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“You have to,” Evie replied, not even looking up from her desk across from her brother’s. “Your body is smarter than you are.”
Jack put his chin in his hands and stared at Evie. “You’ve always been the calm, rational member of the family, but you’re spending money like it’s your last day on earth.”
“Maybe it is. The mother ship could be coming for me tomorrow. Maybe they need an accountant on their home planet.”
Jack tapped a pen on his desk until the annoying noise got Evie to look up.
“I thought you didn’t want to be an accountant anymore,” he said. “That’s why we hired someone to replace you and you’re off building docks and knocking down our old hotel.”
“I haven’t knocked it down yet. I need permits.”
Evie minimized her computer screen and gave Jack her full attention.
“I love numbers. Accounts. Spreadsheets. Love them.” She sighed. “When I was younger, I thought those things would make me happy for life.”
“But?”
“Dad died and left us Starlight Point. I want to be more than just a number cruncher. Accountants you can hire. What you need is a partner.” She paused and grinned at him. “Especially since you’ll be a family man before the summer is over.”
Jack put his head on his desk.
“Don’t be dramatic. You can come in here and cry about your sleepless nights. I’ll pretend to be sympathetic. I’ll even look the other way if you have puke on your tie.”
“I believe you’d tell me if I had puke on my tie. I hope you would, anyway.”
Evie laughed. “I would.”
There was a knock on their office door.
“It’s Mel,” a voice called from the other side.
“You can only come in if you have doughnuts or good news,” Jack yelled.
Mel Preston swept the door open. The head of maintenance at Starlight Point had married June Hamilton in a Christmas ceremony the previous winter. After the two of them had carried a torch for each other for more than a decade, Evie was much relieved when they’d finally given in to the flames. In her mind, it freed everyone up to get back to the business of running an amusement park. For her part, Evie had no intention of ever being such a ninny in the romance department. It killed on-the-job productivity.
“You don’t have to knock, Mel,” Evie said. “You’re a member of the family.”
“Still can’t believe my good luck,” he said. “I hope your sister never comes to her senses.”
“She won’t.”
“What’s up, Mel?” Jack asked. “Evie and I were in the middle of an important whining session.”
“My brother’s being a baby about having a baby in the middle of the summer.”
“I can add to your problems if you need something more to cry about,” Mel said.
“Do we have problems?” Jack asked.
“I think you should come see for yourself,” Mel responded, his tone losing all its levity.
Jack and Evie jumped to their feet. “Ride problem? Someone hurt?”
Mel shook his head. “Someone’s a pain in the rear.”
Evie guessed who the pain in the rear was before Mel could explain.
“Is it the new fire inspector?”
Mel blew out a breath and made two fists. He tapped them together lightly. “Can’t believe the guy has the nerve to wear one of our name tags while being our worst enemy.”
Jack picked up his cell phone from his desk and shoved it in the interior pocket of his suit coat. “Where are we going?”
“Bennett’s going through the employee dorm with a clipboard right now. He just got done raking one of my guys over the coals for parking in a fire lane while he did an emergency repair on the back of the Silver Streak. Yesterday we caught heck for using a torch near flammable materials. Guess the guy doesn’t know that every single thing in the maintenance garage is flammable.”
Mel’s pickup waited just outside the employee gate near the corporate office. He was parked in the same place Scott had parked the fire truck when he dropped Evie off over a week ago on that rainy afternoon. That was before Evie realized who her chauffeur was.
Jack and Evie got in the truck and Mel briefed them on the ten-minute drive around the outer loop to the employee dorms located close to the marina.
“Fact is, the guy’s right about a few things,” Mel said. “I hate admitting that.”
Sandwiched between the two men in the truck, Evie saw the look that passed between her brother and his best friend of more than twenty years.
“We’ve talked about that dorm before,” Mel continued. “It’s eighty years old. The floors roll. The windows leak.”
“We never promised our summer workers a palace,” Jack said. “It’s free housing.”
Mel nodded.
“But?” Evie prompted.
“It’s not the nicest. I wouldn’t let my son stay there,” Mel continued.
