Ten Beach Road

by Wendy Wax

  Her BlackBerry signaled an incoming message from her office, and Nicole frowned as she glanced down. Her assistant, Anita, knew not to interrupt when she was with a client. The message said simply, Call me.

  Nicole took one last bite of the gooey sweet baklava Darios had ordered for dessert and a final sip of mud-thick espresso.

  “So then, you make me a list or send me the pictures?” Darios asked as their meeting drew to a close. “And I choose who I am interested to go out with?”

  Another bing from her BlackBerry. Landlord here. Wants to talk to you.

  “Yes.” Nicole pulled her gaze from the text message and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. She pulled on the jacket of her vintage three-piece Chado Ralph Rucci pantsuit and stood. “It’ll take me a few days to put together a potential list. Then we meet again to go over it. After that I can start setting up appointments for you to meet the women we select.” She made a point of being very involved in the process; no point letting the client think she wasn’t earning her hefty fees.

  “Good,” Darios said. “Remember—only fresh and firm. Nothing too long on the vine.”

  “Of course.” Nicole pushed aside the feeling that she was standing at the open-air market haggling over produce. The truth was there were plenty of women who would fit Darios’s requirements and not be at all put off by having to meet them. Darios’s immense wealth and lavish lifestyle would more than compensate for the fact that Darios himself was much closer to a prune than a plum. He handed her a sealed envelope with the first half of her fee and walked her through the restaurant to the exit.

  From her car, Nicole called her office but got a recording that the number was no longer in service. She speed dialed Anita’s cell. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. The phone’s been disconnected. The New York office, too.” Her assistant dropped her voice. “The landlord’s sitting in the lobby. He says your last check bounced and he’s not leaving without a cashier’s check or money order.”

  Nicole’s stomach clenched, and it had nothing to do with the moussaka Darios had chosen for their first course. She made her living by traveling in the right circles and attracted wealthy clients because she looked like she was one of them. Having one’s office phone shut off and the office padlocked were not business builders.

  Unbidden, snapshots from her childhood flashed through Nicole’s brain. Their family belongings piled out on the curb after yet another eviction. Watching the ancient station wagon being towed down the street. Trying to shield her younger brother from the other kids’ taunts about their patched clothing and obvious home haircuts.

  They’d made a vow that they’d never feel any of these things again. And they’d stuck to it. Both of them had been successful; if not personally, then at least financially. But she’d learned the hard way that earning money and holding on to it were very different things.

  “I’m depositing Thomolopolus’s check right now. When I get in I’ll take care of everything, and we’ll . . . regroup.”

  Nicole hung up. Even though she knew it was useless, she once again tried every number she’d ever had for her investment advisor. But none of them was in service. She had last heard from Malcolm Dyer a year ago just before his name had made headlines around the globe.

  At the bank she confronted just how grim her situation was. She made good fees for her matchmaking services, and she still received sporadic royalties from her book. She’d created real wealth over the last ten years, stockpiling a sizeable nest egg she’d been proud of and had let herself count on.

  But she’d invested virtually every penny of it in a fund run by the person she’d trusted most in the world. All of her operating expenses had been paid from the interest on that investment.

  Nicole willed herself to calm down as she left the bank and drove toward her office. She had to think, had to figure out what to do. It took money to keep up the kind of appearances that were necessary to keep her business going. And at the moment she had none. There was little comfort in knowing she wasn’t the only one who’d lost everything to Malcolm Dyer.

  Nicole parked in the building’s parking garage and went into the ladies’ room in the lobby, where she locked herself in a stall and vomited up her lunch. Leaning on the edge of the sink, she stared into the mirror as she blotted her mouth and face with a damp paper towel. Even the pale yellow of her vintage suit was too bright for the white, ravaged face and desperate eyes that stared back.

  With great care, she added blush to her cheeks and applied a fresh coat of lipstick. Just as her mother used to do when the landlord came to collect. As if that had ever made one whit of difference.

