Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Roz drove her silver hybrid across Comet Cove to the northwest quarter of town, well north of Star Inlet. Her mother’s building overlooked a small bay in the Indian River Lagoon. Or the river, as locals called it.
Clouds scudded across the sky, spattering raindrops on the windshield, but after Roz parked she skipped digging out an umbrella.
She clutched her big leather bag tightly to her chest and trotted across the nicely landscaped parking lot to the multi-winged, eight-story pile of concrete known as Daydream Village.
More of a compound than a village, it was considered a skyscraper around these parts, but the city council reluctantly approved it knowing there was a need for retiree communities, especially one like this.
If Megan Melander’s multiple sclerosis became too advanced for her to live independently in her apartment, she’d have options for higher levels of care.
Roz walked through the spacious lobby with its coffee shop, lovely decor and bright open spaces where people sat reading newspapers (yes!), playing mah jongg, assembling puzzles and having small, cheerful meetings.
This place offered all kinds of hobby spaces and activities, a cafeteria if folks didn’t want to cook, and visiting helpers for hire.
Her mom had a woman come in a couple of days a week.
Roz moved past a bank of mailboxes to the head of one wing and hit the button for the elevator.
This was nice, wasn’t it? Roz had mixed feelings about her mom’s move here after Megan sold the Courier to the Beacon’s publisher.
As a dutiful daughter, Roz couldn’t shake a primal guilt about not stepping up to be a caretaker.
But this was absolutely what Megan wanted.
She wanted Roz to carry on the legacy of the Courier, the newspaper Roz’s grandparents founded that Megan and David, Roz’s dad, made a pillar of the community.
David died close to two years ago of a heart attack. With her mother ailing and the paper struggling, Roz gave up her rising Baltimore journalism career to come back and run it. Then Alden and the big story and the merger happened, and her mom could afford to move.
The elevator opened onto a clean, quiet, carpeted corridor of apartments on the fifth floor.
Doors were set back in small alcoves that residents decorated as if they were front porches in a suburban neighborhood: bouquets of fake flowers, seasonal tchotchkes, ceramic dogs and cats, even small bits of framed art.
Precious bits people couldn’t get rid of even if they knew they no longer had room for them.
Life overflow, Roz thought. You built up your life and then you shrunk it down again.
She found Megan’s door, which had a faux topiary bush next to it, a matching square wreath around the peephole, and a framed picture on the short adjoining wall that had been different every time she visited.
This time it was a black-and-white photo of what this very site looked like before Daydream Village—a ramshackle fish camp with weathered wooden boats.
Roz felt a twinge. Old Florida was endangered if not completely gone. But her mom had a nice place to live.
The door opened a few moments after her knock, and Megan waved her in and enveloped her in a hug. “Roz! I didn’t expect you today.”
“Spontaneous visit. Am I interrupting anything?”
“Not at all. I have a book club meeting later.” Her mom looked well in jeans and a casual light blue top, her gray-streaked reddish hair recently cropped, her green eyes bright.
At sixty-eight, she was practically a kid in this community, though her progressive illness slowed her down. “Want a snack?”
“No, I’m having lunch with Alden later.”
“Oh, Alden.” Megan smiled. “Lucky you. Have a seat then. I’m having a ginger ale with Major Tom.”
“Oh, is he drinking soda now? That actually sounds pretty good. I’ll grab one, too.
” Roz took a detour into the small open kitchen, popped a can of ginger ale and poured it over ice in a tall glass.
She followed her mom into a roomy living area.
It was full of the beachy furniture that came from the old house.
A lot of the art had migrated, too, including the black-and-white photos of people and places of Comet Cove, many of which had once run in the newspaper.
Roz set down her bag and sat on the couch next to Major Tom, a beautiful gray cat with golden eyes. He gave her a dour look before lazily rolling onto his back. Roz chuckled and took the invitation to rub his soft belly. “He’s not missing many meals, is he?”
“He eats more than I do.” Megan sat in her favorite armchair, and they both looked out of the fifth-floor window toward the river, beautiful even under the gloomy clouds.
A misty wall of white descended to the steel-gray water under a brooding mountain of vapor, looking soft and light from up here but, Roz knew from experience, drenching anyone under it with a pounding barrage of rain.
