by Mary Bowers
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you were good friends. And I’m so sorry about your wife. She was so energetic. She must have been a big presence in your life.”
He smiled, quickly and attractively. “How nicely you put it. And how true. The place is so empty without her, even though she was such a little thing. She didn’t even have to make noise or move around to be here. Decidedly present. It’s very strange, to have somebody who’s always been there suddenly be gone. It doesn’t make sense. I can’t quite take it in. What am I going to do now?”
He didn’t seem like a tragic figure. He just seemed confused. I groped for the right words, but there are no right words, and when my voice faded with emotion, I realized with a start that he could no longer hear me. He didn’t ask me to speak up or repeat myself. He just watched me, seeming to give me as much sympathy as I was giving him. He didn’t need to hear the words. He only needed to see my face and hear the tone of my voice.
“I’m so sorry,” I said at last, raising my voice. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, dear. There’s nothing anyone can do. It would be rude, I suppose, to let it be known that I don’t like casseroles?”
From the edge of tears, I burst out laughing. What a strange, harmless, quiet and very nice man. Edith had been almost a force of nature. He was going to be lost without her.
* * * * *
Bernie was hovering when I got back outside. Coco, Terri and Betty were gone, but Bernie was hovering, and Candy was right beside her, looking hungrily at Harold’s door.
“Is he all right?” Candy said, coming at me.
“He’s fine,” I told her. “As fine as he can be, considering. Right now, he’s confused, but it’s going to sink in soon. Let him grieve. I’ve only just met him, but I already have the feeling that he’s a person who needs a certain amount of time to center himself. Bernie, come on back to the condo if you’d like. I don’t know if you’ve been inside one of them yet, and I know you’re writing a piece on them.”
She nodded like that was all she wanted out of life, ever, and we managed to get away from Candy.
“Where did you park?” I asked her as we walked.
“Down by the real estate office. It seems like I’ve been standing around for hours, and my feet are killing me. My car’s all the way at the other end of the development. You may have to give me a ride back to it.”
“Let me get you inside, sit you down and give you something cool to drink first. Did you convince Terri to at least place an ad beside the article?”
Looking disgusted, she shook her head. “You’d think somebody in real estate would be more savvy about sales.”
“You’d think.”
By then we were entering the condo, and Coco came at us and said, “Well, she’s not back yet. I’m calling her.”
“You are not. Why don’t you whip up one of those fruit juice drinks for Bernie, here. Leave out the booze.”
“Leave it in.”
“Okay, leave it in, but go easy. She’s driving. Come on, Bernie, I’ll take you on the grand tour while Coco leaves her cell phone alone and makes you a drink.”
“I should at least track her.”
“Leave your cell phone alone. Now this is the master bedroom. As you can see, it has a walk-in closet full of enough clothes for the First Lady to go on a world tour. It’s Coco’s room, of course. Patty got the guest room, over there, with the children’s furniture and the little tiny closet. Aren’t you going to take notes?”
“I got it,” she said, tracking around the room visually like a sniper. “All the vacation rentals are pretty much like this. Where did Fred die?”
“Between the living room and the dining room. Didn’t Kyle tell you?”
“Nice try. Kyle’s not investigating this. I told you, it’s out of his jurisdiction.”
“Kyle. Common name in the south. Does he know Carlene Hathaway?”
“Everybody knows Carlene. She’s a lifelong Breezer. Why?”
“Does she know him well enough to call him cousin?”
“Everybody around here is your cousin.” The remark was offhand, but her eyes were lasering in. “Why?”
“Oh, no reason. Here’s your drink. Bottom’s up.”
She looked at me suspiciously and I quietly smiled. I could be cryptic too, and let it be a lesson to her.
* * * * *
I was on my cell phone the minute I dropped her off at the real estate office.
“Carlene? About this Cousin Kyle of yours – could his last name be Longley?”
“Oh, sure, you know Kyle, everybody knows Kyle – he’s my second cousin once removed on my father’s side, didn’t you know that?”
“Run it by me again. Not the genealogy, what he told you.”
“About what?”
“About Jason Adderley and his new truck.”
I was glad I had the window rolled up for the air conditioning, because as I said his name, I saw him looking at me outside a condo across the way. If he was a good lip-reader, it wouldn’t matter that he couldn’t hear, though.
Chapter 17
It was around 8 pm when Patty breezed in the condo’s door looking radiant. Coco was up and at her like a Chihuahua with behavioral problems.
“Lunch?” Coco ejaculated. “You call that lunch? Do you know what time it is, young lady?”
I came forward calmly and told Patty, “I pushed her down and sat on her when she finally decided to call 911. Did you have a good time?”
“Wonderful. You know how you just meet somebody and it’s like you’ve known them your entire life, and they’re your favorite old buddy and you never want to leave them again?”
“Oh, I’m so glad. Come sit down and tell us all about it.”
“It’s not like he’s just a boyfriend,” she said wonderingly, moving toward one of the rattan throne chairs. “He’s a friend. A guy. And a cute guy, too. You know? I mean . . . well, I’m not sure what I mean.” She floated into the seat.
