Party Crashers

thoughts. With so many other matters pressing on her mind and her heart, she had no business wasting a brain cell on Beck Underwood.
    They followed the waiter's directions through a set of glass doors to a covered patio. A chilly October wind had blown in, raising goose bumps over Jolie's bare arms. She shivered, thinking she should have worn a coat, although she didn't own anything nearly nice enough to wear over the jumpsuit.
    Pedestals holding bowls of white sand had been situated around the perimeter of the patio for the smokers. They were a forlorn bunch: social outcasts relegated to a covered concrete pad to practice their vice. The lighting was dim and depressing, and the strident whine of nearby electrical boxes filled the night air. Everyone huddled in their jackets, their backs to the wind, huffing and puffing.
    "And to think," Carlotta muttered, "smoking used to be cool." She handed her gin and tonic to Jolie to hold, then opened her purse and pulled out a box of menthol cigarettes. "Want one?"
    Jolie started to shake her head, then decided she could use something to calm her nerves and warm her up. "Okay."
    Carlotta opened the box and slid out two cigarettes, stuck them both in her mouth and pulled out a slender mother-of-pearl lighter. She lit both cigarettes, then traded one to Jolie for the drink she'd been holding.
    Jolie drew on the cigarette until her adenoids stung, then coughed smoke into her hand. "I've never been much of a smoker."
    Carlotta exhaled figure eights into the air. "I've quit twenty-seven times. I hate the way it makes my clothes smell." She gestured to Jolie's jumpsuit. "You'll have to turn it inside out and run it on air-only in the clothes dryer for at least an hour. Make sure you tape cardboard around the tags so they don't curl."
    Jolie nodded obediently and attempted a more shallow inhale on the cigarette. She glanced over her shoulder, uneasy about the pitch-blackness surrounding the patio. A person could be standing a mere foot off the edge and no one would know it. Gary could be out there, watching her as he'd said. She shivered and took a step toward the center of the patio.
    Carlotta looked toward the door, then emitted a little laugh. "Well, if his liver doesn't give out, his lungs will."
    Jolie turned to see Kyle Coffee stumbling through the door, holding an unlit cigar that was at least nine inches long. He stopped next to a bowl of sand and set down his drink, then used both hands to search various pockets. Finally he pulled out what looked like one of the postcards that Sammy was handing out, rolled it lengthwise and used it to borrow a flame from the cigarette of the guy next to him Jolie watched, poised to run in case Coffee set something—or himself—on fire, but he lit the tip of the cigar from the paper, then jammed the card into the sand without incident. He retrieved his drink, drew on the cigar until his face turned scarlet, and exhaled with a happy sigh. He didn't notice them, didn't notice much of anything, Jolie suspected. He seemed to be in a fog, shuffling around the edge of the concrete pad, tapping ashes into the grass.
    Jolie looked at Carlotta. "Do you suppose that Coffee is even more chatty when LeMon isn't around?"
    "Let's go see, shall we?"
    When they approached him, his glassy eyes made it clear that he didn't remember them. They reintroduced themselves as Betty and Linda, and Carlotta congratulated him again on his nomination. He was loud and barely coherent. The cigar smelled like singed hair.
    "That's an interesting tattoo," Carlotta said in her perfectly clipped accent, pointing to his wrist.
    He frowned and leaned in. "Huh?"
    "Your tattoo, what does it mean?"
    Her words registered and he clamped the odorous cigar between his small teeth, then yanked back his sleeve to reveal a black tattoo the size and shape of a postage stamp. Jolie leaned in for a good look, and saw a border of what looked like four arms, one melding into another counterclockwise, the tiny hands on the corners. The center of the image was a filigree pattern that she couldn't make out.
    "This," he slurred around his cigar, "was the biggest mistake I ever made."
    "You don't like having a tattoo?" Jolie asked, enunciating clearly for his benefit.
    "Hell, I got a half dozen tattoos," he said. "But this one has ruined my life."
    Jolie's skin prickled. "What makes you say that?"
    "His wife doesn't like it," Roger LeMon said behind them.

Chapter Twelve

    JOLIE JERKED HER HEAD