Letters and Lace (The Ronan's Harbor Series) (6 page)

He made his way past the front window, waving at the ladies behind the glass, old faces and new faces watching him and exchanging comments he could not and did not care to hear.

With each step down the corridor toward the Captain’s Office Benny felt the acid in his stomach churn in defense and self-reproach. Why the hell he agreed to go in on the purchase of that beat-to-shit beach house with his arrogant, sleaze-ball brother was beyond him. But now,
Captain Salvatore Benedetto
was going to hear it but good.

Paula, Sal’s secretary, grinned with recognition when Benny walked up to her desk. “A sight for sore eyes,” she drawled, tilting her chin. Benny’s tension eased a bit at her familiar flirtation, although he wasn’t, and never had been, interested.

“Hey, Paula,” he said. “He in?”

“He’s been expecting you, Benny.” Paula patted her starchy hair and gave him an appreciative look.

His older brother sat tall behind the laminate desk as though it were a judge’s bench, squaring his broad shoulders in a regal posture. “Benny Boy, how’s the beach?” Sal boomed. He motioned for Benny to sit in the vinyl chair positioned opposite his throne.

Benny’s eyes drifted to the wall behind Sal, scanning the haphazard display of his matted and framed narcissism. He viewed the engraved plaques from local organizations and diplomas Sal had earned ranging from his academy graduation to his karate certificate.

There was a cluster of framed thank-you letters in all shapes and sizes from local muckety-mucks. A new addition, a framed press piece of Sal receiving some award from a local organization, all smiles for the camera, hung right above his fat head.

“I’m sure you didn’t come all the way up here to count my awards.” Sal let out a string of chuckles.

The smile fell from Sal’s face when Benny did not return a cheery greeting. “What’s up, brother?”

“You didn’t tell me this woman with the inn just wants to make her sunroom look good so she can have her kid’s wedding in it.”

“Semantics, little brother.” Sal sighed and pinched his mouth into a one-sided bunch. “The fact remains her plans could totally screw us up.”

Benny folded his arms across his chest. “How have you come to that conclusion?”

“Her bed-and-breakfast is one of four in Ronan’s Harbor.”

“Yeah, so?”

“They’d all like nothing better than to get the town ordinance changed so they can all start expanding and throwing parties, adding traffic and congestion to the town. Do I need to spell this out for you, Benny? You want to make dough on this house we bought or not?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Sal placed his big hands onto the desk top and rotated his swivel chair a quarter turn. He rose and stepped around the desk’s corner and positioned his backside at its’ front edge.

“Trust me, Benny. This can’t happen. It won’t. You got that? I’ve already put the skids into motion. This B&B,
The Cornelia Inn
…” he paused to snicker mockingly at the name, “is run by a ding-bat that ignored the need to get a permit. It’s illegal.”

“I still don’t get why we should we care, Sal. What’s it to us what she does at her establishment?”

“Look, Benny,” His face contorted with impatience. “We don’t want it because this sleepy little town has to stay just as it is if we’re going to sell that house of ours and make the big bucks.”

Sal blew out a long breath. “Can you imagine if all of the inns decided to start having big bashes? How many nice, American families are going to want a beach cottage in a noisy, over-crowded honky-tonk town? Huh, Benny? How many?”

Benny swallowed his urge to argue the point. The only thing that mattered to him right now was getting the shack ready for sale. The sooner he would be rid of any ties to his shyster brother and headed to Key West, the better.

“What exactly have you ‘put in motion’?” Benny said, not caring that his voice rang with accusation. He knew what lurked inside the bullish egotist. “This isn’t anything shady, is it Sal? Because if it is—”

“Benny, Benny, Benny.” Sal laughed like a politician in a polyester suit. “Up and up. It’s all good. Just trying to look after our interests, pal. I contacted a buddy of mine down there and put a bug in his ear. Our luck is that the owner didn’t have any permits for either the work or the event she’s planning. Basically she’s screwed.”

