Chapter 43
43
Poppy stood at the front window, watching the squirrel in the tree outside, and waiting, Cara felt sure, for her friend Bert to change his mind and come back.
“He’s gone,” Cara said, getting up to scratch the dog’s ears and toss her a conciliatory puppy treat. “Anyway, he’s just a man. They come and they go, girl, and when one decides to leave, all you can do is get out of the way.”
Poppy gave her a baleful look, then concentrated on chewing her treat. In the meantime, a battered white pickup truck pulled up to the curb outside, parking in the loading zone. A youngish man in paint-spattered overalls and a green John Deere tractor cap got out of the truck and stood on the sidewalk. He pulled a smart phone from the bib of his overalls, stepped backward and began taking photos. He trotted across the street and snapped more photos as Cara stood, watching.
The man recrossed and walked past the shop window and out of her line of sight. Cara opened the door and peered out, just in time to see him rounding the corner and turning south on Whitaker.
“Here, Poppy!” Cara locked the front door and headed for the rear of the shop and the door into the courtyard. Poppy bounded out into the garden and gave a short, surprised yelp as the stranger stepped into the garden through the door from the lane.
“Hey!” Cara called, her voice sharp. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Poppy barked loudly, and lunged forward, but Cara caught her by her collar.
“Uh, the landlord sent me over.” Seeing him up close, she could see he was probably in his mid-twenties, with brown hair sticking out from the back of his cap, and a string of tattoos on both forearms. He took a half step backward.
“Which landlord?”
He looked confused. “The one who owns this building, I guess. Wanted me to give him some estimates for doing all the work needs doing.”
“Him? The last I heard, Sylvia Bradley still owns this building. Was she the one who called you?”
“Look, ma’am, I don’t want any trouble. I’m just doing my job. The guy called me, gave me this address, said he was looking to restore an old building on West Jones Street.”
Cara felt her face go hot with anger. “You’re talking about Cullen Kane?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he give you the key to get through that gate just now?”
“Sure.”
“You can’t just come in here like this. I live here. This is my business. My rent is paid up until the end of the month.”
“Hey, all I know is, the guy said it’s okay. He has keys to the place, he sent me over to look around. I’m not gonna bother you or nothin’.…”
He took a step toward Cara, and Poppy let out a deep-throated warning growl, the likes of which Cara had never heard before from the people-loving puppy. She grasped the collar tighter. Her unwanted visitor looked uneasily around, as though he might need a weapon to fend off this fluffy white killer guard dog.
“What’s your name?” Cara asked.
“Ricky Ucinski.”
“Ricky, no offense, but I’m not letting you in my house.”
“Geez,” he said. “What do I tell Mr. Kane?”
“Tell him the crazy woman who lives here set her dog on you when you unlocked the back gate. And tell him if he sends any more contractors over here again, I’ll do the same thing to them.”
Ricky Ucinski looked distinctly uncomfortable with this message. “You wouldn’t really set that dog on me, would you?”
Poppy growled again, as if on cue.
Cara gave a grim smile. “I really don’t think you want to find that out, Ricky.”
***
Apprentice floral-designer needed. Owner-operated floral design studio in downtown historic area seeks assistant/apprentice with artistic flair, design skills, working knowledge of flowers helpful, but not mandatory. Ideal candidate must be responsible, reliable, self-starter. Duties also include some clerical work and flower delivery. Must have valid driver’s license and immediate availability.
Cara looked down at the Craigslist help-wanted ad and thought for a moment before rapidly typing the most important addition to the ad:
Whiners, sulkers, and self-involved slackers need not apply.
She added her contact information and hit the Send button. It was nearly four o’clock. She’d loaded the van with the afternoon’s deliveries, and taken Poppy on a brief walk. But she had one pressing piece of business to attend to before anything else.
***
Cullen Kane Floral Design Studio was located in a former Piggly Wiggly grocery store on Habersham Street in midtown Savannah. As far as Cara knew, nearly everything in Savannah was located in a building that used to be something else, and everybody knew what that something was. In her case, she only knew it because she’d spent ten minutes staring at Kane’s website, which trumpeted that his studio was located “in a sensitively upcycled circa-1946 Piggly Wiggly.”
The old red-brick building had been painted charcoal gray, and now sported crisp red-and-white-striped awnings over the plate-glass windows. Huge terra-cotta pots on either side of the front door had palm trees underplanted with white lobelia and asparagus ferns, and the front door itself was painted a gloss red, with wrought-iron inserts featuring the intertwined CK logo, which was also painted in four-foot-high letters on the side of the building.
