ex-boyfriend, but now I wonder if it had something to do with me. What had she seen in my eyes? Had she seen Chet at the bottom of that well? A commonality that went beyond Eric Washburn?
Some guy whose name I’ve forgotten had yelled, “Kiss, already,” from across the room and we broke eye contact, but I’ve never forgotten that moment. I wondered if she remembered it, too.
I stayed in the room until a little after five, then changed into my tightest jeans. I pulled my hair back into a ponytail, and put on more makeup than I normally used, including dark eyeliner. After dinner at the Livery, I was planning on checking out Cooley’s on the beach, and I needed to look the part.
The Livery was quiet when I took a seat at the bar. The bartender, a dyspeptic-looking giant in suspenders and a tie, was cutting lemons and limes, and a waitress was wiping down tables. The bar area was long and narrow. At one end was an unlit fireplace, and at the other, a man with long gray hair was unpacking an acoustic guitar, and setting up an amplifier. I hung my purse from a hook beneath the oak bar and ordered a bottle of light beer. Football highlights were playing on the TV mounted above the bottles, and I pretended to be interested. I wondered if anyone would show up on a Sunday night, but by six o’clock, as I was nursing my second beer, at least fifteen customers had arrived, most of them taking seats at the bar, and the man with the acoustic guitar had already sung two Eagles songs. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and ordered a turkey burger with sweet potato fries. Just as it was arriving, John, the hotel concierge who had checked me in, sat down two stools over and ordered a Grey Goose martini.
“Hello, there,” I said, swiveling my barstool fractionally in his direction.
I watched his eyes hunt my face. I knew I looked quite a bit different from when I had checked in. After a long second, he said, “Hello, guest with no reservation. How’d you like your room?”
“It’s lovely. You were right.”
“Didn’t bump your head going through the door?”
“Almost.”
His drink arrived, the vodka forming a trembling meniscus at the brim of the glass. “Now, how do you expect me to drink this?” he said to the bartender, who, without a word, plucked up a small black bar straw and dropped it into his martini. John lowered the level of the vodka a quarter inch, then flicked the straw back toward the bartender, who let it bounce off his chest and fall to the floor.
“Nice to leave your job and be able to go less than a hundred yards to get a martini,” I said.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said how good this place was. See what a great advertisement I am, drinking at my own place of work.” His laugh was almost like a giggle, his shoulders hitching up and down.
We chatted while I ate my burger, and he worked his way through the martini, adding ice as he drank it. I was about to give up any hope that I would stumble into gossip about Ted and Miranda, but when John’s second martini arrived, he asked, “You said you were from Boston?”
“No, but Massachusetts. Winslow, about twenty miles west.”
“Did you read about the murder in the South End? Ted Severson.”
“I did. It was a home invasion or something, right?”
“Right. He was building a house up here, just about a mile up the road.” He pointed north with one of his large, meaty hands. “They stay here—stayed here—all the time.”
“Oh, my God. You knew him?”
“I knew him really well, and Miranda, his wife, she practically lived here the past year.”
“She did live here,” said the bartender, breaking his silence. “She was down here for dinner more nights than she wasn’t.”
“Has Sidney heard yet?” John asked the bartender, and I noticed that two young women down the bar had stopped talking to each other and were now paying attention to our conversation.
“I don’t know, but I’m sure she has. It’s gone all over town.”
“Is the house finished?” I asked, wanting to keep myself in the conversation.
“No, not yet,” John said. “If you walk to the end of the cliff walk you can look at it. It was going to be huge. Little bit of an eyesore, I thought, but don’t quote me on that.”