Murderers' Row Page 2

  “Dat no hobby class!”

  “De higher de monkey climb, de more he show he tail.”

  It took us awhile to spot Mo and Jonathan amongst the revelers.

  Maureen Russert is a couple of years older than me, in her mid-forties at the time of the wedding, but she didn’t look it that night. Her freckled face glowed and her dark bangs glistened. Jonathan Hawes, whose height and facial architecture made him a perfect Sherlock Holmes in Mac’s 1895 play a few years earlier, looked at her—well, the way I look at Lynda.

  Lynda grabbed Mo. “This is so exciting!” Hugs ensued, although I only shook Jonathan’s hand.

  “Thank you for doing this,” Mo said to Lynda and Mac. “Thanks to all of you.”

  “I couldn’t miss it,” I said. I wasn’t allowed to.

  The live calypso band made conversation a bit of a challenge. But we managed to catch up while we downed among us swordfish, marlin, mahi-mahi, and the Bajan signature treat of flying fish (grilled for me). Not to mention the multiple bottles of Banks beer consumed by Mac.

  “The trip was fine,” Kate reported, “and Sir Owen gave us a little tour on our way to Naniki.”

  “Jonathan and I haven’t seen much of the island,” Mo said. I bet! “We were waiting for you guys.”

  “How are your girls?” Lynda asked.

  “Still a little peeved that I’m doing this without them.” Her frown passed like a shadow over the moon. “All this came up rather quickly. We just couldn’t work it around their school and work schedules. We’ll make it up to them somehow.”

  Jonathan took her hand. “I’m sure we will. But I’m not sorry to be honeymooning alone.”

  I guess he forgot we were there.

  “I’m so happy,” Mo said. “Nothing could spoil this.”

  III

  “Perhaps I should set a mystery novel in Barbados,” Mac mused the next morning over a hearty breakfast of coconut bakes, scrambled eggs, sautéed green bananas, and fresh fruit. If we kept eating like this, the women would have to let out their dresses for the wedding.

  “Great idea,” I told Mac. “Then you can write off the cost of this trip as a business expense.”

  “You won’t lack for material,” Lynda said, looking up from The Saturday Sun. As a journalist by blood, she shares my habit of reading the local newspaper wherever we are. “I see what Sir Owen meant about the marijuana trade. There’s a big story in here about a Jamaican lawyer in Barbados who makes a living representing her countrymen charged with smuggling. And then there’s story about police corruption.”

  I was more taken by the British slang in the startling headline: ACCUSED: IT’S A LIE, I DID NOT BUGGER HIM.

  “That is not my sort of crime, as I am sure you realize,” Mac said, referring to the smuggling, not the buggering. “The murders in my novels are all the work of amateurs, as is the sleuthing.” He stroked his graying beard thoughtfully. “Of course, a novel also needs subplots and red herrings.”

  “Don’t you ever stop working?” Kate grumbled.

  “I presume that is a rhetorical question, my dear.”

  “I’m glad Jonathan doesn’t work all the time,” Mo said.

  Her fiancé put a theatrical glower on his lean face. “Is that an undertaker joke? You know how I hate undertaker jokes.”

  “Oh, look at this cute video of Donata that Mac’s mom sent!” Lynda held out her phone.

  After breakfast, at Sir Owen’s suggestion, we drove up the east coast just a bit and spent a few hours overdosing on the floral beauty of the Andromeda Botanical Gardens in the village of Bathsheba. Another kind of beauty was on display when we donned swimsuits and sunscreen to walk along the beach for a while. (Heavy on the sun blockers for my blond wife and for Kate and me, both red-headed.) The waves were too strong for swimming along the rugged coastline, but I loved the roar of the Atlantic. I also loved the one-piece aquamarine suit that hugged Lynda’s exquisite figure. Mercifully, Mac eschewed swimming trunks and stuck with his shorts and short-sleeved shirt.

  “The ocean air certainly enhances one’s appetite,” he commented.

  Before I could point out that in my experience a flagging appetite had never been one of his problems, Jonathan said, “What was the name of the place you wanted to go for lunch, honey?”

