The Weekenders (36 page)

“Whatever.” Maggy crossed her eyes. “But I'm going over there tonight, and I'm cutting down my tire swing Dad put up for me. And you can't stop me.”

“And when was the last time you got on that tire swing?” Riley asked.

“I don't care. It's mine. Dad made it for me, and I'm not gonna have some weird new kid using it.”

“All right,” Riley said, settling back on her seat. “Maybe you've got a point. And maybe while we're over there cutting down your tire swing we'll grab my staghorn fern by the back patio and dig up my David Austin rosebushes too.”

 

42

A week later, Maggy stuck her head in the library doorway. “Mom, Parrish is here. She said for me to tell you to put on your bathing suit on the double.”

Riley slammed down the lid of her laptop computer, not wanting her daughter to see what she'd been working on all morning. “When did you get back?”

“A little while ago. And yeah, I had some lunch, and yeah, I tested my blood. And no thanks, I don't want to go hang out with you old ladies. I'm meeting the kids at the pool.”

“I guess that answers all my questions.” Riley stood up and stretched. She'd been sitting at the desk for what seemed like hours, scanning industry Web sites, making notes to herself, and looking for job listings. She was actually glad to have a diversion.

*   *   *

“We're not going to the pool?” Riley asked, as Parrish turned her golf cart in the opposite direction of the country club.

“Too crowded. I dropped Ed off for his golf game this morning, and the parking lot at the club was already full. I could hear a million screaming brats, all of them intent on peeing in the shallow end. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to revisit our old stomping grounds.”

“The north end? Why do you wanna go there? It's gonna be too depressing.”

“We haven't been to the beach together all summer, and Fourth of July is next weekend,” Parrish said. “You can't stay locked up inside forever. Come on, it'll be fun. I packed the cooler with cold drinks and some snacks. We can park our chairs on the beach and take a walk and then come back and bust a chill.”

“Bust a chill?”

“That's what David calls vegging out,” Parrish said. “He called this morning. He and Amanda are coming for the long weekend. It's pathetic how excited I am at the prospect of seeing him.”

“Not pathetic at all. I think it's sweet.”

Parrish pulled the cart into the small parking lot at the north end dune walkover. “I'll get the cooler bag if you grab the chairs.”

They climbed the stairs to the boardwalk and paused at the landing to look out at the water. Turquoise waves rolled lazily into the shore, and a flock of seagulls swooped and dove over something on the water's surface. Not a soul was in sight.

Riley inhaled deeply, closed her eyes, and took in the smell of the salt water and the faint scent of beach rosemary. The sun beat down on her head, and the soles of her feet in their flimsy flip-flops were superheated from the sunbaked decking.

“Man,” she said, breathing out. “I forget how amazing this is. Every winter, back in Raleigh, when it's cold and gray and dreary, I wish I could be right back here, just soaking up all this sunshine. You were right. This is just what I needed.”

“I'm almost always right,” Parrish said. “You need to keep that in mind.”

They parked their gear on a level patch of sand. “Come on,” Parrish said, after spreading a towel on her chair. “Let's go exploring.”

The tide was out, so they splashed through ankle-deep water, stooping occasionally to pick up shells, or stopping to marvel at a school of dolphins dipping and cutting through the waves on a path that paralleled theirs for so long the two friends joked that they were being followed.

At the far north tip of the island, where the ocean met the river, the shoreline receded into a rocky jetty. The two women clambered over boulders slick with algae, then climbed onto the seawall and gazed toward the maritime forest just ahead.

“Take a good look now,” Riley advised. “Because a year from now, this will probably be either a Howard Johnson's or a Motel Six.”

“Stop being such a pessimist. Did Nate Milas actually buy this parcel? I thought your grandfather left it in some sort of trust.”

“He did, but Wendell was scheming to do some kind of land swap to move the sanctuary to a piece of swamp in the middle of the island—a piece without that all-important waterfront access,” Riley said. “He said that was a condition the hotel people insisted on. They claimed they'd keep the preserve, but they just wanted to pave what they called ‘access trails'—otherwise known as roads—through it.”

