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

Chapter Seven

  “I can’t believe you’re dropping everything to help me,” I said.

  Ava had poured her curves into a bikini top and blue-jean miniskirt, both of which belonged to me, then slipped on one of my button-front shirts and tied its sides together above her belly button. She was barefoot.

  “Best offer I got for the day,” she said. “I just move back on-island six months ago. I do the dancing-singing-acting-starving thing in New York, but my parents getting older and, well, I can’t stay away from St. Marcos forever. It get in your blood.” She picked up her phone, searched until she found what she wanted, then handed me her phone. She had pulled up a picture of herself standing between a much older white man and a dark-skinned woman who split the difference between his and Ava’s age. “My parents,” she explained. “So I can understand why you here. If something happened to Mom or Dad, I do the same thing.”

  I’d told her plenty last night, it seemed.

  “They’re beautiful,” I said. “You’re a perfect mix of them.” I handed her back her phone.

  And she was. Ava dripped sexy and, with latte skin and wavy black hair, could pass for almost any race. Italian, Egyptian, Mexican, or all of the above. It was a mix that worked.

  She pulled a lipstick out of her teeny pocketbook and walked into the bathroom, still talking. “Yah, they great. So anyway, I home, but there not a lot of work on-island for NYU-trained stage actresses who specialize in Broadway musicals, and no other employable skills.”

  I raised my voice so she could hear me in the bathroom. “I can relate. I was a voice major in college before I wised up. I spent three years hearing how little money I’d make in music.”

  “You sing? Girl, why you not tell me that last night? We coulda put you up on stage.”

  “No way,” I said, and laughed. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Don’t mean nothin’. Well, anyway, I glad you here. This much better than watching Oprah with Mom.” Ava came back into the bedroom and stood with her hands on her hips, studying me. “Fact is, I think you all right.”

  I liked her, even if she was my polar opposite. And I loved to listen to her, was even starting to understand her better. “Da” was “the” and “dere” was “there,” for instance. This wasn’t that hard at all.

  I told her, “Well, again, thank you for helping me.”

  Ava put her foot next to mine and cocked her head. “I need some shoes. All I got is the fuck-me pumps I wore last night. My feet pretty big, so maybe if we try the smallest shoe you got?”

  Her F word jarred me a little, thanks to the upbringing of my kindergarten-teacher mother, but I didn’t take offense about my feet. I was four inches taller than her. “How about these?” I asked, tossing her some Reef thong sandals that were a half size smaller than I should have bought.

  She slid her feet into them and struck a shoe-shopping pose. “What you think?”

  “I think you look better in my stuff than I do, and we’d better get going or I’ll start to hate you for it.”

  She laughed and stuck one arm through mine. “Yah, or I gonna hate you for making my bana look bigger than it already do,” she said, slapping her own posterior with her other hand. “Come, let we go.”

  Ava slipped her arm out of mine. I put on my sunglasses, grabbed my purse from the desk, and stuck my feet into Betsey Johnson sandals that were blessedly too big for my new friend. Ava followed me out the door. I walked briskly down the sidewalk, energized by the gorgeous morning, to the rental car that the concierge had arranged to be dropped here for me.

  “Slow down and lime a little, Katie. You moving too fast for island time,” Ava called from behind me.

  I opened the door to the lovely green Malibu. “Lime, I can lime. Check.”

  As we drove, Ava coached me on the niceties of island greetings, explaining how important blending was to my quest’s success.

  “Don’t say hello. Say good morning, good day, and good night. Say it when you walk into a room full of people, to no one in particular. You don’t have to make eye contact. Pause a long time after you say it, and give the other person a chance to say it back and make a polite inquiry after your health and family. Then, and only then, get down to your business. If you don’t do this, you get nothing done.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and I saluted.

  “I’m serious. If you move fast, talk fast, and don’t say the right things, a West Indian only pretend to listen, and you think things going fine when they not.”

  I reined in the mirth. “I know you’re serious, and I appreciate the help.”

  “Still, let me do most of the talking.”

  I wasn’t all that good at letting someone else speak for me, but I’d try.

  We were in the middle of town at this point, and I swerved to avoid a limo that pulled out of a parking place right in front of me. As I pulled to my left, I felt a crunch under one of my tires. I tapped my horn. It was hard enough driving on the left without this. I cut my eyes to the rearview mirror and read the license plate backwards. Vanity plates. It figured. They read, “BondsEnt.”

  “That my future husband,” Ava said, pointing back at the limo.

  “Really?”

  “Nah, he just rich enough to keep me.”

  A block later, I heard a thump, thump, thump. Flat tire.

  “Shit,” I said, pulling over.

  “Sunday morning,” Ava said, as if that explained something to me. I must have looked a question at her, because she added, “Broken glass from the partiers downtown.”

  “Ah,” I said. Because I’m profound.

  “It not a problem,” Ava said, and jumped out.

  I followed her onto the sidewalk. With a toss of her hair over her shoulder, she soon had a crowd of West Indian men ready to lend a hand.

  “Ah, meh son, that what those big muscles for.” She flattered her help along, bending over to let a young fellow get a good look at her cleavage.

  “I can show you what they for, if you just let me,” he replied.

  “Lah, you too much for the likes of me. You must have women dem fighting over you day and night.”

  “You the only girl for me, Ava. You just say the word.”

  When the tire change was complete, she extricated herself from the throng effortlessly. We got back in the car.

  “That was impressive,” I said.

  Ava just smiled.

  We continued driving through downtown among the old Danish-style buildings. Stucco and arches in a muted rainbow of colors predominated. Nearly every other building was in some state of disrepair. Some were missing their roofs. Hurricanes past, maybe? Others had only crumbling rubble where walls used to stand. Locals loitered in small groups on the street corners. More often than I would have expected, we passed a ragtag vagrant pushing a shopping cart filled with castaway treasures. T-shirt-clad tourists dodged unseeing amongst the locals, shopping bags dangling from their hands, ice cream cones pressed to their lips.

  Soon, though, we had passed through downtown. On its far edge, we came to a baby-blue two-story Danish building. Police headquarters. We pulled into the parking lot and got out.

  It was time to do right by Mom and Dad.

  ~~~