Cape Refuge

by Terri Blackstock

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” the woman yelled over the noise as she came around the machine. “Can I help you?”

  “The lady down the street at the gift shop told me that you were looking for someone,” she said. “To hire, I mean. I’m looking for a job.”

  The woman led her back out of the room and closed the door as she surveyed Sadie’s broken arm. “Don’t know how much help you’d be with a broken arm.”

  “It’s okay,” Sadie said. “I’m right-handed, so it doesn’t affect most of what I do. I’m pretty good with just one hand.”

  “You new in town?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said. “I’m staying at Hanover House.”

  “Ah,” the woman said, nodding her head knowingly.

  Sadie wondered if she was thinking the same thing that the woman at the store had. Maybe she shouldn’t have told her where she lived.

  “Hanover House, huh? So Morgan and Blair are taking care of you?”

  “Mostly Morgan,” she said. “I haven’t seen Blair much.”

  The woman shook her head. “Horrible thing that happened to their parents. Who’d have ever thought?” She clicked her tongue, as if she wasn’t all that sorry. “Do you have any experience in the newspaper business?”

  Sadie wished she could tell her that she had worked on the high school paper as she had wanted to, but the day applications were due she had been in the hospital with a broken jawbone.

  “No, ma’am, but I learn real fast.”

  The woman assessed her again with that critical eye of hers. When Sadie expected her to show her the door, she said, “You can start tomorrow.”

  Sadie caught her breath. “Really? You’re giving me a job?”

  “You’ll have to work hard,” the woman said, passing her in the hall and heading to her office. Sadie followed. She searched her desk for something, then turned to the file cabinet and pulled out some papers. “Here’s an application. Fill it out and bring it back tomorrow. And here’s a Social Security form and a few other things. The job mostly consists of running errands and helping me with the layout. If you can write, sometimes I might even have you write an article or two.”

  Sadie’s eyes lit up. It was too much to believe. “It sounds wonderful.”

  She started out of the room with the papers in her hands, when the woman caught her by her good arm and turned her back around.

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Eighteen,” she lied.

  The woman stared at her for a moment. “You don’t have anything shady in your past, do you, ‘cause my husband’s the judge of this town, and it wouldn’t do for me to have any shady characters from Hanover House working for me.”

  Sadie frowned. “No, ma’am. Nothing.”

  “So you just blew into town one day, and they took you in at Hanover House?”

  “It wasn’t like that exactly,” Sadie said. “I’ve always thought it would be nice to live at the beach. As soon as I graduated from high school I headed out. They said I could stay at Hanover House until I got on my feet. So I’m trying to get on my feet.”

  “All right,” the woman said brusquely. “Be here at eight tomorrow ready to work. When are you getting the cast off?”

  “Another month or so,” Sadie said.

  “Well, I guess it’s all right,” the woman said. “We’ll just work around it.”

  Sadie wanted to dance and turn a cartwheel as she headed back to Hanover House, but she didn’t want the reputation of a crazy reprobate before she started her new job as a newspaperwoman.

  C H A P T E R

  54

  The next morning, Morgan scrambled eggs for the Hanover House guests with one hand as she filled glasses with orange juice with the other. When the phone rang, she grabbed it up and held it to her shoulder.

  “Morgan, it’s Cade.”

  She froze, bracing herself for news about Jonathan. “What is it?”

  “I’ve been going through your parents’ bank statements,” he said, “and I have their canceled checks. And there’s one here for ten thousand dollars, and the notation on the memo says, ‘Paid debt RM.’ Did they mention this to you?”

  She turned from the stove and gave her full attention to the phone. “No. Where would they get ten thousand dollars?”

  “It came from their savings account,” Cade said. “And RM is Rick Morrison. He told me they’d given it to him to pay off some debts. I’m not sure I’m buying that story.”

  “I don’t know anything about it, Cade. They never said a word to me.”

