The Carriage House

Nine

"Lauren, please understand." Richard grabbed a cup of coffee in the kitchen on his way out to the back porch with the newspaper. "I only have a few minutes. When this appointment's nailed down, I'll walk with you to Cape Cod and back if you want."

She tried to smile. "We used to walk all the time, remember?"

"I do remember. Of course I do. You sound as if it's been a lifetime. We've probably taken more walks in the eighteen months we've been together than most people have in years."

Lauren sat at the table, watching him, trying not to think how much she loved him. Not today. She wanted to stay aggrieved awhile. "Just a quick walk on the rocks would suit me. You can't spare thirty minutes?"

"I can't, really. Sweetheart, it's not you-it's me. I know that. I'm just swamped, I can hardly form a coherent thought. Let me drink my coffee and read my paper, okay?" He walked over to her, kissed her on the forehead. She could smell his coffee, see the lines in his face. "It'll be all right."

"Did Jeremy Carver say something last night?"

"No, everything's looking good. It would help if we'd hear from Ike."

She waved a hand. "Oh, pooh. This isn't unusual for him. Tell Carver to talk to me, and I'll ease his mind."

"I already did. They can investigate further if they have any doubts. I've already passed the institute's security checks-the Department of Defense and Senator Bowler's office shouldn't be a problem."

"Of course not." Lauren fingered her coffee cup, wishing she could drum up more interest in her hus-band's impending appointment to Washington. What would she do? Stay here? Go? Throw parties for him? She shuddered inwardly.

"It's important work," Richard said, as if guessing what she was thinking.

"I know it is, Richard. I'll do anything I can."

He nodded. "I've never doubted I can count on you."

"Go on. Enjoy your paper. The dogs and I will go for a walk."

He was out the door before she'd finished her sentence. Lauren dumped her coffee in the sink. The cavernous kitchen, with its tall ceilings and white cabinets, needed renovating, but she had no appetite for it. Lately, her house seemed more like a sprawling, empty inn. Maybe a new kitchen would perk her up. She could talk to Andrew about it.

Her spirits sank, and she moved into the front hall, ignoring the poodles scampering at her feet. She ran outside into a stiff, steady breeze off the water. The house stood on a cliff above Cape Ann, with dramatic views of the shoreline, rocks, the glistening horizon. The tide and waves, the brutal winter storms, were slowly eroding the sandy cliff, until, eventually, the house would either have to be moved or would be lost to the sea.

Lauren blinked back tears, blaming them on the wind. She didn't care what happened to the house. Let the Atlantic take it. Let its loss be her penance for not doing more to rein in her brother's excesses.

She shook off any thought of him, descended the porch steps so quickly she almost tripped.

She ran down a narrow dirt path, moving automatically, having gone this way so many times in her forty years. A gust of wind nearly knocked her over, and her breath came in gasps. She realized she'd been running, and slowed her pace. If only Richard had come with her. If only they'd held hands, laughed, talked. She wanted to confide in him. She wanted him to tell her everything would be all right.

When she got back to the house, Richard had left a note for her on the counter:

Muriel called. Tess Haviland is staying at the carriage house.????

The question marks meant he didn't know about Tess.

Lauren felt sick to her stomach.

She walked out through the back door, down the porch steps to her gardens. The house blocked the wind. She ran her fingertips over a deep orange daylily, just in bloom. Then she started picking flowers, one after another, at random, without thinking, without feeling.

Tess would never have found the hardware store on her own. It was tucked behind a diner on a dead-end side street a block from the village center, a mom-and-pop operation stacked from floor to ceiling with every imaginable item a woman with an 1868 carriage house could need. She bought glass and putty for her cellar window and took a look at starter tool kits. If she kept the carriage house and intended to do any of the work herself, she'd need her own tools. She'd worked as a carpenter's helper through college with a string of her father's pals, but she had no illusions about her capabilities. She was a designer, not a carpenter. She'd need tools, books, advice, borrowed brawn. And luck. Certainly better luck than she'd had so far.

This was all provided she didn't call Beacon-by-the-Sea quits the first chance she got.

Her gaze drifted to a row of gleaming garden spades. She could rebury the skeleton and pretend she'd never found it. It was tempting. But wrong. She needed to verify what she'd found, then call in the proper authorities to have the remains identified and suitably buried…and determine how they'd ended up in Jedidiah Thorne's carriage house.

Maybe the skeleton was properly buried. Maybe whoever it belonged to had wanted the cellar to be his final resting place. Or hers.

Tess shuddered, turning her attention back to tool kits.

Andrew joined her in the narrow aisle. He was relaxed, at home amidst tools, nails, cans of turpentine, fifty different kinds of nuts and bolts. The service people all knew him and called him by his first name.

She regarded him with sudden suspicion. "You aren't a plumber or something, are you?"

"Architect." He had a five-pound bag of kitty litter comfortably under one arm. "More or less. You look relieved. Why? Do you have something against plumbers?"

