“He lied to me!” I cried. “I never would have sold my house. Or the other houses. And what about all my stuff? My furniture, my paintings, my great-grandmother’s silver? And all my clothes. James, all my good jewelry was in the little safe in the floor of my bedroom closet. My mother’s engagement ring was in there. And her mother’s engagement ring, and oh God, Grandmama’s rings. And her earrings and the pearls Granddaddy brought her back from Korea.”
Despite all my promises to myself, I broke down in tears again. When I found out that Grandmama had gone into the hospital, I’d talked my grandfather into letting me put all her jewelry in my safe. With the strain of her illness, I’d worried that he might hide her jewelry in the same “safe” place he’d hidden the Buick spare keys, which we still couldn’t find. And now it was all gone. Along with everything else.
James stood up, walked around the desk and stood there, awkwardly thumping my back. “It’s not your fault,” he kept saying. “Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known.”
But we both knew it was all my fault. If I hadn’t been so blazing mad at Emery Cooper for dumping me, if I hadn’t been so eager to jump into bed with the first man to give me a friendly nod, if I hadn’t been such a blind, stupid idiot, none of this would have happened.
It had been three days since I’d discovered the truth about Reddy Millbanks. Three days since I’d gone home and discovered that I no longer had a home.
I felt numb all over. So tired. My eyes burned and my head throbbed. I was cold. I looked out the window at the long, gray freighter that seemed suspended on a bank of fog.
“Did you hear me, BeBe?” James leaned across his desk. “Can I get you anything?
“We’ll find out who this St. Andrews Holdings is,” James said. “We’ll explain what happened. Tell them you were victimized. It should be obvious that they bought the properties at a fire-sale price. If they’re a reputable outfit, they’ll understand that you’ve been defrauded, and they’ll nullify the deal.”
“And if they’re not reputable?”
“We can take them to court. This was not a good-faith transaction. You’ve signed a complaint with the police, and Jay Bradley says there will be an investigation. I talked to Jonathan about it…”
He blushed again. Jonathan McDowell was the chief assistant in the Chatham County district attorney’s office. He was also James’s significant other. I would have enjoyed James’s discomfort, if at that moment I’d been capable of enjoying anything.
“And Jonathan’s going to have somebody from the DA’s white-collar crime unit contact you.”
“What about my house?” I asked dully. “When can I get back into my house?”
James sighed. “You can’t. Not for a while yet. I’m sorry, BeBe. But until I track down somebody with St. Andrews Holdings, I don’t have any way to get you into that house. Or any of the others. They’ve been sold.”
“And my stuff? The furniture? My jewelry?”
“Bradley will be calling you. You need to give him an inventory of everything that was taken. If you have any photos, that would be really helpful. The police can check pawnshops and places like that. Bradley will be calling your neighbor to see if he can give a better description of that moving truck.”
“Steve Arrendale,” I said, my eyes blazing. “That pretentious prick. Reddy sold him the Maybelle Johns portrait of my aunt Alice. He won’t return my phone calls. He won’t even come to the door when I knock. Can you get my painting back, James?”
“Probably, but we’ll have to take him to court,” James said. He coughed and stared out the window. “Look, BeBe. The thing is, Arrendale has already filed a complaint against you for harassment.”
“Me! Harassment? He doesn’t know what harassment is. He stole my painting. He’s lucky I haven’t had him arrested.”
“Stop calling,” James said flatly. “Stay away from his house. You’re not helping matters. We’ll deal with Arrendale when things calm down.”
“And when will that be?” I asked, sinking down into the chair. “James, this sucks so bad. And it just keeps sucking. It doesn’t get any better. I’ve lost everything.”
“Well,” he said, looking down at his notepad again. “Actually, not everything.”
“Yeah,” I said, gesturing toward myself. “I’ve still got my looks. Right?”
“That and the Breeze Inn,” James said.
“Say what?”
“The Breeze Inn. From the legal descriptions it appears to be a fifteen-unit motel on Tybee Island. Which you bought last week.”
