by Bill H Myers
“When I told him potential buyers would have a hard time getting a loan on a property like his, he said he'd be willing to offer owner financing, as long as the buyer put a big chunk of money down. He wanted the motel and the headaches it caused him to be gone. He was ready to sell.
“I got all the details, and the next day I remembered talking to Mr. Raines about income properties. I gave him a call and told him about my friend's motor court and how it had owner financing.
“Raines said he was interested, so I contacted the seller, got permission to show the place, and picked up the master key, which would unlock all the doors. Raines had agreed to meet there the next day, and he was in the parking lot waiting for me when I showed up.
“We went into all the guest rooms and each one was like stepping back into the fifties. Old TVs, the kind with tubes. Busted up furniture. Dusty paintings on the walls, and mold growing in the bathrooms.
“It was easy to see why no one would want to stay there. The rooms were in bad shape. It'd take a lot of money to fix them up.
“The only thing the place had going for it was its location on A1A south on Anastasia Island. But it didn't have a water view, was on the wrong side of the road, and was surrounded by other failing businesses. The parking lot was small, there were no nearby restaurants, and it was hard crossing the highway to get back to Old Town.
“But for some reason, Mr. Raines liked what he saw. He agreed to pay the full asking price of three hundred fifty thousand dollars and he could put forty thousand down.
“I presented the offer to the seller and he accepted it. Since it was an owner finance deal, we had a local attorney draw up the contracts and were able to close two weeks later.
“That was a month ago. I haven't heard from Raines since. He never told me what he planned to do with the property.”
Erin nodded and said, “Matt, you’re the best. When my husband and I get ready to buy, you'll be the one we talk to.
“But I have one last question. What's the name of the place Waldo bought?”
Phillips smiled and said, “It was originally the Paradise Inn. But that's not what the sign says now. Over the years some of the letters have fallen off, and these days it just says ‘die Inn.’ It's kind of a local joke. When people ask for directions to Pier Park, we tell them to go south on A1A until they see the Die Inn sign and then take a left at the next light.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Our new friend Matt was telling Erin how to find the motor court Waldo had purchased. He offered to draw us a map but said if we got on A1A and headed south, we couldn't miss it. It'd be on our right, about a half mile before the light.
He gave Erin his card and said, “Call me sometime. I'll show you things you might be interested in.”
I think I saw him wink at her but couldn't be sure. It didn't matter though. Erin was leaving with me and we knew where we'd be heading.
When we got back in the car, I said, “Well, I guess unbuttoning your shirt worked. Wonder what would happen if you unbuttoned another one. You can test it on me.”
She shook her head and said, “Prevert.”
After buttoning up her shirt, she started the car and we headed to Anastasia Island. On the way, I asked if there was a flashlight in the car.
“I don't know, look in the glove compartment.”
I looked and didn't find one. Instead, I found the chrome pistol that Raif had taken out when he first gave me permission to use the car. At least I thought it was Raif's. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe it belonged to Erin and she had stashed it there when we started riding around together.
I pointed to it. “Is that yours?”
She nodded. “It is. It's loaded so leave it alone.”
“No problem. I won't touch it.”
It wasn't that I was afraid of hers or any other gun. I had plenty of familiarity with firearms, having carried a pistol and rifle during my time in the desert. Back then, people were shooting at me on a daily basis, and more often than not, I was shooting back.
But riding in Raif's car with Erin beside me, I had no intention of shooting anyone or getting my fingerprints on the pistol in the glove compartment. I didn't think she'd be firing the gun anytime soon, but if she did, I didn't want my prints on it.
I closed the door and said, “If the Die Inn is as bad as Matt says, we should stop and get some gloves. And a flashlight. And maybe more wipes.”
Erin nodded and kept going south on A1A. When we passed the Die Inn on our right, she didn't pull into the lot. She kept going. When I asked her why, she said, “There's a hardware store about a mile ahead. We can stop there and get what we need.”
We pulled into the Ace parking lot, locked the car and went inside. We quickly found what we needed. Gloves, a flashlight for each of us, and anti-bacterial wipes. On the way to the checkout, Erin grabbed a roll of silver duct tape. I couldn't figure out why, so I asked her about it. “Duct tape? You think we'll need some?”
She shrugged. “We might. You never know when having a roll of duct tape can save the day.”
She was right. Duct tape can sometimes be a lifesaver.
When we reached the checkout, a tall, skinny guy, sporting a man bun, was in front of us. Not having anything else to do, I watched to see what he was buying.
Rope, plastic gloves, a shovel, and two bottles of bleach. Everything a person would need if they had kidnapped someone and wanted to bury the evidence. He didn't look like the kidnapper type, but you never know.
He paid with cash and left the store. After the door closed behind him, I stepped over and snapped a photo of his car, with the license plate clearly visible. Just in case the cops needed to find him later.
We paid for our things, bagged them up and went back out to the car. As before, Erin drove.
