“Was? It’s not anymore?” Harry asked.
She shrugged. “It’s not Doobie, it’s his old lady.”
“Who is Doobie?” I asked finally.
“Doobie. You know, Doobie Bauers.”
“Actually, I don’t know him,” I said.
“Yeah, I forget people know about the band, and Meat Loaf. Most people, unless they’re really hard-core Meat Heads, they never heard of Doobie. But see, Doobie was there in the very beginning.”
“So, he is a member of Meat Loaf?” Harry asked.
“Was. He was with them until, like, the third album, maybe? And then, when Meat disbanded the group to go into rehab, Doobie did a lot of session work. He wrote some big hits for other bands, toured with Def Leppard, even. But mostly he’s famous for being in Meat Loaf.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “But we saw the yacht, Reefer Madness. It must be worth a lot of money. Can an ex-musician really afford something like that?”
“Are you kidding?” Emma asked. “Hell, yeah, he can afford it. You ought to see his ranch, or whatever you call it, in Nashville. One thing about Doobie, even when he was totally messed up on drugs, he was smart about business. A bunch of his songs have been on movie sound tracks. Have you seen the new Toyota Avalon television commercial? That’s Doobie’s song playing in the background.”
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “But you said things have gone sour with your job?”
Emma took a swig of beer, then daintily wiped her mouth on a napkin. “Yeah, it really bites. I’m not supposed to know about it, or say anything yet, but Anya is making Doobie sell Reefer Madness. So I’m gonna be out of a job pretty soon now.”
“Who is Anya, and why is she making him sell the yacht?” I asked.
“She’s his old lady,” Emma said. “What a bitch! If she’d just mellow out and leave him alone, everything would be cool. Look,” she said sadly, “Doobie is in the music business. It’s not a secret. He’s had, what do they call it?” She made little quote marks with her fingers. “Substance-abuse issues.
“I mean, Doobie is old school rock and roll. There’s a lot of pressure in the business. A lot of money on the line every time he goes into the studio. Doobie can’t relax until he smokes some weed, or maybe snorts a line of coke. So he flies down here, we take the Reefer out, he drinks some Cristal, and he gets a little high. Who gets hurt?”
“Anya doesn’t like that, I take it?” Harry asked.
“It makes her totally nuts,” Emma said. “She won’t even let him come down here without her anymore, and when they do come, she has a personal assistant go all over the boat, trying to find his stash, and trying to get everybody to narc out on Doobie.”
Emma giggled. “The last time they were down, it was freakin’ hilarious. Anya’s running all over the place, ordering everybody around. I mean, she had me making macrobiotic meals for him. Brown rice and steamed veggies! And every time she’s not looking, Doob is dipping into his secret stash and getting wasted. When we got back into Bahia Mar that last time, she was so pissed she couldn’t even see straight. They had a huge fight. God, what a bitch! That’s when she told Doobie, ‘Either get rid of the boat, and get straight for good, or I’m outta here.’”
Emma took another sip of beer. “Personally? I think he should keep the boat and kick her bony ass out on the street. But I don’t get a vote.”
Harry and I looked over at each other and exchanged a tiny, secret smile.
But Emma wasn’t stupid. She caught the looks.
“Hey. What’s going on here? Why are you so interested in Doobie? Oh, man, you never really intended to give me a chef’s job, did you?”
She’d been straight with me, so I decided to be straight with her.
“I really am in the restaurant business, Emma,” I said. “But I met this man…”
“Yeah,” Emma said, shaking her head. “Same old story. And you got screwed. Right?”
Taken aback by her bluntness, I could only laugh. “Right. He swindled me out of everything. That’s why I’m down here in Fort Lauderdale. Looking for Mister Wrong.”
“What’s any of that got to do with me?” Emma asked. She jerked her head in Harry’s direction. “And what’s it got to do with him?”
Good question.
“Harry and I are…friends,” I said. “He manages the motel I own in Savannah. And, we, uh…”
“We’re friendly,” Harry said, grinning. “Getting friendlier all the time.”
