Savannah Breeze (12 page)

Three hours
and $1,600 later, I stood in the checkout line at Home Depot and handed over my Visa card to the cashier with a trembling heart and shaking hands. I'd always been conservative with my credit, scrupulously paying off bank card balances every month, but as I stood in that line, it suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea whether or not Reddy had thought to help himself to my credit cards while he was looting the rest of my personal finances.

I was standing very still as the computer digested my credit card, just waiting for a big net to drop down over my head and a huge neon arrow to start flashing “Credit Declined.” But nothing happened. The cashier handed back my Visa card, I signed the receipt, then bolted for the parking lot, just in case the credit gods changed their minds at the last minute.

By noon, nearly every inch of my being was covered with dirt, grease, or paint spatters. Unit two, it turned out, was a long way from being habitable. It did, as Harry had promised, have working plumbing and wiring. And a roof. But the rest of the place was a shambles.

“Home sweet hovel,” I mumbled, standing in the middle of my new residence, taking stock. To call the space a cottage would have been charitable. It was a smallish, rectangular room. There was a stunted, fly-specked picture window that looked out on a sand dune, which could, I supposed, count as a beach view. The wind whistled through gaps in the window frame.

“A little caulk will take care of that,” Harry noted as he saw me stuffing newspaper in the cracks.

The wall opposite the window had been designed as a sleeping alcove, with built-in shelves for lamps and a bookshelf headboard. The whole unit was covered with forties vintage knotty-pine paneling, gone nearly black with age.

Another alcove held the abbreviated kitchen, which was identical to the one in unit seven—the one Weezie had found so charming. I opened the tiny refrigerator door and gasped at the stench that flowed out. But Harry patted the door lovingly. “Works great,” he said. “Feel that cold air? A little bleach and it'll be good as new.”

He knelt down in front of the wall heater, fiddled with a knob, and after five minutes, of ominous metallic banging noises, the exposed heating coils glowed red with heat. In another five minutes, we had to open the door and all the windows to cool things down a little. “Heat's fine,” he pronounced.

The bathroom was, as far as I was concerned, a total loss. The porcelain coating of the cast-iron tub was pitted and gray, the tile floors chipped and stained, and the pedestal sink had a bowl but no faucets.

My face went pale as I stood there, wondering what I'd gotten myself into.

What would Mama say?

Maybe, I thought, it was time to let my grandparents in on my situation. Once I explained, they would welcome me back to the sofa bed at Magnolia Manor. And I'd be grateful, this time around. At least at my grandparents' house, I'd had indoor plumbing, heat, and some sort of amenities for basic hygiene. This, I thought, was worse than the worst public bathroom I'd ever experienced in my youthful backpacking days in Europe.

“Okay,” Harry said cheerfully. “Better get cracking if you're planning on moving in tonight.”

I spent the next two hours with a crowbar, pry bar, and blowtorch,
peeling back and ripping up layers of disintegrating carpet and crumbling linoleum tiles, only to find underneath not the heart-pine floors I'd secretly anticipated, but instead, deeply scarred floors that were a patchwork combination of oak, pine, and some other, unidentified kind of wood. Trailer siding, maybe.

“Oh God,” I said, moaning. “This is useless.”

“Now what?” Harry asked, looking in from the bathroom, where he'd been installing the hot-water heater and the new toilet. I pointed at the floor.

“We could put down some new carpet, but that's going to eat into your budget.”

“No more carpet. I've got a better idea. Have we got any white enamel?”

“Sure,” he said. “Gallons of it. Out in the toolshed. You're gonna paint the floor?”

“The floor, the walls, the trim, anything that doesn't move,” I said.

I found a long-handled extension for the paint roller, a five-gallon bucket of white latex enamel, and reserves of energy I didn't know I possessed. I tackled the walls first.

“Hey,” Harry protested, looking in again from the bathroom. “That's authentic pine. You're ruining it.”

“Stick to the plumbing,” I advised him. “And I'll stick to the design decisions.”

The old paneling seemed to suck up every drop of paint in my bucket, but within an hour, I had the walls covered.

