Swindled in Paradise (2 page)

“Yes, Mother.” Fab glanced at the pile of clothes between my feet. “Don’t forget to pick up your clothes.”

I ignored her. “We need to stop by The Cottages, make sure they’re still standing.”

“More problems?” She snickered. “You wouldn’t have so many problems if you stuck to your hard-and-fast rule: no renting to locals.”

I pulled my red hair up into a messy upsweep and forced it between the teeth of a clip. “I’m hiring you as the Director of Security. Evict the lot of them and call me when it’s done. You’re perfect for the job; you never have sympathy for anyone’s sob story.”

“What’s the pay?” From the look on her face, she was giving serious thought to my impromptu idea. “It better be extra if I have to listen to a single problem.” She smiled evilly. “Do I get to charge by the person? Just so you understand that I only relocate as far as the curb.”

“Best friends don’t charge; they offer up their services for free and skip the ‘tudiness,” I sniffed.

She made a face.

“I saw that.” I bent over, sliding my feet into black flip-flops, another new pair. I couldn’t resist the crystals on the straps.

* * *

“Slow the hell down, that’s a horse,” I yelled and shoved my hands against the dash.

Fab jammed on the brakes, screeching to a halt in the entrance to the driveway of The Cottages. “What’s that doing here?” She swerved around its rear-end and parked in the visitor space in front of the office.

I had inherited the ten-unit beach-front property from my Aunt Elizabeth. The individual units were painted in an array of the famously bright South Florida colors. The place had always attracted colorful tenants, but during my tenure, I’d managed to rid the place of felons, drunks, and drug addicts. I’d like to say none of their ilk had managed to sneak back in, but that would be a lie. Since I couldn’t shoot them all, I had an A-1 eviction service, courtesy of Mother’s badass boyfriend.

Mac Lane strolled out of the office as though it was just another day. She’d shown up one day and talked herself into the job of office manager in a matter of minutes. If I had my way, she would never quit. The thought of handling tenant problems gave me a headache.

She was an ample-sized, middle-aged woman who handled everything with patience and calm. When that failed, she also packed a handgun under her clothing. Her style could easily be categorized as bohemian: today, she sported a multi-color checked long skirt gathered together and tied into a knot between her calves to show her legs and ankles. I knew her well enough to know that underneath all that material, she had donned a pair of electric-colored bicycle shorts or obscenely short shorts. Her tops came in one size––too small. Today’s shirt had ‘Yee Haw’ written on the front.

I jumped out of the SUV. “You’re fired,” I told Mac, pointing to the horse.

“I’ve been trying to call you to ask what you want me to do with our newest guest. He won’t fit through any of the cottage doors.” Mac blew a kiss at the chestnut brown, full-grown horse.

“She’s been mean to me,” Fab whined to Mac as she walked up behind me.

“I…” I stuttered, “I didn’t get lunch. And I’m hungry.”

Mac tapped her foot, waiting to see if, just this once, we’d get into a hair-pulling, roll-on-the-ground brawl. I knew that if one erupted, every tenant in the place would put their money on Fab.

“Focus.” I snapped my fingers at Fab. “Part of your new security detail is getting rid of the horse.”

Mac laughed. “I called animal control, and the woman hung up on me after telling me to call back when I sobered up and saying that hopefully then I’d make sense.”

“It just wandered up?” I looked up and down the street; not a single person or car in sight. “In a residential neighborhood?” The area was zoned for single and multi-family homes with no exemptions for livestock.

“Miss January ‘found it’—” Mac made air quotes. “—and walked it home. It took Score longer than usual to sleep off his drunk, so she went for a walk alone. You know she shouldn’t be allowed off the property by herself.”

“Can you hurry the story along?” Fab elbowed Mac in the back. “I’m hungry too.”

Miss January is/was an original tenant who’d been handed down by my aunt, who’d inherited her from the first owner. She looked eighty but was actually half that age. A tear-jerking life did that to the woman, helped along by being an alcoholic with cancer. The doctors had given her a date with death, but she’d failed to RSVP.

Her boyfriend, Score, also a drunk, actually looked his age: a few years short of ninety. He was another “find” of Miss January, who brought him home one day from a walk on the beach.

