Saving Grace (What Doesn’t Kill You, #1): A Katie Romantic Mystery

Chapter Eleven

  We drove away from Baptiste’s Bluff and back into the rainforest half an hour later. My equilibrium was on the mend, enough that the beauty of the flowers swept me in again. They seemed now like tributes to my parents. Memorial arrangements. The rainforest didn’t just do my eyes good, it made me feel closer to Mom and Dad. I hated driving away.

  “You know, my friend give a guided tour of the rainforest. He shuttle his group right from the Peacock Flower. You should go with him tomorrow. I’ma call and tell him you’re coming.”

  “Hiking? I’m not a hiker. I’m a great driver, though. Is there a driving tour?”

  “Nope. He a botanist, and you just hush now and go with him. It change your life.”

  This whole trip already felt life-changing, and I’d only arrived twenty-four hours ago.

  I succumbed to a fit of honesty. “That’s why I’m here, you know. To change my life. Or I’m supposed to be, anyway, as much as I can in a week. My brother pretty much insisted. He thinks I drink too much. I’m trying to look past symptoms to the source. It’s not the alcohol. It’s my parents. My bad choices. Pining after the wrong guy. Yadda yadda.” I trailed off, embarrassed about the words I couldn’t stuff back into the place from whence they came.

  My confession didn’t faze Ava. “Most everybody running from something when they come here. Most of the time they got to figure out whether they running from the right thing, or the wrong thing follow them here.”

  Her statement was deep. I was through with deep for the day, so I stayed quiet.

  Ava didn’t. “Didn’t you say your father an alcoholic? I think I read that it a genetic trait,” she said.

  “Yeah. Maybe.” Except I wasn’t an alcoholic.

  “Lotta people that move here become alcoholics,” she said. “It a tough environment to quit drinking in.”

  “I’ve kinda noticed that.” At least she hadn’t focused on my pining away for the wrong guy, but I was ready to be done with the topic of Katie’s problems altogether. We were almost back to town. “Where am I taking you?” I asked.

  “Take me to my place so I can change. I have a date later, but I looking for company until then.”

  “You’re not singing tonight?” I asked.

  “Not officially.”

  Whatever that meant.

  We pulled up to Ava’s house and she beckoned me inside. It was small, but clean. Cute, with mostly wicker furniture and fluffy white cushions. I puttered around looking at her photographs until she came out of her bedroom in a shiny turquoise baby-doll-type dress with a keyhole neckline. She wore high-heeled white thongs that echoed the keyhole in the leatherwork across the top of her foot.

  “Is this who I think it is?” I asked, pointing at a picture of a younger Ava with a gorgeous and recognizable actor.

  “Yeah, I went to school with him at NYU. Don’t tell anyone I said so, but he gay. All the really good-looking ones gay.” She put a tube of lip gloss into her white handbag. “Ready?”

  “Depends on what I need to be ready for, but, in general, I am ready to depart.”

  “You sound like a lawyer.”

  “Actually, I am a lawyer.”

  “Oh, that explain a lot,” she said in a tone of voice that implied I had a lot to explain for.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what am I supposed to be ready for?”

  “To sing.”

  I busted out laughing. “That’s random. And no, I’m not ready for that.”

  “Fine. Then let we go to the casino. They have a free food bar and free drinks.”

  Nothing to argue with there, so I didn’t.

  After a stop at my hotel that took far longer than it should have when I got caught up in answering work emails, we arrived at the Porcus Marinus Casino. The casino was on the south shore, adjacent to a touristy resort of the same name and across the street from a flat white sand beach. The full moon was reflected on the surface of the undulating water. On our side of the road was a giant bunker-like building and the biggest parking lot on the entire island. We walked up the steps to the bunker and passed under a huge banner over the door that announced, “Karaoke Night.”

  “Karaoke night?” I asked Ava, my eyes narrowed.

  “It fate,” she said.

  We stepped inside, and I immediately coughed. A cigarette haze hovered up against the high ceilings of the casino. For the first time since I’d arrived on St. Marcos, I got a sense of permanent midnight. No windows. Plenty of noise, though, the white noise of the jangling bells of slot machines and the roars erupting as if on regular cues from the craps tables.

  And another noise. In the background, I could just make out the voice of a DJ giving the crowd a hard sell on karaoke. “Who’ll be next? What about you, pretty lady? Or you, sir, over there in the shirt you stole off Jimmy Buffett?”

