“You mentioned a toxic waste dump, and I know you were joking, but that’s essentially what we had here for the past sixty years. Only they didn’t call it that. They called it the Cypress Key Paper Plant.”
“A paper mill? Here? I haven’t seen anything that looks like that,” Greer said.
“That’s because the Peninsula Paper Company, which owned and operated the Cypress Key plant, stopped operating here more than a decade ago. But for fifty years before that, three shifts a day, 364 days a year—they closed Christmas Day—that plant manufactured cardboard boxes. Six hundred jobs, that’s what that plant meant.”
“I’m sensing an unhappy ending,” Greer said quietly.
“You could call it that. All those years, the foul-smelling smoke that poured out of there? Environmentalists called it pollution. Locals, like my dad, said it was the smell of money.”
Thibadeaux swiveled around in his chair and, with his finger, stabbed at a point on the large map pinned to the wall behind his desk.
“The plant was right here. Its discharge pipes emptied directly into Horseshoe Creek.” He dragged his fingertip a few inches to the right. “Two miles downstream, that creek flows into Choklawassee Bay.”
He swiveled back around until he was facing Greer. “Ever hear of Choklawassee oysters?”
“I’m from California. But no, I never have.”
“They used to be famous. When my dad was a kid, oysters from Choklawassee Bay were just as famous as Apalachicola’s. Chocky oysters, that’s what they were called, were shipped up and down the Eastern seaboard, to the finest restaurants around. But it wasn’t just oysters that came out of the bay. Blue crabs, stone crabs, scallops … we had one of the finest fisheries on the central Gulf Coast of the state, right outside this old boathouse.”
“Until?” Greer asked.
“Until we didn’t. Until the catches got smaller and smaller, and somebody from the Feds finally thought to test the water quality of Choklawassee and immediately closed the bay for any kind of commercial fishing.”
“Why didn’t they just make the paper plant clean up its act?” she asked.
“Because at the time, back in the nineties, the Peninsula Paper Company owned more land in Florida than the State of Florida owned in Florida. They also owned enough politicians to keep the environmentalists off their backs,” Eb said matter-of-factly. “For a while, anyway. Eventually the EPA came in and mandated all kinds of pollution abatement regulations. And at that point, ten years ago, Peninsula decided it was just cheaper to shutter the plant.”
“And?”
“And nothing,” Thibadeaux said. “More than four hundred folks lost their jobs. Peninsula abandoned the plant, and five years ago it burned to the ground. Arson, the state fire marshal said. Doesn’t matter. We’re a small town. You can imagine the hit to the economy. Commercial fishing was already all but dead. Families moved off, went on welfare. Those shops you saw on Main Street—the hardware store, the ice cream parlor, the diner, the shoe store—they all died a slow death.”
“But you’re still here,” Greer pointed out. “You don’t seem to have done so badly for yourself.”
“Oh yeah,” he said easily. “I’m what passes for a land baron in Cypress Key. I own half the Silver Sands, which as you saw, is a total gold mine. And the Hometown Market.”
“And this boathouse?”
“Left to me by my grandfather and worth millions and millions, as you can see by the thriving business we do here,” Thibadeaux said. “I’m probably the biggest thousandaire in town.”
He opened the desk drawer, took out a paper napkin, and used it to polish his glasses. Which left Greer an opening for her last pitch.
“None of what you’ve just told me explains why you don’t want us to make a movie here. We can help this town. So why are you so opposed to this project?”
“Opposed? I never said I was opposed. I just expressed a degree of healthy realism.”
“More like pessimism,” Greer said.
“Whatever. You’re not the first rodeo to come to town, you know. Two years ago, some high-tech outfit came in, sniffed around, and made a lot of noise about opening a customer service call center here. They promised to hire one hundred fifty people for twenty-three dollars an hour. Hell, I would have applied for a job paying that. The county offered them two million dollars’ worth of tax incentives, the governor helicoptered in for a photo op. And then nothing. I heard they ended up building in New Jersey. The year before that, it was Chinese investors, saying they were gonna start clam farming and build a high-tech cannery. Three years later? Turns out it was all a scam.”