“Not bad,” Harry decided, tracking through the room with some faucets he'd salvaged from the toolshed. He pointed to a corner near the sleeping alcove. “But you missed a spot.” I took the roller and promptly painted it, and then added a stripe to the front of his gray T-shirt.

“You were warned,” I said.

He just shook his head and walked away.

At three, I took a lunch break, and called Weezie to report in.

“How's it going?” she asked.

“It's going,” I said.

“I told Mama about your little project,” Weezie said.

“She knows? About Reddy, and all that?”

“No! I just told her that you've bought the Breeze Inn and have moved out there,” Weezie assured me. “She said she and Daddy spent a weekend out at the Breeze Inn when they were first married. Called it her little honeymoon cottage. She's dying to come take a look. She wants to know how she can help out.”

“I don't know,” I said dubiously. “It's pretty awful.”

“Why don't you just plan to come into town and spend tonight with us?” Weezie asked. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “She's in the other room, making tuna-noodle casserole. If our friendship ever really meant anything to you, you'd come over here and help me flush that slop down the commode.”

“As alluring as that invitation is,” I said, “I'm gonna take a rain check. I really just wanted to know if you can put some furniture together for me.”

“Furniture?” Weezie laughed. “Does Ethel Kennedy have a black dress? Honey, I have been mentally decorating that whole motel ever since I laid eyes on it. You just tell me what time you want me there with the truck.”

“I can't pay you anything,” I warned. “Not right now. I just loaded up my Visa card at the Home Depot today, and there's no telling how much more I'm going to have to spend to get the rest of these units whipped into shape.”

“Pay me?” Weezie hooted. “Are you forgetting the interest-free loan you made me when I was starting up Maisie's Daisy? How you bailed me out of jail after that awful night out at Beaulieu, when the cops were sure I'd killed Caroline DeSantos?”

“That's ancient history,” I pointed out. “You paid me back as soon as you got on your feet. But I don't honestly know when or if I'll be able to pay you back.”

“You let me worry about that,” Weezie scolded. “Just tell me what all you need.”

“There's not room for much. A bed, for sure. Dresser, table, and a couple of chairs. Something else to sit on. And a big bottle of ibuprofen. Every muscle in my body is screaming for mercy, and I haven't even gotten to the kitchen or the bathroom yet.”

“Consider it done,” Weezie said. “Want me to bring the furniture out tonight?”

“Doubtful,” I said. “The paint won't be dry enough. I'll call you tomorrow.”

“Wait,” Weezie said. “God, I almost forgot. James called. He needs to talk to you and your cell phone isn't working.”

“I turned it off. Can't pay the bill. Did James say what he wanted to tell me?”

“Sorry. He just said to tell you to give him a call.”

I was dialing James when Harry walked in. I hurriedly put down the receiver.

“Your toilet's hooked up. And you've got hot water,” he announced. He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, grabbed the keys to his station wagon, and whistled for Jeeves, who'd been napping in his recliner.

“See you later,” he said, heading for the door with Jeeves hot on his heels.

“Wait.” I followed him to the door. “You're leaving? What about all the work we've got to do yet in unit two?”

“It'll get there,” he said. “There's more paint out in the shed. And when you quit for the night, make sure you lock it up. All my power tools and fishing gear's out there, and I don't want anybody walking off with it. Stuff's expensive.”

“Where are you going?” I demanded. “It's only three o'clock. I can't fix that place up all by myself. I thought we had a deal.”

“We do,” Harry said, getting into the station wagon and starting the engine. “My part's done. The rest is up to you. Guess you've got
the sofa for at least another night. And don't forget to bring in enough firewood. See you.”

He spun out of the parking lot in a cloud of dust.

I stood there cussing him for a minute, then went back to the manager's office to call my lawyer.

“Please tell me you've got some good news,” I said when James Foley came on the line.

“All right,” he said amicably. “I just got back from the doctor's office. My cholesterol's down. And I've lost two pounds since my last checkup. Jonathan has been making me walk almost every day in Forsyth Park.”

