Chapter Nine
Manny couldn’t find anything in the office.
Well, that wasn’t true. He could lay his hand on anything he wanted within a few seconds, because he’d spent nearly a week cleaning and organizing the space. He hadn’t had much else to do, while the Midas Bank kept dithering on the loan and Appleton Construction finalized the plans. Aerope approved of his work, and when he was done, he had a beautiful, airy space that felt like his office, not his father’s.
He’d put most of his own possessions in storage when he’d sublet his apartment in the city. Now that he was staying—and it definitely felt like he was staying—he could see about getting them moved. Perhaps he’d wait until he found a place here, though. He loved his mother, but he wasn’t positive he wanted to live where he worked. Maybe Theo would be interested in moving back to the main house? They could be company for each other, and Theo definitely didn’t have any objection to ignoring a work/life balance.
In the meantime, he’d found absolutely nothing more about the mysterious Chris. There were no photo albums or records in the office, not even a loose document. He’d gotten really excited when he’d found the desk had a hidden drawer, but when he’d pried it open it had contained a 1998 Playboy and half a pack of mints. Cassie had been trying her best with what she had, but without a last name, and with Manny’s wish for discretion, she’d been limited to searching local birth records. A few Chrises had been born in Weeping Rock at around the right time, but she and Manny had been able to rule them all out. Their Chris had been born somewhere else.
If the missing records weren’t in the office, Manny couldn’t figure out where his father would have put them. His parents’ bedroom might have been a possibility, but his mother obviously knew nothing of what her husband had discovered. Manny didn’t think Arthur would have hidden anything in a place he shared so easily with his wife if he meant to keep it a secret.
His phone rang. He glanced at the name and then lunged for it.
“Simon! Hello!”
“Hi, Manny,” Simon said affably. “Sorry for the time it’s taken, but I’m happy to tell you that Midas is prepared to sign off on the loan.”
Manny let out an explosive puff of breath. “That’s great.”
“There’s a few things to talk about, so if you wanted to come in some time, perhaps next week…”
“How about today?” Manny said instantly. It was Thursday afternoon. He didn’t want to waste another minute, much less a whole weekend. It took a minute of gentle pressing, but he finally got Simon to admit that he didn’t have any appointments for the rest of the day. Simon sounded disappointed—he’d probably been planning to leave work early. Normally Manny would have been sympathetic, but not today. He promised to be there in twenty minutes, grabbed his coat and keys, and hurried outside.
Twenty minutes later he was shaking Simon’s hand and sitting down in his office. Simon was a tall, skinny man a decade or so younger than Aerope. He looked like he was built for speed, all sharp angles and taut muscle, but he moved—and spoke—like molasses.
“Now, I don’t mind telling you this was a little complicated,” Simon said, shaking his head conspiratorially. “Those accounts you gave us, whew.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Manny said. “The bookkeeping got a little lax sometimes. But my projections are solid. The comparative analysis of similar proposed business ventures—”
“Yes, that all checked out,” Simon assured him. He rummaged around his files, taking twice as long as Manny would have liked, and produced a red folder, embossed in gold with MB. “But we’ve got a few limitations, some conditions we’d like you to look over.” He looked hopeful. “Perhaps you’d like to take the contract away and consider it? Speak to your uncle and brother?”
“They’ve given me carte blanche on the carriage house project, including the financing,” Manny said, and flipped the folder open. “I can look at it now.”
Simon sighed in gentle disappointment, and Manny ignored it. A shorter loan term than he’d like, and the interest rate had moved up a few fractions. The repayment schedule was still well within his profit projections, but it gave him less leeway if something went wrong. And… He looked up. “You’ve removed the overdraft facility.”
“Yes. You’ll be able to draw down the full amount of the loan, of course, but you won’t be able to go beyond that without approval of an additional loan.”
“Uh-huh. And am I likely to get that approval?”
Simon looked at his desk succulents, then played with his pen for a minute. “Well…”
“I see.”
“I mean, if you mortgaged some land, or perhaps the manor house, I’m sure the bank would be more than willing—”
“Not an option,” Manny said firmly. Aerope might be willing to approve it, but there was no way he was risking the Pelopson family home on this venture. Even the surest of sure things could go to hell in the wrong circumstances, and there were always unforeseen risks in hospitality.
Okay. This was tighter than he’d like, but it was still doable. He’d budgeted for a construction cost overrun of twenty percent, and this would still cover that. His alternative was going to another bank, which would start this whole process again and delay construction to the point where he wouldn’t be able to open for peak tourist season this summer. Or he could ditch the entire project, but quite apart from the sunk cost of the time and money he’d already put into it, his predictions for the future of Tantalus hadn’t changed. If they kept going as they were going, no one would risk money with them, no matter how immaculate the bookkeeping.