  “All right,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Cade?” Morgan clutched the phone. “When are you releasing Jonathan?”

  “I have no plans to do that, Morgan.”

  “Come on, Cade. You suspect Gus, and you suspect Rick—you know Jonathan didn’t do it. Let him go!”

  “I still have more evidence on him than anybody else. He owned the murder weapon.”

  “Well, then why are you holding Gus?” she asked. “You can’t have two suspects for the same crime, unless they were working together, and you know that wasn’t possible. Jonathan didn’t even like Gus.”

  “I’m holding Gus for possible breaking and entering into Blair’s house. Two different crimes.”

  “But you know that break-in was related to the murders.”

  “Morgan, I can’t talk about this with you right now.”

  “Cade, I need my husband. He has no business being locked up in a jail cell.”

  “I’m keeping him until I’m satisfied that he’s innocent,” Cade said, “and I’m not completely satisfied yet.”

  Morgan slammed down the phone and pressed her forehead against it. She was soul-weary of this whole thing. The mystery of her parents’ murders, Jonathan’s incarceration, Blair’s anger, her parents’ past . . . Smoke rose up from the pan and she swung around. She had burned the eggs.

  When the doorbell rang, she felt like screaming, “What now?” She moved the pan off the burner, then wearily went to the door. Melba Jefferson stood there holding a steaming casserole.

  “I know I’m early, honey,” she said, “but I wanted to get this to you so you could feed the guests for breakfast if you wanted.”

  Morgan’s eyes rounded with relief. “A breakfast casserole,” she said. “Melba, you’re a treasure. Come in. I had just burned breakfast.”

  The woman bustled into the kitchen behind her. Morgan turned on the stove’s fan to suck the smoke out of the room.

  “I need coffee,” she said. She poured them each a cup and urged Melba to sit down.

  “So why are you up so early?” Morgan asked.

  Melba shrugged. “I didn’t sleep good last night. I was thinking about Thelma and Wayne.” Her voice broke and she reached for a handkerchief in her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to get you going too. I know you’re having worse trouble than I am.”

  Morgan sank down across from her and reached out to hold her hand. “Melba, you’ve known my parents a long time, haven’t you?”

  “Since the day they came to Cape Refuge,” she said.

  “Tell me about that,” she said, her eyes riveted on the woman. “I mean, what were they like then?”

  “Well, they were just the sweetest people I’ve ever known. Precious through and through.”

  “Really?” Morgan asked. “I mean, were they Christians then?”

  “The genuine article,” Melba said.

  Morgan sat back in her chair, trying to decide whether to be honest with Melba in hopes of getting some information—or just trying to pump more out of her. She finally chose honesty.

  “Melba, Blair and I ran across some information that was very disturbing to us. It had to do with my father being in jail. Do you know anything about that?”

  Melba didn’t look surprised. She dabbed at her eyes again. “Oh, honey, I promised your mother I’d never say a word. . . .”

  “Then she confided in you?”r />
  “Well, of course she did,” Melba said. “She was my best friend.”

  “Melba, it would mean a lot to us if you could tell us whatever you know. Our imaginations are running wild. All we know is that Pop was accused of starting the fire that burned Blair—and that he wound up in jail for it.”

  “Oh, they didn’t want you to know that,” Melba cried. “What am I going to do now? I can’t betray their confidence.”

  “You don’t have to. We already know it. I just want you to clarify a few things.”

  Melba gave a sigh of resignation. “They changed, you know. Your father changed when he was in prison. There was a Christian group that came there and ministered to them. He accepted the Lord, then led your mother to Christ. They came here to start their lives over clean, where nobody knew them and they could work for the Lord unhindered. The Hanovers, who owned this place at that time, took them in right here in this house. And they started that seaman’s ministry down on the dock, and then their prison ministry, and it was such a success. And then the church. Why, your parents hit the ground running as Christians and never looked back.”

  “Melba, did my father go to prison for insurance fraud?”