He peered at Greer over the rim of his glasses. “So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t jump for joy at the news that an unnamed director with an unnamed star might make a ‘major motion picture’ right here in sleepy little Cypress Key.”
Greer nodded slowly. “Okay. I get it. You’ve been burned before. You don’t know me from Adam, and it’s true, right now I can’t give you a lot of information about the project. But how about this?”
She pulled the film company’s checkbook from her pocketbook, wrote out a check for ten thousand dollars, and placed it on the desktop. “I’ve left the payee blank. This is the amount we’re paying to lease your motel. Call the bank, see if the funds are there. The director’s name is Bryce Levy. You can Google him. I can give you his production assistant’s phone number in L.A. and you can talk to him.”
Thibadeaux glanced down at the check and shrugged. “Money talks, Miss Hennessy.”
7
“I’m so glad we speak the same language,” Greer said, giving him her best close-the-deal smile. “Now that you understand I’m not some fly-by-night huckster, let’s discuss the Cypress Key Casino.”
Thibadeaux frowned. “The old casino on the pier? What would you want with that?”
“There’s a crucial scene in the film that would take place there,” Greer said. “I’ve been specifically looking for just the right location and architecture, and that casino is it. Nothing else I’ve scouted even comes close. I know it’s closed currently, and it looks like it’s about to fall to pieces, which is perfect for our story line, because the script calls for it to be destroyed in an explosion. What’s the story there? Who do I need to contact?”
“You’re looking at him,” Eb said.
“You own the casino too?”
“The city is the current leaseholder. I’m the mayor.”
“Great,” Greer said. “I love one-stop shopping. How much would the city take to lease it and then blow it up for the film?”
“Nothing.”
She blinked. “You’re not going to charge us to use the casino?”
“It’s not for rent,” he said.
“Why not? It’s just sitting there empty. I think I can probably get the director to authorize, say, one thousand dollars a day for the filming? I’m not certain how long the scenes will take, but from the treatment I’ve read, at least five, six days.”
“The casino is not for rent,” he repeated. “It might look like a candidate for the scrap heap to you, but to us it’s a local landmark.”
“Okay,” she said slowly, her mind racing. He was in the real estate business, and he was used to negotiating. She had to have the casino. “Two thousand a day. And I’ll talk to my people about some up-front money to outright buy the building, demo it, and then haul it off. If it’s a public safety concern, I can assure you we’ll be hiring the best special effects professionals in the business. This could be a win-win for everybody.”
“Sorry,” Thibadeaux said, as he stood. “It’s not a money thing.” He gestured toward the door. “Do you want to go see those houses now? I’ll have to pick up a key at my office.”
“Wait. That’s it? Just, no? Because you’re the mayor and you said so?”
“Pretty much,” he said cheerfully. He held the office door open for her and brought a key ring from his pockets. “I probably ought
to lock up before we leave. Not that there’s anything here worth stealing.”
“What about the town council?” Greer asked, grasping at straws. “If it’s city property, don’t you have to put something like this to a vote? Isn’t there a committee or something?”
“Oh sure. I guess that would come under the Ways and Means committee.”
“Great. Who’s on that committee? And when do they meet?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Let’s see. Ways and Means? That’d be Ginny Buckalew. And Dr. Borden. And me. Ways and Means meets the first Monday of the month, which was this past week.”
“Let’s go look at houses,” Greer said wearily. This was not surrender, she vowed to herself. More like a temporary retreat.
* * *
She followed Thibadeaux back to the Silver Sands and waited for him outside his office. He pointed at a blue golf cart parked in the lot. “Might as well ride over there with me.”
Greer climbed into the passenger seat without comment. As they puttered along the quiet downtown streets, the mayor waved and nodded and greeted his constituents by name as his passenger quietly fumed and plotted her next move.