“Did he kiss you?” Coco demanded, looming over her.
“Oh, well, yeah,” Patty said, looking adorably debutantish.
“Then he’s a boyfriend. Not just a friend.” Coco glared, stomped to the couch and threw herself down. “Did he book you up for dates, now that he knows you’re staying indefinitely? When are you seeing him again?”
“He offered to help us move into Cadbury House tomorrow. He’ll be here at ten. We should be packed up and ready to go by then, but he said he’d help us with the last-minute stuff. We have to be out of the condo by eleven so the cleaning crew can get it ready for the next renters.”
“Well, you haven’t even started packing yet, and I don’t know how you’re going to get it all done in time,” Coco said. I’d never seen this side of her before. Maybe nobody had, since she’d never had children.
“Easy,” I told her. “She’s not packing up to get on an airplane. All she has to do is sling her stuff into the car and move on down the road.”
Coco was scowling. Patty was laughing.
“So what did you guys do today?” she asked us.
We told her, and it brought her back down to earth.
“Oh, I feel so guilty now,” she said. “The only reason we decided to stay was to be here for you, Taylor, and just look at me, running around shopping and having fun and not even thinking about Fred and Edith, while you two are here with cops and nosey parkers and a grieving widower. Some friend I am!”
“Don’t you dare say that,” I told her. “I’m glad you had a good time. After all, you’re on vacation. Now, are you going to want any dinner?”
“Oh. I don’t think so. Benny took me to this little place for chicken wings and beer. Everybody knew him there and we had such a . . . good . . . time . . . .” She was watching Coco while she talked, and she quickly added, “We’ve still got some food in the refrigerator. We restocked the fridge after the cops took everything from the party, and we have to clean it all out before we leave in the morning. I’m not
really hungry, but I’ll help you guys set the table and get the food out. I’ll just have something to drink while you two eat.”
She was already standing, and I got up and walked off to the kitchen with her while Coco sat on the couch and fumed. By the time Coco realized we didn’t care and followed us, we already had everything out of the fridge and were looking over what we had on the countertop.
It was a random assortment. There didn’t seem to be anything to build a meal around until Patty dug way back behind the milk carton and found a party tray.
“Oh, look!” she said, bringing out a round, shrink-wrapped platter with shrimps arranged in a pretty pink ring. “It’s all defrosted and ready to eat.”
“The cops took the bottle of cocktail sauce,” Coco said.
“It’s got its own sauce in a little cup, right in the middle of the platter.”
Coco gave the shrimps a scowl, made no comment, and waited until Patty had it unwrapped. Then she took one, dipped it and ate it, looking disgruntled.
“Good thing we went back to the Public after the party, or we’d have to drag over to The Shack and choke down yet another grouper sandwich.”
“You like grouper sandwiches,” Patty said.
“And it’s Publix, not Public,” I added.
“Whatever.”
They’d also gotten fruit and veggie platters, and a box of crackers. Patty and I pretended we had a feast laid out, but we both knew it wasn’t going to keep anybody’s stomach happy for long.
We left the half-empty milk carton for breakfast, along with the half-empty box of cereal in the cabinet. While Coco and I picked around and ate this and that, Patty leaned back against a counter and told us more about her day in Tropical Breeze and the backwater hammock around Palm Coast.
Finally, Coco and I looked at one another and she said, “Well, that was awful.”
“Oh, look!” Patty had looked into the freezer in desperation and found a pint of cookie dough ice cream. Low-fat, of course. We all got spoons and ate directly from the carton, standing up and passing it around.
When we were done with that, Coco threw the carton away and said, “I’m going to The Shack and have something decent to eat.”
“You are not,” I said. “We’ve both had enough to eat. You just want to go hang out at the bar and prove to yourself that you can still pick up guys. Shame on you.”
To my dismay, she teared up. “I’ve still got it,” she whined, looking down at her pretty Salome outfit as if trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
Patty got all ready to comfort her, but what she really needed was a little tough love, and I let her have it.
“Oh, Coco, don’t be a glutton. You can’t have every man in the world. Save some for your friends. It’s okay to let Patty have one every now and then. Sarge was more your type than Benny anyway.”
“But he didn’t call me,” she wept.
“Give him a chance. He had to golf today.”
“That’s right, he did. He was busy. He’ll probably call me tomorrow.”
“That’s the spirit. Now, let’s go help Patty pack.”
We whipped her into Patty’s room before she could remember that Sarge hadn’t asked for her phone number, his golf game had been a last-minute thing that he could have refused, and that when Benny called him to be his substitute, he could have suggested a double date instead, but he didn’t.
After that we kept her so busy she forgot about Sarge, or at least stopped talking about him.
* * * * *
When I got to the condo the next morning, Benny’s car was already there. Somehow in spite of Coco, we managed to get organized, go down the Anastasia Resort check-out checklist and do everything right, and get everything my friends had with them out of the condo, including the three pairs of sandals Coco had put under the bed.