“The man who swindled me—his real name is Roy Eugene Moseley—is, we think, right here in Fort Lauderdale. He’s been hanging around Bahia Mar marina, we think, because he’s interested in yachts. Big, expensive yachts. Specifically, he has a thing for Sea Urchins. And the Reefer Madness is the only Sea Urchin in the area right at this time.”
“Again, what’s that got to do with me?”
“Roy Eugene came really close to stealing another yacht, a Sea Urchin, from a widow up in Vero Beach last year,” I said. “And we think he was getting ready to buy, but more likely, try to steal, another Sea Urchin here in Fort Lauderdale. Fortunately for the woman who owns that boat, she sold it to a legitimate buyer before Roy Eugene could make his move.”
“And you think he’s gunning for the Reefer?” Emma asked, her eyes getting big.
“Maybe,” Harry said.
“Absolutely,” I said. “We’ve been able to trace his credit card activity. He’s playing golf at Bahia Mar, eating in the restaurants, hanging around in the bar.”
“So, call the cops,” Emma said.
“The cops won’t do anything,” I said bitterly. “And even if I was able to have him arrested, so what? It doesn’t get me back what he took.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Which was what?”
“Everything,” I said. “My home, my furniture, my money. I had to close down my restaurant, lay off all my employees. He even stole my grandparents’ savings.”
“That is cold,” Emma said. “How much money are we talking?”
“More than two million,” I said, “not counting things like my father’s antique watch and an irreplaceable painting that was a family heirloom.”
Emma sipped her beer.
Harry excused himself to go to the men’s room.
“He’s cute,” Emma said, as soon as he was gone. “Have you slept with him yet?”
I blushed. “Why does everybody keep asking me that?”
“Why not?” Emma said. “You’re straight, right? Only thing. Just how old is he?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He won’t tell me.”
It was time to change the subject to one I was more comfortable with. “If you didn’t go to culinary school, where did you learn to cook?”
“Here and there,” she said offhandedly. “I took some community college classes, worked in a few bars and a few restaurants. I was working at the Sand Bar when I met Doobie, supposed to be waiting tables, but I kept slipping into the kitchen, talking the chef into letting me try stuff. Doobie was in one day, and I’d fixed this red snapper seviche. He went nuts for it, and hired me on at the Reefer. That was two years ago.”
She sighed deeply. “I knew all along it was too good to last.”
Harry came back from the men’s room and we ordered another round of beers.
“So,” Emma said, looking from me to Harry. “You still haven’t told me how I figure into all of this.”
“I don’t really know,” I said.
We gave her a description of Roy Eugene, but she swore she hadn’t seen anybody like that hanging around the Reefer Madness.
“When is the boat going to be sold?” I asked.
“That’s up to Anya,” she said. “She hasn’t officially told us anything, but they let Ernie go last month. Right now, it’s just me and Liam living aboard, keeping things buttoned down. As soon as I get another job lined up, I’m outta there. Liam’s got a girlfriend in Boca, he’ll probably move in with her until he gets another gig, but I ca
n’t afford to get an apartment right now, so I won’t quit until I get something else.”
“Will you work on another yacht?” I asked.
“No way,” she said firmly. “I want a real job, in a real restaurant.”
“Have you talked to Doobie about any of this?” Harry asked.
“Can’t,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“He’s in rehab,” Emma said. “It’s supposed to be a big secret. After that last cruise, Anya checked Doob into Betty Ford. Poor guy. I hear the food there sucks.”
“Say, Emma,” I said casually. “Maybe we can work something out.”
Her green eyes glittered. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Count me in.”
48
Harry was quiet in the car on the way back to Mangoville. But that was okay, because it gave me a chance to study him more closely.
How had I not noticed before just how crazy sexy the guy was? I closed my eyes, trying to analyze his unexpected appeal. He wasn’t handsome in that slap-your-mama way that Reddy had been when we first met. He didn’t have the golden-boy good looks of Sandy Thayer, my first and third husband. He didn’t even have Richard the Wretched’s dark, smoldering sensuality.
