Beach Town (42 page)

She thought about things—not about Sawyer standing here, begging her to go to dinner, but flashing back to the scene a few minutes earlier: Eb Thibadeaux hurling one last accusation at her. How could she really have thought his opinion of her would change? And why was his approval something she so desperately needed?

Funny, she'd felt that way about Sawyer once. Pined for him, really. Every time he'd pushed her away it had made her want him more. How sick was that?

“Greer?” Sawyer glanced over his shoulder, toward the dining room, where they could hear Bryce and Vanessa chatting.

“I've missed you. Crazy, huh?” He touched a strand of her hair, let it curl around his little finger. Sometimes, when they were in bed together, just before he dropped off to sleep, Sawyer would coil her hair around his fingers.

What was crazy was the fact that right now he was standing there, touching her, telling her he missed her. And she felt … nothing. Not the searing rage that had burned in her chest for months and months after the breakup, not the bone-bruising sadness and sense of loss. She felt nothing.

“How's Erica?” Greer asked.

He quirked an eyebrow, then shook his head. “I suppose that's fair. I haven't seen Erica in over a year.”

“I guess she must have healed you, huh?”

“You probably don't want to hear this, but Erica actually helped me a lot. Helped me understand myself, what drives me, why I have problems connecting with people.”

“You didn't seem to have any problem connecting with her that morning I walked in on the two of you,” Greer said.

His face changed and the charming mask slipped, just a little. “I see you haven't changed. Still want to point fingers, lay blame. Okay. I get it. I guess that's the reason you're alone. Why you'll probably always be alone.”

“How do you know I'm alone?” she asked, surprised.

He took a step backwards. “Forget it. I thought maybe there was a chance for us. My bad.”

“No, seriously,” Greer said. “What? You were checking me out?”

“I saw the stories in the trades, heard the talk. After that fire up in Paso Robles. I actually felt bad for you. And then I saw Lise's obituary. I really did call, you know.”

“Okay. Thanks, I guess.”

“Never mind.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Run along after Mayor McCheese.”

“Don't call him that,” Greer said.

He raised that eyebrow again. “So it's like that. Wow, Greer. What? You've gone native?”

“Maybe. Maybe I've finally got some skin in the game.”

 

49

Eb pounded the steering wheel with his fist. He'd blown it with Greer. Again. And why? Because he was angry and disgusted—at himself, for failing to see the handwriting on the wall. At all the Vanessa Littrells and Bryce Levys of the world. And especially at all the slick-haired Sawyer the lawyers of the world.

He could still see the stung look on Greer's face, as though he'd hauled off and slapped her, back there on Seahorse Key.

Why had he insinuated she'd known her old boyfriend would be at the meeting? He'd seen her face when she encountered him. Her face had gone pale and still, two bright pink spots blooming on her cheeks. Almost like that first morning in her room at the motel, when she'd spotted the roach on her pillow.

So why lash out at her? Why blame Greer when he was the one to blame? Clearly he'd been outgunned back at Vanessa's house.

He pounded the steering wheel again, glanced at the speedometer, and realized that in his anger he'd floored it and was now doing nearly eighty. It wouldn't do to have one of Arnelle Bottoms's officers pull him over for speeding.

Eb eased off the gas pedal, but he couldn't stop thinking about Greer.

 

50

Greer was so absorbed in the legal complexities of the city's fire code that the sharp rapping on her motel room door caused her to literally leap off the bed.

“Hey, it's me,” CeeJay said in a low voice. “Let me in, okay?”

She unfastened the chain latch and CeeJay pushed her way inside, closing and locking the door behind her. She was dressed in her bikini, with a towel wrapped around her waist.

“Can I hang out in here for a while?”

“What's going on?” Greer asked.

“Just some creeper hitting on me,” CeeJay said, moving over to the window, where she parted the venetian blind slats to peer out into the corridor.

“Creepers hit on you all day, every day,” Greer said.

“Right. Usually, I handle this stuff. I either shut a guy down or, sometimes, I just roll with it, to see if he can come up with something original. But this guy would not let up.”

