Savannah Breeze

by Mary Kay Andrews

The terrier sat up, blinked, and stretched.

  “Come on, boy,” Harry called. “Let’s go pee.”

  I hurried in the direction of the vacated bathroom, thinking it was the first good idea I’d heard from him.

  By the time I’d showered and changed, it was fully daylight. The worn wooden walls of the cabin were bathed in the morning sun, and the fire in the little woodstove was crackling merrily. The scent of fresh-brewed coffee and frying bacon wafted from the kitchen. Harry stood at the stove, his back to me, and Jeeves beside him, tail thumping on the floor, obviously waiting for breakfast to be served.

  The sheets and blankets on the rattan sofa had disappeared. It was as if he’d deliberately obliterated any sign of my existence there the night before.

  I stowed my stuff back in the Winn-Dixie bag, which he’d pointedly set beside the front door.

  “Coffee?” He slid a full mug down the kitchen counter in my general direction.

  I wasn’t too proud to take it, seizing it eagerly between my hands and inhaling the rich smell.

  “We need to talk,” I said, between sips.

  “I’ve said what I need to say,” he said, flipping strips of bacon onto a paper-towel-covered platter. “I had a deal. I’ve put in hundreds of hours on this place and not been paid a damn dime. It may not look like much to you, but when I moved in over here, there was no hot-water heater. The roof leaked like a sieve, the foundation was about to cave in, the wiring was shot, and all the plumbing was rusted through. I’ve fixed all that and more. Now you waltz in here, say the deal’s off. New owner, new plan. Your new plan leaves me out in the cold and I don’t like it worth a damn.”

  “I said you could stay on here,” I started.

  “No. You said I had to move out. As of last night. Offered to let me live in one of the other units, when I’ve already told you it’ll take me at least a week to get one of ’em ready to move into.” He turned and gave me a sardonic smile. “Mighty white of you.”

  He flipped a piece of bacon in the dog’s direction and Jeeves leaped up and caught it in midair.

  I frowned. “That can’t be good for him.”

  “You let me worry about what’s good for my dog,” Harry snapped. “We were getting along fine until you showed up here.”

  I started to say something, but thought better of it.

  “Anyway, as you say, you do own the place now. And if you want to move in out here, although I don’t understand why you’d want to, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. Which leaves me and Jeeves here out in the cold. Nothing I can do about it. The Reeses and I didn’t have any kind of a contract, just an oral agreement, which we both know isn’t binding in any kind of court of law.”

  He turned the burner off and pushed the frying pan to the back of the stove, then walked over to the table and got a piece of paper, which he brusquely handed me.

  “What’s this?”

  “Just a statement of what I’m owed,” he said, going back to the stove to pour himself a mug of coffee. “Skilled workmen get fourteen dollars an hour, anyplace out here they want to work. I only billed you for ten an hour. The difference is what I’d have paid in rent to stay here. The way I figure it, with what I’ve paid out for materials and what I’m owed for labor, figure twenty hours a week, for six months, it comes out to around $4,800.”

  I stared down at the piece of paper and then up at him.

  “This is the way you figure it,” I said, taking a deep breath.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Pay me what I’m owed and I’m out of here.”

  “Forty-eight hundred dollars,” I repeated.

  “Might not be a lot to you, but it’s a living wage to me,” he said, sipping his coffee. “Moving into a new place, I’ll have to pay first and last month’s rent, utility deposits. Have to get somebody to help me move all my furniture.”

  I raised an eyebrow and looked around. “Your furniture?”

  “Yes, ma’am. All this stuff is mine. The place was empty when I moved in. Except for the pigeons.” He gave me a malicious grin then. “And the mice.”

  “Mice?”

  “Mostly. Jeeves here took care of the one rat we saw.” He slid two pieces of whole-wheat bread into the toaster and pushed down the lever.

  I was trying hard to keep a poker face. I would not give him the satisfaction of screaming, “Eek! a mouse,” and heading for the hills. “I’m glad Jeeves was on the job. I think mice are kinda cute, but it would be bad for business if word got out on the island that we had a rat problem.”

