Beach Town (24 page)

“Oh yeah. I can't have them out in the weather.”

“Why's that?”

“Those cars are my bread and butter. Didn't Lise tell you about my business?”

“No. She just told me you guys had reconnected.”

“Facebook,” he said eagerly. “That's how I found your mom again, you know. We talked on the phone, too. Right after she found out, you know, about the cancer.”

“She mentioned it,” Greer said stiffly.

“Uh, well, I wanted to come to the funeral, you know.”

But you didn't.

“It was small. Just a few old friends.”

But no MIA ex-husbands.

“It's hard for me to travel that far, all the way to California, me running a business and all. I got a couple guys who work for me part time, doing body work and painting, but I do most of the long-hauling myself, delivering cars to locations.”

Greer tried desperately to think of an excuse to leave. She'd done what she came to Alachua to do. She'd seen Clint, talked to him. Her obligations had been met.

“How come you don't do Facebook?” Clint was asking. “I thought everybody your age was into that. You don't even hardly have any pictures of yourself on there.”

“I have a professional page, for my scouting business, but I don't bother with a personal page,” she told him.

Clint's face lit up at the mention of her location scouting business. “How about that? You're the third generation in the business. Guess you could call that a dynasty, right?”

She shrugged. “I guess. Unlike Dearie and Mom, I never was an actress.”

He started to say something, hesitated, then started again. “Good old Dearie. Is she still as full of piss and vinegar?”

“Definitely.”

Clint grinned. “She never liked me. And I probably gave her good reason not to. She thought I was some redneck hillbilly. But I always admired your grandmother. In a town full of liars, phonies, and ass kissers, Dearie was the real thing. You always knew where you stood with her.”

“To say the very least,” Greer agreed.

Must leave. Must leave. Must leave.

“I'd probably better get going. It's an hour drive back to Cypress Key, and I'm sure you have stuff you need to do. It was probably bad manners of me to just drop in on you like this.”

“You're leaving already?” Clint's shoulders drooped. “I was hoping maybe you'd let me buy you lunch and we could spend some time catching up.”

As if a hamburger and a Coke could bridge a gap of more than three decades.

“Maybe another time,” Greer said, sounding deliberately vague. She stood up.

“Let me just show you around the place before you leave,” Clint said. “You haven't even seen my cars.”

“Okay, maybe just a few minutes,” Greer said. “We've got a production meeting this afternoon.”

Humor him. He doesn't know it's your day off.

She followed him down the worn wooden steps and through the overgrown, grassy backyard, down a well-packed sand driveway that ended in front of a huge, industrial-looking prefab metal warehouse.

He was shorter than she'd remembered, maybe five ten, and skinnier. His jeans bagged in the seat and were too short, showing off white athletic socks and black tennis shoes with Velcro fasteners, and his gait was stiff-legged.

Just another sad old man. Nothing to me.

Clint took a set of keys from his pocket, unlocked a heavy steel door, and flicked on a light switch.

“My inventory,” he said proudly.

The warehouse was full of cars and trucks and dozens of vehicles of every description, their paint gleaming under the glare of overhead lights. She spotted an antique cherry red fire engine, a rusty old Ford pickup truck with a wooden stake bed, a flashy pink 1950s Cadillac with flaring fins, even a vintage yellow school bus.

Holy shit. My father is a car hoarder.

“What is all this?” Greer asked, mystified. “Do you drive all these cars?”

“Oh, hell no,” Clint said. “I guess Lise didn't tell you. I'm still in the business, too, in a way. All these vehicles? They're picture cars. I rent 'em for television and movie productions. Some print ads too.”

“Really?” Greer felt herself drawn into the warehouse, as though by a magnet.

At the end of the first row she saw the car she'd been wondering about: the orange Dodge Charger with the Confederate battle flag painted on the roof.

“Is that—”

“Yup,” Clint said. He walked over to the Charger and gave the hood a loving pat. “The General Lee. This is the same car I drove for
The Dukes of Hazzard.
”

“It's not a replica?” Greer asked. The car had no windows. She walked around to the passenger side, leaned down, and peered inside. The padded tan dashboard appeared to have been spray painted. Looking up, she touched a chrome roll bar.