“Hey, Bernice,” he called to an elderly woman driving a golf cart with a large black dog belted into the passenger seat. The driver of a rusting brown Chevy pickup with the bed loaded with crab traps beeped his horn and leaned his head out the open window. “Hey there, Eb.”
“How ya doin’, Kenny? Catching anything?” the mayor hollered.
A pair of oversize stucco columns flanked the entrance to the subdivision, which looked more like the entrance to a weedy meadow. The plaque on the columns read Bluewater Bay Luxury Residences.
“There’s where the guard shack was going to be,” Eb pointed.
Greer studied the road. “Hmm. Wonder how quickly we could get some gates and a shack built?”
“You’d need a variance,” he said.
“Let me guess. That has to be approved by the mayor?”
“Actually, no. That’s the city clerk’s job.”
“And is the city clerk by any chance related to you?”
He laughed. “She was—by marriage. But she got smart and dumped my cousin Butch.”
At first glance, Bluewater Bay didn’t exactly live up to its name. She saw no signs of either blue water, bay, or luxury. Asphalt roads looped through a landscape dominated by sand, scrub oaks, and clumps of palmetto. Every few yards a forlorn-looking FOR SALE sign poked up from the sandspurs.
Thibadeaux saw Greer’s look of dismay. “It gets better down at the cul-de-sac. All this land used to belong to the paper company. They bought it for the timber, logged it, and kept it, because that’s how they ran their business. Then, after they closed the box mill, they decided to get into real estate development. Four years ago they came in, clear-cut this parcel, and subdivided it. The idea was to sell waterfront lots to builders for spec homes. Only problem was, by that time, the economy sucked. They finally ended up selling the lots for next to nothing. Milo Beckman, a local builder, built four houses. He lives in one, and he managed to sell one to a retired couple from upstate New York, but the other two houses have just been sitting here.”
The street came to a Y in the road and Thibadeaux veered off to the right. As promised, at the end of the cul-de-sac she spied four large houses situated on large, nicely landscaped lots.
“This is the four bedroom one I told you about,” Thibadeaux said, as he pulled the cart into the driveway of a vaguely Cape Cod–inspired white frame house raised up on concrete block pilings. “Milo hired an interior designer from Gainesville to decorate them as model homes, and the furniture is still here.”
Greer followed him up the wood-plank steps. He unlocked the door, then stepped aside to allow her to enter.
“Killer views,” he said.
Which was an understatement. They were standing in a vaulted-ceilinged great room with a back wall made up of three sets of French doors. There was a deck outside, and beyond that she saw a small swimming pool surrounded by a white concrete deck. Just past that sparkled the very blue waters of Choklawassee Bay. A squadron of pelicans flew past in V formation and, below, she saw the gray back of a dolphin as it coursed through the waves.
“Wow,” Greer said, moving toward the French doors. Her footsteps on the wooden floors echoed through the high-ceilinged rooms. The furnishings were what you’d expect: large sofas, rooms decorated in beachy green and blue hues. Nothing spectacular, but nothing obnoxious either. She did a quick walk-through, shooting pictures with her cell phone, and e-mailed them off to Bryce Levy’s assistant. When she returned to the living room she found Thibadeaux reading e-mails on his own phone.
“The house is great,” she said. “Decent kitchen, nice-sized bedrooms and baths. Is the other house about the same?”
“Two more bedrooms, three baths, plus a half bath in the, uh, pool house, I guess you’d call it,” Thibadeaux said.
She nodded thoughtfully. “But no basketball court?”
“There’s one at the city park, on Pine Street,” he offered. “The locals play pickup games most weekends.”
“Not sure Kregg is going to like that idea,” Greer mused.
“Who?”
She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Damn. Nobody’s supposed to know it’s him. Pretend you didn’t hear that,” she said quickly.
“Did you say Kregg? That’s a person?”
“Obviously you’re not a big hip-hop fan. You really never heard of Kregg? As in Wannabe Crazy or Lies, Spies and Killa Highs?” Greer asked. “The guy is huge. He’s on the cover of this month’s Rolling Stone. What century are you living in?”
