PAR FOR CINDERELLA

by MCCARTY, PETIE

  They were some of the very last arrivals, having to wait on Frank to lock up the pro shop and outbuildings before he could leave. Belle cast smiles and greetings in every direction as she carried around a plate of muffins and cookies, and Maisey followed behind with a tray holding cups of freshly-brewed coffee.

  Rory skidded in the door behind them, looking worried. Belle spotted the boy immediately and came over.

  “I’m sorry,” the kid wheezed, panting.

  “Take it easy,” Aidan told him. “Catch your breath.”

  “I ran all the way from the restaurant,” Rory huffed out. “I’m late because I was trying to talk my dad into coming, right up until the last minute. He wouldn’t. He’s afraid.”

  Aidan cursed softly under his breath.

  Casey gave Rory a hug. “You tried.”

  “We’ll just have to convince the rest of them,” Belle told Aidan. “You ready?”

  He nodded and stepped to the center of the living room. Frank took up a station at the front door.

  “For those of you who don’t know me, my name’s Aidan Crosse. Um, Crosse with an e,“ he clarified. “And I—”

  “We all know who you are,” yelled one of the scallopers in the back. “You’re the fellow who kicked PJ’s ass into the Gulf.”

  The room roared with laughter.

  Aidan smiled. “Well, that’s how my visit started out, but while I’ve been staying here, I’ve taken notice of some strange and shady dealings.”

  The room went dead silent. Faces sobered.

  “Archer Bartow your mayor is either making suspect loans or offering lousy partnership contracts all over town. Those of you stuck with those loans know what I’m talking about. The mayor is after as many businesses as he can worm his way into as a partner or through loans.”

  A few residents squirmed a bit.

  A short wiry man in his sixties spoke up. “I’m Vern Eisley, owner of the Truly Yours jewelry shop here in Cypress Key. I got stuck with one of the mayor’s contracts. My suppliers had abandoned me, and Bartow came forward and offered new suppliers if I signed his contract for a twenty-five percent partnership.” The old man’s eyes looked bleak. “I had no choice. It was that or go under. I’d been having financial troubles as it was.”

  “Bartow is targeting the troubled businesses,” Aidan said.

  “He’s after my shrimp boat,” Byford Traynor called out.

  “Mine too,” Big Louie chimed in.

  “He almost got my repair shop until Aidan’s friend made me a loan,” Neal Riley called out.

  Aidan wished Neal hadn’t spilled those particular beans in front of half the town, and a rumble of voices erupted around the room.

  Someone yelled, “Hey, Crosse, why doesn’t your friend give us all a low-interest loan?”

  “I wish he could,” Aidan told the crowd, “but he only owes me so many favors. Cypress Key has to fix itself, stand up for itself . . .” He gazed around the room, making eye contact with individual residents as he went. “. . . or Bartow takes over and owns this town.”

  “He already does,” someone shouted back.

  “Not all of it. New people won’t want to stay if this town is dirty.”

  The room echoed with gasps and angry grumbles. Frank and Casey both gave him a supportive nod.

  “I have a private investigator helping me.” Aidan raised his voice to be heard. “If you provide me with copies of your loans or partnership contracts, my PI will investigate them. We need more than one or two to get to the bottom of this and find out why Bartow is after your businesses.”

  A middle-aged woman in the corner rose to her feet. Aidan recognized her as Grace Talley who owned the bakery where he bought breakfast when it was his turn to cook. He gave her a nod and a smile of encouragement.

  She didn’t return his smile. “I can’t help you. If Archer Bartow finds out I gave you a copy, he’d call in my loan, and I’d lose everything.” She glanced around at her neighbors. “There’s a clause in my loan that says if I obtain other funding or secure outside help for my business without his approval, I’ll be considered in violation of the agreement, and he gets forty percent of my bakery.”

  “And you signed that?” Aidan asked, incredulous.

