Killer Move - Michael Marshall [18]
“Hey,” she said as I wandered up.
She was skinny, early twenties, curly black hair in goth/emo style. Drapey black clothes under the corporate apron, a stud through her nose. The effect was not unattractive, though had I been the place’s manager I might have wanted the staff to look like they’d be dishing out fresh dairy products full of organic, carbon-neutral goodness, rather than bat wings sprinkled with toad’s blood.
“Hey,” I said. “I’ll take a . . .”
I trailed off. I actually had no idea what I wanted. Maybe nothing. The conversation with Max had pissed me off more than I’d realized, and I was struggling to pull my mood back up. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted ice cream or if I was just in here to get out of the tail end of the afternoon’s heat.
“I know what you need,” the girl said.
“You do?”
“You bet. You want to take a seat outside? Oh, and give me six bucks. That allows for the generous tip you will wish to confer upon me, after the fact.”
Slightly bemused, I did as she asked. Five minutes later she emerged onto the sidewalk with a bowl of something pale orange in color. I peered at it.
“Hell is that?”
“Mascarpone Mandarin frozen yogurt, with a twist.”
She stood there pertly while I took a tentative mouthful. It was refreshing and yet not too tart, and actually very nice. “Good call,” I said. “I’m liking it.”
“It’s supposed to be called Multimazingmagical Mandarin Mascarpone Madness, for your future ordering convenience. Only, saying all that makes me want to kill myself.”
“I’ll remember it. You nailed me.”
“It’s my superpower. One of several, I might add.”
“I thought people were only allowed one superpower.”
“Nah. That’s just the story they put around.”
I reached my hand up. “Bill Moore. I work up at The Breakers, on Longboat. For Shore Realty.”
She shook, a smart up-and-down motion. “Cassandra.” She slowly turned about the waist to point back at the ice cream parlor. “I work . . . here.”
I ate the yogurt slowly, but the process still filled up less than half an hour. Toward the end the server girl came back out again, divested of white apron and carrying a long black coat.
“Have a good evening, Mr. Moore.”
“You too.”
Halfway to the corner she stopped and turned around. “I never asked. What’s your superpower?”
I was slightly dismayed at not being able to come up with a smart answer right off the bat. I shrugged, rolled my eyes, as if to suggest it was such a long story that I didn’t know where to start, but it was weak.
“Aha,” she said, however. “You’ve yet to discover it. How exciting.”
She winked, and disappeared around the corner.
I got to half past eight largely by catching up on blogs on the phone and updating my Facebook profile with links to the best of them, and then drove back across to Longboat Key. I continued past The Breakers and a succession of similar developments to the upper half of the island. The southerly end of Longboat holds condos on the gulf side and a few communities on the other, bay side—the latter not dissimilar to the kind of place where Steph and I lived, except every house had access to the waterway and they all cost about three times as much as ours. The top half of the island gets a lot narrower and holds larger private dwellings. While they don’t reach the heights of the real glamour compounds down on Siesta Key, there are few that don’t fall into the “price on application” bracket. The address I had been given lay about midway along this section, gulf side.
I slowed as I got into range, peering at the properties I passed. For the half mile coming up to Warner’s place, everything looked swish and expensive and cool. No minicondos, nothing in danger of being pulled down and noisily rebuilt, nothing overgrown on account of a diminishing and cantankerous oldster inside, a relic of the premodern phase of the key, who might raise lunatic enviro-hippy objections to your plans for six additional tennis courts. All good.
I pulled into the driveway, which curved through