Beach Town (21 page)

Once her hair was shiny and straight, she carefully applied what she thought of as full-on paint—foundation, blusher, eye shadow, mascara, even lip liner.

Not bad, she had to admit, admiring her own image in the cloudy glass of the bathroom mirror. She wasn't CeeJay gorgeous, but that was okay too.

Greer opened her motel room door a crack and cautiously peered down the hallway to make sure she wouldn't have another accidental Eb encounter. The coast was clear. She nodded and exchanged greetings with other crew members coming and going from their rooms.

As she passed the pool courtyard, she spotted Ginny Buckalew reclining on a lounge chair, smoking one of her Swisher Sweets. Greer waved and kept going.

*   *   *

The off-duty cop leaned out of the newly built guard shack at the entrance to Bluewater Bay. His name was Ray and he recognized her at once, of course, because she'd been the one to hire him.

“Hey, Greer,” he greeted her. He jerked his head in the direction of the quiet street on the other side of the gate. “Are they expecting you?”

“Hi, Ray. Yes, I'm going to pick up CeeJay from Bryce Levy's house.”

“Cool. I'll just call up and let them know you're coming.”

He picked up the phone and she saw him talking. A moment later he handed the phone to Greer. “She needs to talk to you.”

“CeeJay? Everything okay?”

“Oh, honey, I am sick about this, but I've got to cancel dinner. I was all dressed and ready to walk out the door, but Bryce just watched today's dailies on his laptop and he's really upset. I can't go off and leave him like this.”

A tiny alarm went off in Greer's brain. “What's wrong with the dailies?”

Silence. “I can't really talk about it right now. Just know I feel awful, missing our GNO. I'll totally make it up to you, I promise.”

“It's all right,” Greer said. “Stuff happens. I'll take a rain check.”

“You better. I'll call you in the morning. 'Kay?”

“'Kay.”

She handed the phone back to the security guard and managed a smile. “Change of plans.”

Greer drove away from Bluewater Bay, blinking back tears, hating the way she was overreacting. She'd meant it when she'd told CeeJay she understood. But she'd been looking forward to a night out and away from the set, all day. She glanced down at her carefully pressed pants and touched her carefully pressed hair. All dressed up with no place to go but home, or the closest thing to it. How pathetic was she?

The neon Silver Sands Motel sign blinked in the amethyst-colored dusk. The security guard sitting on a folding lawn chair at the entrance to the parking lot recognized her Kia and waved her in, moving his chair just far enough to one side of the crushed oyster shell drive that she could maneuver into the lot.

It was Friday night, and the crew members and a few of the cast were celebrating a night off after an intense workweek. People splashed in the pool and gathered in knots around a couple of charcoal grills. Loud rap music blasted from the open door of a room that opened to the pool, and one of the grips was handing around longnecks from a red cooler.

They were having a party, but Greer hadn't gotten the memo. Already she could envision herself changing out of her best clothes, slipping into her pj's, and trying to watch a movie or read, above the din from the celebration outside. Or maybe she'd order out and walk the block to the pizza place and eat a slice alone, at one of the tiny tables crammed up against the counter. She could already taste the burned pizza grease and sour tang of the cheap boxed wine.

Or maybe she'd have what she'd come to think of as a solo GNO—Greer's Night Out. She did a quick U-turn, and the guard scrambled to get out of her way. She thumbed her phone and tapped the GPS app for directions to My Thai in Ducktown, Florida.

 

24

Greer looked down at her GPS, then back at the building she was parked in front of. The tan stucco walls and red tile roof made it look like a Taco Bell from the eighties, and the sickly cactus planted in a bed of white gravel added to that atmosphere. But, sure enough, the sign out front—written in both English and what she presumed to be Thai—proclaimed it to be My Thai, “Now Under New Owner.”

One part of her wanted to give up and go back to Cypress Key and wallow in a piping hot bath of self-pity, but some perverse part of her wanted to see if the restaurant's interior matched its exterior. Besides, the parking lot was full, and delicious smells were wafting into the warm night air.