“Ross is six going on seven,” Evie said.
“I know. He thinks it’s fun camping out in the big box our new refrigerator came in. I mean I wouldn’t let him stay there if he was a teenager working here.”
“Why not?” Evie asked.
“It’s not air-conditioned, the bathrooms stink and there are girls living right down the hall. Very dangerous.”
Evie thought about the many times she’d begged her parents to let her live in the dorms with the other summer employees. Although they’d owned Starlight Point, Virginia and Ford Hamilton had required their three children to work regular summer jobs in the park.
Evie had done time running the register in the airbrush art stand, scooping ice cream and sweeping trash off the midways. Her coworkers were her friends and they’d told her about all the fun they’d had off hours in the dorms after playing on the beach and going on rides.
Evie had joined her friends on some of their beach and park adventures, but she’d always been sorry to cross the lot to her parents’ luxurious house on the Old Road abutting the Starlight Point parking lot on the lake side of the peninsula. Her parents had staunchly refused to allow her to bunk with the summer workers. Maybe she knew why now.
“When was the last time you were in the dorms?” Evie asked Mel as they drove.
“Yesterday,” Mel said. “Power went out on the second floor because kids plugged in too much stuff and blew a fuse.”
The three of them rode in silence on the low-speed road surrounding the Point.
“Dad was always afraid the summer employees were going to burn down that old barn someday,” Jack said.
Evie blew out a breath. “Any idea what Inspector Gotcha is writing on his clipboard?”
She pictured him, dark eyes drawn together in a scowl, taping off the doors of the dorm by order of the fire inspector. Her pulse quickened. He wouldn’t close the dorm, would he? Where would their employees go?
What if he found picky infractions as he had at the marina? Two of the three marina problems were already addressed and she had the asphalt truck on order to fix the fire lane. The giant old cottonwood tree that had shaded the marina area for a century was still an obstacle, but she was trying to find a way around it without sacrificing a piece of history.
Soon, her marina would open and she could move on to the hotel project.
If Scott approves my plans.
He had to approve them. Jack was panicking about the money she was investing in the capital improvement projects for the Point. The investment had to start paying off soon or they were all in trouble. Guilt nagged at her. How much was she motivated by planning the next century for Starlight Point and how much was her motivation driven by her own need to prove she was more than just an accountant and a little sister?
Like it or not, getting the exacting new fire inspector to endorse her plans was integral to the success of her project. Making an enemy of him over the employee housing wasn’t wise, and Evie had a lingering feeling that Inspector Scott Bennett was going to make this the most difficult summer of her life anyway.
* * *
SCOTT WAS STUNNED. He knew the former inspector was too friendly with local businesses. Too sloppy. Let too many things slide. Maybe the guy had never seen someone die in a fire that could and should have been prevented.
He took a deep breath and focused on the fire escape at the employee dorm. A lawn chair blocked the door at the top and someone had parked a barbecue grill at the bottom. It mirrored what he’d found inside the dorm when he’d walked through all three floors.
Fire doors propped open. Cooking devices that were illegal and asking for trouble. Posters and fabric decorations covering the walls and draped over lighting fixtures. A shirt hanger dangling off a smoke detector.
The attic spanning the length of the building was filled with flammable junk, probably items left from years of summer employees. Old mattresses. A dresser. Cardboard boxes filled with who knew what. All kindling in the worst case scenario.
If it were a modern building, there would be fire walls dividing the attic to prevent the spread of flames. But it wasn’t anywhere close to being modern. The employee dorm appeared to be almost as old as the Lake Breeze Hotel. The hotel was a different story, one he planned to dig his teeth into another day.
Scott lowered the tailgate on the fire department’s pickup truck. He sat on the tailgate, dangling his legs. It was sunny and the breeze off the nearby lake cooled his heated mind. He began to write the list of corrections that had to be made immediately or he would be forced by a combination of the law and his own conscience to close the dorm.
A blue truck pulled up and three people climbed out. Evie and Jack Hamilton and the head of maintenance, a man he’d already tangled with. Mel something.
