Paradise Burning (16 page)

“
Oh.” Mandy couldn’t think of a more
articulate response. She supposed Glenda was exaggerating, but
Peter, too, had said something about a shotgun. Perhaps this was
one of the times she should take the older woman seriously. After
all, the supermarket Glenda recommended really did have the best
produce department in Golden Beach.

“
You met Wade’s older grandson yet?”
Glenda asked, the sharp look in her eyes at odds with the
good-natured roundness of her face. “Brad Blue?”

“
I’ve only seen him from a distance,”
Mandy said, “but I’ve met his wife and baby. A handsome family.
I’ve fallen for young Bubba.”

“
Handsome,” Glenda scoffed. “Let me
tell you, hon’, Big Boy Blue is a hunk!”

Grinning, Mandy started to unload the bag
with the frozen food. “I have to admit, even from a distance . . .”
she murmured.

“
Well . . .,” Glenda announced,
inserting a pregnant pause, her dark brows moving up toward her
salt and pepper hairline, “Bill and I got here just after all the
fuss a year or so ago. Missed the whole thing. But the way I heard
it,”—Glenda leaned forward, eyes bright with the opportunity to
pass along such a choice bit of gossip—“the day after he was
married Brad Blue was taken in for questioning in the death of his
mistress.”

Mandy stared.

“
Surprise, huh?” Glenda chortled.
“’Course nothing came of it.” The older woman looked as sly as old
Wiley Coyote himself. “And guess who was the only person who heard
the alleged killer confess before he died?”

“
A priest?” Mandy ventured.

“
Claire Blue. Brad’s wife,” Glenda
hissed. “Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

While Mandy was still speechless,
Glenda heaved herself to her feet. “I didn’t mean to scare you,
hon’,” she apologized, “but I just thought you ought to know. About
Wade Whitlaw, that is. The jungle out there’s bad enough, what with
the snakes and gators and all. No sense running into a shotgun.
They say Wade’s nearly ninety and still running things the way they
did in
his
grandfather’s day.
The man’s a menace.”

Glenda Garrison patted Mandy kindly on the
arm before descending the steps and crossing the grass to her
trailer. Behind her Mandy was still staring blankly at the six
plastic bags of groceries, a container of frozen peas and onions
turning her fingers pink with cold.

Brad Blue. Who spoke Russian. Claire’s
husband. Sweet Bubba’s father. A mistress, a killer, a wealthy old
curmudgeon with a shotgun. A Russian girl on a log in the middle of
nowhere, murmuring, “Bad. Very Bad.” Three young women in Manatee
Bay with the deck stacked, possibly irretrievably, against them. A
best-selling author-adventurer attempting to lure his mouse of a
wife into a trap as gilded as the cage she’d left behind.

Golden Beach was no quiet resort community.
She’d fallen into the midst of a real life soap opera.

Too much the product of her upbringing to let
a mystery go unexplored, Mandy maintained her sunrise vigils, but
Nadya no longer graced the log above the river. A whole week had
gone by without a glimpse of her. Perhaps she was gone. After all,
people from all over the world vacationed in Florida. No reason a
girl from Russia couldn’t be among them.

And the strikingly handsome ramrod stiff
soldier? Husband, lover? Merely a fellow guest? Twice, Mandy had
ventured back to the front gate, and not a sign of him. The only
mystery, Sensible Mandy told Curious Mandy, was how foreign
visitors ever heard of the relatively small town of Golden Beach,
Florida.

Internet, Mouse. Real estate
agents
. Peter’s mocking voice was so clear Mandy
scanned the path behind her.

Plahoy. Ochen plahoy. Bad.
Very bad
. That, too, echoed clearly in her
head.

And on the seventh morning of her unrewarded
vigil, Mandy’s vision was playing tricks as well. The mist rising
from the mahogany-colored river seemed to coalesce into a street
scene. Delilah standing on a sidewalk, wearing the lime green
spandex and white thigh-high boots. And there was Jade in her
kitchen with her two little girls. Decorating a cake . . . while a
shadow loomed in the doorway.

The mists swirled, erasing one vision,
revealing another.

