Savannah Breeze (18 page)

Somehow, I made it
through the next twenty-four hours. In between mopping and taking reservations and running loads of sheets and towels and playing the smiling innkeeper, I kept an eye out for Harry Sorrentino, my errant “factotum.” I alternated between being frantic and furious over his whereabouts.

Half a dozen times Saturday, and again Sunday morning, I picked up the phone to call the police and report him missing. Half a dozen more times I resolved to pack up his books and clothes and tools and fling them out onto the street. How dare he take off and leave me in the lurch like this? Was he dead or drowned? I had no idea, and no idea of how to find out.

Come Sunday afternoon, I'd convinced myself I just plain didn't care where he'd gone. I was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs in front of the manager's office, enjoying the late-afternoon sun and sipping a glass of wine, when the old station wagon came chugging into the parking lot.

“Son of a bitch!” I muttered. With an effort, I stayed seated. Jeeves heard the car and came bounding out the office door, barking a greeting to his long-lost master.

“Hey, hey, sport,” Harry laughed, kneeling down to scratch the belly the dog offered. Jeeves wriggled deliriously under his touch, then jumped up and began running in circles around Harry and the station wagon.

“Hang on there, buddy,” Harry told the dog. “Let me get my stuff
unloaded.” He opened the wagon's hatch and removed half a dozen heavy-duty fishing rods, a tackle box, and a large cooler, then headed for the porch, where I was sitting.

He was sunburned, salt crusted, and filthy, and even with the polarized sunglasses he wore, I could tell he was glowing with good humor. The same could not be said of me.

“Hello,” I said coolly.

He nodded a greeting. “Hey there. Everything go okay around here?”

“Just peachy,” I said.

“Great. I'm headed for the shower,” he said. And as he walked past, I got a whiff of diesel fuel and the unmistakable scent of dead fish.

Half an hour later, barefoot and dressed in faded but clean khaki slacks and a blue work shirt, he eased himself into the Adirondack chair beside mine. He untwisted the cap on a bottle of beer and took a long slug.

“Aaaah.” He took his beer bottle and clinked it against my wineglass. “Here's to us,” he said. “The place looks great.”

“Us?”

“Yeah. We did it.” He gestured around the parking lot. “Every room, I mean suite, is full. Swear to God, I never thought the place could look like this.”

I clamped my lips together to keep from screaming, and clutched the arms of the chair to keep myself from reaching over and slapping the look of self-satisfaction off his face.

He took another gulp of beer and belched. “'Scuse me,” he said sheepishly, a moment later. “I've been living alone so long I forget my manners.”

“Have a nice weekend?” I managed.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Couldn't have gone better. How 'bout you? Any problems?”

Was he friggin' kidding me?

“Let's see,” I said, trying to sum up my list of problems. “I've been running this place single-handed for two days. I've been manager, maid, handyman, and janitor. I've unstopped the toilet in the Surfside Suite four times, fixed the dryer twice, and washed, dried, folded, and stacked approximately two hundred towels. And,” I said glaring at him, “cleaned up dog poop from the breezeway several times.”

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Jeeves gets a little anxious when I'm gone.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

He took off the sunglasses. “What?”

I took a deep breath. “You get a phone call in the middle of the night, then you just disappear for two days. On our opening weekend!”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah. But you handled it, right?”

“I didn't have much of a choice,” I said wryly. “But it would have been nice to have some help. I've never run a motel, I mean an inn, before.”

“You did fine though. Nobody's dead. The place is still standing.” He reached over and gave me a proprietary pat on the knee. “Give yourself some credit here, kid. You're a natural.”

I measured my words slowly. I didn't need another fight. But I really did want to know where he'd gone and why.

“I take it you went fishing,” I said finally.

“Yup.”

“Do fish bite around here this time of year?”

“They do if you know where to look. And I do.” He pointed toward the office. “I left you a little present in that cooler. Prettiest fillets you've ever seen. Red snapper.”

