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Margarita Nights Margarita Nights

 Fiction/Mystery   April
McArthur and Company Publishing
Trade Paperback  978-1-55278-699-4  $24.95
The bar in Jacaranda, Florida may be upscale but bartender Sherri Travis is from a side of town where luxury is an extra wide trailer which isn’t actually in the swamp. Jimmy Travis, Sherri’s lying, cheating scam artist husband, comes from Jacaranda’s social registry and there’s only one thing Sherri and her mother in law can agree on – Sherri and Jimmy don’t belong together. Sherri wants Jimmy out of her life, but he won’t stay gone , so when Jimmy and his boat explode in an orange ball of fire, the police come calling. Rather a shame she made that threat to kill him in front of two police officers just days before; worse than that, there's a witness who puts Sherri on the Suncoaster hours before it went boom. Add a quarter million dollar insurance policy, and Sherri becomes the suspect du jour.

And things just keep on rolling. Sherri has something the killer wants. It's nice to be popular but hell to be the rage. Sherri bobs and weaves to keep from being murdered or arrested and with a little help from the guys in the bar she digs through the debris of Jimmy's life, discovering more than a few people who wanted Jimmy dead, some of them she calls friends.

Sultry Florida infuses this taut novel with an exotic flavour. In the Jacaranda world of advantage and money, Sherri will always be an outsider but this gives her unique insights and advantages. In a place where what you have is so important, it's what you keep that matters in the end.

Buy the book: Chapters Indigo, Amazon Canada, Independent Mystery Booksellers.


Autographed Copies
Signed copies of Margarita Nights available from Salt Spring Books
Telephone: 250-537-2812
Signed Copies available in Ontario from Bryan Prince Bookseller
1060 King St W., Hamilton, Ontario
Telephone: 1-905-528-4508



bougainvillea Setting the Scene
Quotes & photos to give you a sense of place...

"I drove through the town of Jacaranda, past houses sheltering under live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, past old Florida-style houses with wide verandas running across the front and metal roofs shining in the sun. There's a whole parcel of white clapboard churches, and everywhere you look scarlet bougainvillea and orange trumpet vine climb on fences and sheds."

"But Marley won the prize when she talked to a guy filleting fish at the gutting table that jutted out over the water. A convocation of brown pelicans were perched on the floodlights above the table waiting for him to toss out the remains of the fish for their dinner.

"The Hollidaze isn't here anymore," he said in answer to Marley's question. "It's berthed on the north side of the island, up past the hotel, in a private slip." He told us all this without once stopping the filleting or taking his eyes off the flashing silver blade. I guess the thought of losing a finger and having to throw it out to the pelicans with the rest of the refuse kept him focused."

   

The Palmetto Motel wasn't used by tourists anymore. A new road had left this place stranded between urban sprawl and industrial wasteland and now it was home to a different type of person looking for temporary lodgings. Women fleeing abusive mates, hookers, people supporting a habit, or folks just plain down on their luck, they all fell into the Palmetto with its broken screen doors, missing numbers and air conditioners leaking rust down cracked stucco, telling the resident they've hit the end of the line and had no future.

Marley parked in front of Andy's unit and we stared out the windows, taking it in. Marley muttered, "What a dump."

"I'm about one paycheck away from here." I got out of the car and crunched across a small strip of sun-fried grass bordering the parking area.


The Shoreline had been a trash heap for people, old cars and drunks when I left at sixteen, and time had not improved it.

I parked beside Ruth Ann's twelve-year-old Toyota, switched off the engine and sat staring at the green vines and mold that grew over the sagging trailers. In the sharp clear air of a cold January day they huddled together, so close to each other that if you spat out your kitchen window you'd hit the lady doing dishes at her sink next door.

A poem we'd had to read in junior high floated into my head, "The Death of the Hired Man" by Robert Frost. I'd always remembered one line from it. It said home was the place that when you had to go there, they had to take you in. I looked out at the sad depressing refuse heap and said, "Welcome home." I'd come full circle.
   

It was a day designed by the board of trade to lure tourists and their money from the snow up North, a clear fine day, a good day to be out on the water with temperatures in the seventies, warm for January. The incoming tide gently lapped at the shoreline at my feet. I stood there between clumps of seagrapes and searched the water, looking for some sign that would tell me what had happened, why a ball of flame had shot into the sky. A light breeze smelling of saltwater and fish was blowing, but I was sure I could smell gas and burning wreckage. Only the remains of a horseshoe crab at my feet spoke of death. There was no debris. No charred remains of boat or man. No sign left on the water of the Suncoaster, or of Jimmy-just sunlight dancing off water nearly as blue as the sky. A brown pelican flew north up the Inland Waterway towards Jacaranda, its wings going up and down in the same unhurried peaceful rhythm all pelicans seem to use, like they're going to fall out of the sky at any second if they don't hurry up.