Miami Midnight (17 page)

“He’s not a Jamaican, he’s from Trinidad!” She broke away, her hair flailing wildly, the jacket of her new coral suit twisted down over one shoulder. The hot sunshine hit her like a blow and she suddenly sagged. “You’re lying,” she said weakly. “David wouldn’t go off and leave me with—with somebody like you!”

“Get in the car and out of this heat.” He steered her to the curb. “What the hell have you been doing, anyway? I ought to cream that son of a bitch Castaneda.”

A magnificent low-slung midnight black Lamborghini sports car was parked in the no parking zone. Gaby felt an irrational surge of relief when she saw it. At least James Santo Marin’s car wasn’t a stretch Cadillac limousine with tinted windows.

She pulled her arm out of his grip. “I’m not going anywhere with you. Keep your hands off me!”

He opened the door of the Lamborghini. “The sooner you get in, the sooner I can turn on the air-conditioning. I’m taking you home.”

“You can’t.” She was undecided now. “My car’s parked down here.”

“I’ll have somebody pick it up.” He towered over her, mouth tight with irritation. The rough clothes he wore, the tight-fitting black shirt and threadbare jeans, outlined the muscular lines of his body sexily. “Right now I’m going to take you home,” he told her. “You can show me exactly what happened out there.”

In spite of the blazing heat a small crowd of loungers had gathered to watch. “I want you to leave me alone!” Gaby cringed under the stares, wanting to be anywhere but there, in a shouting match with James Santo Marin in the middle of
Calle Ocho
. “I’m not going with you. I have to go back to the newspaper and file my story!”

“I’ll have somebody call them.”

“You’ll
what
?” She knew she was screaming like a harridan but she couldn’t stop. “You tell my friends to get lost? You’ll have somebody pick up my car? You’ll have somebody call the newspaper about work I have to do? Who do you think you are, some sort of
king
?”

He gave her a furious look, black brows drawn together like check marks. “Get in the car.
Please
.” He emphasized the last word. “I’ll turn on the air-conditioning. We can talk.”

The “please” made a difference, Gaby told herself. The street was like a blast furnace, and she didn’t know how much longer she could endure it. “Remember, I’m not going anywhere with you,” she warned, and slowly lowered herself into the sumptuous black car.

He shut the door and walked around to the other side of the Lamborghini. He slid behind the wheel, started the powerful engine, and pulled away from the curb, tires squealing.

Gaby reached for the door handle but it had locked automatically. Gasping, she leaned back against the soft black leather and watched the shabby buildings of Little Havana flash by. Now what? she wondered. She’d been absolutely stupid to trust him. She didn’t even know if he was really taking her home.

In the close confines of the Lamborghini, James Santo Marin’s physical presence was disturbing. He was big enough, in spite of a lean, rangy frame, to crowd the front seats. The biceps of a bare tanned arm bunched impressively as he shifted gears. His faded denim jeans hugged his long, muscular legs, and on his feet were battered work boots.

Gaby couldn’t stop staring. It was the same man, yet a totally different version in jeans and T-shirt, hair tousled, face grim. He looked tough. Low-down, she thought with a sinking feeling.

“There’s nothing to see at the house,” she muttered. Everything’s been cleaned up.”

He shot her a quick look. “Did you get my flowers?” When she looked at him in confusion, he said impatiently, “Roses. Four dozen red roses. I sent them to the newspaper.”

It took her a moment to understand. The bouquet that had arrived at the newsroom. The one she thought had been sent for some shopping mall promotion. “You sent
those
?” She couldn’t believe it. “But there was no card!”

He turned his head, surprised. “Who else would be sending you flowers? I sent them after I—” He stopped. “After,” he said, his jaw clenched, “that night.”

That, too, took a minute.
After that night
.

Gaby turned her face to the window. That stormy night and the way it had ended there on the couch in her living room. Until now she had managed to bury the more painful parts of it deep in the back of her mind.

