Savannah Breeze (15 page)

Up until the day
I realized that my second husband, Richard, had that unfortunate penchant for computer porn, I'd always thought of myself as somebody who was naturally lucky. My life had been mostly golden. Happy childhood, loving family, lots of friends, and a natural knack for business. There had been bumps in the road, sure, but I'd always managed to bounce back from adversity and come out slugging.

But the thing with Richard had rocked my world and thrown my self-confidence for a loop. It was all so tawdry. I remember thinking I'd been essentially living an episode of
Geraldo
. How could I have been so wrong about anybody? How could I not have seen what a sleazebucket I'd been living with?

After the divorce, I'd thrown myself into my work. Both my parents had died while I was in my early 30s, so I'd taken my small family inheritance and started two moderately successful small downtown cafes, and bought and flipped my first piece of residential real estate. I worked impossible hours, and had no social life, but I didn't care. I was thirty, and driven to prove to myself, and everybody else, that BeBe Loudermilk was fine, thank you very much.

When Guale became the hottest restaurant in Savannah, I was certain my luck was back. I was still insanely busy, but I allowed myself a little time to kick back and enjoy the delicious sensation of doing and having it all.

Now, as I stood in line at the Home Depot for the fourth time in one week, praying that my last credit card would not be maxed out
with this final load of joint compound and window caulking, I had little time to reflect on how my present lifestyle seemed like such a perverse reversal of fortune.

In two days, the Breeze Inn would be open for business. That is, if Harry and I didn't kill each other first.

We'd come very close to physical violence on Saturday night. Harry had spent all day Friday and Saturday hanging Sheetrock in four of the units that were in the worst shape, and then he'd taught me how to tape and mud and sand the joints. I'd gotten pretty good at it too. But that Saturday afternoon, I'd made another run to Home Depot, and when I got back, he was gone.

I flipped. Three-thirty in the afternoon and he'd already checked out for the day. I sped over to Doc's Bar. As I went through that door, I felt like a gunslinger in one of those old Westerns. I was ready for a shootout with Harry.

The trouble was, he wasn't there. Four men sat at the bar, and all four swiveled completely around on their bar stools to take a good look at me when I walked in.

“Harry Sorrentino,” I said curtly. “Where is he?”

The bartender was an elfin-looking creature with short white hair and deeply tanned skin the consistency of beef jerky. Despite her age, which I judged to be mid-fifties, and the weather outside, which was just about the same, she was dressed in skintight blue-jeans shorts and a low-cut bright orange tank top. She looked me up and down with light brown almond-shaped eyes before taking a deep drag on the cigarette dangling from her lower lip. “Harry's not here, baby. Ain't seen him since Thursday. Anything else we can do you for?”

“Any idea where else he might be?”

“You the lady owns the Breeze?” The speaker had a long, graying beard in the exact same shade as the long, graying braid that fell midway down his back. He too wore cutoffs, along with an army camouflage jacket with the sleeves hacked off, sunglasses, and a black ball cap that said “Tybee Bomb Squad.”

“I am,” I said.

He nodded thoughtfully. “Figures. Harry don't usually date chicks as old as you.”

“And I don't usually date men as old as Harry, so that works out just fine. Do you happen to know where he might have gone this afternoon?”

He shrugged. “I ain't his mama. He don't check in with me.”

The other men sniggered and turned their attention back to the television mounted over the bar, which was showing an old black-and-white John Wayne cowboy movie.

“Assholes,” I muttered under my breath.

I was outside, unlocking the Lexus, when the bar sprite materialized at my side.

“Don't mind them guys inside,” she said. “They're harmless. Listen, I don't know for sure where Harry coulda gone, but I was thinking you might try Marsden Marina.”

“The place where they repossessed his boat?”

She looked surprised. “He told you about the
Jitterbug
?”

I shook my head. “Somebody else told me. Why would he be over there?”

“He's trying to get the money together to get the
Jitterbug
back. If he's not tending bar here, he sometimes signs on as a mate on one of the other charter boats.”