This was a first. I'd had men bring me red roses before, but never red snapper.

“Thanks,” I said. “But how? I mean, I thought the marina took your boat?”

“Shh.” He held his fingers to his lips. “Trade secret.”

“And that's all you're going to tell me?” I finally lost it. “Damnit, Harry! You've been gone for two days. I know I'm not your mother, or your lover, or any other thing. But I am your employer, and I think I deserve some explanation for where you've been and why you chose this particular weekend—the Breeze's opening weekend—to take a powder on me.”

He slouched back down in the chair. “Shit, BeBe. I just thought, you know, everything was pretty much running fine around here. We got everything fixed in time to open, and, well, hell, maybe I wasn't thinking.”

“Maybe?”

He glanced around to see if anybody was within earshot. Nobody was stirring. Most of our guests were either out partying or in their rooms recovering before getting ready to go back out for more partying.

“All right, I'll tell you where I was. But you gotta keep quiet about it,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I mean it, now. You can't tell anybody about this.”

“About what? I don't know anything to tell.”

He leaned forward. “I found the sweet spot.”

I frowned. “Is this some kind of sex club or something? Because if it is, you can just keep the tawdry details to yourself, Harry Sorrentino. I've been mixed up with one pervert in my life already, and I don't intend to have it happen again.”

“Sex? Nah, nothing like that. What I mean is, I found the ultimate honey hole.”

I jumped up out of my chair. “That's it. Get your stuff and get out. I'll have to pay you what I owe you in installments, but I want you off my property!”

He grabbed my wrist. “Hey now. Slow down, kid. Get your mind out of the gutter. I'm talking about fish. I think I found a way to get the
Jitterbug
back.”

“You did?”

“Get yourself another glass of wine,” he said. “And I'll tell you the whole deal. Oh yeah, and could you grab me a beer while you're at it?”

“You've got exactly one hour,” I told him. “The guests meet in the manager's office at five for happy hour.”

When I got back, Harry had a map unfolded across his knees. I sat down in my chair, and he spread it out across my lap. Even a landlubber like myself could tell that it was a chart showing the coast of Georgia and South Carolina.

“This here,” he said, jabbing with a finger at a swath of ocean, “is where I've been for the past two days. The snapper banks.”

“Okay.” It sounded plausible.

“But not just any spot out in the snapper banks,” he continued. “See, it's too early for good offshore fishing right now. Fish are migratory. You know that, right?”

“I know that birds are migratory, but the only thing I know about fish is the wholesale price I paid for the good stuff at the restaurant,” I said.

“But you don't understand how hard it is to find that great fishing hole,” he said, jabbing at the map again. “All the waters in this area are charted. Every decent captain on every boat knows where the fish are. And where the fish are depends on the topography of the sea bottom, on rock and coral formations, jetties, reefs, wrecks, what have you. A wreck is a huge draw for fish. But all that stuff is charted. So everybody's fighting to get out there first, to get to the good spot before the other guy. The farther out you go, the more time and money it costs.”

“To find a honey hole,” I said, catching on.

“Exactly.” He nodded happily at my newfound comprehension.

His eyes lit up. “And I found it. By God, I found it. And nobody else knows about it. That's where I went Friday night. I went out and fished that sucker.” He patted the pocket of his jeans. “You're gonna think I'm lying. Hell, I can't quite believe it myself. But in two days'
time, we caught close to two thousand pounds of red snapper and grouper. I thought the damned boat would sink under all that fish. Two thousand pounds!”

“That's good?”

“Charlie Russo's paying $3.10 a pound for red snapper,” Harry said. “Yeah, I'd call that good.”

I would too. Especially since I knew what I paid Russo's Seafood for the fish I bought from him for Guale.

“But how?” I asked. “You don't have a boat.”

He eased back into the chair. “I sorta borrowed one. Just for the two days.”

“Sorta?” I was getting a very bad feeling now. Was that how Reddy rationalized his fake ownership of the
Blue Moon
? By “sorta” borrowing it?

