Summer on the Cape (26 page)

Zach smiled at the lawyer while Adam continued to peer thoughtfully at him. “Plenty of advantage. First of all, the community up there is really hot for the deal. An amusement park suited their purposes exactly, and they were behind it from day one. And now that it folded, they’re really in the soup. Anyone who comes in and bails them out is going to be Santa Claus and Daddy Warbucks all rolled up in one.”

The lawyers were nodding. The chairman remained impassive. No one noticed Allie, who was hanging on every word, transfixed. Zach turned to Mr. Nakamura. “More important, all the groundwork has been done. All the feasibility studies were completed. They came through the environmental impact work with flying colors. They even started clearing the ground. All the permits are in place. The contractors are ready to go. Matsuhara could walk right in and take it over and you’d save a bundle in start-up costs.

“I drove up there on Sunday, and Hadley and I went over it thoroughly. It’s a good property.” He looked the chairman in the eye intently. “You know my reputation. You know I don’t advise it unless I’m convinced it’s solid.”

There was no smile on Zach’s face now. He was deadly serious. He pushed himself up out of the chair, impatient now to sell his proposal. He paced a couple of steps away from the desk, rubbing his mouth with his open hand. “The federal regulators have their regional office in Boston, and Hadley and I met with them yesterday. They need to unload this property and are willing to make all sorts of concessions.” Zach put both hands on the desk leaning forward, toward the chairman for emphasis. “It’s a sweet deal. You’re not going to find anything as nice as this one.” Then he surprised Allie by gesturing in her direction.

“It’s such a sweet deal, you won’t even lose money on her stuff. You’ll still be able to use her pictures in your ads and brochures.” It broke Allie’s heart to see the cynicism in his face, to hear the bitterness in his voice. “Hell, one seaside town looks pretty much like every other seaside town. The waves look the same. The moon on the beach looks the same. Even the sailboats look the same!”

Adam had not moved from the depths of his chair. “Well, you have been busy. I’d like to know what the advantage to you is. What are you getting out of all this, Zach?”

Zach didn’t move his hands from the desktop, but the chairman noticed that the fingers clenched down tightly, the knuckles going white. Zach moved only his head, slightly, letting his words carry to Adam, behind him.

“You know what I’m getting out of this, Talmadge. I’m getting you out of my face. I’m getting you out of my neighborhood, out of my part of the world. I’m trying to get you out of my life!” His eyes flicked in Allie’s direction, and he repeated, his face tight and bitter, “I’m trying to get you out of my life.”

Now it was Adam’s turn to stand. He did a fast turn to the window and back again. He came close to Zach, who was still leaning stiff-armed on the desk. “Too bad, Eliot, but I’m still in your face. If my advice means anything around here,”—he nodded to the chairman—“and I think it does, we’re not pulling out of the Cape Cod project.”

“You’re not a fool, Adam,” Zach said quietly. “This is a good deal and you know it. Why should you advise against it?”

“Because while you’ve been running around all weekend, I’ve also been busy.” He leaned on the desk, too, his head close to Zach’s. “In these last few days, I’ve picked up options on most of the key pieces of property up there—yours excluded, of course. I’ve just sunk in over half a million of my own money, and if this project goes bye-bye, I’m left holding options to buy a lot of property that no one wants.”

Zach turned slowly, sinking down to sit on the desk corner. His smile was without any warmth. “Well, that’s too bad, Adam. I guess for once you just got too cute. Maybe you should have left well enough alone. Your original investment was solid and you and your clients here could have done really well together. I’m betting they’re going to choose to do really well anyway, and they’ll be perfectly happy to hang you out to dry.”

Barrows said quietly, from the depths of the couch where he and Winder were sitting together, “Well, you know, Adam, it appears Zach really has brought us a most interesting alternative.”

“Most interesting, my eye!” Adam’s face was turning pink. “Not interesting for me, Barrows. I’ve got a half a million in options up there!” He turned to Zach. “Eliot, you try to stop me, with your little circle of selectmen and your little committees and your little townspeople, we’ll have you in court so fast you won’t know what hit you!”

“Who do you think you’re talking to, Adam? You think you’re going to scare me by threatening legal action? You should know me better than that! I’ll bring in Baines and Duffy from Boston. You want to take them on?”