Three minutes later, we pulled into the Die Inn parking lot. There were no other cars there and no sign of life. With all the windows boarded up, we couldn't look inside to see if maybe Waldo was around. But since we didn't see his car, which Erin described as an old Camry with peeling silver paint, we figured he wasn't there. At least not yet.
It was mid-afternoon, and if he was still in town, he might be at Home Depot or Lowes, gathering up the tools he'd need to rehabilitate the place.
Even though his car wasn't there, Erin said we should get out, walk around, and see if anyone had started fixing things up.
We went to the office first. A small glassed-in room with the word “Closed” painted on the outside wall with what looked like white shoe polish. Erin tried the door and neither of us was surprised to find it was locked.
Leaving the office, we walked the sidewalk around the horseshoe-shaped lot, checking the doors of each unit as we passed. Like the office, all were locked. After reaching the end of the sidewalk, we checked behind the building. There were a couple of dumpsters in a small fenced-in area. Nothing more.
Back around the front, Erin pointed to the water fountain that Matt had told us about. It was about six feet tall, made of what looked like concrete, and had a brass-colored spigot near the top. A healthy stream of water flowed from the nozzle to the drain in the pavement below. With the utilities turned off, I would have thought the water would have been off as well. But apparently it wasn't.
Erin headed to the fountain to get a closer look. I followed. The first thing she did when she got to it was to put her hands under the running water. She smiled and said, “It's cold. It shouldn't be, but it is.”
I circled the fountain to see if I could find where the water pipe was coming in. But I found nothing. The base of the fountain went down below the surrounding pavement, suggesting it was in place before the lot was paved. Maybe it was there even before the Die Inn was built.
While I was checking out the base, Erin stayed near the front, intrigued by the water flow. To me, the fountain looked like a large seashell turned on end, with the spigot at the top and water falling directly into the drain below.
When I came back around
to tell Erin that I thought the fountain had been there longer than the parking lot, she nodded and said, “Check this out.”
She pointed to a brass plaque about the size of a playing card. It had turned black as brass left out in the weather for a long time will do. I reached up and rubbed my finger against the top of the plaque and some of the black came off. But not enough to read the words that had been engraved on it.
I turned to Erin. “Can you read what it says?”
“No, the letters are too dark. But I know how to fix it.”
She went to the car and returned with the pencil I'd seen earlier in the glove compartment along with the sales receipt from Ace.
She put the printed side of the receipt against the plaque and started rubbing the pencil on the backside. Soon words started to appear. The first three were, “Fountain of Youth.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
“You know there's no such thing as the Fountain of Youth. Ponce De Leon wasn't looking for it and he never mentioned it in his journals.
“The whole thing was made up to get more people to move to La Florida in the new world. Those that made the trip found swamps filled with alligators, voracious clouds of biting bugs, unbearable humidity, and no Fountain of Youth.”
Erin was right. I'd read up on it. There was no Fountain of Youth. It didn't exist. Except in the minds of tourists hoping for something that would help them recover from old age.
I reached out and touched the water pouring from the fountain. It had a smooth velvety feel. Being so cool to the touch could mean the water came from a stream or artesian well. Perhaps one that had been there before the motel was built. Rather than try to cover it up, they built a structure over it and called it the Fountain of Youth.
A lot of tourist motels in the area probably had similar fountains. The one at the Die Inn wouldn't be the only one. Still, it was an interesting feature at an otherwise depressing location.
We hung around the Die Inn for two hours, hoping Waldo would show. But he never did. Erin was getting hungry and we decided to get something to eat then come back and wait for his return.
Since the motorhome was close, we stopped there first. As usual, Bob met us at the door. This time with a surprise. A dark green lizard with a white stripe down its back hung from his mouth. The lizard was still alive, but I knew it wouldn't be for long.
Bob would soon drop it on the floor and chase it until it didn't have any chase left it in. He'd eat half of it and, later on that evening, throw it all back up.
Erin watched as he played with the lizard. She said, “He is quite a character. He slept with me most of the night. Every time I rolled over, he would reach out with his paw and let me know he was there.
“When I woke this morning, he was playing touch with my ear lobe. At first, I thought it was you, trying to wake me. But when I heard the purring, I knew it was him.”
When he disappeared in the bedroom with his lizard, Erin went to the bathroom to freshen up. When she was done, I did the same.
We discussed our dinner plans and decided to get Chinese to go. We'd eat in the car while waiting for Waldo to return.
Thirty minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of Vapeville, across the road from the Die Inn. We figured that if Waldo saw a car in his lot, he might get spooked and not return. The Vapeville lot was dimly lit, so we weren't worried about being seen.
We sat in the car for two hours watching customers come and go. Most were middle-aged women, going in empty-handed and coming out with a smile and a shopping bag. After a while, we got bored watching the customers and spent the next hour and a half looking at the screens on our phones.
We'd been sitting in the car for almost four hours when Erin said it was time to call it quits. It was nearly midnight and Waldo hadn't shown. She said we should go home, get some sleep and check back in the morning. It sounded like a good idea.
We left Vapeville and headed back to our campsite at the state park. It was a short drive, no more than six miles. When we pulled into the park, the front gate was closed, keeping us from going in any further.
