Cape Refuge (27 page)

 

C
ade double-checked his databases that night and the next morning, trying to find the information Nancy Simmons had cited in her article, but he could verify none of it. Angola had no one by the name of Rick Dugan who had escaped. He couldn't even find evidence that Rick Morrison had been murdered. His sources said that the man had died of a heart attack, just as Rick alleged.

The paper's sources were wrong.

He was about to pay Nancy Simmons a visit, when he got a phone call. The city council had scheduled an emergency meeting for that night. They wanted to discuss Hanover House in light of the news that day.

“Here we go,” he whispered under his breath. They were going to use this article to put a scare into the people of Cape Refuge so they would want to close Hanover House. He hoped Morgan and Blair were strong enough to withstand it.

He headed over to the newspaper and found Sadie sitting at the front desk. She looked well groomed and energetic, like any other teenager on the island. Morgan had done wonders with her.

“Chief Cade,” she said, coming to attention. “Is something wrong?”

He smiled at her and tipped his hat. “No, Sadie. Everything's fine. I just came to ask Nancy something.”

She seemed relieved and wilted back into her chair. “Oh, good. I thought I was in trouble again.”

He smiled and glanced around the desk that she had made her own. She had brought some fresh flowers from Morgan's garden and put them in a Coke bottle; a framed picture sat on the corner of the desk. It was a snapshot of a baby.

“Nancy's in the back,” she said, “in the printing room. Want me to show you?”

“I know where it is.” As he headed to the back, the sound of the printers grew louder. From the hallway, he saw Nancy standing in the hot room.

“Nancy,” he said, “I need to talk to you.”

She looked up. A thin film of perspiration covered her face. “Now, Cade? I'm kind of busy.”

“It's police business,” he said.

She sighed as if she wasn't impressed and stepped out of the room. “Okay,” she said, leading him into her cluttered office. “What is it?”

He cleaned a few papers off of a chair and sat down. “That article in the paper this morning. I want to know where you got that information.”

“What? About the beauty pageant?” she asked.

He didn't find that amusing. “You know very well what I'm talking about.”

“Oh. Rick Morrison,” she said with a grin. “Yes, the killer. Must be frustrating when the local paper solves the murder before you do.”

“Where did you get the information about him being a convict?”

“I have my sources,” she said. “I can't reveal them.”

“Well, does it matter to you if they're false? I checked with the prison you mentioned and they've never had a Rick Dugan there. I ran that picture through my database and it didn't come up. I've even run his fingerprints through my database, and from the looks of things, he's never even been arrested.”

She didn't seem too concerned. “Well, I can double-check it.”

“That's it?” he asked. “You're not upset that you slandered a citizen who's done nothing wrong? That you cast fear into the hearts of the islanders, and that the city council has new ammunition to close Hanover House down? They've called a meeting tonight to discuss it.”

“Really?” She grabbed the pencil from behind her ear and starting to take a note. “What time is that meeting? Where?”

“It's at the City Hall where it always is,” he said, “at seven. Surely your ‘sources' could tell you that.”

“Look, I'm busy,” she said, getting to her feet. “If you don't have anything else to say—”

He stood, appalled at her attitude. “You're not the least bit worried that the front page article in your paper today might be a bunch of lies?”

“I'm upset about it, okay?” she said. “I'm going to check with my sources. I'm going to find out what's going on.”

“You need to ask your husband about slander and libel,” he said.

She rolled her eyes.

“Show some judgment in your reporting, Nancy, or I'll make sure that every resident of Cape Refuge knows that they can't trust the
Cape Refuge News
anymore. You'll be out of business in two weeks. And when I find Rick Dugan, I'm going to encourage him to sue you for so much that you won't be able to keep it running anyway.”

She gaped up at him. “What do you want from me, Cade?”

“A retraction would be nice. Something that tells the townspeople that you lied about this story, that you created a panic unnecessarily.”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll print it right underneath the article about how Rick Dugan extorted money from Thelma and Wayne before their deaths, how he skipped town the day my article came out, how he's still at large, how our pitiful police force wasn't able to catch up with him yet—”

“You're walking on thin ice, Nancy.”

“Fine,” she said. “Arrest me. See how long my husband leaves me locked up.”

Cade's jaw popped. “If I could lock you up even for an hour, Nancy, it'd be worth it.”

As he stormed out into the hall, he heard Sadie talking on the telephone. He stopped and tried to calm himself, taking a deep breath. Sadie's voice was low, as if she didn't want anyone to hear. “Atlanta, please. Miss Tina's Day Care?”

He looked up at her from his place in the hall. There was a pause as she got the number and dialed. “Uh, yes. I just want to check on Caleb Caruso,” she said. “He's in Miss Jane's room. Nine months. Could you check on him for me? Tell her it's Sadie calling.” Her voice broke, and he saw the tears on her face.

