Just Like That

by Nicola Rendell

  She licks the thread with her sandpapery tongue.

  I rub my face and yawn. It wasn’t the best night’s sleep, and this morning wood is fucking killing me, but the day’s got promise: I’ll see her tonight. Probably. If she shows.

  Also, on the plus side, I think I smell…coffee. Not some kind of weird tea made of twigs, but actual old-fashioned coffee. I roll out of bed and put on my pants. Janis Joplin leaps off the back of the sofa onto the warm spot where I was lying, staring at me like she can’t understand why it took nine fucking hours for me to get the message and move. In the kitchen I find Aunt Sharon reading on her iPad, with a big cup of steaming coffee next to her. “Keurig is all set for you.”

  I look at the counter. I sent it to her for Christmas, and holy fuck alive she’s using it. “I was sure you’d donate it to the Humane Society.”

  “They already had one,” she says, trying to keep a straight face. “Just kidding. It’s awesome. They’ve even got my chai.” She lifts her cup and flips the page on her book.

  I make myself some French roast and let my mind return to Penny and what she must be doing right about now. In her nighty. Curled up in bed. With Guppy in my spot.

  The machine gurgles to signal it’s all done. I pour in some soy milk and see the Gazette is on the counter. I take a seat across from Sharon at the little kitchenette and realize the whole scene feels oddly…normal. Could be any house in America. I don’t even see her vape pen anywhere. But then things get back on track, as she glances up at me and says, “There’s some eleven-grain, gluten-free bread in the freezer if you want some.”

  “Awesome.” I put a slice in the toaster and depress the button. As I wait, I notice the headline on the newspaper: Golf Tycoon Applies for Zoning Change. Underneath that is a picture of Dickerson, in his golf plaids, swinging a golf club. The photographer managed to capture him in the exact instant that he missed the drive, and his face is double-chinned and puckered-lipped with anger, like he’s been constipated for weeks. And in that expression, I see something totally unexpected. I knew he was an asshole, but the truth of it is written all over his face.

  He is full of rage.

  Richard “Dick” Dickerson Continues Efforts at Development; City Council Raises Concerns. I skim the article. Variance. Sixty-day permit. Filing fees. Opponents. It doesn’t seem big, but I’ve been in this job long enough to know when someone’s up to something. And this guy here most definitely is.

  The toast springs up from the toaster, smelling like burnt nuts. I slather it with some vegan butter, tuck the paper under my elbow and grab an apple from the fruit basket. Aunt Sharon says, “And I’d recommend not eating anything from any dish, bowl, or tin in this house.” She glances up from her iPad. “I tried to mark all the edibles, but then I ran out of Post-its.”

  “Copy that,” I answer, and head back to the spare bedroom.

  * * *

  As I sit down with my laptop at my Aunt Sharon’s desk, my phone buzzes. It’s a message from Rex, my oldest Army buddy. It’s his company that’s luring me away from the PI business when I get back to Boston. On the screen is a photo of him and me standing together on tour, with an Abrams tank behind us. We’re dusty, fucking exhausted, sunbaked and half shell-shocked. And so fucking glad to be alive. It’s one of those photos that’s so intensely nostalgic, I can hardly look at it straight. Below it, Rex has added:

  * * *

  Looking forward to next week, Macklin. Fucking psyched you’re joining the team.

  * * *

  It all seemed so logical when I agreed to it—one of those jobs that any guy in his right mind would kill to land. But that was before I asked a girl if I could untangle her earbuds, and everything unraveled from there. My heart bangs hard in my chest—it’s got fuck-all to do with the French roast. That’s Penny. That’s these feelings. Scary as shit but real as a heart attack. But right now, nothing about her is for sure. Life has to go on, and I can’t leave Rex hanging.

  Same here, man. Thanks.

  See you Thursday.