“You like it here?” Roz blurted. Yep, still feeling guilty.
“I love it. No maintenance to worry about. And I feel really good right now. I’m on a new medication. But let’s not talk about that.” Megan sipped her ginger ale and looked at Roz. “How do you like the house?”
“The house” was in fact the house Roz grew up in.
She’d given up her furnished rental bungalow and come to terms with her mom to buy the family’s modest 1960s rancher in southwest Comet Cove.
She’d kept a few of the things Megan didn’t want but had installed some of her own and still had a lot of work to do.
“Honestly, it feels a little weird, but I’m doing some painting and updating. I’m leaning in to the mid-century feel of the kitchen, though.”
“That’s all hip again,” Megan agreed. “And lord knows the house needed some TLC. I’m glad. When is Alden moving in?”
Roz almost choked on her ginger ale. “Wha-what?” she sputtered. “We haven’t talked about anything like that.”
“I like him. I’d jump on that if I were you.” Megan waggled her eyebrows.
Roz’s face heated. She was jumping on that on the regular, which was a nice change for sure. But she wasn’t in a hurry to combine households. “It’s awkward enough at work already. Speaking of which, we’re working on a story—the death of that man at the book signing Saturday?”
“I read what you have so far. Not a lot, is it?”
Roz grimaced. “That’s the problem. We have a lot of irons but no fire. I wanted to ask you something.”
Megan looked delighted. “How can I help?”
“We’ve heard that Wayne Vandershell might’ve been building a movie studio by the airport and that he might have a partner.
So I talked to a source at city hall who said they’d received construction permit applications from a company who owns some warehouses down by the airport.
Production facilities were mentioned, and some have been approved.
The problem is, I can’t figure out who really owns the property.
It’s one of those companies owned by a company that’s owned by a company … ”
“And you don’t know who it is.”
“Right.” Roz sighed. “Any idea who that might be?”
“My best guess would be the Esquivels. When the airfield expanded, the airport authority had to buy land from them. If the warehouses are near the airport, that would be a place to start.”
“Is there anything they don’t own in this county?”
Megan smiled. “Quite a few things, but the family’s been here a long time, and they had a lot of property south of the inlet. Some of it was left wild, like the refuge they donated to the town, but they also farmed pineapples and grapefruit back in the day. That’s all gone now, of course.”
In favor of houses and strip malls, Roz thought. “I met Nicole Esquivel on Saturday. She was at the signing with her kids. Her husband’s a developer—Sebastian.”
Her mom nodded. “Yes, I’ve heard of him. One of Antonia’s sons, I think. She’s the matriarch. But I don’t know much about him.”
“Maybe the best way to reach him is through Nicole. I’ll work that angle and see if they know anything about the warehouses or the project.”
“Or the partner,” Megan said. “Even if Sebastian Esquivel says it’s not their project, he might know whose project it is. Kind of a long shot, though.”
“We have to start somewhere. And Duke isn’t calling me back.”
“He’s jealous,” she teased. “But he’s a good guy. You’d better get going. You don’t want to be late for lunch with Alden.”
“Ha! And I have to get some solid reporting in so we can post an update.” As she stood and grabbed her bag, Major Tom rolled over and sat up with a grouchy mrrrow. “Oh, cat, you have it so good. I don’t want to hear it.”
Megan laughed. “He sure does.”
“Need anything before I go?”
“No. Get out of here.” Her mom didn’t get up, but she looked good. Content. At least for now. And now is really all we have, isn’t it?
Roz set her glass in the sink, left the apartment, and texted Duke again as she headed for the elevator.
“Don’t tell me you’ve heard about the deal already,” Porter Cobb said when he answered the phone, not even giving Alden a chance to say hello.
What deal? Alden, driving and using an earpiece that made Porter’s deep voice more gravelly than usual, had a split second to decide whether to play out the string. He settled on greetings first. “Hey, Porter. I guess it’s going well then?”
“Getting to direct my dream project in Paris? Hell, yes, it’s going well.”
“That screenplay you’ve been fiddling with for years? Fantastic.”
“Wait a second.” Porter paused. “That’s not why you’re calling, is it?”
