Beach Town (52 page)

“What are we going to do?”

“We're going to go look for my father,” Greer said, her voice grim. A moment later, her phone dinged to indicate the text message had arrived. “Type that address into the GPS, will you?”

Allie typed rapidly. “Hey, if this car is in Roberta, I know how to get there. One of the girls on my travel soccer team lives there. It's pretty easy.”

“Okay, tell me the way,” Greer said, glancing at the nav screen. The map was still loading. Rain was slashing hard against the windshield, and the wipers were doing double time.

“It's super simple,” Allie repeated. “Up here at the four-way stop, you just make a left onto the county highway.”

“The road of doom,” Greer muttered.

Allie shot her a look. “What?”

“The first day I drove into Cypress Key, I was on that county road and it terrified me. I was almost out of gas, and it's like wilderness, all pine tree forests and swamp.”

“Did you ever see that movie
Wrong Turn
?” Allie shivered. “I don't really like scary movies, but my best friend Tristin loves them. We think they must have used the county road as inspiration for that movie.”

“That one was actually shot in Georgia, if I'm not mistaken,” Greer said. “But you're right about that road. It freaks me ot. I'm a city girl from L.A. That first time I drove it, I was positive that if I ran out of gas I'd be eaten by the bugs or the bears. So, I hear the bears are for real?”

“Black bears. They wander out of the swamps sometimes,” Allie said. She pointed at the four-way flashing sign. “Turn here.”

A moment later the voice on the GPS screen echoed Allie's instructions. Greer handed her the phone again. “I need to keep my eyes on the road in all this rain. Call that second-to-last number, will you? That's my dad's friend Wally. I need to let him know what's going on.”

Allie dialed the phone and then handed it back to Greer.

“Wally? It's Greer. I talked to the guy selling the jeep, and he confirmed that Clint talked to him this morning and told him he was on his way to come see it. That was around eight. You haven't heard from him, have you?”

“No, I haven't,” Wally said slowly. “That's not good, is it?”

“I'm afraid something bad has happened,” Greer said, trying to sound calmer than she felt. “I've got the address of the place, and I'm headed that way. My GPS says I'm about fifty miles away. I think I'm going to call the police, too. It's raining hard here, and if he's gone off the road or something, he could be in bad shape.”

“You want me to come and help look?” Wally asked.

“No, you hang tight there. There's still an off chance he might have changed his mind and gone someplace else,” Greer said. “Do you think you could find out his license tag number? The police are going to want that.”

“Sure thing. We lease that Blazer out occasionally,” Wally said. “I'll run by the office and call you back with what you need.”

Five minutes later the phone rang. Greer handed it to Allie to write down the information about Clint's car.

“You just stay on this road for a while now,” Allie volunteered. “You want me to call somebody else for you?”

Greer considered it. She hated to be an alarmist, but on the other hand, she was truly frightened that Clint had met with misfortune. “Check my contacts list and call Chief Bottoms's cell. I wouldn't even know who to call for help out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Again Allie dialed and then handed the phone to Greer.

“Chief? It's Greer. I'm sorry to bother you on Sunday.”

“No worries about that. I'm headed over to the boathouse right now. What do you need?”

The boathouse. Greer's hand flew to her mouth. She'd completely forgotten she was supposed to have been at work more than an hour ago. But that would have to wait.

“It's my dad. I think he may be in trouble.” Greer repeated what she knew about her father's mission and his precarious medical condition. “I'm headed for Roberta now, and I'm wondering who I'd call to help search for him.”

“Well, that area could be either or Carlyle County or Magnolia County,” the chief said. “Does your dad have a cell phone?”

“He does, but I'm not sure he has it with him. I've been calling, but he doesn't answer.”

“If he does have it, they'll be able to locate him through the GPS in the chip. Give me that number and the make, model, and license tag of your dad's car. I can call the dispatchers in both those counties and ask them to send somebody out to look. And part of that area is in the DeSoto Forest National Wildlife Refuge, too, I believe. There's a ranger station about ten miles outside Roberta. They've got ATVs that can go back in those swamps that regular patrol cars can't get into.”