It couldn't hurt to go in, maybe order an appetizer, and check the place out, she decided.

Half an hour later she was nibbling on basil rolls, nam sod, and the best panang curry she'd ever tasted. She ordered a bottle of Phuket beer and settled in to enjoy the schizophrenic ambience. The interior of My Thai was what she thought of as throwback bargain basement Chinese: dusty hanging paper lanterns, red and gold screens, with cheesy gold relief panels of dragons, tigers, and phoenixes dotting the red walls. Ever the location scout, she was dying to pull out her phone and start snapping pictures, but sternly reminded herself that she was officially off duty.

Her waiter was Hispanic, and most of the restaurant's patrons looked like locals from Ducktown, or possibly even Cypress Key. Greer sat at the bar and took her time enjoying dinner, half listening to the swirl of conversations going on around her. CeeJay would have loved this place, she thought. She was busy tending to Bryce's issues tonight, but Greer wasn't so sure Bryce would be a permanent attachment for her best friend. CeeJay was one of the most genuine, giving women she'd ever known, but under ordinary circumstances CeeJay didn't do well with authority figures, even rich, successful ones like Bryce Levy.

Greer was pulling out a credit card to pay the check when she heard her cell phone ding to alert her to an incoming text. She added a tip to her tab and handed the check back to the waiter. She half expected the text to be from CeeJay or somebody else on the
Beach Town
crew, but the area code wasn't a California one, and the number wasn't one she recognized. No wonder.

Hi Greer. It's Clint. Again. Lise gave me your number. I saw on your Facebook page that you're working in Cypress Key. That's only about an hour or so from where I live, in Alachua. Any chance you could drop by and see your old man while you're down here? Hope so! Dad.

Dammit! Greer threw her phone back into her purse. The mellow buzz of a good meal and an interesting experience was suddenly gone, and she was right back where she'd started the evening. Lonely. Pissed off. Conflicted.

*   *   *

By the time she got on the road back to Cypress Key, it was fully dark. The county road cutting through swamp and woods was twisting and unfamiliar, and it seemed that every other mile her headlights picked up the carcass of a roadkill. Suddenly she was unwillingly channeling every horror movie she'd ever seen that featured unwitting victims driving down a remote rural road.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
came to mind, and she hit the automatic door lock, not once but twice. Once, a twisted, moss-hung tree branch reached across the roadway, like the gnarled claw of an ogre, and she flashed back to
The Blair Witch Project.
Each huge bug that splattered itself on the Kia's windshield made her cringe. At every single yellow
BEAR CROSSING
sign she fully expected to see a raging rogue grizzly bear. Rationally, she knew she was being irrational, but her hands didn't relax their grip on the steering wheel until the Cypress Key city limit sign finally loomed before her.

When she reached the Silver Sands, the parking lot was half empty. She pulled into the lot, moved the orange cones marking her designated parking space, and got out of the car. The moon was half full and the night air was hot and swampy. She was full of a restless energy she couldn't quite describe but knew couldn't be contained in her claustrophobic motel room.

Greer walked down to the beach and stared out at the Gulf. Just at the horizon, in the distance, she could make out slow-moving pinpricks of the lights of what she assumed were shrimp boats. The tide rolled lazily into the sand. She took off her sandals, dug her toes into the still warm, damp sand, and inhaled the scent of salt and decaying seaweed, listening as her own breathing and always rapid pulse slowed, until it seemed to match the rhythm of the waves lapping at the shore.

She closed her eyes and the scary movies images slowly subsided, and beneath her toes she felt tiny coquinas burrowing deeper into the sand.

Greer had never been a stargazer. She'd never had time to ponder the big issues of time and space and mortality. She felt a brief flush of guilt, realizing she didn't even know the names of the constellations spreading themselves out across the blue velvet sky in front of her.

But maybe that was okay. Maybe she didn't have to be able to name them in order to appreciate them.

She kept walking until the beach played out and she'd reached the concrete embankment that marked the entrance to the old pier. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the lights of the Silver Sands. Nothing there for her tonight.

