Rachel said, “That poor kid must have been walking up from the beach when he got stung.”
I said, “I think you’re right. He was probably walking up from the beach and saw the car full of jerks heading in his direction, got scared, and ducked down for cover. Then the ants got him.”
“Poor kid,” she said. “Alone and scared.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Chapter 6
NEXT MORNING I checked Rachel’s pulse, kissed her on the cheek, and climbed out of bed. I left her a note to say I’d be back in time for the eight- thirty breakfast, then I put on some shorts and running shoes and hit the road.
With a four-thousand-year-old history rich with ancient Indians, marauding pirates, seafaring captains, railroads, shrimpers, saloons and sharks, St. Alban’s, Florida, is a visitor’s paradise.
I headed north on A1A and turned left on Coastal, followed Coastal all the way to the tiny airport that served Amelia Island, turned left again on Farthing, and wound up back on A1A, a couple miles south of the Seaside. Six minutes later I passed the area where we had our run-in with the homeboys and then the place where we saved the kid. I sprinted a half mile, then slowed to a cooling jog and stopped a few yards shy of the Seaside’s front gate. The owner, Beth Daniels, was pulling weeds from the stone path that led to the front door.
“Enjoy your run?” she said, greeting me with a smile.
“Very much so.”
Beth was fortyish, recently widowed, disarmingly attractive. She and her husband were said to have had legendary personalities, but she’d been in a deep funk these past months, consumed by the effort required to keep her husband’s bed and breakfast dream alive. Charles had gone to Atlanta on business, suffered a heart attack, died within minutes, leaving Beth deeply in debt. Within weeks of his untimely death, she’d lost her cook, her waitress, and her caretaker. She had only one staff member left, a part-time cleaning lady.
“One thing I noticed while running,” I said. “In store front windows, on telephone poles, and even a billboard: posters about the girl who went missing last year.”
Beth nodded. “Libby Vail.”
“What I was wondering, the posters say she went missing in Pennsylvania.”
“That’s my understanding.”
“So why place them here in Florida?”
Beth dabbed at the light sweat on her face and forehead with the back of her garden gloves. “When it first happened, the police interviewed Libby’s college roommate. She told them Libby always talked about coming to St. Alban’s to research her family tree.”
“Did the cops trace her here?”
“No, she just seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. But when the story came out about her wanting to come here, the whole town got involved. We held candlelight vigils, and her parents came down and made some appeals on TV. Even the FBI set up a command post for a few days, but nothing came of it. Still, the town embraced the story, and every month since her disappearance, we’ve held a weekend celebration in Libby’s honor.”
“Celebration?”
“Like a festival. People come from all over the country. Some folks have come all the way from Europe.”
“But your bed and breakfast isn’t benefitting from all the business?”
“It’s the only thing that’s kept us going this long,” Beth said. “The whole town, for that matter. But with the economy the way it is, Charles had some investments in Atlanta that went bad, and we mortgaged this place to the roofline. Now interest rates are up and we’re struggling to keep it going.”
I glanced at the parking area. She followed my gaze and said, “Oh, I should have said something. Rachel left about thirty minutes ago. She took the car.”
“She say where she was heading?”
“No. Sorry.”
I waved my hand in the direction of the parking area. “The other guests?”
Beth sighed. “Gone.”
“They left before breakfast?”
“You haven’t had the privilege of tasting my cooking,” she said. “If you had, you’d understand.”
I smiled. “Surely you’re kidding. Breakfast is easy.”
She pursed her lips and made an expression that would have been adorable, had she not seemed so sad. She looked uncertain, as if she wanted to say something, but was trying to work up the courage.
“I don’t suppose you want the chef’s job?” She looked at me like a woman seeking space on an over-crowded lifeboat.
I could only think of two things in life worse than being a cook at a B&B in St. Alban’s Beach, Florida.
“I need a caretaker, too,” she said.
Being a caretaker was one of them.
“And a waitress.”
That was the other.