  “The Historic Aquarius Inn,” Mo said. “It’s famous.”

  Better yet, it was nearby in Bathsheba. Lunching on the outside deck, the six of us shared an appetizer tray of fish cakes. I followed up with a swordfish sandwich. I don’t eat a lot of red meat, and even less in sight of an ocean, but my luncheon mates stood in the gap on that.

  “I could use a nap,” Lynda said as we polished off the last of it.

  Well, all right! Naps in the Cody household usually don’t involve only sleeping. But before I could pick up on Lynda’s comment by suggesting that we go back to our cottage, Mo said, “Well, look who the cat dragged in!” She spoke rather loudly in a tone I interpreted as surprise. I later learned that it wasn’t, not by a long shot. I followed her eyes—or rather, her sunglasses. She was looking at two men and two women approaching an empty table with the clear intention of occupying it for lunch.

  “That is your former husband, is it not?” Mac asked.

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled.

  Well, this is a bit awkward.

  I couldn’t have picked Arthur Bancroft Russert out of a lineup. After he dumped Mo, he moved to Cincinnati and I never had the questionable pleasure of meeting him. Therefore, I didn’t know whether he was the powerfully built guy with the broad face and high forehead or the more handsome article with a head of thick brown hair, carefully parted on the left, and a square jaw. But the latter didn’t leave me in the dark long. His eyebrows shot up and the blue eyes below them widened.

  “Mo!”

  “Hello, Arthur dear.” The tone of her voice was somewhat colder than the ice in my glass of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke.

  The woman standing closest to Russert was a petite blonde, with her hair brushing the tops of her shoulders. From what I could see of her face through a pair of roundish, pink glasses, she wasn’t somebody you’d notice in a crowd. Around her neck hung a Canon digital camera with a telephoto lens, something you don’t see so often now that phones are smart enough to take pictures with. Her brightly colored dress, short with a low back, looked like something bought on the island.

  “What are you doing here?” Russert asked the ex-Mrs. Russert.

  Mo smiled like a cartoon cat with canary feet sticking out of his mouth. “We’re staying at Naniki. And on Valentine’s Day I’m getting married to someone I love.” She grabbed Jonathan’s nearby arm. “You should try it sometime.”

  “I knew you were getting remarried, of course, but I never—Well, anyway,” he stammered, “you look great. I hope everything works out well for you.”

  “I’m sure it will for you, Art—no more alimony.”

  I so want to not be here.

  The blonde stepped forward and put out her hand. “Mrs. Russert? I’m Sabrina Coe. We’ve never actually met.”

  “No, Arthur managed to keep us apart while he was married to me and seeing you.” (I cleaned that up a little.) “That was the one thing he was good at. I thought you’d have bigger boobs. Please call me Mo. I’m dropping the Russert in three days.[3] Better late than never.”

  This is going well.

  “I’m very happy for you,” Sabrina Coe said. She didn’t look all that flat-chested to me. “Really, I am, Mo.”

  The look on Mo’s face was hard to read—at least by me—but she didn’t make another snappy retort.

  “Oh, look at the time,” Kate said, not looking at her watch or phone. “We’d better be going.”

  “Indeed,” Mac thundered.

  Sounded good to me, eve
n though we had no place to be for hours.

  “It was so nice to meet you,” said the other woman in the Russert party. Her smile, the product of a generous mouth, took the edge off what had to be sarcasm, considering that we hadn’t been introduced. She was short and so was her hair, a stunning shade of grey-white even though she couldn’t have been older than the low-forties. That hair nagged at my memory. Where had I seen her before? If she were thirty pounds or so overweight, that didn’t stop her from wearing cut-off jeans and a lacy white top. She looked like a bundle of energy just standing there.

  “Sorry,” Russert mumbled, clearly getting the point of the dig. He presented his friends, Marcus and Cricket Wagner.

  “Shark Tank!” I said, without waiting for Mo to dole out our names in return.

  Lynda had that “can’t take you anywhere” look on her face, but Cricket Wagner said, “That’s right.”

