Cape Refuge (30 page)

 

T
hat night, Morgan lay curled up next to Jonathan, her head on his chest. She could tell he had something on his mind, but these days so many things weighed both of them down. “What's wrong, Jonathan?” she asked quietly.

“Nothing,” he said. “I was just thinking.” His voice was a deep, thoughtful rumble. “The other day when I went to the dock to check my rig, I went into the warehouse. I just sat there and thought what a shame to let the church fold, and all those people who would have to go somewhere else to worship.”

“I know,” Morgan said. “It seems like all of Mama and Pop's work was for nothing. It's all just disappearing.”

“It doesn't have to be that way,” Jonathan said.

“What do you mean?”

He sat up. “Morgan, I sat there, looking at that pulpit, and had this overwhelming sense that we need to keep the church going, and that you and I are the ones who are going to do that. And since then, I've been praying and thinking and planning . . . and I'm just wondering how you would feel . . . about us having services starting Sunday.”

She thought about going back into that building, trying to forget the sight of her parents lying there in their own blood. . . . “I don't know,” she whispered. “Who would preach?”

“At first I thought we should try to get a guest preacher, but I realized our members need someone familiar, someone who suffers with them, someone who grieves as they grieve. And all of a sudden, I felt as if I had a whole lot to say to them. I thought I could speak the first Sunday. After that, we could get guest preachers until we found the right person.”

She sat up and hugged her knees. “I could play piano just like Mama did. I never had the confidence to do it before, but I think I could do it now.”

“If we got the word out, let the congregation know, we could open up this Sunday,” he said. “I think I could be ready. Being in jail gave me a lot of time to think. I could make it a memorial service for your folks. I think a lot of people would come, and then I could tell them about Jesus and why Thelma and Wayne are the only ones not grieving over their deaths. I could tell them what death looks like from the other side. The celebration, the joy, the rewards . . .”

That pain that had hidden in her chest for the past several days swelled and blocked her throat. She couldn't speak.

“They'll come if they don't think of me as a killer,” he said.

She swallowed back her pain. “That's their problem. Our job is to carry on and trust God with the hearts of the people. Just like Mama and Pop always did.”

He drew her into a tight hug, and she clung to him with all her might. Those she loved were so easily snatched away.

“I've felt so frustrated lately,” she whispered. “About the unsolved murders, about the things I found out about Mama and Pop's past, about Blair's scars, about you and Gus and Rick. And Sadie's constantly on my mind. She's just so young. She needs an anchor. A family. People she can count on.”

“I think she's found it,” Jonathan said. He stroked his wife's cheek with gentle fingertips. “I see so much of your mother in you. The way you've taken over the care of this house. The way you've mothered Sadie.”

“She's a good kid,” she whispered. “I wish I knew how to keep her from ever going back to that man.”

Jonathan stared at the air for a long moment, then finally whispered, “Maybe there is.”

“What?” Morgan asked.

“If her mother's so adamant about her not going back there, maybe she'd sign papers to let us have legal custody.”

Morgan got up and looked down at him. “Jonathan, do you mean it?”

“Well, sure. That way, when the tenants have to move out, she won't have to go.”

“It'd solve so many problems for her. But let's not tell her until we know it'll work out. She's had enough disappointment.” She reached up to kiss him. “It's so good to have you home,” she said. “You're the problem solver around here.”

“Yeah,” he said. “If only I could solve the murders.”

 

J
onathan answered when East Coast Properties called the next morning. They demanded to know if Blair and Morgan had made a decision yet. “We're keeping the place,” he said. “But we appreciate the offer.”

“Mr. Cleary, perhaps your wife didn't convey our generous offer to you. It's cash, full market value. We're prepared to offer more if necessary. . . .”

“Sorry,” he said. “We're not interested.”

The man sounded stunned. “Mr. Cleary, it's come to our attention that you're being ordered to close the place down. How do you suppose that you can afford to hold onto the house and pay the substantial taxes on the property, when you can no longer accept the donations and rents that keep it afloat?”

“That would be our problem, not yours,” Jonathan said. “Please don't call here again.”

He took great pleasure in hanging up in the man's ear!