I shook my head. “I don't want to know any more. If you've stolen a boat, Harry, you could be in a world of trouble. And I've got enough troubles of my own right now. You're on your own with the law,” I said. And then, bitterly, “Sport.”

“Christ,” he said. “You always think the worst of me, don't you? That I'm a drunk and a thief and a lowlife?”

“You don't give me a lot of information that would lead me to think otherwise,” I said icily.

“The boat I borrowed was the
Jitterbug,
” he said. “It's my own damn boat. Is that enough information for you?”

I held the wineglass up to the sunlight and swirled the chardonnay. It was pretty crappy chardonnay, $9.99 for a liter bottle at the Tybee Market, but if you poured it into a nice glass and sipped it quickly, you didn't notice the vinegary qualities. Anyway, I'd taken to serving the chardonnay and an equally crappy merlot to the Breeze guests at my informal happy hour, along with Ritz crackers and pimento-cheese spread also from the Tybee Market.

“The marina owners gave you permission to borrow the
Jitterbug
? That's pretty generous of them.”

“Generous? Tricia Marsden wouldn't take the time to piss on me if I were on fire. No, I forgot to ask her permission this time.”

“Forgive me for quibbling over semantics, but when you borrow something without the owner's permission, isn't that called stealing?”

“Not in this case,” he said stubbornly. “Look, I took the boat because I had a certain window of opportunity this weekend. The moon was right, the tides were right. The water is warming up. And clear skies. I just had the feeling that if I could get out there, I could find the honey hole and catch me some fish. And I did. And now I can give them a thousand bucks toward what I owe them.”

“Only a thousand?” I raised an eyebrow.

“I had to buy fuel and ice and bait, and pay my mate,” Harry said. “And yeah, I kept some back, for my own living expenses. But the rest goes to Tricia.”

I should have minded my own business. But I had to know. “How'd you manage to ‘borrow' the boat without her knowing about it?”

He whistled a tuneless little ditty. “That phone call Friday night? That was a friend, letting me know Tricia was leaving to go to Florida to visit her sister for the weekend. She won't get back till tonight. But when she does, the
Jitterbug
will be right where she left it. Clean as a whistle. And what Tricia doesn't know won't hurt her.”

I heard a door open down the breezeway, and Michael and Eugene stepped out of their unit, shading their eyes against the sunlight.

“BeBe!” Michael called, stumbling in my direction. “Aspirin, darlin', stat.”

“Gotta go,” I told Harry. “Party time.”

On a sunny morning
two weeks later, I was sitting in the office at the Breeze, frowning down at the ledger. When the office door opened, I looked up, hoping to see a carload of guests who were just dying to check in.

But it was James Foley. He carried a battered leather briefcase, and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened with the smile he gave me.

“James!” I said, jumping up from the desk. “Tell me you've brought me some good news. Tell me you've gotten my house back. Tell me you've stopped those bastards at Sandcastle Realty. At least tell me you got me back my painting of Aunt Alice.”

He sighed and set his briefcase down on the counter. “BeBe, I wish I could tell you all of those things today. I'm sorry, but I can't.”

I managed a rueful smile. “Then at least tell me you'll take me to lunch.”

“That I can do,” he said. “And I'll even pay.”

Since it was such a sunny day, we decided on the Crab Shack. Over blue crabs and iced tea, James caught me up on my legal status.

“It's not all bad news,” he started. “The judge has enjoined Sandcastle from taking any action to sell or otherwise develop the Breeze Inn, based on our evidence that Reddy Millbanks acted fraudulently when he sold the option without your knowledge.”

“Thank God,” I said.

“I did,” James said, twinkling. He reached over and patted my
hand. “There's another reason I came out to see you today. I have news,” he said, lowering his voice and looking steadily into my eyes. “I think I know where to find Roy Eugene Moseley.”

It sounds hokey, but right then, I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

“Reddy? You found him?”

“Maybe,” James said. “Just maybe.”

I took a deep breath. “Where?”

