Miss Julia Weathers the Storm Page 10

  When we reached the center of the activity, the excitement had almost died down. Sunbathers were gathering up towels and tote bags, many already hurrying across the dunes to get away from the beach. Coleman and Mr. Pickens stood grinning while Latisha, beside them with her little blue bucket, looked grim.

  Lloyd said, “J.D., did you get any? Coleman, did you?”

  “Nope,” Mr. Pickens said. “We were afraid we’d get run over. Have you ever seen such scrambling?”

  Coleman grinned. “Scrambling in the water, then scrambling to get away with what they found.”

  “Well, I think,” Latisha solemnly announced, “that we oughta look around in case they missed some.”

  “Me, too,” Lloyd said. “Come on, Latisha, maybe some washed farther up and we can find ’em.”

  I was finally able to get a word in edgewise. “What in the world was it?”

  “Hundred-dollar bills,” Coleman said. “Somebody found a couple of ’em washing in on a wave, then everybody started looking—and finding more and more. We think something—maybe a wallet or a pocketbook—fell off a boat somewhere.” Then, after a moment’s thought, he went on. “Maybe more like a strongbox or a duffel bag. There were bills floating around everywhere. Some people just paid for their vacations and then some.”

  “You’re right about that,” Mr. Pickens agreed, as both men professionally considered what had just happened. “A lot of money goes up and down Interstate 95. No reason it wouldn’t go up and down the coastline, too.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I mean, where does it come from?”

  “Smuggling,” Coleman said. “Drugs, people, whatever.”

  “Oh, my,” I said, understanding then why the apparently lucky ones had hurried away as fast as they had. Who would want to meet a smuggler looking to get his money back? “Lloyd,” I said, calling to him, “you and Latisha come on back to the house. I expect the police will be here soon.”

  “Yep,” Mr. Pickens said. “Probably the Coast Guard, too. Let’s get everybody in. It’s about lunchtime, anyway.”

  Chapter 17

  The Great Money Haul took care of the morning, and it remained the subject of our conversation throughout lunch. Wild guesses as to the amount that had floated in were thrown around, but of course there was no way for us to know. Lloyd thought that it had to be millions. Hazel Marie said she’d seen one woman with both hands full of bills, and Mr. Pickens said that money in the aggregate looks like more than it actually is—a comment that put a lull in the guessing game.

  The little girls were fussier than usual, having missed their playtime on the beach, so quiet didn’t descend until they were put to bed for naps. By that time the day had brightened considerably after a cloudy start—all due to the antics of Marty, still off the coast of Florida. Even so, no one seemed inclined to go back to the beach—not even Latisha. She had dumped all her shells into the sink of an upstairs bathroom and was washing the sand from them.

  Hazel Marie started a load of clothes in the washing machine, and Binkie decided to wash her hair. LuAnne had found a paperback book with a scantily clad, muscle-bound warrior on the cover, so she curled up on a sofa and began to read.

  “Hey, everybody,” Lloyd called as he stepped in from the front porch. “Cops are down on the beach, and I think the Coast Guard, too. J.D., can we go down and see what they’re doing?”

  “Sure,” Mr. Pickens said. “Come on, Coleman, you’re official, so maybe they won’t run us off.” And off they went.

  Sam was reading a newspaper that he’d gone out to get, so I knew that he’d soon be occupied with the crossword puzzle. I fiddled around doing nothing much but glancing at my watch, thinking of Etta Mae. She should soon be out of the funeral and on her way.

  I hoped that she’d enjoy her beach trip, although I still worried a little about her being the only single woman among us. Of course, LuAnne was temporarily—so far—a single woman, but she and Etta Mae had little in common.

  Even with no eligible men around, I intended to see that Etta Mae had a good time. She deserved it, and as I thought of how much I actually owed her in terms of friendship and help on numerous occasions, I recalled the little use I’d had for her when we’d first met. She’d been a thorn in my flesh with her constant complaints about garbage pickup or lack of same, loud parties, and the generally poor upkeep of the Hillandale Trailer Park where she lived and which I owned, courtesy of Wesley Lloyd’s demise. It had been Hazel Marie who’d suggested that I offer Etta Mae the job of manager of the park.