She’d whispered to me, “We’re perfect for one another—we like to drink and have sex.”

To my credit, I managed to make some appropriate noise; it was one of those times I was at a loss for a more fitting response.

I surveyed the property. The cottages reserved for tourists were once again filled, each with a rental car parked in its assigned space. All was calm, which could be very deceiving. Two drunks getting in a fight over which one would get the last swig of the bottle could break out in a hot second, as past experience had proven. Not a single head pushed between the wooden blinds that covered the windows, so the horse had thus far gone unnoticed.

“Miss January strolled up the driveway and tossed me the reins, telling me she needed a cigarette.” Mac inclined her head towards the porch, where Miss January lay slumped in a chair. “She had one in her mouth but had forgotten to light it. The horse and I followed her to the door, where she sat down and fell asleep. I took the smoke from her mouth and put it in her pocket, and fished out the matches and kept them for myself. I figured when she sobered up some, she’d have to find another pack of matches, lessening the chances of something accidentally catching on fire, like her muumuu.”

“I suggest
you
get rid of it.” Fab nudged me and pointed to the horse. “Before it uses your property as a bathroom. One other thing, I quit. The pay sucks, and I don’t have animal skills except for my cat.”

“That’s
my
cat,” I said.

The four of us turned at the sound of a car taking the corner too fast and bouncing into the driveway. The horse had come up behind Mac and nudged her shoulder; she reached up and patted his mane. Another qualification for her resume––horse rapport.

Deputy Kevin Cory slammed the door of his patrol car. “Which one of you stole the horse?” he demanded. Sneer in place, he’d perfected a tight-ass look.

His blondish hair, was slicked straight back, unlike its usual off-duty, windblown style. The only plus to Kevin being in uniform was that it showed off his muscular backside. In addition to being good friends with my brother, which had come about when Brad started dating Kevin’s sister, he’d recently became a full-time tenant of The Cottages. His previous residence, a duplex, erupted in flames due to a drug-cooking explosion in the neighbor’s unit and everything had burned to a crisp.

“None of us.” I forced a half-smile that wasn’t even remotely friendly. “Miss January found it and here it is. Don’t you think you should be a little nicer to your landlord?”

Brad had graciously let Kevin move into my property before informing me, knowing I wasn’t rude enough to tell him to get out after he’d unpacked his newly purchased bag of clothing. My brother found it amusing that my name always appeared at the top of Kevin’s suspect list when a crime got committed. I secretly got a perverse kick out of the fact that the address that garnered the most police calls in the Cove was the one he now called home.

“The horse was used in the robbery of a liquor store.” He struggled to control his irritation.

The three of us laughed.

“I’m going to need to question Miss January,” he said, glaring at us.

“Good luck.” I pointed to her porch. “She’s passed-out drunk. And when you first wake her, she has a tendency to not make any sense. Then she either comes around or goes back to sleep.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” His lips pursed in a hard line.

“She mentioned you the other day, told me, ‘he’s such a nice young man… and hot.’”

Fab and Mac snickered.

“I’m sure she’d love to be dragged from her stupor and grilled about things that she won’t have any answers for,” I said.

“Did you get a description of the robber?” Fab asked Kevin.

“We’ve got him in custody. The dogs sniffed him out behind a dumpster.”

“Well good, you got your man and your horse.” I turned and walked towards the pool.

Rounding the corner, I came face to face with Professor Crum’s chest. Fab and Mac skidded to a stop. Crum was another tenant gift from my brother.

Over a year ago, I had acquired a rundown trailer park. The presence of its only tenant—the professor—had served to keep the squatters out. My first choice was to bulldoze the property, but my brother had other plans. Brad undertook the renovation, turning it into a tourist destination and selling it for a tidy profit. He felt bad when the new owners had made Crum’s eviction a condition of the deal. The retired college professor didn’t project the right image for their property, probably because the man constantly strutted around in tighty-whities and changed shoes depending on the occasion; for gardening, he chose a dingy pair of mismatched flip-flops.

“Hello, ladies.” He gave us a sweeping bow, a garden trowel in one hand. He stood at over six feet, ramrod stiff, with a butch haircut, and a condescending look he had perfected firmly in place.