“Fine,” he said. “Do I just sign and initial? And you can make the loan available today, so that I can get Appleton their construction deposit, right?”
“Er, well,” Simon said, and Manny ruthlessly bullied him into admitting that yes, they could do that, a little unusual, they usually preferred to wait three business days, but Manny was quite right to point out there’d already been some delay—unavoidable, but understandably frustrating—so perhaps he could hurry things up just a little…
Manny left with an impressive addition to the bank app on his phone and strode into the late winter sunshine, feeling good. The truncated payment schedule was something of a concern, but not a big enough one to smother his growing sense of triumph. He headed towards the car, then hesitated. Appleton Construction’s main office was just down the street, and he could drop in and arrange the deposit in person. Maybe take possession of the plans, if they were ready.
“Mr. Pelopson!” he heard, and for a moment it didn’t register as his name. Mr. Pelopson was his father, and occasionally his uncle. But Herc Stormson was rushing up to him, all ruddy good health and wide shoulders, and Manny resigned himself to feeling old for a minute.
“What can I do for you, Herc?” he asked. For once, Herc wasn’t accompanied by his shadowy girlfriend, and he looked oddly unbalanced without her.
Herc beamed at him. “Did you maybe need more help at the vineyard?”
“Jim Stevens is the man to talk to, but yes, probably, especially during vintage.” He saw Herc’s confusion. “Harvest. Grape-picking season. Are you looking for work?”
Herc nodded. “I need to make some money for college. And you paid pretty well for the snow day, so I was hoping…”
“Your dad told me you had scholarships,” Manny said. He’d had a beer with Tyron Stormson just last week, and Tyron had bragged about it, in his quiet way.
“Oh, yeah, I got full ride offers from sports schools. But I only got a partial scholarship to Asclepius. I need more to cover the gap.”
Manny paused. Asclepius specialized in the sciences, and while their pre-med program was renowned, he’d never heard anything about their sports teams. He’d imagined Herc going to Eleusis or Nemea instead.
Herc caught his look and said, “Thrace is going to Asclepius.” He sounded half-proud and half-defiant, probably already anticipating Manny’s reaction.
“Ah,” Manny said, and resisted the urge to explain that following your high school sweetheart to college wasn’t necessarily a good idea. No doubt many people had already pointed that out to Herc, and anyway, who was he to give anyone romantic advice? His most meaningful relationships were a disastrous engagement to his sister-in-law’s sister and… Well. And whatever he was doing with Cassie.
“Thrace is really smart,” Herc said, in a tone that verged on worship. “I mean, I do okay, Cs and Bs, but she’s like an actual genius. She’s going to be a research scientist and invent drugs that cure cancer and heart disease and stuff. She got a full scholarship, all four years. She’s a really good musician, too, and she could have gotten music scholarships for cello, but she wants to help people and do good for the community.”
Manny pictured the gothic teenager who’d faced him down when he’d caught them stealing road signs and tried to picture her as an altruist. “Does doing good for the community include stealing the community’s property?”
“Um,” Herc said, and then his mouth twisted. “Can I tell you something? If you promise not to tell my dad?”
“I am not promising to keep anything from the chief of police,” Manny said, alarmed, but Herc looked so downcast that he relented and added, “I promise to use my discretion, how about that?”
“The road signs thing was a challenge from the football team,” Herc said, talking fast. “Like a quest, you know? Last year’s seniors got fourteen signs without getting caught, and they were like, no one will ever beat this record, so this year me and the guys were aiming at twenty-five. We took some other stuff, too, like those orange cones, and those bird decoys the town puts out to scare birds away from new lawn planting. Nothing expensive, nothing, like, really important.”
Manny thought of Cassie, hopelessly lost on her first day, and briefly closed his eyes. “We might have a different standard of important, here, Herc.”
“Right, well, Thrace thought the whole thing was stupid, and she told me so, and she only ever went with me to be a look-out, so I wouldn’t get caught. And after you did catch us, she researched how much replacing those signs actually cost and it was nearly four hundred dollars. Each.”
“Yes, Herc,” Manny said. “That’s been mentioned several times in the many stories the local newspaper has run on sign theft.”
“Newspaper?” Herc said, as if Manny had suggested he take a quick trip to a cave system to examine the drawings marked there in charcoal and ochre.
“Never mind.”
“Anyway, we didn’t realize it was that much. Like, twenty-five signs would be ten thousand dollars! So we stopped, even though we only had twelve and couldn’t break last year’s record. And I’m trying to figure out a way to give them back without my dad noticing.”
“A heroic sacrifice.”
Herc nodded, taking him at face value. “Yeah. I should have known it was a bad idea from the start. The very first sign I took was the night your dad died. I didn’t know that then, of course, but afterwards Thrace told me it was an omen.”
Manny winced. “Omen might be a bit ghoulish. I would have said a coincidence.”