  Unsure of the wisdom of encouraging the woman, I had reluctantly followed Hazel Marie’s advice. I had to concede, however, that once Etta Mae took over the management, there was a noticeable improvement in the living conditions there.

  The main reason for such a quick turnaround was the fact that Etta Mae’s home was a single-wide hooked up to a rented space in the park, so she was on hand to see that things were run right. That single-wide, she’d said, was the only thing she owned free and clear, as it had been the settlement in the divorce from her second husband, and she had no intention of letting it go downhill in a trash-strewn trailer park.

  The first thing she’d done was to evict the riffraff who’d been gradually moving into the park and who, according to her, had brought the park down to their own disreputable level. She’d made it clear that she had no use for such trash and wouldn’t put up with them. She herself, she’d announced, had come from a long line of riffraff and knew how to handle them.

  As I thought of these things, it occurred to me that Etta Mae might be able to give LuAnne some advice on living alone, although I couldn’t envision LuAnne moving into a trailer park, no matter how well managed. Keeping up appearances was much too important to her.

  After a while, the men came back to the house, full of what they’d learned from the law enforcement officers who were searching the beach.

  “A yacht on the way to Miami got stranded, Miss Julia,” Lloyd told me. “Right off the coast from here, maybe a little to the south, but too far out for us to see.”

  “What happened? I mean, how did it get stranded?”

  “Blew a gasket or something, I guess. Anyway, it was just wallowing out there in the huge waves from the storm, so they had to call the Coast Guard. Boy, I bet they hated doing that!”

  Coleman grinned. “Yeah, and hated having to get rid of their cargo, too.”

  “But,” Mr. Pickens added, “it was either throw it overboard or be thrown in jail. By the time the Coast Guard boarded, it was just an innocent pleasure craft and the crew denied knowing anything about any kind of cargo. So they got towed in, and even though the officials were suspicious, they had no reason to hold the people on it.”

  “My goodness,” I said, shocked at the waste. “You really think they just threw money overboard? I can’t imagine doing such a thing.”

  Mr. Pickens’s black eyebrows arched as he said, “Me, either. But somebody got rid of a pile of it—enough to show up all along the beach from below Sullivan’s Island to here. No telling where it’ll go when the tide turns. For all anybody knows,” Mr. Pickens went on, thoroughly enjoying the possibility, “some of that money’ll end up on the Jersey shore.”

  By that time the little girls had awakened and were now milling around in the center room with the rest of us. We’d had a few quick showers of rain spattering against the windows in gusts of wind, so no one was interested in sunbathing. To entertain them, as well as to add to the general noise, Binkie found a channel on the huge television set that was playing videos of what she called beach music.

  Coleman cleared out the center of the room, grabbed Binkie, and they commenced dancing the shag. That delighted the little ones, and they began to dance along with them—not quite the shag, but twists and turns and shakes and whatever else they could think of that was inspired by the beat of the music.

 
Then Mr. Pickens took Hazel Marie’s hand and began to demonstrate some moves that I didn’t know he had in him. The children were thoroughly entertained to see their parents putting on a show, so squeals and laughter were added to the general mayhem.

  When I saw the glint in Sam’s eyes, I quickly busied myself in the kitchen. I had no desire to make a spectacle of myself trying to dance to a song about Leroy Brown.

  Through all the whirling and twirling on the improvised dance floor, my eye caught sight of Latisha sitting apart as she watched the dancers. Surprised that she hadn’t joined in, I noticed that she didn’t look all that enthralled with the floor show. She looked, in fact, lost and lonely, so I threaded my way across the room and sat down beside her.

