Please welcome author Elaine Viets back to
the blog today as she shares the first chapter excerpt from her new book, Sex and Death on the Beach: A Florida Beach Mystery.
This first book in the series, published by Severn House, is scheduled to be
released on June 3rd. It is available from Amazon and other vendors.
“Sex and Death on the Beach: A Florida Beach Mystery
Chapter 1
My
name is Norah McCarthy, and I own the most exclusive apartment building in
Peerless Point, Florida. The Florodora is more than a hundred years old, the
first apartment building in this south Florida beach town between Fort
Lauderdale and Miami.
You don’t need money or social status
to rent an apartment at the Florodora. You must be a member of a more exclusive
group. You have to be a genuine Florida Man or Woman. You’ve seen the
headlines: “Florida Man Busted with Meth, Guns and Baby Gator in Truck.” Or: “Florida
Woman Bathes in Mountain Dew in Attempt to Erase DNA after Committing Murder.”
Yes, those are real
headlines.
Florida Men and Women stories often
involve alcohol and alligators, although the Florida Man who tossed a live
alligator the size of a Labrador through the drive-up window of a burger joint
was probably sober.
Seems this Florida Man found a gator by
the road and dumped it in the back of his pickup (pickups are Florida Man’s
favorite vehicle). Then he got out of the truck and chucked the gator through
the burger joint drive-up window. After he paid for his soft drink.
Unbelievable?
That’s the standard reaction to Florida
Man. Are there any limits on his (or her) so-called pranks?
Nope. And many of them aren’t funny.
Including the Miami Cannibal, a naked marauder who attacked an innocent man,
chewed off the poor guy’s face and left him blind. The cops shot that Florida
Man dead.
A slang dictionary says Florida Man “commits
bizarre or idiotic crimes, popularly associated with – and often reported
in – Florida.”
Florida Man, known as the “world’s worst
superhero,” became nationally famous in 2013 when he was given his own Twitter
account. He’s inspired a play, two TV series, songs, and more.
Like many Floridians, my feelings
about Florida Man and Woman are somewhere between appalled and perversely
proud. I’m descended from an early Florida Woman, my grandmother, Eleanor
Harriman.
Grandma always had a soft spot for
scapegraces, since she was one herself. She was a Florodora Girl, a superstar
chorus girl a century ago. Grandma was in the 1920 Broadway production of Florodora,
before she eloped with handsome Johnny Harriman, a millionaire, back when a
million was real money. She was married at sixteen and madly in love.
When I was old enough, Grandma told me
about poor Johnny’s accidental death, which involved a champagne bottle and a
chandelier.
“I loved that man,” Grandma said. “I’m
glad he died happy.”
Johnny’s death made Grandma a rich
widow at seventeen. She moved to Peerless Point and built this apartment
building right on the ocean in 1923, on a narrow barrier island.
The building was as quirky as Grandma,
with grand rooms, odd hideaways and at least one secret staircase. To her
bedroom.
Grandma never married again, but she
never lacked for male companionship. In 1941, Grandma left the apartment with a
caretaker and went north to New York for six months. She returned in
mid-December with a newborn baby girl, Dot, my mother. Grandma said she’d
adopted an unmarried cousin’s baby.
Was Dot Grandma’s real daughter? No one knows for sure.
I moved in with
Grandma when I was four, after my parents were killed by a drunken driver in
1988. The
residents became my family, an eccentric collection of honorary uncles and
aunts. When Grandma died at age ninety-eight some
twenty years ago, she left me the Florodora.
I miss her. Every day. I’m reminded of
her constantly. Her life-size portrait dominates the apartment building’s
office on the first floor. Florodora Girls had to be either brunettes or
redheads, weigh no more than 130 pounds and stand five-feet-four inches tall.
Grandma insisted that was “tall for the time.” I
inherited her thick dark hair and hope mine will turn the same shade of white
as Grandma’s hair when I get older. I’m five-feet-ten. I got my height from my
father.
The Florodora is a prime example of
high-style Spanish Colonial, a white stucco structure with a red barrel-tile
roof. The windows in front have elaborate plaster Churrigueresque, which make the windows look like
they’re framed in cake frosting.
If you drive past the
Florodora on South Ocean Drive, you’ll see the old white apartment building
looks much the same as it did during the roaring Twenties. It’s shaded by palm
trees and surrounded by a coral rock wall with purple bougainvillea spilling over
the top. The Florodora is set back from the sidewalk by a courtyard cooled with
a jungle of tropical plants.
The courtyard’s
centerpiece is a
swimming pool with a flirty Twenties’ bathing beauty in mosaic on the bottom.
Most days you’ll find the apartment’s carefully curated collection of misfits
sunning themselves by the pool.
Not today. The plumbers, Liam and Lester Sykes, were
digging up the courtyard. Once again, the antique plumbing was a problem.
The Florodora needs constant maintenance. That may be
why it’s almost the only old Florida building left on Ocean Drive. On either
side of the building, and marching relentlessly down to Miami, are high-rise
condos. Most look like shoeboxes standing on end.