“Down in Florida. Fort Lauderdale, to be exact.”

“Fort Lauderdale. Where the girls are,” I said, laughing at my own joke.

“Women,” James corrected me. “Roy Eugene Moseley likes women. Women with money, specifically. Anyway, it's not the money that took him to Fort Lauderdale. It's the boats.”

“Boats again?”

James nodded. “Fort Lauderdale is considered the boating capital of the world.”

“I didn't know that. But what about Reddy? Can the cops get to him?”

He held out a cautionary hand. “Hold on. Not so fast. Remember, I told you Detective Bradley found out that Moseley fleeced a widow in Vero Beach, right before he moved up here and met you?”

“Polly's Folly. How could I forget? I even remember that he likes Sea Urchins. So, Reddy found another rich lady with a Sea Urchin down in Fort Lauderdale?”

“Possibly,” James said. “Unlike you, Polly Findley still had lots of money left after Roy Eugene Moseley skipped town. He ripped her off, but thanks to her very suspicious children, who are very protective of their inheritance, there's still lots of money to go around.”

“How nice for her,” I said.

“Mrs. Findley's children would like to have
all
their late father's money,” James said, grinning. “Their mother, understandably, is embarrassed and humiliated by the whole tawdry affair. She'd like it for
gotten. But her children, especially her older daughter, Sandra, have no intention of dropping the matter. Sandra Findley has been dogging the Vero Beach police on an almost daily basis. When the detective down there mentioned to Sandra that Moseley had victimized another woman, in Savannah, Sandra called our own Detective Bradley to compare notes.”

“And?”

“Bradley filled her in on your situation, and then suggested that she contact me, which she did. We had a long chat this morning. Very illuminating.”

“What does she know about Reddy, I mean, Roy Eugene Moseley, that the police don't?”

“‘Know' isn't quite the correct word,” James said gently. “It's more like suspicion. But I will say this for her. Sandra Findley has two things going for her that law-enforcement people don't. One, she is very motivated. And two, she has the time and the inclination to pursue Roy Eugene Moseley. She's never married, has no children, and apparently doesn't have to work for a living.”

“Lucky girl.”

“She's obsessed with tracking down Moseley and bringing him to justice. I think she's seen too many episodes of
The Rockford Files
.”

I gripped the tabletop with my hands. “Come on, James. Quit stalling. Just tell me what you know. Or even what you think Sandra Findley thinks she knows.”

“Sorry.” James's eyes did that crinkly thing. “All right. Once Sandra talked to Jay Bradley and heard that Moseley had been living aboard a Sea Urchin here in Savannah, she decided to try that angle. She called the Sea Urchin folks in Michigan, and got the name of every yacht brokerage in Florida authorized to sell Sea Urchins. There are only two of those on the East Coast. She visited each one and showed them the only photograph she had, which was a fuzzy color snapshot taken of her mother and Moseley aboard
Polly's Folly.
”

“And?”

“Nothing,” James said. “I told you, these are very expensive yachts. The cheapest one sells new for around eight million. According to Sandra, people who buy Sea Urchins are rock stars, CEOs of multinational corporations, that kind of thing. Very high profile. Neither of the brokers had seen anybody even close to Moseley's description.”

“But you said he's in Fort Lauderdale. What makes you think that?”

“One of the yacht brokers Sandra talked to suggested that somebody like Moseley—somebody with his criminal background—probably wouldn't attempt to buy a new Sea Urchin. Prospective buyers of a yacht this expensive have to get vetted six ways to Sunday before they can get anywhere near one of these boats. All your financials are scrutinized. Bankers are called, references are checked. Not even Roy Eugene Moseley would run that risk. The broker suggested that if Moseley were going to try to buy—or even steal—a Sea Urchin, he'd do so on the secondary market.”

“I don't understand,” I admitted.

