The House on Mermaid Point

Chapter Nine

An alien sound pierced the quiet.

Avery shot up in bed. Her eyes flew open. On the other side of the divider Deirdre’s bed was empty of everything but Deirdre’s suitcases, which were piled so high they blocked the narrow rectangle of window through which morning sunlight had already appeared.

Avery stole a look at her watch and groaned. Eight o’clock. She sank back on her pillow, closed her eyes, and willed herself back to sleep.

This time the sound was louder, more insistent, and recognizable. It was a sound she’d never actually heard in person. That sound was cock-a-doodle-doo.

The rooster did it again even though it was long past sunrise. Weren’t they supposed to have internal time clocks?

The rooster crowed again.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo, my ass!” Beyond irritated, she threw off the covers and sat up to squint out her window at the island. The damned bird was down in the clearing near the stand of palm trees. It threw out its chest and opened its mouth, emitting another wake-up call as it strutted around the clearing. A bevy of chickens clucked around him.

She was about to pull the sheet back up over her head when the aroma of coffee reached her nostrils. There was movement below. Hushed voices. The sound of water running.

Pulling on cutoffs and a T-shirt, she climbed down the ladder, landing in the middle of the main cabin.

Maddie, wonderful Maddie, handed her a cup of coffee and led her to the banquette on which an open box of doughnuts sat. Kyra and Dustin were already there, munching on a granola bar and a banana, respectively. Deirdre, who was made up and dressed in gauzy white high-end cruise wear, was eating a carton of low-fat yogurt with a plastic spoon, pinky up. There was a thud in the bathroom and a curse that had to be coming from Nicole.

Deirdre looked at Avery, took in her clothing. One eyebrow went up. Her mouth opened. At a head shake from Maddie, she actually closed it. Avery sighed and sipped her coffee. As the caffeine entered her system Maddie reached into the box, removed a chocolate-glazed doughnut, and set it on a napkin in front of Avery.

“Bless you,” Avery said, taking a large, wonderful, sugar-filled bite.

“My pleasure.” Maddie smiled. Her warm brown eyes glowed with good humor. “I’ve got a grocery list started.” She slid in beside Dustin and broke off a piece of doughnut for him. “We don’t have much in the way of storage space, but go ahead and add your must-haves to the list.”

“How are you planning to reach land?” Deirdre asked.

“I don’t know,” Maddie said. “But for the time being I’m going to assume that we’re not being held hostage and all they’re trying to do is make things more challenging.”

Nicole came out of the bathroom in running clothes, her hair slicked back in a ponytail, her makeup in place. “‘Challenging’ is an understatement. I’m black-and-blue and that’s without showering or attempting to blow-dry my hair.”

“Where are you going?” Kyra asked.

“Out for a run,” Nicole said.

“I don’t think the island’s all that big,” Deirdre said.

“Then I guess I’ll have to run around it a lot of times. Or learn how to run on water.”

There was a knock on the cabin door. It opened. Troy and Anthony stood on the other side of it.

Avery sighed again. She took another sip of coffee as they entered.

“We thought you’d abandoned the island,” Kyra said.

“Nope.” The light that indicated he was shooting glowed on Troy’s video camera.

“Where were you?” Kyra asked, wiping doughnut crumbs off Dustin’s mouth and hands.

“And here I thought you’d be glad we weren’t in your face,” Troy said amiably.

“I’m just curious how you’re getting on and off the island. Seeing as we might actually want or need to do the same at some point.” Kyra slid out of the banquette, keeping Dustin behind her.

“Hudson took us for a drink over at the Lorelei. They have a pretty cool celebration at sunset.” Troy moved to his right to get in better position. “Speaking of celebrating, there’s no alcohol on the island. Or at least there’s not supposed to be.” Troy pulled a typewritten sheet of dos and don’ts from his pocket and handed it to Avery.

“Well, I’m not going to make it through this summer without a drink,” Nicole said.

“You can drink on the houseboat,” Troy said. “You just don’t want to be obvious about it.”

“So we’re turning this place into a B and B that isn’t going to serve alcohol?” Deirdre asked. “I thought fishermen drank like . . . well, fish. Not that I’ve ever understood that expression.”