  I pocket my phone and get down to the case at hand. This might be my last job as a PI, but I’m damn well going to do it right. Using the back door of a mortgage database, I look up the major property owners in Port Flamingo. Not surprisingly, the mayor’s name is everywhere. Co-signatory, 7.9 acres single-family residence/farm, 901 FL Route 8. I pull the map out of my bag and scan along Route 8, into Dickerson’s highlighted circle. It’s the llama farm. Back to the database, where I find him listed again. Co-signatory, Commercial property, 1220-1450 North Beach Point. That corresponds to the whole patch of land where the boardwalk carnival is. On and on. One local business after the other, rescued from bankruptcy by the mayor.

  But another company keeps popping up in the property listings, which is known by the mysteriously nonsensical name of National Kindergarten Folios, Inc. It hasn’t made any huge land grabs, but it’s made a fuckton of little ones: $15,000 for beachfront acre, $10,000 for a derelict building. They’re such tiny purchases, in fact, that it makes me wonder if someone’s buying up mineral rights on the down-low. I’ve seen this same kind of shit in places like northern Colorado and the Permian Basin. But this doesn’t look like mineral rights. National Kindergarten Folios is also buying up foreclosed houses, closed-down gas stations, and even shops on Main Street.

  I do a search for it in the county, and the map springs back at me in square red pixels everywhere, covering the town like a rash.

  It turns out that National Kindergarten Folios Inc. isn’t a real company, but a shell corporation. It’s registered in Delaware, operated from Florida, but there’s no real name linked up to it anywhere. The paperwork of the Florida company points back to Delaware, and back again. Tricky shit. Expert shit. Whatever the company is really about, it fronts all sorts of projects: Boat building, real estate, communications, construction. An article buried way down in the search results says KFolios Communications to Build Cell Towers in Port Flamingo.

  Which never happened. Clearly.

  Even the name of the company is weird. It’s like Mad Libs—a string of words together that don’t really belong in a row. And sure, people do weird shit with company names, but not usually this weird. So I go with my gut and write it out on a pad of paper. Under that, I write down A.R. Dickerson Golf International.

  I cross off one letter after another, as I find them in each word. D from Dickerson matches up to the d in Kindergarten and so on. By the time I’m halfway through, I see it, clear as can be. It’s a fucking anagram. The letters are rearranged, but it says the same goddamned thing. I look back at the map, and the holdings, and the article about the uncompleted cell towers.

  I lean back in the little office chair, thinking, Holy shit.

  Because Dick Dickerson isn’t trying to build a golf course with a spa and a knockoff Benihana. He isn’t trying to help Port Flamingo. He’s trying to wipe it right off the map.

  * * *

  The Shorefront Grill is upscale. It’s situated at the end of the bay, one town over and up on a clifftop, with a view of the Gulf. At the end of the road that leads to the parking lot is a commercial For Sale sign, and for about one heartbeat I think, What I wouldn’t give to own a place like this.

  I arrive way ahead of our reservation, and the hostess seats me at a table for two in the corner. She puts the menus down, making sure the edges are exactly parallel with the tabletop.

  “Can I get you anything to start?”

  “Scotch, neat.”

  She nods. “Any kind in particular?”

  “Best you’ve got. But one thing, before my date gets here,” I say. My date. Not even close to the right word, not even close to how I feel.

  She smiles down at me, her hands clasped behind her back. “Yes, sir?”

  “No fish.” I slice my hand through the air. “Not the same cutting board, not the same plate. Not an oyster, not a clam, not a piece of calamari. Not for me.”

  “Noted,” she says, and turns
to go.

  As the waitress leaves, I keep my eyes locked on the parking lot. I give it a 50/50 chance that Penny won’t show. I feel more nervous about this than I have before a date in…fuck, years. Maybe ever. I look out at the sunset and try to think about the last time I came totally clean with a woman, told her straight up the whole fucking deal, laid it all out there, lock, stock, and barrel.

  I've never done it, not once. I’ve never wanted to and never felt the need. Until now.

  Down below me, Penny’s Bronco pulls into a space right next to my Suburban. Her door opens, and one beautiful leg slides out, wearing a killer black heel with a red sole. Out comes the dress, and the body. Her hair is in perfect long curls, in a cascade down her back. The sun glints off them, and she bends inside to grab her purse.

