Mariah Stewart - On Sunset Beach

She grabbed her phone and sent Ellie a quick email:

Ellie, tell these people that you want to keep the existence of Carolina’s paintings hush-hush until a big splashy announcement can be made. It’s too much to hope that it could be kept a secret, but try to make them understand and appreciate the value of silence. Tell them that the greater the surprise, the bigger the news will be—that you want to bring as much positive attention to St. Dennis as possible. Then call me the minute you have something to tell!

She hit send and then sat back and prayed that the powers that be in St. Dennis had enough sense to know that what Ellie was proposing was the best way—the only way—to introduce the world to Carolina Ellis.

Over the next thirty-six hours, Carly jumped every time the phone rang or pinged with an incoming email. When Ellie finally called, she was bubbling over with news.

“You would have been so proud of me,” Ellie told Carly. “I was so cool. So collected. So professional. So—”

“Right. I’m sure you were. Now what happened?”

“Well, first I went over the things we discussed. You know, temperature, moisture in the air, security, that stuff. No one knew anything about any of that. So I said that I’d already discussed the situation with the owner of a very prestigious New York gallery and that I couldn’t possibly let my family’s legacy be put in jeopardy unless the conditions in the mansion were right.”

“Ah, that might have been piling it a little high.”

“Who cares? They bought it. Long story short, they agreed that you should come to St. Dennis ASAP and go through the mansion and see if it would—or could—work for an exhibit such as this one. I pointed out that if we could get this exhibit off the ground, we could make it a huge event with tons of publicity, and it would bring in a lot of revenue for the merchants and the restaurants and the B&Bs.”

“Nice touch.”

“I thought so.” Ellie sounded smug.

“So when should I come?”

“Oh, that’s the other thing. I hope you don’t have anything planned for the weekend, because I told them you’d be here on Saturday.” Ellie paused. “I hope that works for you.”

“It works. I’ll be at your place on Friday, so make something really good for dinner.”

“Will reservations do?”

“Of course. Oh, and Ellie? Tell Grace to please keep it all out of the paper …”

CARLY stood in the foyer of the very impressive Enright home and marveled that anyone would give away such a treasure.

“This place is beautiful. It’s hard to believe the man just gave it to the town.” She doubted that she’d ever feel so philanthropic that she’d do the same.

“It is unless you know the man.” Grace Sinclair, as a member of the committee that was to decide the fate of the proposed art gallery, met with Carly and Ellie at the property on Saturday morning.

“The Enrights have lived in St. Dennis for over a century,” Ed Lassiter, who was there in his official capacity as president of the town council, explained. “I think Curtis wanted to make certain that the property was maintained and that it never fell into disrepair. That’s the chance you take when you sell a property. You have no control over who buys it or what they’ll do with it. But if you gift it with strings, as Curtis did, you can ensure that it will be properly cared for.” He added, “At least until the money runs out.”

“The word is that he provided quite handsomely for the maintenance,” Grace noted, “so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“One hopes.” Ellie took Carly’s arm and steered her into the first room off the hall. “This was used as a living room, I believe. As you can see, there’s quite a bit of wall space to display paintings.”

Carly walked around the room, noting the abundance of windows.

“There’s so much light in here. If this room were to be used as a gallery, the windows would have to be heavily draped or you’d run the risk of the colors in the paintings fading. Plus, with the light being uneven in the room, the paintings will be partially in shadow, which won’t show them off well. Artificial lighting would have to be installed and carefully placed if this room were to be used.” She paused in the center of the room. It was barely eleven in the morning, and already the temperature was in the eighties. “There’s no air-conditioning?”

“Window units. The house was built long before duct work was in use,” Grace explained. “Hence all the radiators.”

Carly looked at Ellie almost apologetically. “If the temperature and humidity can’t be controlled, you can’t hang the paintings here for any length of time. They’ll be damaged, some perhaps irrevocably.”

Ellie nodded her head. “I understand.”

The entourage followed Carly back into the hall and watched her climb the first few steps of the staircase.

“As grand as these stairs are, they really weren’t designed for the type of foot traffic you’re likely to have, especially during those first days of the exhibit. You’ll have people stumbling over each other, and bumping into each other, and the next thing you know, someone falls and there’s—”

“A lawsuit against the town.” Ed stated the obvious.

“Exactly. Also, there’s no real gallery space here. These are important works of art and they will need to be displayed in a specific way, and that wouldn’t be possible here.” Carly turned to Ed, who had the fullest, whitest head of hair she had ever seen. She tried not to stare. “I don’t really think this house is suitable, as magnificent as it is. I couldn’t recommend it as being an appropriate venue to display your paintings, Ellie. I’m sorry. I know how much you wanted to share them with everyone.”

Ellie nodded. “I understand.”

