Savannah Breeze by Mary Kay Andrews

then, in the late eighties, Tybee had been a last-ditch destination. If my friends and I had any choice in the matter, we went south, to St. Simons, or north, to Hilton Head, or even west, to the Gulf beaches on the Florida panhandle, Destin or Panama City. Never Tybee, with its depressing collection of cracker-box cottages, cheap motels, and sleazy bars. As far as I knew, there was not a single white-tablecloth restaurant, tennis court, or golf course on Tybee.
    Of course, I knew people who’d bought and even restored beach cottages at Tybee. They called Tybee quaint, genuine, even charming. Daniel, for one, insisted that there was nowhere else he’d rather live.
    Fine. If real estate prices at the beach really had escalated as much as James claimed, maybe, just maybe, there was something worth salvaging at the Breeze Inn. Although I very much doubted it.
    I swiveled my head back and forth as I headed south on Butler Avenue. Tybee had definitely changed. There was a new brick city hall building and YMCA, and new hotels and midrise condo buildings blocked the view of the ocean. Some things hadn’t changed though. Every other block seemed to hold a convenience store. The island’s only grocery store, the Tybee Market, was still there, and as I got closer to the cluster of faded concrete-block buildings that made up the commercial district, I saw that the cheesy bars and tourist traps were still there too, though most had probably changed hands and names a dozen times since I’d last seen them.
    When Butler Avenue played out, I turned onto Seventeenth Street, and found my way to the address James had given me.
    A faded billboard in the crushed-oyster-shell parking lot had an arrow pointing to the left. BREEZE INN , it said, with stylized white palm trees swaying to some unseen ocean breeze. It was almost dark, and the neon VACANCY light was lit.
    No surprise there. I turned into the parking lot, and even though I had absolutely no expectations for what I would find there, I was still disappointed. Eight squat buildings were scattered around a central building that was—incongruously—built to look like a log cabin. A whitewashed log cabin at that, one that leaned precariously to the left, and whose rusted tin roof looked as though a puff of breath could send it flying off into the ocean, which was presumably just over the nearest sand dune. A small, hand-lettered sign proclaimed this the manager’s office.
    A tattered and faded American flag flew from a pole tacked to thecabin’s front porch, and there was but one car in the parking lot, an old wood-sided seventies-era Vista Cruiser station wagon that looked like the ones my parents used to load us up in for summer vacation trips.
    I parked beside the Vista Cruiser and got out and walked around. The buildings were actually duplexes of a sort, with two units to a building. The numbers were missing from most of the doors. All of the windows were dirt streaked and fly specked. Each unit had a modest, covered porch furnished with a couple of rickety aluminum lawn chairs and cheap plastic tables. None of the cabins was lit up.
    â€œIt’s the Bates sur la Beach,” I muttered under my breath, turning toward the log cabin. I could see the blue glow of a television from the front window. Somebody was home. “Meet the Manager,” I muttered, tromping up the front steps and pressing on the door buzzer mounted on the door frame. From inside I could hear the voice of a television announcer, calling what sounded like football plays. Odd, since it was February.
    Footsteps clomped toward the door, but it didn’t open. I pressed the buzzer again.
    â€œHello?” I called. “Anybody there?”
    â€œGo away,” called a man’s raspy voice. “We’re closed.”
    I took a step away from the door and looked back at the Breeze Inn sign.
    â€œHey,” I called back. “There’s a vacancy sign out front. So