“Tending bar? Here?” Now it was my turn to look surprised.

“Sure. My daughter needs me to baby-sit some afternoons and nights, so Harry's been filling in for me. Until last week.”

When I issued the old ultimatum, I thought.

“Thanks,” I said. “I'll check over there.” There was no reason for me to confide in this woman, but for some reason, I felt the need to explain just how important it was that I shanghai Harry back to the motel.

“We're fully booked for St. Patrick's Day, and we've still got a lot of work to do before we can rent out those rooms,” I told her.

“Uh-huh.”

But I still felt the need to unburden myself. “The Sheetrock's up, but we need to paint yet, and there are a couple of bathrooms that have to have the tile patched, and—”

“I know, baby,” she said, patting my arm reassuringly. “Harry showed me around the place a couple weeks ago, right before you took over. What a rat hole! But he says you've already worked miracles. You're doing real good. Just cut Harry a little slack, if you can. It's about killin' him, losing the
Jitterbug.
Somebody like Harry, who's always run his own boat…well, he ain't really used to having anybody else bossing him around.”

“I'm
not
bossing him around,” I objected.

“Somebody's got to run the show,” she agreed. “And when it's a woman, we always get called the bitch, right?”

“Exactly,” I said, smiling.

She stuck out her hand. “By the way, I'm Cheri Johnston.”

“And I'm BeBe,” I said, taking her hand and shaking it warmly. “Thanks for letting me know about the marina. I'll check for him over there. Where is it, exactly?”

“Right on Lemon Creek,” she said. “After you cross the first bridge going toward Thunderbolt, take a left at the sign for CoCo Loco's.”

“Got it,” I said, and I climbed in the car.

She knocked on the window, and I rolled it down. “And don't you dare let him know I told you where he was at.” She grinned. “Us girls gotta stick together.”

“Amen to that, sister.”

I bit my lip as I passed the motel on my way off the island. The neon
NO VACANCY
sign was still blinking on and off. Yet another thing to add to my endless punch list, and we only had forty-eight hours until opening day.

Still, we'd come so far.

It had been Weezie who'd insisted we temporarily redirect our efforts to the exterior of the motel. “Once people see how cute it is,
they'll start calling and asking about your rates,” she'd promised.

Under Weezie's tutelage, I'd painted the weather-beaten old Breeze Inn sign a fresh white, with retro turquoise lettering, and Harry had installed up-lights that cast intriguing palm-shaped shadows on the front of the buildings. Weezie and Daniel had spent a full day working around the grounds, pruning the scraggly old palm trees, planting tubs of shocking pink and purple petunias, and patching the concrete porches in the fronts of all the units. Daniel had raked a fresh load of crushed oyster shell into the parking lot, filling up all the potholes and bare spots, and Weezie had even placed a pair of turquoise-painted Adirondack chairs in front of each unit.

“They're on loan from Acey, the guy who does a lot of refinishing work for me,” she'd explained. “He builds them in his spare time, and I told him it would be good advertising.” She pointed out the small brass plate on the back of each chair, which did, indeed, have “Chairs by Acey” engraved, along with his phone number. “People can buy them from you, right here in the office,” Weezie, ever the entrepreneur, suggested. “They sell for ninety dollars apiece, and you'll get a ten-dollar commission for each chair you sell. And then Acey will replace them with new ones.”

Even I had to admit, the Breeze Inn had been transformed from a raggedy-ass dog to the picture of shabby chic charm. As long as you didn't open the door to most of the units, that is.

As soon as we'd finished spiffing up the outside of the inn—“Stop calling it a motel,” I'd instructed Harry. “It's an inn now. And we charge inn prices.” I'd taken color photos of the Breeze with a borrowed digital camera, and e-mailed them, along with a brief (and highly hyped) press release to a travel writer at the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
who'd once written a glowing article about Guale.

“Great,” she'd e-mailed back. “The place looks adorable! We're doing a last-minute travel planner for St. Patrick's Day. You just made
it under the wire.” As soon as the story hit the Wednesday paper, our phone started ringing, and by the end of that day, we were completely booked for the entire four-day weekend.

