The House on Mermaid Point by Wendy Wax Read Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t help smiling at the thought. “What did you say, Dustin?”
    “Bitch!” Dustin gurgled.
    Kyra’s ponytail whipped in the warm breeze as all three of them laughed.
    The sun glinted off the water and Kyra folded the sun visor down in an attempt to cut the glare. They’d lowered all the windows so that they could catch the ocean and Gulf breezes. Perhaps it was time for someone to design a convertible-topped minivan. That, too, made Kyra smile.
    “The railroad and hundreds of people, many of them World War One vets working on a road project and who were in the process of being evacuated, were wiped out by a massive hurricane with two-hundred-mile-per-hour winds and an eighteen-foot tidal wave in 1935. There’s a monument right around Mile Marker 82, where we’re supposed to check in.” Maddie looked around tentatively. “How could they evacuate even today? I mean, this is the only way in and out.” She snapped the guidebook shut.
    “It’s May. If we’re lucky we’ll be in and out before August, when hurricane season gets serious,” Kyra said, though all of them knew that the network wouldn’t object to the ratings bonanza that another hurricane like the one that had menaced Bella Flora would provide.
    “Do you want me to text and see if Nikki or Avery and Deirdre have heard anything yet?” Maddie asked.
    Kyra looked at her mother. “Um, no. Thanks.” Maddie had sent autocorrected texts requesting “dick measurements” and revealing plans to serve meals composed of “baby black bugs.” One slip of either thumb could launch a search-and-rescue mission.
    At Mile Marker 83 they passed Whale Harbor Marina—a complex of wooden buildings and docks on the Atlantic side. The fly bridges of fishing boats poked up into the sky, and signs advertised charters for fishing as well as a watering hole and restaurant called Wahoo’s.
    The urge to spoil Maddie’s fun had passed, but now that they were almost at the appointed rendezvous point, Kyra was ready to see the house they’d be working on or at least find out where in the Keys they’d be.
    A text dinged in. “Can you see who it’s from?” Kyra asked.
    “It’s from the network,” her mother said. “Rendezvous point adjusted to Mile Marker 79.5,” she read. “Bud N’ Mary’s.”
    “What’s a Bud N’ Mary’s?” Kyra asked.
    Maddie leafed through her guidebooks. “I’m not sure. It could be a restaurant or a bar. Or a hotel. Or . . .”
    Kyra’s eyes scanned from right to left, bay side to Atlantic. A strip mall with a visitors’ center/Chamber of Commerce and an assortment of small buildings slid by. An angular sign straight out of the fifties announced the Islander Resort across the road on the left. A large wooden mermaid marked the entrance to a place called the Lorelei on the right. She slowed down as they passed what she thought might be the Hurricane Monument.
    Along this stretch of the Overseas Highway new and shiny rubbed elbows with old and funky. Her mother appeared spellbound. “Oh, look, there’s the Cheeca Lodge and the Green Turtle Inn. They’re in my guidebook.”
    “We just passed Mile Marker 81.”
    Another text dinged in. Maddie squinted down at her screen. “This one’s from Avery. It says, ‘Brace yourself . . .’” Her thumb moved. “Oh, no!”
    “What? What is it?” Kyra’s stomach dropped as she looked over at her mother. “Have they met the owner?” Ever since she’d found out that Daniel Deranian was the mystery buyer of Bella Flora she’d been afraid that he would somehow be tied to the Keys house, too. Or worse, that the network might have chosen a home that belonged to Tonja Kay in an effort to boost ratings. “Does she say anything about the house?”
    “No. I mean, I don’t know,” Maddie said. She looked at Kyra. “I was trying to ask that when I accidentally hit ‘delete.’”
    A green mile marker on the right-hand shoulder snagged Kyra’s attention. “Oh, my God! We’re