Page 16 of The Homewreckers
“Mmm. I see a tax lien. Oooh. They really are fixing to lose their house. Latest appraisal is $425,000. All the value’s in the lot, not the house. Here’s the survey. Looks like there’s some kind of outbuilding. Maybe a boat shed, something like that?”
Hattie fiddled with a paper clip, bending and twisting it as she thought. “Can’t believe a lot on Tybee isn’t worth way more than just that. Zen, are you friends with Mavis Creedmore?”
Zenobia shrugged. “We’ve served on altar guild together at Blessed Sacrament for a long time. We’re not friends, but we been knowing each other for years.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s in her eighties. Cranky, and opinionated. You know that generation. They always think their way is the only way.”
“Huh,” Cass said, grinning at her mother. “Who does that sound like?”
Zenobia picked up a plastic Kavanaugh & Son promotional flyswatter and flicked it at her daughter. “Remember who writes the paychecks around here, little girl.”
Hattie pushed her chair away from the desk and it made a screeching noise on the worn linoleum tile floor. “Come on, Cass. Let’s take a ride out to Tybee and check it out.”
“But that house isn’t even for sale,” Cass protested.
“Yet,” Hattie said. “Anyway, we can cruise around and check for new listings or for-sale signs that aren’t on the Zillow radar yet.”
Hattie was quiet on the long drive out to Tybee Island. The tide was out. Traffic was light. It was late spring, and the marsh grasses on either side of US 80 were a brilliant chartreuse green. Cass glanced over at her.
The temperature was mild for Savannah, mid-eighties, but Hattie’s face was pale and beaded with perspiration and she seemed to have a death grip on the steering wheel.
Hank’s accident had happened on this stretch of what all the locals called Tybee Road. The highway narrowed to two lanes after you left Whitemarsh Island, and anytime there was a wreck, especially on one of the four bridges you crossed to reach Tybee, traffic could be tied up for hours.
“Hey,” Cass said softly. “You okay?”
Hattie nodded.
“We don’t have to do this,” Cass pointed out.
“I have to,” Hattie said. A pink blotch bloomed on her cheeks. “It’s stupid. I mean, it’s just a dumb bridge. The bridge isn’t what killed Hank.”
She had a point. A drunk driver, coming from a day-long binge at one of the numerous bars on the island, was the cause of Hank Kavanaugh’s death. The drunk, a teenager, had veered into the oncoming lane of traffic to avoid hitting something on the roadway, and struck the motorcyclist head-on. As soon as he saw what had happened, the kid took off running, abandoning his car—and the mortally wounded Hank—in the middle of the Lazaretto Creek bridge span.
A physician’s assistant, who happened to be approaching the scene when the crash happened, called 911, then ran from her car to try to help. Hank was still breathing, she later told police. But it had taken more than an hour for emergency responders coming from Savannah to weave through the snarled traffic to reach the accident site.And by then, Hank Kavanaugh, age twenty-nine, had succumbed to his massive head and chest injuries.
“I can drive if you want me to,” Cass offered, but Hattie shook her head.
“How come you’re suddenly hot to trot on thisSaving Savannahthing? I thought you hated the idea.”
Hattie drummed her fingers on the pickup’s steering wheel. “I did. Still do. But I’m the one who put the company—and Tug—in the red on the Tattnall Street house. So it’s up to me to fix it, and I don’t know any other way to try to recoup our losses.”
They were almost to the top of the humpbacked Lazaretto Creek bridge. If you looked to the right, you saw the shrimp boats and dolphin tour boats tied up to the docks there. If you looked to the left, you might spot one of the massive container ships, some longer than a city block, gliding by on the way to or from Savannah’s port facility.
Hattie felt herself involuntarily holding her breath. Get a grip, she told herself.
She slowed the truck as they passed the Tybee Island city limits sign, laughing at the spectacle of a family of four having their photo snapped in front of the giant resin replica of a sea turtle, and she followed the highway as it made the curve at the ocean and turned east, becoming Butler Avenue, which was the town’s main drag.
“Tell me the house number we’re looking for?” Hattie asked.
Fifteen twenty-three,” Cass said, glancing down at her phone.
Hattie rolled the truck windows down and inhaled the salt air. She glanced around at the passing scenery, at the houses and shops lining both sides of Butler. “Wow, it’s a lot more fixed up than I remembered.”
Cass sniffed. “If by ‘fixed up’ you mean they added some new T-shirt shops and renamed the hotel, I guess it is. Tybee ain’t Hilton Head. And it ain’t St. Simon’s Island, that’s for sure.”
“You are so damned bougie, Cassidy Pelletier,” Hattie said, laughing. “I like Tybee. It’s like, the last unspoiled beach town. No outlet malls, no high-rise condo towers, no fast-food joints… well, except for Arby’s. I mean, Arby’s is still here, right?”
