Key West (2 page)

So tonight—couldn’t be earlier than ten-thirty because the gentleman had “things” to do until then—tonight they would meet and see just how good they might be for each other.

The phone rang. Sonnie hesitated a moment before picking up the receiver. “Yes.”

“Sonnie, darlin’, it’s Roy. Just checkin’ in to remind you you’ve got a date.”

“I have an appointment,” she told him. “And I’ll be there. Then I’ll help close up.”

Roy laughed his hoarse laugh. “I been closing this rundown, beat-up bar for enough years to do it in my sleep, babe. You just get your pretty ass over here and get my brother out of...make my brother listen to you. He’s good. If anyone can convince you there aren’t any ghosts to chase, it’s Christian J. Talon. See ya.”

The line went dead and Sonnie let the receiver drop into its cradle.

She was as ready to go as she’d ever be.

Frank had disappeared, kidnapped by people it was hinted might be Italian terrorists. But there had been no ransom demand. Eight months had passed since the night when she’d set out to meet him at the airport, and not a word had come to Sonnie, or to any member of the Giacano family. She knew that was so because Romano made certain he was never very far away from her. The thought that he didn’t know where she was now didn’t make her happy.

He was a good friend and he would be furious. But she had to do this alone.

The heels of her sandals clapped on the polished slate tiles that covered the whole ground floor. She went into the airy entrance hall where a staircase rose from the center to the second story. Above Sonnie’s head more moon shadows sifted through the faceted panes of a lofty, domed skylight.

A dream home for a star-kissed couple.

A hell for a woman left alone with her disappointment.

The rented Camry sat to the right of the front door. Sonnie ignored the car and set off to walk to the Rusty Nail on Duval Street. Ten minutes in the fresh air would help her think more clearly—maybe.

If this Chris Talon, private investigator and ex-detective, decided she wasn’t too boring to talk to, he might help her at least decide how and where to begin looking for leads—if there were any leads to find.

All he had to do was ask the right questions in the right places. If there were any right places, and Sonnie was certain there were. She was sure she’d managed to stuff truth out of sight and that if it could be pulled back into the light, she might face more terror than she could have imagined, even after what had already happened. But in the middle of that terror was truth, and without that truth she would never be free.

“Hush little baby, don’t you cry…”

Eight months since she’d hit that wall hard enough to be thrown many feet from her vehicle.

Eight months since she’d killed her baby.

Two

“Quit feedin’ the g—damn cats, will ya?”

Chris Talon tossed another oyster to a rangy orange tabby that sat between his dusty brown loafers. “You’re cute when you’re angry, Roy,” he told his brother. “But I bet Bo tells you that all the time.” Bo Quick was Roy’s partner in the Rusty Nail, a Key West drink-and-cheap-food institution. They were also partners in life.

“Quit feedin’ the g—damn cats,” was all Roy said from behind the bar.

In the mood to goad his older sibling, Chris scuffed at the worn boards beneath his feet. “This place could use a facelift, bro.” He poked at sagging coconut matting on the wall beside him. “Υοu ought t’ have to pay people for coming in here. Health hazard, that’s what it is.”

“Yeah, yeah. Lot of folk like it just the way it is. Have for years. You just sit there and keep your mouth shut for once.”

“The boys are fighting again,” Bo Quick said, swiping a wet rag along the bar. He grinned engagingly at the row of regulars who had probably been warming the green plastic on their stools for hours. “Added attraction around here these days. The Talon brothers’ daily mix-up.”

It was too late, and too many beers had wetted the throats of the glazed-eyed patrons. Not a flicker of interest showed. Or maybe they were engrossed in the tinny reggae that squawked from ancient speakers.

“Save it, Bo,” Roy said. “My no-good brother loves to stir it up. Disappoint him.”

Chris yawned and reached from his stool to stroke the sinuous marmalade tom. “Reckon I’ll get on out back. Time for my beauty sleep.”

“Hold it,” Roy said. “Just you g-damn hold it there, bro. You’re not going anywhere.”

“If you want to cuss, why not cuss? Why tippytoe around like a goddamn fairy?”

Roy aimed a cocktail cherry at Chris.

Scrawny Bo sent up a cackle, and when he could control himself said, “He is a goddamn fairy, that’s why.”

“On that note,” Chris said, “I’ll bid you a fond nighty-night.”

“Get back on that stool or you don’t have anywhere to
go
nighty-night, smart mouth. In case you forgot, you’ve got a date.”

“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?”