She parked the van in the lot beside his shop, trying to ignore the stabbing envy in her gut. Kane had at least sixteen spaces in his own dedicated lot, where more palm trees were planted in oversized wooden tubs. A gleaming black Mercedes box truck emblazoned with the CK logo was parked near the door. If a truck could look chic, this one did.
Cara took a deep breath and pushed the door open. The air inside the shop was lightly perfumed and deliciously cooled. The ceiling was open to exposed wooden roof rafters, and dropped ceiling fans whirred soundlessly overhead. A reception area had been screened off from the rest of the building with a red latticework partition, and in front of it, at a black midcentury modern desk, sat a familiar figure—Bert Rosen, dressed in an unfamiliar tight-fitting black T-shirt with the scrolling CK logo.
He was talking on the phone and tapping notes into the laptop computer on the desk and didn’t notice her at first, which allowed Cara time to feel the full extent of the rage and jealousy boiling up from her gut.
Suddenly, it all fell into place. The no-shows, the long weekends, the long lunch hours and mystery text messages. Her assistant’s phantom boyfriend had finally been unmasked.
Bert clicked off the phone, but kept typing. Without looking up he parroted the greeting, which he’d already mastered. “Welcome to Cullen Kane Design. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“I can wait.”
That got his attention.
“Cara?” His pale face bloomed a bright shade of red that exactly matched the screen behind his desk.
“Bert.” She gestured around the shop. “You seem to have had a pretty busy lunch hour.”
“You fired me,” he said. “What was I supposed to do? Go on welfare?”
“I fired you four hours ago. You seem to have had a remarkably fast recovery. Or were you already working here—and I’m the last to know?”
He shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Your boss,” Cara said. “I need to see him. Right now.”
“I’ll call back to the workroom and see if he’s available. What’s this in reference to?”
Cara reached over and grabbed the neckline of Bert’s black T-shirt, in the process knocking over a heavy crystal vase holding an arrangement of bamboo leaves and spiky red bird-of-paradise blooms. “This is in reference to him sabotaging my life, buying my building out from under me, and seducing a formerly valuable employee.”
“Owww.” Bert slapped ineffectively at Cara’s hand. “Cut it out.”
She abruptly released the shirt and he snapped backward like a limp rubber band.
A stream of water flowed across the desk and into his lap. “Look what you did!”
“Never mind calling. I’ll find him myself.”
She charged around the screen. Directly behind it was an informal seating area, with a pair of low white leather tufted sofas facing each other across from a chunky Lucite coffee table.
Behind that Cara saw six workstations, occupied by designers clad in signature black CK Design T-shirts, who were busily assembling what looked like enough extravagant flower arrangements to fill Savannah’s largest cathedral.
She kept going. At the back of the open space she spied a glass-enclosed office. Cullen Kane sat at another midcentury modern desk. He was on the phone, his back turned away from the workroom, so he never even saw her coming.
Cara yanked the door of his office open. He spun around in his chair. “I’ve got to go,” he told his caller. “We’ll talk later.”
Kane hung up the phone. If he was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it. “Hi there. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“We need to talk,” Cara hissed.
“Love to,” Kane said. He gestured to the chair facing his desk. “Please sit. Can I get you something to drink? What would you like? Perrier, some champagne? I’ll get Bert to bring us something.”
Cara bristled. “Nothing. I want nothing from you. Except my life back.”
“Oh, please.” Kane gave an airy wave. “You’re upset that I bought your building?”
“Bought it out from under me,” Cara said. Her face felt stiff and unnatural, and the anger, fizzing just below the surface, felt like a fast-moving rash. “To put me out of business.”
“Not at all,” he said pleasantly. “This was a good investment. That’s all. What? You think I’ve cooked up some grand conspiracy against you?”
“Haven’t you? You spread nasty rumors around town about my finances. You buy my building and then start sending contractors over to look at it—while I’m still living there. You poison my employee’s relationship toward me.…”
Kane leaned back in his chair and studied her thoughtfully. “How long have you been harboring these paranoid delusions of yours? Really, Cara. First of all, yes, I bought your building. Jones Street is the most beautiful street in the historic district, and your block is one of the most desirable. I would have been crazy to pass it up.”
“You don’t need another shop,” Cara cried. “This place has four times the space Bloom has. You’ve obviously spent a fortune redoing this. You’ve got parking, location, everything.”
He shrugged. “I happen to like your building. It’s quaint. I like real estate, and it was a good buy.”
“It’s a dump and you know it. The Bradleys haven’t spent one nickel on it in probably twenty years.”