“I never bought anything out at Tybee,” I said. “I haven’t been out there in years. I hate the beach. And Tybee.” I shuddered. “Talk about tacky.”
“All I know is, the deed to the place is in your name. You, or somebody representing you, paid $650,000 for the Breeze Inn. Actually, this could be a blessing, BeBe. Tybee real estate prices have gone through the roof in the past few years. Even if this Breeze Inn place is a falling-down roach motel, it’s got to be worth a lot more than $650,000.” He looked down at the pad again. “It’s on 1.6 acres. On Chatham at Seventeenth Street. That’s the south end of the island.” He smiled. “Maybe, just maybe, you’re back in business.”
“I’ll never be back in business,” I said glumly. “I’ve had to close the restaurant. I don’t have the money to keep it open and make payroll. That’s sixteen people who are out of work. Because I couldn’t keep my britches up.”
James winced, but then he smiled that smile of his. “You know what my mother used to say?”
“Something relentlessly cheerful, I’m sure. But I don’t need cheer right now. I need my painting back. I need my house back. I need my life back.”
James rocked back in his chair. “Still. She used to say, ‘God never closes a door that he doesn’t open a window.’”
“And my mother used to tell me, ‘Vulgarity is the crutch of the weak and the ignorant,’” I snapped. “But what the fuck did she know?”
13
Rain flattened the expanses of gray-green marsh grass on either side of Tybee Road, and I had to grip the Lexus’s steering wheel with both hands to keep from being blown into the other lane. Not that it would have mattered. In such cold, wet weather, late in the afternoon, nearly six, traffic to the beach was nonexistent.
I scowled down at the water below as I crossed the humpbacked bridge over Lazaretto Creek, and wrinkled my nose at the dank musk of saltwater and marsh mud. This was a fool’s errand, I was sure. Despite James’s nauseatingly optimistic tendency to look for a silver lining in the thunderclouds hovering over my financial horizon, I had no hope for what I’d find out at Tybee Island. Reddy had been ruthlessly efficient in selling off all my other assets. Why would he have left behind a piece of valuable beach property when he’d gone to such lengths to liquidate everything else?
As the highway followed the bend in the island, I slowed to get my bearings. When had I last been out to Tybee? Not since my college days, I decided. Even back then, in the late eighties, Tybee had been a last-ditch destination. If my friends and I had any choice in the matter, we went south, to St. Simons, or north, to Hilton Head, or even west, to the Gulf beaches on the Florida panhandle, Destin or Panama City. Never Tybee, with its depressing collection of cracker-box cottages, cheap motels, and sleazy bars. As far as I knew, there was not a single white-tablecloth restaurant, tennis court, or golf course on Tybee.
Of course, I knew people who’d bought and even restored beach cottages at Tybee. They called Tybee quaint, genuine, even charming. Daniel, for one, insisted that there was nowhere else he’d rather live.
Fine. If real estate prices at the beach really had escalated as much as James claimed, maybe, just maybe, there was something worth salvaging at the Breeze Inn. Although I very much doubted it.
I swiveled my head back and forth as I headed south on Butler Avenue. Tybee had definitely changed. There was a new brick city hall building and YMCA, and new hotels and midrise condo buildin
gs blocked the view of the ocean. Some things hadn’t changed though. Every other block seemed to hold a convenience store. The island’s only grocery store, the Tybee Market, was still there, and as I got closer to the cluster of faded concrete-block buildings that made up the commercial district, I saw that the cheesy bars and tourist traps were still there too, though most had probably changed hands and names a dozen times since I’d last seen them.
When Butler Avenue played out, I turned onto Seventeenth Street, and found my way to the address James had given me.
A faded billboard in the crushed-oyster-shell parking lot had an arrow pointing to the left. BREEZE INN, it said, with stylized white palm trees swaying to some unseen ocean breeze. It was almost dark, and the neon VACANCY light was lit.
