French Quarter (43 page)

“I
had
an appointment,” Chris said. Not that he should have agreed to meet the pale, forgettable, wispy creature Roy had hired when he and Bo didn’t need the extra help. “The lady didn’t show, so sayonara.”

“She will show,” Roy bellowed.

“Wassamatter?” Α man dozing over his beer came to life and swung around so hard he fell off his stool. “What’s the f—ing matter?”

Chris groaned. “How’d you do that, Roy? Don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed. Yessir. You’ve got ‘em all cussing like they were in Sunday school.”

“Keep it down,” Roy said, coming from behind the bar, although Chris had yet to raise his voice and rarely did so anyway. “Play something, will ya?”

“
Play
something,” Roy repeated. “G—damn storm’s been coming up for hours. Got everyone uptight. We’re not over the last one yet. So play. You always could charm a room into forgetting why they don’t have somewhere else to be.”

“I’m going to bed.”

“You leave this bar and you’ll be looking for a new bed.”

“What is it with the woman?”

Roy stared. Nearly ten years older than Chris, a fit forty-five with red hair and light blue eyes he’d inherited from their mother, Roy Talon had taken a lot of knocks in a cruel world and bobbed up stronger for every one of them. Despite Chris’s marked physical resemblance to their abusive father, Roy regarded him as the relative he loved most in the world, and as currently needy. Much as Chris didn’t like the attention, he wasn’t about to hurt the best man he’d ever known.

Roy’s sudden smile brought the boy back into the man. “Humor me, huh? All I know about Sonnie is she’s got trouble. She won’t say a lot, but she did agree to talk to you.”

“Agree? You mean you browbeat her into talking to me? If you’ve got some fool notion about the two of us hitting it off, forget it.”

“Hitting it off?” Roy rolled his eyes. “She’s a nice, gentle woman. Why would she hit it off with a beat-up hard-ass like you? Play something, Chris. For me, huh?”

Chris looked at the war-torn upright. It was set to one side of glassless windows open to Duval Street, and a tasteful Hawaiian-print runner flapped on top of the instrument. “Wind gets much worse, you’d better batten down the hatches.”

“Leave the shutters to me. I worry about you, Chris.”

“Yeah.” Enough of that. He threw the last oyster on his plate to the tom, took up his glass of bourbon, and went to the piano. On the way he felt the first drops of hot rain fly out of the night and into the Rusty Nail.

“You shave today?”

“Huh?” You never knew what Roy would ask next. “Hell, no. Not yesterday, either. So what? You expecting a talent scout for the movies?”

Roy shrugged a muscular shoulder. “Just wondered.”

“She’s not coming,” Chris said, smiling with one side of his mouth. He set his glass on the piano and sat down. “You goofed, bro. You should have tried for the casual approach. Waited till she was working, then called me to help put out a fire in here. Something like that.”

He sat at the yellowed keys, made a tentative pass, and shook his head. “How d’you do it? This monstrosity ought to be on a junk heap, but it’s always tuned.” And Roy never let anyone but Chris play it, so it sat idle, sometimes for years at a stretch.

“Turn off the music,” Roy hollered to Bo. “Chris is gonna serenade us.”

But for the muted murmur of patrons, silence fell. “Pressure could be too much,” Chris said. “Critical audience like this—.”

“Zip it up, and play for me.”

Chris looked into his brother’s eyes, saw so many shared moments from the past hovering there, and played.

“ ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,’ ” he said, grinning because it felt like the thing to do. “Dad’s favorite.”

“Bum,” Roy said succinctly. “D’you know how much you look like him?”

“What can I say? He was a mean son of a bitch, but you’ve got to admit he was a handsome devil. And I got his good looks.”

Roy sniffed the liquor in Chris’s glass and set it down again. “It’s going to be a wild night. This place is a hellhole this time of year.”

“Yep. Even the bugs are too smart to come out of the shade.”

“I’m glad you decided to come to me.”

The message was implicit. Roy was glad Chris had come to Florida when the floor dropped out of his life. “I came to Key West,” Chris said. “Bottom of the world as I know it. End of the world. No place farther to run. You just happen to live here.” Only partially true. He’d needed to be with Roy.

“Thanks. You’re still one helluva piano man. Know that?”

Chris glanced past his brother and winced. The world’s least likely bartender had arrived, a waif of a woman with a limp he tried not to watch. “Your other charity case is here,” he said.

