Stargazey Point (27 page)

She mentally shook herself.
Barbecue,
she reminded herself. Not philosophy, not psychology, but barbecue.

Gradually the dark lessened. Soon they were passing through the outskirts of Myrtle Beach.

A few minutes later, Cab slowed down and pulled off into a sandy parking lot, filled with cars, trucks, and motorcycles. Lincolns and Mercedes rubbed fenders with rusty pickups and battered heaps, though SUVs seemed to be the vehicle of choice. They were packed haphazardly into two ragged rows.

“Lucky I know the owner,” Cab said as they searched for a place to park.

A white stretch limo pulled into the parking lot and stopped at the entrance. Abbie unconsciously pulled the rubber band holding her ponytail in place and finger-combed her hair.

Cab looked over and smiled. “You look fine.”

Right. She was wearing jeans that had been crawled in, squatted in, had apple juice spilled on them, and were covered by inky fingerprints. But her escort didn’t look much better. His jeans were paint splattered, and his sweatshirt was faded and stretched out at the neck.

As the limo’s passengers, who seemed way overdressed for a barbecue joint, crowded through the entrance, Cab squeezed the Range Rover into a space that had been meant for a much smaller car.

“Can you get out okay?”

“Think so,” Abbie said, looking out to the narrow opening between them and a ten-year-old Ford. “Not sure about after dinner. Depends on how good the barbecue is.”

Cab smiled so openly that she wondered how she could have ever thought of him as a conniving usurper.

As she squeezed out of the car, the smell of hickory wood and roast pork filled her nose and surrounded her.

Sonny’s was little more than a shack with a long screened-in porch filled with picnic tables and people. Smoke belched from behind the building. People moved from counter to tables in a constant stream.

The inside of the shack was a tad more upscale, though the smell of barbecue permeated the air even here. Tables and booths were crowded together, and through an opening in back, Abbie saw another dining room just as crowded.

She thought about Silas and his lost smokehouse.

“Cab, great to see you.” A tall, barrel-chested man strode up to them.

“Hey, Sonny, thanks for squeezing us in.”

“Good thing you called ahead. There’s an hour’s wait. Had some kind of big conference this weekend. Still got a lot of overflow. Fine by me. They can stay all spring if they keep coming like this.

“I’ve got you a table in back. Quieter. Out here you can hardly hear yourself think. Come right this way.” He nodded to Abbie, then began weaving his way through the room.

They were halfway across when a loud voice called out. “Cab, over here.”

Cab stopped, looked around, found the source. “Oh, shit, maybe this wasn’t a good idea.”

Chapter 18

A
man was standing at a table halfway across the room. He waved.

“Jesus, what are the odds,” Cab said under his breath. “Just hang on, and I’ll get this over with as soon as possible.”

Their host stepped aside and waited while Cab maneuvered Abbie toward the table. She was acutely aware of the heat of his hand resting on the small of her back, and she reined in the direction her thoughts were taking.

“Good to see you, George, how are you?” Cab reached over the platters of ribs and fries and shook hands with a man a decade or two older than Cab, deeply tanned and well dressed.

Cab nodded to the other men at the table, none of whom stood or shook hands.

“I’d be better if you were heading this project.”

“I’ve retired. But it’s good to see you. I’d like you to meet Abbie Sinclair. Abbie, George Erickson, a local developer.”

George half rose from his seat. “Abbie, I’d shake hands, but I’m covered in sauce. You must try the short ribs.”

“They look delicious,” Abbie said.

“So are you the reason for Cabot’s disappearing act?” George smiled at her, smooth as silk and deadly as a snake.

She smiled back. “We just met.” She’d had to deal with people like George before, rich men enamored of their own success, poor men with chips on their shoulders, powerful men surrounded by beautiful women or security people with automatic weapons. All totally self-involved.

“Why don’t you two join us,” George said. “I’m sure we could rustle up a couple more chairs.”

