Beach Town (32 page)

“This is so cool,” Vanessa exclaimed. “I've never seen a movie being made before. Is Bryce around? He said I should check in with him as soon as I got here.”

“Right over there,” CeeJay volunteered, pointing at a nearby tent, where Bryce was peering into a monitor with his cameraman.

“See you later,” Vanessa said, as she strolled away.

CeeJay and Greer watched with undisguised interest as Bryce greeted the newcomer with a hug. Moments later, a P.A. produced a folding director's chair with “Vanessa Littrell” emblazoned on the back.

“He never gave me a chair with my name on it,” Greer mused.

“Because he never anticipated you might sleep with him,” CeeJay shot back.

“Well, that kind of hurts my feelings. What? I'm not his type?”

“If you have breasts and a vagina, you're his type,” CeeJay said. “It's not that he would mind schtupping you,” her best friend explained. “He thinks you're cute. But you're my friend, so that makes you off-limits. Because you might rat him out.”

Greer nodded in the direction of the tent, where Vanessa was now staring into the monitor, with Bryce standing directly beside her, his hand on the small of her back.

“You don't seem too upset about any of this,” she observed.

“Bryce has the sexual attention span of a three-year-old,” CeeJay said with a shrug. “He likes anything shiny and new. What's the story on Vanessa?”

“From what I gather, she's what passes for royalty in Cypress Key. Her family's been here for generations.”

“Married?”

“Twice divorced,” Greer said. “And actively seeking a suitable man. She says the local pickings are pretty slim for somebody in her tax bracket.”

“What about the Professor?” CeeJay had an impish twinkle in her eye. “He seems eminently suitable, if you ask me.”

“Nobody did. Vanessa made a run at him years ago, but I don't think Eb was interested.”

“Saving himself for something better.” CeeJay nudged Greer.

“That was over before it even began. He's currently avoiding me. Which is fine. It never would have worked out. Anyway, I've got enough drama in my life without his and his niece's.”

“Oh yeah. I'm guessing the shit hit the fan when he found out about TMZ?”

Greer gave CeeJay a condensed version of her last conversation with Eb Thibadeaux, including the fact that he'd made Allie quit the film and had placed her under semi–house arrest.

“Too bad about the kid,” CeeJay said. “But Eb might want to dial it down. Girls that age, you clamp too tight a lid on 'em and you get a backlash that's even worse than what you're punishing them for. I ran away from home the first time when I was only fourteen, after my dad refused to let me get a nose ring. All kids rebel. It's part of growing up. Right?”

Greer's attention had wandered, as she watched the body language between Vanessa and Bryce.

“Hmm?”

“Teenage rebellion?”

Greer's mind flashed back to an incident in her early teens when her own youthful rebellion had nearly gotten her killed. She shuddered. It was a memory she'd long repressed and didn't plan to dredge up again any time soon.

“You seeing what I'm seeing?” she asked CeeJay, nodding at the director's tent, where Bryce's hand was now gently hovering over Vanessa Littrell's posterior.

“Gag me,” CeeJay said.

Greer's radio squawked again.

“Hi, Zena, what's up?”

“You've got a guest down here. Okay to bring him up?”

“Looks like it's open house on the set today,” CeeJay observed.

“What guest? I didn't invite anybody on set,” Greer said.

“Uh, he says he's your dad.”

Greer felt the blood drain from her face.

“Stay where you are. I'll be right down.”

“Did she just say your dad is here?” CeeJay asked. “Like, your real dad?”

“Alleged dad, is more like it,” Greer said.

When Greer arrived at the barricades blocking entrance to Pier Street, she spied Clint Hennessy leaning up against a dusty, late-eighties-looking black and white sheriff's department cruiser, chatting with her assistant. He wore a black baseball cap, black Hennessy Picture Cars logo T-shirt, and baggy, ill-fitting jeans—again with the white tube socks and ten-dollar black tennis shoes. “Dad jeans,” CeeJay would have called those pants. He'd hooked his sunglasses over the neckline of the shirt.

Oh my God. This old redneck is my father. I have his DNA. How did he and Lise ever end up together? I don't care. It doesn't matter. She's dead, and he might as well be.