“I know. That’s what makes it so delicious. The possibilities are endless.”
Cara swallowed the bile rising up in her throat. Swallowed her pride. “I want to stay in my building. I want a new lease. So. How much?”
“No telling,” he said lightly. “You’ve turned away the two contractors I sent over there to get estimates.”
“You walked the building before you signed the contract with Sylvia. While I was gone. You went through it, went through my apartment. And you didn’t even have the decency to ask my permission.”
“Your landlord isn’t obligated to ask for your permission to show the property. You don’t even have a lease.”
“How much?” Cara persisted. “I want to stay in my building. I don’t want to move.”
“Sorry. That’s impossible. I’m planning a total restoration. Down to the studs. New roof, all new electric, plumbing, HVAC. After I’m done, well, we both know you won’t be able to afford to stay.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that?” Cara could hear her own breaths, coming fast and shallow. Was she about to hyperventilate?
He leaned across the desk. She could see the bleached blond highlights in his hair, the ghost of five-o’clock shadow on his cheeks. The skin over his cheeks and forehead was pulled unnaturally taut. Maybe he and Patricia Trapnell shared the same surgeon. He wore some kind of gold medallion on a fine chain around his neck. This close, she could see that he wore blue-tinted contacts.
“You’re not listening to me,” he said, his voice low and deadly serious. “You have two weeks to vacate the premises. You and your dog and the rest of your stuff? I want all of it out of there. Two weeks. If you’re not gone, I call the sheriff.”
Cara rocked backward on her heels, singed by the intensity of his animosity toward her.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why are you doing this to me?”
Kane’s phone rang. He picked it up immediately. “Cullen Kane,” he said smoothly. He looked over at Cara—his glance telegraphing just what an insignificant nuisance he regarded her as.
“It’s nothing personal.” He swiveled his chair around so that she was facing his back.
***
She stalked back to the reception area, where Bert was wearing a telephone headset, typing away at the computer. He didn’t look up, although she knew he’d seen her coming.
She reached down and yanked off the headset. That got his attention.
“What now?”
“Answer me one question,” Cara said. Her voice quavered so much that she could barely trust herself to say more. “How did he know my building was on the market, when I didn’t even know?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t play dumb, Bert. I asked you how Cullen Kane knew that Sylvia Bradley might be interested in selling Jones Street. Did you tell him?”
“I don’t… what are you saying? Are you saying Cullen is the one who bought your building?”
“You know he bought it,” Cara said angrily. “And the only way he could have known it was available was from you. Pillow talk, huh?”
“No!” Bert protested. “I mean, he could have seen old Mrs. Bradley’s obituary. It was in the paper. That’s how we found out.”
“Yeah, but we knew who my landlady was. There was nothing in the obituary about that. So how would Cullen Kane figure out? You told him, right?”
Bert’s right eye twitched. “I told him the old bat died, and her daughter wouldn’t fix the air-conditioning, and the place was like a furnace. Yes! Okay? Big deal. I had no idea he’d go out and buy the place. I swear, I didn’t know he’d bought it until you just told me.”
“Did you also tell Cullen I owed my father a lot of money, and that he was bugging me to repay him? Did you tell your new boyfriend I was in dire straits—until Brooke Trapnell decided to hire me to plan her wedding?”
“He already knew you were broke,” Bert said. “He was at Breitmueller’s the day they put a hold on your credit, remember?”
“But you told him the other stuff, didn’t you?”
Bert looked down at his computer terminal, and then out the window, anywhere but at Cara. “I might have mentioned it. In passing.”
Cara grasped the edge of his desk with both hands. “How could you? I trusted you, Bert. I thought you were my friend. It’s bad enough that you snuck around behind my back, sleeping with somebody we both know wants to put me out of business. He’s kicking me out of my building in two weeks. Did he tell you that? Then you go blabbing my personal financial information to him. I just… I just can’t believe you’d betray me this way. And for what? A hookup? A job answering his phone? A free Cullen Kane T-shirt? That’s all this is, Bert, I guarantee it. He’s using you to destroy me. And when he’s done, he’ll toss you aside, the same way he mowed me down.”
Bert’s face hardened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Cara. Cullen and I… you don’t know anything about him. Or us.”
The front door opened then, and a young couple walked in, holding hands. “You need to go, Cara,” Bert said. He looked over her head, dismissing her the same way his lover had earlier.
“Hello! Welcome to Cullen Kane Floral Design Studio. You must be Kimberly and Stephen. Can I get you a Perrier? Some champagne?”