Stargazey Point (17 page)

The phone scans the rubble, stops on the solitary figure of a woman on her knees digging frantically in the mud, her white-blond hair catching the light. Two villagers drag her away, as she kicks and screams and tries to return to her effort. The phone jerks, and the screen goes black, but not before Cab saw why she was digging.

He covered his face with his hands. He should have never looked at that heartbreaking moment. Abbie digging in the mud; the buried donkey, wild eyed and panicked and struggling beside her; the small arm that stuck out from the mud.

No wonder she was so skittish. It was amazing she wasn’t stark raving mad. And how was he going to face her and pretend like he didn’t know?

He shut down the screen. Closed the laptop. Went to the kitchen for another beer, then out to the porch. There were a few lights in the houses along the street; some were vacant. He looked up at the sky, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the YouTube video. And he knew just as sure as he was standing there that he’d go back and watch it again, and he would read more.

Because information at your fingertips was a constant siren call, a temptation, and when it was about someone you knew . . . He gave up and went back into the house, opened the laptop, and sat down.

Two hours later, he’d found little more than he already knew. A couple of small articles about Landseer’s arrest. Another announcing his death. Cabot read it twice; the man was forty-four.

And his first thought was not about Landseer’s death or the mud slide, but what was Abbie doing with a man probably fifteen years older than her?

He read on; learned about the subsequent disappearance of the local men who had assisted the camera crew.

There was no investigation of Werner’s death or the other missing men. No retribution on the company whose shoddy practices had caused so much damage and tragedy.

And no more mentions of Abbie. It was like she had dropped off the face of the earth. Perhaps she had. Perhaps that was why she was here.

Chapter 11

A
bbie began work on the gazebo the next morning. She’d stayed up late, drawing plans in her as yet unused journal. And though she was no artist, she was thrilled with the way the gazebo had turned out in her mind. Now to make it a reality.

She stopped by the garden shed to get her hat, which the sisters insisted she wear; gathered up rake, broom, hammer, and a makeshift toolbox; and hurried down the path. She swept off the sand, pulled the weeds away, tested the flooring, poked and prodded, shaded her eyes and inspected the roof. The old summerhouse appeared to be structurally sound, which was a bit of a miracle considering all the storms it had withstood. It would make her job easier.

She worked with a vengeance all morning. There was really no rush to get it finished, and she knew that her desire to repair the gazebo was only part enthusiasm. The other part was avoidance. She’d have to face Cab sometime soon and try to explain why she’d reacted the way she did. And she wasn’t looking forward to that.

When the summerhouse was clean, she stopped to look out over the ocean. The view was breathtaking. She’d seen a few such views on her travels, those that actually stopped your breath, like a camera shutter closing, while discovery hovered shimmering before you, until the shot was taken and the whirr and click of the camera brought you back to earth, and appreciation became a conscious thing again.

Stargazey Point was majestic but personable, vast yet comforting, formidable but engaging. And if she stood here waxing about the scenery, the gazebo would still be a dilapidated old outhouse when Beau’s birthday finally arrived.

She went back for the hammer, placed a box of nails on one of the benches, and began her systematic search for loose boards. Some she merely had to reinforce by driving finishers at an angle against the floor joists. Some needed to be replaced and she marked these with a black marker.

Several splinters and a mashed thumb later, she was forced to put on a pair of work gloves that she’d found with the rest of the tools. They were cumbersome and slowed her down considerably. After several minutes, she threw them off in frustration. One flew right out of the gazebo to the ground. She stood, looked over the railing, and came face-to-face with two small ebony faces peering up at her.

A boy and a girl, looking so much alike they must be twins. They couldn’t be over five or six.

“Hi,” Abbie said.

They didn’t say a word, but turned and ran off toward the beach. Abbie watched them run over the sand, wondering what they were doing alone so close to the water. When she saw them turn and disappear down a path through the dunes, she went back to work.

She’d just completed the floor and was starting on the railings when the lunch triangle rang. She reluctantly packed her tools, slipped the toolbox under one of the benches, and climbed the hill to the house.

Marnie was waiting for her on the kitchen steps. “Productive morning?”

“Very, but I need to buy some lumber and find someone with a skill saw.”

Marnie’s eyebrows lifted.

“Oh, it’s not bad, just a few pieces of flooring and a couple of the benches. It should only take an afternoon—or two.” She smiled. It felt good. “You don’t happen to own a skill saw do you?”

“No, but I know who does.”

Just the tone of her voice set off Abbie’s alarm bells. “If it’s who I think you mean, thanks, but no.”

“Hell, Abbie. You ran out on him without explanation. You might have hurt his feelings.”

“Whose feelings?” Millie asked from the doorway. “Now you two hurry up. I’ve got pimento cheese sandwiches all made.”

Marnie pulled a face. “Just saying,” she said under her breath and went through the open doorway.

“It wasn’t a date,” Abbie said under her breath, following close behind.

“Are you two tellin’ secrets?” Millie looked eager to join in.

“No, Abbie was just asking who owned a skill saw.”

“Skill saw? Why on earth?”

“Abbie is going to refurbish the summerhouse for Beau’s birthday.”

A frown creased Millie’s face. “That old thing. It’s practically fallin’ down.”

“Which is why it’s getting a spruce-up.”

“And it will be a nice place to sit on warm days,” Abbie added.

Millie shook her head. “I would never go out there. I won’t.”

Shocked at her vehemence, Abbie glanced at Marnie.

Marnie looked thoroughly disgusted. “I think we’ll have some early beans in a week or so.”

