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“I hope we haven’t upset you,” she said.
“No, my heavens, come in,” he replied. He looked over his shoulder at the deck. “Can you give me a second?”
“Is there a problem?” I said.
“We were playing a couple of songs,” he said. “Antoine isn’t quite dressed. I got my times mixed up.”
He went into the bedroom and got a robe and took it out on the deck. Through the glass doors I saw him and Butterworth arguing. Butterworth was wearing a yellow bikini, his tanned body glistening with oil; he put on the robe and cinched it tightly into his hips, then picked up a roach clip from an ashtray and took a hit and ate the roach.
Desmond came back into the living room. “Do you know who you look like?” he asked Bailey.
“My parents, I suspect,” she replied.
“Cathy Downs. The actress who co-starred with Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine.”
“I’m not familiar with that film,” she said.
“We’ll have a showing here. Whenever you like,” he said.
“Need to talk to your man out there, Desmond,” I said.
He scratched at his eyebrow. “That stuff again?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘that stuff,’?” I said. “This is a homicide investigation.”
“Antoine had some addictions in the past. You should be able to understand that.”
“I just watched him eat a roach.”
“He has a prescription for medical marijuana. I won’t let him smoke it here again. You have my word.”
“Do you play all those instruments?” Bailey asked.
“The saxophone is Antoine’s,” Desmond replied.
“What songs were you playing?” she asked.
“Some of the Flip Phillips arrangements. You know who Flip Phillips was?”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said.
“This isn’t a social call,” I said.
“Okay,” he said to me. “What a hothead you are, Dave. No, I take that back. You’re a Puritan at heart. You need buckle shoes and one of those tall hats.”
I slid back the glass door and waited for Bailey. “Coming?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
Desmond’s eyes never left the back of her head.
Butterworth was lying on a recliner under a beach umbrella inset in a glass table. “Oh me, oh my, what do we have here?” he said.
His robe had fallen open. The outline of his phallus was stenciled as tautly as a banana against his bikini. He blew me a kiss.
• • •
DESMOND WAS RIGHT. My feelings about Butterworth were not objective. An open cooler humped with crushed ice and imported bottles of beer rested on a redwood table. I pulled a bottle of Tuborg from the ice. “Catch.”
