Ten Beach Road (40 page)

Only Kyra didn’t look surprised at the level of Internet interest. All of them leaned closer.

“And?” Madeline asked, clearly needing to hear her answer.

“And I thanked him for his belated concern.”

Avery smiled as she remembered the shock on Trent’s face at what followed. It had been so incredibly sweet. “And then I told him to go fuck himself. And I showed him to the door.”

On August 6 another tropical storm formed in the Caribbean and held together long enough to be given a name. While they waited for the wood floors to dry, Tropical Storm Bernard rained down upon the islands of Haiti and Jamaica. Winds blowing from the east moved it farther westward where it gathered strength and picked up speed. Intent on finishing before the Labor Day weekend, Chase stepped up the start date for exterior painting. In hopes of finishing before the band of thunderstorms preceding Bernard or any sibling storms it might spawn could reach them, they prepared to paint.

It was August 8, the end of the first week of the month, the date by which Steve was supposed to appear. Maddie opened her eyes slowly when the morning light first trickled through the blinds, hoping against hope that he’d somehow be sitting on the side of her mattress dressed and smiling and ready to help them start painting Bella Flora, like he had last night in her dreams.

All she saw was three out of her four roommates still sleeping around her and the light shining out from beneath the closed bathroom door. Swallowing back her disappointment, she put on a pot of coffee and pulled a Danish ring out of the refrigerator. As she waited for the bathroom, she gave herself a stern talking-to. The day wasn’t over yet. Technically, Steve had until midnight to get here. Even a text or an email that he was on the way or planning to be would be good enough for her.

“Should we be worrying about Bernard becoming a hurricane and landing here?” Maddie asked thirty minutes later as she and Kyra and Nicole and Deirdre finished off the Danish and stepped out of the pool house. At the moment the sun was a bright cartoon-like ball of yellow, the sky a watercolor blue. It was hard to imagine a cloud, let alone a rain cloud, blocking even a portion of that picture-perfect sky. Maddie told herself not to look for one more thing to worry about even as she pulled out her cell phone and glanced at the screen. She’d had two more texts and one email since Steve’s apology, but they were all oddly vague while satisfyingly upbeat. Things like:
I’m thinking about you. Wish you were here.
Or
Edna’s house is coming along.
They implied that he was doing something besides lying on the couch wielding the remote, but whatever he was doing he wasn’t doing it here. And so far there was no message today, vague or otherwise, about when she might expect him.

“I don’t know,” Nikki said. “I’ve dealt with power outages and terrorist threats in New York, and mudslides, forest fires, and earthquakes out in L.A. But other than living in the Florida panhandle for about ten minutes as a child, I have no personal experience with hurricanes. Maybe Avery or Chase would have a better idea.”

“Probably,” Maddie said as she spotted the two of them setting out paint cans and brushes in the shade of the loggia, being careful not to look at each other. Whatever had happened the day Avery succumbed to the polyurethane must have been a doozy, Maddie thought. Ever since, you could have cut the “awkward” between them with a knife.

“What do you think, Chase?” Deirdre asked when they’d assembled on the loggia. She was expecting delivery of the kitchen cabinets today and the counter tomorrow and had been absolved of painting duty in order to finish the kitchen and coordinate the designers’ installations. “Should we be worried about Bernard?”

“Nah.” Chase began to parcel out the paint and pans. Avery inspected the stack of paintbrushes. There was a good two feet between them. “It’s still way south of us and the most we’re probably going to see is some heavy rain. There hasn’t been a direct hit here since 1928.”

Nicole’s friend Joe arrived to help and Maddie found herself wondering, once again, why the word “friend” didn’t seem to fit. Like Chase and Avery, something else crackled between them; but in their case Maddie was fairly certain it wasn’t lust. Of course, given the state of her own marriage, perhaps she was no longer qualified to judge.

“But even an indirect hit could be dangerous, couldn’t it?” Kyra asked from behind her camera. She’d passed from “rounded” to obviously pregnant and had begun to lead with her stomach. Worry for her daughter wriggled to the forefront of Maddie’s mind. Even as she willed it away, she marveled that so many worries could fit into such a confined space; at this point they were stacked up like airplanes at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson waiting for the go-ahead to land.

