The Weekenders (34 page)

Luck and timing were factors, too. What if his sophomore-year roommate hadn't been Matt Seaver, a computer nerd who shared Nate's fascination with the Internet? What if, after he'd been dumped by Riley Nolan, he hadn't met Cassie Barnes, who was as brilliant at business as she was beautiful? And what if the three of them hadn't landed in San Carlos, with some of the highest real estate prices in the country, and been totally frustrated in their efforts to find a condo they could afford?

The intense heat was making him sleepy. He yawned. Yeah, luck and timing, and a decent family, and yeah, he had to hope his own smarts and hard work had something to do with it.

Things were lining up again, he felt, now that he was home. All he lacked was a partner, somebody who would help him build a new dream from the ground up. He'd have to forget about Riley Nolan, though. She'd made it crystal clear that they had no future together.

Nate felt a tug on his line. He sat up and started reeling, watching as the silvery shadow of a nice five-pound trout skimmed through the water. Hmm. Luck and timing again. Maybe this was an omen.

 

39

Left to her own devices, Maggy would sleep until noon. Friday morning, Riley went into her bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. She looked down on her sleeping daughter's face. She was sun-browned, and her toffee-colored hair was lightened, too. Her pale pink lips were slightly ajar, and the room was quiet except for her deep, even breaths. Her hot-natured daughter had kicked off all the covers and was sprawled sideways on the pink-sprigged sheet.

“Hey, Maggy,” Riley called softly. “Sleepyhead.”

Her daughter sat up in bed, stretched, and yawned. “What time is it?”

“It's still early. Just barely eight.”

“Good.” Maggy launched herself backward onto the mattress. “See ya, Mom.”

“Honey, I just wanted to let you know I'm going into town this morning, to try to buy back our house.”

Maggy's eyes widened. “Oh, Mom. That is so awesome. I'll get my old room back, and we won't have to share a bathroom.…”

“Wait. I said I'd try. The house is being sold at an auction, and that means that if somebody else comes along with more money, I might get outbid.”

“Then you just outbid them. Right? I mean, it's our house.”

“Not anymore,” Riley said. “It belongs to the bank now. Look, there are some things I need to tell you. I thought you were too young to understand before, but now, I really don't have a choice. I'm sorry, baby, but you're gonna have to grow up in a hurry today.”

Maggy clutched her hand. “What, Mama? Are you sick?”

“No, baby, that's not it. I'm healthy as a horse, and I'm not going anywhere. It's about your dad.”

“Oh.” Maggy crossed her eyes. “That again.”

“Just listen. Your dad made a big mistake. Several big ones. I know you want to think he was perfect, but he wasn't. None of us is perfect, including me, which is okay. And it's good that you want to remember what a great dad he was to you, and how much he loved you, because that part about your daddy is true, and nothing can change it.”

Maggy nodded. “But there was bad stuff too, wasn't there? Stuff he did that hurt you and made you cry, which is why you were going to get a divorce, right?”

“That's true. I don't want to dwell on that. I want to move ahead with our lives. But I have to deal with the fact that his bad choices, and some dishonest things he did, are going to affect our family for a long time to come.”

Tears filled her daughter's eyes. “I know, Mom. BeBo told me a little bit, when we went for ice cream yesterday.”

“He did?” Riley was again taken by surprise at her brother's sudden streak of maturity.

Maggy nodded. “Yeah. Dad took your money that Granddad left you, and BeBo's, and Mimi's too, didn't he?”

“I'm afraid so, sweetie. I think he intended to pay it back, and he had his reasons. He thought he was doing it for the business, but it turned out to be a really bad thing.”

“And that's why we're poor and have to live with Mimi,” Maggy concluded.

“We're not really poor,” Riley protested. “But it's true we'll have to change the way we live. And we may not get our old house here back. Your Aunt Roo is being incredibly generous and giving me some money to try to buy it, but I just don't know if it will be enough. Either way, we'll always have a place to live here on Belle Isle. And when we get back to Raleigh in the fall, I'll have to get a job.”