The city park was deserted, except for a lone teenager who rolled slowly back and forth across the concrete plaza on his skateboard. He took no notice of Greer. She found a concrete bench and sat. The heat and humidity settled over her shoulders like a wool shawl, but she tilted her head back and waited, and sure enough, eventually a small breeze whipped a lock of her temporarily straight hair. She could have sworn she felt it as it frizzed out around her head.

The old casino building loomed tantalizingly just out of her reach. As she stared moodily out at it, she realized something was amiss.

A faint beam of light flashed through the wall of broken windows. She sat up and blinked to make sure she hadn't imagined light and movement coming from the abandoned building.

A bank of clouds rolled in, and for a moment she could only make out the dimmest outlines of the darkened building.

But then the beam of light was moving. She could make out shadows, flickering through the windows. She got up and walked over to the boarded-up entrance to the casino.

Now she heard music, a heavy bass beat, and then a high-pitched peal of nervous laughter.

Somebody was in the old casino tonight, and they were having themselves a party.

She strained to hear more, and then was startled by a sudden series of loud pops.

Gunfire? She grasped the chain-link fence, looked down, and saw that the huge padlocks were intact.

A narrow white rocket exploded into the night sky. And then another, this one red, with a blooming chrysanthemum blossom, followed by a blue pinwheel.

Fireworks! Whoever was in the casino was setting off fireworks. She glanced over at her phone. Should she call the police? An errant match or burning cinder could land wrong and burn down what was left of the old building. For a moment, she wondered if Eb Thibadeaux was watching this display from his loft over the grocery store.

But just as suddenly as the fireworks show had started, it ended. She heard the music again, and then silence. Another peal of laughter, and then the high-pitched whine of a motor. A boat? Greer strained to see in the darkness. But it was too dark. The engine tailed off in the direction of the municipal marina, and all she heard now was the steady roll of the lone skateboarder as he crisscrossed the concrete plaza.

Her skin felt hot and prickly and her shirt was sticking to her back. She stood, put on her shoes, and walked briskly back to the Silver Sands.

*   *   *

The pool area looked deserted, but as Greer approached she saw Ginny Buckalew moving slowly around the patio, straightening chairs, emptying ashtrays, and dropping bottles and cans into a large orange recycling bin.

Ginny looked up, startled to see Greer.

“Well hello. You missed the big party here earlier.”

“So I see. Where'd everybody go?”

“The Crow's Nest, most of 'em,” Ginny said. She pulled a chair away from a round iron table, sat down, and lit up one of her cigarillos. She inhaled, exhaled, and smiled before reaching over to the big red cooler and pulling out a longneck Corona.

“They left all this beer behind. Be a shame to waste it. Care to join me?”

Greer shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

She sat down at the table opposite the older woman and took the beer Ginny offered. The two women sipped quietly, and they could hear tree frogs croaking in the palms.

Greer slapped at a huge mosquito and could already feel a welt rising on her cheek. Ginny handed her a can of insect repellent, and Greer stepped away from the table before spraying every inch of her body with the stuff.

She handed the can back to Ginny and sat down again. “Don't you need any? I've never seen mosquitoes as fierce as you have down here.”

“Honey, those bugs can't chew through this tough old hide of mine.”

“Did you happen to see fireworks coming from the casino earlier?” Greer asked.

“The casino? That's supposed to be boarded up tight. You sure they were coming from there and not someplace else?”

“I'm sure. I saw flashlights too, and heard music and voices coming from inside.”

Ginny shook her head. “Damn kids. Did you call the police to run 'em off?”

“I thought about it, but it ended almost as soon as it started. Maybe they got spooked. I heard a boat or something speeding away.”

“Eb's gonna want the police to check into that,” Ginny said. Her eyes narrowed. “You sure it wasn't some of your movie people?”

“I'm not sure of anything, because it was dark. But I didn't send anybody from the crew out there.”

“Just asking,” Ginny said. She sat back in her chair again and took a long drag from the Swisher Sweet.

Greer waved ineffectively at the cloud of smoke that hung over her head. She looked around the patio area. “Where's Allie tonight?” She hoped she sounded casual.