Sweet Paradise Gene Desrochers (classic novels TXT) 📖

“Your family turn in early every night?” I asked.

“No, but recently everyone seems to be doing their own thing. Whether they go out, isolate in their room, or whatever. Harold’s probably out with some girl.”

He went to the kitchen and brought out a bottle of brandy. We sipped it and watched the stars in the impossibly black sky. Anna dozed off on a lounge chair, her hair gently swaying like a palm in the ocean breeze. The perfumed scent of a flower drifted by.

“Wasn’t Herbie sending you back to school soon?” I asked Junior.

“He threatens.” He looked like he wanted to say more, but stopped himself. “He’s not a good guy,” Junior mumbled in a drunken, half-asleep tone.

“Your father?”

“Gilroy, man. He’s ... I don’t know ... not right or something and I should know.”

“I’m gonna need more than that.”

“Well, just last few years really, he got hotter.”

“Perhaps he was always like that, just got less interested in hiding it. Frustration can do that.”

“Frustration?”

“I get the feeling he was promised something by one of your grandparents that he never got.”

“Like what?”

“You think Harold or the others would know?”

“I’ll ask and get back with you tomorrow.”

BACK AT THE MANNER, Lucy lounged on the enclosed porch upstairs. She shuffled cards absentmindedly by the light of a kerosene lamp. It reminded me of an old painting housed in the The Getty Center Museum of a philosopher-scientist studying the orbits of the planets with a compass by a single candle.

“You’re up late,” I said as I cut through to get to my room. She nodded. I stopped. The breeze buoyed me as I leaned against the wooden railing. Crickets chirped in the light breeze of dark morning.

Below us, Charlotte Amalie spread away to the black sea at Waterfront. Even in a small place like St. Thomas, there were always lights dotting the hillsides or peeking out of buildings at all hours. A stripped metal awning extended over the porch that could be lowered during hurricanes for added metal protection from the cataclysmic winds.

Strangely, I felt comfortable here with my landlady, amongst the chirping crickets and soft shuffle of her Bicycle cards. Lucy and Marge hosted a friendly poker game on Wednesday nights for the guests and a few close friends. Lucy dealt and Marge filled drinks and food orders. The bar-restaurant had recently begun to get busier with non-guesthouse patrons as word spread about the happy hour and good food at reasonable prices.

“This private detective from Georgia asked about a poker game this week. Should I have sent him over?”

Lucy shook her head. “No. We got da people we like. Might be we need to hire a cook or a waiter,” she said. “Marge don’t like that idea.”

“Why not?”

“She like it just be us.”

“I get that,” I said, shifting my weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. My knee ached from dancing.

“But we growin’ and I tired of doin’ everything myself. This business ain’t easy, you know.”

“If you want my opinion, hire a bartender or waiter, not a cook. You and Marge are already too good at that.”

She smiled, never looking up from the cards in her lap. “That’s nice for you to say, Boise. But cook is the cheapest. Besides, I don’t want give up tips.”

How could I argue with that? I was tired but not sleepy. Too many factors rattling around, and I still didn’t have the hold on things I had hoped to have by now. Was it the family? Was it someone in the business? Was Francine’s killing simply an accident followed by Kendal’s because he had figured something out? If that was the case, why hadn’t he gone straight to the police, rather than set up a meet with Junior. All illogical, but then again, human beings were illogical. The killings had to be related.

“Me don’t like the night,” Lucy said above the quiet din of her shuffling.

“Why don’t you turn on some more lights? It’ll feel less like night.”

Lucy did a thing where she fanned out the cards and popped one out of the deck. She could do things with cards like some of the magicians.

I was about to ask where she learned to do that, when she said, “Lights don’t take away the night. Trying to pretend it’s not night impossible. I don’t see the night, I feel the night. It heavy. Me don’t like it. It’s why I can’t sleep. I sit up, waiting for it to be over.”

Chapter 26

The mixed drinks at Mojo’s were made with cheap liquor. Really cheap liquor. I could usually drink any damn thing and a lot of it. My eyes felt like there were tiny strings with tiny dumbbells hanging off the tiny strings pulling down on my eyelids. It felt like that all damn day. Coffee didn’t help. A cold shower didn’t help—it may have even made me sleepier.

Slapping myself only made my eyes bulge, causing Lucy to comment that I looked more intense than usual as I walked through the lobby on the way out. Despite having still been on the porch shuffling cards when I went to sleep the night before, she was chipper as a cheerleader. Some people never seemed to get tired. I envied those people.

The sugar in the doughnut from Island Bakery helped slightly, but the stifling tropical heat countered the positive effect. Relentless sunshine—oh the humanity. Tugging my hat lower, I had to squint under the brim to keep from walking into people.

I trailed a tour group into the Bacon Distillery, breaking off as we approached Gilroy’s office. At the bottom of the stairs someone hollered my name. Yarey. She had dumbbell-eyes, too.

“Long night?” I asked.

“Amen. Fun, right?”

“You’re fun,” I said playfully. “When’s your next gig?”

“I’m supposed to sub in as a singer at The Normandie next Friday, but he ... ” She nodded up at the office above. “ ... said I gotta stop this nonsense or else.”

“Else what?”

“Probably kick