Beach Town (2 page)

As she was putting her phone back into the cup holder in the Kia's console, she remembered the slip of paper Lise had pressed into her hand a lifetime ago, back in L.A. On a whim, she pulled the paper from her purse and stared at it.

Give him a call, her mother had urged. He'd get a kick out of hearing from you.

Greer wasn't so sure.

Sitting at the departure gate back at LAX, she'd had an hour to kill. She was updating her Facebook page, flicking dispassionately through her feed, when she gave in to the urge she'd been fighting since packing up Lise's apartment.

There were three Clint Hennessys on Facebook, but only one who lived in Florida, and only one whose profile picture showed an intensely tanned guy with a white handlebar mustache, grinning through the open window of an orange Charger emblazoned with a huge Confederate flag across the roof.

She found herself holding her breath as she stared down at the photo of her long-gone father. His eyes were the same blazing blue she remembered, the mustache drooping below thin lips stretched wide into a guileless smile. He wore the same kind of sleeveless “wife beater” T-shirt he'd always favored, and Greer was surprised to note his leathery, still muscular biceps.

The father of her memory was perpetually laughing down at her, tugging at one of her pigtails, teasing her about her missing front teeth, offering a stick of his ever-present Juicy Fruit gum. It was a funny thing about her memories of Clint. He was always grinning, laughing at some private joke. But Lise never seemed to find her stunt-driver father funny. Even as a five-year-old, Greer sensed the tension between her parents.

After he'd gone, Lise sold the two-bedroom ranch house in the Valley and they'd moved in with her grandmother, sharing Dearie's tiny one-bedroom apartment until Lise got the part in
Neighborhood Menace,
and they'd moved into a house in Hancock Park.

“Give him a call,” Lise had urged, as they'd sat in the oncologist's reception area, waiting for yet another set of test results. “We both know how this is going to end. After I'm gone, he'll be all the family you have left.”

“You're not going anywhere,” Greer had insisted, wanting it to be true. “I'll still have Dearie. And anyway, he's not my family.”

Maybe that's when it finally began to sink in for Greer—that Lise had resigned herself to dying, because she'd stopped holding grudges.

“Call your dad,” Lise repeated, propped up in bed at home. “He wants to see you. And you need to see him.”

“I don't need a father.” Greer had inherited her mother's stubborn streak.

Maybe she could have used a father when she was ten and had to take one of Lise's boyfriends to the father–daughter dance at school. Maybe Clint could have helped her out when she was fifteen and learning to drive in Dearie's yacht-sized Bonneville. Or maybe, yeah, he could have helped out by steering her away from the legions of wrong guys she'd dated over the years.

Maybe if Clint had any interest in his only child he would have taken the trouble to show up at Lise's funeral.

He hadn't done any of those things. And it was too late now. Greer crumpled the slip of paper, thought about tossing it in the trash, but at the last minute, as her flight was boarding, she'd tucked it back into her purse.

*   *   *

Somewhere south of Steinhatchee and west of Gainesville she pulled up to a restaurant she'd seen advertised on faded billboards for the past fifty miles.

Little Buddy's BBQ was a low-slung wooden shack perched in the middle of a pothole-pitted crushed oyster shell parking lot crowded with pickup trucks and big American sedans. A thick hickory-scented cloud hovered over a huge black smoker off to the east side of the restaurant.

All good signs, Greer thought, as she pushed through the screen door to observe the crowded dining room. She'd done quite a bit of location scouting in the South in recent years, and one thing she'd learned early: if you wanted to do beta research there, the local barbecue joint was the best place to start.

Scouting thoughts were laid aside when a paper plate loaded with chopped pork, coleslaw, potato salad, and a single slice of garlic-toasted white bread was plopped down in front of her, along with a quart-size plastic tumbler of iced tea so sweet it could have been dessert.

She was using the bread to mop up the last drop of barbecue sauce when the counter guy slid her check across the counter. “Anything else? Some pie, maybe?”

“No pie,” Greer said with a groan. “I'm stuffed. But I could use some help.”

“How's that?” He was a skinny, older man, in his late sixties, she thought, with thinning gray hair cut in a military-style flat-top crew cut.