“I’ll be glad to have fresh beans,” Millie said without missing a beat. “Don’t know where the ones at the supermarket come from. Probably some South American country where you don’t know what kind of conditions they’ve been grown in. And the seafood. The Publix last week had shrimp caught in Thailand. What kind of fools are those folks? We have more shrimp than we can eat right here without going to Timbuktu and back for what’s right in our own backyard. Jerome might be able to come over here after school lets out. He’s good with his hands.”

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Marnie said perfectly seriously. “I’ll call over to Hadley’s and ask him to go over to the community center and ask him.”

After lunch, Millie went upstairs to listen to the radio. Marnie made the call to Hadley, and she and Abbie walked outside together.

“She’s fine, you know,” Marnie said when they were some distance from the house. “She’s dotty, strays from the point, and gets confused sometimes. But she’s always been like that. ‘One to chase after her own thoughts,’ Momma always said. But she’s a good soul under all that superficial prejudice. She wouldn’t let a person starve no matter what their pedigree—or their color.”

They parted at the garden gate, Marnie to nurture the nascent beans, Abbie down to the gazebo. She wasn’t alone. Her two visitors from the morning were back, and they’d brought three friends. They were sitting in a circle on the grass playing some kind of game with stones, but they stopped and turned to watch Abbie as she came toward them.

Two of the new kids were older. A girl, maybe twelve, with fire engine red hair pulled up to the crown of her head into two ponytails and freckles so thick across her face to almost be a mask. The other was a serious-looking boy, of maybe ten, with stringy blond hair that fell over his eyes. Abbie wondered why they weren’t in school. A girl, who looked hardly old enough to walk, stood on the edge of the circle rocking back and forth between two feet.

Abbie smiled but didn’t try to approach them. She’d met lots of kids in her work, and she’d learned you couldn’t push friendship or trust on them, especially when their culture was different from yours. And so far, just about everything about Stargazey Point was different. It could almost be a foreign country.

There wasn’t much more she could do without Jerome. But she could take a closer look at the roof while she was waiting for him to arrive. She dragged a heavy wooden ladder out from the shed and wrestled it up the side of the gazebo. When the top rested against the most solid-looking eave and the feet were braced in the long grass, she tested the first rung, then climbed up.

The ladder groaned, shifted, and bowed beneath her weight. She carefully took another step, and another. And was suddenly surrounded by the five children, hands grasping the ladder to steady it and looking curiously up at her.

She smiled down at them. “Thanks.”

“What’chu doin’, missus?” This from the new boy.

“I’m fixing up the gazebo.”

He nodded seriously. “What’chu doin’ that for?”

“I want to make it beautiful again.”

“What’chu climbin’ that ladder for?”

“To see how bad the roof is.”

He nodded again. The heads of the other four lifted and fell as they followed the question-and-answer session.

“It’s bad. It gotta hole in it.” He smiled, broad and proud.

The other four giggled. He cuffed the closest one, who happened to be the boy twin. He didn’t cry, just frowned and rubbed his ear vigorously where the blow had landed.

“Well, I figured it might be bad, but I want to repair it. What do you know about roofs?”

He screwed up his face, looked up to the sky. “Roy, he crawled up on our roof and fell off. Broke his arm. Got a cast and everybody wrote their name on it.”

“A good reason not to climb up on a roof,” she said.

“Then why are you goin’ up on it?”

“I’m not, I’m just taking a look to assess the damage.”

“Huh.”

They were silent while Abbie inspected the roof. There was definitely a hole in it, and some of the shingles had broken off. The eaves seemed to be solid enough, though it would take someone more knowledgeable than her to repair it. She climbed down the ladder.

They all held on until she reached the ground, then they dispersed as rapidly as dandelion down, stopping about five feet away.

“I bet’chu could use some help.”

“I might.” Though Abbie didn’t know what she could find for five children under twelve to do.

“What’chu gonna pay?” the smallest girl asked.

“She ain’t gonna pay you nuthin’,” said the boy twin and cuffed her on the ear.

The trickle-down principle,
thought Abbie,
as efficient here as with any corporation
.

The girl stepped away, mumbling something Abbie couldn’t hear. Then she stuck out her tongue and ran away.

“JuJu Jenny, JuJu Jenny,” chanted the older boy. The other three joined in and ran after her. Abbie watched until their cries were drowned out by the waves and they were mere dots on the beach. Then she lowered the ladder and dragged it back to the shed.

W
hen Jerome arrived a little after four o’clock, Abbie was sitting in the gazebo, staring out to sea. She watched him come down the walk with long bouncing strides and she thought how much more comfortable he looked in jeans than he had wearing that ridiculously small waiter uniform her first night.

Someone was with him and at first she thought it must be Marnie showing him the way, but as they got closer, she recognized Bethanne.

“Hope you don’t mind that I traipsed along with Jerome,” she said a little breathlessly and Abbie thought maybe a little nervously.

“Of course not,” Abbie said. “I’m glad to see you.” She
was
glad to see her even if it meant she had an apology to make.

“It’s beautiful,” Bethanne said.

“It will be,” Abbie said.

Bethanne stepped closer to look, and Abbie took the opportunity to talk to Jerome.

“Yes, ma’am?”

The ma’am made her feel ancient. “My name is Abbie.”

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Abbie?”

Abbie gave up and told him what she needed.

“I got a gas skill saw,” he said and leaped onto the gazebo floor.

“I marked out the worst ones,” Abbie said.

Jerome nodded, placed one foot on the marked board, and tested the strength. He tested the next and then the others she had marked until he returned to the entrance. “You need some two-bys; I can probably get Otis to take me down to the lumberyard and get some scraps. Fix up those seats, too.”

“Great, when do you think you can get started?”