Stargazey Point (36 page)

Beau licked his lips, glanced at Cab, and pushed himself off the stool. “You tell Dom to come up to the house. If you two will excuse me for a few minutes, I think I’ll go talk to Silas.”

He shuffled out the door, moving no faster than he did any other day.

Abbie sank onto the stool he had vacated. “I hope I haven’t butted in where I shouldn’t. What if it all turns out to be nothing?”

Cab shrugged. “Then life goes back to normal. They’ll end up having to sell Crispin House, and nature will take its course.”

“Thanks, you’re making me feel so much better.”

“But I have a feeling things are going to turn out fine for them. And for me. Can you believe he had this the whole time?”

“He didn’t. I think he’s been making it since you decided to restore the carousel. That’s what he’s been working on. But there’s so much more, Cab. Shelves and shelves of figures, tiny ones, big ones, he has whole towns of little people and buildings. And the paintings.

“To my untrained eye, they’re beautiful. One especially—” She stopped as the image of the young nude came to her mind. “They’re a treasure trove.”

“What’s a treasure trove?” Sarah bustled into the workshop. “Whoa. What’s that?”

“Beau made a copy of the carousel,” Cab said.

“Huh, how about that?” She looked more closely, then looked at Abbie. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t tell me you’re sick ’cause three mothers already stopped me on the street to say they’re coming to get their picture made today.” Sarah frowned at her. “Abbie?”

“I’m not sick; I’ll be there,” Abbie said. She’d been thinking about the painting of the young girl when Sarah walked in. It was the same face, the same swaying walk, but it must have been painted over sixty years before. Ervina? Was that what the fight with Beau’s father had really been about?

Abbie let out her breath. “I’m fine. Just thinking.”

“Hopefully about what you’re going to do with those mothers this afternoon. Gotta run.” She ran.

“So this means you can get the carousel finished,” Abbie said, still a little befuddled from Sarah’s likeness to the painting.

“Yes. It’s amazing. We can start replacing the animals next week as soon as the exterior painting is done. And with the paintings out in the world, it’s a pretty good day.”

He slipped off the stool, grabbed her by both arms, and kissed her. For a second she just stood rooted to the floor. Then she gave in, and the kiss turned slow. They fell into a timeless moment until simultaneously they stepped away. Breathing hard.

“Don’t run,” Cab said.

“No.”

“That was meant to be a celebratory hug.”

Abbie nodded; she couldn’t seem to speak. She knew how she felt, but she didn’t know what she should feel. And she wanted to run; it was so much easier than having to face the fact that she wanted that kiss and she wanted more.

“Now what do we do?” Cab asked.

Abbie shrugged. “I think—” She didn’t get a chance to finish what she was thinking, because Cab took her in his arms and kissed her again.

W
hen Beau came back a half hour later, Cab was still feeling a kind of exuberance that he wasn’t sure came from the miniature carousel or from kissing Abbie. He was afraid he looked like a starstruck simpleton, but Beau didn’t seem to notice, just went straight back to work.

Even though Beau seemed as calm as ever on the outside, Cab could sense a different energy about him. An excitement. Both of their good moods were brought about by one girl, as skittish as ever, except for a few minutes that afternoon she’d let down her guard. Only a few minutes, a couple of kisses, but it had Cab thinking down the road. Something he didn’t do much these days except when it came to the carousel.

He knew better than to put too much importance on the fact that he’d surprised himself and Abbie as well, and she didn’t bolt. And neither had he. Could they both be ready for something more?

Then he thought about the Crispins and decided anything more than a few dinner dates would be out of the question. That was the downside of small towns, one of the few, but a major one.

He shook his head to clear it. He was steamrolling right along, and he wasn’t even sure if she was really interested in more. Maybe he was just an exploratory experiment.

Best to leave it for now. He’d have his hands full and his time scheduled until he got the carousel up and running. For the first time in weeks he thought he just might have a chance to get it opened by the beginning of the summer season.

He moved the miniature over by the computer screens so he could begin making a schematic. As soon as that was done, he and Beau had decided they would ask Bethanne to display it at the hotel with a short story of the carousel and the opening dates.

He should have thought to ask Abbie if she would be interested in bringing the kids to see Beau’s miniature, but he wasn’t sure if Beau was ready to share, and he suspected he wasn’t either.

He ran a finger over the tiny horse that was Midnight Lady. Beau had captured her perfectly in his four-inch carving. He’d captured them all. He was more than a craftsman. He was an artist, and if his paintings were anywhere as good as this, he should be able to make some money from them. And at last glean a little fame and appreciation.

Cab smiled. He just couldn’t see Beau basking in the limelight of a gallery show, but that was probably because he’d only really known Beau the last year. When he was a kid, he just accepted Beau, with his block of wood, as a man who was kind to children, but a man unto himself.

Cab tried to imagine him as young and dreaming of becoming a painter. It wasn’t easy. But he could imagine old Beau Crispin Senior putting an end to that dream and shipping him off to a military academy. It was no secret that even though the old man was generous toward the town, he had a mean streak when it came to his children.

Ned had once told him that right before Beau had left for the merchant marines, he’d come to his house, bloody and beaten.

“I think I killed my father,” he said before he passed out in Ned’s kitchen.

But Beau hadn’t killed him, just fought back when old Beau had threatened to smash his hands. All over some portrait no one had ever seen. Cab wondered if it was among the ones hidden in the Crispin House attic. And whether it would finally be displayed.

Chapter 24

J
uJu Jenny’s grandmother, Momo, arrived at three o’clock for her interview.

“She’s been pesterin’ me and pesterin’ me to come down here and tell y’all about that old carousel. So here I am.”

“Thanks for coming.” Abbie explained a little about the documentary and showed her to the interview area where she’d set up the tripod in front of a straight-backed chair.