“People are nuts,” Harry had said when I'd shown him the reservation sheet.

“We're the ones who are nuts,” I told him. “I should have bumped the rates up to $500 a night. Not a single person wanted to quibble about prices with me.”

Only forty-eight hours to go. And my staff had gone AWOL. Again.

I found Marsden Marina with no problem. It was a collection of ramshackle wood-frame buildings, including a seafood market, bait shack, and boatyard. And Harry's station wagon was definitely parked there, along with three pickup trucks and a shiny red Ford Explorer with Atlanta license tags. But there was no sign of Harry, or even Jeeves. There was no sign of anybody, much.

I finally found one person at the seafood market. She was sitting at a plastic table in the middle of the concrete-floored room, busily coloring Princess Jasmine a riotous shade of pistachio. A wall-mounted television was playing a tape of
The Little Mermaid
.

“Hello,” I said, looking around the empty shop, with its trays of iced-down shrimp, blue crabs, oysters, and flounder. “Is your mama or daddy around?”

“Nope,” she said, putting her crayon down to stare at me in that unnerving way children have. “Who are you?”

“I'm BeBe. What's your name?”

“I'm not allowed to talk to strangers,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“That's a good idea,” I agreed. “Are you allowed to be here all by yourself, without any grown-ups around?”

“I'm not all by myself,” she said gravely. “Jesus is with me always.”

Very profound. But not too helpful, I thought.

“I was looking for my friend today,” I said, finally. “His name is Harry, and he has a cute little white dog named Jeeves. Do you know Harry? Or Jeeves?”

She nodded.

“Have you seen them today?”

Another nod.

“How long ago was that?”

“I can't tell time till next year.”

Right. I walked over and took a closer peek at
The Little Mermaid
. It looked to me like the movie must be close to ending.

“Was Harry here when the movie started?”

Nod.

“Right at the beginning of the movie?”

Nod. “It's Harry's movie. He just lets me watch it when he comes over.”

“Do you know where Harry went?”

“He and my daddy went out to catch some bait. They'll be back right when everything in the movie gets happy.”

Which should be quite soon, I thought, from the upbeat tempo of the music.

Just then, a door behind the seafood counter opened and a young woman wearing white rubber hip boots and a knee-length black rubber apron struggled through it carrying a huge white plastic bucket full of shrimp.

“Hey, Mama,” the little girl chirped. “This lady knows Harry and Jeeves.”

“Hi there,” the woman said warily, setting the bucket down on the floor. “Can I help you?”

I gave her my brightest smile. “Your daughter is very smart. She doesn't talk to strangers, especially when she's all alone.”

“She wadn't alone,” the woman said. “I wouldn't leave Amber by herself. I was just out in the shed, sizing shrimp. And I could hear everything going on in here.” She motioned to the seafood counter,
where, for the first time, I noticed a baby monitor with a glowing green light.

“What do you want with Harry?” she asked.

“He works for me,” I said, and even to me, it sounded incredibly stupid and insipid. “At the Breeze Inn.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I heard all about you. Like Amber said, they ought to be back any minute. My husband's got a charter in the morning, and Harry just went out to help him catch some bait. Does he have to clear that with you, or something?”

“No,” I said sharply. I wished acutely that I had not come here.

We heard the chugging sound of a boat motor then, and the woman craned her neck to look out the door.

“Here they come right now,” she said, flying out the door to meet them.

I stood awkwardly in the doorway of the bait shop, watching the men tie up the boat and start unloading equipment.

“Jeeves!” The little girl stood beside me, issuing a shrill whistle by putting her fingers in her mouth. The dog bounded over the side of the fishing boat, clearing the dock by barely an inch. He trotted up to the bait shop, his tail wagging happily, and the little girl scooped him up in her arms.

She buried her nose in his fur and made a face. “Shoo-eee.” She laughed. “You stink!” She set the wriggling dog down and he promptly sat on his haunches, looking up at me expectantly.