“That's cool,” Maggy said. “But what about my new school? Can I still go?”

“I think so. Anyway, let's worry about one thing at a time.”

*   *   *

Since the auction was to start at 10 a.m., she took the 8:30 ferry and was waiting outside the bank when the doors opened. As promised, Roo had gone to her bank the previous day to make arrangements for the money, but the teller had informed her that such a large withdrawal would require the signature of a bank officer, who was out of the office until late in the day.

“They said they'd have the cashier's check ready for you at the receptionist's desk first thing Friday,” Roo reported.

“It's for five hundred and fifty thousand, and I'm sorry it's not more,” she added. “I took a flier with one of those damn dot-coms in the nineties. Myspace. Phooey!”

“That's more money than I ever could have hoped for,” Riley told her aunt. “And I can never thank you enough.”

At nine o'clock, she rushed inside the bank and made a beeline for the receptionist's desk. “I'm picking up an envelope for Riley Nolan,” she told the elderly man.

He fumbled around the desk for a full five minutes, mumbling her name over and over. “Riley Nolan. Riley Nolan. Riley Nolan.” After he'd turned over the same piece of paper for the third time, she wanted to scream.

“Nothing here,” he said with a shrug.

“Can you go ask one of the tellers?” Riley said tersely. “I'm sort of in a hurry.”

By now customers were streaming into the bank, and the line at each teller's window was five or six deep, yet the old man waited patiently at the end of the longest line.

“Come on, come on,” she muttered, glancing again at her watch. It was 9:20. She'd studied the online auction rules and catalog the night before, and knew she'd need to register and present her proof of funds before being given a bidder's paddle.

Finally, twenty minutes later, the old codger sauntered over. She reached impatiently for the envelope.

“Sorry. Need to see some ID,” he said. She produced her driver's license and he studied it for what seemed like an hour.

“That's a nice likeness of you,” he said finally. “Hey! I know you. You used to be the TV lady from WRAL. Riley from Raleigh. Whatever happened to you, anyway?”

“I fell down a rabbit hole and lost my way,” Riley told him.

*   *   *

The parking lot at the Seafarer Motel on the highway was packed. She found a spot at the far edge and managed to wedge her car in between a Mercedes with South Carolina tags and a tricked-out RV with Florida tags. If she'd had any notion that a bank-owned real estate auction in an obscure corner of North Carolina would be of little interest to the outside world, she now knew better.

Signs in the lobby pointed to the Admiral's Conference Room. She could hear the buzz of voices as she sprinted down the narrow hall toward the room. It was 9:55 a.m.

Riley was still gasping for breath as she hurriedly filled out the paperwork for her bidding paddle and presented a photocopy of her proof of funds. The clerk barely looked up as she handed her a numbered cardboard paddle.

“They're fixin' to start,” she said, motioning to another couple who'd just arrived at the table.

The conference room was lined with rows of folding chairs. A stage had been set up at the front of the room, with a wooden lectern front and center. A large easel held a blown-up cover photograph of what she recognized as an old gas station from the next town over. She looked around for an empty chair but, finding none, claimed a spot standing against the wall.

A woman walked up to the lectern and tested the microphone. “Can y'all hear me?” she drawled. “In the back, can y'all hear?”

Assured by the crowd, she nodded and sat down at a long table at the edge of the right side of the stage.

A short, bandy-legged man dressed in starched and pressed blue jeans, a bright yellow logoed polo shirt, and an enormous ten-gallon cowboy hat took her place at the lectern.

“Okay, all right, welcome everybody. I'm Colonel John Fowlkes, and I'll be your auctioneer today. That lovely lady at the table over there is my able assistant and wife, Miss Martha. She'll be keeping the bidding and me straight today, so y'all mind your manners and we'll have us a great auction.”

Members of the audience laughed appropriately at the colonel's seasoned patter.

“In case you're new to these auctions, be advised that all properties are in ‘as is' condition, with no warranties about condition stated or implied. If you're the successful bidder, proceed immediately to Miss Martha to make arrangements for payment and completion of paperwork.