Sal pointed a fat finger at Benny. “I’ve started it. Now you finish it. Got that? Stop this broad. We’ll paint and tidy up our little place and sell. Then I won’t care what the hell they do in Ronan’s Harbor. I need to count on you.”

Sal sounded just like their father. The old man had boomed his commands at them as they grew up. Sal had been his pathetic yes-man, Benny the odd guy out. So frickin’ what? He’d never pleased his father up until his dying day. And to his big brother he’d just been a screw-up, a poor excuse for the great Benedetto name in the police world.

The image of Sarah’s face last night in the bar was unrelenting.
Doesn’t it just figure,
he thought,
that the one time I decided to pay attention to a nice lady like her that it turns out I’ve already treated her like shit?
This was one for the record books, even for him.

So, yeah, Sal could count on him this one last time. There was nothing more important than severing this fool alliance with Sal. If that meant
proving
to this Sarah that he was a jerk, that was just par for Benny. If nixing the inn’s plans meant selling, moving on, and putting the stupid little town in his rearview mirror, then, sure, he was on board, full-throttle.

He pushed the image of Sarah from his thoughts. It was a blessing in disguise, really. The last thing he needed was involvement with a woman. In the long run he’d have disappointed her anyway. Hell, he already had.
Who needs it?

“Benny, you with me on this?”

“Yeah, I’m with you.”

****

As she pulled into the municipal building’s lot, Sarah’s cell phone sounded, flashing Hannah’s number in the display. Sarah flipped the device open.

“Hi, Mom,” Hannah said.

Her voice was so sweet and unassuming. It made Sarah even more aggravated that she had to jump through these hoops. She breathed in, then out, and did her best to relax in her own skin. “Hi, Honey. How was your weekend?”

“We met with some of Ian’s work friends for dinner on Saturday. Yesterday we just kind of had a lazy day.”

“How’s work?”

“Fine.” Hannah’s tone changed as abruptly as a shifted gear. Temping at a law firm in the City was not what her daughter wanted for the long term, and the job had gone on for over a year.

Her degree was in anthropology, although her father had steered her to dual-major for a more practical business degree. As much as Sarah consoled her daughter during the job crunch, and rationalized the blessing of attaining the temp spot, the poor kid’s career dream had choked to accelerate.

She heard Hannah’s long breath on the other end. “I was just checking in. Everything good?”

“Oh, sure, wonderful actually.” Sarah clamped her mouth shut before she spewed herself into sounding suspicious. “Busy, though. I’ve got to run.”

“How’s the work going in the sunroom? Have they broken through the wall yet?”

“Uh, no…” Sarah bit her lip. “There’s been a little delay. The carpenter’s not coming this week.”

“Mom…” Panic coated Hannah’s tone. “There isn’t a lot of time.”

“Don’t worry, Hannah. It’ll be fine.”
Will it? It has to be fine.

“Ian’s going away this weekend on business again, so I’ll come home and spend it with you. Okay?”

“Great,” Sarah said. “See you then.”

She entered the brick municipal building with fueled determination. She wanted this mess cleaned up before Hannah came for the weekend. And she could blissfully get back to normal.

She held the anonymous note in her hand at the ready. The receptionist ushered her into a sitting area where she waited for an available officer.

Soon a young man with a shiny badge and black glossy shoes came out from a doorway, offering his hand. “Mrs. Grayson? I’m Officer Carr. How can I help you today?”

“I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

She showed him the letter and watched as he studied it. He was young, probably a rookie. She silently hoped he was an overly zealous newbie who would do something big, like arrest the person who complained against her, cuff them good and haul them off to the slammer.

“I found that shoved under my front door last night.”

“Any idea who did this, and why?” He turned the paper over, scanned the back, and then looked at the front again.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s currently a complaint against my plans to do some improvements and host my daughter’s wedding at my inn. I own The Cornelia on Tidewater Way. I have to appear Monday night at the town meeting. All I can think of is that maybe it was whoever made the complaint.”