Fawn, her delicate body sinuous, bare,
blatantly exposed to a ring of leering male faces. Mandy could
almost feel the beat. Arch the back. Thrust out the boobs. Bump.
Grind. Slide. Shimmy. Pause long enough for an old man’s shaking
fingers to pull down her G-string, tuck in a hundred dollar bill.
Lift the leg, hug the pole. Arch the back, thrust out the
boobs.

Mandy winced, squeezing her eyes shut. A
waking dream, but where had it come from? And why? From Nadya to
Delilah, Jade, and Fawn. A strange leap, even for Amanda Armitage’s
fertile imagination.

Or was it?
Plahoy . . . ochen plahoy
. The whispered words
drifted on the mist. Was it possible there was a reason her mind
connected Nadya to the other three . . . ?

Sure. Too much imagination. The mystery in
Claire’s mind was just as ephemeral as the mists that were
dissipating, presaging another bright sunny day in paradise. Nadya
was gone. It was over. Time to enjoy the beauty of the day. Think
of her new friend Claire, with whom she now had lunch almost every
day.

Mandy allowed herself a secret smile. Unknown
to Peter, Bubba Blue and his older half-brother Jamie were winning
Peter’s argument for him. And she’d had a chance to observe Claire
and Brad Blue together and seen a love that, in spite of few public
words or overt gestures, was so incandescent it outshone the
Florida sun. They had survived their problems and were basking in a
personal joy Mandy admired and envied.

As much as she absolutely hated to admit it,
perhaps some of what Peter said had merit. Maybe it was time to
switch her loyalty to the family that hadn’t happened yet.

Once again, Mandy peered upriver. No Nadya.
With a small sigh she picked up Peter’s recorder from the seat
beside her, and headed home.

Nadya drooped disconsolately on her log. For
one whole week she had not dared come to the river. Four days
trapped inside by the man from Miami. The Boss. The one even Karim
feared. And three days cowering inside after he’d left, too
frightened to break the rules, even though the Boss had gone away
seemingly satisfied after sampling his merchandise, all eight girls
living in the old house along the river.

Seven days without leaving the house. Her
cowardice had ruined everything. Mandy had grown tired of waiting.
She would not come again.

Hope gone, Nadya plunged deeper into despair.
Before her lay only endless nights of degradation, and mornings
that brought promise of more of the same.

Nadezhda. Her name meant hope. Yet there was
none.

Nadya shifted on the trunk of the fallen
palm, looking behind her toward the east. The heavens were so
glorious she felt as if God himself had rebuffed her despair. The
diamond bright morning star had not yet begun to fade. It glimmered
in the center of a sky streaked with pink, rose, and palest blue
over a wash of gray. Even the low-lying clouds were as pink as they
were fluffy. Dawn was almost upon the world, and surely . . .
surely out there somewhere was a flicker of hope for something
better than the nightmare life she was leading. There had to be.
Mandy would come back. She would make her understand.

And bring the police? Was that what she
really wanted? Nadya wondered. To be sent home in disgrace to the
life she had tried so hard to escape? To poverty. And shameful
disgrace.

Perhaps, as Karim said, there was no way out.
Here, she was in the United States. She did not have to slog
through the snow to go to work or struggle to light a wood fire in
the one-room log building that was the village school. She was
eating well; Karim never stinted on groceries. Her clothes, such as
they were, were bright and clean. And her room, though not large,
was her own. No . . . not quite her own. But she did not have to
share it with two sisters and a baby.

She was living a terrible life, but in many
ways it was better than what she had left behind. She wished to be
free, but . . . Nadya glanced at the now-fading morning star—Venus,
was it not?—and thought that if freedom was not possible, then
death would be preferable to returning home.

She would not go back. Ever.

Karim frowned as Nadya came up the path from
the river. Sometimes she seemed to float, drifting above the last
lingering wisps of mist. Other times there was a spring to her
step, a renewal of spirit as she returned from the brown jungle
river which, so strangely, seemed to give her strength. But this
morning her shoulders were slumped, her slippers dragged along the
damp path. She was not even bothering to pick up the hem of her
caftan. Foolish girl. Again she would be waiting her turn for the
washing machine. The washing machine was very popular. The silly
creatures even fought over which one would have the privilege of
doing his laundry. Karim permitted himself a slight curl of his
lips. The women did not jostle each other over who would wash the
clothes of Yuri or Misha, or even the Boss from Miami.