Evie’s long hair was pulled back tight from her face. Her green eyes flashed in the bright sunlight.
Her brother was much taller but his grim expression matched hers.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Scott said, resolved to deliver the true but unpleasant news without dancing around it. “We can begin the twenty-four-hour notification period required in the event of closure and condemnation by the fire inspector.”
“Twenty-four hours?” Evie said. “Closure and condemnation?”
Her eyes were wide, mouth open in shock. Jack’s face registered closer to murderous. Mel and Jack stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind Evie, as if they were her enforcers.
Interesting. She appeared to be the youngest of the three, but she was in charge. He had no idea how the Hamiltons operated. He knew there was another sister, but he hadn’t met her yet.
“In the event of actual danger to life or property, I have the authority to close buildings, construction sites, parties and just about anything else,” Scott said. “Michigan law.”
“Is there actual danger here?” Evie asked. She stepped closer, her hip almost brushing the edge of the tailgate. Scott wished she wouldn’t stand so close.
“This place is five seconds from going up in flames. I wouldn’t sleep at night if I owned it or if anyone I cared about was staying in it.”
He saw the glance exchanged between Evie, her brother and her maintenance man. None of them looked surprised.
What was wrong with these people? Were they too busy adding up their cash to make potentially lifesaving upgrades?
Evie held out her hand for his clipboard. Her expression softened just a little. Not a smile. But perhaps an admission that he wasn’t the big bad wolf.
He handed her the clipboard and watched her read his neatly printed list of violations. She flipped to the next page and perused the diagram he’d drawn with marks indicating the locations of the infractions.
Her expression hardened as she read. Lines defined the set of her mouth. When she looked up at him, her eyes were narrowed, brows drawn together.
“These violations have nothing to do with the actual building,” she said.
Scott shrugged. “True. It’s the careless way your employees are living. Probably find the same things on a college campus.”
“But you’re holding us at fault and threatening to close our building.”
Obviously.
“Yes,” he said curtly. “It’s your building.” He took back his clipboard. “You,” he said, pointing to her and Jack, “are responsible for the people living in your dorm, like it or not.”
Evie slid onto the tailgate, only two feet away from him, swinging her long legs. Her skin was bare from her knee-length navy blue skirt to her low-heeled sandals. She had a small scar on the outside of her ankle and Scott was tempted to ask how she got it.
He shook off the thought and returned his attention to his clipboard.
“If we go through the dorm, knock on doors, educate our employees and remove hazards, would you be convinced to let this go?” Evie asked.
Scott glanced up at Jack and Mel, who were towering over him, arms crossed over their chests.
“I wouldn’t be letting it go,” Scott said. “The problem would be solved. And that’s what I want. It’s what you should want, too. Assuming you care about the lives of your employees.”
“Hey,” Jack said. He uncrossed his arms and took a step forward. “I’m not going to stand here and let you imply I don’t care about what happens around here. I care about every single thing that happens at Starlight Point. Maybe you don’t want to work for a guy like me if you don’t get that.”
Evie bounced off the tailgate and took Jack and Mel by the upper arms. She walked away with both of them and had a low-volume conversation. Scott couldn’t see their faces and was probably better off not knowing the direction their discussion took.
The two men got in the truck and left.
Evie turned around and walked straight up to Scott, stopping only when she was almost close enough to touch him. “If you’re willing to go through the dorm with me and set things straight, I’m all yours.”
CHAPTER FOUR (#uad0c0979-609f-5530-9a3c-8835618016cc)
CRISIS AVERTED, EVIE THOUGHT. But when would the next one come? The daily life of Starlight Point was madness. A beautiful madness that ran through her veins like sunshine. And sometimes rain.
The employee dorms would remain open, but she had no doubt Scott Bennett would sweep through with his book of fire codes whenever he thought their guard was down. Following him through the dorm, floor by floor and room by room, made for the most exhausting morning she could remember. With every door they knocked on, her spirits sank because she dreaded the tangle of extension cords they’d find. Or the doors half blocked with furniture. Or the furtive hot plates. Ashtrays. Candles.
It was a disaster waiting to happen.
