Pier Pressure Read Online Free Page B

perched on a high stool at Gram’s coffee bar sipping espresso.
    Unspoken questions leaped at me from Gram’s dark eyes, but she said nothing. I wondered if Curry had told her about Margaux, but I didn’t want to ask. Plenty of time to talk to Gram about Margaux later, and I preferred to do it privately.
    Since Detective Curry already knew Gram, they needed no introduction. He thanked her for her hospitality, set his coffee cup down, and we walked directly to my workplace. As I bent slightly to unlock the door, the ring on my necklace swung into his view.
    “An interesting ring,” Detective Curry commented. “It has the rosy glow of Cuban gold. Is it a family piece?”
    “Yes, my mother’s wedding band.” I didn’t go into the details about Mom’s death and I hated being asked about them, but I felt his questions coming.
    “Your mother lives in Key West, too?” he asked.
    I opened the door, pushed my bicycle inside, then propped it on its kickstand, before I answered his question. “No, sir. My mother’s dead. Her murderer’s doing life without chance of parole in a prison up north.”
    “Did this happen recently?”
    “I was fifteen when she died. One crazed druggie went on a binge and snuffed out one worthwhile life. Maybe you remember the case. It made big news headlines at the time.” I wished I hadn’t said so much. Didn’t want him to think I was playing for sympathy or feeling sorry for myself, but when conversation turns to my mother, my feelings run strong and deep.
    “Must have happened before I moved to the Keys,” he said. “I apologize for touching on sad memories.”
    “Sad memories, yes, but I like remembering those good days when Mom was alive. Long before my birth, Gram sent Mom as a baby from Havana to Miami on the Pedro Pan airlift.”
    “I’m not aware of that airlift.” He paused barely inside the doorway.
    “You may recall reading a bit about it. It took place around nineteen fifty-nine or nineteen sixty. The organizers both in Cuba and Miami kept it very hush-hush at the time, but now I see articles about it in the papers every so often. Beau Ashford wrote a column about it last month.”
    “No, I don’t remember that airlift. I lived abroad then—with the military. But I’m interested. Tell me a little about it.”
    Again, I suspected Detective Curry had ulterior motives for delving into more details concerning the Pedro Pan airlift, but I preferred that subject to the subject of my mother’s death or finding Margaux’s body. I wanted to keep him listening. I wanted to be the one talking—talking about anything except a dead body.
    My office held the mixed fragrances of peppermint, sage, lemon—some of the soaps and herbs I used in oils and lotions. I led Detective Curry to a chair beside my cluttered desk.
    “Please make yourself comfortable. I’ll he right with you.”
    I wheeled my bike back behind the partition that separated my office from my apartment. When I returned, Curry sat eyeing my desk, so I made a hurried pretense of straightening it, tossing a faded blossom from a crystal dish into my wastebasket, quickly replacing it with the blossom in my buttonhole. Then I shoved some unopened mail into my top drawer, slid a reflexology magazine to a desk corner. After that brief flurry of activity, I opened the privacy curtain for more light, but I placed a CLOSED sign in the window while sweat beaded under my bangs.
    “You’re closing right now?” Curry asked. “Don’t let my presence stop your daily business.”
    “I’m closing out of respect for Margaux Ashford,” I said. “I’ll call today’s clients in a few minutes.” Even as I settled into the swivel chair behind my teakwood desk and began talking, I still had the feeling that Detective Curry remained in charge.
    “You were telling me about the Pedro Pan airlift,” Curry said.
    “When Castro and his guerrillas ousted President Batista from Cuba, some Cuban citizens in Havana, along with