“Those plants aren’t stolen are they?” I pointed to a couple of containers lying in the dirt.

He’d replaced the last gardener by showing up and doing the work. There were no other applicants, and surprisingly, he did a good job. Who would have guessed that, in addition to his off-the-chart IQ, he had a green thumb?

“How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t steal.” He looked down his nose at me.

“You and I both know that digging up and relocating plants from someone else’s yard is stealing.” I lowered my voice. “We’ve got a sheriff’s deputy living here now, and it would amuse him to put you in jail, especially since he didn’t take it well when you informed him he was dumber than a stump.”

“He’s clearly the product of an inferior part of the gene pool,” Crum insisted.

Fab laughed, and I wanted to poke her but she stepped out of range.

“How did Kevin get in here anyway?” Crum asked.

“The same way you did,” I said in exasperation. “Snuck in by my brother when my back was turned. For familial reasons, I’m trying to warm up to Kevin. You, I have a slight affection for already, but don’t think you’ll use that to get anything over on me.”

Fab looked up at Crum. “Give us the highlights version of what’s going on around here, so we can go home and guzzle tequila.”

The thought of a margarita—rocks, salt and lime—had me closing my eyes and letting out a small sigh of pleasure. Before we left the driveway, I needed to place a takeout order from my bar.

Crum pointed to the two-story building next door. “Told Huck to stop peeing out the bathroom window.”

“The exhibitionist?” I almost snorted. Nothing that man did surprised me.

When I first moved in, I’d asked a few questions of the owner of the building next door and found out that Huck had a perfectly good bathroom with a working toilet. And still he peed out the window. The landlord didn’t care—Huck was doing his part to save water.

“Huck’s been doing that since I took over.” I glanced up at the second floor unit. “What could we plant on this side of the fence to block the view?” I asked Crum. “One of the recent guests complained. She was afraid she might get urine in her hair. I reassured her that, having seen him in action, that wasn’t possible.”

We catered year-round to tourists from different countries. They came for the warm, beautiful days and nights and blue-green waters, where you could splash mid-calf deep and still see your toes. Returning guests hoped for a little excitement: an arrest, a fight, or the occasional local girl who’d tumble naked into the pool, which the men in particular enjoyed seeing.

Crum craned his neck, scoping out the property, then lowered his voice. “You don’t need to worry about Kevin. Since our discussion, he doesn’t hang around much. Too busy banging his flavor of the moment at her place. Also, Julie is sneaking around, trying to hide from Liam that she’s shagging your brother.”

Liam was the only child of Julie, Brad’s girlfriend. Mother and I were crazy about the teenager and considered him to be the first grandchild/nephew.

I shook my head. “He’s a teenager; he knows what’s going on.”

“Let’s go,” Fab said, coming up behind me. She pulled on my arm. “A horse trailer just pulled up.”

Chapter 3

Fab pulled into my driveway and slid the Hummer in next to her black Mercedes. When I first met her, she’d traded her cars in regularly, like a pair of shoes she’d grown bored with. But she’d had this particular model for a while, mostly because she drove my Hummer instead.

I’d inherited the two-story white Key West-style home, with its wraparound veranda, from Aunt Elizabeth. Growing up, my brother and I would come and spend our summer vacations playing under the sun. Elizabeth and I would shop all the local nurseries for a variety of tropical plants, mostly hibiscuses. I’d added my own touch once the house was mine, filling the inner courtyard with brightly colored pots, adding more flowers and mulching with seashells from many afternoons scouring the beach.

“I wonder what’s up?” I’d skimmed the street when we pulled up, noticing that my brother’s and both our boyfriends’ vehicles were parked in the street.

“They’re working on a super-secret real estate deal.”

“I’d ask how you know that, but I already know the answer, you eavesdropper.”

Fab pulled the clip from her hair and shook out her long brown hair, letting it fall down her back. “You’re just annoyed you don’t have the same sneak-around skills I do.”

“You’ve already taught me to pick locks and hotwire cars, but you’ll have to have another seminar. I’ll invite Mother; she wouldn’t want to miss out on anything to do with sneaking around.”