She pulled the golf cart up to the barricade, hopped out, and hurried over to the car.

“Greer, you didn't tell me your daddy was coming to the set today,” Zena bubbled. “I could have gotten him a director's chair and put it under Bryce's tent.”

“I didn't know he was coming myself,” Greer said.

“Hi, honey,” Clint said, offering a shy smile. “Surprise!”

“Could I talk to you a minute?” Greer said, taking him by the arm and steering him away from Zena's curious stare.

“Sure thing,” Clint said.

She waited until they were several yards away from the barricades and the crowd of girls lined up there, hoping for a glimpse of Kregg.

Greer could feel the sweat rolling down her cheeks, down her back, and between her breasts, but an odd chill settled itself in her chest.

“What are you doing here?” she asked tersely.

“Working, same as you.” He turned and pointed proudly at the police cruiser. “That's my 1986 Crown Vic. My graphics guy finished your sheriff's department logo yesterday, so I drove it over here today. I couldn't believe it when I got the call from your transportation guy Monday, telling me they needed a picture car for
Beach Town.
What a coincidence, huh? They needed a Crown Vic, not too new, not older than mid-eighties, for a sheriff's cruiser, and I got two of 'em. I said, ‘Hell, my daughter is working on that movie. Greer Hennessy.' And that fella, he told me you're the location manager and they think a lot of you. I almost never do the deliveries anymore. I leave that to my guy Wally. But there was no way I'd miss out on seeing where my kid is working. Not when you're practically working in my backyard.”

“Great. Now you've seen it, and now I have to get back to work,” Greer said.

I sound like such a bitch, but I am a bitch. And he needs to go.

“That's it?” Clint pushed the baseball cap to the back of his head. He wasn't cool enough to hide the hurt. “I thought maybe we could grab some lunch or something. It wouldn't take long.”

Greer felt the cold, clenching feeling in her chest. She could hear Lise's voice: “Call him. What could it hurt?” It hurt a lot, seeing him.

She sighed. “Why are you doing this? Do you really think after thirty years you can just show up in my life and everything will be all good and happy?”

He took off his cap and turned it around and around in those big, chapped hands. The stubble on his weather-beaten cheeks was gray, and his hair was plastered to his head. “You showed up at my house. You did. I thought maybe … I don't know. I guess I hoped maybe we could figure things out, between us. Maybe, if we spent some time together, you'd see I'm not such a bad guy.”

“I don't think you're a bad guy,” Greer said, and even to her own ears that sounded like a lie. “I don't think anything about you, because I don't know you. And the reason I came to your house—the
only
reason—is I promised Lise I would see you. I still don't understand why she wanted me to, but she did, and I did.”

“Okay,” Clint said. “Fair enough. You got work to do, I got work to do.” He turned and walked slowly back toward the barricade and his Crown Vic. He got a few yards away, then came back.

He jammed the hat back on his head. “You want to hear something, Greer? Lise made me promise too. I told her you probably wouldn't want anything to do with me, but she said I had to try. Your mom and I had some good talks, those last few months. I wanted to come see her but she wouldn't let me, said she didn't want me to see her sick and skinny and old.”

“Just go, please?” Greer swallowed hard and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

His gait was slow and bandy-legged, and he held his right arm stiffly out to one side, like a sailor who'd lost his sea legs. When he reached the barricades, Zena stopped, smiled widely, asked him something. He shook his head and kept on walking.

*   *   *

As soon as the casino scenes were shot, by midafternoon, Greer and Zena directed the move of all the equipment, trucks, and personnel to the nearby Veterans Park, where the call sheet dictated a 4:00 p.m. shoot time.

As the day progressed, the crowds behind the barriers grew, until Greer estimated there were probably at least two hundred fans straining to catch a glimpse of Kregg and Adelyn.

Twelve hours into the day, with no end in sight, Greer was in no mood for diplomacy when she spotted Kregg, in costume, toss a lit cigarette butt into a flower bed that the set dressers had just finished planting with multiple flats of daisies, geraniums, and ferns.

