“You can’t sell a TOWN!”
Lynn Louise starts banging her gavel, and the room goes silent in a hurry. Not quickly enough. Ashlee shakes her head. “He hung up.”
Winnie returns to us. “I feel like I need to bleach my brain and my ears.”
Val practically throws herself over my body to give Winnie a hug. “You did good, Winnie. That guy is such slime.”
“Total slime,” I agree.
“The slime slugs leave behind,” Winnie says with a shudder.
“But it sounds like he’s gone now,” I say.
Val returns to her normal spot. “Good riddance.”
“Except for the whole part where he’s my boss. Do I even have a job if the mayor is gone?” Winnie asks.
It’s a solid question. One of many being voiced all around us.
“Can he do that? Can he sell the town?” Lynn Louise asks no one in particular. Judge Judie shrugs, and we all turn to Ashlee.
Her face is grim. “I can do some digging. It shouldn’t be hard to find a paper trail of this size. I didn’t even know the mayor—former mayor?—owned it. Or that any one citizen did. I’m guessing the fact that he’s saying he’s somewhere tropical means there was a sale, and he got paid. Whether he committed some kind of fraud—that I’m not sure of. I just know I didn’t broker any deal.”
“You think the Waters Firm would help with this?” Judge Judie asks, looking skeptical.
It doesn’t really make sense for them to sabotage the town. They’d more likely buy it themselves. The Waters are Sheeters through and through. Billy Senior’s great granny had the prize-winning sheet cake recipe at the festival for years. I don’t think this was quite what they had in mind when they supported the mayor’s campaign.
“Not really,” Ashlee says. “Though they have the money to do it. I don’t know what the going rate for a town is, but I’m guessing six to maybe seven figures.”
It’s hard to imagine our falling-apart and mostly empty town proper going for that much.
“Who would want to buy Sheet Cake, much less have the money to—” Lynn Louise starts to ask, then stops, as the whole room seems to come to an understanding at once about who might have the money to buy our town.
Pro athletes would. Like the two pro athlete investors who were in town today.
All deals and bets with my cheeks about blushing are off. My face, my neck, and even my ears are burning. If my educated guess is correct, then Pat and his dad aren’t just interested investors.
They’re the new town owners.
Chapter Nine
Pat
I can’t stop thinking about three things. Well, one person, one place, and one idea. So, basically, nouns. I can’t stop thinking about NOUNS.
The person I’m thinking about is Lindy. Thinking is a vast understatement for what I’m doing. Obsessing. Dreaming. Mentally and emotionally imploding. Planning. Hoping.
The place on my mind is about as obvious: a dying little town named after a cake. I’ve almost driven back there four times in the last few days. Now that I know where Lindy is, I just want to be there.
The idea is how I can possibly win her back. So far, I’m coming up empty on this front, which is why I haven’t returned to Sheet Cake. Yet. I can’t go in guns blazing. Now that I know more about what the past five years have been like for Lindy, I know she’s going to need a gentle hand. I have a lot of mistakes and time to make up for.
What I need is a good, solid action verb to get me started. To untie the veritable tangle of complicated knots in my head and heart. I was never a Boy Scout or a sailor, so I’m not good at knots. I’m just fumbling around, getting more and more frustrated with every passing second. Add in the fact that our family is still mostly at odds over Tank’s decision to buy Sheet Cake, and I’m all tied up.