  “We?”

  I sighed. His poker face was at least as good as mine. I was fairly sure the Savannah gossip mill was already churning with stories of BeBe Loudermilk’s comeuppance. After all, Guale was closed, and my house had been sold. But this was Tybee, after all, and with any luck, Harry Sorrentino didn’t know anybody in my rarified social circle. Still, I didn’t know how much he knew about me, or about my dire financial straits. I had no intention of telling him that I didn’t have $4,800 to pay him in back wages. And I certainly didn’t intend to let him know that the Breeze Inn was truly my last resort.

  “Good help’s hard to get, I know,” I said. “I’m not disputing that you’ve done the work, and you’re owed compensation. And maybe I’ve been unreasonable about the living arrangement here. Surely we can come up with some kind of compromise. One that would allow you to continue living here on the property, and getting on with the repairs, but at the same time allow me to put all my capital into completing the repairs so we can start getting this business in the black.”

  He picked up a piece of bacon with his fingers, broke off a piece and flipped it to Jeeves, then ate the other half. My stomach growled. I was starving.

  “What kind of compromise did you have in mind?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Which of the units is the closest to being ready to occupy?”

  “Number two’s pretty far along,” he admitted. “The roof’s done. Wiring’s sound. Have to get the new hot-water heater hooked up. All those units have the old-timey built-in space heaters, but they’re pretty simple, so I’m assuming it’ll work. Other than that, it’s just a matter of a lot of elbow grease.”

  “Fine,” I said, finishing my coffee. “I’ve got elbow grease to spare. I’ll get started this morning. How soon can you get the hot-water heater hooked up?”

  “Soon as you buy one,” he said. The toast popped up then. He folded a piece in half and slid in a couple of slices of bacon, then extended the sandwich toward me. “Breakfast, ma’am?”

  He made himself a sandwich too, and we stood there in the kitchen, with our backs against the counter, chewing in companionable silence.

  When we were done, I took some paper towels and wiped out the cast-iron skillet, then set it on the back burner. There was one slice of bacon on the platter. I looked at Sorrentino, and at Jeeves, who was sniffing around on the floor in hopes of seconds.

  “Just one more piece,” Harry said, nodding approval. “Bacon makes him fart.”

  I made a face, but knelt down and fed the dog the last bits of our breakfast. He nearly licked the skin off my fingertips in appreciation.

  “All right,” I said, after I’d wiped down the countertops and stove. “Guess you’d better give me a look at unit two.”

  “In a minute,” he said, digging in his pocket. He brought out a penny and held it up for me to see.

  “What’s that for?”

  “I’ll flip you for it,” he announced. “Heads I stay here, tails I move into unit two.”

  “No deal.”

  He pocketed the coin and headed for the door. “See you around.”

  I knew when I was beaten. “Never mind.”

  He made a big show of producing the coin again and flipping it into the air, then slapping it on the backside of his left hand.

  I made a mental note to call Weezie as soon as possible. I was going to need some furniture in a hurry to move into unit two.

  20 />
  Three hours and $1,600 later, I stood in the checkout line at Home Depot and handed over my Visa card to the cashier with a trembling heart and shaking hands. I’d always been conservative with my credit, scrupulously paying off bank card balances every month, but as I stood in that line, it suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea whether or not Reddy had thought to help himself to my credit cards while he was looting the rest of my personal finances.

  I was standing very still as the computer digested my credit card, just waiting for a big net to drop down over my head and a huge neon arrow to start flashing “Credit Declined.” But nothing happened. The cashier handed back my Visa card, I signed the receipt, then bolted for the parking lot, just in case the credit gods changed their minds at the last minute.

  By noon, nearly every inch of my being was covered with dirt, grease, or paint spatters. Unit two, it turned out, was a long way from being habitable. It did, as Harry had promised, have working plumbing and wiring. And a roof. But the rest of the place was a shambles.

