Savannah Breeze

by Mary Kay Andrews

  She went to the door, stuck out her head and hollered back, “Can I call them back later?”

  “It’s some woman who says she’s calling long distance from Vero Beach, Florida. Says she’s returning your call.”

  “I’ll be right there,” BeBe yelled, and she took off running with a speed I didn’t know she possessed.

  I walked around the room, picking up the tacky pottery tiki mugs and putting them back down again, straightening the shades of the tiki-god lamps, and just generally fluffing the place up. And then I stretched out on the Hawaiian-shirt-covered bed and yawned. I plugged in the strand of twinkle lights I’d woven through the palmetto bed canopy and smiled. Maybe Daniel and I would need to spend a night here ourselves. I could see us toasting each other with mai tais on the little porch. I drifted off to sleep thinking about my own adventures in paradise.

  35

  My heart was pounding as I picked up the phone in the office—and not just because I’d raced across the parking lot to take the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this BeBe Loudermilk?” Her voice was low and raspy, and she pronounced my name as Bee-Bee.

  “It’s Bay-Bay,” I corrected. “This is she. Thank you for calling me back, Sandra.”

  “I hear you and my mother have something in common.”

  I winced at her directness. “Sounds like it,” I said.

  Her laugh was more like a bray. “So, what can I tell you that might help put that bastard behind bars?”

  “I don’t know. But I hear Reddy is down there in Florida.”

  “Unfortunately,” Sandra said. “Mother met him here in Vero, and now he’s surfaced down in Lauderdale. It’s the damned boats. I swear, he loves the boats as much as he likes the money he steals from these stupid women.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  “Sorry. My mother says I have a bad habit of shooting my mouth off without thinking. I don’t mean anything by it. I’m just so frustrated by everything that’s happened. The son of a bitch stole more than three million dollars from her. And yet she refuses to do anything about it. My brother says I should just let the whole thing drop. That’s easy for him to say. He’s got a big-deal job with the bank my grandfather started. And his wife’s money. But we’re talking about my inheritance here.”

  “It sucks,” I agreed. “And I’m just as frustrated as you. I feel like we’re so close to catching him. But the police up here in Savannah don’t care about catching him. And my lawyer tells me your mother won’t press charges. Sooo…”

  “So we just fold our hands and keep our mouths shut like good little girls, and let him get away with it,” Sandra said, her voice dripping sarcasm.

  “I’ve never been good at being a good little girl,” I said.

  Harry was sitting across the room, tinkering with a fishing reel, shamelessly eavesdropping, and when I said that, he nodded his head in agreement.

  “Me neither,” Sandra said.

  “I’m coming after him,” I said suddenly.

  “What do you propose to do?” she asked. “I mean, pardon me for mentioning it, but he knows you, right? I mean, I hear you were sleeping with him. He’s not stupid. If you go anywhere near him, he’ll take off like a shot. He knows me too, unfortunately. Mother had him to dinner at the house several times. We took an instant dislike to each other. So what can you accomplish by coming down here?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But I’ll have a plan by the time I get there. I’ve got a call in to Sabrina Berg, the woman whose Sea Urchin he looked at down in Lauderdale. She sent us a copy of the videotape she made of Reddy looking at her yacht. He’s changed his appearance, passing himself off as Cuban. Calls himself Rodolfo Martinez.”

  “He told us his name was Royce Milstein,” Sandra said. “And that his grandfather invented the strawberry frosting they put on Pop-Tarts. Every time he came to the house, he brought this big case of Pop-Tarts. And that’s why my mother believed everything he told her, because she figured where else could somebody get that many Pop-Tarts, unless their family was in the business?”

  We both shared a good laugh at that inventive bit of fiction.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Give me a call when you get to town. Better yet, call my lawyer. His name is Owen Techet. He’s got lots of connections. Maybe he can figure out a way to help us. As long as you’re not planning anything blatantly illegal.”

  I hesitated a minute.