  Melba looked down at her hands, as if trying to decide whether to tell her the truth. “Yes, but you know he changed. You know that in your heart.”

  “Did he start the fire that gave my sister her scars?”

  Melba’s face twisted. “Oh, honey, that plagued him till the day he died. God forgave him, but he never forgave himself for that. It was the defining moment in his life. The thing that brought him to his knees and made him realize that he had to change.”

  Morgan wilted. Blair was right. The newspaper articles were real. She looked around, trying to find something to do with her hands, something to keep her busy and get her mind off of this horror. Her parents putting her family in harm’s way, almost killing Blair, altering her life.

  She didn’t want to break down in front of Melba, so she breathed in a cleansing breath. “Jonathan and Blair want to sell Hanover House.”

  The woman expelled a heavy sigh, then dabbed at her eyes again. “I kind of thought you would. It’s a lot to handle, even for someone as young and energetic as you.”

  “I don’t feel young or energetic right now,” Morgan said. “I feel empty and numb, like I’ve been beaten up and shot with morphine or something. I don’t want to be in this position. And I don’t want to sell.”

  Melba looked around at the big, homey kitchen. “This was your folks’ dream. They loved it so. It was a miracle when the Hanovers left it to them.”

  The woman got up and stuffed her handkerchief back into her pocket. “Well, I’d better be getting on now. I’ve got things I have to do.” Morgan could hear the emotion still quaking in her voice. “You take care now, you hear? And let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you.”

  Then pulling that handkerchief back out of her pocket, she headed out to her car.

  C H A P T E R

  55

  Cade needed a break. He wasn’t sleeping well, and the workload that greeted him each morning kept him keyed up and worn out. Today, he got up with the sun, put his kayak into the river, and paddled out through the Wassaw Sound. He reached the Atlantic as the sun rose and warmed his bare shoulders.

  The act of stroking, front to back, front to back, riding up over the waves, worked some of the tension out of his muscles. He drifted farther out, where the only sounds were rushing waves and birds swooping down for their morning meal. He paddled until the waves calmed, until he was floating alone on the current.

  Questions swirled through his mind as he drifted. Did he really need to keep Jonathan locked up? What did Gus know about the money the Owens had given Rick? Why had Thelma and Wayne withheld the truth from Blair?

  Why had Blair been so offended when he had touched her scars and told her she was the prettiest girl on the island?

  You really know how to kick a girl when she’s down.

  He wished he could set her free from the prison of her life—the slavery to her philosophies, her beliefs about herself, her lack of belief about the God he believed in. Blair was the toughest woman he knew, but he wasn’t fooled by that toughness. It was a cover. Like those scars were a cover for the beauty behind them, her toughness hid the soft heart inside. The heart that hurt. The heart that feared.

  He knew these thoughts weren’t helping him, so he turned the kayak around and paddled back the way he had come. He moved more easily this time, as the current took him in. When he got back to the river, it was only seven, so he put the boat up, showered, and got to the station by eight.

  He got Gus out of his cell and took him into the interview room. “I want to ask you something, Gus,” he said. “You knew about the money that Thelma and Wayne gave Rick. How did you know?”

  “I overheard. The walls are thin at Hanover House. My room be next to his.”

  “Did they give him the money voluntarily, or was there some manipulation involved?”

  “It was their idea,” he said.

  “Why would they do that?”

  The big black man looked down at his feet and rubbed his eyes roughly. When he looked up at him again, Cade saw that his eyes were red with tears. “They told him that Christ paid for his sins, and the least they could do was pay for his debts.” He swallowed back the emotion in his throat. “That be when I really came to Christ.”

  “I thought you were a Christian before they brought you here.”

  “Me too, mon. But I knew it up here.” He tapped his temple. “That day they gave Rick the money, I got it down here.” He put his hand over his heart.

  Cade didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to believe Gus had been transformed by the same Holy Spirit that had changed his own life.

  “So you heard all this firsthand?”

