Chapter 39
Traci gazed at her half-full glass of wine with regret. She’d ordered and drank a second glass after Heather’s departure. She wasn’t sloppy drunk, but she wasn’t cold sober either.
What she was was melancholy, morose even, looking around the now-crowded bar full of lively, much younger customers, talking, laughing, dancing, flirting. How long had it been since she’d had a night like that?
Stop with the pity party,she told herself. She pushed the wineglass across the table and flagged down her server to ask for her check.
She was reminded of those summer nights she and Shannon had spent right here at Pour Willy’s, shamelessly trolling for rich, cute guys who might offer to buy them drinks; guys they’d flirt with, dance with, and yes, occasionally leave with, although Shannon had been much more successful at that than Traci.
Her car was still parked at the chapel, but she knew it would be unwise to drive, buzzed as she was. Instead, she pulled her phone from her purse, tapped the app, and summoned an Uber.
Whelan hadn’t intended to drive that night, but the Braves game was on a rain delay and he’d read the last of the paperback mysteries he’d bought by the bagful at a local thrift store.
He tapped the Uber app on his phone, and by the time he got downstairs to his Tahoe, he had a ride waiting. Fortunately, the pickup spot was two blocks away. Unfortunately, it was Pour Willy’s. Another night he might have declined the fare, but tonight his passenger, someone named Traci, was headed out to the Saint, easily a twenty-dollar ride, and hopefully a decent tip. He accepted the trip.
Whelan pulled up to the curb outside the bar and groaned when he saw two guys, dead drunk and sprawled on the sidewalk with their phones in their hands.
But his mood brightened when an attractive woman, wearing a black dress and heels, nimbly sidestepped the drunks and approached his car. He lowered his window. “Traci?”
She nodded and got into the back seat.
Before pulling away from the curb, he turned to get a look at his passenger. Early forties, nicely put together. “You want a bottle of water or something? It’s awful hot tonight. There’s some in the cooler on the floor there.”
“No thanks,” she murmured, leaning back in the seat. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”
“I just live around the corner,” he said. “You having a good night?”
“Hmm?”
He raised his voice. “I said, hope you’re having a good night.”
She didn’t reply. He was watching her in his rearview mirror. Her eyes were closed, and at first he thought she was dozing, but then he noticed her wiping at the tears flooding down her face. She was weeping.
“Hey, are you okay?”
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
A moment later: “That’s a lie. I’m not fine. I’ve had a really sucky day, and suddenly, it’s just all… too much.” Her eyes met his in the mirror. “Sorry.” She gave a rueful smile. “I’ll try to pull myself together. You can just pretend I’m not here.”
“You wanna talk about it?” Whelan asked. This was unusual for him; he didn’t really engage with passengers. He liked a nice, clean transaction, but there was something different about this fare. She looked like she could use a friend.
“Something bad happen back at that bar?” he asked.
“No, it wasn’t the bar. It was what happened earlier.” She sniffled. “I was at a funeral. For my niece.”
“Oh. Damn. Sorry for your loss. How old was she?”
“She would have been twenty-two in September.”
“So young.” Whelan shook his head in sympathy. “What a shame.”
She was quiet for a while, and again, Whelan thought, even hoped, she was asleep. He didn’t know what to do with a crying woman. It was a complication he didn’t need.
“Her name was Parrish.”
“Pardon?”
“My niece. Her name was Parrish.”
Whelan was afraid to ask for details. Because details would invariably bring more tears.
“Nice name” was all he could come up with. Stupid thing to say.
“She was named after her paternal grandmother, Helen, but Parrish was her mother’s maiden name.”
“That’s a real Southern thing, huh?”
“I suppose so.” The passenger, whose name was Traci, he recalled, blew her nose on a tissue and stared out the window. They were on the causeway that crossed from the mainland to St. Cecelia Island. There was a full moon and it was mirrored perfectly in the river’s smooth black surface.
“Nice night.” Weather, he thought, was always a safe topic.
“At least it didn’t rain. On the funeral, I mean.”
“It was raining hard in Atlanta. Delayed the Braves game.”
“Oh. You’re a Braves fan?”
“Yeah. Grew up listening to the games on the radio with my granddad.”
“That’s funny. So did I. Where are you from?”
“All over,” Whelan said. “My folks split up when I was a kid, so I went to live with family in Greenville, South Carolina, then went in the military, started and sold a business. Retired a few months ago, and decided to try out island life for a while.”