  Tears filled Grace’s eyes. “I had no choice. I lost almost all my food distributors overnight, and the rest raised their prices on me. I had no time to go search for others. I’d been operating on a wing and a prayer for months.”

  “Let me guess, Bartow showed up with new cheaper distributors?”

  She nodded. “And your investigator could be considered outside help.” Her chin came up. “This is a small town, Aidan. We don’t all have the option of going to big cities for loans or the time to do it. Equity loans are tougher to get than mortgages, and Bartow shows up at the opportune sink-or-swim moment. We’re caught unawares.”

  A couple residents chimed in with a, “Yeah, she’s right.”

  “Why isn’t Jameson here?” a voice came from deep in the crowd.

  Rory stood up, his neck and cheeks flushed red.

  Aidan held up a hand. “You don’t—”

  “It’s okay, Aidan.” Rory faced the dissenter’s direction. “He’s afraid. Afraid to lose his loan. Mr. Bartow even threatened him if I keep working for Frank and Casey.” He smiled at her. “Casey told him, ‘Baloney!’ though. Told him to leave me alone.”

  No one laughed. No one said a word.

  “These aren’t simple loans and contracts he’s executing,” Aidan went on. “Bartow wouldn’t need these horrendous conditions if he was just making simple loans. These are all pieces of a bigger picture, and if it’s illegal, you’ll all get blowback for being part of it.”

  Worried faces appeared around the room.

  “We need to be in this together,” Belle called out. “Archer can’t fight all of us. We can’t stop him until we know what he’s up to.”

  “You don’t have a business, Belle,” someone in the crowd called to her. “You don’t have a dog in this hunt.”

  She glared in the direction from which the comment came. “Think so? Archer has been pressuring me hard since early last summer to sell him my airport property.”

  Aidan whipped around to stare at Belle. Last summer was when Aidan’s real estate team got the call about her property. The team was told the buyer was only testing the market. She had played him like a fiddle.

  “He wants my property for a huge new development, and he wants Frank’s golf course to sell golf-frontage condos and villas,” she was saying.

  Frank and Aidan exchanged glances. Bingo. Now they had motive for the vandalism at the course. All aimed at forcing Frank to sell.

  “The irrigation lines to my property have been vandalized, as well as the potable water lines to my terminal building. Bartow’s threatening to take a proposal to the town council to double my property taxes on the value as a commercial property in use.”

  “It won’t pass,” Frank retorted. “That field’s abandoned. The town council lowered the taxes when your husband Henry died, and the airstrip went virtually deserted.”

  “Yes, but the airstrip lights still work,” Belle shared, “and a plane could land there if it had to.”

  “There’s no fuel or tech available,” Frank argued.

  “Doesn’t matter if Archer can get the proposal passed by the council, now does it?” Belle said sadly.

  It couldn’t happen Aidan knew because Belle had sold the property to him, but Bartow still infuriated him for threatening a widow.

  “How many of the council members hold a Bartow loan or partnership, Frank?” she asked and blinked back what looked like tears. The room went deathly still. Not a murmur.

  Why that little minx!

  Belle was
forcing these folks into finding their backbones.

  “Will you help me?” Aidan gently asked them.

  A heavy-set guy—who Aidan knew ran the Feed and Seed store in Cypress Key—was sitting up front on Belle’s sofa. “Folks are afraid to go against the mayor and risk the loans they do have,” he said. “What’s so bad about Bartow’s loans if they save our businesses? It ain’t like he’s money-laundering or anything.”

  “That’s exactly what he’s doing,” Aidan said grimly.

  More gasps and angry rumbles spread through the room.

  “I just need your help to prove it,” he added.

  “Why are you in the middle of this? What’s in it for you?” one of the shrimpers yelled from a back corner.

  Frank’s head snapped up to study Aidan’s reaction. Aidan hoped the slight stab of guilt he suffered wasn’t visible. He did want to help these folks—badly—but he couldn’t ignore the fact that his golf resort wouldn’t succeed until Bartow was stopped and preferably no longer the mayor. What will these same townsfolk think of him when they discover his identity?

