Beach Town (3 page)

Five minutes later she handed her credit card and driver's license to the teenager who was running the kayak rental stand.

“Ever been in a kayak before?” the kid asked, looking her up and down.

She wasn't exactly dressed for a boating expedition. She wore white capris, a black sleeveless T-shirt, and her red Keds. She tucked her credit card in her pocket and her cell phone in her bra.

“Lots of times,” she lied. He shrugged, handed her a neon orange life vest and an aluminum double-edged paddle. “We close at seven. If you're not tied up here by ten of, I gotta charge another seventy-five bucks.”

“I just want to take a little spin around, get my bearings for the week.”

He hefted a kayak off the aluminum rack, dumped it in the water, and helped her climb down into what looked like nothing more than a pregnant blue banana.

The kayak wobbled wildly, and she had to clamp her lips together to keep from screeching. He stuck his foot onto the end of it, steadying it. “Lots of times, huh?”

“I've seen it done lots of times,” she said lamely.

He gave her the short course on balancing and paddling. Ten minutes later, she was making for the end of the pier, glancing over her shoulder, praying the water would stay calm and that she wouldn't be seen.

As she nudged the kayak up to the landing, a huge pelican squawked and took off, landing a few yards away, giving her a malevolent stare. She paddled close to the pier, stood up, and the kayak began to wobble crazily.

She dove desperately for the concrete pier, and somehow made an imperfect landing.

Greer sat on the pier for a moment, gathering her wits and her courage. She checked her tied line to make sure it was secure, then dashed toward the casino building. A rope was stretched across the stairs leading up to the casino deck, and a faded
NO TRESPASSING
sign was fastened to it.

She stepped nimbly over the rope and scampered up the steps. She was on the side of the building, in a sort of open-air pavilion. Round concrete picnic tables and concrete benches were spattered with bird droppings, and another faded red and white awning shaded what was left of a refreshment stand. But the windows were boarded up now. A plate glass door to the left of the stand had sheets of plywood nailed across it. She stood on tiptoes but couldn't see inside.

A narrow wooden catwalk ran across the back side of the casino, with large bay windows overlooking the water. Two windows had been broken out and ineffectively patched over with peeling strips of silver duct tape. She pulled at a strip and it came off in her hand.

The window jamb was a good four feet up from the floor of the catwalk. The stucco walls offered no hint of a handhold, and it was definitely too high to jump. She walked a few yards down the catwalk, to a service door. Two galvanized steel trash cans were bolted to the wall, and a collection of old wooden milk crates was haphazardly stacked in the alcove that sheltered the door.

She grabbed two crates. Using them as a step stool, she vaulted over the windowsill without looking, and promptly fell flat on her ass on the wooden floor, a good five feet below.

If Greer hadn't already had the breath knocked out by her fall, the interior of the Cypress Key Casino would have done the trick.

She crawled to her hands and knees, and stood slowly. The late afternoon sunlight streamed through salt-streaked windows, casting a moody golden glow on the cracked plaster walls.

This had once been a grand old place, Greer realized. The high, vaulted ceiling was set off by heavily carved wooden beams, and dust-covered ceiling fans hung from long metal rods. The floors beneath her feet were scarred and littered with what looked like more bird droppings, but at one time this had been a highly polished maple dance floor.

On the south side of the cavernous room was a raised bandstand, with a threadbare fringed and swagged red velvet curtain pushed to one side. Behind the bandstand was an impressionistic painted pastel mural of jazz musicians, reminiscent of pre-Castro Havana.

On the north wall, opposite the bandstand, stood a varnished dark wooden bar. Yellowing signs tacked to the wall behind it advertised snacks, sandwiches, beer, and something called setups. Nothing on the menu board cost more than fifty cents.

Greer pulled her phone from her bra and began clicking photos, mindful of the time and the waning light. At first, she concentrated on the bandstand and its mural, and then the bar.

When she rotated around to capture the rest of the ballroom, she noticed a large illuminated sign hanging by chains from the ceiling on the north end of the building—a sign for bingo. Thus explaining why this was called a casino.