  “Did you get your shells all cleaned up?” I asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, and got some of the broke ones throwed out, too. I figured better to throw ’em out here than to tote ’em home and throw ’em out there.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “But what about your special sand dollars? Did you wash them, too?”

  “No’m, I just wiped ’em with a washrag, then wrapped ’em up so they don’t get broke. Great-Granny made me bring some socks in case we had to dress up, even though I tole her I didn’t need no socks at the beach. But come to find out, I did need ’em ’cause that’s what I used to wrap my sand dollars up in. Then I wrapped up them three socks in newspaper an’ put ’em in a corner of my suitcase. So they ready to go when we leave this place.”

  “Are you ready to leave, Latisha?” My heart went out to her, well knowing the pangs of homesickness.

  “I guess I could leave anytime, if it come down to it. But I sure do like that beach.”

  “Well, look,” I said, pointing at the front windows, “the sun’s coming out again. Let’s you and me walk down to the beach and see what’s going on. But first, would you like to call your Great-Granny and talk to her awhile?”

  “No’m, I’ll wait on that. She always ask me too many questions. I just as soon go for a walk. Maybe that big ole storm bring up some more sand dollars.”

  I took her hand and we moved around the gyrating children to the porch, then walked down the path to the beach. The breeze was stronger than usual, but not too bad. It was the sudden gusts, though, that tore through my hair, making me long for a scarf or a hat or something to hold it on my head. Maybe a helmet.

  “Hey, wait for me!”

  I looked back to see Lloyd running after us, so Latisha and I waited at the top of the dune.

  “You’re not dancing?” I asked, smiling as he caught up with us.

  “Nope,” he said, laughing. “The best dancers are already taken. I was just about to ask you, Latisha, but first thing I knew you were gone.” He gave me a quick grin. “That left Mrs. Conover, so I decided I better get out of there.”

  I had to laugh at Lloyd’s sense of propriety. He’d had a few years of attending cotillion classes and knew a gentleman’s social obligations. To simply leave had seemed to him the better part of valor.

  “Boy, the beach is just about deserted, isn’t it?” Lloyd looked up and down the strand as he made his observation. “No cops, no Coast Guard, and no swimmers or sunbathers. Too much excitement this morning, I guess.”

  “Would you look at that,” Latisha said, pointing south toward the pier. “What they doin’ walkin’ ’round like that?”

  Coming our way, but still some distance away, was a trio of figures in street clothes. As we reached the packed sand where the tide had receded, we could see that there were two men with their pants legs rolled up to their knees, carrying their shoes, while the statuesque woman, barefoot as well, had her shoes stuck one in each pocket of a windbreaker. The two men wore white dress shirts with ties loosened and flapping in the breeze. The woman was hampered by what Hazel Marie called a pencil skirt, a poor choice, it seemed to me, for a walk on the beach, or possibly a walk anywhere.

  “Don’t ask them, Latisha,” Lloyd said. “Just pretend it’s normal to swim fully dressed.”

  “Ha!” Latisha said. “That’d be pretty funny.”

  But the three fully dressed people didn’t appear to be interested in swimming. They veered up near the foot of the dunes, walking unsteadily in and among the dune grasses and sea oats that grew in the soft, thick sand.

  As we drew closer, the swarthier of the two men broke away and came toward us. “Afternoon,” he said, his thick, dark hair blowing in the wind. He brushed it back with a gold-ringed hand, drawing my eye to the gold chain around his neck. “You folks live around here?”

  “Just visiting,” I replied. “And you?”

  “Oh, we’re just visiting, too. Heard there was some excitement around here this morning, so we decided to see if a bill or two got overlooked.” He grinned to show that he knew how unlikely that was.

  “Well,” Latisha proclaimed, “you’re lookin’ in the right place, ’cause right about here’s where I found mine.”

  I placed my hand on Latisha’s shoulder to caution her about speaking to a stranger, but it was doubtful that she’d ever met one.

  The man’s eyebrows went up. “So you got some? How much, if you don’t mind me asking.”