  Savior or scoundrel?

  “Frank and Louie stepped up to help a perfect stranger,” Aidan said honestly. “I owe them. Maybe this will help me pay them back.”

  Frank stepped to the center of the room alongside Aidan.

  “Everyone in this room knows me. I was born here. My father was a hard-working scalloper and shrimper who scraped and saved to put his two boys through school so they could have a better life. There’s a lot people in this town who owe me favors I never called in. Favors from when I helped build new stores and restaurants, when I roofed houses before and after hurricanes, when I’ve gone out in my tour boat in storms to rescue broke-down boats—” He eyed the shrimpers until a few looked away. “—when I gave kids I didn’t need, jobs at the golf course in the summers.”

  A boom of what sounded like thunder rolled in the distance, but Frank hesitated only a second.

  “This is my home, dammit, and I won’t let Bartow have it. I’m calling in my favors now.” He held his arms out to the group. “We need your help.”

  Belle moved up along Aidan’s other side. “And I’m calling in my favors too.”

  The thunder rolled again.

  Someone’s cell phone chimed. Big Louie reached for his, checked the display, and decided to answer.

  “Yeah?” he answered softly, then roared, “What?”

  He shoved the phone in his pocket and people aside as he fought his way to the door. “My boat just blew up!”

  Chapter 20

  Aidan flew out the door on Louie’s heels, Frank jogging alongside. Casey caught them at her Jeep.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Aidan shouted.

  “With you.”

  “Forget it. Frank, tell Casey to take your truck and go home.”

  Frank stared at his niece’s face for a handful of seconds, then he opened the back-passenger door. “Get in.”

  Aidan muttered a curse under his breath and sped the Jeep out into traffic, screeching tires all the way to the corner before the doors had even closed. By the time they got to Louie’s house out on the edge of the marsh that surrounded the peninsula, the Cypress Key Fire Department had cordoned off an enormous debris field around the house and entrance drive as three firefighters methodically discharged water from the tanker truck to the burned embers on the roof and anything burning or smoking in the yard to reduce exposure.

  Aidan couldn’t believe the amount of burning debris and smoking embers roped off. Nor could he believe the blackened, carved-out shell of Louie’s huge shrimp boat, the biggest in Cypress key. All that remained was the charred hull—floating half in and half out of the water—and a small portion of two side walls. The detached captain’s cabin rested alone in the shallow marsh about twenty-five yards away, and the outrigger trawler’s superstructure and winches lay up against the front door. All of this visible from the firefighters' portable flood lights used to scan the area to find and prevent reflash.

  “The gas tank blew,” the closest fireman said quietly. “Unfortunately, most of the shrimpers fill their tanks at night since they leave so early in the morning. Damage wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if the tank had been near empty.”

  Big Louie had elbowed past the two guardian firemen and raced for a small circle of people at the far debris boundary. Aidan and the others hustled that way.

  “I don’t recognize the guy, but that’s Louie’s wife and two daughters,” Frank said, trotting alongside Aidan.

  The big man next to Louie’s wife turned to face Louie steaming toward them.

  “That’s Ian!’ Aidan shouted and broke into a run.

  He ducked under the tape. The remaining firemen had their hands full with the dozen cars and truckloads of residents that had chased Frank’s Jeep in.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Ian?” Aidan demanded.

  The Highlander raised his brows in warning. “Is that any way to talk to yer boss?”

  Dang, Aidan had been so full of adrenaline, he’d forgotten his cover.

  “He’s been saving my wife and girls,” Louie said, hugging his family as tears ran down his cheeks.