“And did Wendell manage to do that?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Well, before you start assuming this is all gonna turn into a HoJo, maybe you should do some research. Maybe you could actually have a discussion with Nate.”

“Not happening,” Riley said flatly.

“You're going to have to talk to him sooner or later. He now owns a big chunk of this island. What he does is going to impact your family's business, and vice versa.”

“Don't remind me.” Riley pressed onward, drawn toward the wildlife sanctuary just ahead. A bronze plaque marked the entrance to the area.

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF EARLINE RILEY, WHOSE LOVE OF NATURE INSPIRED ALL SHE KNEW
. Beneath the words was a silhouette of Riley's grandmother. As always, she placed the palm of her hand on the sign. “Hi, Nanny,” she whispered.

She'd always thought the wildlife sanctuary was the most magical spot on the island, and it still held a powerful sway on her imagination. She stepped over the trunk of a sun-bleached live oak, so battered by wind that its branches were nearly parallel to the sandy soil.

The temperature dropped noticeably once she was beneath the tree canopy.

“Here,” Parrish said, catching up. “Bug spray.”

As they wandered among the live oaks, red cedars, and bay laurels, they heard a loud flapping sound and looked up to see a pair of snowy egrets rising from the top of the canopy.

“Remember when we were in Girl Scouts and Roo brought us out here to count species for our bird-watching badge?” Riley asked.

“I'd never seen a cedar waxwing before,” Parrish said. “And I'll never forget when we climbed that tree and peeked inside that huge nest and saw all those just-hatched white ibis.”

“Remember how we'd make little fairy houses in the crooks of the live oaks?” Parrish asked, leaning against a tree trunk.

“And plan which tree we'd live in after we ran away from home,” Riley said. “And then Billy did run away when he was nine and Daddy tried to make him join the swim team, and that lasted about two hours, until he got hungry and scared when he heard a hoot owl.”

As they got deeper into the maritime forest, they pushed aside branches of holly, yaupon, and wild olive, flinching when catbrier branches scratched their bare ankles.

After thirty minutes, they emerged from the undergrowth to find themselves in a wide, sandy area.

“Son of a bitch,” Riley exclaimed. The exposed roots of bulldozed old-growth live oaks reached like ugly tentacles into the sky. Blackened tree stumps poked from the soil, and a huge stack of newly cut trees had been scraped to one side of the land like so many pickup sticks, where a bright yellow Bobcat was apparently stuck in a patch of mud.

“Oh, no,” Parrish said, looking around in dismay. “Do you think Wendell did this?”

“Who else? I'm pretty sure this is the start of the Pirate's Point tract, where the hotel was supposed to go.” She did a quick about-face. “Let's go back to the beach. This is too depressing.”

*   *   *

“Speaking of Wendell,” Parrish said, as they returned to their gear, “have you guys figured out a succession plan yet?”

“That'll be up to Mama. You know, Wendell liked to think of himself as a one-man show. For now, Bruce Boore, who ran the office in Wilmington and handled the sales and marketing end of things, is coming down on Monday. He's been doing the nitty-gritty stuff, dealing with the tenants in the village and fielding inquiries about lot sales and stuff. And I guess he's been staving off our creditors. I've been dreading all those credit card statements we found in Wendell's office.”

“You won't be liable for all those debts,” Parrish said. “At least, I don't think so.”

“If I am, I am,” Riley said. “I've already lost my house, so what else are they gonna do to me? They can't get blood from a turnip, right?”

She reached into the cooler bag Parrish had provided and brought out a thermos bottle, which she opened.

“Margaritas! Nice touch,” she said, pouring a stream of the chartreuse drink into an insulated plastic tumbler and offering it to her friend.

“Not for me, thanks,” Parrish said hastily. “The older I get, the more I realize I can't drink in the heat of the day without earning myself a wicked headache.”

“I can,” Riley said, taking a swig of her cocktail. She stood up, stripped off her bathing suit cover-up, and began applying sunscreen. She glanced over at Parrish, who was uncapping a bottle of water, still dressed in her calf-length gauzy cotton caftan.