“Not our problem,” Avery said, still reading the list. “Our job is to renovate and keep the show interesting enough to be renewed without completely humiliating ourselves.”

Troy panned across them, no doubt going in tight on each and every one of their faces.

“Right.” Nicole blinked when the camera lens stopped moving and remained aimed directly at her. “I know I’m not alone when I say it’s the humiliating part that worries me the most.”

Maddie followed the others along the sandy, tree-rutted path that led to the house, Dustin’s hand in hers. Her thoughts were caught up in William Hightower and his drinking problem. The tabloids were filled with stories about celebrities who checked in and out of rehab as regularly as she might run to the grocery store; she just hadn’t been looking, had even been avoiding her usual People magazine fix at the hair salon ever since Kyra’s and Dustin’s faces had begun staring back out at her. She reminded herself that she knew absolutely nothing about the real William Hightower. Like a million other girls, she’d had a juvenile crush on a bad-boy rock star.

Now he was the homeowner they were here to help. No different from Max Golden, the former vaudevillian they’d fallen in love with on South Beach. Except that Max, who’d had a professionally honed sense of humor, superb comedic timing, and a boatload of heart, had been ninety. William Hightower was barely sixty and had a wounded look in his eye that only made him more attractive.

The house looked larger and more weary in the bright morning light; its wooden façade and heavy double doors weather-beaten; its windows obscure and glazed.

Nicole jogged into the clearing to join them. She bent at the waist, hands on her knees, to catch her breath as the rest of them studied the house. Avery scribbled in a notebook while Troy and Kyra shot video of the house’s exterior and those assembled in front of it, seemingly unaware of each other but somehow managing not to collide.

Thomas and William Hightower stood near the steps. The younger Hightower was dressed in business casual, which seemed oddly formal in this setting. His father wore bathing trunks that rode low on his hips, an old World Wide Sportsman T-shirt, and a well-worn pair of flip-flops. His hair and T-shirt were damp as if he’d been dragged out of the pool against his will. His dark eyes were sharp and not the least bit hospitable.

“So, the house and the structures you saw yesterday are pretty much as they were when William bought Mermaid Point in 1983. It hasn’t really been remodeled or redecorated in any significant way since the early nineties.” Thomas cleared his throat, ran a hand over his short dark hair. “There’s been a good bit of deterioration over the last ten or fifteen years.”

Will snorted with impatience. “I imagine they can see that for themselves,” he said. “Why don’t we just give them the tour and be done with it?”

Avery stopped scribbling and looked at the aging rocker. “I love the clean lines of this house,” she said. “The board and batten gives it lift and a classic Florida feel. And the keystone in the foundation surround and on the steps gives it an indigenous feel—almost as if it grew out of the island itself.”

Will eyed her suspiciously for a moment, not sure of her agenda. His brows lowered and his eyes lasered in on her. Maddie was glad she wasn’t under that kind of scrutiny.

“I agree,” Deirdre added, taking everyone, especially Avery, by surprise. “And the metal roof not only reflects heat but has accurate island detail. Of course things are a bit more . . . weathered . . . than they might be in another environment. It’s hard to avoid the elements when you’re completely surrounded by salt water, wind, and hot sun,” she said graciously.

“But then if the house didn’t need any work we wouldn’t be here,” Avery added, getting to the point.

Mother and daughter turned identical blue eyes on the Hightowers.

“Can you give us the tour now, Will?” Deirdre said. “I hardly slept last night from the anticipation of seeing the interior.”

Deirdre tried not to laugh at her daughter’s shock as they stepped inside and took in their surroundings. Dust motes danced in the sunlight that made it through the salt- and grime-caked transom and sidelights. The foyer was wide and high with rooms to each side and a stairway running up one wall, but the air was slightly damp and carried the scent of a load of towels left too long in a washing machine. Or a locker room that had gone too long between cleanings.

The walls were pecky cypress. Solid wood trusses—a triangular web of beams that drew the eye upward—filled the voluminous ceiling. Ahead a sun-infused space beckoned, but Hightower led them into the room just left of the front door, which had been set up as an office. Across from it lay a formal dining room where Deirdre tried—and failed—to picture the rocker sitting at the head of the mahogany table under the cut-glass chandelier hosting a formal meal.

