Murder on the Orient Espresso(6)
Based on my inspection, the Flagler Suite was large and luxurious, featuring a king-sized bed, ocean-view whirlpool and granite-countered kitchenette, should one need to grab sustenance traversing between the two.
Still, I told myself, if the room had romance written all over it, tonight’s event promised more in the way of melodrama. Apparently the plan for the evening’s loose re-enactment of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express featured Rosemary Darlington and Laurence Potter in the lead roles.
‘I think you’d make a much better Poirot than Potter,’ I said. ‘Except for the mustache, of course.’
‘Laurence Potter – and Rosemary Darlington – are the guests of honor. I’m just the lead forensics guy. Sort of the …’ Pavlik’s eyes followed me as I stepped out of my pants, ‘… working stiff.’
Thankfully, more like stiffy. Thus encouraged, I started to take my time, doing a bit of a striptease, unbuttoning my blouse to expose what I thought of as my ‘good’ red bra. Though, truth to tell, I intended it for no-good. ‘Appropriate, then, that you’re playing Ratchett.’
I slipped off the shirt and tossed it onto the bed, which had been turned down to expose the gazillion thread-count linens. ‘You know, the stiff. So to speak.’
‘So to speak.’ The eyes in the mirror caught mine. ‘I’m hoping we can get back here early.’
It wasn’t so much Pavlik’s words as the way he said them. Experiencing a little thrill down my spine, I sidled up behind him and wrapped myself around his bare torso, resting the palms of my hands on his flat abs. I’d forgotten how good he felt. ‘Early would be great for me, too.’
Pavlik’s eyes, usually blue against his tanned face and dark, wavy hair, could change to slate gray – nearly black – when he was … well, let’s say ‘agitated.’ We should also acknowledge that this color transformation could come from anger as well as lust, and I had unfortunately seen more of the former than the latter.
Not tonight, though.
His mood-ring eyes were deliciously dark as he turned and tipped my chin up so my mouth met his.
‘We’re going to be late,’ I said in a ‘convince-me’ kind of voice, tasting the lovely combination of residual soap and current sheriff.
‘They’ll wait,’ he said, edging me toward the bed. ‘The Orient Espresso isn’t going anywhere fast. At least not without a corpse.’
As it turned out, Jake Pavlik was right.
In – oh, so many ways.
THREE
Luckily for our breach of punctuality, it turned out that wrangling mystery writers was akin to herding the proverbial flock of cats. When we arrived outside the lobby door ten minutes late, people were still milling about on the sidewalk.
It was dark, landscape lights illuminating the hotel’s palm trees and tropical plantings. A tiny, nearly transparent gecko scurried past my foot and up the trunk of a— ‘Whoa, what’s that?’
The tree I referred to was shaped like a gigantic bunch of asparagus, thick multiple stalks topped by a wide green canopy.
‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Pavlik said. ‘I asked about it the last time I was here for Mystery 101.’
‘Impressive’ was an understatement. The thing looked like it had been there for decades, if not centuries, a hunch borne out by the fact the tree seemed to have earned a spotlight and plaque of its very own. ‘Incredible. And very southern-looking. Is it a mangrove?’ I asked, pulling out the only tree name I could remember from the Florida guidebook.
‘No, this is a banyan,’ Pavlik said. ‘You’ll see mangroves mostly in coastal areas like the Bay of Florida and also in the sawgrass marsh of the Everglades. Mangroves can grow in salt water – even form islands. They’re amaz—’
‘And the banyans?’ I reminded my own personal Mr Wizard.
‘Glad you asked,’ Pavlik said, grinning. He took my arm and hooked it around his to stroll closer to the tree. ‘Banyans, too, are amazing. A type of fig or ficus, they’re actually epiphytes.’
‘Gosh,’ I said, running my hand up and down his bicep. ‘That is amazing. What’s an epiflight?’
‘Epiphyte,’ he corrected. ‘And it’s a plant that lives off another plant.’
‘A parasite.’ If so, this was the Tyrannosaurus Rex of parasites. The canopy looked to be able to fill a city block and the gnarled trunk had to be eight feet across at the base.
‘Technically, yes. Birds drop the banyan seeds, which germinate and grow in the cracks and crevices of other trees. As the banyan grows, its limbs drop these supporting roots you see and they eventually become the multiple trunks that wind around and envelope the entire original host tree.’