No surprise there. I turned into the parking lot, and even though I had absolutely no expectations for what I would find there, I was still disappointed. Eight squat buildings were scattered around a central building that was—incongruously—built to look like a log cabin. A whitewashed log cabin at that, one that leaned precariously to the left, and whose rusted tin roof looked as though a puff of breath could send it flying off into the ocean, which was presumably just over the nearest sand dune. A small, hand-lettered sign proclaimed this the manager’s office.
A tattered and faded American flag flew from a pole tacked to the cabin’s front porch, and there was but one car in the parking lot, an old wood-sided seventies-era Vista Cruiser station wagon that looked like the ones my parents used to load us up in for summer vacation trips.
I parked beside the Vista Cruiser and got out and walked around. The buildings were actually duplexes of a sort, with two units to a building. The numbers were missing from most of the doors. All of the windows were dirt streaked and fly specked. Each unit had a modest, covered porch furnished with a couple of rickety aluminum lawn chairs and cheap plastic tables. None of the cabins was lit up.
“It’s the Bates sur la Beach,” I muttered under my breath, turning toward the log cabin. I could see the blue glow of a television from the front window. Somebody was home. “Meet the Manager,” I muttered, tromping up the front steps and pressing on the door buzzer mounted on the door frame. From inside I could hear the voice of a television announcer, calling what sounded like football plays. Odd, since it was February.
Footsteps clomped toward the door, but it didn’t open. I pressed the buzzer again.
“Hello?” I called. “Anybody there?”
“Go away,” called a man’s raspy voice. “We’re closed.”
I took a step away from the door and looked back at the Breeze Inn sign.
“Hey,” I called back. “There’s a vacancy sign out front. So you can’t be closed.”
More footsteps, retreating, and then returning to the door. I glanced over at the billboard and saw the NO part of the VACANCY sign light up.
“Cute. Really cute,” I called. “But there are no other cars in the parking lot. None of these units is occupied. Anyway, you’re a motel. You can’t be closed. Open up, damnit.”
“Damnit,” I heard the man on the other side of the door echo softly. I heard the click of a lock, and then the squeak of rusty door hinges. A bearish man with a deep tan and a half-inch of stubble on his face peered out at me from behind a chain security lock.
“Listen,” he said, frowning, “I’m busy in here. If you want a room, try the Holiday Inn, or the Days Inn. They’re open. And their toilets actually flush.”
He started to close the door, but I wedged the toe of my sneaker in the opening.
“I don’t want the Days Inn,” I said. “I want this motel.”
“Why?” he asked, his chin jutting out belligerently. I saw him looking in the direction of my Lexus. “You can afford something a lot better than this dump.”
Little did he know. I took a deep breath. “I happen to own this dump. Now can I come in?”
“Since when? Johnny Reese owns the Breeze.”
“Not since last week, when I bought the place.”
He unlatched the lock and swung the door wide. “By all means, do come in.”
The inside of the log cabin was as depressing as the outside. We were standing in a long, narrow room. A huge fireplace covered with what looked like millions of seashells randomly plastered into place had a hideous kerosene stove sticking out of what should have been the wood box. The floors were painted battleship gray, and the furniture looked like rejects from the Salvation Army. A wide-screen television set took up most of the far wall of the room, and a beat-up kitchen table held a partially disassembled outboard-boat motor. One glance confirmed what I’d already guessed—that this place, and the rest of the Breeze Inn, was a prime candidate for a total teardown.
My host crossed his arms over his burly chest and watched me warily. He wore a faded Hawaian shirt, baggy khaki shorts with cargo pockets, and was barefoot. He had wiry brown hair, a weather-beaten face, and gray-green eyes. His age was hard to guess. Maybe forties? And pissed. He looked pissed.
“And you would be…,” I asked, staring him down with my own version of pissed off.
“I would be watching the fourth quarter of the Notre Dame and Michigan game if you hadn’t busted your way in here,” he snapped. “But if you’re looking for a name, mine is Harry Sorrentino. I’m the manager. Now. How about you?”
“BeBe Loudermilk,” I said. “Isn’t football season over?”
“Not for me,” he said. “It’s ESPN Classic. Any other questions?”
“How, uh, long have you been working here?”
He ignored my question. “The Reeses didn’t say anything to me about selling out.”