“Hey,” she said, approaching him, as he slouched against a bench. “Please don't do that.”

“Do what?” He looked up from lighting another cigarette and appraised her with glassy, red-rimmed eyes.

“That was a lit cigarette,” she said, leaning down and retrieving it. “There are trash barrels right over there.” She pointed to an area not more than five yards away.

“Sorry!” he drawled, in a tone that conveyed the complete opposite sentiment. “Hey, uh, what happened to your cute little P.A.? I haven't seen her around in a couple of days. And she doesn't answer my texts. She like … disappeared.”

Greer glanced discreetly around. Bryce and his assistant director and cameraman were huddled together on the opposite side of the park, blocking out their next shot.

“Her uncle grounded her for life after he saw the topless photos of her with you on that Jet Ski on TMZ.”

Kregg grinned. “Yeah. Girl has a rack on her, right?”

Greer's temper flared. “You're a pig, you know that?”

He blinked. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means, Kregg, that that cute little P.A., whose name is Allie? She's only seventeen. A minor. Her uncle is the mayor. And his best friend is the chief of police. Right now he's said that if he catches you anywhere near Allie Thibadeaux he will see to it that you end up not just in the jailhouse, but in the hospital.”

“Christ,” Kregg muttered. “First Bryce, now you. Everybody should just chill. We were just messing around.”

He exhaled and blew a smoke ring in her face, then pinched the butt and tossed it at her feet.

“Find somebody your own age to play around with.” Greer bent down, picked up the still smoldering butt, and nimbly flicked it at his face. “And pick up your own friggin' mess. I'm the location manager, not your maid.”

 

38

Sunday morning was finally, and inescapably, laundry day. Greer pushed the wobbly-wheeled Hometown Market shopping cart slowly down the corridor at the Silver Sands Motel. On her second trip between the motel's laundry room and her own room, she spied Ginny Buckalew.

Ginny was wearing a pair of shapeless white painter's pants, a long-sleeved cotton shirt, and an ancient-looking canvas safari hat. She was standing outside her patio garden, whacking away at a palm tree with a pair of long-handled pruning shears.

Her broad, pink face broke into a smile when she saw Greer approach.

“Well hey there, Greer. You doing laundry for everybody in the whole motel?”

Greer laughed ruefully. “It sure feels like it. This is every stitch of clothing I own.” She gestured at her own peculiar ensemble: a pair of jeans so old and faded they'd worn to the consistency of a crumpled Kleenex, and a black T-shirt from a long-forgotten TV series for which she'd scouted locations.

“I've been putting off this day for three weeks, but now I am officially out of clothes.”

“You're not working today?”

Greer leaned against the shopping cart. “Not supposed to be. But in between loads, I've been doing research on the computer.”

“What kind of research?”

“We need a military-looking building for a location this week. But everything I've come up with is either too far away or tied up in red tape.” She hesitated. “I was going to call Eb and ask him for suggestions, but I think he's officially not talking to me.”

Ginny gave her a sympathetic smile. “He'll get over it. I will say that he's been preoccupied the last few days with all this business about Jared.”

“Oh-h-h. Can I ask? Is his brother really getting out of prison?”

Ginny used her shirtsleeve to wipe the sweat from her brow, leaving a faint stripe of dirt on her forehead. Her gray eyes clouded over.

“I'm afraid it's true. The Department of Corrections website shows Jared's status as prerelease, which means he could be released as early as this Wednesday. But our lawyer says it's never really official until right up until the day.”

“Has Eb talked to Jared?”

“No. Inmates don't have access to phones or e-mail, and the boys have been more or less estranged since Allie came to live with us.” She shook her head in dismay.

“What will happen with the custody issue?”

“Nobody seems to know. It's so frustrating! Our lawyer doesn't think a judge would award custody of Allie to Jared, but nothing is certain. All we can do is be prepared for the worst.”

“How is Allie? We all miss having her on the set.”

“I'm sure she misses being there as well. But she's not speaking to me or Eb. It's the old silent treatment. I used it on my mother, may she rest in peace, and I'm sure you used it on yours.”