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sure he went and didn’t hover around, no longer of this world but not yet welcomed into the next.
    Cab wondered if he would be welcome at that celebration.
    There were a few local officials waiting in the Inn’s parlor to say hello, along with other ­people he didn’t recognize but who remembered him as a boy. Ervina wasn’t there, but the young woman who had been with her was. She was introduced as Sarah Davis, Ervina’s great-­granddaughter and a Columbia University professor on sabbatical to study the Gullah community.
    â€œCan’t get her to give up her Yankee ways and move back here where she’d be real appreciated,” said the mayor.
    Sarah smiled slightly, wryly, Cab thought, before the mayor excused himself to talk to someone else.
    Sarah looked at him appraisingly. “He only wants me around to run the community center and keep Ervina from putting the hoodoo on him for talking Silas into selling his barbecue place.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “If I believed in hoodoo, I’d have encouraged her to go ahead. Anybody with half a brain would have known Silas’s granddaughter could get a scholarship just about anywhere without him losing his property.” She gave him an even harder look. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
    Cab hesitated. Was this little sprite of a Columbia professor baiting him? Now that he’d learned she lived in Manhattan, he began to understand the air of sophistication that stuck out among the rest of the inhabitants even though he sensed she downplayed it quite a bit.
    â€œCat got yo’ tongue?” she asked in a broad, Southern accent, almost as if she had read his mind and was laughing at him.
    When she flashed him a wide grin, he knew she was laughing. And if she was Ervina’s great-­granddaughter, she might just have read his mind.
    â€œSo why didn’t you bring your fi-­an-­cey.” She drew out the word, and it pissed him off. Where did she get off making judgments about Bailey or him, and it was clear she was making a judgment.
    â€œShe had other commitments.”
    â€œUh-­huh.” Sarah stretched her hand out and studied her nails, which Cab could see were cut short and broken, as if she’d been doing manual labor. Her meaning was clear. And she was pretty much right. Still, Cab didn’t need a stranger pointing it out to him.
    â€œSo how long you staying, Mr. Reynolds?”
    â€œA day or two. And call me Cab; I’m sure you’ve called me just about everything else in the book.”
    Her polite smile turned into a full-­wattage grin, and Cab found himself smiling back.
    â€œTouché . . . Cab,” she said, dropping the drawl and speaking like a no-­nonsense New Yorker. “We’ll have to chat more before you go.”
    Cab watched her walk away, wondering what on earth they could possibly have to chat about.
    Just about everyone was gone by six, and Bethanne began cleaning up.
    The caterer put a plate of food on the table. “You have to be starving,” she told Cab. “You didn’t have a thing since you’ve been here. They’ll feed you plenty down on the beach later, but we don’t want you passing out from hunger before then.”
    Bethanne introduced her as Penny Farlowe, owner of Flora’s Tea Shoppe. She was a pretty, middle-­aged woman with reddish hair and a weird shade of blue-­green eyes.
    â€œAnd before you ask,” Penny said, “Flora’s been dead for decades. I inherited the name when I bought the tea shop, so I decided to keep it. Has a certain old-­fashioned ring to it.”
    Bethanne came back with a glass of sweet iced tea. “I thought you might rather have something stronger. But eat first.”
    â€œThis is fine,” Cab said. “Thank you both.”
    Since they both seemed inclined to stand over him while he ate, he asked a question. “What’s with Sarah,