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

Chapter Twenty-seven

  That night, I moved in with Ava, a process which consisted of me dragging two suitcases, a carry-on full of toiletries, and my laptop bag from the truck to her couch. Or, rather the floor beside her couch. My Rimowa bags in Ultra Violet and Inca Gold stood in a colorful row like soldiers guarding the entryway from the living room to the kitchen.

  “Are you sure about this?” I asked again. “I could be homeless for months.”

  “I making room for you in there,” she said, pointing vaguely toward her bedroom. I now saw there was a smaller bedroom next to it, one without a bed. And with a lot of boxes stacked haphazardly in the middle of the room. “That OK with you?”

  “As long as you’re OK, I’m OK,” I said, and meant it. “I’ll stack the boxes against the wall and get a futon tomorrow.” I’d have to do it before Emily arrived in the late afternoon. Emily. I’d forgotten to tell Ava about Emily. Oops. “My friend Emily is coming tomorrow and staying on-island for a few days. I can’t wait for you to meet each other. You’re going to love her. Where do you think I should book her a room?”

  “If you have a futon, she can take the couch. Unless she just made of money.”

  That she was not. So we’d sardine together. Cool.

  After all that strenuous unpacking, we celebrated at Toes in the Water with burgers. We sat at a picnic table in the sand on a small ledge above the beach proper, not far from where a hammock filled with young children was swinging between two coconut palms. The tiny establishment consisted of a handful of half-filled picnic tables, a roofed patio bar and stage, and three structures in various states of sun-bleached, windswept disrepair. A faded mural of Toes in the Sand was painted on the side of one of them, and I caught a glimpse of the cook when he stuck his head out of another to take an order from the waitress. A communal washbasin inlaid with glitter and shells ran the length of the third building. If Annalise hadn’t already lured me away from Dallas, this place could have. I tingled with delight at the sound of the surf kissing the beach boulders goodnight.

  The sight of the ever-hopeful Jacoby was no surprise when he met us there. We’d already taken our seats when he walked in from the parking lot on the west side of the restaurant, carving a black hole in the sun behind him as he made his way over to our table. He expressed no delight at my presence, but it didn’t faze him, either. He stuck out his ham-sized paw and shook my hand. Please don’t hurt me, I thought. Then he sat by Ava and soaked her in as if I didn’t exist. I slid my feet out of my shoes and buried my bare toes in the sand underneath our picnic table, listening to Ava. She had a lot to say.

  “Everywhere I look, people still talking about Guy’s murder. It all over the TV, the paper. I can’t get away from it. All of it just make my blood chill. There a killer out there,” she said.

  Jacoby was digging his right heel into the sand with heavy thumps as she spoke. He said, “The detectives doing all they can to find the murderer. A lot of people hate that man, though. A lot of suspects.”

  “I know. I know. I just so grateful you kept me out of it, Jacoby.” She put her hand on his arm and stroked his skin with her thumb. I could see the goose bumps in his flesh. “It could have all been so nasty, instead of sad. It supposed to be sad when someone die.” Tears pooled in the corner of her eyes but didn’t fall.

  “Anything for you, Ava. You know that.”

  “Still, I don’t want you to get in trouble,” she said. “You took a big chance, helping me.”

  “No one gonna know except us. Everyone believe the call anonymous, and you make it from the hotel phone to 911, just like I tell you. You cover the phone with a cloth, disguise your voice, everything. They couldn’t even tell it a woman. It gonna be all right.”

  “He was a good man,” Ava said.

  I could see she’d taken a wrong turn in the conversation as Jacoby stiffened and spoke. “He a big man, but he no good. I coulda told you ’bout all his girlfriends before, if I knew about you and he. I’m sorry he dead, but I glad you not with him anymore.”

  Now it was Ava who stiffened. “Just please tell me if you hear something, anything, about who did it. Promise me, Jacoby.”

  “Yah mon. I promise.”

  Just when I was getting seriously uncomfortable, a perky waitress in a threadbare khaki miniskirt and braless lavender tank top diverted our attention.

  “Time for sunset shots,” she said from underneath her unfortunate overbite, setting three plastic cups in front of us. “Coconut rum, Cruzan, of course. Watch for the green flash.”

  I started to tell her to take mine away, but the words didn’t come out. The bartender counted backwards from ten, and all the patrons held their shot cups aloft.

  “Three, two, one,” he shouted.

  Jacoby and Ava threw back their shots. I looked around in the fading light, taking in the rolling waves as they broke over the reef twenty yards away, the curve of the shoreline as it folded into the two miles of white sand around Cape Bay, and the green of the palm tree tops extending down the beach toward the hills of the rainforest. I was at peace here. I didn’t have to contend with Nick’s draining presence or flip-flopping witnesses. Here, I could do moderation. I could be smart, be measured. I was in control. I downed my shot and savored the delicious and instantaneous flood of warmth through my body. As I stared westward over the horizon, the sun sank, and I saw a flash of green light.