“Thanks,” Cab said smoothly. “But Abbie and I have some business to discuss.”

George frowned. “Well, see if you can talk some sense into him. This will make your career, Cab. There are more projects down the road. Big projects. Don’t throw it all away.”

“I’m retired, George. Nice running into you.”

“If you don’t want to go back to the firm, I’ll hire you myself. I’ll pay you as a consultant.”

“Thanks, but I’ve moved on to something else. Not architecture.”

“Well, if you change your mind . . .” George reached in his breast pocket and thrust a business card at Cab.

Cab looked at it, then took it.

“Call me.”

Cab turned away. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Sonny.” He pushed Abbie along behind their host.

He sat them at a table on the far side of the back room and took their order, something Sonny called the house special.

“What would you like to drink?” Cabot asked. “They have a great microbeer.”

“Sounds great.”

“Oh and, Sonny, can you throw this away for me?” Cab handed him the business card. Sonny took it and hurried away, then returned almost immediately with two bottles of beer.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what work did you do for him?”

“A totally self-sufficient resort community. Two towers, gardens and parks between, with complete shopping facilities underground and connecting the towers, plus pools, a stocked lake, and direct access to the beach.”

“Sounds major. And you designed it?”

His face clouded over. “Yes.”

“Does that mean you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I don’t mind. It’s a hell of a design if I do say so. Big, bold, self-sufficient, and depends a lot on solar panels.”

“It sounds wonderful ecologically,” Abbie said, wondering why he’d left it behind.

“It is; unfortunately, they plan to raze three old motels, a local shopping area, and several blocks of low-income homes to do it.”

“Oh. Is that why you pulled off the project?”

He put down his beer. “When you design, you hand it over to a contractor, maybe you’re on-site a few times. I wasn’t naive. I knew that in most cases for buildings the size we designed, something had to be torn down to make space for it. Sometimes that was okay. I turned my back on the details. But this one. No. It was too much. Too callous. I just couldn’t be responsible for that many people losing their homes.

“When I said so, they pretty much told me to stick to designing and leave the rest to the developers. I couldn’t do it. I quit.” He smiled a little crookedly. “Guess I won’t be lunching in that town again.”

“Have any regrets?”

He cocked his head, gave her a funny look. “Oh, I have lots of regrets. But none about leaving the firm—or the fiancée. You met her at the carousel.” He sighed. “I don’t know what the hell happened to me. Then Ned left me the carousel, and I knew I couldn’t do what I was doing anymore. Nobody gets it.” He stopped to look at her.

“I get it.”

The food arrived. Two oblong plates piled high with sizzling ribs glazed to a shine, corn on the cob, coleslaw, sliced tomatoes, crunchy dilled cucumbers, and a plastic basket of thick slices of corn bread.

The smell was a heady mixture of sweet and spice all steaming together, and within seconds they were both licking sauce from fingers and sighing.

“Incredible,” Abbie said between bites.

“Told you.”

For the next few minutes they just ate, drank, and sighed with satisfaction.

“So what did Oakley say?” Abbie asked, reaching for another piece of corn bread.

“The usual. The Crispins are sitting on prime property and a lot of it. They could make millions if they sold.”

“And Stargazey Point would become a golf course resort.”

“Pretty much. But nobody wants that to happen, even Robert Oakley. That would be the end of the town and a lot of people’s homes and ways of life.”

“Including yours.”

“Including mine.”

“And the threat of auctioning off the house and land?”

“Oakley suggested they think about parceling it off so it wouldn’t have to go to auction. That would see them clear for a few years. But it would be like taking the finger out of the dike.” Cab licked a spot of sauce off the corner of his mouth.

Abbie almost forgot what they were talking about.

“It doesn’t matter whether they sell to individuals or developers, the tax base will go up again. The Crispins would be able to pay their taxes, but everyone else would be out of luck. There would be a mass migration. We’ve lost enough of the local populace already.”