Developers offered Grandma fabulous sums for the
Florodora and its five-acre lot, but she stubbornly refused to sell.
Grandma made me promise not to sell the building or
the property. I gladly keep that promise. I love the Florodora almost as much
as I loved Grandma. Besides, there’s no reason to sell it. I have plenty of
money. I’m forty-one and love beach life.
What you can’t see from the road is the beachfront.
The Florodora sits on the edge of the Beachwalk, a wide strip of boardwalk
teeming with tourists and vendors selling everything from ice cream and
rum-filled pineapples to T-shirts and beach umbrellas. The sea air smells of
salt and suntan lotion and the breeze is soft on the hottest days.
I longed to be out there now, but I couldn’t lounge on
the beach. After I got the bad news from the plumber, I went back inside to
finish my work. I needed to find a new resident for the empty apartment.
I kept my grandmother’s tradition of renting to
Florida Men and Women, using my gut feeling. After years of living with
Grandma’s choices, I thought I could recognize the more benign versions of the
breed.
There was no way I could advertise for the resident I
wanted. I needed a referral from someone I trusted. Ben the beach cop had found
two possible renters. The third one just showed up.
The four-story Florodora has eight apartments. Each
floor has only two suites, and they’re two thousand square feet. That’s huge by
beach standards. People will kill for a big, affordable apartment with ocean
views.
The special Floridians at the Florodora Apartments
have never been in the news – not yet, anyway. Not even Billie, who held up a
convenience store with a banana and stole three overdone dogs from its hot dog
roller grill.
The empty apartment is on the first floor. Next to it
lives Mickey, our artistic saboteur. Kind, gentle Mickey lives alone and works
as a freelance artist, but she’s been known to vandalize for a good cause.
My favorite prank was what Mickey did in the local gas
station bathroom. In the restroom was a wall-mounted infant diaper changing
station that pulled down into a changing bed. Mickey put a sign on the plastic
baby bed that said, “Place sacrifice here.”
Right above Mickey, on the second floor, lives Lennox,
a Shakespearean actor and my grandmother’s last tenant. Somewhere in his
seventies, I’m not sure if Lennox is a real Florida Man. Maybe forty-five years
ago, when Grandma rented to a flamboyantly gay actor, that was a qualification.
Next to Lennox on the second floor is a real Florida
Woman, Willow. Five years ago, Willow was a successful Manhattan model known as
Gorgeous Gwen. Max Devine, a big deal designer, caught her eating a
cheeseburger and fries in a diner.
“Stop that, darling.” He tried to take the
cheeseburger out of her hand. “Fast food will make you fat.”
“Not as fat as your head,” she said, and broke the
plate over his head.
Fortunately, Gwen (now Willow) had saved enough money
to retire to Florida, where she cultivates pot and studies Eastern philosophy.
Willow loves bright flowers and good weed. I can smell
what Willow is doing. She’s smoking her latest cannabis crop on her back
balcony, where she gardens. Willow has long blonde hair and wears loose, floaty
clothes.
Billie the banana bandit lives on the third floor.
Since he couldn’t hang by the pool today, he retreated to his living room to
watch old movies. Rocky, by the sound of it. Billie writes
retrospectives about movies. His first book was a New York Times
bestseller.
I live on the top floor, in Grandma’s old apartment.
Dean the diver lives next door to me. That’s convenient, since Dean and I are
sometime lovers. I’m sure the whole building knows that. Dean is forty-two,
with blond hair and hazel eyes. Smart and funny. A certified hunk. Grandma
would have said he was the bee’s knees.
I went with a different gut feeling when I saw Dean. I
felt the Florodora could use some eye candy. I admired Billie the banana
bandit’s fine mind, but Billie could turn a person into a pillar of salt when
he talked about his latest movie obsession.
I’m the only one who knows Dean is an ex-cop who went
in to Witness Protection after he testified against fifteen mobsters who ran
online prostitution rings, selling underage girls. The mob put out a contract
on Dean while he spent two stressful years testifying against the cyber-pimps.
Dean’s testimony put fourteen mobsters in prison. Another hanged himself.
A visit to a plastic surgeon changed Dean’s looks. Now
he lives at the beach, drinking, fishing and diving. It’s lobster season, and
today he’s diving for spiny lobsters.
I like our current residents, though not in the same
way as Dean. I was relieved when the live-in staff agreed to stay on after
Grandma died. Calypso, the housekeeper, is Bahamian, what the islanders call a “big-panty
woman.” She is proud of her callipygous posterior. Calypso keeps the Florodora
shining and cleans the residents’ rooms, as she sings spirituals in a pure,
clear contralto, a preview of the heavenly choir.
Rafael,
a dark, stocky man who knows inventive ways to repair ancient machinery,
handles maintenance and takes care of the grounds. He keeps the building one
step ahead of the city inspectors, who are determined to shut us down. I figure
the inspectors are in the pay of the developers, and will get a hefty bonus if
they successfully condemn the Florodora.