“How much time would you say you spend in these rooms?” Avery asked Hightower, which just went to show that however much Avery might want to deny it, their minds were similarly wired.

Hightower shrugged. “Not much. They came this way. I never saw any reason to bother with them.”

Avery nodded carefully, giving nothing away, and Deirdre had to hide her smile. Depending on what lay on the other side of these rooms, both could potentially be turned into guest suites. Even better, Hightower had already been forced to acknowledge that he wouldn’t miss this outdated, unused room. Deirdre gave her daughter a mental high five.

They moved past the narrow stair and into a huge light-filled great room. A small L-shaped galley kitchen filled with dated cabinetry and stained Corian countertops seemed inadequate for the space. Once again Deirdre held back an approving smile when she saw Avery home in on the Wolf stove with its signature red knobs, and a massive stainless-steel hood, the only items worth salvaging.

A tackle box sat on an oak trestle table, its contents spilled out around it. Battered and flattened leather furniture surrounded a wood-burning fireplace and the massive flat-screen TV—possibly the only addition made this decade—that hung above it.

Beyond a row of cypress columns that supported another vaulted wood-beamed ceiling a pool table the size of a small country ate up a large piece of the wide plank floor. In a corner a club chair and ottoman, with fabric so faded that Deirdre couldn’t tell what color or texture it might have once been, sat next to a telescope whose barrel lens pointed out to sea. Fishing magazines littered a small lamp table and stood in teetering stacks around it. Pieces of disassembled fishing rods lay across the top of a rustic-looking bookcase fashioned from wooden crab traps.

William Hightower had turned his private tropical island home into a fishing-gear-filled bachelor pad.

It was impossible to focus on the pitiful condition of the once-fabulous space when confronted with the eastern wall of the great room, which was actually a bank of sliding glass doors that, despite their cloudy spots and pitted aluminum frames, provided a stunning and uninterrupted view of the Atlantic Ocean.

“Wow.”

“Oh, my God.”

“Incredible.”

Their comments were hushed, reverent as they took in the jewel-toned blues and greens of the ocean stretching to the horizon. Birds swooped and dove from a pale blue cloud-flecked sky to pierce the sparkling water on which beams of morning sunlight seemed to dance. In the distance a boat headed out to sea, its wake spreading a plume of white behind it like a jet leaving a vapor trail as it cut through the sky.

“Boag.” Dustin pointed at the boat, breaking the awed silence. Hightower continued to study the view with an intensity that made it clear he had not yet grown tired of, or complacent about, his surroundings.

Thomas Hightower turned away first, breaking the spell, giving them no time to step out onto the vast covered porch. “Shall we move on?”

The wrought-iron banister beneath their hands was chipped and the gouges in the pecky cypress walls impossible to miss as they ascended to the second floor. But even as they toured the laundry room and two small bedrooms and baths at the front of the house, the part of Deirdre’s brain not busy calculating space, opportunity, paint colors, furniture, lighting, window treatments, and the million other details that would be a part of the final design—even as she watched Avery sketch and scribble, undoubtedly mentally moving walls and evaluating the physical structure—returned to the stunning view.

In the master suite, which spanned the entire eastern end of the house, she noted William Hightower’s simple, almost spartan taste and the way in which every slider and window drew in the view. As they leaned out over the railing of his private deck, once again struck silent by what nature had wrought, Deirdre reminded herself that this was why William Hightower lived here. And that this, not just its reluctant celebrity host, was why guests would pay big bucks to stay here. Whatever they did inside this structure could never, should never, compete with what lay outside it.

Thomas Hightower showed them out. The others headed back to the houseboat, leaving Deirdre and Avery standing in the clearing contemplating William the Wild’s once-glorious island home.

This house was not as chopped up and neglected as Max Golden’s Millicent or as filthy and forlorn as Bella Flora, but it was not exactly an easy fix—or even a string of easy fixes. This house and the other structures on Mermaid Point were going to have to be skillfully carved up, completely updated, and turned into a retreat that multiple unrelated people could inhabit comfortably and with privacy.

The challenges were considerable, the working conditions less than stellar. But Deirdre had no doubt that Mermaid Point could be turned into a high-end destination if only Avery could let go of her hurt and anger long enough to allow a true collaboration.