“What with you wearing a bathing suit and all.”
“Trust me, this top’s never seen the water. It would fall apart.”
“Now isn’t that something? A bathing suit you can’t get wet. What’ll they think of next?”
Tracy smiled, as if to say the time for chitchat had expired. “I won’t keep you from your book.” Her gaze flashed down to the cover of Wanda’s favorite paperback, then back up again, but she didn’t quite conquer a smirk. “I was just stopping by to pick up your rent check.”
“I thought maybe that’s why you’d come.” Wanda didn’t move.
“Then it’s ready?”
“Nope. Not ready at all, seeing as I got a list of things that got to be done before you get even one penny.” Wanda watched with pleasure as Tracy’s smirk faded. The second it was gone, she dove in for the kill.
“And before you remind me our lease—if that’s what you want to call that scrap of paper Kenny signed—says you don’t have to do a thing on the place, I’ll just tell you I had a chat with some folks over at the courthouse this week and told them all the things that were wrong here.”
Wanda paused just long enough to let that sink in. “Of course, I didn’t tell them exactly where I lived. Not yet. But they were talking about condemning this shack if half the things I said were true. So I figure that you, being a smart woman and well-educated…you’ll agree that making a few repairs now and keeping the renters you have will serve a lot better than going through all that rigamarole before you can find new ones.”
Tracy was silent. Wanda wondered if she was trying to keep her temper.
“You want that list?” Wanda asked at last.
“Did you ever consider just telling me the problems and seeing if we could resolve them?”
“Honey, people like you don’t ask people like me to sign such a stinking old lease unless you’re planning to hold it over our heads.”
“Honey…” Tracy’s eyes narrowed, and the word came out more like boiling cane syrup. “People like me know that people like you happen to be married to a cop. So even if I was a slumlord, which wasn’t ever one of those things I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d have thought twice about ignoring real problems here.”
Wanda glanced down at her hot pink nails, noting the tiniest chip on the polish of one. She supposed the chip was due to that platter of grouper she’d carried to table six yesterday. She had known better than to carry all that grouper in one attempt, without a free hand for emergencies, like the swinging door that had raked her fingertips.
She looked up again. “You want the list? I got it right here. ’Course, all you really have to do is look around a little. I’d have guessed you’d do that before now, on account of my Ken being that cop you were talking about.”
“Give me a break, okay? I’ve been here just two weeks. I’ve spent the whole time mucking out that hovel I’m living in. I haven’t exactly had time for house inspections.”
“Nope, you been hoping we’d just take that lease at face value. Don’t go pretending it’s not so.”
Wanda lifted an envelope from under her book and held it out. “Stove’s throwing out so much gas both those crotons outside my kitchen window keeled over. Roof’s leaking in the bathroom. Toilet’s got more rust than a battleship. And if I wanted pets, I’d get me a kitty cat, not some flock of palmetto bugs. I already paid for an exterminator and somebody to patch up some of the biggest holes where they were getting in. You can take that off my rent.”
“Gosh, no travertine tile? No granite counters?”
Wanda put the envelope on top of her book when Tracy didn’t take it. “You just go ahead and be sarcastic. But you think about it. We’re not going anywhere while you do. You have any idea how hard it is to evict somebody these days? Especially when the sheriff happens to be friends with a certain member of the Palmetto Grove police force?”
Tracy leaned over and snatched the envelope. “I’ll do what I can, but don’t expect miracles.”
Wanda watched her stalk down the road toward the cottage where those folks from India had taken up residence. Wanda didn’t try to stop her, even though she knew they weren’t at home because she had seen them leave an hour ago. At