“That town can’t afford Baines and Duffy.”

“The hell with the town!” Zach’s face was inches from Adam’s. “I’ll match every one of your millions with one of my own, and more, if I have to.” Zach’s rage was now clear to everyone in the room. “You are not going to build that damn park, Adam. You are not going to foul that place with your crowds and your hoopla. You are not going to stir up those waters. I am not going to let you! You hear me, Adam, you’re going to leave the waters of Cape Cod Bay in peace!”

Allie was dumbfounded. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Were there tears in Zach’s eyes? She thought she knew Zach, but this was a man she had never seen. His face was immobile, his eyes and Adam’s locked together.

But Adam had dropped his gaze and turned away. He walked to the window and leaned on the sill for a long time, looking down on Madison Avenue, eighty-three floors below. No one in the room spoke while they all waited for Adam’s next move. Finally, still gazing out the window, his shoulders lifted and he sighed deeply. When he turned around at last, his normal color had returned, and he looked quite at ease. He came back to Zach and said quietly, “Of course, Zach. You’re absolutely right.”

Nothing more. The chairman’s eyebrows really climbed this time, and his hands lifted a bit from the desktop, and then dropped back again, his fingertips tapping lightly on the polished wood. Barrows and Winder looked at each other curiously. Allie’s face was an open book as she suffered for both men.

Zach looked deeply into Adam’s face. Something passed between them that Allie couldn’t understand, something cold, and angry, but very private, just between the two of them.

The chairman said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Eliot. We will give your proposal very careful consideration.”

Zach’s eyes held Adam’s for a moment longer. Then he relaxed, took a slow breath and turned to the chairman. “Thank you, Mr. Nakamura. Perhaps, when Mr. Hadley calls today, you’ll have a decision ready for him. His people are prepared to draw up a full memorandum for you, spelling out all the details. If you would like to keep me informed, I’d be grateful.” He reached across the desk and shook hands with the chairman. Then he and the lawyers shook hands. As he turned to leave, he glared at Adam.

“Stay out of my way, Adam. If I see you around, I’ll take you apart. Send your man up to clean your stuff out of the house. I want you out of there.” He nodded toward Allie. “And get her out of there, too.”

Adam was silent.

Zach headed for the door, and as he passed Allie, he stopped. He leaned his face down close to hers and, just loud enough so that only she could hear him, he whispered, “You see, Allie? I’ve been just as busy as a little beaver!” Then he was gone, slamming the door behind him.

The big office, in the wake of Zach’s departure, was like a vacuum. No one spoke, and no one moved. The chairman sat thoughtfully, his head nodding slightly. “Very interesting,” he said at last. “Very interesting.” He smiled gently at Allie, noting her pale face, her eyes red-rimmed again, her misery apparent to anyone who wasn’t a fool.

He decided to speak to her directly. “I think, Ms. Randall, that we are going to be very busy here for a few days. Perhaps you will prefer not to meet tomorrow. The portrait can wait. I will be back in New York in a few weeks and I think maybe you have other things to attend to in the meantime. Perhaps on Cape Cod?”

Allie didn’t dare speak and only nodded her agreement. As she gathered up her bag and her paintbox, Adam came up to her and took her arm, taking the box from her at the same time. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee, Allie. I want to talk to you.”

Together, they left the room.

Chapter Eighteen

I
t was too early for the lunchtime crowd to start arriving, so the little diner on 54th Street was almost empty. Adam steered Allie into a quiet booth near the back, telling the counterman, as they passed him, to bring a couple of cups of coffee.

Allie dropped her bag onto the leatherette seat and sank back against it, turning her face away from Adam’s gaze.

“Sweetie, you look a mess,” Adam said, pulling his handkerchief from his breast pocket and handing it to her. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

Allie just shook her head as she wiped her eyes, strands of her hair catching against her wet face.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said, his voice full of genuine concern. Allie just closed her eyes, nodding her head slightly, in silent acknowledgment that she had never been like this. “What I’m going to tell you isn’t going to make it any better,” he said, “but there’s something you need to know, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to put it off.”

Allie bunched up the handkerchief in her hand and lifted her small chin resolutely. She looked him firmly in the eye.