  “Sandra?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What I’m thinking—right now, I’m thinking the police won’t lift a finger to help us. So I may have to try something not exactly, uh, by the books, per se.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Sounds intriguing. Just exactly what are you hoping to accomplish? If and when you find the guy?”

  “I want it back,” I said. “All of it. The money he stole, my things…”

  “Your self-esteem,” she added.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “That too.”

  “I just want my inheritance back,” she said. “I have no intention of having to work for a living anytime soon. Anything I can help you with, you just name it.”

  “Great.”

  “Seriously. Come by the house. We’ll have a drink. And some Pop-Tarts.”

  I hung up the phone and Harry put down the reel he was tinkering with. “You planning some kind of a trip?”

  I took a deep breath. “Yes. Reddy, I mean, Roy Eugene Moseley, the man who stole my money, has surfaced down in Fort Lauderdale. He contacted a woman down there about buying a yacht—the same kind of yacht he was leasing when I met him.”

  “What kind of yacht was that?” Harry asked.

  “A Sea Urchin,” I said.

  He whistled. “He has expensive tastes. But why go to Florida? Why not let the police deal with him?”

  “They can’t, or won’t, touch him,” I said. “And even if they did arrest him, what does that get me besides the satisfaction of seeing him in jail? I want more than that.”

  “You want your money back,” Harry said, finishing my sentence. “That seems to be a recurring theme with you.”

  “I should think you’d understand how I feel,” I said. “You of all people. You had your boat taken away, and now you’re working day and night—even risking stealing it—just so that you can pay off your loan and get the Jitterbug back.”

  “It’s not the same thing at all,” Harry said. “I don’t have any kind of vendetta going with Trish. She’s a coldhearted bitch, but it’s not about that. It’s about me being able to make a living doing what I’m good at.”

  We heard the crunch of tires from the parking lot, and Harry stood and looked out the window. “That’s Adam Thompson. You ready to do this?”

  Officer Thompson proved to be a perfectly competent, balding, big-bellied fishing buddy of Harry’s. He listened without comment while I told him about how Peyton Hausbrook had lured me to his room on the pretext of killing a nonexistent cockroach. He didn’t even crack a smile when I detailed the way in which Hausbrook had exposed himself to me. He did, however, nod in approval when Harry recounted the way our guest ran away after being threatened with a baseball bat. Thompson wrote it all down, took a tour of the Sunflower Suite, and even inventoried all of Hausbrook’s belongings before boxing them up and stowing them in the trunk of his police cruiser.

  He shook my hand, pounded Harry on the back for old time’s sake, and promised to file his report immediately. “Y’all understand nothin’ will happen, right?”

  “What?” I demanded. “Why not?”

  “No offense, or nothin’, but public indecency, well, even in Tybee that’s just little old nitshit stuff,” he said. “It’s a misdemeanor. I’ll file the report, and we can swear out a warrant for him and all, but unless he shows up down here again anytime soon, that’s about all that’s gonna happen.”

  “Why can’t you call Atlanta and have him arrested?” I asked.

  He laughed. “They got every kind
of violent criminal in the world in Atlanta and they can’t do nothin’ about it. So they’re not exactly gonna slap a blue light on a cruiser just to go after one little old pissant pervert like this fella,” Thompson said.

  He looked at Harry for help. “You know how it is, right?”

  “Yeah,” Harry said reluctantly. “I get it, but I think it sucks.” He slapped Thompson on his back then. “Thanks, buddy.”

  “Sorry,” Harry said, as we watched Thompson leave.

  “I should have kept his damn wallet and money,” I said angrily.

  Harry laughed, reached into his pockets, and fanned out an array of twenty-dollar bills.

  “A $400 fine sounds about right to me, for the scare he put into you,” Harry said. “I had an idea something like this might happen.”

  When we were done with the police business, we found Weezie sitting in the office, flipping through an old magazine.

  “It’s suppertime,” she said. “I thought you could use some dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry, but I could use a drink,” I said. “A big, fat drink.”

  “I’ll stay, you go,” Harry said. So Weezie and I walked over to Butler Avenue.