“The swamp?” Greer said, choking at the thought. “I can't imagine how he'd end up…”

“This happens a lot down here,” Arnelle Bottoms said soothingly. “We have so many snowbirds and retirees in Florida. They get confused or disoriented and end up in the damnedest places. But don't you worry. I'll make the calls, and I'll give the dispatchers your number, in case anything turns up.”

“Thanks,” Greer said. She repeated the information about Clint's Blazer and hung up. The swamp. Unbidden images of Clint, mired in a mud, surrounded by alligators and poisonous snakes and God knew what, sprang to mind. She again cursed her questionable fascination with horror movies.

Allie must have picked up on her terror. “It's not like a real swamp, like the Everglades or anything,” she assured Greer. “Mostly the swamp there is like shallow, muddy ditches. And, like, a gabillion mosquitoes.”

“Thanks.” Greer sniffed and wiped at the tear that was rolling down her cheek.

Five minutes later her phone rang and Allie held it out to her. “It's Bryce,” Allie whispered. “Maybe you should just not answer.”

Greer shook her head. “No, I need to tell him what's going on.”

“Hi, Bryce—” she started.

“Where the fuck are you?” the director shouted. “I've got about a million fans and reporters crawling all over this place after that thing on TMZ this morning. One security guard. This place is a madhouse … and you're a no-show?”

“My father is missing,” she said. “I'm out looking for him right now, so I doubt I'll make it to the set today.”

“You can't send out an APB or something? This is your job here, Greer. You can't just disappear like this the day before a big shoot.”

“Sorry, Bryce. He's old and he's hurt and he's family. You'll have to get somebody else to manage the set today.”

“Like who?”

“Zena.”

“That kid can't manage squat,” he said. “Anyway, I already called her. She quit on me.”

Her phone beeped to signal an incoming call. “I have to go, Bryce.”

“You hang up and you're fired, Greer.”

She tapped the Disconnect button and then hit Connect.

“Greer?” It was Eb.

 

62

“Gin said she had a message that Allie was with you. What's going on?” He sounded angry. As usual.

“Clint is missing. He apparently left his house around eight this morning to go to Roberta, to look at a car he found on Craigslist. But he never made it. I was on the way there to look for him when I spotted Allie walking on the side of the road. The golf cart's battery died.”

“Is she okay? It's storming pretty bad here.”

“Allie's fine, but I didn't have time to bring her back to Cypress Key.”

“Christ, Greer. You should have called me.”

“I did call you, this morning, when I discovered I'd missed your call last night. You never returned my call.”

His voice was low. “I thought you were blowing me off last night.”

“I can't have this conversation now, Eb. Here. Talk to Allie.”

She handed the phone to the teenager, then leaned forward, concentrating on trying to see the road through the waterfall of rain on her windshield.

Allie turned her head away, talking quietly to her uncle.

“I know I shouldn't have taken the cart without asking. I was upset, okay?”

She listened for another minute or two, then handed the phone back to Greer. “He wants to talk to you.”

“Tell me where you're headed,” Eb said. “I'll meet you there. Have you called the cops?”

“I called Arnelle and she was calling the dispatchers in the counties around Roberta, and the Park Service rangers from the wildlife area there,” Greer said. “If Clint has his cell phone with him, they think they can track him that way. I'll have Allie text you the address in Roberta where he was headed.”

*   *   *

Greer turned on the defogger to burn off the condensation on the windows. With every mile she felt a mounting sense of urgency, but she had to slow down to twenty miles an hour because of the poor visibility. The county road was flat as a pancake and she was now driving through at least three inches of water that had no place to drain.

She needed something to take her mind off all those frightening images of Clint.

“Allie, where were you going this morning, when you took the golf cart? Bluewater Bay?