As Nadya climbed the steps to the raised
porch, she did not look at him. Her hip came within an inch of his
as he continued to lean against his favorite roof support beam. Her
pure white caftan swirled around his ankles, but she never turned
her head. Or spoke. So be it, Karim thought. Speaking was not
necessary. His alligator shoes, his pride and joy, made no sound as
he followed her down the hall. It wouldn’t matter if they did. She
knew he would follow. Knew there was no escape.

And when it was over? As it must be,
for these things did not last.
Keep moving,
keep moving, keep moving
. That’s what Misha said. Hit
and run and move on.

And the little Nadya?

She would move with them, of course. Why
not?

Nadezhda. Hope. Was there any for the
occupants of this cursed house? Or only a long series of dark,
endless nights?

Peter, wondering what the hell he was doing
there, sat at a table against the side wall of Max’s Les Girls. He
waved away a drift of cigar smoke from the man in a three-piece
suit, who was sitting on the padded vinyl bench next to him, while
never taking his eyes off the raised platform where four girls,
wearing only G-strings, writhed around tall poles as if they
couldn’t decide if they were Eve or the snake.

Dancing, Peter thought sourly, was not
the girls’ primary skill. The only other time he had visited this
place he’d taken a table at the edge of the stage so he could
easily slip a note to his chosen research subject. The action on
the low stage had been too close for evaluation. Too many long
nimble limbs, smooth rounded cheeks. Pink- and brown-tipped breasts
the size of the Guggenheim bounced within inches of his face.
The
savoir faire
of the
supposedly blasé internationally renowned journalist and author had
slipped, then skidded, almost plunging into the pit of reveling in
his new-found role of voyeur. He had hastily written the note about
luncheon, wrapped it in a fifty, and chosen the smallest, most
delicate of the dancers. Fawn.

But from his current vantage point near the
wall it was easier to maintain his cool. For a sickening moment an
even more flagrant example of sex as a commodity flashed before his
eyes. Ruthlessly, he shoved aside the phantom cluster of bewildered
children. Here he might be able to do some immediate good. Nothing
short of the exposé in his book and outrage by the international
community could help the parade of childish brown bodies in a
far-away land. Peter forced himself to concentrate on the four
young women on stage.

It was plain to see only Fawn could
actually dance. The others writhed languorously around their poles
or merely strutted about the tiny stage, their boobs shaking in
dubious rhythm to the music. Peter’s guts writhed as well. He
hadn’t wanted to come, hadn’t a clue what he was going to do now
that he was actually here. But Mandy was worried about the girls,
and he’d felt trapped into offering to check up on them.
Jesus H. Christ
, if he was the
sentimental type, he never would have lasted all those years while
he traveled the world for AKA and then for himself.

But he’d changed. As Mandy had changed.
They’d grown older, mellower. Become . . . not less dedicated, but
less obsessive, less
driven
.
More able to see the individual trees instead of just the vast
challenge of the forest.

They’d become more sensitive. Better able to
feel the pain of others.

Shit!
Once
again, the parade of tiny Thai puppets popped into his mind.
Children, lost and alone. About to be sold into sexual slavery.
Okay, so somewhere inside him was a heart. And the steel armor
around it had more chinks than the one called Mandy. If he wasn’t
careful, his hard-won professional detachment was going to crumble
into dust.

He’d even refused to bring Mandy to the
club. How unprofessional and downright old-fashioned was that? He’d
gone caveman and given her a flat-out
No
. In the end, after she’d threatened to follow
him, and he’d yelled that he didn’t want her anywhere near the men
who frequented what he’d called Max’s Maximum Exposure, she’d been
struck by the irony and begun to laugh. They’d compromised on Mandy
doing a follow-up with Jade, and then they’d go together to track
down Delilah.