“Aren't you hot in that getup?”

“Nope,” Parrish said, ratcheting down the back of her chaise longue and tilting her sun hat over her face. “We fair-skinned redheads have to be careful of too much exposure, you know.”

“You're not the least bit fair skinned, and you're not a real redhead either,” Riley said.

“Sun is very aging,” Parrish said airily. “But if you want to end up looking like a piece of beef jerky, go right ahead.”

“Aging,” Riley said with a sigh. “That again.”

Parrish tipped her sunglasses down. “What's going on?”

“I've started job hunting. That's what I was doing when you showed up at the house.”

“And?”

“And nothing. You know what a tiny market Raleigh is. There
was
an opening for a consumer affairs reporter at WRAL.”

“Perfect!”

“Yeah, for a twenty-four-year-old Asian bombshell two years out of Duke and a graduate degree from Columbia,” Riley said. “Jade Kang. Can you believe it? And that's her real name. I even went so far as to call my old program director.” She shuddered. “I groveled. It wasn't pretty. He was very nice and promised to ‘seriously consider' me, but I knew it wasn't gonna happen.”

“Aw, man, that's so unfair. And shortsighted. You would have been ratings dynamite again. Nobody in this state had a following like you.”

“Had,” Riley said. “Past tense.”

“But you've got until August when school starts to find something, right?” Parrish asked.

“That's only a little over a month away. I'll tell you, I've even started looking outside the Triangle. I was thinking maybe I could go into a smaller market, say Roanoke, Virginia, or Columbia, South Carolina.”

“And how would that affect Maggy?”

“Exactly. That kid has been through so much this past year, with the diabetes, then Wendell, and losing the house. She's been a trouper, but I just can't pack her up and drag her to a strange town, especially with no family or friends for a support network.”

“You know I'm always just a phone call away,” Parrish said. “Have you thought about trying something totally different?”

“Like what? Aerospace engineer? Journalism is all I know. I'm too damn old to reinvent myself.”

Parrish lunged forward and took a swipe at Riley's drink.

“Stop talking like that! If you're too old, then so am I. And I can't stand to think we're done already—at forty-two.”

“You can go back to lawyering anytime you feel like it,” Riley said. “But you won't have to. You can sit back and restore houses all you want. Ed is Mr. Perfect. Steady Eddie. He'd never do you like Wendell did me.”

Parrish put her sunglasses on and sank back into her chair. “Nobody knows what somebody else is capable of.”

 

43

The listings on TVJobs.com were depressing. They were either geographically impossible or economically laughable. Sunrise coanchor in Pierre, South Dakota. General assignment reporter in Naples, Florida. Investigative team leader in Newark, New Jersey.

Riley clicked over from the listings, searching for a response to any of the feelers she'd put out to old friends and former colleagues in broadcasting. Nothing. Crickets.

She heard footsteps coming down the hall toward the library, and quickly closed her laptop. She hadn't told anybody but Parrish about her plan to return to work, and wasn't eager to share that news just yet.

“Riley?” Evelyn's voice called. “The sheriff is here, and he'd like to speak to you.”

“I'm in the library, Mama,” Riley called.

Craig Schumann trailed Evelyn into the room. He held his baseball cap in his hands, and his white-blond hair still held its imprint.

“Sorry to barge in on you,” he started. “I was on the island on business, and I did try calling, but I only got your voice mail, so I decided to drop by to fill you in on our progress.”

“Whoops. I guess I left my phone upstairs,” Riley said, standing. She pointed to one of the wing chairs that flanked the fireplace. “Why don't you have a seat? I'm anxious to hear what news you have.”

“So am I,” Evelyn said, starting to sit in the other chair.

“Uh, Mama, maybe the sheriff wants to talk to me in private,” Riley said.

He turned and gave the older woman an apologetic smile. “If you don't mind.”

Evelyn sniffed. “Why would I mind being kicked out of a room in my own home?”

Riley watched her leave. “Sorry about that. Are there any new leads on who killed my husband?”