Spring and David shared a glance, humor sparking between them. "I told you," Spring murmured. "Maddie has had a thing for him for years. He's oblivious."

"Hey, no whispering down there," Cecelia said. "If you're sharing juicy gossip, I want to be a part of it."

"Just filling him in on some backstory," Spring said.

David lifted his water goblet in a slight toast to indicate all was well at their end of the table.

"On the QT, Officer Walters told me that the police are looking into several burglaries in Cedar Springs," Gerald said, clearly relishing his role as purveyor of news unknown to the others. "And," he said, lowering his voice as if said criminals might be listening in to their dinner conversation, "they think there may be a ring operating somewhere out here."

"Out here where?" Cecelia asked.

"In one of the abandoned barns or houses," Gerald said. "Can you imagine that?"

Spring's eyes widened, and she looked at Cecelia, who was also staring at Gerald.

"There aren't that many abandoned properties," Spring said. "Many of them are like this house, used as weekend getaways."

Gerald nodded knowingly. "Exactly. I would a.s.sume the crooks have scanned out all of the property out here and know exactly when they're empty. They could be watching us right now."

"Gerald," Cecelia said, "stop being so melodramatic."

He huffed and sat back. "Call it what you want. I just hope the police recover those paintings and the vases they took. I can't believe they just cherry-picked our inventory like that."

Cecelia pushed her chair back. "I'm going to go get dessert ready," she said, standing. "Spring, why don't you help me?"

Spring knew exactly what Cecelia wanted to talk to her about in the privacy of the kitchen. They'd seen Sweet Willie wandering around in the area where there was a barn that was definitely deserted. What if he was a part of the burglary ring or knew something about it?

Just as soon as they were alone in the big country kitchen, Cecelia voiced the very question that had been on Spring's mind.

"Do you think Sweet Willie has something to do with the break-in at the antiques store?"

Spring leaned against the counter. "I don't know. It doesn't seem likely."

"What's out here for a homeless man to get into besides trouble?" Cecelia said, keeping her voice low so it didn't carry to the other room. "Wasn't I just saying yesterday something was off about him?"

"Do you think we should go to the police?" Spring said.

"Go to the police about what?" David asked, entering the kitchen with several dinner plates in hand.

Spring started as if she herself had been caught in the middle of a criminal activity. She looked at Cecelia, who lifted and dropped her shoulders, leaving the decision to Spring whether or not to bring David into their confidence. Although he was an outsider, she trusted him... Well, she trusted certain parts of him. But because he wasn't from Cedar Springs, maybe he could see a different perspective.

"Cecelia and I were coming out here to get the house ready for this dinner, putting the leaves in the table, making sure there was enough dinnerware and that sort of thing. But on the way here, we saw one of the homeless men who is a regular for meals at Manna, the Common Ground ministry's soup kitchen."

"Was he doing something illegal?" David asked.

"No," Spring said.

"But there's a good reason to believe he's not so innocent."

"Cecelia," Spring said, resignation in her voice.

"What?" David asked, looking between the two women.

"Cecelia has a theory about him that I think is ridiculous."

David placed the dirty dishes in the sink. "Well, if there's a connection between him and the burglary at Gerald's store, you should let the authorities know. Police on the news are always saying that even the smallest of details can be significant to a case."

"What do you think, CeCe?"

The professor looked torn as she weighed the pros and cons of the situation.

"Tell you what," Cecelia finally said, "I have some volunteer shifts at Manna this coming week. If Sweet Willie is there, I'll see what he has to say."

"You should not be playing detective," Spring said. "We have no idea what, if anything, could be going on."

"That's right," David said. "I've been involved with development projects where squatters had to be forcibly removed from buildings before demolition or renovation could take place. It wasn't pretty, and the police were ultimately called in on each situation. Given that you're thinking there could be criminal activity a.s.sociated, the wisest course of action would be alerting the authorities."

Spring let out a snort, the type her mother would deem extremely unladylike. She went to the refrigerator and started pulling out the miniature parfaits that would be served with their tortoni.

"If you think Professor Many Degrees over there is going to follow the wisest course of any action, you'll be sadly and extremely mistaken."