Chase shrugged but was careful not to do it in Avery’s direction. “Hurricanes are nothing to take lightly. But Bernard isn’t even hurricane strength yet and probably won’t be. The odds are with us.”

Maddie’s stomach dropped. They were living on the very tip of a tiny spit of land that jutted out into the Gulf of Mexico. She did not want to lay odds on the possible trajectory of a hurricane that could wipe them off the face of the map. Another planeload of worry began to circle her mental airport.

“Our goal right now is to get Bella Flora painted as quickly as possible and to do whatever we can to help the designers finish their installations before Labor Day.” Chase looked at all of them. “We’ve got just over two weeks and it’s going to be tight.” He pried a lid off one of the paint cans, then moved on to the next. Avery laid a paintbrush next to each pan. “Will Renée Franklin and her ladies be ready to come finish the landscaping as soon as the paint dries?”

“I’ve got them on standby,” Nicole said. “But we’re thinking late this weekend or early next week, right?”

Chase nodded, then watched surreptitiously while Avery assigned them to different sections of the exterior. The scaffolding had already been adjusted to allow them to begin cutting paint into the corners and around edges. The real painters would move in behind them to fill in the large expanses of wall.

Feeling almost like an old hand, Maddie climbed the scaffolding up to her position at the top of the arch of the westernmost salon window. The pan of paint and her brush were handed up to her. For a moment she stared out over the rooftop and down the beach, where the Don CeSar pierced the watercolor sky. Bella Flora would be done in the same flamingo pink that had been so popular in Florida in the 1920s, the limestone moldings and balustrades would be left their natural sand color, and the wrought iron would receive a fresh coat of black paint.

She sat down on the scaffolding next to her paint supplies and let her legs dangle over the side. Instead of picking up her paintbrush, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, wishing it were a genie’s lamp and all she had to do was rub it and concentrate, maybe do an
I Dream of Jeannie
blink to make Steve appear. For an embarrassing moment she actually considered rubbing the phone—a quick just-in-case, covering-all-your-bases rub—then settled for simply staring at its screen with intent.

Nothing.

Maddie’s eyes misted in disappointment, and she turned her blurry gaze back out over the Gulf as a flock of gulls glided low over the water, looking beneath the surface for their midmorning snack. For them the Gulf of Mexico was one giant drive-through.

Below and to the right on the opposite end of the scaffold, she heard Nikki and Giraldi talking, their voices rising and falling, their words indecipherable. With a sigh, Madeline set her phone down where she could reach it if a call or text came in. She was the one who’d set the deadline and issued the ultimatum; she could change that deadline if she chose or push it back in some way. It wasn’t like she’d be filing for divorce one minute after midnight, if Steve didn’t show up in person. She just wanted him moving forward with their life. All she needed was a decisive sign that this was happening.

But even Maddie could hear the evasion in the thought; the urge to rationalize was strong, almost impossible to resist. Was this what Edna felt before she tucked her son in in front of the television? Would any sign of hesitation undo whatever good her ultimatum might have set in motion?

Once again uncertain, Maddie reminded herself that she had no choice but to let things play out. So deciding, she reached over, repositioned her phone a few inches closer, then dipped her paintbrush in the thick pink paint, tapped off the excess, and got to work.

 

 

Nicole dabbed at the thick plaster wall where it met the wrought-iron stair leading down from the master bedroom. Giraldi stood on the stair itself. The black paint he was using sat on the step in front of him. They painted for a few minutes in silence while the sun got stronger and the breeze off the Gulf grew warmer. She hadn’t seen him for over a week, though she realized that given what he did for a living, that didn’t mean he hadn’t been around.

“Where have you been?” she asked when what she really wanted to ask was, “Have you been chasing Malcolm? Do you know what he asked me to do?”

“Following up on a lead.” He didn’t say whether it had anything to do with Malcolm or was a part of some other investigation. “Did you miss me?” he asked.

“No.”

“Another hope dashed.” He moved down another step and dipped his brush into the black paint. “I keep thinking I’m going to grow on you.”