Momo sat down on the edge of the seat, clearly nervous. “What’chu want me to do?” she asked.

“Just tell us what you remember about the old Stargazey carousel. But first let us get a test and a sound check. Okay, crew, are we ready?”

Kyle, with Jerome’s help, adjusted the light for Momo’s diminutive size. Jenny stood at Abbie’s side with her questions written in large letters. Dani stood on a chair behind the camera.

Kyle moved away, and Abbie lifted her hand. “In three, in two, in one.” She dropped her hand, Dani pressed record like they had been practicing. Abbie nudged Jenny.

“Momo, what’chu ’member about that merry-go-round?”

Momo straightened her skirt with both hands.

Abbie leaned over to Jenny and prompted. “First ask her her name and who she is.”

“She’s my grandma.”

Momo shook her head. “My name’s Momo. And I’m Jenny’s grandma. Her mama was too little to remember that carousel, but I do. It was a mighty fine carousel. Mr. Ned always gave the local boys and girls a ride. Afore that it was owned by a Mr. Clayton. In those days nobody round here could afford to ride that carousel. Just the summer folks. Only cost about a nickel, but none a us had a nickel.

“But then Mr. Ned bought it and gave everybody a ride. All’s you had to do was bring him a piece of garbage.”

“Garbage?” Abbie asked.

“Yes’m. Like Coke bottles and candy wrappers and such. Mister Ned just took whatever we had, didn’t make no matter to him. He’d just take it and toss it in this big old barrel, then let’chu go up and choose your animal. That was a fine thing to do on a summer’s night. Mighty fine.”

Abbie nudged Jenny and pointed to the next question.

“What was your favorite thing to ride?”

“Oh, I liked them all, but the ones that went up and down were the best. I was little then myself, but the older kids would sit in the Neptune chariot or one of the other seats with their sweethearts.

“And now young Mister Cabot’s gonna bring it all back like it was.”

Abbie thanked her and waited for Kyle’s mother to take her place and for Kyle, and the twins, to go through the routine of setting up the shot.

“The carousel wasn’t the only thing to do on a Friday night,” Kyle’s mother said into the camera. “But it sure was the most fun. The lights and the music just made you feel all fizzy inside. And if you didn’t have your nickel, Mr. Ned wouldn’t turn you away.

“Sometimes, he’d just give you the loan of the nickel. He didn’t expect you to pay him back. Not in money ’cause none of us had much. We’d just pass that same old nickel back and forth all summer long. And our mamas would make him jam and corn bread and fried okra and all sorts of things ’cause he was so nice to us.”

“What else was there to do on the boardwalk?” Kyle asked.

“Oh, there was an arcade, where you could throw things for prizes and guess the number of marbles in this big old bowl. And a machine that you could move around this claw thing and snag yourself a prize. And dancin’ at the end of the pier, and car’mel corn. A guy with one leg shot off in the war sold cotton candy. And another one sold foot-long hot dogs out of a cart.

“And across the street there were shops with souvenirs. This building right here was a store that sold local crafts and such. But they all cost money. So we mostly hung out at the carousel.”

Next up was Pauli’s grandfather. “Yessiree,” he said. “I proposed to your grandma on that carousel. It was in the Neptune car. Ya see, his tail sorta came over you so nobody could see. I thought that would be real romantic. Mr. Ned said he’d make sure nobody else got to it before I did.” He winked. “Neptune was mighty popular with the young folks.

“Miss Sally Gentry she was in those days. And I knelt down right there beside the seat and asked her to be my wife. We been married goin’ on fifty years now. I used to tell everybody if they wanted to ensure themselves a long, happy marriage, propose under Neptune’s tail.

“We sure were sad when Ned closed it down for the last time. Glad it’s coming back. It belongs down here.”

A
n hour later, Abbie transferred the last of the interviews to her computer and closed up for the night. All the kids were gone. Several more family members had added their names to the list to be interviewed. There was a good bit of ambient noise on the footage, because they had no soundproof place to use for filming, but it gave the filming a sense of energy, like something exciting was going on just out of frame.

She added stills of the four interviewees to the pictures that were already posted to the “board thing.”

She looked out the window at the carousel. All the lights were blazing. Cab and Beau were still working. They’d be working late for the next few weeks in order to finish in time for the opening. This might be a perfect time to take some of her own footage for a publicity trailer without the children underfoot. Besides, she wasn’t really looking forward to facing Millie after that scene earlier.

She checked the camera battery and headed for the carousel, where she met Silas, Hadley, and two other men coming out the door.

They nodded. Silas stopped for a second. “They still in there. Working like they were possessed. We’ve finished for tonight.” He tipped his head and joined the others as they made their way across the darkening street.

She stepped inside. Cab was at the workbench. He looked up, stood, started to cross to meet her.

She felt a little flushed. She hadn’t seen him since that unexpected kiss, and the repeat performance. She was suddenly embarrassed to face him, and just a little giddy at being near him.

“Hi,” he said.

“Looks like things are really coming together,” she said, looking around instead of at him.

“Yeah. We might just make it. The storm windows are in. The painters are coming tomorrow, the exterior should be finished by next week.” He took a deep breath. “And then we replace the animals.”

“I can’t wait,” she said. “Everybody is really excited. We have a long list of people wanting to be interviewed.”

He nodded.

“I know you’re busy, but I do need to get some footage of you and Beau working, if that’s okay. I’ll take some for the carousel documentary, and then I can take some that you can use for advertisement. Free of charge as a thank-you.”

“That would be great. I’ve been sending out some Facebook stuff, took a few stills.” He heaved a sigh. “I really didn’t want to have to do all that myself. Maybe I can hire someone down the road.”