He waited for a minute or two. “How about you? You staying out at the Saint?”
“Yes. You could say that.” She didn’t elaborate.
The ball was in her court. “Do you drive full-time? Or is this a sort of side hustle for you?”
“I’ve got a full-time job, so yeah, driving is just to make walking- around money. And, to tell you the truth, I’m new in town. I don’t know a lot of people, so this gets me out and learning the community.” This was partially true, so he didn’t feel guilty about the part that wasn’t strictly true.
“Walking-around money,” she mused. “I like that.”
“With my job, I mean, the money is okay, but living in a resort town ain’t cheap.”
“Tell me about it. What exactly do you do in your job?”
“I’m a supervisor for a landscaping crew. Out at the Saint, actually.”
“Interesting,” she said. “Do you like your job?”
“Yeah. I kinda do. It’s hot, sweaty, physical work, but I don’t mind that. The main problem is, we don’t have enough reliable help. You get someone good on the crew, and damn if, a few days later, they’ve gone to work someplace else, for more money.”
“How well I know,” she murmured.
Whelan liked this woman. She was easy to talk to.
“And what do you do, that you can afford to stay someplace as fancy as the Saint?”
“I’m in the hospitality business,” she said.
They’d reached the security gates at the Saint. Whelan pulled forward and lowered his window to address the security guard, a redheaded woman he’d seen around the property, although he still didn’t know her name.
“Got a hotel guest,” he started to say, but in the meantime, his passenger had rolled down her window and leaned out.
“Oh, hi, Micki,” she said.
The guard snapped to attention. “Mrs. Eddings! Sorry, I didn’t recognize your car.”
Whelan turned his head to stare. “So… you’re Traci Eddings? My boss?”
She gave him an apologetic shrug. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Glad I didn’t say anything bad about my job here,” he muttered.
“I’m glad too. People think I’m exaggerating, but our staff is our greatest asset here. I want all our employees to be treated fairly and paid a living wage. But, as you say, it’s hard in a place like this with the cost of housing as high as it is.”
Whelan let his GPS guide him to her cottage. He’d seen the place, named Wisteria, while working around the Saint’s grounds, had even pruned some dead palm fronds at the front of her property, but he wouldn’t have guessed it belonged to the resort’s CEO.
Compared to some of the lavish multi-story, multi-million-dollar homes on the property, it was a fairly modest house: pale-pink- colored stucco in a Spanish mission style, low-slung with a terra- cotta tile roof, surrounded by a waist-high hedge of pittosporum.
“You can pull in here.” She pointed to a break in the hedge. The driveway bisected a smallish lawn of thick St. Augustine grass, with beds of palm trees and oleanders outlined with flowing borders of green and white caladiums and pale pink and white impatiens. There was an arched porte cochere to the left of the front door, and beyond that he could see double garage doors.
He stopped the car in front of the front door and waited.
“Thank you, uh, Whelan.”
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“Did you have a car downtown?”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t want to drive after having a couple glasses of wine, which is why I called for an Uber.”
“How are you going to get the car back tomorrow?”
“I guess I’ll ask someone on staff to go get it and drive it back here.”
He hesitated a moment, wondering why he should go out of the way to help her, and then pushed that thought aside.
“I was going to say, if you wanted, you could give me your keys tonight, and in the morning, when I come to work, I’ll drive your car here, and leave it for you up at the hotel.”
“Oh, I couldn’t possibly impose on you like that,” she said.
“No trouble. I’m coming back in the morning anyway.”
She appeared to be considering his offer. “But… how would you get home tomorrow, after work?”
“Everybody on my crew lives on the mainland. One of them can give me a ride home.”
“That would be a help,” she admitted. “Of course, I’d pay you.”
“Then, it’s a done deal? I swear, I won’t steal your car, or take it joyriding.”
She laughed. “Well, if you were to take off with it, I’m pretty sure we have your personal information in our employee database, so we’d know where to find you. And also, Ray Bierbower, our head of security, is pretty darn good at what he does.”
“Duly noted,” Whelan said.
She reached into her pocketbook and retrieved a set of keys. After a moment, she removed a black plastic fob from the keychain. “It’s a silver Mercedes, parked on the street near the Chapel by the Sea.”
“Tag number?” he asked, and jotted down the number she gave him on the pad of paper he kept on the Tahoe’s front seat.
“Good night, then,” he said. “I’ll drop the car off by seven tomorrow.”