Rows of round wooden tabletops with fold-up legs, and wooden folding chairs, were stacked against the wall beneath the
BINGO
sign.

On the opposite side of the room she spotted a door with an inset glass window. Crossing to it, she peered inside and glimpsed what must have been the casino's office. A large metal desk stood on one wall, and in the middle of the room stood a rolling metal cart holding a huge, old-school movie projector. She spun around and saw that, mounted on the wall high above the bandstand mural, was what looked like a pull-down movie screen.

At one time, this must have been the epicenter of culture for the community of Cypress Key.

For a moment, she stood in the empty old building, imagining it in its heyday, picturing couples who looked suspiciously like Bogie and Bacall, or even Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, dancing cheek to cheek as an orchestra played big band tunes of the era.

The light in the room changed, flaring orange. Alarmed, Greer glanced down at her phone. She had ten minutes to get back to the dock. She clicked off a few more photos on her phone and then, regretfully, pulled a folding chair up to the window to make her escape.

 

3

Job one was to find housing—for herself and the cast and crew of
Beach Town.
Cypress Key was only about a mile long, with two motels and a couple of condo complexes with several vacation rental signs posted out front.

The Silver Sands looked like it might fit the bill.

It wasn't much to look at. A trio of mint-colored two-story concrete block units formed a horseshoe surrounding a courtyard with a small garden and an even smaller pool. But it was right on the Gulf, which was a plus, and it had a blinking neon
VACANCY
sign, which sealed the deal, since it was starting to get dark and she was hungry and tired. She snapped some photos and texted them to Bryce.

She followed a wooden sign pointing to the motel's office, which looked like it had actually been carved out of the last two ground-floor units on the far end of the motel.

A buzzer sounded as she pushed open the door, and a silver-haired woman seated behind the desk looked up from the paperback book she'd been reading.

“Need a room?”

“Yes, please,” Greer said. “Just a single.”

“Traveling alone?”

“That's right.”

“In for the weekend?” The woman turned to an old-fashioned wooden mail rack mounted on the wall, and studied the numbers. “I don't have anything right now with a Gulf view.”

“That's all right,” Greer said wearily. “I mostly just want a clean bed and a hot shower. Do you have a weekly rate?”

“I can give you the AAA rate. That's four hundred ninety dollars.”

“Really?” Greer tried not to look shocked She'd paid half that for a single night back in Destin. “Okay, that would be fine.”

She handed over her American Express card, but the woman shook her head. “We don't take that one.”

“Visa?”

“That'll work. I'll need a driver's license too.”

Greer studied the older woman as she took down her billing information. She was rail thin, with leathery skin that bespoke a life spent in the Florida sun. Her silver hair was cropped in a pixie cut, and her gray eyes were flinty behind a pair of steel-rimmed glasses. She was dressed in a sleeveless white cotton blouse and neatly pressed blue jeans.

“You got a car?”

“Yes, a Kia.”

She handed Greer a hot pink paper parking pass. “Put that on your windshield.”

“Will do.”

Now the woman passed her a clipboard with a single sheet of paper, which appeared to be a hundredth-generation photocopy. She tapped four different spaces on the paper. “Initial here, here, and here, and sign here, that you understand the rules.”

Greer scanned the page, then initialed a statement that pledged that she was over the age of twenty-one, would not allow more than four guests to sleep in her room, would not smoke in her room or play loud music after 10:00 p.m. Lastly, she pledged not to clean fish anyplace other than the designated fish cleaning station.

“College kids,” the woman said, by way of explanation.

She handed Greer a key with a plastic Silver Sands Motel fob. “I'm Ginny Buckalew, the owner, manager, and head housekeeper.”

“And I'm Greer. Is there a place nearby that I can get a quick dinner?”

“Walk up one block and over another, and that's Tony's. Good clam chowder. Another block over, you got Wong's, which is so-called Chinese. I never seen anybody Chinese coming or going from that place, so I'd skip it if I were you. Right next to them is the pizza place. It's fast and it's cheap and that's the best thing I can say for it. Captain Jack's has decent seafood, but they water down the drinks. The Cypress Key Inn probably has the best food, but it's not cheap.”

