Ocean Beach (5 page)

The man who posed in front of the two-story circular entryway was short and old with close-cropped white hair, a tanned face, and a wide, welcoming smile that could be seen even from the sidewalk. He wore white pants with a white shirt and navy blazer that hung on him as if they’d been borrowed from a larger man; possibly Captain Stubing on
The Love Boat.

The man came down the curved front steps and walked slowly toward them, the grasses and plant life so tall in spots that he looked as if he were wading through a tropical cornfield. Although his movements appeared purposeful, the closer he came the clearer it became just how carefully he was moving. So carefully that if he’d been racing a snail, the snail would have already lapped him.

Everything about him discouraged the offering of assistance and so they stayed where they were and waited for him to reach them. The red tally light of the camera remained on.

As he drew near, his features came into focus. His weathered face was anchored by a slightly oversize, but distinguished nose and a pair of intelligent brown eyes that were
shaded by caterpillar eyebrows the same white as his hair. His hands were gnarled and covered with age spots. One of them held an unlit cigar. He’d tucked a captain’s hat beneath one arm.

Coming to a stop in front of them, he plopped the hat onto his head and looked directly into the camera. Opening his arms wide, he boomed, “I’m Max Golden. Welcome to The Millicent!”

They watched him, too surprised to speak.

He lowered his arms and fiddled with the cigar.

“You want me to try it again?” he asked the cameraman. “I can do it with or without the cigar. Or maybe I should take off the hat since it’ll be dark pretty soon?”

Troy gave an almost imperceptible nod. Anthony repositioned the microphone. “Yes, sir,” he said crisply. “We’re still rolling.”

Max Golden revved his smile back up to full throttle, opened his arms wide once more, and said, “Welcome to The Millicent! I’m your host, Max Golden!”

“Got it,” Troy said.

“That’s a keeper,” Anthony agreed.

“Good,” Max Golden said, lowering his arms. “Because even now that the sun’s gone down, I’m really shvitzing in this jacket.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began to mop his forehead. Sweat glistened in the hollows of his cheeks and on his upper lip.

Avery stepped toward Max Golden. He was about her height and she stared him directly in the eye, which was a nice change from the usual cricked-neck conversation. “I’m Avery Lawford. I’ll be coordinating your ‘do-over.’”

His grip was surprisingly strong. As she introduced the others, Max shook each person’s hand, making a special
show of pumping Dustin’s tiny appendage up and down until the baby broke into a gummy smile. “I was about his age when I first started in vaudeville,” Max said. “I was more of a prop than a performer, of course, but I did learn to suck my thumb on cue.”

“A useful talent, I’m sure.” Nicole’s tone was just the wee-est bit dry.

“Yes,” Max said jovially. “Although it doesn’t come in as handy now as it did then.”

Dustin couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the cigar Max waved around as he spoke. Kyra handed the baby to Madeline and lifted her video camera to her shoulder. The rest of them stayed close, doing their best to shield Dustin from the network camera.

“I haven’t been around this many beautiful women since the last time we played Vegas,” Max said. “This is a perk I wasn’t expecting.”

“You are going to be a little outnumbered,” Avery agreed. “Are you sure you have room for all of us?”

Mentally, she was already putting Deirdre at the head of the list of things to move to another location. Maybe they could talk the network into arranging for the camera crew to join her.

“Oh, there’s plenty of room,” Max said in a hearty tone with a glimpse toward the camera. “But it’s not in the best shape. We had to turn the upstairs into apartments back in the sixties. It was mostly just Millie and me for the last five or six years. And then…well…my wife passed away a little over a year ago just after the last tenants moved out of the pool house. I’m not much of a housekeeper. Or gardener.” That was his only acknowledgment of the chest-high
grass and junglelike overgrowth. “And I’m not too handy either.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” Deirdre said, stepping forward and taking Max by one arm. Nicole took the other.

“That’s right,” Nicole said as they began to move toward the front steps at a slightly accelerated pace, although Avery wasn’t certain if Deirdre and Nicole allowed Max’s feet to touch the ground.

Dustin let out a whimper and burrowed his head beneath his grandmother’s chin.

Max glanced at the baby and then at Maddie, who was stifling a yawn. “It’s getting a bit late,” he said gallantly. “Why don’t I show you to your rooms now and leave the tour for tomorrow morning.”

Relieved, they agreed and Max changed direction, leading them back toward the garage and across garden pavers choked with weeds and tilted at unintended angles. Nicole and Deirdre tightened their hold on Max’s arms and Avery offered up a small prayer that he’d make it wherever he was taking them without falling and breaking his neck.

“I absolutely love The Millicent’s nautical elements,” Avery said, looking up at the cruise-liner-inspired observation tower that topped the two-story entrance and the run of porthole windows. Double smokestacks rose majestically above the flat roof and into the darkening sky.

“We honeymooned on the SS
Franklin
,” Max said. “We were the onboard entertainment even though it was Millie’s first time onstage. When I saw this house for sale a couple years later, I knew we had to have it.”

“It reminds me of the
Titanic
,” Nicole said under her
breath. “Post-iceberg. Assuming it had mowed down a flock of flamingos first.”

“There is a somewhat unfortunate pairing of pinks and greens,” Deirdre said in quiet agreement. “And the walls are a mess,” she added, motioning to the chunks of wall that littered the ground.

But Avery didn’t care how many pieces of stucco the house had shed or how many colors it had been painted. With its sharp straightaways and sinuous curves, it was one of the most glorious examples of Streamline Moderne architecture she’d ever seen.

“The Millicent has weathered a lot of storms,” Max admitted. “I’m pretty sure I told the network that it would take a good bit of work to get her back in shape.” He fiddled with his cigar.

Avery and Maddie exchanged glances. “Where are you taking us?” Maddie asked as they passed the driveway and rounded the garage.