She watched his face. It was an unreadable plane. She had hoped this would fire him up. “Who else would want to threaten me?” she added like a poke to kindling.

“Well, Mrs. Grayson, I’m not sure this is technically a threat per se, but how about your daughter?”

“Hannah? Why would she…”

“No, not Hannah herself, but I was thinking maybe someone in her circle of acquaintances? Ex-lover? Disgruntled ex-girlfriend of the groom?”

“No,” Sarah was emphatic. “There’s no one like that.”

“What does Hannah say about this?”

“I’m not telling her. She’s got much too much to deal with. No. I’m not going to her with such absurdity.”

Officer Carr let out a long sigh, took out a small spiral-bound pad and a pen. He flipped the cover of the pad, perched his pen, and tapped his thumb on the retractor button. “Was anything disturbed at your residence?”

“No.”

“Be sure to contact us if you receive another one of these. I’ll just make a copy, start a file. Meanwhile, if you can think of anything else, be sure to give us a call. Spell your name, please, and leave me your number.”

She watched him jot down her information then close the cover on his pad. He looked up and gave her a quick smile.

“That’s it?” she asked.

“For now.”

Chapter Four

On Monday evening Sarah and Gigi sat in the back of the room at town hall. The parsons’ benches gave Sarah the feeling that they were in church rather than a court room, which was fine considering she was praying.

She tried to read the faces of the township committee members as they sat in high-backed padded chairs behind the large rectangular table at the head of the room. None of them, not even her friend, Mayor John Reynolds, looked her way.

John called the meeting to order. Gigi patted Sarah’s knee and gave an encouraging little smile. “We’ll fix this,” she whispered.

Sarah scanned the room. She recognized everyone, or at least the ones she could see. She knew the clerk, Tim Conover, his wife Betty was a co-member with Sarah of the Ronan’s Harbor Garden Club.

The Zoning Officer wasn’t someone she knew by name but his starchy face was familiar. Sarah had seen him, slight and skinny with hunched bony shoulders, at the bank and at the post office. Plenty of times she’d spied him walking his fuzzy Brillo pad of a dog along the roadside, letting the little guy pee on everybody’s plants. She bristled. Maybe she’d give him a citation, like a citizen’s arrest or something, for illegal piddle.

The rhetoric faded in and out of Sarah’s attention like a radio broadcast with poor reception. Her mind reeled with what she wanted to say while snippets of conversation about replacement snow fences and new stop signs on Main Street filtered into her ear.

She’d practiced how she wanted to defend her plans. She’d rehearsed it over and over in front of her grandmother’s cheval mirror. But now all her thoughts jumbled into one clog of nothing.

“Mrs. Grayson,” the Zoning Officer said, snapping her to full attention. “We’re here in regard to your land use at Four Tidewater Way, the bed-and-breakfast known as The Cornelia Inn.”

“Yes,” she said, the word bursting out like a gunshot in a tunnel.

“Sarah,” the mayor interjected, his face stoic but his eyes kind. “It’s come to our attention that you’re doing some construction at your establishment, yet we have no building permit on file. A detailed report with the specifics of your project is required to obtain a permit.”

He looked down at the paperwork in front of him. “Additionally, we’ll need you to initiate the conditional use process for your inn for holding catered events. In order to do so, you’ll need to fill out the proper paperwork and file with initial payment. Mr. Pallis here can provide you the forms.”

“John…Mr. Mayor.” Sarah stood up from her bench, keeping her attention on him and not Pallis, the zoning guy. “It’s just a matter of tearing down a store room wall to add space to my sun porch. I just want to hold my daughter’s wedding at my residence. Why do I need to go through all of this? It’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

“Please re-examine the town regulations regarding inns such as yours. It clearly states that no parties of any kind will be permitted on the premises,” Mr. Pallis interjected. “And no one may perform construction in Ronan’s Harbor without first obtaining written consent.” He clucked his tongue. “We must all follow the same rules, Mrs. Grayson.”