“Unlikely,” she said though the truth was if he weren’t chasing her brother and trying to use her to catch him, she might have appreciated his good looks and dry sense of humor. As it was, she worried when he was around all the time and worried even more when he wasn’t.

“You know, you don’t have to like me to do the right thing.” He looked her in the eye when he said it, and it took every bit of self control not to blanch at the very words she’d thrown at Malcolm. “You’re going to have to declare yourself, Nikki. You won’t be able to ride the fence much longer.”

She swallowed painfully. She put down her paintbrush and opened the water bottle she’d brought up with her, buying time while she drank.
He knows
, she thought, while the cool liquid trickled down her throat.
He knows Malcolm asked me to meet him on the twenty-fifth and he’s waiting for me to tell him
. She set down the water bottle and licked her still-dry lips.

But once she told him, if she told him, the course would be set, and she wouldn’t be the one calling the shots. If she confirmed the time and place, Malcolm would be captured with no possibility of turning himself in. If she did what Giraldi considered the right thing, it would eliminate Malcolm’s chance to do the same. They’d catch him and lock him up. But if he refused to tell them where he’d stashed the money, what would happen then? Could they make him provide access? Could they retrieve the money without his help? She had no idea what the FBI could and couldn’t do or what Joe Giraldi was really capable of.

She, who had dug her way out of poverty by being ruthlessly decisive, dithered yet again while Giraldi watched her in the same way the big brown pelicans watched the schools of bait fish dart through the shallow water.

“If Malcolm turned himself in and gave back whatever’s left of the money he stole, would things go easier on him?” she asked.

“Probably,” he said. “It depends. I apprehend, I don’t prosecute.” He didn’t blink but continued to study her as if he knew all the thoughts racing through her head and even what she felt deep down in her heart. “If you think that’s going to happen or have any information at all about his whereabouts, you need to speak up. Don’t let him put you in the middle.” His dark eyes bored into hers, searching for answers, willing her to confide in him. “You haven’t been ruled out yet as a subject of interest, Nikki,” he said. “You could take a lie detector test to rule yourself out as an accomplice. Or you could simply agree to help us lure him in.”

She looked away then, because she was actually afraid that if she didn’t, she was going to spill everything: What Malcolm wanted her to do and what she wanted from Malcolm. How much she wanted him to redeem himself. Or maybe she wanted Malcolm to redeem her. Maybe she just wanted him to prove that it wasn’t her parenting that allowed him to disengage his conscience at will.

“You need to decide whose side you’re on,” he said. “And soon. Before your friends here find out who you really are and wonder why you haven’t tried to help the authorities find the person who ruined their lives.”

Below there were footsteps on the pool deck. Nicole looked down and saw Deirdre dragging the Frankenstein dummy past the pool and toward the reclinada palm. With Chase’s help, she tied it to one of the three trunks so that it dangled out over the grass near the seawall. Then she walked away, leaving Malcolm’s effigy swinging in the morning breeze.

 

 

Maddie fell asleep just before midnight, nodding off with the cell phone still clutched in her hand, her mind only partially numbed by the sunset margaritas she’d consumed. She hadn’t brought up the deadline she’d given Steven and neither had the others, but she’d fallen asleep with the sound of a clock ticking off the minutes in her head.

The text came in at 12:01, though she didn’t see it until the next morning. It read,
Please think of yourself as the IRS. I have to file an extension. I love you.
It had been sent from Steve’s cell phone. Which could have been located anywhere. Including the family room couch.

From her perch at the highest point of the scaffolding where the living room chimney met a large section of angled roof, Avery kept an eye on the activity below as the first wave of designers unloaded furnishings and accessories at tightly controlled intervals and began to set up the rooms and spaces they’d been awarded.

In the back, a long garden hose snaked across the pool deck and emptied water into the resealed and newly tiled pool. Big cardboard cartons containing outdoor furniture sat waiting to be unpacked. Any and all exposed pipes had been reburied. Renée Franklin’s landscape plans, delivered just yesterday, included a bed of flowering perennials to camouflage and mark the area.