“I'm glad,” I said. “But I was hoping for some good news that concerned me.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, sure. Jay Bradley thinks he may have a line on Reddy.”

“Where is he? Have they arrested him?”

“Not even close,” James said with a little too much cheer. “Jay's pretty sure he's down in Florida somewhere. But it's a big state.”

“I know you said the cops think he ripped off another woman down there, but wouldn't he have left the state after that? Like he did with me?”

“If he had any sense, he would have left,” James agreed. “But Florida's nice in the wintertime. All that sunshine. And ocean. And all those big, beautiful boats.”

“Boats? What's that got to do with anything?”

“Jay Bradley went back to talk to Jimmy Yglesias, the owner of the
Blue Moon,
the yacht Roy ‘borrowed' while he was living in Savannah,” James said. “And while he was sitting in the yacht's wheelhouse, he happened to notice a little brass plaque on the yacht's steering console. ‘Sea Urchin.' So he asked about the meaning of that, and Yglesias told him that's the name of the
Blue Moon
's manufacturer. It's kind of an unusual company name. Sea Urchin. The Sea Urchin Corporation of Charlevoix, Michigan. And that's when Bradley remem
bered that woman down in Vero Beach. So he called the detective who'd worked that case to see if there'd been any new developments.”

“Had there been?”

“There weren't any new developments. But Bradley asked the detective if the Vero Beach victim owned a boat. Why, yes, the detective said, as a matter of fact, the victim's late husband owned a seventy-two-foot yacht called
Polly's Folly
. Polly Findley is the woman's name. And that's how the woman came to meet Moseley. She and some friends were having lunch aboard the
Folly
one day at the marina when Moseley pulled alongside in another boat, and struck up a conversation with her. One thing led to another, and pretty soon they were ‘keeping company.'

“Screwing, you mean,” I said bitterly.

“If you say so,” James said. “Now here's the interesting part, BeBe.
Polly's Folly
was manufactured by the Sea Urchin Corporation of Charlevoix, Michigan.”

“I guess it's interesting if you say so,” I said. “So Roy likes yachts. And wealthy women. We already knew that much.”

“We didn't know how much he likes this one specific kind of yacht,” James said.

“Janet's been doing some research on Sea Urchin. It's a very small, highly successful family-owned shipbuilder. Very high end. Everything is done by hand. These boats are considered the Bentleys of yachts. The company only builds maybe eight a year. And Roy Eugene Moseley has been involved with two Sea Urchins just in the past year.”

“Okay,” I said. “I guess that's a start. But how does that help us track down Moseley?”

“We don't know yet,” James said. “We just know Moseley likes Sea Urchin yachts. We know he was probably thinking about stealing the
Blue Moon,
until he got sidetracked with you. And there's a possibility he had the same idea about
Polly's Folly
too. He almost had Mrs.
Findley talked into letting him take it down to Costa Rica in October. But her children got wind of the plan and put a stop to it. So he settled for fleecing her instead.”

“Too bad he didn't get to steal the damn boat,” I said gloomily. “Maybe he would have sailed off into the sunset before meeting me.”

“Doubtful,” James said. “Look, BeBe, this really is good news. Bradley's talking to the Sea Urchin folks. They have a national registry of owners of their yachts. If they'll cooperate with the police, there may be a way to see if there are any other victims. Or if he's working on somebody right now. Anyway, I thought you'd be delighted that the police think they have a way to track down Moseley.”

“I'm sorry, James,” I said, regretting my sour-grapes attitude. “It's just this Breeze Inn situation has got me down. I'm tired and I'm broke, and the place is a wreck, and I've been working all day, but it's just a filthy, awful stinkhole. I don't see how I can turn it around. I really don't.” I felt myself close to tears, and when I went to wipe my eyes I noticed that my hand was streaked with paint, and now my face was surely just as streaked. I sniffed pitifully.

“Are you crying?” James asked. “Oh, child, don't start crying. You'll make me feel like a priest again. Pretty soon I'll be telling you to make a novena.”