  “I was driving back to my hotel from the golf course. Went out after dinner and before sunset to walk the course one more time for our match tomorrow,” Ian explained to an incredulous Aidan. “A case of the right place at the right time, I guess. I saw the explosion from the road.” He pointed. “Like a big fireball. So I drove straight here in case anyone needed help. A wee bit of embers were raining on the roof—the wee bit probably for Louie’s benefit—and the boat was in flames, so I made sure the house was vacated.” He shrugged.

  Louie’s wife looked up at her husband. “A big piece of your trawling tackle landed and wedged against the front door, and we couldn’t get out. The lawn and shrubs at the back were all on fire. Ian arrived and grabbed our garden hose to put out the fire, so we could exit at the sliding glass door.”

  “Thank you, sir, from the bottom of my heart,” Louie rasped with emotion. “Who are you, if I can ask? I’d like to know the name of the man who saved my family.”

  “I’m Ian MacVicar.” He glanced at Aidan for help in how much to divulge.

  Damnation, Aidan hated to add to the lies. Frank and Casey were right there listening and now Louie and his family.

  “I work for him . . . sometimes,” Aidan told Louie.

  Ian smiled at the shrimper. “He bosses me when he works on my yacht.”

  “So you’re the yacht guy Neal talks about,” Louie said.

  “That I am.”

  “Don’t worry, Louie,” Aidan said. “We’ll find you a loan for whatever the insurance doesn’t cover.” He’d make sure the big shrimper who’d stood up for him would be okay.

  Louie shifted bleak eyes toward him, and Louie’s wife started to cry softly. “The insurance company canceled me at renewal last month,” Louie ground out. “Said I was a bad risk.”

  “What?” Aidan roared. “That’s ridiculous. What company?” He’d have his lawyers on them by tomorrow.

  “I got them through the insurance broker here in town.” Louie hugged his wife tighter. “It was a small company I never heard of. But with the harvest so bad the last couple of years, they were all I could afford.”

  “Let me guess. Bartow’s mixed up with the broker.” A statement not a question.

  Louie nodded morosely. Aidan murmured expletives to himself.

  “No worries. Everything will be all right,” Ian said quietly, as he drew Louie aside. “Ye go ahead and call yer ship broker in the morning. Order yer new boat, and I’ll take care of this particular loan. All this . . .” He waved an arm out at the burned-out boat and scorch-spotted house. “. . . jus
t made it personal for me.” He patted his chest. “So I’ll be makin’ ye a no-interest loan for yer boat at whatever payments ye can afford.”

  “Why would you do that?” Louie looked stunned.

  “Because ye were threatened for trying to help my . . .” He shot an awkward glance at Aidan. “. . . my crewman. And I don’t like what this bastard Bartow is about.”

  “But I can’t—” Louie said hoarsely.

  “Ye take of yer wee wife and girls,” Ian continued softly. “I’ll explain yer new threat to my crewman. No worries. I’ll take of him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Louie said to Aidan.

  “Don’t!” he ordered. “You offered to step in and testify to help me when you didn’t even know me.” No one had ever done something like that for him before. “That was more than enough. I’m the one who’s sorry I got you into this.”

  “What the hell is going on?” he whispered to Ian when Louie went back to hugging his wife and girls.

  Ian led him a few steps away. “Send Casey and Frank home, and we’ll talk.”

  Telling the Stuarts his boss had questions about the yacht and promising to be right behind them seemed to work, and Frank drove Casey home.

  “Start talking,” Aidan said.

  Ian glowered. “Louie’s wife got a text while she waited for the fire department, and I was hosing down what I could reach of the roof. She only checked the text because she thought it might be from Louie.”

  “What did it say? Who was it from?”

  “My guess is it came from a throw-away cell phone.”

  “The text,” Aidan demanded impatiently.

  “The text read, Tell your husband, if he sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong, his house is next.”

  Aidan remembered Watson’s threat earlier that day about sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. He felt the heat of rage surge to his face. “Damnation!”

  “Since the only thing Louie has been sticking his nose in that doesn’t concern him is testifying for ye, the identity of the text sender is pretty easy to figure out.”