  “How about Doc’s?” she asked, spotting the leftover Christmas lights that were still glowing through the tavern’s plate-glass window.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a guy place. I feel funny going in there.”

  “Why?” she asked, tugging at my sleeve. “Daniel and I go in there all the time. They actually make a pretty decent burger.”

  “All right,” I said. “Just get me in there and get me a drink. The day I’ve had, I think I deserve to get wasted, even if it is only Thursday.”

  Doc’s had a different ambience at night than it had during the day. The last time I’d come gunning for Harry, the crowd had been exclusively male, mostly of the barfly persuasion. Tonight, almost every seat at the bar was full, with men and women both. Two women were shooting pool, their cues threatening to poke innocent bystanders sitting at the bar.

  Weezie slid into a booth on the far wall, and I slipped in opposite her. I immediately recognized the woman who took our drink order, and she recognized me.

  “Hey there,” she said warmly. She was wearing tight black leather pants and a black leather lace-up vest. Her hair was hidden by a black leather newsboy cap.

  “Cheri, right?” I said.

  “And you’re BeBe,” she said. “What’re you girls drinking tonight?”

  I saw Weezie shoot me an admiring glance before she ordered. “I’ll have a glass of merlot. And a cheeseburger. Medium, mustard, pickles, no onion, no lettuce.”

  “Jack and water,” I said. “Make it a double.”

  “Sure thing,” she said, and left to go get our orders.

  When we had our drinks in front of us, and I’d emptied half of mine, I finally started to relax, or I thought I had.

  “Your hand is shaking,” Weezie said quietly.

  I looked down and saw the puddle of bourbon on the table. “Delayed reaction.”

  “Perfectly normal,” she said. “I’d be a basket case if I’d been through what you’ve been through.”

  “I’ll be all right,” I told her. “I had an epiphany today, you know.”

  “What? After that guy flashed you?”

  “Actually, it was before that. While I was at lunch with your uncle James.”

  She shook her head. “He can’t get used to not being a priest.”

  “Not that kind of ephiphany,” I told her. “I just made up my mind about something. Reddy, actually.”

  “Uh-oh,” she said, taking a sip of merlot.

  “He’s down in Florida. In Fort Lauderdale. So that’s where I’m going.”

  “You taking your roach spray and flyswatter?” Weezie asked.

  I smiled. “Actually, I was hoping to take you. If you’re up for it.”

  Weezie leaned forward. “I’m listening.”

  “Remember that caper we pulled? Back when we were trying to figure out what that slippery antiques dealer was up to in that old warehouse in town?”

  She nodded. “The outfits were my favorite part. Remember? We both had those black outfits? And I had the leopard-print scarf, and you had the catsuit with the leopard belt? Only you could look good in a catsuit. I would have looked like a trick or treater—”

  “Weezie!” I said sternly. “This is not about the outfits we wore. Although yes, we did both look pretty hot, as I recall. My point here is, we knew the guy was involved in something illegal, so we did what we had to do to get into that warehouse.”

  Weezie nodded enthusiastically. “That was brilliant, your telling those Mexicans that you were a real estate agent, and you wanted to see the space for a client. I still can’t believe the way you marched in there like that, like you owned the place.”

  I took a sip of my bourbon and waited for my hands to stop shaking. I was also trying to think of a way to get Weezie to sign on to the plan that was coming together in my head.

  “Wait a minute,” Weezie said. “Is that what we’re gonna do, in Fort Lauderdale?”

  “A caper,” I said.

  “What would it involve?” she asked. “Would I get to dress up?”

  “Absolutely,” I promised. “You’re going to be a very wealthy divorcée. With a wonderful yacht, and a lot of money to throw around.”

  “Mmmm,” Weezie said, licking her lips. “Resort-wear. They have some amazing vintage-clothing boutiques down in Lauderdale, I hear. How do you think I’d look in a hot pink Lilly Pulitzer shift? With maybe one of those little matching head scarves with the flower appliqués? Or no, better yet, vintage Vera.”

  “You’ll be stunning. Reddy will eat you up with a spoon.”

