Murder Packs a Suitcase (17 page)

Mallory was staring at them, transfixed, wondering whether or not to point out the obvious, when she heard a strange noise that almost sounded like someone was choking. Turning, she saw it had come from Annabelle. In fact, tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“Annabelle!” Mallory cried. “Are you all right?”

She just nodded.

“Are you sure?”

Annabelle nodded once again. Yet after only two or three bobs of her head, she stopped and began shaking her head from side to side.

Mallory put her arm around Annabelle's shoulders protectively. “It's these silly spears, isn't it? This is hitting a little too close to home.”

Annabelle nodded again, this time sniffling loudly.

“You're really traumatized by what happened to Phil, aren't you? It was a shock for all of us.”

“Th-that's not it,” Annabelle said. “I—I mean, it is, but there's more to it.”

Mallory sharply drew in her breath. Trying not to show how anxious she was to hear what was coming next, she reached into her pocket with her free hand, pulled out a tissue, and handed it to Annabelle. And here she'd believed that now that her children were grown, her days of pulling tissues out of her pocket like a magician were over.

“Is it because of the horrible way he ended up, drowned at the bottom of a fake waterfall?” she asked.

Annabelle shook her head again, this time more vehemently.

Mallory was still puzzling over Annabelle's extreme reaction when the other woman blew her nose loudly and wailed, “It's because I was in love with him, damn it!”

Mallory blinked, struggling to digest what she'd just heard.

Boy, if that isn't the biggest “believe it or not” in the joint! she thought.

But this was a time for diplomacy, not honesty. So, aloud, she said, “You know what? I think it's time for an early lunch.”

Annabelle was sobbing into her third tissue as Mallory pulled into the parking lot of the first restaurant she spotted, Race Rock. The good news was that it was only a few doors down from Ripley's. The bad news was that it was a theme restaurant built around the race car concept.

Maybe a little whimsy will lighten Annabelle's mood, she rationalized, not knowing where else to take her weeping companion.

The building was round, its exterior decorated in the same bold black-and-white check pattern as a NASCAR flag. A short stretch of road ran along one side of the round building. Parked on it was a big blue car with oversized wheels, appropriately stenciled with the nickname Big Foot.

As they walked through the main entrance, she saw that race cars hung from the ceiling. Mallory took a moment to appreciate the fact that Florida wasn't in earthquake territory.

Inside the cavernous building were more race cars, displayed on platforms high in the air. The distinctive decor also included motorcycles in glass cases, along with life-size mannequins decked out in racing outfits. Race-car drivers apparently favored bright colors like orange and yellow, with matching helmets. It was a look that reminded Mallory of Jordan's early childhood obsession with the Power Rangers.

Once they were seated, Annabelle continued sniffing. She also seemed reluctant to make eye contact. She looked at the floor, the menu, the car races on the huge screen next to their table, anywhere but at Mallory.

“Would you like a drink?” Mallory suggested.

“I usually just have water in restaurants,” Annabelle replied. “It's an easy way of keeping the cost down. Not only in terms of the drink itself, but also the tax and tip.”

Oh, dear, Mallory thought. The budget thing, even at a time like this.

Annabelle let out another loud sniffle. “But maybe I'll splurge this one time and treat myself to a Diet Coke.”

“I was thinking of something a little stronger,” Mallory said. “Something that might make you feel better.” She scanned the menu. “How about a Race-A-Rita?”

“You mean alcohol?” Annabelle seemed shocked. “I don't usually drink at lunch. Not when restaurants charge such exorbitant amounts for—wow! Will you look at these prices?”

“It's on me,” Mallory insisted, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “In fact, I'll join you.”

She scanned the menu, struggling to make sense of the unusual combinations of alcohol, fruit juices, and even some ingredients that had no place in alcoholic beverages, such as ice cream, bananas, and chocolate syrup.

“How about an Oil Slick?” she finally proposed. It was just beer with a fancy name, but she figured that was less likely to get Annabelle loopy than one of the restaurant's more creative concoctions. It also happened to be one of the cheapest drinks on the menu, which meant her tightwad of a dining companion wouldn't have such a hard time allowing herself to indulge.

“I guess I'll have one of those Race-A-Ritas,” Annabelle finally decided.

“Let's order some food, too,” Mallory suggested. The last thing she wanted was to end up with a luncheon companion who was slumped on the table, sobbing into her glass over her lost love.

Fortunately, their waiter came by almost immediately.

“A Race-A-Rita for my friend, and I'll try a Barney's Purple Passion.” Mallory hoped Annabelle wouldn't notice that the drink she'd ordered for herself had no alcohol mixed in with the raspberries and ice cream.

“Would you like those in a fuel can?” the waiter asked matter-of-factly, glancing up from his pad.

Mallory blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You can get your drinks in a fuel can with the Race Rock logo,” he explained, pointing to the fine print on the menu. “Or for an extra charge, you can get it in a twenty-two-ounce logo collector pub glass.”

“I think we'll both stick with a regular glass,” Mallory told him. “And we'd like some appetizers. How about an order of the Chicken Dragsters and some Nitro Wings…easy on the High Octane Nitro Sauce?”

Mallory had come to this bizarre place with the goal of calming Annabelle down—and perhaps even finding out more about the man who had not only been murdered but also had some mysterious connection to her dead husband. Yet now that she was here, she couldn't stop the newly uncovered writer's voice in her head from narrating the experience.