Clint reached across and leaned on the horn, and the first twelve notes of “Dixie” blared so loudly she jumped backwards.

That horn. “Dixie.” Suddenly she was four again, sitting on her daddy's lap

Do it again. Again. Again. Please, Daddy.

Until Lise came out of the house and yelled at him to cut it out before the neighbors called the cops.

“A replica? Not on your life,” Clint said. “We used hundreds of Chargers during the life of the series. This was one we wrecked doing a stunt jump for an episode at the end of the third season, in 1981. I bought it, restored it, and for years I'd take it around to car shows all over the country.”

“Does it run?”

“They all run,” Clint said, gesturing around the barn. “Some of 'em I bought as is, others I restored myself. That's what I've been doing since I quit driving—buying, selling, and restoring cars.”

He rested a hand lightly on Greer's shoulder. “This one I'll never sell. Do you remember it at all?”

Lise's voice, shrill, on the phone with Dearie. “Goddamn General Lee. Yeah. The car has a name. He has a kid he can't support, but he treats that car like it's his baby.”

Greer closed her eyes, thinking back to that long-ago day. “I have a vague memory of you coming home with an orange car. But that one, the front end was bashed in. I remember you let me sit in it, and we'd honk the horn, but Mom wouldn't let you take me for a drive because she said it wasn't safe.”

“God, she hated this car.” Clint's laugh was wheezy. “I had a herniated disc, you know, from work. I was getting workers' comp, but I was bored as hell, hanging around the house, so I bought it without telling her.”

“You did what? You paid seventy-five dollars for that piece of shit? Jesus, Clint!”

“Seventy-five dollars,” Greer whispered.

Clint stared at her. “That's right. I paid seventy-five dollars for it. But how…”

She shook her head, as if that would shake off the memory. “I better get going. My meeting…”

His face crumpled like an old brown paper sack, dry and creased. “Son of a bitch. You must have heard us fighting that day. Right?”

Greer took a deep breath. “I heard her yelling ‘Seventy-five dollars!' over and over.”

“We thought you were sleeping,” Clint said. “Money was tight. We had all these doctor bills because you kept getting ear infections. And it was pilot season, and she wanted a new outfit to go out on callbacks. But I'd spent every spare dime on this thing.” He ran a gnarled hand slowly over the windshield.

“I had a plan, you know. The way I saw it, the General Lee was an investment. All it needed was some bodywork. I was gonna fix it up, then rent it back to the studio for the show. But Lise thought that was just some wild hare of mine. She was furious.”

“I'd never heard Mom cry before,” Greer whispered.

Clint patted her shoulder awkwardly. “It didn't occur to me to tell her what I was doing. I was the man of the family, right? Why should I ask her permission?”

“When I woke up from my nap, you were gone,” Greer said accusingly.

“She threw me out. Told me to take my gee-dee car and never come back. Looking back now, I can't say I blame her.” He smiled sadly. “It wasn't just the car. I was a young hothead. It hurt my pride, knowing she didn't believe in me, in my ability to support my family.”

Greer's heart was beating wildly, like a trapped rabbit's. For a moment she was back in her tiny bedroom, huddled under the pink and green quilt Dearie had made her.

Lise was in a towering rage. In between her mother's sobs she heard dresser drawers opening and slamming, the muttered curses. Heard metal clothes hangers scraping on the closet rod. The front door opened and closed, again and again, as Lise made multiple trips from the bedroom to the front yard.

“I drove around town for a while, just to cool down. I slept in the car that night,” he said sheepishly. “I figured, we'd had fights before, one of us would leave and things would blow over. But when I got home, she'd thrown all my stuff in a big pile in the yard. All my clothes, tools, everything. So that was when I knew it was over.”

“I have to go,” Greer said abruptly.

No more toxic strolls down memory lane for this girl.

“Okay.”