“I just want to know that he's all right,” she said into the phone, “that he's not sick or anything, that maybe he doesn't have any bruises or cuts. Yes. So—has he been there every day?”

He saw her listening, her eyes intense as she took in every word.

“You're sure? I appreciate that. No, that's all right. Thank you.” She hung up the phone and dropped her face into her hands.

Cade stepped out of the hall. “You okay?” he asked.

She wiped her face quickly. “Sure. I was just working on a story for Nancy.”

“A story,” he said. “It didn't sound like a story.”

“I know,” she said. “It's kind of silly. I get all emotional over nothing.”

“She has you writing stories?” he asked. “How long have you been here, a couple of days?”

She straightened and lifted her chin. “I'm a good writer. I made straight A's in English.”

“Journalism major?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. But Nancy didn't ask for that.”

“Yeah, she doesn't have real high standards, does she? You didn't by any chance write the article on Rick Dugan, did you?”

“No, of course not.”

He knew she hadn't, but he was still angry. He nodded to Nancy's office. “Keep an eye on her, Sadie. She's ruthless.”

Sadie looked at him as if she didn't know what he was talking about.

Sighing, he went back to his car and told himself that he needed to do some digging into the girl's past. She was calling about a baby named Caleb Caruso. Maybe he was her own child. Maybe her name was really Caruso too.

As soon as he had a moment to breathe, he would see what he could find out.

 

J
onathan sat up late in his cell, studying his Bible with a zeal he hadn't had many times in his life. He had convinced Cade not to turn off the light yet, and Gus hadn't made any protest. He read with a new hungriness, searching for something, though he didn't know what. Finally, he heard Gus moving around in the cell next to him.

“Hey, mon,” Gus said through the bars.

Jonathan looked up at him. “What?”

“We both be Christians, mon, am I right?”

“I know I am,” Jonathan said.

“Well, I guess you don't be trusting that I am. I was thinking maybe we could pray together. “

Jonathan turned back to his Bible and stared down at the page. Had someone he considered an enemy really asked him to pray with him? The thought sent a cold chill through him. Then, suddenly, he was ashamed of himself. He set the Bible down and put his hands on his knees, staring at the concrete floor. Finally he turned around.

“You want to pray with me?”

“The Bible, it says whenever two or more—”

“Yeah, I know what the Bible says,” Jonathan threw back.

“I heard Cade tell you about that city council meeting tonight,” he said. “We need to pray on that.”

Jonathan only looked at him for a moment. The gulf between them seemed as big as the lake out on his granddaddy's farm. He didn't want to do it, but he was supposed to be the big Christian. And Gus, well, what was he? Jonathan wondered. Another ex-con? A threat to his wife? A beloved man Thelma and Wayne had taken under their wings? Had he been the one to try to break into Blair's house when Morgan was there, or had he really been set up as he claimed?

“What is the harm?” Gus asked. “We both be behind the bars.”

Jonathan realized that was true. “All right,” he said, “I'll pray with you.”

Gus nodded and sat down on the one chair in his cell, folded his hands, and dropped his elbows onto his knees. Jonathan did the same, and they both bowed their heads and closed their eyes. After a few seconds of silence, Jonathan looked up.

“You go first,” he said. He wanted to hear Gus pray, wanted to hear if it sounded like Gus was used to talking to God, wanted to hear if his words sounded sincere.

Gus's gruff voice grew soft, and he began to speak in a tone that was reverent and awestruck. “My gracious Father, the God of the universe,” he said, then paused for a moment as if catching his breath at the awe inspired by such a statement. “I be amazed at you,” he went on.

Jonathan opened his eyes, looked over at Gus, and saw the tears on his face and the struggle he was having to keep his voice steady. A sure knowledge came over him that this man in the cell next to him was no threat at all. His heart was sincere. He was, indeed, a brother.

Jonathan closed his eyes and bowed his head in earnest this time, joining his heart with Gus's in prayer.

 

T
he standing-room-only crowd at City Hall that night made Blair feel like a movie star whom people had come to gawk at. It was a minidrama, she thought. The daughters of the murder victims having their property snatched out from under them. Adrenaline rushed through her as she prepared for the fight.

“I don't care if we're going to sell the place,” she whispered to Morgan. “I'm not going to honor them with that announcement tonight. It's the principle of the thing. They have no right to do this.”

Morgan touched her hand. “I wish I knew what Mama and Pop knew that day. They were so confident that they were going to win. They had some information, they said. I wish they'd told me what it was.”

“Well, if it was important, we'd have found it by now.”