  I slug back half my Scotch without looking away from her. Fuck. She was beautiful before, but now she’s someone else again. She turns and looks up at the restaurant, giving me a view of her cleavage and a string of pearls, long and knotted, nestled right between her breasts.

  I groan into my palm.

  The restaurant is up above the parking lot, at the end of a long set of stairs, which means she can’t see me watching. She turns her back to me again and bends her knees, touching up her lipstick in her side mirror. The position accentuates her hips and her waist and every perfect inch.

  I drain back the rest of the Scotch and feel the warmth come up from my stomach. And then I watch her make her way up the cliffside staircase. Every other step shows the inside of her thighs—that creamy, soft skin, those curves and lines. I imagine her bruises, invisible under the dress. The ocean breeze catches her hair, and she gathers it up in her palm, holding it in front of one shoulder.

  Straightening my shirtsleeves and smoothing my vest, I pray to a God I don’t even really believe in that maybe, just maybe, she’s willing to take a chance on me. On this. On us.

  38

  Penny

  My day was full of llamas, donkeys, and chaos at my mom and stepdad’s farm. Before the slightly stooped doorman opens the door for me, I step aside to collect myself behind a stucco column. My feet already ache from the walk up the steps, but not as bad as I expected. I’m getting used to the dress, but I’m still not used to how I look. My face is reflected back at me in the shiny chrome doorplate and I realize that I don’t look like Penny anymore. I look like Penelope, the whole kit and caboodle. Put together. Polished. Poised. I’ve always felt confident, but never like this. Cute but never…

  “You look very beautiful, ma’am,” says the old doorman. “You look like an angel that fell right out of the sky.”

  I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and smile at him, too nervous to even say thanks. I steady myself, and take a step towards the door. I feel like I’m about to jump from a plane, that same sort of oh my God is this a good idea? panic. But the plane is airborne, and my chute is packed. All that’s left now is to step off the edge and hold my breath. I adjust my long string of pearls and the doorman puts his hand on the massive door handle. “Ready?”

  And I give him a wordless, smiling nod.

  * * *

  As soon as I walk inside, Russ stands from the table. I don’t wait for the hostess to lead me over, but go straight to him. He looks even more handsome tonight than before, because not only is he crisp and starched in yet another pair of perfect pants, but he’s also wearing a vest. No suit coat, because it’s too hot, but a very yummy, absolutely perfect pinstripe vest, with his shirtsleeves rolled up.

  He pulls my chair out for me, and I sit, looking up the length of his body at him as I do. I scooch in, and he puts his hand on my back, certain and confident. “You’re here. Does that mean I get another chance?”

  I feel the blush come back up into my cheeks. My words are all caught up in my throat, like I know what I want to say, but I don’t know how. He sits across from me, and for one long second, we stare at each other, unblinking, over the flickering candle. “Yes. Yes.” As I say it, warmth returns to my nervous-cold hands. “You didn’t have to tell me all that. I don’t need to know everything, Russ.”

  “Yes, you do. Listen,” he says, leaning in and putting one of his thick forearms on the white tablecloth.

  That listen of his turns me into rice pudding.

  “I’m not going to bullshit you. I’m falling for you, that’s all there is to it. The last few days have been fucking madness, and I’ve loved every second of it.”

  I press my lips together and stifle a laugh. “I know. It’s been insane. I’ve loved it, too.”

  “I don’t have any fucking clue what we’ll do when I leave, but I promise you, Penny. We’ll figure it out.”

  We’ll figure it out. I grip my chair hard with both hands. I remember hanging onto a piano bench exactly this way when I was five years old, and I forgot how to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” at the school recital, when every note slipped right out of my head. I’m falling for you.

  “I hope so.”

  From his vest, he pulls a second envelope, like the one from last night. He slides it onto my menu. “I forgot something.”

  I consider the envelope without picking it up. “If these are tickets somewhere, the answer is yes. All I need is a few hours and a twenty-degree temperature range so I know what to pack.”

  He snickers, loosening up like I am. “We can do that. Iceland, Turks and Caicos. Bali. You name it. But that’s something else.” He glances at the envelope. “I realized I left that out last night. And I think you, of all people, need to know about it.”