Clint followed her back to the trailer, and then out to the Kia. He circled the car slowly, evaluating it as though it were a horse he was thinking of buying.

“Is this a rental?”

“Yes.” She fumbled around, trying to find the seat belt, which had retracted back into the door.

“How's it handle on the road?”

“It's okay. Not the smoothest ride.” She started the ignition. But he still had his hand planted on the car's roof. As though that hand could hold her there, keep his daughter from her determined retreat.

He leaned in the open door. “I came back, you know. Two days later. But she'd left you with the babysitter, Claire. The kid who lived next door.”

Greer clamped both hands over her ears. She swore she could feel the searing heat, the agony of that long-ago infection.

Clint gently pulled her hands down. “I'm sorry your mom is gone. And I know you don't want to hear this. But you need to know the truth. I didn't just walk off. I came back. I came back, and it was Lise who stayed away. You were sick, and I took you to the doctor and I got your medicine and fed you and gave you your bath and your ear drops. A week! She stayed gone a week. Finally, I didn't know what else to do. I had to go back to work. So I called Dearie to help out.”

His face was pink with agitation, his voice hoarse. “Lise always told you I was the one who walked out. I bet you never knew I came back. Nobody ever told you that, did they? I came back, dammit.”

Greer's jaw was clenched so hard it ached. She closed the door and gripped the steering wheel, trying to calm herself. Just before she put the car in reverse, she rolled the window down and turned to the sad old man with the hollow eyes.

“But you didn't stay, did you?”

She did a neat 180-degree turn in the sandy yard and drove away.

 

27

Vanessa Littrell's Sunday morning text was brief but intriguing.

Hey! Big news. Can u meet me @Coffee Mug @10?

It was 9:30 and Greer had just returned to her room from a run—two laps of the island equaled five miles. She peeled off her sweaty clothes and jumped into the shower.

As soon as she'd lathered up with the pathetic sliver of hotel soap, she instantly regretted not stopping in Gainesville, at a real store, to buy some decent toiletries. She cursed the cheap hotel soap that left her skin dried out and ashy, and reserved a special curse for the scent memory that would now, forever more, be associated with her ill-advised assignation with Eben Thibadeaux.

Vanessa had snagged a table on the patio at the Coffee Mug, away from the prying eyes and ears of the dozen or so people who were seated inside the caf
é
. Greer paid for her coffee and a blueberry muffin, and sat down at the table with her back to the street.

Vanessa noted Greer's wet hair. “I hope I didn't wake you up. I always forget not everybody gets up at six to take out the dogs.”

“With my job, six a.m. is the equivalent of sleeping in. I was actually just coming back from a run,” Greer said, stirring sweetener into her coffee. “What's the big news?”

“Are you still interested in the casino?”

“Of course. We're dying to use it. The director is still dogging me about it.” She held up her phone to show Vanessa the half dozen texts Bryce Levy had sent, urging her to get the casino location nailed down. “Has Eb Thibadeaux changed his mind?”

“We don't need Eb's permission,” Vanessa said. “After that farce of a city council meeting last week, I asked my lawyer to go over the old lease one more time. There has to be a loophole, I told her, that could get us out of it. And there was. I don't know why it never struck me before, it's so obvious.”

“She found a loophole? What is it?”

Vanessa smiled and nibbled at a bit of muffin. With her sleek, dark hair and pert, upturned nose, she reminded Greer of a self-satisfied Cheshire cat.

“The city hasn't used the casino for a municipal entertainment facility since they boarded it up, back in 2011.”

“So? What difference does that make?”

“It changes everything. Their lease specifically provides that if the property is not being used for purposes stated in the lease agreement, they are in default, and the lease is nullified.”

“Huh?”

“Standard real estate boilerplate,” Vanessa said with a chuckle. “Which I guess is why we all overlooked it. Until yesterday, when Sue Simpson, my lawyer, got her teeth into it. The clause is very clear. The city is in default. Their lease is history. And I can do whatever I want with
my
property. I can blow it up or burn it down, and there's nothing they can do to stop me.”