“What?” Roy looked over his shoulder and grinned. “Sonnie. Good. I told you she’d come. And she’s no charity case.”

“You took her on in your slowest season because of her vast experience in the business?”

“Just talk to her, damn it. And keep your thoughts to yourself. She’s special—not that you would understand the finer things of life—and Sonnie’s one of the finer things. So hold yourself back. One of your wiseass snarls and she’ll bolt.”

“Snarls? You malign me. Anyway, it’s past my bedtime. Give the lady my apologies. Explain I’ve got a headache.” He kept on playing because he wanted to. He fought against letting music trap him, but it always won in the end. Damn thing was that it quieted the gnawing in his gut, and he didn’t want it to quiet; he wanted to feel it, needed tο feel it.

“Hey, Sonnie,” Roy called. “Come on over and meet my brother.”

“Shit,” Chris muttered.

“Cut it out,” Roy said under his breath. “If you want incentive, I took her on because I’ve got a feeling about her, okay? She wasn’t looking for a job; she was drinking tea next door and minding her own business. She was there every day for a week, and what I saw in her face scared me.”

“What—”

“She’s barely hanging on. That’s what I saw.” Roy unfurled a wide grin. “Storm’s rolling in, Sonnie. Did you get wet?”

Chris stopped playing and crossed his arms.

The woman needed a good meal. Α lot of good meals. “Not really,” she said. He couldn’t place her accent, or almost lack of one.

“Feels like a doozy coming,” Roy said, rubbing his hands together in a manner Chris knew was a sign of nervousness. “Meet Christian J. Talon. Chris, this is Sonnie Giacano.”

He hadn’t known her last name before. Sounded familiar but didn’t ring any bells yet. He rose to his feet and stuck his hand over the piano. “Hi, Sonnie.” He’d seen her several times, but never up close. “Time we met formally.”

She shook, her grip surprisingly firm. “Hi.” Her grip was the only thing about her that didn’t seem shaky right now. She was fair, not exactly blond, just fair. Fair hair and skin. Thin face. All cheekbone. And a way of bowing her head and looking up at you with big eyes that were dark. Dark what, he wasn’t sure. The fact that she was smiling didn’t immediately occur to him; when it did, it was too late to smile back.

Roy cleared his throat. “Well, I’ll leave you two to get to know each other better.”

When Chris opened his mouth to compliment his brother on his smoothness, he got a glare that induced him to change his mind. Roy walked away.

Chris stood on his side of the piano.

Sonnie Giacano stood on hers.

He took up the bourbon and sipped, narrowing his eyes against cigarette smoke that held its own even against the wind. “Roy suggested—”

“We should meet. Yeah, I know. Roy’s full of great ideas.” That earned him a very direct stare. Maybe her eyes were very dark blue. They made him uncomfortable—not easy to do.

“You’d prefer that we don’t talk?” She ran the fingers of her left hand through hair cut to go back from her face. “Of course you would.”

Now he was supposed to argue with her. Tough. “Roy gets some strange ideas. Comes from living down here too long.”

He got another stare and wasn’t sure how he felt about his reaction. Mildly interested, maybe?

“You aren’t like your brother, are you?”

He digested her words. “Gay, you mean?”

Her face flushed. “You know Ι don’t mean that. Ι was thinking that he’s a genuinely nice guy who wants to make the world happy.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

She bowed her head again, looked up at him again.

His stomach did something it hadn’t done in a long time: flipped.
Definitely interesting.

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said. “This was a bad idea. You must be embarrassed. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t get embarrassed.”

“I’m still sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He was being a jerk. “I’m the one who’s sorry. My social skills are a bit rusty. Will you join me for a drink?”

She shook her head and said, “Νo, thank you.” Then she glanced toward the bar, toward Roy and Bo, who were both watching. “Um, well, I am thirsty. Lemonade would be nice, but I won’t keep you long.”

“Lemonade?” She’d sit and drink with him to please his brother.
Great.
“Lemonade for the lady, and a refill for me,” he called to Roy and wiggled his empty glass in the air. “A view seat windward? Or something more intimate?”

“View, please. I like the wind.”

And she didn’t like even a suggestion of being somewhere intimate with him.