Morgan looked around uncomfortably. “Blair, why don't you let me do the talking?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “It's me they're going to contend with. They're counting on our not having the strength to fight. I resent their tactics, and I won't let them get away with it.”

The mayor hammered his gavel and drew the microphone too close to his mouth. It produced instant feedback, and people moaned and yelled for someone to fix it. It was like the opening bell in a boxing match, only she didn't intend to shake hands.

“This meeting will come to order,” the mayor said. He had dressed up for the occasion in a Hawaiian tourist shirt and a pair of khakis with sandals on his feet. At least Sarah Williford hadn't worn her bathing suit to the meeting, Blair thought.

“As everyone knows,” the mayor began, “we're here to discuss Hanover House and the fact that polls show that seventy percent of the citizens on Cape Refuge want to see it closed down.”

“Give me a break!” Blair sprang up and pushed through the crowd to the microphone. “Don't give us that stuff about polls,” she said. “You know good and well this island doesn't have a pollster. What did you do, go out on the beach and ask random people? Did any of them happen to
live
here?”

She didn't get the cheers that she got the last time she had done this, the night her parents were murdered. The townspeople were scared now and weren't on her side anymore.

“Blair and Morgan, first of all, let me offer my greatest sympathies in the death of your parents,” Fred Hutchins said. “The whole island has felt the loss. It's with great sorrow that we called this meeting tonight.”

She didn't have the patience for condolences. “Yeah, I'm sure you cried your eyes out as you were putting on your Hawaiian shirt and rehearsing how you were going to twist the knife. Could we just get on with this?”

The council members looked at each other uncomfortably, then went on. “Very well,” Fred Hutchins said. “As you know, we're a little upset about the article on the front page of the paper today. It's about one of your tenants being a convicted killer and a fugitive from the law. Your family has been harboring him. He is a danger to the community.”

“Cade told me this afternoon that he can't confirm that anything in that article was true.”

“I understand Rick Dugan has left town. Is that true?” the mayor asked.

“He left,” Blair told him. “But that certainly doesn't implicate Hanover House in any way. It's not a reason to close it down.”

“Blair, we all understand your pain,” Sarah said, her saccharine voice carrying without the mike. “We understand about the grief that you and your sister must be going through. Having Jonathan on his way to prison for murder, and then Gus and now Rick—”

“My husband is not going to prison,” Morgan said from her seat. “He is not guilty!” She stood up. “Do you hear yourselves? You just named three people you think committed these murders. What do you think it was, some kind of killing club?”

“Might have been,” the mayor said. “As a matter of fact, there's been quite a bit of speculation that's just what Hanover House is.”

“Why are you out to get us?” Morgan demanded. “What do you want?”

“I'm not out to get you,” he said. “We just want to make Cape Refuge a safe island for everybody.”

Blair wasn't going to let that go. “Well, you don't care about making it safe from tourists. You want more of them to come through, not fewer. And you don't know anything about them. They could be from anywhere. It's your
plan
to have strangers roaming this island. And you can thank the
20/20
piece on Hanover House for tourism picking up thirty percent already this summer. At least the tenants at Hanover House work in the community and contribute to it. People get to know them. They're not just phantom convicts roaming around mysteriously.”

“They might as well be,” the mayor said. “Rumor has it that you're now harboring a teenage runaway.”

“She's not a runaway,” Morgan shouted. “She says she's eighteen. She can live anywhere she wants to. She came here with a broken arm and a bashed face, and I wasn't going to turn her away.”

“Maybe if you did start turning people away you wouldn't be here before us tonight,” he said. “We wouldn't have to close you down. But since you refuse to be discriminating about who you keep in that place—”

“That place is my home,” Morgan shouted as tears twisted her face. “It's where I live. It's where my parents lived. How dare all of you treat their memory like it was nothing?” She stumbled across the people in her way, and grabbed the microphone in front of her sister. “My parents did something for every one of you, and you know it. They took in people with problems, even some of you. You have no right to stomp dirt into their memory like this. They were coming here to fight for Hanover House the night of their deaths, but they never made it here. And if they had made it, you would have seen a fight like you'd never seen before. Hanover House was their dream and they loved it, and it was the best thing they'd ever done. We have the right to do whatever we want with our own property, and you don't have the right to choose that for us.”

Silence fell over the room as Morgan's impassioned speech hung in the air. Under her breath, Blair whispered, “Way to go, Sis.”

“Well, we appreciate your plea,” Fred said. “Now, we have a few residents who would like to speak.”

Blair shot a look around, daring anyone to get up and speak against them. No one did.

“I think you're mistaken, Mayor,” she said. “Looks like these fine folks are here to support us.”

“I have something to say.” Sam Sullivan got up at the middle of the room, and slid his hands into his pockets. “Mayor, Council Members. . . .”