In fact, he wasn’t like any man I’d ever been with before. He was, dare I say it? A grown-up. Sneaking another peek, I thought about how much I liked the way his hair refused to lie down flat, and the fact that he refused to use any kind of product on it. I liked his clear gray-green eyes and the crinkling crow’s-feet that radiated out from them. I even adored his strong chin, covered now with a half-inch of stubble.
“You’re staring at me,” Harry said.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“Probably trying to figure out how to make your big move and jump me right here in the front seat, but without making us end up with this land yacht in a ditch.”
“Not really,” I said.
But I slid a little closer on the burgundy leather seat, and silently thanked my grandfather for having the foresight to keep an old eighties car with bench-type front seats.
“That’s more like it,” Harry said approvingly. He slung his arm over my shoulder and drew me even closer, almost onto his lap. He kissed my bare shoulder.
“What are you thinking about?” he inquired.
“I was thinking how glad I am that you agreed to come down here with me.”
“Had to,” Harry said. “I was afraid if you came alone, you’d kill somebody.”
“No, really,” I said. “I can’t tell you how great it is to finally have a really experienced man in my life.”
“You got that right,” Harry said, letting his fingertips rest lightly on the top of my breast.
“Mmm,” I said, snuggling even closer. “You’re the man, Harry.”
“Just wait till we get back to the motel,” he promised. “I’ve been thinking about this all day. All weekend.” He kissed my neck. “You make me crazy. You know that, right?”
“Good crazy,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since I saw the Reefer Madness tied up at Bahia Mar. It’s all going to work out just right.”
Harry nuzzled my neck, and with his free hand tugged the wig off my head and tossed it to the floor. He gently finger-combed my flattened hair, and rubbed the nape of my neck. His touch was hard and warm and deft, and I spooned myself into the curve of him.
“You are an amazing lady, BeBe Loudermilk,” he said. “You even turn me on in this weird getup of yours. I can’t believe I’m having sex fantasies about a woman dressed up as a seventies go-go dancer.”
“Whatever floats your boat,” I said, turning to face him and slipping my hand inside the open neck of his sport shirt.
“Oh, lady,” he said softly. “You are rocking my boat tonight.”
“It’s only going to get better, isn’t it?” I asked, kissing him hard on the mouth.
“Wait,” he said, his breathing getting shallow. “We’re almost back at the motel. Five minutes, tops. What do you say I get us a room of our own? We’ll have a whole night together. Just the two of us.”
“Sweet-talking devil.”
I waited by the car while he went into the office at the Mango Tree. Five minutes later, he stormed out, slamming the door behind him. His face told the whole story, but I had to ask.
“What happened?”
“No vacancies,” he said, pounding the roof of the Buick. “Can you believe there’s not a single vacant room in this stinking roach motel?”
I glanced over at the Mango Tree’s neon sign, which did, indeed, have a blinking NO VACANCY on it.
He knelt down beside the car and took my hand in his. “I’d say we could go to another motel, but you know the deal.”
I sighed, and kissed him. “Yeah. No money. And no honey.”
He kissed me back and helped me out of the car.
“It won’t always be like this, I swear.”
“I know.”
Harry glanced back at the Buick, stopped, and went back and looked inside.
“This backseat looks pretty roomy,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. “Leather seats too.”
“No way, Jose. We are not having Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Not tonight. Not ever. Now come on, handsome. Walk me to my door?”
49
Over a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and a cup of instant coffee the next morning, I outlined the plan that had started to gel the night before.
“I went to the Internet cafe this morning,” I told Weezie and Granddad.
“Yeah, you must have gotten there really early,” Weezie said. “I never even heard you leave. In fact, I never even heard you come in last night.”
“I tippy-toed. But listen, I got on the Internet and looked up Meat Loaf.”
Granddad peeled his banana and made a face. “If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just stick with cereal today, same as always,” he said.