“This one,” Thibadeaux said with a shrug. “I mostly listen to country music. With a little alternative rock thrown in, just to prove to my niece that I’m not a complete troglodyte.”
“How old is your niece?”
“Allie is seventeen. She lives with Ginny, but I guess you’d say I’m sort of her guardian.”
“And how old are you?” Greer asked.
“How old are you?” he countered.
“I asked first.”
“Forty-one,” he said. “Yourself?”
“Midthirties,” she admitted.
“No wedding ring?”
“No.” She left it at that. She and Sawyer had lived together on and off, mostly off, and although she’d secretly fantasized about marriage, she’d somehow known from the beginning that Sawyer Pratt was a pathological bachelor.
Anyway, that was a long time ago.
Eb Thibadeaux wasn’t done with his cross-examination.
“How old is ‘midthirties’?”
“Thirty-five. Okay?”
He pondered that nugget of information. “About what I figured. And you actually listen to that hip-hop crap?”
“I’m in the entertainment industry,” Greer reminded him. “Pop culture awareness is part of my job. As for Kregg? His stuff isn’t that bad. He’s kind of cute, if you’re into that sort of look.”
“Which look?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Tattoos, scruffy beard, ripped jeans, soulful, urban, wounded, self-absorbed. Like that.”
“I’m sure that’s catnip for girls Allie’s age.”
Greer clutched his arm. “You can’t tell her Kregg is coming here, Eb. You can’t tell anybody.”
“Cypress Key is two square miles. You’ve seen what people on this island look like. Don’t you think somebody is going to notice when this Kregg character shows up in his ripped jeans and urban, wounded soul patch? So, what’s the big deal anyway? A few girls squeal a little and ask for an autograph?”
“You don’t understand,” Greer said. “It’s not just a couple of girls. Kregg is a huge deal. This is his first movie. If word gets out that he’s here, this place will be swarmed with fans. Crazed, obsessed fans who will stop at nothing to take a selfie with him.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
�
�It is if you’re trying to make a movie. You have no idea of the security hassles involved with a star of Kregg’s magnitude. They’ll show up on the set and disrupt filming. They’ll stalk him, follow him to restaurants, the gym, home, pester him until he signs their CDs or allows a photo. And it’s not just the fans. Once word gets out, we’ll have the media here too. And that’s another whole layer of trouble.”
“Okay. I’ll keep it to myself. About the houses? Yes, or no? I’ll need to talk to Milo to make sure he’s okay with a short-term lease, but I’m thinking they’ve been on the market long enough, he’d just like to see some positive cash flow.”
Greer heard her phone bing, notifying her of an incoming text message. She glanced down, then nodded. “That was from the director’s assistant. Yes on both houses. But we’ll need a guarantee that security will be in place by the time Kregg gets here Monday. So, can you do that? Get a variance from the city clerk and get some kind of gatehouse erected by then?”
“I’ll talk to Milo,” Thibadeaux repeated. “Not sure about the timing of building the gatehouse. Tell you what I can do, though. There’s only one street coming in and out of the subdivision. I’ll ask the chief of police to station an officer out here to keep folks from coming in.”
“That would be perfect,” Greer said.
“It’s gonna cost you,” Thibadeaux warned. “We’ve only got six officers on the force. You’ll have to pay for an off-duty officer.”
“Of course,” Greer said. “We’ll need security for the duration of the shoot anyway.”
“You can take that up with the chief,” Thibadeaux said. “Her office is back at city hall.”
“I’m headed that way as soon as I get my car from the motel,” Greer said.
8
The police chief was an imposing-looking black woman named Arnelle Bottoms. “So y’all want to make a movie. Right here in Cypress Key? Are you sure?”
“Very sure,” Greer said. “Eb Thibadeaux suggested I talk to you about security during the shoot. We anticipate being here about five or six weeks, and we need to make sure we don’t have people wandering onto the set or bothering the cast, especially our male star, once everybody gets here.”
Beach Town Page 5