“Your rooms are upstairs and you can’t get there from inside anymore,” Max said. “At first we rented the upstairs bedrooms to other performers, people that we knew. But when we started renting to strangers, we walled off the first and second floors. The stairs are around back.”

Like The Millicent’s exterior, the backyard had once been wonderful. Two staircases designed to look like ship gangplanks led up to large decks rimmed with ship-style railings. One deck had a triangular “bow” that pointed east; the other was shaped like the stern.

The pool was cracked and filthy. A one-story cube of a building sat near it, barely visible through the hedge that surrounded it. “That’s the pool house,” Max said. “It was
the first space we rented out.” In a far corner of the yard, several citrus trees sagged against the wrought-iron fence.

Everyone was tired and they were far too aware of the Lifetime crew recording every word to engage in chitchat. Kyra had her video camera out too. The lenses moved so constantly that Avery had no idea what they were actually shooting. She tried to keep the worry off her face as she absorbed the extent of The Millicent’s damage and noted the ancient wall air conditioners, whose back ends protruded from the house like blemishes on a teenager’s face. Surely the inside had been better maintained.

“Is there any central heat or air?” Maddie asked.

“No,” Max said. “But a lot of the wall units still work.” He said this with a certain amount of pride.

“South Florida Art Deco homes were built to make the most of cross breezes,” Avery pointed out, though she wasn’t sure whom she was trying to reassure. “And the walls are thick, though probably not as thick as Bella Flora’s.” Avery turned to Max, who had slung his jacket over one shoulder and was once again mopping at his brow. “I’m assuming the house was built around 1938 or ’39. Do you have any idea who designed it?”

“Henry Hohauser,” he said without hesitation. “We bought it from the people he built it for.”

“It’s a Hohauser?” Deirdre said, perking up. “That should up the price significantly when it’s ready to go on the market.”

An odd look passed over Max Golden’s face. Once again he fiddled with the unlit cigar.

Dustin began to cry in Maddie’s arms. He reached out toward his mother, who was filming the others staring at
the house and talking. The film crew filmed her filming them.

Following behind Max, who now clung to the wobbly handrails, they started upward. Avery sent up a small prayer that the interior of The Millicent would be in better shape than the stairs that now swayed and shuddered beneath their feet.

Inside, the air was thick with trapped humidity and smelled of too little air-conditioning and the underuse of cleaning products.

There were three bedrooms, each with a small kitchenette. The two bedrooms on the west side of the house shared a Jack-and-Jill bath.

“Do you mind if I open a window?” Nicole asked in the third bedroom. Her face had taken on a greenish tinge.

Avery had been doing her best to breathe only through one nostril. Which was no easy task when you were also trying not to hyperventilate.

“Here, let me.” Max shuffled over to a block of casement windows. The first handle he grasped came off in his hand. He couldn’t budge the second. Avery could barely keep herself from rushing over to help him when he put all of his weight into the third. All of them relaxed slightly when he managed to crank that window open a few inches.

Max turned on the room’s wall air conditioner, which made noise as if it were on. Nothing stirred.

The baby started fussing in earnest. Avery had a bad feeling that her face looked as horrified as the others’ and, of course, she was wearing ridiculously short shorts and what was now a sweat-stained halter top.

Max too was drooping, his earlier banter and stage persona long gone as he led them out to the eastern deck, where they stared out over the bow in the direction of the night-shrouded Atlantic.

“This would be a great place to watch the sunrise,” Madeline said. “The ocean’s only a few blocks away.”

Avery winced at the suggestion. She was not now, and never intended to be, a morning person.

“I have to agree that sunset toasts seem a lot more civilized,” Deirdre said, referring to their ritual at Bella Flora. “And I don’t think I could bear watching Avery eat Cheez Doodles that early in the morning. It was bad enough at sundown.”

Madeline and Nicole laughed.

“There’s never a bad time for Cheez Doodles,” Avery scoffed. “I’m pretty sure it says so right on the bag.”

Max mopped at his forehead. His cheeks seemed even more sunken.

Cradled in his grandmother’s arms, Dustin whimpered and yawned. His eyelashes brushed his cheeks.

“I think we’ve done enough for today,” Avery said. “Let’s divvy up the rooms and get a good night’s sleep.” As tired as she was, she knew she’d be spending most of the night open-eyed and praying that the bottom of the house was in better shape than the top. She did not want to see it for the first time with the Lifetime crew documenting her reactions.

“What time do you want to get started tomorrow, Kyra?” she asked, intentionally ignoring Troy and Anthony. “Nine or nine-thirty?” She emphasized the latter, which would give her more time for a quiet walk-through and a chance to rough out a schedule, and was relieved when Kyra chose nine-thirty.

“Does that work for you, Max?” Madeline asked.

“Perfect,” Max said, the relief etched clearly on his face. “I’ll see you in the morning, kiddos. There should be clean sheets in all of the bedrooms.” He tilted his captain’s hat in their general direction and headed toward the gangplank staircase.

The women looked at one another and Avery knew she wasn’t the only one who would have liked to help him down the stairs; just as she knew he would have rejected such an offer.

Dustin let out a serious wail and reached for his mother. Kyra set down her camera and reached for her son. “That’s a wrap,” she said as she held the baby against her, his back to the network camera.

“But…” Troy began, his camera still raised atop his shoulder.

“I said, we’re done,” Kyra repeated in much the same tone that an officer might command an underling to “stand down.” She continued to stare at him until he finally lowered his camera. “We’ll pick up again tomorrow morning at nine-thirty if you want to come back then.”

“We have instructions to stay here and be available to shoot twenty-four/seven,” Troy said, shoving a hand through his hair. “I assumed we’d be assigned rooms on-site.”