Rafael has a bachelor apartment above the garage.
Calypso lives rent-free in my parents’ old apartment. Calypso is quirky, but
too hard-working to be a Florida Woman. The same goes for Rafael. He’s
definitely not Florida Man material.
So that’s the Florodora line-up: a Shakespearean actor
my grandmother found, and my four picks: Billie the
banana bandit; Mickey the artistic saboteur; Willow, the pot-smoking ex-model;
and Dean the diver.
I did well picking those four, so you’d think I’d know
exactly who’d fit in, but I couldn’t find the right person. I sat behind the
reception desk, reading through my application files.
One applicant was an accountant. I asked him what was
the craziest thing he’d ever done. He confessed to skinny dipping “but it was
dark and I was alone. No one saw me.”
He definitely wasn’t a Florida Man. Especially since
he wanted “peace and quiet.”
I could hear Calypso vacuuming the upstairs hall and
singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” while the Sykes brothers tore up the
courtyard with a mini-excavator. Rafael was trimming the bougainvillea with
something that sounded like a dental drill. Drunken college students were
playing beach volleyball to cheers and loud Eighties music.
No way that accountant would be happy at the
Florodora. Sorry, sir, I thought. No peace and quiet here. Application denied.
For your own good.
A woman wanted an apartment for herself and her
sixteen “very clean cats.” The craziest thing this woman ever did was make a
kitty litter cake for a party. The cake looked like a dirty litter box, using
melted Tootsie Rolls. It was served in a real litter box.
Yuck. No thank you.
I still had the three applications from Sammie Lant. Ugh. That woman ignited such a red rage in
me, I forgot manners and customer service. About six months ago, she applied
for the empty apartment. I told her no. She was the worst kind of Florida
Woman.
Sammie was locally
famous – make that notorious – for having sex on the beach with a college
quarterback during spring break. The beach cop threw a blanket over the
copulating couple and hauled them off to jail for indecent exposure. The judge
fined them both, but Sammie’s partner lost his college scholarship for
lascivious behavior.
Sammie thought it
was funny that she’d destroyed a young man’s promising career.
She was back the next week, offering
me double the rent. I still said no. The third time Sammie caught me when I was
outside, watering the courtyard plants. Calypso was sweeping. Sammie was
dressed formally for Florida, in a red blouse, black pleather skirt, and red
heels with rhinestone butterflies. Her blonde hair hung loose and her bulging
breasts were nearly falling out of her top. A rhinestone butterfly rested in
her décolleté.
This Sammie
attempted a hoity-toity accent. “The Lants are an old Lancaster family,” she
said. “That’s Lancaster in England. Your building has nothing but nobodies.”
She looked pointedly at Calypso and said, “And mutts.”
That’s when I lost my temper. “Old
families are like potatoes,” I said. “The best part is underground. And that’s
where I’d like to put you. If you ever come back and insult me or my residents
again, you’ll regret it. I will never, ever rent that
apartment to you. I will rent it over my dead body. Or better yet, yours.”
We must have been arguing pretty loud,
because someone called 911. Jordan DeMille, a Peerless
Point cop, showed up. I wasn’t sure how much he’d heard.
Sammie cried crocodile tears and said,
“Did you hear that, Officer? She threatened my life.”
“Yeah, yeah, Sammie,” Jordan DeMille
said. Like most of the local force, he was sick of Sammie’s shenanigans.
DeMille marched Sammie out of there, to the cheers of the Florodora residents.
“If that woman moved in here, I would have given
notice,” Calypso said. All the other residents had quietly told me the same
thing. Sammie was universally hated at the Florodora.
I checked the stack again, but there
were no more applicants. I listened to the clock tick and the familiar blend of
Florodora noise, when suddenly I heard loud screams. So loud, Calypso switched
off her vacuum and pounded outside. I followed her. We were hit by a horrible
sight.
A muddy Liam the plumber was pointing
into the hole excavated for the pipes and shouting, “Dead. Real dead.” Lester
was throwing up in a potted palm.
I looked over the side of the
excavation. Even though the body was reduced to a pile of cartilage, bones and
scraps of skin that looked like dirty clothing, I knew who it was.
Sammie Lant. She’d been strangled with
a gold bikini top.
I felt like I’d been socked in the stomach. Was one of
the Florodora’s residents a killer?
***
Amazon
Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4kMcwjF
Elaine
Viets ©2025
Elaine Viets has
written 34 mysteries in four series, including the Josie Marcus, Dead-End Job,
and Angela Richman, Death Investigator mysteries. With Sex
and Death on the Beach, Elaine Viets
returns to her adopted home, South Florida. Her first Florida Beach mystery
will be published June 3rd. Elaine’s award-winning short stories are
collected in Deal with the Devil and 13 Short Stories. She’s won the
Agatha, Anthony and Lefty Awards and was honored with Malice’s Lifetime
Achievement Award.
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