  But as she rode the elevator up to the twenty-first floor and strode into the tastefully appointed lobby of her West Coast office, she not only had to deal with the dismantling of everything she had built, she had to face the fact that the person who’d stolen her hard-earned savings was not some faceless stranger. The person who had taken her money and trampled her dreams was someone she had not only trusted but loved and done her best to protect. Malcolm Dyer was her brother.

  Nicole had spent much of the fall and all of the winter completing her pending assignments, closing both her offices and satisfying the most insistent of her creditors. By March word of her financial difficulties had spread on both coasts and the flow of clients diminished to a trickle. In the middle of the month, she attended the wedding of Darios Thomolopolus to a genuine Georgia peach who’d decided that cruising the Mediterranean and sleeping with an older man beat teaching Pilates and coaching beauty contestants. Nicole wore one of her few remaining vintage gowns to the affair and used Thomolopolus’s final fee to pay the month’s rent on her New York apartment.

  When she received the letter informing her that her claim against Malcolm’s seized assets had resulted in partial ownership in a beachfront mansion, the glimmer of hope it produced told her just how hopeless her life had become. Still, owning even a third of something at this point was . . . something.

  She actually laughed when Madeline Singer called, hoping to sell Nicole her third; she barely had enough to get to Florida to look at their “asset” and wasn’t sure how she’d manage to stay there long enough to take care of the paperwork and put it up for sale.

  She was no longer laughing when the FBI showed up on her doorstep, yet again, demanding to know where her little brother—and the three hundred million–plus dollars he’d stolen—had gone.

  “Do I look like I know where three hundred million dollars is?” Nicole glanced around the stripped-down interior of her apartment. She’d sold off every piece of artwork she’d collected that had any monetary value, the best of her antiques, and every stitch of vintage clothing she’d been able to authenticate.

  Special Agent Giraldi stared back at her from behind piercing eyes that were more black than brown. He had a strong nose and even stronger chin. If he possessed a sense of humor, he had yet to display it.

  “I’ve told you, I don’t know where he is. And I am not harboring someone who would steal from his own flesh and blood.”

  “So you’re not worried about the other investors.” Agent Giraldi’s voice was carefully controlled, just like his movements.

  “I didn’t say that. But I’m worried about me first. I still can’t believe my own brother stole every penny I had.” Especially one she’d mothered when their own mother no longer could.

  He nodded, conceding the insult added to injury. “All the more reason why you should help us put him behind bars and return the money to its rightful owners.” He was much too large for the settee on which he sat. Nicole hoped he was as uncomfortable as she was.

  “Look, I don’t even have a working telephone number for Malcolm. And he certainly hasn’t been in touch with me.” She wasn’t sure how much longer she could sit still. She folded her hands in her lap to keep them from shaking.

  “And if I could provide you with a way of getting in touch with him, would yo
u help us bring him in?” the agent asked.

  Nicole stood, wanting to bring this conversation to an end. She was furious with Malcolm and hurt in a way she could never make this man understand. And yes, she damned well wanted her money back. But did she want to get involved with the FBI? Did she want to be the one who went out and dragged her brother back to justice? She didn’t even want anyone knowing he was her brother. Every day she reminded herself of how much worse things would be if they’d had the same last name or traveled in the same circles.

  Giraldi narrowed his dark eyes, and she had a horrible feeling that he knew exactly what she was thinking. He rose. “You don’t owe him your loyalty, you know. He didn’t feel any for you when he took all your money.”

  Nicole looked the FBI agent in the eye even though she had to look up to do so. He was right, of course. But Malcolm had been more like her child than her brother, and he was a product of their environment just as she was. When they’d vowed to succeed at any cost, it hadn’t occurred to her that that cost would be levied on others. Or that for Malcolm, “others” would include her.

  They locked gazes for a long moment. Nicole was the first to look away. “I’ll think about it,” she said, escorting him to the door. Which was exactly what she’d said to him the last two times he’d asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t think about it too long. The longer it takes us to find him, the less chance we have of recovering the missing money.”