  I’d seen her on the show a year or so earlier with a portable diaper-changing apparatus that she’d invented for use with her own three children.

  “Great invention you had there!” I told her. “I’m sorry none of the sharks invested in your business.”

  “Oh, don’t be! Business is booming from the publicity, and I didn’t have to take in a partner.”

  Mo cut short this fascinating (to me, anyway) discussion by introducing the rest of us to Russert and his traveling companions. Jonathan tried to be cordial, and why not? Russert’s loss was his gain.

  “How long are you going to be in Barbados?” Lynda asked.

  “Not too much longer,” Russert said.

  The Hazel Carter concert was “awesome!” So said Lynda as we ate world-class ice cream afterwards (rum raisin for me) at a fast food restaurant called Chefette. Somehow, my wife had turned from a mere fan into a certified Hazelnut since landing on the island. She bought a concert T-shirt to prove it. My sister didn’t yell and gyrate insanely during the event like Lynda did, but she used the word “fabulous” in describing it later. Mac, who in his spare time runs St. Benignus University’s small popular culture program, pontificated on the “popular” and “cultural” aspects of the concert experience, laced with observations about Ms. Carter’s appeal to women of a certain age range. That was brave, given the presence of Kate and Lynda.

  As for my own reaction to the concert, I couldn’t understand the words of songs I’d never heard before, and that always makes me suspicious. Also, my mind was somewhat occupied during the performance by mixed thoughts of the day’s events. Mo had been clever, witty—and nasty. Not like her usual pleasant self at all. But maybe that’s normal for a woman who encounters her ex-husband and the woman who replaced her in his life.

  Anyway, I was somewhat quiet during the concert post-mortem at Chefette, even when not eating. Then Lynda and I parted from Mac and Kate to walk on the beach by ourselves. The waves roiled in the moonlight and Lynda put her head on my shoulder.

  “Isn’t this romantic, tesoro mio?”

  “Romantic” was the word she’d used months before to describe this destination wedding, whereas I would have chosen “expensive.” But at that moment—

  “I couldn’t agree more,” I whispered.

  After a few minutes of exploring that topic, we strolled back to our cottage. Not fast enough for me!

  Some minutes after getting in, we heard a knock on the door. We were in the shower.

  “No, no, no!” I snarled. “Who would be knocking on our door at this time of night?”

  “A friend in need,” said Lynda, always compassionate as well as comely.

  “Oh.”

  We grabbed bathrobes, put them on, and opened the cottage door. It was Mo, looking like a politician the day after an election defeat. Even her cute bangs seemed to droop.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said. “In fact, maybe I’d better—”

  “Come on in,” Lynda said. “We weren’t going to bed any time soon.” I thought we were. “We’re still winding down from the concert. It was incredible. Here, have some rum.”

  When in Barbados…

  “Thanks.”

  While Lynda poured, I ducked back into the bathroom with my clothes and got a little more dressed. I came back into the room to find Mo in mid-explanation.

  “…but I didn’t hate her at all! How could I? She seemed genuinely nice to me. I thought she would be a rich bitch. She inherited a pile from her parents, who were liquor distributors. That’s how Art met her—he manages her money. But I just Googled her name for the first time. It turns out she runs a non-profit making micro-loans for poor people to start businesses here in the Caribbean! She’s not the sort of person I thought at all. I feel so ashamed.”

  “Having unkind thoughts about people isn’t a crime, thank heavens,” Lynda. “We all do that, from time to time.”

  “And you didn’t exactly unsheathe your talons on her,” I added with a chuckle. Except for that crack about her body shape. “You saved that for your ex. So, don’t be so upset with yourself. You have no reason to be.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She closed her eyes and took a healthy slug of Old Brigand Barbados Rum neat. I prefer mine mixed with Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, and not too much of it. I don’t expect to live forever, but I would like to outlive my liver.

  “I could never tell Jonathan this,” Mo said, “and you can’t tell him either.”

  “Tell him what?” Lynda asked.

  “I picked this island at this time because I knew Art and Sabrina were going to be here. Jonathan has no idea that’s why we rushed the wedding.”