Allie nodded. “Triss texted me to tell me what was in TMZ today. It was so gross! God! I am so stupid. I should have known something was up. Kregg hasn't called me in a couple days, and he wasn't answering my texts.”

Greer glanced over at the teenager. “He gave you another phone after Eb took the second phone away?”

The girl's face flushed, but she nodded.

“Have you been seeing Kregg on the sly?”

“Yeah.” Allie's voice was suddenly meek. “Dad told me it was okay. He said Eb wasn't in charge anymore, you know, since Dad got out of prison.”

Greer had to bite her tongue to keep from telling the girl what she thought of Jared.

Allie fiddled with the strap of her backpack. “My dad is kind of messed up, huh? I thought it was gonna be so neat, when he told me he was getting out. He said he was coming home and we'd get to live together, like a family again.”

“I know,” Greer said.

“And Kregg was really into meeting Dad because he thought Dad was a major badass.” She shook her head. “I've hardly seen him since he got home. All he does is sit around and drink beer all day, or play
Call of Duty,
and hang out with Kregg and talk about the movie he's writing.”

“Not like you thought it would be, is it?”

“No. And I know he's smoking weed with Kregg. He tries to hide it when I'm around, but I'm not a friggin' baby. I can smell it on him. I called him out on it, too. I looked it up on the Internet. Because he's on probation, the cops can make him take a drug test, anytime they want. And if he fails, he goes back to prison.”

“What did Jared say to that?”

“He just laughed at me. He said Kregg knows ways to get around that. Some pill you take to make your pee okay. And he told me I should lighten up, because it's not like weed is a real drug, and anyway it helps him mellow out so he can write.”

Greer realized Allie was watching to see what her reaction would be to her latest revelation. It probably wouldn't be helpful to tell the kid that her father was an idiot and a loser.

“But you're afraid if he has a positive drug test, he'll go back to prison. Right?”

Allie nodded.

“And you think Jared should care more about staying clean and being with you than getting high with Kregg. Correct?”

“I just want him to be like a normal dad. You know, get a job and buy us a house and come to my soccer games. Like normal families. Maybe help me with my trig homework. He's really smart, you know. He went to med school and everything. He could be a doctor if he wanted.”

She swiped at the tears running down her face. “I'll tell you something else, too. You know that little notebook Dad always carries around, because he says he's writing a movie in it? The other day, when he was passed out drunk in Gin's living room, I opened it. It's nothing but scribbles. Seriously. Like I used to do in kindergarten, when I was pretending to be a writer, scribbling in my mom's waitress order book.”

So the O-train actually hadn't left the station. Big surprise, Greer thought.

Greer reached over and patted Allie's knee. “My parents split up when I was five. Same age as you were when yours divorced, right?”

“Yeah.”

“My dad wasn't around at all when I was growing up. My mom and grandmother raised me. My mom was an actress with some pretty kooky ideas about raising a kid. Definitely not what you'd call normal. And that's all I wanted, too. I finally realized not everybody needs normal.” She sighed. “Of course, it only took me thirty-five years to figure that out.”

“But you and your dad are tight now, right?”

“Not really. Not the way he wants us to be. I never saw him, except briefly, once or twice, for thirty years. Right before my mom died, back in the spring, she wanted me to reach out to my dad—you know, reconnect. But I didn't want to, because I was still so pissed at the way I thought he abandoned us.”

Allie's eyes widened. “I didn't know your mom died. That must suck. I mean, Gin and I fight sometimes, but if something ever happened to her, or Eb, I don't know what I'd do.”

“They're really good people, Allie. And they love you so much. I get that Eb went nuts when he found out you were hanging out with Kregg. He doesn't want anything bad happening to you. I know he doesn't think you'll be like your mom or your dad. He told me how proud he is of you, and the way you play sports and make good grades. And what a good person you are.”

“I know,” Allie whispered. Her eyes filled with tears. “When I was living with my mom, and she was messed up, I used to wish all the time that Eb was really my dad. Pretty sick, huh?”