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