 

 

A
few hours later Morgan was served with papers from the city's legal department. She scanned the document and handed it to Jonathan.

He quickly read over it. “Another threat to close us down in . . . twenty-seven days.”

“It's not a threat, Jonathan. They're going to do it.”

“They can't take our property,” he said. “All they can do is tell us we can't do business, and even that's debatable. We're going to see a lawyer as soon as we can get an appointment.”

Morgan grabbed the phone. “I'm calling Blair.”

When she had told her sister what had just happened, Blair wasn't surprised that the papers had been served. “I've got an idea,” she said. “We're about to start a propaganda war. We're going to change the tide of public opinion. Just leave it to me.”

 

 

S
adie had a hard time concentrating on work that day. Her conversation with Chief Cade played through her mind. He had made promises, but she didn't know if she could trust him. He seemed kind, but others had seemed kind before. They hadn't been able to help her or her little brother.

She sat at the computer on her desk, searching the Net for some statistics Nancy needed, when Blair burst through the door.

“Sadie, where's Nancy?”

“Back in her office.” She got up. “I'll get her.”

“No, I'll get her myself.” Blair whizzed past her and reached the door before Sadie did. Nancy looked up, surprised. “I need your help, Nancy,” she said.

The woman sat at her cluttered desk, digging through a pile as if searching for something. “Blair, you've got a lot of nerve. After what you said about me at the city council meeting, you have the gall to ask for my help?”

Blair sighed. “Nancy, after all the things you've written in the past few months about Hanover House, you have a lot of nerve being insulted.”

Nancy set her chin on her palm. “What do you want?”

“I want to give you a story. News, Nancy. The real kind. The city council just served us papers. I need some publicity. You could do an article on this. You know it's big news and the townspeople would want to know.”

“Of course,” she said, pulling a pencil from behind her ear. “Sit down.”

Blair looked suspicious, as if she knew better than to think Nancy could turn on a dime.

“I could write it!” Sadie said from the doorway. “I mean, living there and all, I could do a good job.”

“Sure you could,” Nancy said. “Come on in and sit down, Sadie.” She pulled a legal pad out from one of the stacks. “Here, take notes.”

Pride swelled in Sadie's heart, but her stomach tightened. She hadn't expected it to be quite that easy.

Blair wasn't buying it, either. “Come on, Nancy. I was thinking you could probably devote a whole issue to it. Think of it. You could interview people who've stayed there over the years, do a piece about Joe and Miranda Hanover, interview people in the community about their feelings about the House. . . . No offense, Sadie, but I had a substantial article in mind.”

“I can't give it a whole issue,” Nancy said. “Sadie can write it up, and if it's any good, I'll run it.”

Her noncommittal attitude worried Sadie as she followed Blair back to the front. “Do a good job, Sadie. Hanover House depends on it, and we're not gonna get a lot of help from Nancy. Fax me the article when you're finished with it, and I'll proof it for you.”

Sadie felt as if the fate of the beloved home rested on her shoulders. She hoped they were strong enough to carry it.

She spent the rest of the day in a nervous flurry. She went to Hanover House and listened as Morgan gave her a quick rundown of the history of the house, complete with newspaper clippings and pictures of Joe and Miranda Hanover. She had Blair explain in detail what the city council was doing, then she rushed to Crickets and interviewed the few midday diners about their thoughts on the home.

She went back to the office and typed up the article, then faxed it to Blair at the library.

When Blair called five minutes later to say, “It looks great, Sadie. You got talent, kid,” Sadie wanted to dance and leap and let out a loud cheerleader whoop, but she had to act old enough to be a newspaper reporter. She took the article in to Nancy's office.

Nancy was laying out the day's edition, and Sadie saw with disappointment that the front page was already full.

“I finished the article,” she said. “I hope you like it. I can make any changes you want.”

Nancy took it and devoted three seconds to reading it over. Then she tossed it down. “Good job, Sadie, but I'm not going to put it in.”

“What? Why not?” Sadie picked it back up, feeling like a failure. “I can redo it. Maybe I just rushed too much. . . .”

“No,” Nancy said. “I've just given it more thought today, and I've decided it's not newsworthy.”

“But . . . it's Hanover House. People had nice things to say about it. I got a lot of good quotes. . . .” Her voice trailed off. Nancy wasn't even listening.