  “Yeah, mon,” he said. “They never knew. Too bad it didn’t change Rick.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “He set me up, mon. Took my do-rag while I showered, then left it for you to find. He be your mon, not me.”

  When Cade had locked him back in his cell, he saw Jonathan sitting beneath the one lightbulb in the room, studying his Bible as if seeing it for the first time. Cade stood at the cell door, watching for a moment. Jonathan never looked up to see him. Finally, Cade went back out to his desk. He dropped his face into his hands and rubbed hard, wishing he knew what to do.

  There Jonathan was, studying his Bible while sitting in a jail cell for murder—and another possible suspect sitting in the next cell, talking about how Christ had changed his life. He went to church with both men, believed the same things they seemed to believe.

  But he had a job to do. So shaking those personal feelings out of his head, he went back to his office.

  C H A P T E R

  56

  Sadie started her job at the Cape Refuge News that day. Morgan loaned her a blazer to wear with her khakis, so she felt mature and professional. Judge Randy Simmons, her boss’s husband, was at the paper when she arrived that morning. He was a good-looking man who had a long gray ponytail, and wore jeans and tennis shoes even though he was on his way to the office. Sadie tried to picture him making serious decisions about people’s lives. The judge who had sentenced her mother was a stern-looking older man with a bald head and an angry scowl on his face. Nothing like this old hippie who reminded Nancy to order the new T-shirts for the soccer team he coached.

  Nancy Simmons, Sadie’s boss, was a driven, ambitious woman who took her job seriously. She and the two writer/photographers who worked for her ran from telephone to file cabinet, from the grand opening of the new souvenir shop to the police station—with stops at the office in between. Nancy kept Sadie hopping with a list of things to do, but Sadie met the challenges head-on. She loved the pace of the office, the deadlines they were trying to meet before going to press, the drama of fielding new stories, and deciding what to tell their readers.


  The first copies of tomorrow’s edition were coming off the press as Sadie prepared to leave. Nancy tossed her a copy. “A memento of your first day’s work,” she said. “Congratulations.”

  Sadie clutched the newspaper against her chest as she walked back to Hanover House. As she passed the establishments that had refused to give her jobs, she held her head higher. She was gainfully employed now. She could support herself. And her fear that Jack would hunt her down and drag her back was diminishing. Things were working in her favor now, and she felt she could do anything.

  Maybe someday she could even go back and get Caleb.

  Hope burgeoned inside her, and she pictured herself playing on the beach with him as he started to walk, teaching him to float in the water, signing him up for a “Water Babies” class at the Y. Now that her feet were on surer ground, she dared to dream of security for the baby too.

  She reached Hanover House and trotted up the stairs to the porch, slipped in through the screen door, and found Blair, Morgan, and Mrs. Hern in the kitchen.

  “Hi,” she said brightly.

  Morgan looked up at her and smiled, like she was genuinely glad to see her. “Sadie, how was your first day at work?”

  “Fantastic,” Sadie said. “I did everything. I proofed articles, filed, and even took information for articles over the phone. It was fun. And look at this.” She tossed the newspaper down on the kitchen table. “My first issue.”

  “Tomorrow’s paper?” Blair asked.

  Morgan smiled as she looked down at the headline, but her smile quickly crashed. The glass she was holding slipped out of her hand and shattered on the floor. “Blair, look!”

  Blair grabbed the paper. “Convicted Killer Living at Hanover House.”

  “It’s Rick,” Morgan said, starting to cry. “Look at that picture.”

  “A mug shot,” Blair said. She brought her eyes up to her sister. “I thought there were no arrests. I looked under both names. There was nothing.”

  Sadie’s hands were shaking as she pulled out a chair and sat down. She shouldn’t have brought the paper home, she thought. She couldn’t believe she had been so stupid, so insensitive. But she hadn’t even noticed the headline. She had just been so excited about the feel of the paper in her hands and the knowledge that she’d had a small part in it.