Abbie sighed. It wasn’t a future that she wanted for Stargazey Point, and she’d only known it for a short time. But now she understood Cab’s initial hostility to her. He’d given up everything not to be a part of the land grab monster, and now he might become its victim.

“What do the Crispins want to do?”

Cab took a swallow of beer. “I think Marnie would be glad to be rid of the responsibility. But she’s loyal to the town. And to the family in her own way.”

“Millie?”

“I think we both know she won’t go down without a fight.”

“And Beau?”

“I don’t know about Beau. You never really know what he thinks about anything that touches his own life. But he’s pretty astute. He gave you that necklace.”

Abbie touched the tiny star. Just knowing that it was there made her feel at peace.

When they finally left the restaurant, there were only a few patrons left. The table where George Erickson had sat was now occupied by a young couple with a sleeping baby.

“You know,” Abbie said, watching the lights of Myrtle Beach blur by as they drove toward home, “Bethanne came out to the house the other day while we were painting the gazebo. Well, while the kids were painting the gazebo.”

“Ha. So that’s how Sarah lassoed you into working at the center.”

“Bethanne told me about her idea for a business called Weddings by the Sea.”

Cab nodded. “She and Jim planned to expand into the building next door, but then Jim got sick and the owners sold to an antiques dealer from Beaufort.”

“It sounds like a good idea. She said she would have done that big wedding that Penny was making cheese straws for, but the inn was too small. She thought the gazebo would be a perfect wedding venue, and I have to admit, looking through her eyes it was pretty romantic.”

“What about your eyes?” He glanced over long enough to give her a provocative smile then went back to watching the road.

“I wouldn’t know,” Abbie said, slightly flustered. “Are there enough rich people having weddings to make any money?”

“Yeah. The venue would be great. And the ballroom would be perfect for large receptions, but she’d have to advertise, hire a large staff, waitpeople, ushers, caterers, bartenders. She’d have to do all the rentals, tables and chairs and whatever else. She’d need dressing rooms and bathrooms for the guests; you can’t have a wedding with porta-sans lined up across the lawn. Landscapers. The house itself would have to be spruced up—”

“Okay. I get it. A money pit. But I hear they know a pretty good architect who might be able to advise them.”

“Sure, but it would cost, and it takes time to build a business. Bethanne would eventually make money probably. But not in time to save the Crispins.”

Abbie frowned. “You sure know an awful lot about catering weddings.”

“Not me, but Bethanne has been talking about this so long, it just kind of rubbed off on me.”

“I like that.”

“What. Talking about weddings?”

“No. That everyone is trying to figure out how to save the Crispins.”

“And themselves,” Cab said.

“And themselves.”

It was only ten o’clock when they drove through Stargazey. The Silver Surfer was still lit up, though most of the cars had left. The rest of the town was dark. Even the moon had shrunk to a sliver, and the night was black.

Cab slowed down near the carousel, checking to make sure it was safe, Abbie supposed. But when he got to the entrance of Crispin House drive, he stopped.

“Does this mean I have to walk the rest of the way?”

“It means—” She heard him take a deep breath. “It means I’m not ready to take you home yet.”

“Oh?”

“And since there’s no place open to have coffee or a nightcap, and I don’t want to scare you away by asking you if you wanted to stop by my house, and I’m not really up for visiting with Millie and Marnie, I’m kind of stuck for an idea.”

“How about a walk on the beach?” She heard herself say it and couldn’t stop. She knew she should just get back to the Crispins’ where life was safe. But she didn’t want the evening to end either, and that scared her.

Everything was churning around inside her, the relief of being able to talk to someone who didn’t feel sorry for her or judge her in any way. She was also feeling a little attracted to him—a lot attracted. She didn’t want to; she didn’t trust it. As Marnie said, he was the only act in town, and she didn’t need to have anything like that going on in her life right now.