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?”
“When’s the last time you were out here?” Cass demanded.
Hattie’s laugh trailed off. “You know … now that you say that, I guess it’s been awhile.”
“This is a waste of time,” Cass muttered. “I know you feel snake-bit by Midtown, but I bet if we made some calls to some real estate agents, we could find a hip-pocket listing. You know? One that hasn’t gone online yet?”
“Maybe. But as long as we’re here, let’s take a look.”
They drove past Tybrisa Street, with its one-block-long strip of bars, souvenir shops, and ice cream parlors, following Butler until it dead-ended into Chatham Avenue at the far south end of the island.
Hattie peered out the window as she rolled slowly up the street. She pointed at a real estate sign posted at the gate of a rambling wood-frame house. “Damn. Look at the size of this place. Cass, can you look it up?”
“On it,” Cass replied, scrolling through the Tybee Island real estate listings on her phone. She laughed. “This one’s a cool $2.3 million. The lot’s over an acre and the listing says it can be subdivided into four lots.”
“Obviously not the Creedmores’ house,” Hattie said.
Half a block away, Cass pointed at a weather-beaten wooden sign nearly obscured by a clump of palmettos.
“Can you make out what that sign says?”
Hattie pulled the truck onto the weedy shoulder of the road.
“Um, I think maybe it’s something with a C and an M?”
“This has to be it,” Cass said. “The house across the street is fifteen twenty-four. I guess this is what used to be the driveway?”
A narrow sandy path was barely visible through the screen of overgrown scrub pines, palmettos, and wax myrtles. Hattie stepped over a rotted tree branch and into a tunnel of green. She glanced over her shoulder at Cass, who was standing, motionless, with both hands on her hips.
“You gonna just stand there?”
“Who, me? Do I look like a girl who wants to go hiking back in some godforsaken, snake-infested jungle like that there?”
Hattie shrugged. “Okay, I’ll go by myself.” She set off through the underbrush, kicking at morning glory vines creeping across the path and batting away low-hanging branches.
“Damn it,” she heard Cass mutter. “Hold on, okay? Let me just cut me a snake stick.”
8
This Property Condemned
Hattie picked up a snake stick of her own and the two women moved slowly through the thick tangles, using their sticks to push aside the greenery.
“There’s gotta be a house back here somewhere, right?” Hattie asked, brushing a cobweb from her face.