  I turn it over. The flap is tucked into the fold, and I peek inside. On a typed piece of paper, I see a few words on a single page, but I don’t read what they say. “Can’t you just tell me?”

  He raises his delicately scarred eyebrow. Just because I know it came from a cat scratch now doesn’t make it any less sexy. “Going to make this hard on me, tiger?”

  “Noooo,” I say through a smile, suddenly feeling much easier in my dress than I did five minutes ago. “I’d rather hear it from you.”

  The hostess comes by and takes our drink order. When she’s gone, I try to hand the envelope back to him. But he won’t take it and waves me off. “That’s yours. Not mine.”

  So I put the envelope between the salt and pepper shakers. I smooth my napkin and lean in. “All I want to know now is what you’re doing in Port Flamingo. And why.”

  * * *

  “I’m not a movie scout, which I’m pretty sure you know already, judging from the way Maisie rattled off every last detail of my website at me.”

  I nod at him through my wine glass, watching him all the time. My “umm-hmm” echoes back at me through my chardonnay. “A private investigator.”

  “I do what’s sometimes called information brokering, but what could also, possibly, be called…” He hesitates.

  Blackmail. I might be a small-town girl, but I’m no dummy. “Gathering things to use as leverage.”

  He lifts fingers from the table and nods. “Right. I prefer to keep it corporate. Sometimes it gets personal.” He takes a slow sip of his Scotch, and I can tell he’s not used to talking about this, because for the first time his words are a bit unsure, almost. Not that normal dominant confidence, but something a little more…gentle. Like it’s up to me to decide if I approve of him—of his work—or not.

  Which makes it all so incredibly sexy.

  “I don’t do dirty work. I don’t do process serving or any of that shit. I stay in the background, get the info, and move on.”

  I let him keep going without any extra interruptions, even though I really do have about six million questions, just to start.

  He goes on, “But I keep it legal. I’m not in this job to get myself thrown in jail. So that’s my line in the sand. The edge of legal is where I stay.”

  At first, the angel on my shoulder sort of gasps. I don’t know what that means, the edge of legal. The devil gives the angel a solid shove. “Don’t be such a wuss.”


  “I was hired to come down here and see what I could find on your mayor.”

  “The mayor?” I lean forward so far that the back legs of my chair come up off the floor. “Look into him for what? Man of the year?”

  “See, that’s just it,” Russ says, picking up his drink and swirling his Scotch. “Everything I find on him is unbelievably nice. Never seen anything like it.”

  Nice doesn’t even scratch the surface. “He’s never seen a lost cause he didn’t want to fix. He’s like Saint Rita in a green polo.”

  “Exactly. I couldn’t find any leverage on him at all. So then I started thinking about this job in the opposite direction. What if the mayor isn’t the problem? What if the backer is?”

  While I’m totally down with all of this, the jargon is a little bit unfamiliar still. We’re heading into Bourne Identity when I’m only vaguely familiar with Mission: Impossible. “I have no idea what that means.”

  “The guy who hired me, he’s my backer. The name is Dick Dickerson.”

  As soon as the words come out of his mouth, my rage spikes up inside me like the ball-and-hammer game at the fair. “Bastard.”

  “You know him?”

  “Know him?” I keep my voice hushed, but I don’t let the volume hide my anger. “We have two hobbies in this town. Going to festivals and hating Dick Dickerson.”

  The waiter comes over with some bread and butter and hesitates, like he’s waiting for us to order. Russ gives him an incredibly authoritative come back later glance, and he nods and walks away.

  He doesn’t even have to speak and he gets his way. God. This man. How I want this man.

  Russ straightens his fork. “I don’t think he wants to develop the land. I think he wants to raze it. What intrigues me is why.”

  At first, it all seems so absurd, so obvious, that I almost burst out laughing. It’s like asking, Why does the guy who owns the carwash drive a Range Rover? Because seagulls have made his fortune, you num-num. But then I realize that Russ can’t know the whole story. He’s not from here. He doesn’t know about small-town skeletons. He deals in high-end information, not the sort of thing that gets nattered about at the beauty salon.