in fact there was something very charming and exciting about the man, not to mention that his interest in me was doing great things for my recently bruised self-image. The fact that he might be dangerous as well only made him more interesting. Part of me hated myself for the attraction I felt, but it was not that part of me that spoke first.
“Would you like to come in for a drink? Actually, beer is about all I have. I haven’t had a chance to do much shopping lately.”
“That would be nice.”
“I’d better go lock up my dog first. She can get a little weird sometimes.”
I let myself in, took Abaco to the Gorda, and locked her into the wheelhouse. She stood up on her hind legs and rubbed her wet nose against the glass in the door. I felt sorry for her, but I pointed my finger: “Now, you be a good girl.”
James was leaning against his Jag, his head back, staring up at the sliver of a moon, very similar to the moon in his painting. He looked just like something out of one of those perfume ads where all the gorgeous people appear faintly sad. The gate squeaked, and he turned to look at me.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“I was just thinking about Elysia. It was such a waste to lose her like that.” His voice cracked, and his Adam’s apple dipped as he swallowed. I walked over and leaned my butt against the warm car hood next to him. The stars visible through the the branches of the oaks were few and far between, as the lights of the city just across the river had washed most of them away.
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