Free KW 09:Shot on Location by Laurence Shames Page B

she’s on board in a heartbeat. She could sell that story to anyone.”
    Uneasily, people swayed toward joining in the laugh but didn’t get quite as far as laughing.
    Without raising her eyes, Candace said, “It isn’t just a story. I think someone’s trying to kill me.”
    The suit who’d been laughing went silent with the others. Quentin Dole and Jacqueline Mayfield looked past each other like people lost in a cave.
    Then Candace laughed. The laugh was cloaked in geniality but it was a mocking laugh, a reveling in her skill at fakery, her capacity to fool. Throwing back her rich black hair, she said, “Had you going, didn’t I?”
    Everyone except Claire Segal pretended to find this rather funny.

16.
    At yet another fancy marina, this one right there in Key West, mere blocks from downtown, a third speedboat was being berthed, this time under the last mauve glow of dusk. In the soft and shifting light, the boat’s exact color was impossible to discern. Midnight blue? Deep-space purple? Obsidian black? Huge twin engines freighted the stern and lifted the bulbous hull so that the boat had rather the posture of a crouching lion, the hindquarters held low, coiled to spring, the chest and shoulders tensed to strike.
    When the last line had been cleated off, a dockhand laid a gangway across the transom. A woman in large amber sunglasses stepped off the speedboat. She was tall, lean, and blonde, her hair becomingly wild and spiky from the sea breeze and the spray. She wore tight pink pants that buttoned off just below the knee; on her feet were gladiatorial-looking sandals with mid-height heels and straps that climbed and wrapped around her calves like strangler vines. Over a bikini top that was little more than strings and patches, she wore a light black leather jacket that was far too snug to zip; it left a slice of her exposed from below the navel to her taut and suntanned throat.
    Swinging a stylish bag that seemed able to contain not much more than some make-up and a change of clothes, she sashayed down the dock, the heels of her sandals clicking softly as she headed for her hotel, The Nest, where she had a reservation under a name that was not her own.
    ---
    Back in Joey and Sandra’s backyard, dinner was well advanced. Much wine had been drunk and more was on the table; the yellow glow of hurricane lamps reflected off the glasses. The companionable smells of garlic and olive oil were mingling with the salt air and the jasmine. Expertly twirling pasta while also fondling the chihuahua in his lap, Bert said to Jake, “So Joey tells me you’re a writer. Whaddya write?”
    Jake sipped some wine and blithely said, “Whatever I can get a contract for.”
    “Ah, you work on contract. Me and Joey, we know some guys who work on contract, don’t we, Joey?”
    “Don’t even go there, Bert.”
    “Hey, just messin’ around.”
    Hoping to steer the conversation elsewhere, Sandra said, “You know what I think must be great about being a writer? The mental health part.”
    “There’s a mental health part?” said Jake.
    “I mean, people hold so much inside. What they’re afraid of. Who they’re mad at. What they think is all screwed up about the world. Writers have a way to get all that off their chests. Don’t they?”
    Jake considered as he put some salad on his plate. “Sometimes. Sort of. Maybe.”
    Bert said, “What are you, a politician?”
    “It’s just that it’s complicated. You know, people think writers just sit down and let it all hang out, tell the world what they really think, write whatever they feel like writing. But if you’re on a job —”
    “Y’ever write your own stuff?” Bert cut in. He hadn’t meant to interrupt, or not that sharply at least. But that was one of the things about being old: If you wanted to ask a question it paid to ask it quickly, before it slipped your mind. “Ya know,” he went on, “just stuff ya wanna say?”
    Jake seemed caught up short. He drank some wine