Stargazey Point

by Shelley Noble

  “Thank you.” Abbie’s voice drew him back to reality.

  “For what?”

  “For giving these kids something to look forward to. It’s been a bad day for them.”

  “One of many.” But he felt unjustifiably touched by her thanks. Whether he deserved it or not was another question.

  “This has got to be a quick one, because some people”—Sarah stopped to look at certain members of the group—“have tutoring today.”

  “No, Miss Sarah. This is better.”

  “So it is. But Cab has work to do and so do you. I’m sure he’ll let us come back.”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Cab.

  He showed them the platform. Moved them back while he turned on the engine and the platform jerked to life.

  “But there’re no horses,” Lucy complained. Her pigtails swung as she followed the moving rods.

  “They’re getting a fresh coat of paint. You can look in at the door, but you’ll have to wait to get a closer look.”

  Cab stepped inside the workshop, and the others crowded into the doorway. Joe squirmed to the front of the line.

  “I’m gonna ride that one.” Joe pointed to Lady, half covered by a tarp.

  “She was my favorite, too. Her name is Midnight Lady,” Cab said. He managed to grab Joe as he darted forward. He handed him back to Abbie, who looked apologetic. “But her mane was just painted, so she can’t be touched until it dries.”

  There was pushing from the back, but before pandemonium broke out, Abbie had moved the front group to the back and maneuvered another batch to the front. They looked at the animals, and she moved them on, too. In a few minutes, everyone had gotten a firsthand look.

  “Now I have to get back to work,” Cab said, trying to sound chipper as all hell. Actually he was feeling a bit overwhelmed.

  “Well, thank you for having us,” Abbie said.

  The two of them had to physically force the group out into the parking lot.

  “See ya tomorrah, Mr. Cab,” Dani said, all smiles.

  Cab nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Thanks,” Abbie said. “I mean it.” And she hurried after the group before he could even respond.

  “I want to work on the carousel history, too,” Kyle said.

  “Me, too.”

  “And me, too.”

  “Me, too. Me, too.”

  “We all want to work on the carousel.”

  Abbie turned, and their eyes met over the heads of the children. And how could he say anything but “Fine”?

  I’ve never seen them so enthusiastic,” Sarah said as they climbed the steps. “The carousel’s so close that if it was a snake it would’ve bit me, and I didn’t even think to make use of it.”

  “You wanted to do family histories. Something that should be done.”

  “But not by kids.”

  “This will be the start, and we’ll see where it goes from here.”

  “Works for me. Hey, you guys calm down and listen to Abbie. She’s gonna tell you what to do next.”

  They started by cleaning up the media room. Two of the older kids printed out a sign that said media room, and they hung it on the door. They moved equipment and labeled shelves, then talked about the carousel.

  It was almost six before Abbie realized she wasn’t going to make it back to Crispin House in time to help with dinner.

  She called Marnie and apologized profusely. “I just started a project and it’s taking longer than I expected.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll leave you a plate in the oven. Or get Cab to take you out to dinner.”

  “Thanks, it’s just that I told the kids . . .”

  “It’s my meeting night, and Millie will be content with Jeopardy! Go have some fun.”

  Several kids left for home. A few minutes later a woman came in and spoke to Sarah. She looked over at Abbie, gave her a lengthy once-over, then Sarah brought her over and introduced her as Jenny’s grandmother, Momo. She was young, probably not over forty years of age. She was polite and curious.

  As soon as the last batch left, Sarah began turning off the lights, and Jerome reluctantly shut down the computer. He gathered up the twins who were practically hidden by the couch cushions where they were watching a snowy rerun of Flipper. He turned off the ancient set, collected their backpacks, and led them out.

  Sarah plopped down on the couch the twins had just vacated.

  Abbie collapsed beside her.

  “Tired?”

  “Exhausted.”

  “Just wait until summer. Most of them will come first thing in the morning and stay until we kick them out.”

  “Summer? You’re using that ‘we’ awfully freely.”

  Sarah lifted her eyebrows. “I’m counting on you.”

  They were staring at each other when the door opened and Cab walked in.

  “Sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

  “Depends,” Sarah said.

  “Depends on what?”

  “On what you’re offering.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Sorry, I already got a date.”

  “Does she?” Cab asked.

  Abbie shrugged. “No idea.”

  “What about you? Do you have a—” He stopped abruptly, remembering what he’d heard about the last time someone mentioned dates. “Something to do tonight?”

  Sarah guffawed into her hand.

  Abbie gave her a look and turned to him. “Do I have a date? No. But you don’t have to ask me to dinner.” Her eyes narrowed. “Did Marnie call you?”

  She knew in an instant that she’d guessed right. Cab looked totally guilty. It was pretty endearing.

  Sarah had moved onto silent chortling.

  Cab cleared his throat. “Well, yes, but I was going to come over anyway. I thought you wanted to hear what the assessor had to say.”

  The assessor. She’d forgotten all about him.

  “I do.”

  “Not here, you don’t. I’m locking up.” Sarah jangled keys at them. “But the Silver Surfer is open nights, and it has a great ambience for talking if you don’t mind screaming over loud music. Bet you haven’t even been to that end of town, have you?”

  “I don’t recall seeing anything called the Silver Surfer.”

  “Up-scale beach bum.” Sarah grinned. “Expensive junk food.”

  “Actually I was thinking barbecue,” Cab told her. “What do you say? With Silas closed, Sonny’s has the best barbecue in the county. It’s about a half hour away, but it’s worth the drive.”

  Abbie bit her lip. It was tempting. And she did want to hear about the assessor. Besides, now that he’d mentioned dinner, she realized she was starving.

  “You had her at barbecue,” Sarah said. “Now get the hell out of here. This mess ain’t going anywhere overnight. See you”—she pointed to Abbie—“at two.”

  Sarah waited for them to go out then locked the door behind them.

  “Sure you don’t want to go?” Abbie asked.

  “Yep.”

  “You want a ride home?” Cab asked.

  “Nope,” Sarah said and walked into the night.

  “She certainly has a theatrical streak,” Abbie said, watching Sarah’s slim retreating figure.

  “She learned it from the best.”

  “Ervina?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Is Ervina really . . .” Abbie groped for a word. Not a witch. A wisewoman? She was certainly that.

  “Full of crap?” He sighed. “Not really. But it’s hard to always tell what’s real and what’s posturing.” He opened the car door for her, and she climbed agilely into the front seat.

  The town looked deserted. The porch light was on at the inn, but only one lamp shone in the first-floor window, and the windows a
bove were all dark.

  Abbie wondered if Bethanne was sitting alone at the kitchen table, missing her husband. Or maybe she was out drinking margaritas with Penny at the Silver Surfer, which was open and lit up like a giant pinball machine. Cars were parked along front and in the spaces across the street.

  It seemed to be the only hot spot in town.

  “Do you still get tourists in the summer?”

  “Some. It was at an all-time low a couple of years ago, but with the beach rebuilding, they’ve started coming back. Last summer Bethanne had most of her rooms let out for most of the season.” He sighed as he looked ahead to where the headlights carved out a cone in the darkness. “But ‘most’ isn’t good enough if you want to make a go of it. For the inn or any other business. We’re working on it.”

  He turned down a road that curved away from town. It was black as pitch, and she couldn’t imagine where this place was. It felt like they were at the end of the earth. They were. She’d felt it more than once since she’d been here. The end of the world, the end of the line.

  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, someth
ing 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.