“They wadn’t living here when Jazmin got killed,” Yvonne said. “There was a nice young family living over there, but they moved away. That’s how it is here. All the nice people move off. That’s what Jazmin wanted, for her and for me and Aliyah. She wanted something better.”
20
After the driver dropped her off at the cottage, Drue went inside, stripped and put on a bathing suit. She called Corey.
“Hey, I was wondering if it would be okay if I came down and used the pool at your complex,” she said, as soon as he answered.
“Oh hi, Drue. I’m headed home right now, and I was actually planning on swimming laps tonight, so yeah, perfect timing. Meet you there in twenty minutes?”
As soon as she waded into the pool, Drue felt her tensions begin to melt away. She floated on her back and closed her eyes, willing herself to relax. She heard a splash from the far end of the pool, and watched while Corey swam toward her.
“Water feels great, right?” he said, emerging at the shallow end where she was clinging to the side of the pool.
“It feels amazing,” she said. “I can’t even tell you how much I’ve missed this.”
“Feel like doing some stretches?”
For thirty minutes he patiently put her through a routine of exercises designed to strengthen her still-mending knee. “Stop if it starts to really hurt,” he instructed. “You don’t want to do too much too fast.”
Finally, she waved the white flag. “Okay, I think that’s probably enough,” she admitted.
“I’ve gotta get my laps in, but if you want, just hang around and do some really easy pedaling like I showed you,” he said.
She watched appreciatively as he glided back and forth through the water, his eyes covered with swim goggles, his Lycra suit molded to his body. This could, Drue reflected, come under the category of soft-core porn.
They sat on the edge of the pool, their legs dangling in the water, while Corey took glugs from an evil-looking plastic gallon jug of something he called “go-juice.”
“What all is in it?” she asked.
He held the jug out. “Just the usual. Protein powder, electrolytes, powdered kelp, vitamins, apple cider vinegar…”
She made a gagging sound and pushed the jug away.
“How was your week?” he asked, sliding back into the pool and doing scissor kicks.
“Boring. Frustrating.”
“How so?”
“I feel like I’m doing what you’re doing. Treading water. I’m useless at this job. I mean, I suck, big-time. And I can’t quit because I need the money.”
“It’ll get better,” he said.
“No, so far it’s only gotten worse. I’ve got some weird oppositional thing going on with my father. I’m thirty-six years old, and as soon as he tells me I shouldn’t do something—I go right out and do it anyway. It’s nuts!”
“What? You drove without a seatbelt? Had unprotected sex?”
“She blushed, thinking about her one-night-stand with Jonah. “Worse. There’s a case the firm handled. It involved the murder of this young girl—shewas only twenty-four, a single mom with a little kid. She was murdered two years ago, right down the street here, at Gulf Vista.”
“A maid, right? I remember hearing about it on the news.”
“Right. Her mother hired the firm to sue the hotel for criminal negligence.”
“Did they ever catch the killer?”
“No. The hotel management said Jazmin was at work when she was killed, which meant they could settle it as a workman’s comp case. And the state of Florida limits worker’s comp claims to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Even if you’re murdered! By the time our firm took its cut of the payout, Jazmin’s mom, who, by the way, is only forty-eight, and is raising her granddaughter by herself, came away with peanuts.”
“That’s terrible,” Corey said.