  He handed her his card, just as he had every time he’d called on her. This time he scribbled his cell phone number on the back. “Call me if you hear from him. Or if you think of anything that might help us track him down.”

  “Right.” She opened the door and waited for him to leave, both of them aware that she hadn’t actually committed.

  But this time after he’d gone she didn’t throw the card away.

  Six

  It took Madeline just under eight hours to drive from Atlanta to Tampa. Although she’d brought along a book on tape, she spent most of the trip worrying. Steve’s depression and abdication, Kyra’s pregnancy and refusal to talk about her baby’s celebrity father, her mother-in-law’s growing frailty, Andrew’s belligerence—all of these things fed the panic that churned inside her. The fact that pretty much everything was riding on producing some sort of income from her third of this “property,” and that she’d have to deal with two complete strangers to produce that income, just made her stomach churn faster.

  She got to Tampa late in the evening and checked into a motel just off the interstate, where the worrying, churning, and burgeoning hope that all of their financial problems were about to be solved kept her tossing and turning through the night. In the morning, she climbed back in the minivan and drove onto the Howard Franklin Bridge, the center of three bridges spanning Tampa Bay, and got her first stunning view of sunlight sparkling on water. It was a beautiful May morning, and as she lowered her window to draw a deep breath of warm moist air into her lungs, she wished she could draw the sunshine in with it.

  Following her GPS, she passed the rounded dome of Tropicana Field and continued south toward Sarasota/Bradenton, ultimately exiting onto the Pinellas Bayway. Condominium buildings whooshed by on either side of the causeway, each with its slice of waterfront or golf course, most of them with names that attested to the state’s early Spanish influences: Fort DeSoto, Tierra Verde, Isla del Sol. Over the bridge’s concrete balustrade, she spied hand-shaped neighborhoods with fingers of land that poked out into the blue green water of Boca Ciega Bay. They were far too symmetrical to have been formed by nature but were beautiful nonetheless.

  Slowing for a traffic light she came face-to-face with what looked like a huge pink wedding cake with white icing trim. Massively built, it stretched for several blocks, its bright pink stucco walls broken by lines of arched windows edged in white and topped by cupolas and bell towers. It loomed over the narrow two-laned Gulf Boulevard, allowing only small glimpses of the white sandy beach and the Gulf of Mexico behind it.

  At her GPS’s urging, she headed south, where a sign welcomed her to the Historic District of Pass-a-Grille. There the road narrowed further, sandwiched between the bay-front homes, which ranged from small and untouched to huge and newly constructed, and the labyrinth of small streets and homes that fronted the Gulf. The call of seagulls broke through the everyday sounds as the sun continued its ascent, growing brighter and more insistent. The breeze was more subtle, barely stirring the fronds of the palm trees that seemed to be everywhere, lightly flavored with salt and warmth.

  Soon her GPS, which was starting to sound a bit bossy given the palm trees and all, directed her onto the aptly named Gulf Way, and she got her first full-on look at the Gulf of Mexico and the wide white sand beach that bounded it. Drawing in another deep breath of salt-tinged air, Madeline promised herself a long walk on the beach and a swim in the Gulf. Just as soon as she saw her “mansion” and discovered, at last, just how much her share of it was worth.

  The blocks were short and the avenues, which stretched from the bay to the Gulf were barely longer. Despite the tattoo of her heart, which seemed to speed up as she drew closer, Madeline drove slowly, trying to take it all in and because it didn’t seem the sort of place you were supposed to hurry through.

  Moments later she’d reached the tip of the island. A sign dangled from a wrought-iron post. The first line of gold scripted letters read Bella Flora. The second line contained the address: Ten Beach Road.

  A thrill snaked up Madeline’s spine. A house with a name was almost always more valuable than one without, wasn’t it?