She inched away from the touch of his leg and arm as far as she could.
Who else would be sending you flowers?
He was crazy if he thought he had some sort of claim on her.

When they stopped at a red light on the causeway, she kept the back of her head to him, pretending to be absorbed in the cruise ships in the port of Miami.

“I was out of town for a few days.” His voice was expressionless. “Otherwise I would have called you.”

If he’d gone out of town Gaby could guess why. No, she hadn’t changed her mind about him. He was too flashy, too good-looking, undoubtedly dangerous. Dodd had told her as much. Even the
babalawo
had more or less agreed. He might be responsible for the
Santería
at her house, she thought with a shiver. After all, he had tried to threaten her, hadn’t he?

The Lamborghini purred up the driveway and stopped at the Colliers’ front door. James Santo Marin got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side to open her door.

“Start from the beginning,” he said. “When your friends brought you home and you found the dog.”

Gaby stepped from the car and pulled her arm out of his grip. “It’s really none of your business. And this wasn’t funny, practically kidnapping me. I want you just to leave me here and go back to”—her gaze raked his clothes meaningfully—”to whatever it was you were doing.”

“I was working on my boat. I can do that anytime. Now, where did you find the dog?”

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her anger flaring. “Are you checking everything out to see if it worked? Well, it did! Beautifully! This
Santería
mess put my mother in the hospital. The police came.” He strode ahead of her on the path. She stalked after him, yelling like a harridan again, amazed at herself behaving that way. But she found him, and especially the way he acted, unendurable. “We got the whole neighborhood up in the middle of the night,” she went on. “And it scared
me
half to death!”

He ducked under foliage, scraping a hibiscus branch from the back of his neck. “Where did you find the dog?”

“Over there,” she said reluctantly, pointing.

She really didn’t want to talk about it. To James Santo Marin, or anyone. Jupiter had been such a good-hearted dog, expecting nothing but kindness in this world. But somebody had wrapped a cord around his neck, probably while he was wanting to be petted, and strangled him.

Santo Marin dropped to one knee, his hand brushing the ground. “The dog hadn’t been cut open or anything?”

Cut open? The idea was horrifying. She turned away, feeling ill. “What’s your interest in all this? Are you just satisfying your curiosity?”

He got to his feet. “My interest is just what you said. That somebody came out here and frightened you half to death with this crap.”

She stared at him. “This
crap
?”

“Yes, this crap, this stupid junk.” He glowered at her, his eyes hard. “I don’t care what George Castaneda’s been telling you, it’s garbage. And the lunatic who did this ought to be locked up. Take me around the back of the house,” he ordered. “That’s where they put the rest of the
bilongo
, isn’t it?”

“There’s nothing to see.” He started down the side path and she followed him. “You’re not telling me everything!” she cried, frustrated. “I’ll bet you know who did it, don’t you?”

“No.” He didn’t turn to look at her. “But I’m sure as hell going to find out.”

He pushed through the untrimmed bushes to the back of the house, then stood there, staring at the porch door. “They told me you think you’re being followed.”

The back terrace was blisteringly hot, even though a breeze blew across the turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay and ruffled her hair. When he turned to her, squinting against the light, the intensity of his darkly handsome face seemed as vivid as the burning sun. But his eyes were angry, dangerous.

“A—a stretch black Cadillac limousine.” She knew he wasn’t going to believe her. “It’s followed me home from work.”

Amazingly, he considered it. “There are a million stretch black Cadillac limousines in Miami. Who’s in it, can you tell? Man or woman?” He paused a fraction of a second. “Two men?”

She gasped. “Oh, my God, your Colombian drug dealers are following me!”

“Jesus, don’t say that!” He was genuinely alarmed. “You’re jumping to crazy conclusions. Besides, I don’t know any Colombian drug dealers.”

But when he started for the sun porch door, she yelled, “Don’t just walk away from me. There were Colombians there at your house, I saw them. That’s what this whole thing is about, isn’t it? That I saw something I wasn’t supposed to!”