  I jumped to my feet. “I saw it!” I yelled. “I saw the green flash!”

  The bartender rang a bell above his head. “Green flash, everybody. She saw it.”

  Ava and even Jacoby slapped me on the back. “I only seen it once, myself,” Jacoby told me. “Powerful good luck.”

  That would make for a nice change. The waitress showed up again, barefoot like us, this time with a pitcher of margaritas.

  “Green for the green flash,” she explained, and handed me a cup. “On the house.”

  “Thanks!” I said. “This is what we drink where I’m from. That and Lone Star beer,” I said. “Want some, y’all?”

  Ava emptied her water in the sand, and Jacoby followed suit. They both held out their empty cups. I poured. “To the green flash,” I said.

  Ava said, “To the singing sensation, Ava and Katie.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Just drink,” she said. “Then I explain.”

  I drank, swallowing slowly, enjoying the reunion my bloodstream was conducting with its old friend tequila, then refilled our glasses.

  “OK, so here what I thinking, and don’t stop me until I’m through,” Ava said. “I have a synthesizer and sound system. I buy it cheap from a continental who drink himself into an island stupor. Same old story. Anyway, I do a couple of solo gigs, getting my feet wet, but solo don’t do so good here. Katie, you and me, we sound goooood. More depth. More range. Plus, two hot chicks better than one. Four breasts, you know.”

  Jacoby acted as if she’d said something profound and I spit margarita in a jet-propelled arc that hit the guy at the next table. Oops. But he was pickled, and didn’t notice.

  There was no reason not to join musical forces with Ava. The point of studying music in college was the joy of making it. I thought of all the hours I’d spent in tiny soundproof rehearsal rooms with my voice professor at piano, a metronome beside me, and a music stand in front of me. Again, Katie. Round your mouth. Open your chest. I remembered the two best years of my life, of a standing bass, a snare drum, an electric keyboard, and a guitar, my lips against the microphone. It was so long ago. The only time I sang now was after three or four shots on karaoke night.

  My throat tightened. The joy of making music. That was the subject of the last good conversation I’d had with Nick, back in Shreveport. I almost smiled as I recalled him talking about his high school garage band, Stingray. I had defended lead singers, a category of musician he defined as egomaniacal. By reflex, I looked for messages on my iPhone. Nope. As if. I was the one who’d deleted his last message, anyway. “Why not??
?? I said. “Sign me up.”

  “Yay! We gonna be the toast of the island!” Ava said, and hugged me.

  “Was that we gonna be toasted? Because I think I am already,” I said.

  “Oh, hush you mouth,” Ava said.

  So I was to be Eliza Doolittle, and Ava my mentor. I didn’t want to be another Ava, though. I could never out-Ava the real Ava. Everywhere she went, her ribald personality lit up the room and a horde of male admirers vied for her attention. I was the awkward one, the redheaded stepchild, too tall, too thin, too many angles. I needed my own shtick. I could do elegant as a foil to her sexy vamp, for instance. I knew my fine-boned features spoke of class, whether I had it or not. So I wouldn’t copy Ava, but I could certainly emulate her confidence and learn about the island music scene from her.

  She began instructing me right away on the art of performing for slightly disinterested audiences, starting with the nearest one—Jacoby. She grabbed my margarita-free hand and pulled me to the square concrete stage. We stood under the peaked palm-frond roof and faced the ocean, and it roared its approval. Ava blocked out where she wanted us to stand, demonstrated a few easy dance steps, and explained how she sets the equipment up in relation to the microphones.

  A giant of a man with unruly blond curls and effeminate tortoiseshell glasses at another table did a double take at us. His stare wasn’t admiring. He looked as if he was trying to decide whether to swat us with a flyswatter. His companion turned to look in our direction, and this time I was the one who did a double take. The investigator, Walker. He gave no indication he recognized us, just turned back to his basket of fries.

  “Did you see Walker over there?” I asked Ava. “He’s with some big guy who was staring at us.”

  Ava was singing below her breath and working on a step-ball-change-spin sequence of dance steps. “Just a second,” she said, holding up her hand and working her feet.

  I waited five beats, then said, “Ava.”

  “Yes, I with you. Now, what you say?” she asked.

  “Do you see Walker over there?” I asked, and pointed over my shoulder with my thumb.

  “Where?” she said, looking all around.

  I turned back to where Walker and his large companion had been just moments ago. Empty.

  “Oh, never mind. He’s gone.” I scanned the restaurant and the parking area. No sign of them. They’d certainly split fast. I’d ask Walker about it when I caught up with him, hopefully tomorrow.

  Ava was unconcerned. “I giving you a songbook to study tonight, and you can sing a few with me at my gig tomorrow night,” she said.

  “That soon?”

  “Yah mon, nobody care if you read the words. We all chill here. It be fun.”

  I stepped off the stage and put my head back. The sky was a blanket of stars now. I picked an extra bright one and made my wish: that things could always be as perfect as they were right now.

  ~~~