Envy(31)

“You’ve never heard his name before?”

“Not that I recall. Should I have?”

He studied her for a long moment, then smiled and extended his hand. “I’m Mike Strother. Forgive me for not making that clear to you when you arrived. I thought you would know immediately that I wasn’t Parker.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Strother.”

“Mike.”

She smiled at him, liking the older gentleman and wondering how she could have mistaken him for the abrasive individual she had spoken to on the telephone. His eyes were kind, although she sensed that he was still taking her measure, sizing her up, appraising her. His wariness of her had diminished somewhat, but it was still there. Of course, there was no telling what his boss had said about her. It couldn’t have been flattering.

“Are you the contractor in charge of the house’s restoration?”

“Lord, no. I’m just trying my hand at this refinishing. I’ve worked for Parker since long before he bought this place.”

“In what capacity?”

“I do a little bit of everything,” he explained. “I’m the chief cook and bottle washer, housekeeper, gardener, valet.”

“Is he a demanding taskmaster?”

He chuckled. “You have no idea.”

Apparently she didn’t. Her preconceptions of Parker M. Evans were being dispelled one by one. He certainly hadn’t sounded like a man who would have a manservant at his beck and call. “I’m looking very forward to meeting him.”

Mike’s eyes shifted away to avoid looking directly at her. “He’s not here.”

Although she had already gathered that, having it confirmed was not only a crushing disappointment, it was perturbing. “He knew I was coming.”

“Oh, he knew, he knew,” Mike said, nodding. “He said you sounded just stubborn enough to travel all this way even after he’d told you it would be a waste of your time. But nobody on earth can outstubborn Parker. He didn’t want to be sitting around here when you arrived as though he were waiting on you. So he went out.”

“Out? Where?”


* * *


Maris angrily marched up to the man who’d rented her the golf cart. “Why did you send me all the way out to Mr. Evans’s house?”

He smirked. “Knew you’s lying ’bout him expecting you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”

“Don’t recollect you askin’.”

She was seething, but he was too coarse and stupid to waste her anger on. She would save it for Mr. Parker Evans. She had a lot to say to him. He had probably known about the wild goose chase she’d been sent on. Terry, the cook, surely had. His charcoal grill had gone cold, but he was tending bar when she pulled open the squeaky screen door to his establishment and went inside.

She crossed a bare concrete floor, splashed through a puddle of what she hoped was beer, and strode past the pool tables straight to the bar at the back of the room. The man who had rented her the cart followed her inside.

Billiard balls stopped clacking. Conversations died. Someone turned off the boom box. The floor show was about to begin, and the angry New Yorker was the featured act.

Terry was grinning at her sardonically.

“Give me a beer.”

His grin slipped a notch. He hadn’t expected that. But he reached into an ice chest and pulled out a longneck bottle of beer. He uncapped it and passed it to her. Foam oozed from the neck. Maris shook it off her hand, took a long drink, then set the bottle on the bar with a hard thump.

“I’m here to see Parker Evans,” she announced.

Terry planted his hairy forearms on the bar and leaned across it toward her. “Who should I say is calling?”

His customers guffawed. Terry basked in the success of his clever comeback. He laughed louder than anyone. Maris spun around and confronted the room at large. The interior was thick with tobacco smoke despite the screened walls and the overhead fans. Their desultory rotations didn’t eliminate the smog but only stirred it into the warm, humid air.

A dozen pairs of eyes were focused on her. There was only one other woman in the place. She was wearing crotch-hugging shorts and a clinging tank top that barely contained her pendulous breasts and the tattooed cobra whose flared head and wicked tongue rose out of her cleavage. One hand was insolently propped on her hip, the other held a smoldering black cigarette.

The tavern smelled of beer and grilled meat, tobacco smoke and male sweat. Maris drew a deep breath and tasted those essences in the back of her throat.

“Isn’t this rather juvenile, Mr. Evans?”

No one said a word. There was little movement beyond one man glancing at another, jabbing him in the ribs and winking. Another gave her a mocking salute with his beer bottle. One sitting near a pool table idly chalked the tip of his cue.

“To say nothing of rude,” she continued.

Forcing herself to move away from the false security of the bar, she approached a group of three men sitting around a table. She looked at each of them carefully. Judging from their moronic leers, she doubted any of them could read without moving his lips, much less write fiction.

“I’ve come an awfully long way to see you.”

“You can go back the same way.” The voice issued from a shadowed corner and elicited more chuckles.