  Ava gave me a little push between the shoulder blades in the direction of the stage. The place was packed, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. We weaved through bleary West Indians and a few stumbling tourists. Most of them looked like they’d have done better spending their money on a decent meal or some fresh clothes.

  An eerie and unwelcome recognition hit me. The Porcus Marinus was no different from the brief glimpse I’d gotten of the inside of the Eldorado casino in Shreveport. I shook it off. It was different. A world away, different. Nothing to be ashamed of, different. I pushed my chin higher in the air.

  When we reached the stage, Ava didn’t break stride. She swept past me to the DJ. “Miss Ava,” he said into his mike. A few people in the crowd clapped and hooted. “What’ll it be tonight, sexy lady?”

  “Hit me with some No Doubt, some Fugees, and,” she turned to me, “what else?”

  “I’m from Texas. Give me Dixie Chicks and Miranda Lambert.”

  The DJ said, “Miranda what?”

  “Never mind. Dixie Chicks.”

  “They those three blonde girls?” he asked.

  I was sure they’d love that description, but they’d fared better than Miranda, anyway. “Yes.”

  “Yah, I got them.”

  Ava threw her pocketbook into the DJ booth like it was a frisbee. I walked over and set mine on his counter. “Is this OK?” I asked him.

  He had already loaded No Doubt’s “Underneath It All” track and was grooving his head in time to the music coming through the speakers and the headphone he wore over the ear closest to me. He didn’t look my way. His eyes were glued to Ava.

  “What the hell,” I said, and made my way to a table in front of the stage to watch her.

  “Hunh UH,” she said into the microphone. “You get that bana to the stage, girl.” Her accent had thickened.

  Now the small crowd cheered louder.

  “Great,” I said to myself. “I’m the continental foil. The buffoon tourist.”

  “I not getting any younger up here,” Ava said, one hand on cocked hip. Hyeah.

  I sighed and walked to the stage in the white sundress I’d been wearing since I first got dressed that morning, climbed the three steps of doom, and joined her in front of the black backdrop. I was all right angles and sharp corners next to her vavavoom and curves. If you’re going to go out, go out in style, I thought, and I put my chin back up.

  Now the crowd joined Ava as she whooped and clapped for me. She handed me the microphone and pointed at the monitor. “Sing,” she commanded.

  So I sang. Then she sang, then we sang together, and it was astonishing. My twangy voice, able to reach the highest notes but too thin alone, interlaced and thickened when combined with her deeper, more soulful voice. I harmonized with her, backed her, then she returned the favor. I relaxed and imagined that my edges had rounded, at least a bit. This was fun.

  We left the stage twenty minutes later to a standing ovation, which counted even though it was only ten drunk men and one little blue-haired lady who’d gotten lost on her way back to the slot machines from the bathroom.

  “Now who brave enough to follow that?” th
e DJ asked. The crowd yelled back at him, “Not me, no way, no sir.” He put a playlist on, shot us two thumbs up, and went on a break.

  I collapsed into my chair. “Champagne,” I told the waitress who had followed us to our table.

  “Me, too,” Ava said.

  She scribbled our order and strolled off, giving me the best demonstration of slowing down to lime a little that I’d seen yet.

  “We rock, Katie Connell,” Ava said. “And damn, you’re even taller on stage.”

  I hadn’t sung except in the car and shower in years. I felt electrified. Alive in a way practicing law didn’t make me, that was for sure. “We kick ass,” I said, then giggled. Kick ass. Like I ever said that.

  “Yah mon,” Ava said.

  Our waitress sauntered back toward us, bearing two drinks on a tray. As she passed a small round-topped table on the other side of the karaoke area, a woman reached out and grabbed her free arm. Her voice cut through the crowd’s noise.

  “Where is my drink? I ordered it five minutes ago,”

  “I bring it shortly,” the waitress said, and removed her arm from the woman’s grasp.

  “I want my drink immediately. This is ridiculous. Where’s your supervisor?” the woman demanded, her accent identifying her as a resident of New York or thereabouts.

  The waitress nodded, smiled, and said, “Oh, yes, ma’am, it will be right out.”

  She resumed walking toward us, even slower this time. When she reached us, Ava said to her, “Wah, someone think she special.”