“I nearly got caught then too,” Herc confided. “It was the middle of the night, so I thought I’d be safe, but the truck from your vineyard barreled right past me, and I was sure Mr. Stevens must have seen me. I nearly pissed—uh, I was surprised. But he never said anything, so I figured he was a good guy. Or maybe he just didn’t notice me up the step-ladder with the hacksaw.”
“Are you sure it was Jim Stevens?” Manny asked. From Jim’s complaints about getting older, he hadn’t thought he was much of a night owl.
“Sure. Pickup with a painting of grapes hanging over a lake, right?”
“That’s the vineyard truck,” Manny said, and then frowned. “Wait, you were nearly caught in the middle of the night, so instead you started trying to steal signs in the middle of the day? That is what you were doing when I caught you, right?”
“That one was kind of an impulse decision,” Herc confessed. “Trace and I were going for a drive and I saw the sign, so I pulled over. Um, do you have any ideas about how I could give the signs back? Trace said I should dump them somewhere and make an anonymous call, but I don’t know.”
“Tell your father,” Manny said firmly.
“He’ll be pretty mad. I, uh, kind of lied to him about it already.”
“Then he deserves to be mad, wouldn’t you say? But coming clean will help. You don’t want one of your buddies to let it slip and for it to get back to him anyway. Tell him, and deal with the consequences.”
“Are you going to tell him?” Herc asked, already looking betrayed.
“Not yet,” Manny said. “I’ll let you have a shot at it first.
Herc winced.
Thrace was coming out of the library, weighted down by her selections, and she eyed them suspiciously.
“Let me take those, babe,” Herc said quickly, and took the books from her. “Uh, thanks for telling me about the work, Mr. Pelopson.”
“You’re welcome,” Manny said meaningfully, and left them there.
Appleton Construction’s yard was on the outskirts of Weeping Rock, but Petra Appleton maintained an office in town, where she met clients and did most of the design and budgeting work. Her older brothers, who seemed to enjoy being ruthlessly managed by their little sister, ran a solid construction crew, and Manny had confidence in their work.
Petra was a short woman with flame-red hair, and an old acquaintance from high school. She’d run the student council with the same neat efficiency she now applied to the family business, and Manny knocked on her office door with a smile.
“Sorry, reception was empty,” he said.
Petra’s face went from stern attention to her work to bright anticipation. “Chloe leaves at three for the school pickup. Can I take it you come with good news?”
Manny grinned at her. “Loan officially approved, and I can get you that deposit right now.”
“Fantastic! Well, in that case…” She got to her feet and pulled a long roll of paper out of a filing shelf. “These blueprints are all done. I’ve blocked out the schedule. We can do the initial assessment on Monday, and if all goes according to plan, we’ll finish cleanup by the first of June.”
“What if it doesn’t go according to plan?”
“It will,” Petra said, as if she wouldn’t allow the universe to get up to any tricks. She extended the roll of blueprints to Manny. “These are your copy.”
“Thank you,” Manny said, feeling the relief settle through his bones. Petra would make the redesign work. And after that, he could handle the rest.
Petra smiled at him. “Planning to celebrate?”
He should celebrate. He hadn’t taken the time to acknowledge a major milestone like this in a long time. His mind went, immediately and inevitably, to Cassie. She was planning to spend the weekend with Steph again, tactfully getting out of the way as his brother’s family descended on them, but she’d probably be free tonight. He’d been promising to cook something for her. Maybe that, and a couple of beers, a movie on her laptop while they sat by the fire… Maybe he’d have the guts to ask if he could stay the night.
“You could celebrate with me,” Petra said, unaware of his train of thought, and he blinked at her. She was smiling at him. “I could buy you dinner. What do you say?”
Oh. Oh. “Um, thank you so much,” Manny said. “But I’m kind of seeing someone.”
“Are you?” Petra said, and her eyebrows went up. “That hadn’t hit the grapevine yet.”
Because he and Cassie had spent most of their time having amazing sex and trying to work out mysteries, Manny realized. They hadn’t been on a public date that would ping the radar of the Weeping Rock gossip network. Which made sense, because they weren’t really dating.
Would she even say yes, if he asked?
“It’s pretty new,” he said.
Petra shrugged. “Okay. Figured I’d take my shot. But we can keep it professional. Let’s talk schedules.”
Ten minutes later they’d arranged a meeting at the carriage house for first thing on Monday, and Manny was back out on the street, trying to struggle through his whirling emotions. Petra was pretty and smart as hell, with the edge that he’d acquired a taste for after Helen. She was exactly who he’d normally be interested in. But she wasn’t Cassie, and that was starting to become more and more of a factor.
Okay. If he wanted to date Cassie, for real, he’d better let her know about it. They had an agreement for no expectations—but they also had an agreement for honesty. And he honestly wanted to start expecting. It was time to take his shot.