She closed the blind and stepped back from the window. “Okay, he's gone. I just saw him leave on a golf cart.”

“Who was it? Somebody on the crew?”

CeeJay moved to the bathroom, where she was combing her damp hair. “I don't think so. I've never seen him around before. I was swimming laps, hoping my new fella would happen along and decide to join me. Minding my own business, right? And I got the sensation that I was being watched. But there was nobody around. And then I saw the guy. He was on one of the chaise lounges, in the corner by that one big clump of palm trees, and he was sitting there, watching me, drinking beer. He'd drink one down, throw the bottle in the bushes, then open another one. I could hear the bottles clinking as he tossed 'em.

“It spooked me so bad I kept swimming, hoping somebody would come along. Finally my legs were cramping up, so I got out of the pool, and this guy is standing there, holding my towel, like he's going to dry me off.”

“Eww,” Greer said.

“I tell him no thanks, and then he starts rubbing my back with the towel!”

“Double eww.”

“I take my towel and walk over to the chair where I left my stuff, and he's right there, hitting on me, offering me one of his beers. Wants to know if I'm working on the movie, if I'm staying here. I'm giving him no information, of course, just being vague. I tell him I'm waiting for my boyfriend to join me, but he still doesn't take the hint. Finally, the guy is acting so sketchy I tell him I have to go because I have an important business call to make. I grab my stuff and start heading for my room, then I realize he's following me!”

“So you lead him to my door?” Greer asked. She went back to the window and peeked outside, but the corridor was deserted.

“Sorry. I didn't know what else to do. I figured he wasn't going to break in on two of us.”

“What did he look like?”

“Big, muscle-bound type. With a little pigtail. Like, in another life, somebody who's not me would consider him good-looking.” CeeJay shuddered.

Greer sat back down on the bed where she'd been working. “That's Jared Thibadeaux.”

“Eb's brother?”

“And Allie's dad. He's staying here. I wonder if I should let Ginny know he was bothering one of the guests here?”

“No,” CeeJay said quickly. “It's no biggie..”

She sat down on the only chair in the room and pointed at the cardboard pizza box on the dresser. “I thought you hated the pizza place.”

“I do, but this was a desperation dinner. After the meeting at Vanessa's today, I'm so behind on work it's pathetic.”

“How did it go?”

“That depends on your perspective. If you're Bryce and Vanessa, it went great. They got everything they wanted, and more. If you're Eb, it went lousy.”

“But how was it for you?”

Greer uncapped a bottle of water and took a drink. “It was … different. I knew Vanessa had hired a lawyer from L.A. that Bryce recommended. What I didn't know was that it was Sawyer.”

CeeJay whipped her head around. “No way!”

“Way.”

“I would have liked to have seen that,” CeeJay said with a chuckle.

“It wasn't pretty. I nearly wet my pants when I got to the house and Vanessa casually mentioned his name. It was all I could do to pretend I was cool. And then it got worse. Sawyer basically mowed Eb down, buried him in a blizzard of legalese—writ of mandamus, conflict of interest, lease termination. He did everything but slice Eb up and serve him on a platter with a slice of lemon.”

CeeJay was fastening a bath towel around her damp hair. She looked like a movie star. She always looked like a movie star.

“How did Eb take it?”

Greer shook her head, remembering the way he'd looked at her back at Seahorse Key. “He thinks I had something to do with bringing Sawyer out here to humiliate him and get that damned demo permit.”

“Oh man,” CeeJay said. “That sucks.” She sat down on the bed next to Greer and crossed her legs Indian style. She nudged Greer in the ribs. “So. How did he look?”

“Eb? He looked like he'd been run over by a bulldozer.”

“No. Sawyer.”

“He looked okay. Some gray in his hair … just enough to make him look distinguished.”

“Knowing that weasel, he probably has it colored that way.”

Greer laughed. “He wanted me to go to dinner. I begged off.”

“Good for you. What else?”

“He told me he's not with Erica anymore but that, thanks to her, he has a whole new level of connectedness.”

“Whole new level of bullshit, more like,” CeeJay said. “What a waste of a penis that guy is.”