  “Home sweet hovel,” I mumbled, standing in the middle of my new residence, taking stock. To call the space a cottage would have been charitable. It was a smallish, rectangular room. There was a stunted, fly-specked picture window that looked out on a sand dune, which could, I supposed, count as a beach view. The wind whistled through gaps in the window frame.

  “A little caulk will take care of that,” Harry noted as he saw me stuffing newspaper in the cracks.

  The wall opposite the window had been designed as a sleeping alcove, with built-in shelves for lamps and a bookshelf headboard. The whole unit was covered with forties vintage knotty-pine paneling, gone nearly black with age.

  Another alcove held the abbreviated kitchen, which was identical to the one in unit seven—the one Weezie had found so charming. I opened the tiny refrigerator door and gasped at the stench that flowed out. But Harry patted the door lovingly. “Works great,” he said. “Feel that cold air? A little bleach and it’ll be good as new.”

  He knelt down in front of the wall heater, fiddled with a knob, and after five minutes, of ominous metallic banging noises, the exposed heating coils glowed red with heat. In another five minutes, we had to open the door and all the windows to cool things down a little. “Heat’s fine,” he pronounced.

  The bathroom was, as far as I was concerned, a total loss. The porcelain coating of the cast-iron tub was pitted and gray, the tile floors chipped and stained, and the pedestal sink had a bowl but no faucets.

  My face went pale as I stood there, wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

  What would Mama say?

  Maybe, I thought, it was time to let my grandparents in on my situation. Once I explained, they would welcome me back to the sofa bed at Magnolia Manor. And I’d be grateful, this time around. At least at my grandparents’ house, I’d had indoor plumbing, heat, and some sort of amenities for basic hygiene. This, I thought, was worse than the worst public bathroom I’d ever experienced in my youthful backpacking days in Europe.

  “Okay,” Harry said cheerfully. “Better get cracking if you’re planning on moving in tonight.”

  I spent the next two hours with a crowbar, pry bar, and blowtorch, peeling back and ripping up layers of disintegrating carpet and crumbling linoleum tiles, only to find underneath not the heart-pine floors I’d secretly anticipated, but instead, deeply scarred floors that were a patchwork combination of oak, pine, and some other, unidentified kind of wood. Trailer siding, maybe.

  “Oh God,” I said, moaning. “This is useless.”

  “Now what?” Harry asked, looking in from the bathroom, where he’d been installing the hot-water heater and the new toilet. I pointed at the floor.

  “We could put down some new carpet, but that’s going to eat into your budget.”

  “No more carpet. I’ve got a better idea. Have we got any white enamel?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Gallons of it. Out in the toolshed. You’re gonna paint the floor?”

  “The floor, the walls, the trim, anything that doesn’t move,” I said.

  I found a long-handled extension for the paint roller, a five-gallon bucket of white latex enamel, and reserves of energy I didn’t know I possessed. I tackled the walls first.

  “Hey,” Harry protested, looking in again from the bathroom. “That’s authentic pine. You’re ruining it.”

  “Stick to the plumbing,” I advised him. “And I’ll stick to the design decisions.”

  The old paneling seemed to suck up every drop of paint in my bucket, but within an hour, I had the walls covered.

  “Not bad,” Harry decided, tracking through the room with some faucets he’d salvaged from the toolshed. He pointed to a corner near the sleeping alcove. “But you missed a spot.” I took the roller and promptly painted it, and then added a stripe to the front of his gray T-shirt.

  “You were warned,” I said.

  He just shook his head and walked away.

  At three, I took a lunch break, and called Weezie to report in.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “It’s going,” I said.

  “I told Mama about your little project,” Weezie said.

  “She knows? About Reddy, and all that?”

  “No! I just told her that you’ve bought the Breeze Inn and have moved out there,” Weezie assured me. “She said she and Daddy spent a weekend out at the Breeze Inn when they were first married. Called it her little honeymoon cottage. She’s dying to come take a look. She wants to know how she can help out.”