  “How in the world did you know—”

  “You’d be surprised how many ‘friends’ are eager to tell you about your ex’s wonderful life. One of them even told me that Art and Sabrina were staying at the Aquarius. That’s why I picked it for lunch. But now I see how stupid it was to come all this way just to try to ruin Art’s vacation by rubbing it in his face that I’m marrying a better man than him.”

  “Your feelings toward a despicable man who ran out on you four years ago are entirely understandable,” Lynda said.

  Should I get my testosterone-infested body out of here?

  “I don’t really hate him, you know, any more than I hate Sabrina,” Mo clarified. “There was something real between us once. At least, I thought it was real. Maybe it was just those eyes, those beautiful blue eyes and his charm. He did have charm. I guess he still does. Apparently, he’s charmed Sabrina for years.” She sighed and worked on the rum for a bit. “He gave me two wonderful daughters. I’ll always be grateful for that. And when you share children, you stay in each other’s lives.

  “I’m not proud that I watched with secret satisfaction when that trendy Cincinnati restaurant that Art invested in went bankrupt last year. But that wasn’t enough for me. Oh, no, I had to drag Jonathan here for our wedding just because I thought it would upset Art. And I’m not even sure it did. I was such a fool!” Tears threatened.

  “No, you’re being a fool now, Mo.” The motherly way Lynda spoke, one would have thought she was the older woman instead of the reverse. “It doesn’t matter how you got here. You’re going to have a wonderful wedding on Tuesday and a great marriage.”

  Mo sat back, a hint of a smile on her face. “You seem pretty sure about my life.”

  “I am.”

  “Everything will look better in the morning,” I assured Mo. “You’ll see.”

  IV

  In the morning, Sunday, Sir Owen took us into Bridgetown—“us” being a party of five.

  “Mo doesn’t feel well,” Jonathan said, “but she told me to come with you guys.”

  Our first stop was the early Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The church is appropriately big, with a high vaulted ceiling, arched windows, and stained glass. The windows were open, and birds fl
ew freely throughout. It was hard for me to keep in mind that it was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, with the temperature about 40 degrees back home.

  Spirituality taken care of, we went on to spirits at Mount Gay distillery. It’s the world’s oldest distiller of rum, “Est. 1703,” as the sign says. We toured the facility and tasted the product, though not to excess. Then Kate dragged us to Pelican Village, a collection of small wood-frame shops on the outskirts of the city selling local handicrafts. Every time I heard Lynda exclaim, “Oh, how cute!” I knew the Cody credit card was in for a workout. “Christmas gifts,” she explained. But we kept for ourselves a nice black-and-white block print of Bajan fishermen casting their nets. It hangs above my desk as I write this.

  Rain paid a visit just as we came out of the last colorfully painted shop, Lynda and Kate each clutching several bulging bags. But the sun didn’t go away.

  “Barbados has only two seasons—sunny and rainy,” Sir Owen informed us. “It is not unusual to have both at the same time. We like to say the sun and the rain are getting married.”

  Passing the bronze statue of Admiral Lord Nelson in National Heroes Square, we went to lunch at the nearby Nelson’s Arms Pub. I felt like I was back in jolly old England, what with the standard-issue British pub interior. But Jonathan didn’t look so jolly.

  “You seem distracted,” Mac observed between quaffs of Banks beer.

  “Is that what you call it! Wouldn’t you be a little off your feed if you were in my shoes? A guy about to get married in a tropical paradise doesn’t expect to run into a snake in the garden.”

  “Well, there is a precedent for that. You refer, of course, to Mo’s former husband and the father of her children.”

  He winced. “Some father. He spends time with them, but everything else I know about him says he’s a selfish schmuck. What kind of example is that for the girls?”

  “Forget about him,” Lynda said. “I’m sure Mo has.”

  “I wonder about that,” Jonathan said, in no way cheered by this unburdening of soul.

  Just then his phone pinged. He looked down and smiled. “It’s a text from Mo. She wants us to circle back and pick her up.”