“No, it isn’t, but I’m happy for you. I take it this hasn’t been announced yet?”
“It hasn’t. But I suppose I can’t stop you.”
Alden chuckled. “Listen, when you’re ready, I’ll be glad to write something. Especially if it somehow connects with Comet Cove, where I now hang my dashing fedora with the cute little press badge.”
Porter snorted. “As if you’d be caught dead in a fedora. You’re in Comet Cove? Who’re you stalking?”
“You do know I’m out of the tabloids and into local journalism now, right? And I’m stalking whichever celebrity happens to cross my path.”
“Alden Knox, reputable journalist. I don’t believe it,” Porter teased him. “I haven’t made it to Comet Cove yet, though I keep hearing people talking about it. I’ll look you up when I do.”
“You’d better. And I confess, this isn’t a purely social call.”
“Ah, here it comes. Get out of the road, picklehead!” Porter called out, obviously driving too. “Sorry, tourist was selfie-ing at the Chinese Theatre in the middle of the street. You were saying?”
“I was about to ask you whether you remember a guy named Wayne Vandershell. He worked on the crew for Fastest Spin Wins.”
“Ooooh, that was a crazy shoot. Let me think.” A pause. A honk of a horn. “Refresh my memory.”
“I don’t know what he looked like then, but he had brown longish hair when I saw him. A pretty good-looking guy, I guess. Supposedly he worked as a video assist operator. I’m not sure what that is.”
“A VAO? They show the camera images on video monitors so we, I mean the director mostly but also the crew, can see what’s being shot.
It can get pretty technical if they integrate simulated visual effects so we can evaluate those kinds of shots on the go, though Fastest Spin Wins was mostly live action. Wild car chases.”
“And you don’t remember Wayne Vandershell?” Alden pushed.
“Maybe I do,” Porter mused. “This off the record?”
“It can be.”
“Make it so. I don’t want to be in the news for anything right now except my movie.”
“OK. I don’t have to attribute it to you,” Alden conceded. “We just want to know more about the guy.”
“Fine,” Porter said. “He was OK at the job, but I seem to remember him sucking up to anyone who would listen, trying to get them to back his movie.”
“What was the pitch?”
“I dunno, some tripe about a struggling writer. Autobiographical. You know the type.”
Like me, Alden thought wryly. “And he had no luck?”
“Not then and not ever, I don’t think, because I never heard of it getting made.
In fact, one day over breakfast bagels, the director told him straight up, ‘I could blow smoke up your skirt and tell you I’d do it.
Ask you to put up the money to do it. Give you the total runaround.
You know why? You smell desperate, and desperate people will do anything.
Even your script is about somebody who’s desperate for approval and attention and success.
And if you’re not careful, someone else is going to take advantage of you.
I’m just going to do you a favor and say no. ’”
“Brutal. Seems like you remember him pretty well, then.”
“That’s about it.”
Alden rattled off the names of the movies Wayne Vandershell listed in his credits, but Porter didn’t recognize any of them. “Why do you want to know about him anyway?” his friend asked.
“He got killed on Saturday,” Alden replied. “We’re trying to figure out why.”
“Geez.” Porter paused. “That really sucks. Way to bring me down, Knox.”
“Sorry. But I appreciate you. Holler if you think of anything else. And keep me updated.”
“Will do. I might just come to Comet Cove if you’re buying the beer.”
“I’ll buy the beer and write a friendly feature.”
“Sounds like a plan. Later.”
They clicked off just as Alden pulled into the parking lot that served Comet Cove’s small boardwalk. The promenade ran along the northeast side of the inlet to a park and pier facing the ocean.
He flashed back to a memorable ice cream with Roz at the Milky Way, just two doors down from where they were meeting for lunch. They needed to go back there. That was a very good day.
He headed out to the boardwalk. The clouds were starting to clear, and a beam of sunlight hit the causeway bridge to the west, glinting off the cars crossing over it. He admired the boats navigating the inlet and the red-and-white-striped lighthouse across the wide swath of water, a beacon for all.
The Beacon—The Courier-Beacon—was aptly named, he thought, as he walked into the diner to meet Roz. Together, maybe they could shed some light on this strange, dark death.