"Professor Many Degrees?"

"Pay her no attention whatsoever," Cecelia answered.

But Spring was looking at David. "What you said," she told him. "That may be it."

"What did I say?"

"The abandoned buildings. My sister Summer runs the kitchen at Manna. And I remember her saying there have been periods when Sweet Willie just sort of disappeared."

"And?" Cecelia prompted.

"The abandoned buildings out here. They are the perfect place for someone to live, especially someone without a permanent home," she said. "Maybe that's what Sweet Willie was doing out on Orchard Road. Heading to a barn or building where he's-what did you call it?-squatting?"

David nodded. "It's not as big a problem here on the East Coast as it is in some of the southwestern and western states where entire subdivisions have foreclosed properties. Homeless people, drug addicts and others just move in. Sometimes squatters keep up a property better than the homeowners who abandoned the places because they want it to appear like they belong there."

"How long does it take three adults to gather a simple dessert?" Gerald said, entering the kitchen carrying the remaining dinner dishes. With a glance around the kitchen, he scowled. "You didn't put the coffee on. Must I do everything?"

"No one makes chicory coffee like you do, Gerald," Spring said, smoothly changing the subject.

"Go," Gerald said, shooing all three out of the room. "I'll see to the dessert and coffee service."

After dessert at the dining room table, the group of diners moved to the living room for after-dinner coffee and the real purpose of the dinner party.

"So, David," Carol Delaney said. "I read in the Gazette that your firm is coming up with a plan for developing outlying parcels here in Cedar Springs."

"That's right," he said, taking a sip of espresso from the demita.s.se cup. "My team has reviewed all of the sites, but I've only seen two of the three proposed sites. I'm here to inspect the third."

Cecelia, sitting to his left, reached for one of the small fresh-baked minibiscottis on a tray that Spring was pa.s.sing around. "Did you know that this house was once part of the Underground Railroad? One of Spring's ancestors was an abolitionist."

"Really?" David said, sitting forward. "I researched a lot of the area and didn't come across that fact. I know there were rumors about way stations being in eastern North Carolina, but I had no idea that Cedar Springs was a part of it."

Cecelia nodded and continued with the story. "Cedar Springs was something of a little protected enclave in the years leading to the War. Things weren't quite as they appeared. Most of the homes over on Catalpa Road, like the Scofield House, are on the Historic Register. They were all built by and for free blacks."

"Cecelia heads up a project that's getting a few of the ones that haven't been kept up purchased and renovated."

"Is that so?" David said. "Hmm..."

Spring wondered what he was thinking. But before she could think of a way to ask, Cecelia was answering.

"Indeed," the professor said. "There were more free blacks living in the town, then known as Springs, North Carolina, than in much of the state. Spring's family, the Darlings, were a perfect example of how it was done. A couple believed by most to be their enslaved domestics were actually a teacher and a groomsman who would later go on to earn a medical degree. Eventually that groom earned the piece of paper that validated what he'd been doing most of his life under the tutelage of Dr. Darling, her great-great-grandfather," she said with a nod toward Spring.

"And that black teacher who masqueraded as a house servant for the Darling family was her grandmother's grandmother," Spring said, indicating Cecelia.

"Hiding in plain sight," David said. Then he sat back in the wing chair and steepled his hands. "I'm starting to get the overall picture here," he added. "You didn't invite me here for dinner. This is some sort of pa.s.sive-aggressive ploy to get me to either withdraw from the mixed-use project or to recommend one of the other sites."

He didn't look at Spring when he made the accusation, but she felt his quiet wrath as if he were yelling directly at her.

Sitting forward, David met the anxious gazes of each of the dinner party guests. "I don't appreciate the subterfuge," he said. "If you wanted to make your case, why couldn't you be straight up about it?"

For an uncomfortable moment, the room remained oddly quiet. The quiet of the guilty, Spring thought.