“It was a surprise to me too,” I said. There was no way I was going to admit the circumstances of the sale to this stranger. “Now, how long did you say you’d been here?”
“About three months,” he said. “Johnny Reese hired me on after his dad died.”
“I take it you live here?” I asked, gesturing toward the television, the outboard motor, and the makeshift shelves of paperback novels on either side of the fireplace.
“That’s right,” Sorrentino said. “Rent free. I was supposed to get paid a hundred bucks a week too, but business has been slow, so the pay deal kinda went by the wayside.”
“Slow,” I said, deliberately drawing out the word. “As in…nonexistent?”
“It’s off-season,” Sorrentino said, his face reddening. “Check the other hotels on the beach. Nothing going on this time of year.”
“Especially if you refuse to rent rooms to anybody who happens to knock on the door,” I pointed out.
“Screw that,” Sorrentino said. “I’m doing work on all the units. Paint, plumbing, that kind of thing. Johnny knew that. That’s what you do in the off-season. Maintenance. It’s part of my deal.”
I walked around the room to get a better look at it. There was a small kitchen just off the main living/dining room. It had ancient red Formica countertops, and rusting white metal cabinets, and one of those old round-shouldered refrigerators just like the one my dad used to keep beer in out in the garage. For a man’s kitchen, it was surprisingly neat. No dirty dishes in the sink, or grunge on the floor. Just off the kitchen was a large utility room with two huge commercial washers and dryers, white-painted shelves full of neatly folded bed and bath linens, rolls of toilet paper, and stacks of hotel-size shampoos and soaps.
Sorrentino caught up with me at the kitchen doorway. “Anything in particular you’re looking for here?” he asked.
“Just getting a look at my investment,” I said airily. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“A phone call would have been nice,” he said. “To let me know you were on the way. I would have straightened up the place.”
“I didn’t have a phone number,” I said evenly. “Anyway, it looks all right to me. Is there a bedroom?”
“There is,” he said. “But these are my private living quarters. Johnny never came poking around in my apartment. An
d I’d appreciate it if you’d do the same.”
“Fine,” I said. But secretly, I was dying to see what the bedroom looked like. And why didn’t he want me looking around in there?
“So,” Sorrentino said. “What’s the deal?”
“Deal?”
“With you. And me. Do I keep my job? And the apartment? Johnny and I had an understanding. That I would stay here and work through the end of the summer, till I get my boat going again.”
“Which boat is that?” I asked.
“The Jitterbug,” he said proudly. “A thirty-foot T-Craft. I run a charter-fishing business. She’s, uh, in dry dock over at Marsden Marina. Soon as I get her up and running again, I’ll be out of here. Say, September, probably.” He gave me a grudging smile. His teeth were big and white and even. “So, is it a deal?”
“Harry,” I said. “Let’s be square with each other. You know, and I know, that the Breeze Inn has seen better days. This place is a derelict. To be frank, it’s a teardown.”
“Some painting. And plumbing,” he protested. “I finished the roofing last week. Got toilets on order at Lowes. Two weeks, tops, we’ll be booked nonstop.”
“No,” I said. “We won’t. How much does one of these units rent for, anyway?”
“High season? The one-bedrooms bring $750 a week, the efficiencies $500. Johnny says business is real steady. Same families come back year after year. I got a phone call from some folks in Tifton, just yesterday. They want unit six the week of July the Fourth.”
I shook my head again. “Not enough. I haven’t seen the tax assessment for the Breeze Inn yet, but I know it’ll be a killer. The real value in this place, as far as I can see, is the location. I’ve got a little over one and a half acres here. Technically, it’s ocean-view property. And those are the magic words, Harry. ‘Ocean view.’”
“Shit,” he said, turning his back to me. “You too?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Look around the island,” he said bitterly. “Goddamn developers are ruining the place. Anything with any age, any character, they tear down and put up a damned high-rise. The Breeze is the last of the old-time motels. My folks brought us here for a week every June when I was a kid. And you wanna tear that down to make a fast buck.”
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