“That’s my assessment.” Carly’s voice reflected what she hoped would sound like the appropriate amount of apology. “And we still haven’t discussed possible security.”

“I know that Curtis has a system installed.” Grace pointed to a keypad on the wall near the front door.

Carly came down the steps to inspect it. After a moment, she said, “This is a very common system for residential properties, and I’m sure it was adequate for Mr. Enright’s needs. But when you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars—perhaps a million dollars or more worth of artwork, you need to be much more diligent. Any experienced thief could disable that system in seconds.”

“We simply can’t take that sort of risk,” Grace told Ed. “We can’t expose the town to that liability.”

“Well, there’s probably insurance that could be purchased to cover the paintings for theft, right?” Ed asked.

“Insurance would cover the financial loss, but it couldn’t replace the art.” Grace’s forehead creased with concern. “We certainly wouldn’t want to see Ellie lose the life’s work of her great-great-grandmother. Maybe this just wasn’t meant to be.”

“Which means our exhibit will consist of Elmer Dougherty’s watercolors and Hazel Stevens’s paintings of her cats,” Ed said drily. “I’m sure those two will pack ’em in when the exhibit opens.”

“I’m really sorry,” Ellie said. “I was hoping we could work something out.”

“I know you were, dear, but really, we can’t be careless with Carolina’s work.” Grace patted Ellie on the hand.

“Well, I guess there’s nothing more to say.” Ed went out through the front door and the others followed. Once outside, he locked the door behind them and the four walked toward the driveway, where they’d parked their cars.

“It really is a beautiful property,” Carly commented. “I love the way the gardens are filled with so much color and the way the beds are laid out.”

“Jason Bowers designed them,” Grace said.

“Sophie Enright’s guy,” Ellie told Carly. “You met him last year at Pirate Day.” She glanced sheepishly at Grace and Ed. “I mean, First Families’ Day. Mr. Enright hired Jason to re-create the gardens as they had been in the late 1800s.”

“I remember Jason. He did a beautiful job here.” Carly stood near the bumper of Ellie’s car and gazed at the property as a whole. “This place would be fabulous for weddings and as a community center.”

“All being considered,” Grace told her.

The stone structure at the end of the driveway caught Carly’s eye. She paused to study it. Two stories high, the building had small windows on the first floor and a single, simple door in front.

“What is that building?” Carly asked.

“Oh, that’s the old carriage house. Mr. Enright hired us—that is, he hired Cameron’s company—to restore it.” Ellie smiled with pride. “We did a bang-up job inside and out, if I do say so myself.”

“What’s inside?” Carly asked.

“Not much. One big room—one floor, tall, open beamed ceiling.” Ellie shrugged. “I don’t know what Mr. Enright had in mind for it originally, but once he decided to give it to St. Dennis, he just had us finish the basic restoration. Walls, floor, roof, that sort of thing. Oh, and we had the exterior stone repointed.”

Carly turned to Ed. “Would you happen to have the key?”

“I don’t know.” He fumbled with the ring of keys. “Maybe one of these …”

“Let’s take a look inside,” Carly suggested.

“What are you thinking?” Ellie whispered to Carly as their pace took them well ahead of their companions.

“I’m thinking that there are probably a lot of blank walls in here.” Carly pointed to the side of the building. “And very few windows.”

“Just one on each side in the front, two on the back.”

They reached the door and waited for the others to catch up.

“I have a good feeling about this place,” Carly told Ellie. “A really good feeling. It gives off great vibes.”

“Wait. I can see where this is going.” Ellie grabbed her arm and pulled her aside. “Wouldn’t you rather display the paintings at your own gallery?”

“That was my first choice, yes, of course it was. But I have thought a lot about what you said, and I have to admit, the idea of displaying them in St. Dennis—right here, where Carolina painted many of the subjects that still exist—that really appeals to me. It’s a unique concept. I can think of only a few galleries that display works by famous artists where you can actually go and see the subjects. The Brandywine River Museum in Pennsylvania with its collection of three generations of Wyeth paintings is the one that comes immediately to mind. It takes my breath away to think that we have an opportunity to do something similar here. And as much as I wanted this exhibit in my gallery, I want to be fair,” she continued. “Which means we need to look at the spaces that could be available. Maybe this place won’t be any more appropriate than the house, but like I said, I have a really good feeling about it.”

“Let’s see if any of these keys work.” Ed tried first one, then another key in the big iron lock. The fourth key opened the door.

Inside the carriage house, the air was very still. Dust motes drifted in the light that spilled in from the few small windows and the opened door.

“There’s a light switch on the wall.” Ellie pointed to it. “We had the electric brought up to code when we were working on the place.”

She switched on the lights and at once the place came alive. “We had a lot of detail work to try to preserve the old floor, so we needed as much light as we could get.”