“I'm looking for the perfect beach town.”

He shifted from one foot to the other. “Destin's a few hours north of here. Saint Pete's a couple hours south.”

Greer shook her head. “Yeah, I know about both of them. But I'm looking for something quieter. Picturesque, but not touristy, if you get what I mean. An old-timey-looking beach. A small town with palm trees, white sand, fishing boats.”

“Sounds a lot like Cypress Key,” the counter guy said. “I ain't been in a few years, but the last time I was there it was pretty much like you just described.”

She tipped him ten bucks and headed out to find Cypress Key.

 

2

“
Proceed to the route
.”

The disembodied voice on Greer's GPS was maddeningly vague about which exact route she should take. Against her better judgment, she'd turned off US 98 and on to a county road that looked like it might lead her straight into
The Blair Witch Project.

Since she didn't have a road map, she'd have to rely on the magic of some mystical satellite high up in the blazing blue Florida sky. She only prayed it knew where she was supposed to go.

It had rained so hard the night before, Greer had awakened with a start in her cheap motel room, startled by the steady rattle on the roof and at the windows of the cinder block room. She'd been living in drought-stricken California for so long, she suddenly realized, she'd forgotten what rain sounded like.

She'd called Dearie before leaving the motel. There hadn't been time to stop by to see her before leaving Los Angeles. Her eighty-seven-year-old grandmother kept bizarre hours, often sleeping during the day and watching television most of the night.

“Dearie? How are you?”

“Who is this?” Dearie demanded.

“Who else calls you at five o'clock in the morning, Pacific time?”

“Sometimes the people at that Prayer Cathedral call. They seem nice.”

“You're not still sending them money, right?”

“Not since you cut back on me,” Dearie said accusingly. “Say, where are you?”

“I told you, I'm down in Florida, scouting for a film.”

“That's right. Well, have a nice time. And don't forget my money. We're supposed to take a bus trip to Knott's Berry Farm this week. Or maybe next week. Anyway, I'll need a little extra for that.”

The sides of the pancake-flat blacktop road were still awash in puddles, and the air was syrupy thick with heat and humidity. Green walls of palmettos, stick-thin pine trees, and scrub oaks draped with Spanish moss were a blur as the Kia sped down the county road.

She glanced nervously at the GPS, which claimed she should arrive at Cypress Key in 14.2 miles, and again at the dashboard, where the needle of the fuel gauge hovered dangerously below the quarter-full mark. She'd had zero bars on her cell phone for the last forty miles. If she ran out of gas on this godforsaken edge of nowhere, she was certain she'd be eaten alive either by the swarms of mosquitoes or by one of the black bears whose silhouette was featured on ominous-looking
BEAR CROSSING
signs posted every few miles.

Finally, she began to see billboards. They urged her to eat at Tony's—home of three-time world champion award-winning clam chowder. Or take a swamp boat ride.
As if!
Or stay at a motel called the Silver Sands, which boasted forty-two modern rooms, air conditioning, tile baths, and free television.

Five minutes later she breathed a sigh of relief after spotting the
CYPRESS KEY 5 MILES
marker. The landscape changed suddenly. In the distance she saw the gleam of water, a swath of sand, and a metal bridge.

Ahead, she saw a stretch of waterfront, with docks jutting out into what a sign told her was Choklawassee Bay. Fishing trawlers and sailboats bobbed in the calm water. Rooftops peeked above the tree line, and she spotted a handful of shrimp boats, far out on the horizon, in the Gulf.

Spanish moss, shrimp boats, palm trees, and a beach. She felt the familiar serotonin buzz starting at the back of her skull, the one that told her she was onto something.
Proceed to the route.

*   *   *

She pulled into the first gas station convenience store she found, filled up the Kia and, noting that she now had two bars on her phone, pulled up the Cypress Key Chamber of Commerce website. There were half a dozen motels in town, which came as a relief. Bryce's assistant had e-mailed that she'd need to find housing for a cast and crew of at least sixty people.