  “For true,” the waitress agreed. “She ’bout to get real t’irsty.”

  She placed our drinks on the table and left. “What I tell you?” Ava said to me.

  “I’m limin’, I’m limin’,” I said.

  We drank our champagne from plastic cups with leaping blue dolphins on the side. I took a sip and the bubbles tickled my nose. I giggled again. I never drank this stuff. I never giggled. “Salud,” I said, raising my glass. Ava and I bounced our cups off each other’s, splashing champagne on our arms. More giggles.

  “Is this chair taken?” a deep voice asked. One of our fans, maybe? His broad shoulders blocked out the sun, yowza. Except there was no sun in the casino. It blocked out the light from the cheesy light fixtures. The backlighting around the voice’s head hid his face.

  Ava recognized the voice, though. “Jacoby, sit down, meh son.” She patted the padded Naugahyde seat next to her. Small island.

  Darren Jacoby, still in his police uniform, sat down facing Ava, and the two locals traded cheek kisses. He had looked pretty good for a moment, in the dark.

  “Hi, Ms. Connell,” he said over his shoulder.

  He really didn’t seem to want to call me Katie. Oh, well. “Hello, Officer Jacoby.”

  “I can’t stay long,” he said to Ava. “I’m on duty. My shift end at ten. Just making the rounds when I see you. What you doing?”

  “We went to the private investigator you recommended,” I said to his profile.

  He looked back at me, expressionless. “Well, I hope that turn out well for you. When you go back to the states?”

  He was so not subtle. “Five days,” I said.

  “Be careful, then.” He turned all his attention back to Ava. “Do you want to hang out later? I got Love and Basketball on DVD.”

  Oh, jeez, even less subtle. He might as well rent a billboard.

  “Oh, Jacoby, I can’t. I have a date.”

  His jaw bulged and anger flashed in his eyes so fast I almost didn’t catch it. “Always somebody, ain’t it, Ava?” The jaw relaxed. The big shoulders shrank. “Well, another time.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I’ll just be going, then.”

  He and Ava cheek-kissed again, he turned and bowed his head at me, and he ambled away, a double for a grizzly bear from the back. He didn’t like me much, but I still hurt for him.

  Ava made a sad face. “He that way forever. He don’t give up easy.” She pulled out her phone and said, “I better check on my date.” A few clicks later, she said, “Guy booked into a room here, up on the hill. A suite. Ooo la la.”

  “Will I get to meet him?” I asked.

  “No. He very private about us.” She pointed to the third finger of her left hand and mouthed the word “married.” “He not even contact me himself. It like I having a thing with his assistant, Eduardo.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. It sounded pretty smarmy and awful to me.

  “Oh, it’s no problem,” Ava said, and shooed the imaginary problem away with her hand. “He’s a senator. People know him. It’s a small island.”

  So I’d noticed.

  I thought of how I felt when Nick ignored me in public. And I wasn’t even “having a thing” with him. Jacoby wasn’t with Ava, either, but that didn’t seem to keep him from having big emotions about her date. “But doesn’t it hurt your feelings?”

  Ava pursed her lips. “I don’t love him, Katie. He nice, and he trying to get a pilot here for a TV show, starring yours truly. We get what we want from each other. I like rich better than powerful, anyway, and he not rich.” She took another sip of champagne.

  I tucked my hair behind my ear. Pilot for a TV show? Her senator Guy had to be my drinking buddy from my flight in. I decided not to mention it, since he’d hit on me relentlessly. Hey, if their arrangement didn’t bother Ava, I wasn’t going to let it bother me. Maybe I’d be happier if I was as dispassionate as she was. Maybe. But probably not.

  “So, who’s the wrong guy, anyway?” she said.

  “What?” I asked, thinking for a moment we were still talking about Guy with a capital G.

  “The one you not supposed to pine for.”

  Ah, him. I signaled the waitress for more champagne. Then, carefully, I picked my way through the story, trying not to set off any landmines that would blow up my fragile Nick-peace.

  Ava said, “You better off without him. I’ma take care of you, and find you a man to keep your mind occupied this week.”

  “No men, Ava.”

  “Huh. So you gonna pine? Looks like you not running from him too hard.”

  “No pining. I’m running. Really.”

  Ava didn’t look convinced. “If you say so, Katie. If you say so.”

  ~~~