Race Rock offers travelers a chance to feast on foods with a race-track theme—or at least race-track-themed
names
—in a truly unique environment. Where else can a vacationer dine on Nitro Wings dipped in a High Octane sauce while watching racing footage on a tremendous screen, enjoying the
rrr-rrr
sound that's unique to this popular pastime?

“Sorry about all this,” Annabelle suddenly said, gesturing at the clump of damp tissues wadded up in one hand. “I don't usually get so emotional about things.”

“I don't blame you,” Mallory insisted, her thoughts returning to the assignment at hand. “Not when you had such a close relationship with Phil.”

All of a sudden, instead of seeing an irritating travel writer who was obsessed with pinching pennies, Mallory saw Annabelle as a woman in pain. True, it was difficult to imagine any woman falling in love with an oaf like Phil, but there was probably no greater mystery on earth than the reason one person was attracted to another. Couples had their own secret life, one that no one else was privy to. Even attempting to comprehend it was usually a waste of time.

Fortunately, the waiter brought their drinks quickly. He seemed to have had some experience with tourists who were at the end of their rope and had become desperate for alcoholic beverages served in tall curvy glasses that resembled hurricane lamps—even if it was still way before noon.

As she stirred her purple foamy drink, Mallory commented, “I have to admit, I had no idea you and Phil were…a couple.”

She hoped she'd used the correct term. She braced herself for a confession of unrequited love. Or worse yet, a heartbreaking report that Annabelle and Phil's relationship had consisted of nothing more than a series of one-night stands in travel destinations all around the globe, everywhere from Albuquerque to Zanzibar, which Annabelle had interpreted as love and Phil had seen as one of the perks of travel writing, along with free shampoo and gift baskets.

So Mallory was relieved that Annabelle nodded. She opened her mouth as if she was about to speak, but instead leaned over and took a long, slow sip of her bright-orange Race-A-Rita. In fact, by the time she came up for air, a full third of the gigantic hurricane lamp was empty except for a thin film of foam around the glass.

“It started about five years ago,” she began. “I'd just gotten into writing travel articles. I think I was on my third or fourth press trip—”

“What did you do before you got into travel writing?” Mallory asked. She couldn't resist learning everything she could about Annabelle Gatch's history while her guard was down and her blood alcohol level was climbing.

“I was a technical writer. I wrote pamphlets on how to program your VCR or change the message on your answering machine.”

No wonder no one can figure out how to do those things, Mallory thought.

“Anyway, I was in the BVI—”

She blinked. “I'm sorry, the
what
?”

“The BVI,” Annabelle repeated. “The British Virgin Islands.”

“Got it.”

Annabelle took another impressively long sip of her drink, wiping out another third. Mallory glanced around the restaurant, hoping their waiter would materialize so she could order Annabelle another before she started making embarrassing slurping sounds.

“There were five journalists on that trip,” Annabelle continued, “along with the usual escort. This one happened to be from the PR firm that represented the BVI's Tourism Board.”

A faraway look had come into her eyes and her voice sounded uncharacteristically dreamy. Whether that was due to her trip down memory lane or the fact that she'd just downed enough alcohol to incapacitate a sailor, Mallory couldn't say. Still, she pushed the plate of chicken wings closer to Annabelle, hoping she'd take the hint and add a little solid food to all the tequila sloshing around in her stomach.

“I barely noticed him at first,” Annabelle continued. “In fact,” she added with a smile, “believe it or not, I actually thought he was kind of obnoxious.”

Imagine that, Mallory thought wryly.

“At least, until the third night,” Annabelle went on. “That was Calypso Night. The hotel we were staying at, the Tortoise Island Resort, had set up a table right on the beach for just the six of us. All around us were tiki torches that were stuck into the sand. We had a whole team of waiters, who brought us one course after another. I can't tell you how beautiful it was. Or how romantic. Sitting on the beach under a sky filled with stars and a big, bright moon…”

Mallory could picture the entire scene. In fact, she could practically hear the waves pounding on the shore and experience the grittiness of a grain of sand that had found its way into her appetizer.

“Anyway, somehow I ended up sitting next to Phil, even though I'd kind of been avoiding him up until then,” Annabelle went on. “And for the first time, we talked. I mean, we
really
talked. Not only about the past, but also about our hopes and dreams for the future. And before long, we both realized there was a real connection between us. That we were meant to be together. It was almost as if we were soul mates.”

Somehow, Mallory was having a difficult time picturing boorish Phil as anyone's soul mate. Unless, of course, he thought that playing that role would result in a payoff—namely, one that took advantage of the fact that hotels changed the sheets every day. Yet given Annabelle's sincerity, she had no choice but to concede that there was at least a possibility that the man had had another side to him.

“That was probably the most amazing night of my life,” Annabelle said wistfully. “After dinner, all the other writers went off to their rooms. But Phil and I walked along the beach, holding hands.” She sighed. “It was incredibly romantic. It was also the beginning of something wonderful. That same night, Phil and I made love for the very first time. It happened on the terrace outside his room, overlooking the Caribbean Sea.”

I hope that terrace wasn't also overlooking the kitchen, Mallory thought. Or else that's a night the hired help is still talking about, too.

“We made love three times,” Annabelle told her.

Too much information! Mallory thought, wincing.

Annabelle didn't seem to notice. “Phil and I connected in a way I'd never connected with anyone else before,” she continued in the same dreamy voice. “Neither of us slept a wink that night. We were too busy getting to know each other. For me, it was as if I'd been in a deep sleep and I'd just woken up for the first time in my life.

“But we knew our relationship would never work in the real world,” Annabelle continued, her voice hardening. “Not when I had my life in Baltimore and he had his far away in Los Angeles.”