“Adam, something went on, up there in Nakamura’s office, between you and Zach. Something that made you back off the way you did. Is that what you want to talk to me about?”

“That’s right, Allie.” Adam was quiet for a moment as the counterman arrived with their coffee and set it down together with a little pitcher of cream on the Formica tabletop. Adam handed him some dollar bills and the man understood they wanted to be left alone.

“You see, Allie, I know something about Zach that no one else in that room knew—except Zach himself, of course.” Adam poured a bit of cream into his coffee and stirred it with a spoon. He looked thoughtfully into the cup, as though he might find some guidance there as to how to proceed. Still staring into the cup, still swirling the coffee slowly, he said, “It’s a story that goes back a number of years, and I guess I just hadn’t connected it with this whole project. But something Zach said made me remember, and then I understood the whole thing.”

“You mean you understood his opposition to the project?”

“That’s right. I not only understood why he was fighting it, I understood why he would spend any amount of money and any amount of time and energy to kill it. I knew there was no point in trying to stop him.” Adam snorted. “I realized this was a battle Zach Eliot was going to win.” Adam laid the spoon down on the tabletop abruptly. “I saw I was going to lose this one.” His lips compressed tightly against his teeth, and then, with a small, rueful laugh and a shake of his head, he added, “A half a million, down the drain!”

Allie’s tears had stopped. She only stared at Adam, waiting for him to continue.

“I didn’t catch on,” Adam continued, “until Zach said something about ‘not stirring up those waters.’”

“What he said was, ‘You’re going to leave the waters of Cape Cod Bay in peace.’ ” Allie remembered exactly.

“That’s it,” Adam said, picking up his spoon and stirring his coffee again, staring into the cup. “That’s when I realized what’s going on.”

Allie felt a cold breath of dread pass over her as she saw the somber expression on Adam’s face. “What is it, Adam? What happened to Zach?”

“It’s a terribly tragic story, Allie.” He raised his eyes to hers, seeing there the pain and the growing anxiety. “Believe me, sweetie, if I’d had any idea of what was happening between you and Zach, I would have seen to it that you knew, but I just never realized. I never had a clue that Zach was even in the picture.”

He reached across the table and stroked the damp bangs away from Allie’s forehead and ran his hand in a comforting gesture down the side of her cheek. Allie’s eyes were fixed on him intently.

“I never knew Zach Eliot well,” he began, “but my family had been renting that house up on the beach from the Eliots ever since I was in college, so I guess we weren’t exactly strangers. He’s younger than I am, by about ten, maybe twelve years, so we didn’t have much contact back then.

“I guess eventually he went off to school, had a couple of the usual wild years—all the Eliot boys seem to have done that—and then settled down to being a respectable adult. That also seems to be an Eliot characteristic.

“Then I heard that he’d married a girl from one of the old, old Boston families. Elizabeth something. Morrow, or Monroe. Something like that. Very high class. That would have been soon after he got out of college.”

“The girl in the picture,” Allie said, as though to herself, remembering that morning in the darkened living room of Zach’s house.

“What picture?”

“Never mind,” Allie said, shaking her head briefly, not wanting to stop Adam’s story. “Go on.”

“All right. Well, there were also two children. Two little boys.”

“Two?” Allie asked, surprised.

“That’s the way I heard it. Anyway, they lived in Boston, and Zach worked in his family’s investment banking firm. They had offices here in New York, too, so I suppose Zach traveled back and forth a lot. And they had the old Eliot place on the Cape.” Adam paused, knowing this was no time to tease her about her “visit” to that house. “You’ve seen it, of course.”

Allie nodded, her hands circling the saucer of her coffee cup. She hadn’t drunk a drop. Hadn’t even thought of drinking it. “I guess I really was snooping that day. I hate to admit it. I didn’t even admit it to myself, but I guess that’s what I was doing.” She brushed at her bangs. “I guess I wanted to know more about him.”

Adam gazed at her sadly for a moment, realizing how unhappy she was. Then he went on with his story.

“Well, here’s the thing. For generations, that whole family had been into sailing. I mean really big-time sailing. Zach had been sailing since he was a kid. He was world-class, very, very experienced. Won all sorts of trophies. He’d been in all the big races, international competition, the works, with custom-made, high-tech boats. That kind of sailing is only for rich men, very rich men.