Erin shook her head. “We're locked out. And I'm too sleepy to go find another place to stay. Guess we’ll have to sleep in the car.”
There was no way I was going to sleep in the car, especially since I knew how to get through the gate. I told her, “Pull up to the gate. I know how to get us in.”
She inched the car forward until the front bumper was almost touching the metal gate. She looked over at me and said, “Okay Houdini, how do we get through it?”
I reached over the dashboard and picked up the park pass the ranger had given me when we checked in. It had our site number and the date we were leaving printed in large letters.
Below that, in a much smaller font, were seven numbers. Four three four one one nine three. I knew what they were for. Erin didn't.
I pointed to the left side of the gate, the driver's side. There was a small keypad on a pole. I said, “Punch in this code. It’ll open the gate.”
She tried, but the car was too far from the keypad for her to reach it from her window. She needed to get out and step over to the pole.
It was dark in the park, Florida dark, with the possibility of gators, bears, pythons and other interesting and perhaps lethal wildlife lurking nearby. With her window rolled down, she listened to the jungle noises outside and said, “Nope, I'm not going out there. You do it. When the gate opens, I'll pull through and wait for you.”
Getting out of the car wasn't something I wanted to do, but being a gentleman, I didn't argue. I opened my door, stepped out and crossed behind the car to get to the keypad. With Erin watching, I made a show of entering the gate code and then a “ta-da” motion with my hand when the gate started to lift.
When it reached its full height, Erin pulled the car through and waited for me on the other side. At least that’s what I thought she was going to do.
But as the gate came back down and I started walking toward the car, Erin leaned out her window and said, “Watch out for gators,” and drove off.
I'd left my flashlight in the car, and with her a hundred yards down the road, it had gotten Florida dark again. I was pretty sure she was just playing and would come back, but she didn't. She waited for me to walk the distance from the gate to the car.
It wasn’t a long walk and was kind of refreshing after spending the last four hours on a stake-out. Still, it was Florida and walking in the dark, especially in a game preserve, was always risky. So I hustled in her direction and just as I was about to reach the car, she pulled away again, this time stopping about fifty yards ahead of me.
I was pretty sure she was enjoying her little game, but I was quickly growing tired of it. It had been a long day and I wanted to get to the RV and rest.
I was hoping that when I got close to the car again, she wouldn't do the same thing. Drive away and make me walk to catch up with her. If she did, it was going to be a long night.
Fortunately, she decided the game was over. When I reached the car and opened the passenger door, she said, “I don't know what happened. I pulled through the gate, and the car kept going like it had a mind of its own. I'm not lying. That's what really happened.”
If she hadn't had a big grin on her face while she was telling me about the car driving itself I might have believed her, but the grin gave it away. She'd done it on purpose. Not out of spite, but to have a little fun at my expense. It really didn't bother me. In fact, it kind of felt good that she was confident enough around me to play games.
After I got in, we made our way to the RV. On the way, we saw two raccoons scurry across the road in front of us. No alligators, bears, or pythons.
When we got back to the motorhome, Bob wasn't waiting for us at the door. It was after midnight, and I was pretty sure he was in the back, sleeping. Or maybe he'd found another lizard.
I turned on the lights and asked Erin, “Which one of us is sleeping on the couch?”
She pointed at
me and said, “If you promise not to mess with me, and that means no touching or spooning, you can sleep back there with me. But sleep is all we're going to do. If you try anything else, I'll send you to the couch.”
I agreed to her terms and after each of us took care of our nightly bathroom business, we headed to bed. She slept in her bra and panties, with me in my boxers at her side.
Chapter Forty-Eight
When I woke the next morning, Erin was still in bed next to me. She had snuggled up against my back and had an arm around my chest. She was moaning. Or maybe snoring. Either way, it was a good start to the day.
I needed to get up and pee, but I wanted to stay in bed and see what Erin might do next.
Still moaning, she began kissing the back of my neck and with the arm she had over my chest, she pulled me in closer. Then, just as things started to get interesting, she pulled away, pushed against my back with her hand and said, “Get off me, you prevert!”
I rolled over to face her, smiled and asked, “What were you dreaming about? It sounded like you were having a good time.”
She made a face and said, “It's none of your business. But you can be sure I wasn't dreaming about you.”
She tried to roll over away from me, but her path was blocked by Bob. While she had been spooning me in her sleep, he had been spooning her as well, his belly up tight against her neck.
When she rolled into his direction, her face met his manly parts. He purred even louder until Erin opened her eyes and took in the view.
She sat up, pulling the covers off both of us, and said, “I need to find my own place. I can't stay here much longer.”
She pushed me out of bed and I headed to the bathroom. When I came out, she was standing there, a frown on her face. “It wasn't about you. The dream, it wasn't about you.”
I grinned and stepped aside so she could go into the bathroom and take care of business. While she was doing this, I put on my clothes and headed to the kitchen. I pulled out the bottle of Simply Tropical juice from the fridge and poured half a glass. I used it to wash down my morning pill.
