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Setting the Scene
Quotes & photos to give you a sense of place for Sherri Travis' Jacaranda...
CHAMPAGNE FOR BUZZARDS is the 4th book in the Sherri Travis series.
I've just finished it and, although it is a departure for both Sherri and I, I'm pretty happy with it.
Let's start with the opening…
The back door to the bar opened, filling the Florida night with Zydaco music.
Foot stomping and loud, it set the air pulsing with rhythm.
A man pushed through the door, stumbled down the single step, cursed and grabbed hold of the tailgate of a red pick-up to stop his forward motion.
Slumped against the truck, he swore, gave a loud belch, and cursed again, holding on and waiting for the world to right itself.
Behind him the door opened. The drunk threw his right arm back along the tailgate, swiveling his body to face the new arrival.
With arms splayed along the tailgate for support he looked up and demanded "What the fuck do you want?" his voice, slurred and thick, showed no fear.
The new arrival looked down the empty hallway behind him and then reached back inside for the light switch. The alley went black as the exit door sighed shut.
******
Clay has asked Sherri to go to a decorating shop in Jacaranda to look at the design for the redo of his ranch house.
Sherri doesn't know she's carrying an uninvited passenger in the back of her little red pickup.
"I'll just show you the boards. Clay has been a little undecided about this.
Bringing me a shallow basket filled with material swatches, all browns and beige and other muddy colors, she said, "These are the materials."
Laura Thorne glided towards the wall covered in pictures while I stared down at the basket full of shit.
"Isn't there any color?" I fingered the nubby coarse materials. "You've seen the ranch house, it's Victorian. It needs color."
She turned to face me, raising one eyebrow in surprise or was it disgust?
"Oh? I didn't know you were an interior designer." She stretched her mouth. "Oh, that's right, you aren't. You're a bartender."
Sherri, Marley, Tully and Uncle Ziggy are out at Clay's ranch, getting ready for Clay's surprise birthday part.
Sherri does her best to meet the neighbors in the local ranch town of Independence, she does her best to fit in.
It doesn't go well.
Not only is there a murder on the loose but one neighbor is a psychopath and another, well let's just say the rest are not a whole lot better.
*****
HIGHBALL EXIT
In the fifth Sherri Travis novel, Sherri, barely surviving the economic downturn, let's herself be blackmailed into looking for the baby of a dead friend.
Along with the usual suspects here are a few of the people you'll meet in Highball Exit
The Blue Angel Escort Agency was over the Sundried Pizza and was run by a man named Randy Clovis, a really short man.
I was guessing he stood about four foot eight in his snakeskin cowboy boots but what he lacked in height he more than made up for in attitude.
This attitude was backed up by a bulge under his jacket, a gun being a great equalizer.
****
The Flamingo bar offered happy hour for eleven until six. You can't get happier than that.
The interior was dark and smelt of stale beer and bodies in need of help.
A garbage heap of used to be and has beens with a decor put together from garage sales on the wrong side of town,
or maybe just the dump, it featured lots of dark faux wood.
I sorta coveted the flashing pink flamingos over the bar - except for the one that had one of its leg amputated, I could live without that one.
The bartender matched the decoration, worn out, cheap, and plastic.
Her straw blond hair reminded me of a fright wig I'd once worn for Halloween, but her smoker's cough drowned out the hurt dog wailing that was passing for music.
*****
He was a wasted and wounded drink deadened drunk. An odor rose from him, urine, sweat and decay.
His whole body was wrecked by tremors; his head was shaking along with his hand. One eye was bruised and partly closed.
He grinned, exposing missing and rotted teeth. "Hey, aint you the little Jenkins girl?"
There were so many answers to that question but I kept it simple.
"Yes."
******
LAST CALL This is the sixth book in the Sherri Travis series. Set in Key West where....
The Ramrod Saloon down in Key West was a swirling kaleidoscope of waiters disguised as cowboys and hookers disguised as ladies.
The music, country and western, much of it from a bygone era, was too loud, the laugher was on the edge of crazed and everything was in motion.
The wide eyed tourists, fresh off of cruise liners were already thinking how they were going to describe this bar when they got back to Omaha.