“Where do you like to eat around town?” Greer asked.

“At home,” Ginny said. And for a moment, Greer could swear the older woman cracked a smile.

“Anyplace else?”

“Captain Jack's is okay,” Ginny relented. “And it's fast. But they close at nine on weeknights, so you'd better get going if you want dinner.”

“Got it,” Greer said.

She was halfway down the walk toward her car, but doubled back to the office.

“One more thing, Ginny. You've got Wi-Fi, right?”

“Wi-Fi? We don't even have caller ID.”

*   *   *

Room number seven was what some people would call Spartan. Ceramic tile floor, cinder block walls. Aluminum-framed jalousie windows looked out onto the courtyard, with a hulking air conditioner poking out the middle window.

The decor was early thrift shop: a double bed with a polyester quilt in a Day-Glo floral pattern, mismatched brown laminate nightstands. A triple dresser held a television so old it actually had rabbit ear antennae. There was an Early American–style desk with a rickety wooden kitchen chair, and beside the desk stood a rusty dorm-size refrigerator topped with a microwave oven and a doll-sized coffeepot.

Equally style impaired was the bathroom, with bubblegum pink tile floors, a turquoise sink and commode, and a narrow shower stall.

Still, the room was scrupulously clean. She turned the faucet in the bathroom, and five minutes later the water got hot. She scrubbed her face and looked in the mirror. The humidity had turned her dark blond hair into a frizzy puffball. She pulled it into a tight ponytail and jammed a baseball cap on her head. Her career had taken her to lots of much better hotels, and a few that were much worse than this.

*   *   *

At Captain Jack's she ordered broiled redfish, which the menu promised was locally caught, with sides of coleslaw and hush puppies and, mindful of Ginny's warning, two glasses of the house white wine. She had the restaurant almost to herself, with only two other tables still occupied.

While she waited for her dinner, she checked her e-mail. There were three new messages from Bryce Levy, wanting to know how soon she could have her locations locked in.

“Soon,” Greer muttered to herself.

There was an e-mail from CeeJay too.

Bryce showed me the pix. Gonna be an amazing project. Guess who's doing the hair and makeup for Beach Town? Uh-huh. Together again.

Having CeeJay on location would be great. She and Claudia Jean Antinori had met years earlier, back when Lise had gotten Greer a gig buying props for a short-lived Disney Channel sitcom and CeeJay was working her first job as a hairstylist on the same show, a puerile piece of crap called
Hall Monitor.
She'd bonded instantly with the loud-mouthed purple-haired chick from Traverse City, Michigan. This was even before Claudia Jean had morphed into CeeJay Magic, one of the most in-demand hair and makeup artists in Hollywood.

There was a second e-mail from CeeJay, with a PS on the subject line.

Make sure you book us a decent place to stay. Bryce is kinda picky about this kind of stuff.

Greer wondered how Bryce would feel about signing an affidavit that he wouldn't clean fish in his motel room.

She was about to put her phone away when a new e-mail appeared in her in-box. The sender was somebody called MotorMouth. Just more spam, she thought, but as she was about to hit the Delete button, she saw the subject line and froze.

From your dad, Clint Hennessy

Not tonight,
she thought, hitting the Save as New icon on her phone. She'd had a long day, a long week, a longer month. Whatever he wanted, it could wait. Like she'd waited, all those years when it mattered.

She finished her dinner, declined coffee or dessert, paid her tab, and walked outside.

Cypress Key rolled up its sidewalks early on weeknights. When she left the Inn, the pizza place still had a lit
OPEN
sign. A few people strolled past, but otherwise it seemed to her that she had the town all to herself.

All that would change very soon, she thought, once the circus came to town.

*   *   *

The motel pool was an eerie turquoise-glowing blob in the darkened courtyard. The smell of chlorine mixed with the heady scent of a waxy-petaled white flowering vine twining around the wrought iron porch posts. A couple of children splashed in the pool's shallow end, their parents perched nearby on cheap vinyl chairs, sipping beers and talking quietly.