Driving south on A1A to Cadbury House, I wondered how Myrtle was going to take all this. Two houseguests might as well have been twenty. I was pretty sure having friends staying with us was going to bring out the martyr in Myrtle. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
When the caravan finally pulled up in front of Cadbury House, she was waiting outside for us like the chatelaine of the manor, and helped to carry everything into the house and up the stairs. You could’ve knocked me flat with a hard stare. I should have paid more attention when Myrtle and Coco had been chatting in the kitchen the day before. Against all the rules of human relationships between fashionistas and old prunes, it seemed that Myrtle had a girl crush on the fabulous Coco, and was about to like Patty even more. Michael and I looked at one another in amazement behind their backs, and Michael did a thumb’s up. When he had the chance, he eased on up to me and murmured, “Who knew?”
“Not me,” I said.
We stood back and watched as Benny, bags, suitcases, Coco, Patty and Myrtle all went up the stairs together in one big happy gaggle.
“I guess we’re not needed here,” I said.
“We are the hostess and host.”
“Myrtle will show them to their rooms. She looks like she’s enjoying herself. Besides, I’ve been thinking. I need to get my computer up. I won’t be long.”
“Your friends just got here and you’re going to your office to work?”
“Not to work. To do some research.”
He looked inquisitive, but I wasn’t ready to put it into words yet. My evolving theory was pretty wild, and I needed some confirmation before I started talking about it out loud.
* * * * *
I stared at the desktop icons on my computer screen. Now that I was faced with it, it didn’t seem like such a good idea any more. It had been almost a year since I’d had any contact with Victor Pacetti, and that’s the way I’d wanted it to stay.
Victor was a computer hacker with a past I could only guess at, but even the little bits that I knew were enough to make me uneasy. He had his own moral code, and in some ways, it was more strict than other people’s. He’d gone where no man should go in cyberspace, according to the law of the land, but when the FBI caught up with him, instead of jailing him, they recruited him for a while. Sometimes he did things just to prove he could, and I suspect his relationship with the Feds was terminated because they couldn’t control him. He was both a good guy and a bad guy, but in his own opinion, he was a guardian of the Internet. A white hat hacker.
Before I clicked on his Recipes icon, I tried to think of another way.
I could call Jason. I had his number. He could give me the password I needed. After all, he worked at the Anastasia Resort.
I’d given their website a cursory look when I’d found out my friends were staying there, but when I tried to get into the homeowner group’s private page, I found I needed a password. It didn’t bother me at the time. I just figured it was where everybody traded gossip, issued invitations and let off steam. Things the rental office wouldn’t want potential customers to see, and just the kinds of things I was looking for now. There might also be a private Facebook page somebody had created for the homeowners.
Jason or Victor? The choice was easy. I called Jason.
“Facebook?” he said with a snort. “You’re dealing with the last stop before the old folks’ home here. No offense, but the condo owners are not exactly members of the Facebook generation. Most of them don’t even text. Terri gave them a space on the website hoping they wouldn’t go rogue on the Internet and create something she couldn’t control. They seem happy with it. They treat it like a community message board, and I think they’re kind of proud that they even know how to use it. As far as I know, there’s no private social network page for the Anastasia Homeowners.”
“Does Terri use it too? To post information for the homeowners?”
“Sure. Saves a lot of paper. As for the password you want, Terri lets Darcy keep it updated, and Darcy doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“Darcy?”
“Terri’s secretary.”
“Oh.” The dunderhead. “So what’
s the password?”
“Password.”
I stopped a second, thinking he hadn’t understood me, then it hit me. “That’s it? The password is ‘password?’”
“Yup. All lower case.”
“That girl is a dunderhead,” I muttered.
“They haven’t changed the gate code in three years.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Nope. Repeat renters kept complaining that they’d get here after the office was closed for the day and not be able to get in the gate, so they just left it. Every pizza delivery boy and landscaper and lowlife swamp rat in the area knows that gate code. People keep sneaking in to throw their garbage into our dumpsters so they don’t have to pay for pick-up at their houses. We don’t have security cameras, like Publix.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said, so he wouldn’t go on for hours. After all, he was sort of related to Carlene. Anybody even close to her family tree has all the time in the world to tell you their troubles.
I hung up, typed “password,” and I was in.
* * * * *
“Talk me out of this,” I said, as I joined Michael at the kitchen counter half an hour later. Judging from the bumping and laughter upstairs, everybody was settling in just fine.
“Don’t do it,” he said. “Whatever it is.”
I hiked up beside him and leveled with him. “I’m thinking of consulting Victor.”
“Don’t do it,” he said, dead serious this time. “Why in the world would you want to do that?”
“I need information, and I’ve gotten all I can manage to get without his help. I’ve been in the Anastasia Resort Homeowners’ webpage, but naturally, that doesn’t include the office files. I’ve read the minutes of the HOA meetings, and that helped, but I need more, and for anything else, I need a hacker.”
“I can see that, but I still don’t like it.”
“Think of another way,” I said, hoping he really would.
Michael is pretty smart, and he knows a lot of people, but this particular thing was out of his wheelhouse, which is a nice way of saying it was illegal.
“I can’t,” he said at last. “Are you sure this is the only way?”