"Don't blame them," she said, looking as miserable as she felt. She'd been trying to tell him, to make her confession before things got to this point. But she had waited too late, let herself get swept up in the tide of it'll all work out in the end. She should have known better. Only in the movies and on reality television did interventions actually end with the result desired at the beginning. "It was my idea," she told David. "As a matter of fact, more than one person tried to talk me out of it. I just thought-"

"You just thought that you could bombard me with stories about how precious this house and your land is. How I should take my architectural plans and go ruin some other community."

Spring lowered her head.

That's exactly what she'd thought. But hearing the words come from David made the plan seem cold and callous, devious and self-serving.

"We thought if you saw-"

David held up a hand to halt the rest of her explanation. Rising, he nodded to the members of the Magnolia Supper Club. "The food was great," he said. "I wish I could say the same about the rest of the evening." When no one said anything, he added, "I'll see myself out."

Spring slumped in her seat.

She would have liked to have heard the front door slam behind him on his way out. But there wasn't even that bit of his anger to a.s.suage her guilt.

"I'm sorry, guys," she told her friends. "This clearly wasn't one of my better ideas."

"What do we do now?" Carol asked.

"Maybe we can fast-track the historic landmark application."

Spring rose. "Excuse me," she told her friends. "I need some air."

She didn't want to cry, but she felt the wetness welling up in her eyes. Cecelia had predicted that this escapade would end badly. Spring had relied on the strength of her convictions. But look where that got her-roundly and solidly chastised by someone she was starting to have strong feelings for.

Pulling open the front door, she came up short when she spied David standing on the porch. His back was to her as he stood gazing out at the cedar trees and beyond them the fields leased by small farming operations.

"I thought you'd left."

"I wanted to," he said without turning around. "But I hoped you would come out."

Still standing in the doorway, the screen door open, Spring asked, "Why?"

"Because even more than I wanted to leave, I wanted to hear from you why you did this. Why you thought it would be all right to lure me under false pretenses out here to your family's home. Was it so you and your friends could have some fun at my expense?"

Chapter Eleven.

"That wasn't the case at all," she said, dismayed by the very idea.

Spring closed the door and indicated the swing on the front porch. "Would you like to sit?" she asked.

"No."

He had yet to face her. He stood on the top step, hands shoved in his pockets, his back erect. Spring imagined he was holding on to his temper with everything he had in him. She knew if the tables were reversed, she'd be giving him more than a piece of her mind; she would be giving him the riot act with a righteous dose of Southern indignation.

Spring moved forward until she stood next to him.

"I'm sorry," she said as she, too, stared into the distance. "It seemed like a good way to introduce you to some of the members of the historical society. What you saw at the planning commission meeting was, well, a more vocal faction, and things got out of hand."

"At least Mrs. Lundsford was honest and up-front about where she stood."

"I was angry," she said. "When you walked into that room and I realized who you were and what your business was here, I was just..." She shook her head. "Ambushing you seemed irresistible. Gerald, Cecelia and I along with Roger and Carol Delaney and Johnson Gray are all historical society members as well as in the supper club. We..." She paused. "No, I thought we could show rather than tell you how much this property means not just to me and my family but to the history of Cedar Springs. Don't blame them for a plan that was my idea."

She chanced a glance in his direction to see how her words affected him.

If they had any type of impact, it didn't show. She could read nothing in the features, which had grown hard right before her eyes.

"You made me the b.u.t.t of the joke with your friends."

"It wasn't intended that way," Spring said, feeling miserable about what she had done. "I won't harbor you any ill will if your recommendation is for land the Darlings own, either outright or in trust."

He snorted. "In trust? You mean you own even more of the town?"

Spring's eyes narrowed. "Every bit of real estate that my family owns is in the public record."

"I'm sure it is," he said drily.

Spring's pique at him was starting to take wing. "David, staging an intervention of sorts wasn't one of my better ideas, but it was well intended," she said, gathering steam for her argument. "There are a lot of people in Cedar Springs, in eastern North Carolina, who could care less about the history of this place. But there are a lot who do. We can't just have placards or road markers put up at every site that has historic significance. All of the state would be one big 'This happened here in 1789 or 1882 or 1952 or yesterday' sign. But we can keep that history alive, the history of then and the history we're making now."