  I did mind. No well-bred person ever asks about money, either how much or how little, or whether it was found, earned, or inherited.

  I sniffed and raised my head. “None,” I said decisively. “We weren’t even on the beach when it washed ashore.”

  “But, Miss Lady,” Latisha said, tugging at my hand. “I found mine, remember?”

  “That was something else, Latisha,” I said. “He’s not interested in that.”

  But, apparently, he was.

  Chapter 18

  “Is that right, little girl?” the man asked, peering closely at her as his companions glanced our way with disinterest. “How much did you find?”

  “Three, but two’s pretty messed up.”

  “That don’t matter. The bank’ll give you some good ones to replace them.”

  “It will?” Latisha said, frowning at the thought. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Sure it will,” he said. “Then you can buy yourself a scooter or something.”

  “I don’t want no scooter.”

  Uncomfortable with his questions, I said, “Latisha is talking about something else entirely.”

  Then the man, having had enough of Latisha, turned to me.

  “So you folks weren’t at the beach when all the bills rolled in? Bet that was a disappointment.”

  Lloyd, who’d been digging his toes into the wet sand, then watching as the holes filled with water, looked up. He glanced at me and tilted his head to the side, indicating that he was ready to move on.

  “Not especially,” I said. “We saw enough of the mad scramble for money to stay out of it. So undignified, you know.”

  The woman, whose teased hair had been blown straight out to the side and was staying that way, which is what hair spray will do for you, had also had enough. With a roll of her eyes, she said, “Let’s get on with it, Rob.”

  I, too, was ready to get on with our walk. The man—Rob, she’d called him—was much too interested in getting his hands on a few hundred-dollar bills, none of which we had.

  “Well, nice meeting you,” I said, taking Latisha’s hand and starting on our way. Lloyd had already taken a few steps, but was still giving the three a quizzical once-over.

  “Same here,” Rob said in the dismissive tone that strangers use with each other. He caught up with his companions, and the three of them resumed their search for an errant hundred-dollar bill or two.

  We walked on, stumbling occasionally in the wind gusts that seemed to be getting stronger. Lloyd kept turning his head to look back at the well-dressed but windblown beachcombers, checking, I supposed, to see if they’d found anything. I had my mind more on Etta Mae, wonderin
g how far inland the wind gusts would go and hoping that her little car could withstand them. Latisha stopped every now and then to scrape sand from a shell sticking up from the wet sand, then moving on after deciding that it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  “I already got lots of shells better’n any I’m findin’ today,” she said.

  “If you’re not having any luck,” I said, “why don’t we turn back. Etta Mae will be coming in soon, and we should be there for her.”

  “Tell you what, Miss Julia,” Lloyd said. “This wind’s pretty strong. Why don’t we cut across the dunes here? We’ll come out near the hotel, and it’ll be easier walking back to the house on the sidewalk.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said, and that’s what we did.

  Lloyd, however, stopped at the top of the dune and looked back the way we had come. “They’re still looking,” he said as he hurried to catch up. “They’re just about opposite our house. I’m just as glad they won’t know where we’re staying. That man was too nosy for my liking.”

  I frowned, wondering what he’d picked up that I hadn’t. I mean, other than Rob’s ill-bred interest in our financial standing and his penchant for jewelry. “Well, that’s probably wise,” I said. “No use advertising that we’re renting the most expensive house around. You can’t be too careful these days, especially with strangers.”

  “Not just strangers,” Lloyd said, “but scavengers. Who ever heard of hurrying here in street clothes to look for money hours later? It doesn’t make sense.”

  But he made sense, so I picked up the pace when we reached the sidewalk, hurrying to reach the house that had two law enforcement officers temporarily in residence.

  —

  I combed my hair as best I could after our windblown walk, getting ready to go out for dinner. The children were restless with hunger in spite of the heavy snacks they’d had earlier. Sam had just finished insisting that we should go on while he stayed and waited for Etta Mae, when Lloyd sang out, “She’s here!”