There was a pause in the bidding.
“Nine? Get serious here, folks, this is a two-thousand-square-foot building with prime highway access. Wake up, people! Did y’all not have your Wheaties today?”
A couple of bid paddles went up.
“That’s more like it,” the colonel said. A few minutes later, when the action slowed again he shook his head sadly. “All right, we’re stalled at twelve five. Is that it? Only twelve five?” He glanced over at his wife. “Call the sheriff, Martha, this is a crime right here!”
She shrugged, and he hammered the building down. “Twelve five it is, and bidder two eighty-eight, you just bought yourself a gas station. See the lady!”
* * *
The Sand Dollar Lane house was not at the top of the catalogue, which was a relief. It was on the last page of the four-page catalog, with a thumbnail-size bad color photo and a brief description:
Stunning custom-built waterfront Belle Isle manor house with every luxury. Five bedrooms, including master suite with ocean-view balcony, four baths, gourmet kitchen, formal living and dining room, media room, three-bay garage, professional landscaping, patio with outdoor kitchen, fire pit. Minimum bid: $400K.
Riley didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the last line. They’d spent four hundred thousand dollars building the house six years ago, and Wendell had refinanced it for an astonishing two million dollars, and now it was being auctioned off, as Parrish had warned, with a minimum bid of less than a quarter of that. But if the bidding went higher, past half a million dollars, she’d be forced to drop out.
She scanned the room looking for a familiar face, but she was too far at the back of the room to see much more than the backs of other bidders.
The morning dragged on as Colonel Fowlkes sold off a convenience store, half a dozen condos in an ill-fated complex in Wilmington, a fire-ravaged duplex in Southpoint, and eleven builder’s lots in an unfinished subdivision the next county over.
Riley was surprised at how cheaply some of the properties sold for, while others, based on description alone, fetched double the price she’d expected.
There had been no time for breakfast that morning, so at noon she wandered out of the room and into the motel’s modest coffee shop, where every stool at the counter was full, and every table occupied.
She was turning to leave when she saw Nate Milas heading directly toward her, a determined gleam in his eye.
Her pulse raced as he grew near. His hair was newly cut, he was clean-shaven, and dressed more formally than she’d seen him over the summer, in jeans, a pale yellow dress shirt, and a well-cut linen sport coat. He wore polished oxblood loafers on his sockless feet. He looked like what he actually was, a wealthy entrepreneur with a head full of plans and a pocketful of cash.
There was no place to run and hide, so she stood her ground.
“Riley, can we talk? Please?” He stood so close she could smell the starch in his shirt.
“What about? Your plans to buy up all the land on the island and turn it into Milas World?”
“That’s not what I want. At all. I’m sorry that Wendell drove you into debt buying all that land, but there was nothing I could do to stop him.”
She stared. “You knew what he was doing? Buying all that land for the north end?”
“Well, sure. I’d been watching the land sales records in the weekly newspaper, and I saw that he was making a run at most of the undeveloped property. And overpaying, from what I could tell.”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Riley snapped.
“I heard the rumors around town, six months ago, that he was in over his head,” Nate said. “I went to Wendell, offered to partner up with him, invest some capital, if he’d be willing to change the scope of what he’d planned.”
“And what did Wendell say to that?”
“Said he wasn’t interested in having a partner, and that he knew exactly what he was doing. In short, he told me to buzz off.”
Riley felt herself doing a slow burn. “So you sat back and waited for it all to blow up in his face. And now that it has, you get to swoop in and scoop it all up at a bargain price. It’s a happy day for you, right?”
“No! It’s not like that.”
“You’re not here to bid on the Holtzclaw place?”
“Well, yeah. It’s an amazing property. There’s nothing else like it on this part of the coast.”
“You don’t plan to live in that house. You’ll knock everything down and build a marina, and when you’re done with that, you’ll mow down the nature sanctuary.…”
“No, you’re wrong,” Nate protested.
“No marina? On the widest part of the creek?”
“Hell yeah, there’ll be a marina…”
“See?”
“Look,” Nate said. “You saw that room in there. There are a dozen or more guys waiting for the Belle Isle lots to come up. That’s what they’ll do with the land if they get it…”
“And I’m supposed to believe that you’re different?”
“I am different,” Nate said. “That island is my home. My people have been on Belle Isle almost as long as yours.”
“There’s a big difference,” Riley said heatedly. “My family came and they stayed. You? This is just another deal for you. You’ll do your thing, then you’ll head back to Silicon Valley.”
“You’re wrong,” Nate said. “I don’t know how to make you believe it, but you are.”
Riley looked at him with contempt. “God knows, I can’t stop you. I don’t even know if I want to try. Just do me a favor. Stay away from me and my family.”
40
She settled for a lunch of a candy bar from a vending machine and a tepid cup of free coffee from the hospitality table in the lobby.
By the time Riley got back to the conference room, it had cleared out enough to offer a seat on the back row, but she was too nervous to sit.
At 3 p.m. Colonel Fowlkes announced, “And now, we’ll start with the parcels I think a lot of you have been waiting on. Folks, this is an extraordinary opportunity, in fact, I’d call it a once-in-a-lifetime chance to own a large tract of land on Belle Isle, which, as you may know, has been exclusively owned and developed by one family for nearly a hundred years.”
Riley saw several heads in the room turn and stare knowingly in her direction. She looked down at her catalog, unwilling to meet their curious eyes.
The auctioneer coughed discreetly. “Due to a tragic set of circumstances, these tracts are being auctioned off today, and you will note each parcel does have a minimum bid, as well as a ten percent buyer’s premium.”
He placed a survey map on the easel. “This first item is a twelve-acre tract containing an as-is home, with ocean views on the island’s beautiful north end. It has recently been rezoned for commercial development. The previous owner has already done some clearing of land, and word has it that there has been some interest in that land from a prominent national hotel chain. Now folks, we have a set minimum bid of three million, and I’ll remind you that we will only be recognizing prequalified bidders for this lot. Everybody else, you’re welcome to stay for the show.”