  “Reddy?” She frowned.

  Cheri came back to the table with Weezie’s hamburger then, and all of a sudden, with my creative juices flowing, I discovered that I was suddenly famished.

  “I’ll have a cheeseburger too, please,” I said. And tapping my empty glass. “And another Jack and water. And a merlot for my wealthy divorcée friend here.”

  When Cheri was gone, I snitched one of Weezie’s French fries.

  “You see, Weezie,” I said, “we’re going to set a trap for Reddy, or Roy Eugene, or Rodolfo, or whatever he’s calling himself these days.”

  “And I’m the bait?” she asked. “Is that safe?”

  “Very safe,” I promised. “Anyway, you’ll just be a part of the bait. The other part will be the yacht.”

  “Where are you going to get a yacht?” she asked.

  “Not just any yacht. A Sea Urchin. They start at around eight million.”

  “That’s nice,” Weezie said, nibbling at her burger. “Then I can wear yachting clothes too. Maybe a blue blazer, and some silk trousers. Hey, wait,” she said. “You still haven’t told me where you’re gonna get this big, expensive yacht.”

  “We’re just going to borrow one,” I said. “When we get down to Fort Lauderdale.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “As soon as I line up things at the inn,” I said. “I’ve got to make sure Harry can cover for me.”

  “Why can’t Harry go with us to Fort Lauderdale?” Weezie asked. “He knows about boats. I bet he can help us get one.”

  “No,” I said. “We can do this by ourselves. We’re wonder women, remember?”

  “What I remember is that we had a man to help us the last time we pulled a caper,” she pointed out. “Daniel was the wheel man. And like it or not, I think we’re going to need a man to do the heavy lifting this time too, BeBe.”

  “Then we’ll take Daniel.”

  “Can’t,” she said. “He’s in Charleston for the next two weeks, helping out at a new restaurant his friend is opening.”

  “Not Harry,” I said, “I don’t want to ask him for a favor.”

  “Then I’ll ask,” she said. She bit into her burger and juice went oozing down her chin.

  36r />
  The office doorbell chimed while I was on the phone, tying up one of the dozens of loose ends involved in trying to leave town for a few days. “Come on in,” I called. “Be with you in a minute,” I said, not bothering to look up.

  “I can wait.”

  My heart fell. The voice was my grandfather’s. For weeks, I’d been meaning to get over to the home for a visit, but life had gotten crazy, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t know if I could face my grandparents, aware that it was my fault they were facing financial ruin.

  I stood up, amazed by how shaky my knees felt.

  “Granddaddy? Is Grandmama all right?”

  “Right as rain,” he said, giving me a quick hug. He glanced around the office, taking in everything. He was dressed formally—an ancient seersucker suit, a carefully pressed but yellowing white shirt, red bow tie, and black loafers with a high shine. “So this is your new business venture,” he said, nodding his head slowly. “Very nice.”

  “It still needs a lot of work,” I said. “And when I get things stabilized, I’ll flip it and make a nice profit. Town houses, probably. I’m thinking a gated community.”

  Granddaddy held up his hand. “Child, stop. I know all about everything. How that charlatan tricked you into signing away your properties. Why the restaurant is closed and you’re living here, eking out a living scrubbing bathrooms and renting rooms.” He shook his head sadly. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  I felt my lower lip start to tremble. “I just…I was so embarrassed. And when I found out he’d emptied your money-market account…” I pressed my fists against my eyes, trying to forestall the flow of tears. “It’s all gone,” I said. “All your money. All your years of hard work. Oh, Granddaddy, I am so sorry. I will never forgive myself. It’s all my fault. But I’m going to get it back. I swear to God, I will get back every nickel he stole from you.”

  Granddaddy was walking around the living room, examining Harry’s bookshelves, thumping the walls, admiring the woodburning stove.

  “It’s a cozy little place,” he said approvingly. “Not squalid at all. Your grandmother will be quite pleased. You know how she worries. From the reports we had, well, I had the idea you were living in some sort of flophouse, to tell you the truth.”