He hesitated, then started forward again. “Let’s go inside. I want you to tell me about the things you hear inside the house at night.”

He even knew about that. It made her furious. “Who told you that? Your friend with the computer?” How she regretted, now, letting the whole story spill out in the
babalawo
’s office. “Did you know the
babalawo
said somebody was trying to
kill me
?”

“With
Santería
?” He looked at her contemptuously. “Are you kidding? You don’t believe in that stuff.”

“I don’t know what I believe in anymore,” she wailed. “It was all pretty convincing today—the little African
iyalocha
, your school chum with the computer. Was that all for my benefit? To warn me off again? Oh, God.” She moaned, turning away. “I’m so sick of you people!”

“You people?”
He grabbed her arm and whirled her around. “What do you mean, Miss Collier?” he asked softly. “Are you referring to us uncouth, greasy
latinos
?”

She flinched. “No, no. I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“The hell you didn’t. I know what Anglos think of us, Miss Collier, you don’t have to spell it out.” He let her go so suddenly, she staggered. “Did you think I was any different? Did Castaneda tell you how
altaclase
I am? About my mother’s pure Castilian blood? And did he brag on his own nice brown skin? Well, I hate to disillusion you, but I’m Cuban, too. My father’s Cuban. He’s still there, in Cuba.” He spat out the words. “He’s one of Fidel Castro’s long-term political prisoners, an old man in a wheelchair who’s had a stroke, under twenty years’ house arrest. He’ll probably die there.”

He turned away from her, his shoulders stiff with anger. “The reason I’m here is that I don’t want you defiled with our ignorant superstitious practices. When I find out who did this to your genteel Anglo household here on Palm Island, I’m going to gouge his eyes out. Barbarically. Disgustingly. Does that satisfy you?”

She was horrified. “That’s unfair! I don’t feel that way, I don’t know why I said that. It’s just that this whole thing, going to the
iyalocha
today, the high priest with the computer...” Her voice trailed away. “I didn’t ask you to come here,” she reminded him. “Why don’t you just go back to your boat?”

“Forget it.” For a long moment they stood glaring at each other, irresistibly drawn by their conflict, neither willing to give an inch.

Finally he turned away. “I want to check the inside of your house.”

Gaby followed him slowly. Watching him stalk toward her house, captivated by the tightly wound grace of his narrow-hipped, long-legged body, she remembered the
babalawo
’s words.
Tiger. Fireball
. He had talked about gouging someone’s eyes out. He’d told her his father was still being held prisoner in Cuba. Twenty years. The cruelty of it made her wince. But he still hadn’t answered any of her questions. Neither had the others.

He was waiting for her at the door to the sun porch. “You said you heard noises at night,” he said tautly. “And something about a tape recorder.”

She got her key out and unlocked the door. “I don’t know what I heard anymore,” she admitted. “There isn’t a tape recorder in the walls. I just said that.”

The house was tightly closed against the heat and smelled mildewed, like all old waterfront places. Their footsteps were loud on the tile floors. Gaby couldn’t help thinking nervously of the night of the storm, when James Santo Marin had come into her house. In the
sala
she avoided looking at the old slipcovered couch. She still remembered too vividly how she had lain there in the darkness, half naked, practically panting for him to make love to her. And his passionate mouth, his long body lying heavily on hers, his trembling hands caressing her bare, aching breasts.

“I need a drink of water,” she said loudly. She started for the hallway and the front of the house. “I can’t describe the sound, anyway. It’s probably all in my imagination.”

“Wait,” he said.

She didn’t stop in the kitchen for the water. The memory of his hard, sexy body followed her like a heated ghost. She rushed through the hall, threw open the front door, and stepped out into the drive, gulping the steamy air. Just the way he looked affected her, she thought wildly, and she couldn’t let herself be that stupid. He was bad, evil, dangerous. He was mixed up with drugs!
Stop thinking about him!