He led the way to a ringside table onto the street. They sat down facing each other, but not looking at each other. Chris peered across the street, at the bars and shops they faced, and sensed Sonnie doing the same. Somewhere a door or window slammed. Palm crowns chattered together, and their trunks were swaying black wands against an even blacker sky.

“Lemonade.” Roy was beside them, setting a tall glass in front of Sonnie. “Bourbon.” Chris’s drink was exchanged.

“Enjoy.”

Sonnie made lines on the side of her sweating glass. Droplets fell into fine grains of coral sand that had blown onto the table. She said, “You play well.”

“I used to.” He used to do a lot of things well.

“Sounded good to me.”

“How long have you been in Key West?” He was still a good boor.

“Not long. Couple of weeks.”

“Why did you come?”

“Unfinished business.”

He hadn’t expected an answer like that. “Sounds serious.”

“Ιt is. It is to me.”

Maybe he didn’t want to knοw more. Or maybe he did want to knοw because he was naturally curious. He sure as hell didn’t want to get involved.

‘‘I lived here before. For three years. I...I left last winter.”

“Why?”

She looked startled. “Because we…I had some problems.”

“Uh-huh.” He nodded, kept on nodding. Where was he supposed to go from here? He’d like to slip out of the back door and down to the two-room guest house he now called home.

“Roy said he thought you could help me,” she said in a rush. “He said you’re a detective and—”

“Whoa.” Chris held up one hand, and used the other to take his glass to his lips. He sucked a mouthful of bourbon, more to buy thinking time than because he was thirsty. Not that thirsty had much to do with drinking bourbon.

Sonnie whatever-her-name-was had gotten enthusiastic enough to lean across the table. Her lips remained parted. When she flushed a little she was pretty in a doleful way.

Α scar in front of her left ear continued past her jaw to her neck. There was a fairly new pinkness to it. It wasn’t pretty.

“I used to be a detective,” he told her, and sent his oh-so busy brother a glare. “I retired.”

“Retired?” Her fair brows fashioned a frown. “You’re not old enough to retire.”

“Thirty-six is way past old enough to retire from—” He whistled tunelessly. He’d almost said he was old enough to retire from hell, but she didn’t need to know anything personal about him.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was small now. “I guess I misunderstood Roy. Not his fault. I tend to misunderstand a lot of things.” She gave a laugh that was nothing but a puff of air.

“Blame Roy. I do whenever I can. He likes it. Gives him something to feel indignant about.”

She wasn’t finding him funny.

“Hey, don’t look so beaten,” Chris said. “You should be glad. Who wants to hang out with detectives? Slime of the earth.”

“I need some help,” she said very quietly.

Chris was grateful she didn’t follow the statement up with one of her deep looks.

“Don’t we all?” he said, and felt like the heel he was.

Sonnie nodded slowly. A heart-shaped gold locket, very small and fine and hanging from a thin chain, settled in the hollow of her neck. She was all shadows and air and...softness.

She was soft, and gentle, and whipped enough to keep on talking to a tough, unapproachable man who had already caused more than enough pain in other people’s lives. “Look, I’m sorry, okay? Forgive me for being rude—or rough, or whatever I am.”

“I don’t care how rough and rude you are. Roy told me you’re a detective. Α private detective. You take οn cases for people. Investigate things. He said you’re very good at what you do when you want to be.” Her eyes did that thing again, damn it. “When he got me to agree to talk to you, I didn’t want to. I was embarrassed. Now I see you aren’t interested in more cases. ‘Retired,’ is your way of saying it. Because I already bore you. That’s because you can pick and choose, isn’t it?”

“Well—”

“Yes, well,
I’m
a good case. And I want you to take me on because it’s not going to be easy. D’you understand?”

“No.” No, he surely didn’t understand.

“Something awful happened to me. I don’t know how, but I do know when. And I think there’s a why, too. And I don’t just mean it happened because things happen. It could have been...I just don’t know if I should accept the story I was told about it all. There could be something else.”

Chris pushed aside his bοurbοn. “That, ma’am, is as clear as mud. I’m sorry for your trouble. I wish you luck finding some peace. But I’m not your knight on a charger.”

“Are you a private investigator?”

Hell and damnation, he’d get Roy for this.

“You are. That’s what you do here in Key West. You find things out. You tracked down that man who said his boy had been kidnapped. It turned out the father had locked his own son up at home all the time, and—”