Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen Page A

still friendly.” Surely, he thought, Jenna could see how uncomfortable this was.
    “So you’re living alone,” she said, not unkindly.
    “Most nights, yeah.”
    “You could call, just to say hi.”
    “Skip doesn’t like it,” Keyes said.
    “He wouldn’t mind,” Jenna said, “every now and then.”
    But in fact, when Jenna had first dumped him for Skip Wiley, Brian Keyes had phoned every night for three weeks, lovesick and miserable. Finally Wiley had started answering Jenna’s telephone and singing “When You Walk Through a Storm.” Immediately Keyes had quit calling.
    “You look like you’ve lost about eight pounds,” Jenna remarked, studying him across the table.
    “Nine,” Keyes said, impressed. “You look very good.” The understatement of the century.
    She had come straight from her jazz exercise class, which she taught four times a week. She was wearing a lavender Danskin, pink knit leg warmers, and white sneakers. Her blond hair was bobbed up, and she wore tiny gold earrings that caught the light each time she turned her head. Keyes noticed a fresh hint of lipstick, and the taste of an elusive perfume. As if all that weren’t enough, she had a terrific new tan, which fascinated Keyes because Jenna was not a beach person.
    “It’s been a while since you’ve been here,” she said, pouring white wine.
    “You’ve really done some work on the place.”
    “Damage, you mean. It’s Skip, mostly.”
    Keyes pointed to a cluster of pockmarks high on the living-room wall, beneath a stuffed largemouth bass. “Are those bullet holes?”
    “Now, don’t get all worried.”
    Keyes got up for a closer look. “Looks like a .38.”
    “He got mad one night watching the TV news. The governor was talking about growth, how growth was so essential. The governor was saying how one thousand new people move to Florida every day. Skip’s opinion about that was considerably different than the governor’s. Skip didn’t think the governor should have been quite so happy.”
    “Why did he shoot the wall?” Keyes asked.
    “Because he couldn’t bring himself to shoot the TV—it’s a brand-new Trinitron,” Jenna said. “I forgot you don’t like spinach.”
    “It’s fine. Jenna, why is there a coffin in your living room?”
    “I know, I know. I hate it, too. Skip says it makes a good cocktail table. He bought it at the flea market. He keeps his newspaper clippings inside there.”
    “That’s a bit odd, don’t you think?” Keyes said.
    “At the very least he should get it refinished.”
    Keyes ate faster. This was more traumatic than he had feared. Meeting in her house—the place she shared with Wiley—had not been Keyes’s idea. Jenna had insisted. She had wanted to be here, she said, in case Skip called.
    If Jenna seemed genuinely worried about her lover’s whereabouts, Keyes was not. His heart was with the Ernesto Cabal case—what was left of it—and tracking Skip Wiley was just a sporting way to pass some time, pay some bills … and see Jenna again.
    Keyes had a simple theory about Wiley’s disappearance. He figured Skip had orchestrated the whole thing to gouge a fatter salary out of the Miami Sun. Wiley’s usual strategy, when he wanted more money, was to arrange for friends at the Washington Post and the New York Times to call up with phony or wildly inflated job offers. Then he’d charge into Cab Mulcahy’s office and threaten to defect. Mulcahy quit falling for the Fantastic Job Offer ruse about two years ago, so Keyes figured Wiley was merely trying out a new scheme.
    Keyes also now realized that the idea of publishing a Ricky Bloodworth column might have backfired, and that Wiley was holed up somewhere, howling with glee over Mulcahy’s torment. Keyes now believed—though he dared not tell Mulcahy—that Wiley might wait weeks before emerging. He might wait until his readers began rioting.
    And Keyes also believed that Jenna might be in on it.
    “Did you love me,