“Would you mind going to the microphone, please?” Fred asked.

Blair relinquished it to him but didn't sit down. If he was going to trash Hanover House, then he was going to do it standing right beside her.

“Uh . . . Mayor, Council Members . . . I just want to say that ever since Wayne and Thelma's death, I've been afraid to leave my family alone. I don't want my children playing outside. I want to go back to the life we knew before this tragedy. And I think we can do that if Hanover House no longer harbors criminals.”

“Hanover House never harbored criminals,” Blair said. “And as for wanting to go back to the way things were before the tragedy, you don't know the half of it, Sam. But the fact is that closing Hanover House won't solve anything. We're still going to need a police force because there are still going to be people who come and go with evil intentions. But Hanover House is one of the good things about this island.” It had gotten hard to talk around the lump in her throat, so she forced it down and forged on. “Most of you know I'm not a religious person. But I've got to tell you, I do believe in good and evil. Hanover House is a light in this town. It's a beacon and a symbol of all that Cape Refuge should be. A symbol of all it can be. If you shut Hanover House down, then what hope do any of us have?”

She met Morgan's eyes and saw the tears on her face. She fought valiantly to keep her own emotions at bay. “We're a community of kind, warm, caring people. That's what our name represents. Sadie, the teenager who is staying at Hanover House, told us she chose Cape Refuge because the name sounded inviting. It sounded like a pleasant, beautiful place. And she found that it was. Hanover House drew her here because some stranger in a café in Savannah told her that she wouldn't be turned away. Don't you want to live in a place that opens its arms to people like Sadie, instead of a place that shuts them out?”

Hattie Brumfield, who sat near her, got up and waddled to the microphone. “I just have to say that Blair makes a good point, but I feel that we can be a sweet, warm, inviting town without Hanover House. In fact, we might be more inviting if we didn't have the reputation that Hanover House brings us.”

Blair rolled her eyes. “What reputation? You've never had a problem with Hanover House until the
20/20
special came out. It's always been known as a good place, not a breeding ground for killers.”

“Then explain what's happened with that Rick fellow,” Hattie said in her deep drawl. “There he is, a fugitive convict who's already killed once, and now he's disappeared. He could be anywhere, and all because your parents, rest their souls, invited him here.”

“I told you, the article is probably a lie. We haven't been able to confirm it.”

“Well, Nancy couldn't print it if it wasn't true,” she said. “Could you, Nancy?”

Nancy, who sat taking notes on the front row of chairs, said, “We're in the process of confirming the story, but I can tell you that I do trust my source.”

“Your imagination is your source, and you know it!” Blair bit out. “Since when has anyone put any stock into what she writes? She makes a hobby of misquoting everybody on this council, and you're telling me that she prints truth?
She's
the one who ought to be shut down!”

Fred banged his gavel. “That's enough, Blair. I think we've heard enough. It's time we took a vote.”

She didn't sit down, just crossed her arms and watched as the council members settled in to cast their votes.

Fred got his pen and pad, as if he wouldn't be able to add the five votes up in his head. “To give thirty days' notice to close down Hanover House, vote yes. To keep it open, vote no. Sarah Williford, what is your vote?”

“Yes,” Sarah said.

He made the notation. “George O'Neill?”

“Yes.”

“You're kidding me!” Blair shouted. “George?”

George looked down at his hands.

“Harold Delaney?” the mayor said.

The man leaned forward to the microphone. “I have to vote yes.” He shrugged. “Sorry, Blair.”

“Cowards,” Blair said. “That's what you all are.”

“Ron Helms?”

Helms raised his hand. “Count me as a yes.”

“And finally, Ken Adams?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“I can't believe you people! You're not worthy to serve this island! I'll spend every cent I have campaigning against each one of you!”

“Please, Blair,” the mayor said. “Don't make me call the police to escort you out.”

“Why don't you do that?” Blair asked. “Call Cade to escort me out. He'll probably love reliving the whole thing. I'll just wait right here.”

She had called his bluff, and the mayor just sighed. “As you know,” he said, “I only vote in the event of a tie if one of the council members is absent—but since we have a unanimous vote to shut down Hanover House, my vote will not be needed.”

“We'll get a lawyer,” Blair said in a flat voice. “We'll get a
team
of lawyers. We're going to fight this with every resource we have.”

“You'll wind up paying more than Hanover House is even worth,” the mayor said.

“It would be worth every penny,” Blair told him and tore out of the room with Morgan behind her.

The wind was whipping hard from the east as she stepped outside, and she swung around to her sister. “We'll sell that bed-and-breakfast over my dead body. Those people are not going to decide what we do with our own property. And they
won't
tell us who we can have in our home.”

Morgan was silent as Blair got behind the wheel and drove them back to Hanover House.