  A low concrete wall wrapped around the property, barely containing an explosion of jungle-sized greenery. Assorted palms and massive bushes, some long dead, others flowering madly, shot up above the wall and blocked most of the first story from view. Above the unruly mass and between the curving trunks of the taller palms, she could make out large expanses of pale pink stucco, a second floor lined with windows, and a multi-angled red tile roof.

  Her heart beat faster at its heft and weight. Her gaze was drawn from the house to the long brick drive just beyond it where a bright blue Mini Cooper was already parked. Madeline pulled in behind it, eager to see which of her “partners” it belonged to; even more eager to tour their asset.

  As Madeline parked, a figure emerged from the driver’s seat of the Mini Cooper. She was petite with pale white skin, delicate, almost doll-like features, and a bust that belonged on a much larger frame. A fringe of blonde hair hung over one eyebrow and angled to her shoulders. She wore white jeans and a long-sleeved gray and white T-shirt that deepened the gray of her eyes. Though her hair wasn’t “poufed” like it was on TV, Madeline recognized her right away. Madeline was out of the van and moving forward as the blonde straightened. “Avery Lawford?”

  The blonde froze beside her car and Madeline blushed. “My mother-in-law is a big fan of Hammer and Nail. I’ve seen you on TV.”

  “Oh.” That was all. As if she thought Madeline were going to ask for an autograph or was some sort of do-it-yourself groupie. “I’m Madeline Singer. I’m one of your, um, partners in the, uh, house.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word “mansion” aloud, though she’d loved the sound of it in her head.

  Extending her hand, she noticed how much smaller Avery Lawford appeared in person than on television. The top of her head, without the big Dolly Parton hairdo, barely reached Madeline’s shoulder.

  The blonde smiled and her shoulders relaxed. “Nice to meet you,” she said as she withdrew her hand. “I was a little worried that ‘mansion’ was just a Realtor’s marketing term. But it looks . . . significant.”

  Madeline nodded her agreement even as she tried to tamp down the hope burgeoning inside her. It was dangerous to have all of her eggs in this one basket; she’d already discovered just how easily those eggs could break. She shifted uncomfortably, feeling large and clumsy beside the smaller, younger woman, unsure of what to say, knowing she nee
ded to be careful not to reveal how crucial the sale of this house was to her.

  The discomfort she felt with Avery Lawford was nothing compared to what she felt when their third partner arrived a few moments later in a classic green Jaguar convertible, from which she emerged like a celebrity being handed onto the red carpet.

  Madeline and Avery exchanged glances but said nothing as Nicole Grant approached.

  Everything about the tall, willowy redhead screamed “big city” and “not from around here.” Her hair was pulled back in a careless yet elegant way, and her high cheekbones were set in an almost artistically angled face. The bio Madeline had read online put her in her midforties, but she looked a hell of a lot closer to Avery’s age than Madeline’s. Madeline regretted her white capris and cap-sleeved T-shirt. The multi-striped sandals and bag that she’d thought tied everything so nicely together shouted “Payless shoe store.”

  The breeze stirred the short skirt of the dating guru’s halter sundress, which was undoubtedly designer and possibly vintage.

  Madeline smoothed a hand down the side of her capris and wished she’d worn Spanx or at least splurged on a pedicure. “Welcome to Bella Flora,” she said as the redhead drew nearer. “I’m Madeline.”

  “Avery Lawford.”

  “Nicole Grant.”

  They were contemplating each other warily when a Cadillac drew up to the curb. An elderly gentleman climbed out and walked toward them as briskly as the cane he leaned on would allow.

  “Hello, ladies. Welcome to Pass-a-Grille,” John Franklin said after the introductions had been made. “I’m thrilled to see that Bella Flora has owners as lovely as she is.”

  The Realtor had a ruff of white hair around an otherwise bald scalp and a long face dominated by the droopy brown eyes of a basset hound. But he appeared freshly shaven and turned out in a short-sleeved button-down shirt and khakis—which, Madeline reflected, could very well be the beach equivalent of a three-piece suit.