The Buccaneer Bay Motel consisted of a cluster of faded A-frame cedar units gathered around a cracked and drained swimming pool. There were four beat-up cars in the parking lot and a faded
VACANCY
sign swinging from another faded billboard leading to the motel's entrance. She drove on, past a couple of ramshackle seafood processing plants. Promising, she thought. Totally gritty and atmospheric.

A heavy chain-link fence with a
NO TRESPASSING
sign surrounded the Stephen Foster Memorial Elementary School, an Art Deco–era stucco building with a red tile roof and boarded-up windows. Rusting swings sat in a weed-covered playground.

Two blocks over, she hit pay dirt.

Cypress Key's Main Street reminded her of a relic from an old Bogart movie. Was it
Key Largo
or
To Have and Have Not
? Two-story stucco and wood-framed buildings with rickety-looking balconies and front porches stretched for three blocks. There was a library, a barber shop, an old bank, and many vacant storefronts. But the Hometown Market lights were on and its plate glass windows promised fish bait, cold beer, milk, and Boar's Head deli products. There was even a welcome center in the former movie house.

Greer pulled to the curb, which she happily noted was free of parking meters, jumped out of the Kia, and began snapping photos, stopping only to e-mail them off to Bryce Levy.

She pressed her face to the glass of what had most recently been the Smart Shoppe Women's Boutique. The walls were bare and the floors littered with trash, but they were wooden, and if she stood back a ways, she saw that the high ceilings were made of pressed tin panels. She snapped a picture of the real estate sign in the window.

FOR LEASE
:
CALL THIBADEAUX REALTY

Her cell phone dinged and she smiled as she read the text message.

LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT. SEND MORE PIX ASAP. ART DIRECTOR IS DROOLING.

She walked back to the welcome center and tugged at the door. Locked. A sign on the door indicated that the center was only open Thursday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. But a wooden rack held an assortment of maps and brochures for local businesses. Greer helped herself and kept walking.

When she came to a street marker for Pier Street, she inhaled a lungful of salt air. She followed the street for two blocks, past pastel-painted wooden cottages and yards full of exotic greenery spilling from every corner. Ahead, she saw the bay. And sure enough, the street narrowed and then morphed into a wooden pier.

A handful of businesses, wooden huts, really, lined both sides of the pier. There was a kayak rental stand, a bait shack, a dock for Cypress Key boat tours, and another for golf cart rentals. She clicked off photos as she walked, pausing to e-mail them to Bryce and his art director.

She had only the sketchiest sort of treatment for this movie, and Bryce hadn't bothered to give her a list of sets he wanted, but Greer's location scout antennae were beeping away. Every instinct she possessed told her she'd found exactly what Bryce didn't even know he was seeking.

The pier ended abruptly in yet another chain-link fence. But behind it she saw a hulking white elephant of a building, crouching at the water's edge.

Built in the same stucco design as the old elementary school, this building was much bigger, shaped almost like a Quonset hut, with a red tile roof and creamy yellow stucco walls. Big picture windows looked out on the pier at the front of the building, barely shaded by red and white striped canvas awnings, the frayed fabric flapping in the breeze coming off the bay. A fanciful crenellated parapet jutted out from the building's front, and a pair of raggedy but still towering palm trees grew from stucco planters on either side of the entry.

The red neon sign above the parapet was rusting, but the lettering was still readable. The sign said Cypress Key Casino, but Greer knew she'd found her director's Alamo.

She snapped away, e-mailed, and did her own abbreviated version of the happy dance when Bryce texted back immediately.

Awesome! Send interiors!

*   *   *

It was close to six o'clock, but heat still shimmered off the concrete pier. Small groups of fishermen were knotted about, but they were concentrating on their quest for trout and redfish, not on her. She glanced back toward the waterfront. Children were playing along the narrow sand beach, splashing in the limpid waves while parents lolled on chairs.

Greer strolled casually to the far edge of the chain-link fence. It wasn't terribly high, but it was high enough that she'd definitely attract attention if she attempted to scale it. She leaned as far over the edge of the wooden safety railing as she could, and for the first time noticed that a short dock jutted out from the side of the casino. A small aluminum fishing boat bobbed at its mooring, alongside a weather-beaten sailboat.