How do you explain freaks and sideshows? But in truth, that night, it was the tourists from middle America who looked most odd.
"So, can you still pee standing up?" Marley asked.
Cee Cee arched an elegant eyebrow at me.
"Don't look at me," I told Cee Cee, "Marley is flying solo here. I have enough trouble with my own, 'open mouth insert foot,' moments."
Cee Cee gave a resigned sigh and reached out a beautiful manicured had for her wine glass.
Even though the hand was a little larger than might be expected, it was still fine-boned and elegant, with jewels sparkling from every finger.
****
Marley and Sherri have a deal - no reality for the whole weekend, no talk of jobs, love life or family.
The penalty for bringing up Jacaranda is five bucks. And there's no calling home.
Let the good times roll. But, here in this glamorous tropical paradise, Sherri and Marley are about to uncover a dangerous underbelly.
Marley meets a man, leaving Cee Cee and Sherri to go out on the town without her. The fun is about to end.
"What are you wearing," Cee Cee called from her bedroom.
"One thing I've learned," I yelled back, "You can't compete with drag queens so the best thing to do is to keep it real simple.
I'm wearing high heeled sandals, a black sleeveless turtle neck and slim black slacks and a uterus."
"Bitch."
MARGARITA NIGHTS
"The Sunset's dining room runs along the front, facing west and overlooking the beach, which gives diners an unobstructed view
of the sun setting out towards Texas.
Originally, back in the early twenties when the building housed a hotel,a balcony ran along the front of the second storey.
Later the balcony was closed in with Palladian windows, and in the early nineties the wall between the two rooms was removed.
The new space was two steps lower than the old dining room, giving the room a theatrical feel, enhanced by the nightly round of applause
as the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico.
For a few seconds each evening everyone paused to watch the sun dip below the rim of the world,
setting the sky on fire with reflected glory."
"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."
Jacaranda was already starting to feel deserted, but for now the sun shone, the air was fresh and satin smooth on the skin
and the only hint of what nature had in store for us was the stiff breeze blowing onshore.
But I knew what to expect and it made every weather beaten wall, covered in scarlet flowers, heartbreakingly precious.
Turning down Banyan Street, the town never looked more perfect. The joy of it caught in my throat.
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.
From "And a Brewski for the Old Man"
She looked like an unmade bed in a cheap motel; faded, grubby and sagging, and not a good place to stretch out unless you were desperate.
"What you staring at, Miss Uptown Gal?"
"I'm sorry if I was staring."
She took a deep drag on her cigarette.
"You and I aint so different."
And that was what was so frightening. She recognized me right off. Some instinct told her we were sisters.
From Champagne and Buzzards
Twenty-five minutes down the road, at the boiled peanut and veggies stand, I made the turn onto the highway and back into the modern world.
The freeway running north south up the western side of Florida separates the two realities, the high rise
- high rent area along the coast and the farm towns time forgot to the east. It was like crossing a magic line from the past to the present.
Now I stepped on the gas, speeding up to join the world again.
The Town of Independence
And A Brewski For The Old Man
He made a patting downward motion with his hand. I took it to mean he wanted me to stay down close to the water.
Then he beckoned for me to come. I rolled on my belly and started to crawl through the reeds after him, no longer worried about leeches.
Tully pushed the canoe ahead of him. I wanted to raise my head enough to search for the men but didn't.
I was going strictly on instinct here, instinct and a thousand adventure movies. Mostly I was following my Dad and trusting to his sixty years of survival.
We moved deeper into the reed bed in the shallow bay. Here and there, where it was as much land as marsh, bushes were growing out of the grasses, offering us concealment.
We hovered behind them without moving, waiting until Tully decided it was time to move then we went on to the next clump of shrubs, angling toward a denser area,
thicker than the last but still I could see glimpses of the lake through it. Tully leaned in close to me, his breath warm on my cheek.
"They're waiting for us to break cover."
I stayed as still as I could, staring into the emerald green bush in front of me. Five minutes passed and then ten.
A red-wing black bird landed on the bush, startling me. Tully reached out a hand to my shoulder. More time passed before we heard them.
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