  “I don’t know,” I said dubiously. “It’s pretty awful.”

  “Why don’t you just plan to come into town and spend tonight with us?” Weezie asked. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s in the other room, making tuna-noodle casserole. If our friendship ever really meant anything to you, you’d come over here and help me flush that slop down the commode.”

  “As alluring as that invitation is,” I said, “I’m gonna take a rain check. I really just wanted to know if you can put some furniture together for me.”

  “Furniture?” Weezie laughed. “Does Ethel Kennedy have a black dress? Honey, I have been mentally decorating that whole motel ever since I laid eyes on it. You just tell me what time you want me there with the truck.”

  “I can’t pay you anything,” I warned. “Not right now. I just loaded up my Visa card at the Home Depot today, and there’s no telling how much more I’m going to have to spend to get the rest of these units whipped into shape.”

  “Pay me?” Weezie hooted. “Are you forgetting the interest-free loan you made me when I was starting up Maisie’s Daisy? How you bailed me out of jail after that awful night out at Beaulieu, when the cops were sure I’d killed Caroline DeSantos?”

  “That’s ancient history,” I pointed out. “You paid me back as soon as you got on your feet. But I don’t honestly know when or if I’ll be able to pay you back.”

  “You let me worry about that,” Weezie scolded. “Just tell me what all you need.”

  “There’s not room for much. A bed, for sure. Dresser, table, and a couple of chairs. Something else to sit on. And a big bottle of ibuprofen. Every muscle in my body is screaming for mercy, and I haven’t even gotten to the kitchen or the bathroom yet.”

  “Consider it done,” Weezie said. “Want me to bring the furniture out tonight?”

  “Doubtful,” I said. “The paint won’t be dry enough. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Wait,” Weezie said. “God, I almost forgot. James called. He needs to talk to you and your cell phone isn’t working.”

  “I turned it off. Can’t pay the bill. Did James say what he wanted to tell me?”

  “Sorry. He just said to tell you to give him a call.”

  I was dialing James when Harry walked in. I hurriedly put down the receiver.

  “Your toilet’s hooked up. And you’ve got hot water,” he announced. He washed his hands at the kitchen sink, grabbed the keys to his s
tation wagon, and whistled for Jeeves, who’d been napping in his recliner.

  “See you later,” he said, heading for the door with Jeeves hot on his heels.

  “Wait.” I followed him to the door. “You’re leaving? What about all the work we’ve got to do yet in unit two?”

  “It’ll get there,” he said. “There’s more paint out in the shed. And when you quit for the night, make sure you lock it up. All my power tools and fishing gear’s out there, and I don’t want anybody walking off with it. Stuff’s expensive.”

  “Where are you going?” I demanded. “It’s only three o’clock. I can’t fix that place up all by myself. I thought we had a deal.”

  “We do,” Harry said, getting into the station wagon and starting the engine. “My part’s done. The rest is up to you. Guess you’ve got the sofa for at least another night. And don’t forget to bring in enough firewood. See you.”

  He spun out of the parking lot in a cloud of dust.

  I stood there cussing him for a minute, then went back to the manager’s office to call my lawyer.

  “Please tell me you’ve got some good news,” I said when James Foley came on the line.

  “All right,” he said amicably. “I just got back from the doctor’s office. My cholesterol’s down. And I’ve lost two pounds since my last checkup. Jonathan has been making me walk almost every day in Forsyth Park.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “But I was hoping for some good news that concerned me.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, sure. Jay Bradley thinks he may have a line on Reddy.”

  “Where is he? Have they arrested him?”

  “Not even close,” James said with a little too much cheer. “Jay’s pretty sure he’s down in Florida somewhere. But it’s a big state.”

  “I know you said the cops think he ripped off another woman down there, but wouldn’t he have left the state after that? Like he did with me?”

  “If he had any sense, he would have left,” James agreed. “But Florida’s nice in the wintertime. All that sunshine. And ocean. And all those big, beautiful boats.”