He was staring wide-eyed at me.
“Please tell me what you know. Please. I have a feeling you were her friend.”
He got up, saying nothing, and stepped out from behind the bar. His back to me, he began collecting the empty bottles and other trash the young people had scattered over the deck.
I sipped my drink in silence and stared past him at the water. In the distance a bronzed young man was unfurling a deep blue sail as he prepared to set out to sea. Palm fronds whispered in the breeze and a black Labrador retriever danced along the shore, darting in and out of the surf.
“Zulu,” I muttered, staring numbly at the dog.
The bartender stopped what he was doing and looked up at me. “What did you say?”
“Zulu,” I repeated. “Beryl mentioned Zulu and your cats in one of her letters. She said Louie’s stray animals eat better than any human.”
“What letters?”
“She wrote several letters while she was here. We found them in her bedroom after she was murdered. She said the people here had become like family. She thought this was the most beautiful place in the world. I wish she’d never returned to Richmond. I wish she’d stayed right here.”
The voice drifting out of me sounded as if it were coming from somebody else, and my vision was blurring. Poor sleep habits, accumulated stress, and the rum were ganging up on me. The sun seemed to dry up what little blood I had left flowing to my brain.
When the bartender finally returned to his chikee hut, he spoke with quiet emotion. “I don’t know what to tell you. But yeah, I was Beryl’s friend.”
Turning to him, I replied, “Thank you. I’d like to think I was her friend, too. That I am her friend.”
He looked down awkwardly, but not before I detected a softening of his face.
“You can never be real sure who’s all right and who ain’t,” he commented. “It’s real hard to know these days, that’s for damn sure.”
His meaning slowly penetrated my fatigue. “Have there been people asking about Beryl who aren’t nil right? People other than the police? People other than me?”
He poured himself a Coke.
“Have there been? Who? “I repeated, suddenly alarmed. “Don’t know his name.”
He took a big swallow of his drink. “Some good-looking guy. Young, maybe in his twenties. Dark. Fancy clothes, designer shades. Looked like he just stepped out of GQ. I guess this was a couple weeks ago. He said he was a private investigator, shit like that.”
Senator Partin’s son.
“He wanted to know where Beryl lived while she was here,” he went on,
“Did you tell him?”
“Hell, I didn’t even talk to him.”
“Did anybody tell him?” I persisted.
“Not likely.”
“Why isn’t it likely, and are you ever going to tell me your name?”
“It’s not likely because nobody knew except me and a buddy,” he said. “And I’ll tell you my name if you tell me yours.”
“Kay Scarpetta.”
“Pleased to meet you. My name’s Peter. Peter Jones. My friends call me PJ.”
PJ lived two blocks from Louie’s in a tiny house completely overcome by a tropical jungle. The foliage was so dense I’m not sure I would have known the paint-eroded frame house was there had it not been for the Barracuda parked in front. One look at the car told me exactly why the police continually hassled its owner. The thing was a piece of subway graffiti on oversize wheels, with spoilers, headers, a rear end jacked up high, and a homemade paint job of hallucinatory shapes and designs in the psychedelic colors of the sixties.
“That’s my baby,” PJ said, affectionately thumping the hood.
“It’s something else, all right,” I said.
“Had her since I was sixteen.”
“And you should keep her forever,” I said sincerely as I ducked under branches and followed him into the cool, dark shade.
“It’s not much,” he apologized, unlocking the door. “Just one extra bedroom and John upstairs where Beryl stayed. One of these days, I guess I’ll rent it out again. But I’m pretty picky about my tenants.”