“It was good on one level, though,” Greer said. “It made me realize how over him I am.”

CeeJay patted her on the knee. “That's my girl. But what about Eb?”

“Nothing. The good news is I'm over Sawyer. The bad news is I have a schoolgirl crush on a guy who won't give me the time of day.”

“Oh, honey. He'll come around. How could he resist a package like you?”

“Same old story. I am
so
messed up.” Greer gave her best friend a crooked smile. “Hey. Maybe I should call Erica. I bet she could help me feel connected and fix me right up.”

“Ha!” CeeJay flipped the lid on the pizza box, looked inside, and shuddered. “Enough of this moping around about boys. Let's go get some real food. I'll even buy.”

“I can't,” Greer said with a sigh. “I've got a ton of paperwork to do before the demo scene.”

“Bryce is really going to blow up that cool old casino, huh?”

“That's what he says. Thanks to Sawyer, it looks like it's going to happen. Vanessa is calling the shots. Eb signed the permit. Jake Newman is here, checking it out for the big blow.”

“What about Sherrie Seelinger? I thought she was threatening to shut off the money fountain.”

“As far as I know, the blow is a go.”

*   *   *

The yellow fluorescent light in Eb Thibadeaux's office in the Hometown Market flickered and buzzed. He had a stack of invoices to check, and e-mails about city business that needed to be answered, but instead he'd been researching historic preservation guidelines on the Internet, grasping at some straw that might help save the casino.

“Eb?” Bobby Stephens, the store's assistant manager, stood in the open doorway. He was young, not even thirty, but Bobby was a local kid who'd worked his way up from bag boy to management. Right now he looked supremely uncomfortable.

“Hey, Bobby. What's shaking?” Eb motioned for the manager to sit down, but Bobby darted forward and placed a stack of cash register receipts on the desktop, each with a hastily scrawled signature on the bottom.

“What's this?”

“Uh, well, your brother Jared's been coming in this week, buying groceries, and he, uh, said he'd cleared it with you to just sign the receipts. He said your family always had a house account here. Roseanne, she didn't know any different, so she's been letting him do it, but I thought maybe I should check with you.”

Eb leafed through the receipts. His brother's purchases came as no surprise. Four cartons of cigarettes, lunch meat, bread, Doritos, deli stuff, and three cases of beer. Imported beer. In all, Jared had managed to charge nearly three hundred dollars' worth of supplies in just a few days' time.

He felt a slow burn in his gut.

“Thanks, Bobby,” he said finally. “I'll handle this. But let Roseanne and the other girls know, the next time Jared comes in here, we don't have house accounts, and there's no credit. If he has any questions, tell them to send him to me.”

“Right.” Bobby nodded and backed out the doorway.

*   *   *

He was in the back room, using a box cutter to open cases of canned goods that had come in on the delivery truck earlier in the day, when he heard his cell phone ringing in the office. Eb hurried to the desk, and he felt a flutter of happiness when he saw the caller ID screen. Allie Thibadeaux.

“Hey, Al,” he said.

“Hey, bro. Sorry, it's me, not Allie. How 'bout giving me a ride home?” His brother's voice was thick, the words slurred. “The damned golf cart ran out of juice and I'm kinda stranded.”

Eb's first impulse was to disconnect. If Jared was stranded, let him stay that way. Maybe he'd wander away and never find his way back.

“Where are you?”

“Aw hell, I'm not sure. Lemme see. It's been a long time since I was home, you know? Okay. Yeah. I'm standing in front of Old Man Crowley's house.”

“Crowley? You're over on Palmetto? What are you doing way over there?”

“Shit. I dunno.”

There was a pause. Eb heard the phone drop, and the line went dead. A moment later, Jared called back.

“Sorry. Had to take a leak. Look, if you're gonna get all pissy about it, I'll just call Gin.”

“No. Stay right there,” Eb said. “I'm on my way.”

*   *   *

Palmetto was a narrow street, and the live oaks on either side made a thick canopy of branches that threatened to blot out what little moonlight seeped through the leaves.