The Sky Beneath Her(14)

“Sounds like a lot of cleaning.”

“Yeah, this one is chaos. But it’s a surface clean. Basically, fresh linens, tidy up, and wipe down. No deep scrubbing required,” she admitted. “I checked it out this morning.” She looked me over. “You good to clean in those clothes?”

My shorts and athletic T-shirt weren’t fancy, but they weren’t exactly grunge. “I have other clothes for cleaning.”

“Well, grab your bag from the car. We’ve got to get going.”

“Like now?”

“Like five minutes ago.”

I headed outside to my car and from the back seat opened my trash bag. I grabbed old cutoffs, a tank top, and worn sneakers. I vanished into the ladies’ room. As I tied back my brown hair, the woman looking back from the mirror had a tight expression and eyes wide with fear. “What the hell am I doing here?”

When I emerged, Kaitlin had flipped the shop’s Open sign to Closed and was already behind the wheel of her van. I tossed my travel clothes into my car and slid into the van’s passenger seat.

“Just like the old days, right?” Kaitlin asked.

It was an uncomfortable full-circle moment. My mother had died, and I was staying with Kaitlin’s family while I got myself together. Kaitlin’s mom was too tired to work much, so I’d taken her place. I’d scrubbed toilets, wiped out refrigerators that smelled like death, mopped floors, and changed more bedsheets than I could count. “We cleaned our share of houses that last summer.”

I’d hated every minute of it, but the job had given me time to shake off the shock of Mom’s death. And at the end of each day, I’d had an odd sense of satisfaction. Cleaning was something I could control. Dirty. Clean. No gray areas. I’d left in late August, made a short detour to the mountains, and then fallen back to Norfolk and the job at Tierney, Brooks, and Bainbridge.

“Let’s hope I remember your cleaning lessons,” I said. “I don’t want to slow you down.”

“You’ll pick it up quickly.” She fumbled with her keys. “What’s the deal with the Brooks house? Why are you dealing with it?”

“The former owner had an interest in the Oceanus. And my boss, his great-nephew, thought I might be interested.”

“Seriously?”

“Mr. Brooks gave me a partial manuscript someone wrote about the ship. He said the rest might be in this house.”

“Who wrote it?”

“Don’t know. No name on it.”

“And you want to know more about that wreck?”

Surprising myself, I said, “I think I do.”

The van rumbled down the beach road. At milepost ten Kaitlin pulled onto a cracked concrete driveway that cut between larger, lightly colored homes built in the last few years.

The van’s tires rattled over the driveway’s ruts filled with weeds. The shrubs on either side were overgrown. “Is this the land that time forgot?”

The duplex looked as if it had been built in the seventies. It had a slightly pitched roof, faded green window shutters, and a porch that wrapped around the entire house. Amazing ocean views suggested that whoever stayed in this house wasn’t interested in lingering inside.

“Just about,” Kaitlin said. “The owner says he won’t sell if he can keep renting. But rentals are slowing. He wasn’t booked for June, and then it suddenly rented for the summer a few days ago.”

Even rentals like this weren’t affordable for locals on a long-term basis. “Lucky for Mr. Homeowner.”

“The duplex is dated and rough, but the view from the back deck of the sunrises is stunning.”

“Sunrises? You start that early?”

A nonchalant shrug lifted her shoulder. “I know the owner. We used to date. I stayed over a few times.”

“Not dating anymore?” Kaitlin was always very private about her love life. Given that the Outer Banks felt like a small town on a long stretch of land, maintaining privacy was a challenge.

A beaded bracelet rattled as she smoothed her hand over her head. “No, but we’re friends. And he always throws in a generous tip when he calls last minute.”

“Like now?”

“Yeah. He wasn’t expecting this rental and thought he could clean it himself, but he has work.”

“Hence the emergency cleanup?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s hope this mess won’t reach a level ten ick factor.”

“I predict it’s just untidy. A level three.”

We’d rated the jobs in high school. A level ten was the stuff of nightmares. “Let’s hope.”

Kaitlin cut the engine, waiting as the motor rattled until it shut off. She got out of the van, and as I followed, she opened the back hatch and handed me a bucket and a mop. A warm breeze brushed strands of hair across my face.

She grabbed another box full of cleaning supplies, rags, and large plastic garbage bags. “Welcome to Team MERmaid.”

“Do I get a T-shirt?” I quipped.

“You do. But it’s at the office. Now on to the job.”

I wrestled with the bucket, mop, and vacuum cleaner as I followed her up the stairs. She punched a code into the digital lock, and it opened. “Folks like us get a special code that works for all our clients.”