“Meat Loaf, the band,” I said. “I Googled them on the Internet. You wouldn’t believe how many Web sites are devoted to them. It’s unreal.”
“Did you find that girl last night? The one who supposedly works on the yacht?” Weezie asked.
“Yeah. Emma. She’s cool. It turns out the guy who owns the boat is named Doobie Bauers. According to the official Meat Loaf biography, his real name is Douglas Jefferson Bauers. He got the nickname Doobie in high school.”
“Interesting,” Granddad said. “I remember a television show called Dobie Gillis.”
“Right,” Harry said. “This is different. Way different.”
“Doobie Bauers cowrote a lot of Meat Loaf’s big hits,” I said. “And a lot of other hits. He’s got, like, seven platinum albums to his credit, and two Grammys, and a ton of money. Originally, he was a keyboardist. But he hasn’t really toured in at least seven or eight years, that I can see. In fact, he’s kind of become a semirecluse.”
“Poor guy,” Weezie said.
“Here’s the only picture I could find of him,” I said, sliding a computer-printout photo across the dinette table toward them.
“It’s an old wire-service photo from 1997,” I said. “It ran with a story in Rolling Stone about attempts to mount a Meat Loaf reunion tour.”
Weezie studied the photo intently. “‘Keyboard artist-slash-composer Doobie Bauers says “No Thanks” to another helping of Meat Loaf,’” she read.
“The story said Doobie felt at the time that his music was going in a whole different direction,” I explained. “Plus, he’d ballooned up to about 340 pounds. He was even beefier than Meat Loaf.”
“Oh, man,” Harry said. “That’s rough.”
“Not to worry,” I told him. “Doobie lost more than a hundred pounds right after that. And apparently gained a nasty little meth habit at the same time.”
The four of us took turns turning the photo this way and that, staring at the fifteen-year-old image of the keyboard artist-slash-composer Doobie Bauers. What we saw was not particularly memorable. A middle-aged
white guy, wearing a baseball cap, wire-rimmed spectacles, and a thick beard, hunched over an electric keyboard.
“I read where he never goes anywhere without a baseball cap,” I said.
“Bald spot,” Weezie said knowingly.
“And like I said, this is the most recent photo. The only other ones I found are from the late seventies, when he was still touring. In those, Doobie has dark hair down to his ass, and a giant handlebar mustache. He weighs maybe 130 pounds soaking wet, and he’s wearing skintight black leather pants.”
“In his defense,” Harry said. “It has been more than thirty years. Even Mick Jagger is starting to look middle-aged.”
“Mick Jagger looks older than Granddad,” I retorted.
I slid another photograph across the dinette table. This one showed an attractive blonde in a well-tailored pantsuit, wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat.
“‘Anya Bauers Co-hosts Children’s Hospital Charity FundRaiser,’” Weezie read. “This is his wife? She looks a lot younger than old Doobie.”
“She’s Mrs. Bauers number three,” I agreed. “She’s all of thirty-five. Young enough to be Doobie’s daughter, according to my research. She doesn’t really come down here to Fort Lauderdale very often. She’s got some kind of sun allergy, which is why she’s wearing these big hats in all the pictures I found of her in the Nashville Banner.”
“Who doesn’t like Fort Lauderdale?” Granddad asked, puzzled. “The sun, the sea. Early-bird specials at almost every restaurant. Senior-citizen discounts everywhere!”
“It isn’t necessarily Lauderdale she hates,” I said. “From what Emma says—she’s the chef on the yacht—Anya doesn’t like Doobie to come down here either, because when he does get down here to go out on the Reefer, he, uh, gets himself in trouble.”
“Chasing women?” Granddad asked, chuckling. “I sure did see a whole lot of pretty women worth chasing at that bar yesterday. If I was the chasing kind, that is.”
“It’s not women who are his problem,” I said. “Emma says whenever Doobie goes out on the yacht, he gets totally trashed on cocaine or alcohol or marijuana or all three.”
Savannah Breeze Page 31