Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

“Okay. Hear me out. You and Maya could stay with me. Just for the short run. And I’m totally not trying to get in your, er … grass skirt.”

“You’re not?”

He grinned. “Okay, well, yeah, I mean, I am kinda trying, but I’m not a pig. My place is five minutes from here and it has two bedrooms. You and Maya could have my room, and I’d stay on the pullout in the room I use as an office. And I would totally respect your boundaries.”

Letty was watching Joe’s face as he made his case. He was so earnest, so … so unexpectedly kind. He was, she concluded, that rare thing. He was a good man. And he was damn fine-looking, too.

“Can we not do this tonight?” she asked. “After tomorrow, after you’ve dealt with Evan, I promise I’ll think about moving in with you for a few days.”

“Letty! Mr. Joe.” Maya was standing by the door. “Let’s go!” She swished her grass skirt. Joe swished his hips in imitation, and Letty swished hers. She went to the sliding glass door and checked the lock. She locked the window that led to the breezeway, and finally, after they were outside, she locked the front door.

44

“ALOHA!” AVA CALLED, WHEN SHE spotted Letty and Joe approaching the rec room with Maya. “Oh, if y’all don’t look too stinking cute!” She whipped out her phone. “Joe, stand right there with those girls, and for God’s sake try to smile. Put your arm around Letty. No, closer. Maya, sweetheart, look at me now.” She quickly snapped half a dozen photos.

The motel owner was dressed in a floor-length fuchsia flowered muumuu, with a flower crown balanced on her graying blond curls and half a dozen leis draped around her neck.

“You look pretty cute yourself,” Letty said.

“Are we done yet?” Joe asked, deliberately baiting his mother. “This shirt itches. What the hell is it made of? Aquarium gravel?”

“Quit your bitching and get inside and start working the bar,” Ava directed. “We’re gonna have a full house tonight. Letty, can you sit by the table and sell bingo cards?” She looked over at Maya and smacked her forehead. “Oh Lord. I am getting senile in my old age.” She leaned in closer to Letty and lowered her voice. “I’m so sorry, hon. I completely forgot. We can’t let Maya stay. It’s illegal for a minor to be on the premises when gambling is going on.”

“She’s right,” Joe admitted.

“But it’s only bingo,” Letty protested. “Who’s going to mind?”

“Vanita Dunn,” Ava said promptly. “The bitch who owns the Islander. A couple years ago, Joe arrested Vanita’s son for stealing from her hotel guests, and ever since then, she’s always trying to make trouble for me. I wouldn’t put it past her to have one of her spies here tonight. She’d rat me out in a heartbeat. It wouldn’t be so bad for me, but Joe’s a cop. It could look bad for him.”

“I’ll keep Maya tonight.”

Letty turned to see that Vikki Hill had joined the small group clustered around the four-year-old.

The FBI agent was dressed in jeans and a pale pink button-down blouse, with a plastic flower stuck behind her ear as her only concession to the evening’s theme.

She nodded at Joe. “Nice shirt, DeCurtis.”

“Oh no, Vikki, I couldn’t ask you to babysit,” Letty said, uneasily. “You’re sweet to offer.…”

“What? You don’t think I could keep a kid alive for three hours? I’ll have you know I had a pet goldfish in a bowl on my kitchen counter for three years. That’s longer than either of my marriages lasted.”

“You don’t want to play bingo?” Ava asked.

“Nah. I just came out because those four walls in the crummy efficiency were starting to close in on me—no offense, Ava. Plus I was hungry.”

“If you’re really serious, you could watch her at my place,” Letty offered.

“And you can eat dinner from the buffet,” Ava added. “We won’t start the first game for another fifteen minutes.”

“Good deal.” Vikki squatted down until she was at eye level with the four-year-old. “Hey Maya. Wanna hang out with me tonight? We can eat some sweet-and-sour meatballs and, uh, watch Hawaii Five-O on television, okay?”

Maya focused her huge blue eyes on the agent for a moment, considering the offer. “ PAW Patrol? ”

“Huh?” Vikki wrinkled her nose.

“It’s sorta like Five-O, but with cartoon dogs,” Joe advised.

“Okay, cool. But let’s eat first.” Vikki extended her hand and Maya took it.

As Ava predicted, the motel’s regulars were already streaming toward the rec room, and the parking lot was filling with cars. “Big crowd, huh?” Letty observed.

“Word gets around,” Ava said, showing her the metal cash box containing stacks of one-, five-, and ten-dollar bills. “Of course, it’s mostly snowbirds and retirees. Where else are folks gonna go for a night out where they maybe spend ten or twenty dollars for an evening of entertainment like this—they get as much food as they can eat, cheap drinks, and maybe even win a jackpot.”

“And it’s legal to gamble like this?” Letty asked.

“As long as you do it for a nonprofit,” Ava said. “We partner with the Legion of Mary, from the Catholic church. We don’t make any money on this. After we pay for our operating costs, all the rest of the money gets paid out in jackpots. Good clean fun, right? Our regulars look forward to this all year long. It’s a tradition, and lesson one here at the Murmuring Surf is, you don’t mess with tradition.”

“And it looks like everyone is really into the aloha theme,” Letty said, marveling at the array of loud flowered shirts, plastic leis, and muumuus flowing through the door.

“There aren’t any costume prizes, but still, it’s a real cutthroat competition,” Ava said. She nudged Letty. “Even the Feldmans want to play.

“Ruth! Billie!” Ava called, as the couple approached the table. “Where on earth?”

The two women wore matching traditional Hawaiian women’s long muumuus, with wide puffed sleeves and gathered, ruffled necks, along with flower crowns woven with bits of palm fronds, vines, and yellow frangipani blossoms. They wore necklaces of cowrie shells and puka beads.

“Billie designed and made our dresses herself,” Ruth said proudly. “I only made the necklaces.”

“Those are works of art,” Letty said. Before she could say anything else, Billie handed her two twenty-dollar bills. “How many cards?” Letty asked.

“Forty,” Billie replied, hefting a large straw bag onto her shoulder. “We came to win.”

More players crowded into the room. Trudi and Merwin Maples arrived, he dressed as a beachcomber with tattered shorts and straw hat, she in a blouse with a pattern of golden pineapples. The guests swarmed the food table, and Ava was kept busy, ferrying more platters of meatballs and fruit trays from the kitchen.

Joe stood at the front of the room on a makeshift plywood platform with a bar-top table and a large lit-up screen where the bingo numbers would be displayed. He tapped the microphone, resulting in an eardrum-piercing static squawk. “Five minutes, everybody!” he boomed. “Get your cards and take your seats.”

People rushed her table, holding out money, and Letty dealt out the bingo cards as fast as she could.

“One-minute warning,” Joe called. “Letty, go ahead and close the doors. Anybody not in the house sits out the first game.”

She was in the process of closing the door when a slight figure in a grass skirt came barreling down the breezeway in her direction.

“Wait! Don’t lock me out,” Oscar Jensen yelled.

She looked at Joe for approval. He shrugged. She held the door ajar.

Had there been a costume prize, Oscar Jensen, Letty thought, should have won it. His South Pacific –inspired costume consisted of a crudely made bra constructed of coconut halves strung together with duct tape and bungee cords, the grass skirt, and a sailor hat worn at a rakish ankle. He’d smeared his pasty-white chest, face, and torso with a cheap orange bronzer, and was barefoot. He thrust a handful of bills at Letty, still out of breath from his dash to the door. “Gimme twelve cards.”