“In some ways, buying a yacht is like buying a car, in some ways, it's more like buying a house,” James explained. “If you want to buy a yacht, you can go to a broker, who is like an authorized dealer. Or, you could go to a boatyard or marina and look around. Or you could look in the classified ads. You could even go online. Sandra did all that and more. That's how she found out about BUC.”

“Buck? Like a deer? Or like a stud?”

“Neither,” James said. “BUC is an acronym for a company that serves as a multiple-listing service for yachts. They publish printed catalogs of yachts available for sale, and they also have an online listing service. And that's where Sandra found the paradox.”

“You mean, paradox like a fable?” I asked.

“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head again. “It's a boat name.
Pair-o'-Docs
—get it? Pair of doctors. One is a plastic surgeon, the other a radiologist.”

“Lame,” I said. “What happened to just naming your boat for your wife or your mama like the shrimpers down here do?”

“These doctors, between them, reportedly have seven ex-wives,” James said. “Anyway, this
Pair-o'-Docs
is a seventy-five-foot 1991 Sea Urchin that was listed on the BUC online site for the bargain price of four million.”

“That's considered cheap?”

“Very cheap,” James said. “Four million is a fire-sale price for that boat. The radiologist's wife found out he and the plastic surgeon were entertaining hookers in the yacht's master cabin. She hired a private investigator who rigged the cabin with a small voice-activated video camera, and he then took the resulting tape to her attorney, who took it to the radiologist's attorney. The wife insisted that she be given the yacht in the divorce settlement, and she then turned around and listed it for sale for four million—strictly to get revenge on her cheating ex.”

I chewed a little bit on the lemon rind from my iced tea. “What is it about big yachts and cheating men? Doesn't it all seem very phallic to you?”

James blushed again, so I let it go.

“This is a very entertaining shaggy-dog story, but you still haven't gotten around to telling me how Reddy figures into it,” I pointed out again.

“Reddy—or, I should say, a man we suspect is Roy Eugene Moseley—spent a good bit of time sniffing around the
Pair-o'-Docs
,” James said. “He apparently saw the listing on BUC, and called the doctor's ex to make an appointment to take a look.”

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“He's currently using the name Rodolfo Martinez,” James said. “Trying to pass himself off as Cuban.”

I snorted. “Reddy? Cuban? He's the ultimate white man. I've never seen anybody who looks Waspier.”

“According to Sabrina, he looks the part. Dark hair, dark tan, dark eyes.”

“Sabrina? Rodolfo? Are you sure you aren't making all of this up to distract me from my own troubles?”

“You give me too much credit,” James said. “The doctor's ex-wife is named Sabrina Berg. She found this Rodolfo character charming. Too charming. Remember, she'd already caught her husband cheating on her. She noticed things right off the bat. He arrived at the marina in a leased Jaguar. He never took off his sunglasses—not even when they were in a restaurant discussing the yacht. And he was quite vague about how he earned his living. It made her nervous. And it made her attorney nervous too.”

“What happened next?” I asked, leaning across the table. The shaggy-dog tale had suddenly become quite a compelling story.

“Nothing,” James said. “She got another offer, from a legitimate buyer, through a yacht broker, which she quickly took. She called the number this Rodolfo character had given her, just to let him know the boat had been sold, but he never returned the call. And she hasn't seen him since.”

“Damn!” I said, pounding the tabletop. “I thought you said this was good news.”

“You haven't let me finish,” James said quietly. He took a sip of iced tea. “Remember that video camera in the master cabin?”

“Don't tell me,” I said. “She has Reddy on video?”

James nodded, pleased with himself. “She's overnighting a copy of it to me. I should have it tomorrow. And there's more. The marina where the
Pair-o'-Docs
is tied up is gated, with a security shack. They write down the tag number of every car that passes through the gate. Thanks to Sandra Findley, we now have that tag number.”

“Thank God for the sisterhood of scorned women,” I said fervently. “Now what? The cops track him down, arrest him, and drag his ass back here and get me back my money, right?”

James looked down at his lunch.

“James?”

“I'm afraid it's not quite that easy,” he said.