“The first item in our auction today is number zero-zero-one. It's a concrete block structure, built around 1963, located out on the county highway, with two hundred feet of highway access. Formerly used as a gas station, what you do with it today is your business. We'll start the bidding on this fine building at five thousand. All right, here we go.

“Who'll give me five thousand?”

Half a dozen hands shot up into the air.

“That's a start, folks. Now six. Who'll give me six? Seven? Gimme seven for this outstanding commercial property. Good. Eight? I have eight. Nine? Gimme nine, now folks.”

There was a pause in the bidding.

“Nine? Get serious here, folks, this is a two-thousand-square-foot building with prime highway access. Wake up, people! Did y'all not have your Wheaties today?”

A couple of bid paddles went up.

“That's more like it,” the colonel said. A few minutes later, when the action slowed again he shook his head sadly. “All right, we're stalled at twelve five. Is that it? Only twelve five?” He glanced over at his wife. “Call the sheriff, Martha, this is a crime right here!”

She shrugged, and he hammered the building down. “Twelve five it is, and bidder two eighty-eight, you just bought yourself a gas station. See the lady!”

*   *   *

The Sand Dollar Lane house was not at the top of the catalogue, which was a relief. It was on the last page of the four-page catalog, with a thumbnail-size bad color photo and a brief description:

Stunning custom-built waterfront Belle Isle manor house with every luxury. Five bedrooms, including master suite with ocean-view balcony, four baths, gourmet kitchen, formal living and dining room, media room, three-bay garage, professional landscaping, patio with outdoor kitchen, fire pit. Minimum bid: $400K.

Riley didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the last line. They'd spent four hundred thousand dollars building the house six years ago, and Wendell had refinanced it for an astonishing two million dollars, and now it was being auctioned off, as Parrish had warned, with a minimum bid of less than a quarter of that. But if the bidding went higher, past half a million dollars, she'd be forced to drop out.

She scanned the room looking for a familiar face, but she was too far at the back of the room to see much more than the backs of other bidders.

The morning dragged on as Colonel Fowlkes sold off a convenience store, half a dozen condos in an ill-fated complex in Wilmington, a fire-ravaged duplex in Southpoint, and eleven builder's lots in an unfinished subdivision the next county over.

Riley was surprised at how cheaply some of the properties sold for, while others, based on description alone, fetched double the price she'd expected.

There had been no time for breakfast that morning, so at noon she wandered out of the room and into the motel's modest coffee shop, where every stool at the counter was full, and every table occupied.

She was turning to leave when she saw Nate Milas heading directly toward her, a determined gleam in his eye.

Her pulse raced as he grew near. His hair was newly cut, he was clean-shaven, and dressed more formally than she'd seen him over the summer, in jeans, a pale yellow dress shirt, and a well-cut linen sport coat. He wore polished oxblood loafers on his sockless feet. He looked like what he actually was, a wealthy entrepreneur with a head full of plans and a pocketful of cash.

There was no place to run and hide, so she stood her ground.

“Riley, can we talk? Please?” He stood so close she could smell the starch in his shirt.

“What about? Your plans to buy up all the land on the island and turn it into Milas World?”

“That's not what I want. At all. I'm sorry that Wendell drove you into debt buying all that land, but there was nothing I could do to stop him.”

She stared. “You knew what he was doing? Buying all that land for the north end?”

“Well, sure. I'd been watching the land sales records in the weekly newspaper, and I saw that he was making a run at most of the undeveloped property. And overpaying, from what I could tell.”

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Riley snapped.

“I heard the rumors around town, six months ago, that he was in over his head,” Nate said. “I went to Wendell, offered to partner up with him, invest some capital, if he'd be willing to change the scope of what he'd planned.”

“And what did Wendell say to that?”

“Said he wasn't interested in having a partner, and that he knew exactly what he was doing. In short, he told me to buzz off.”

Riley felt herself doing a slow burn. “So you sat back and waited for it all to blow up in his face. And now that it has, you get to swoop in and scoop it all up at a bargain price. It's a happy day for you, right?”