“Maybe tomorrow's issue, then?” Sadie asked.

“No, not tomorrow either,” Nancy said. “The community's tired of hearing about Hanover House.”

 

 

B
lair was waiting at Hanover House when Sadie got home from work that day. The girl came in, a sheen of perspiration on her face. She was flushed, angry, and shaken.

“How'd it go, Sadie? What page did she give the article?”

“She isn't putting it in. She has no intentions of publishing it.”

“What?” Blair asked. “Are you sure?”

“She said it wasn't newsworthy.”

Blair slammed her hand down on the counter. “Not newsworthy? And the article on the pros and cons of the post office being closed on Wednesday afternoons
is?
She ran a whole series on whether World's Finest Chocolate was a better school fund-raiser than popcorn! Last week there was a front-page article about that thirteen-year-old who got her hair cut for the first time. Give me a break!”

“Did you ask her why she didn't think it was newsworthy?” Morgan asked.

“I tried, but she told me the community is just sick of hearing about it.”

Blair shot Morgan a look. “That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. If this isn't news, I don't know what is. Has the whole world gone crazy?”

“Not the whole world,” Morgan said. “Just Cape Refuge.” She crossed her arms, and looked at the girl. “Sadie, do you think you can get that article back tomorrow?”

“Sure,” she said. “I kept a copy.”

“We could buy an ad for the paper and put it in that.”

“Contribute money to that rag?” Blair asked. “I don't think so. Let's just print it up ourselves and pass it out all over town.”

“We can send a copy to East Coast Properties,” Morgan said. “Just a few hours before we got served yesterday, they called and demanded an answer. Even raised the offer. Jonathan told them no.”

“What did they do?” Blair asked. “Call the mayor and get him to serve us so we'd change our minds?”

“Do you think someone pressured Nancy into not publishing the article?” Morgan asked.

“Could be. But if that's the case, we're about to show them that it didn't keep us quiet. Before the end of the week, we'll make sure everyone on the island knows what's happening to Hanover House.”

 

T
he more she thought about it, the more suspicious Blair became. Things seemed too coincidental. First, the call from East Coast Properties, then the serving of the papers just hours later, and now Nancy's refusal to run an article about the closing of the island's most revered landmark. . . .

She went back to the library and turned on her computer. Her fingernails drummed on the table as she waited for it to boot up. She clicked in “Copernic,” the search engine that had access to eighty databases. She typed in “East Coast Properties, Inc.,” and watched as the bars traveled across the screen.

The search didn't come up with anything she could use, so she logged onto the public-records database she was able to access.

While the database searched for East Coast Properties, she went to the bathroom for a glass of water. She turned on the faucet and stuck the glass under it, but her mind drifted back to the company, to those papers, to Sadie's article, to Nancy's refusal.

Something wasn't right.

The water ran over the glass, wetting her arm, and she pulled it back and dried off her hand.

Her computer bell rang, so she rushed back into her tiny office. A few things had come up, so she quickly clicked the first.

East Coast Properties was owned by another company called Georgia Estates. She did a quick search to see who owned Georgia Estates.

Her heart jolted when she realized it was owned by Savannah Enterprises. She saw the pattern forming as she did the search on Savannah Enterprises. It was the classic modus operandi of dummy corporations set up for tax shelters or money laundering.

One company owned by another and another and another in a never ending trail that led nowhere.

But Savannah Enterprises did own quite a bit of property on Cape Refuge—three souvenir shops down by the beach and the Green Eggs and Ham Breakfast Nook near the Pier. They also owned three hotels along Ocean Boulevard, some condominiums on the north side of the island, and various houses and convenience stores that she knew had been bulldozed for parking lots. So what did they want with Hanover House?

She sat back in her chair and stared at the screen.

Who was really behind East Coast Properties, and what did they want with her family home? Did they want to tear it down to build a parking lot, or did they plan to turn it into condos? Or did they hope to remodel it and turn it into a high-priced bed-and-breakfast that only wealthy tourists could afford?

And was it a coincidence that the city council's harassment and the offer had come at roughly the same time?

She couldn't say for sure. Not yet. But she was determined to find out.