"No. It's nothing. Never mind." But she was smiling, because Jim Haviland, Davey Ahearn and their pals in construction had no use for architects. "I suppose we should get Tippy Tail an extra cat dish. One for your house, one for mine."

Andrew shrugged. "I just use an old margarine tub."

Dolly darted up the aisle. Not one to be left out, she'd hopped in Tess's back seat, her father up front. She was just as at home in the hardware store as he was. She tugged on Tess's sleeve. "I know the dish Tippy Tail wants!"

"I guarantee," her father said wryly, "it will be fit for a princess's cat."

Tess laughed. "Anything's a step up from a margarine tub."

Dolly lobbied for engraving and heavy porcelain, but Tess prevailed when she found a heart-shaped red plastic dish and suggested it matched the sparkly red hearts in Dolly's crown.

"You're quick, Tess."

Andrew had slipped in behind them, not making a sound. His voice was low, resonating in places she didn't want to think about while picking out cat dishes. She'd needed more sleep. A lot more sleep. She turned, her arm brushing his, sending a current right through her. "I have clients. I've learned the art of negotiation."

"I think you and Dolly are kindred souls." He smiled, but didn't move back out of her space. "You both like to have your way."

They dumped everything in her car, and Dolly jumped up and down, wanting chowder on the pier. "I like that idea myself," Tess said. "It's a beautiful day. We can walk." She glanced at Andrew, who hadn't said a word. "Unless you have something else you need to do."

"No." His daughter slipped her hand into his, and Tess couldn't tell what he was thinking, something she found unsettling as she was usually good at reading people. He was especially difficult because he was so self-contained. "Nothing important."

Dolly giggled, slipping her free hand into Tess's. "I like you, Tess."

"I like you, too, Princess Dolly."

They walked over to the pier, lined with cedar-shingled buildings that had been converted into upscale shops. With the beautiful May weather, tourists and locals were out in droves, fishing boats, sailboats and yachts setting out across the picturesque harbor. Dolly wasn't here to sightsee. She wanted chowder and dragged Tess and her father to a cozy, cheerful restaurant. They got a small table overlooking the water. Father and daughter sat on one side of a booth, Tess on the other.

The sun sparkled on the water, bright-colored buoys bobbing in the light surf. Tess smiled at the view. "It must have been wonderful growing up here."

"Dolly seems to like it," Andrew said.

"What about you? Did you grow up in Beacon?"

"Gloucester."

He wasn't the most talkative man she'd ever met. "Your family's been in this area for generations-"

"The Thornes have. They settled on the East Coast in the 1600s."

"Tell me about them," Tess said, eager for a distraction.

"What's to tell? Jedidiah's the only one in the history books. You know what happened. The rest of the lot were the usual mix of bums and heroes. Sea captains, revolutionaries, privateers, fishermen, a few solid citizens." He broke open a crusty roll. "The old cemeteries around here all have a Thorne or two in them."

"What happened to Jedidiah after he killed Benjamin Morse?"

"Prison."

Tess sighed. "I meant after prison. I know he headed west."

"He made it out to San Francisco. As the story goes, though, he couldn't stay away. He came home, called by the ocean, supposedly broke. He worked in the shipyards, got married, had a couple of kids. People had mostly forgotten about the duel. Benjamin Morse, they'd decided, was a man who'd needed killing."

"What a cold thought. We leave those decisions to a jury, not mobs or popular opinion." Tess stopped herself, since Andrew Thorne didn't need a lecture from her. "What happened to the wife?"

"Adelaide Morse." He set his roll on his bread plate. "She became a rich widow."

Tess looked out at the harbor, tried to imagine it in the mid-nineteenth century. "How did Jedidiah die?"

"He was lost at sea."

She almost choked, tried not to overreact. "When?"

"I don't know the exact date. Around the turn of the century, I believe."

"Then he's not buried here in Beacon?"

"No."

"But there's a record of what happened to him-"

"Not really. He went out in a fishing boat by himself and never returned." Andrew shrugged, matter-of-fact. "I figure that was his way of letting go."

Lost at sea. Alone. With no witnesses, no record. No body. Tess noticed Andrew watching her through narrowed eyes. She suddenly wondered if he and Harl knew there was a body in her cellar, suspected she'd seen it-suspected it was their unfortunate ancestor and wondered if she planned to stir up trouble.

She focused on Dolly and the harbor, counted buoys and seagulls. When their bowls of chowder arrived, Dolly immediately decided she needed to go to the bathroom. Tess offered to accompany her. The little girl shook her head. "I can go by myself." She jumped off the bench, then turned back to her father as she adjusted her crown. "Don't put crackers in my chowder. I hate crackers in my chowder."

She pranced off to the bathroom. "Well," Tess said, "she does have a mind of her own, doesn't she? And obviously a great imagination."

Andrew gazed out the window, a breeze churning up the surf. "Independence and imagination aren't necessarily a safe combination. Her life might be less complicated if she were one or the other, not both."

"Think of her as a ‘creative risk-taker.'"

"Is that what you are?"

"I suppose. I used to work in the design department of a major corporation, but I went on my own almost two years ago. It's been fun, unnerving at times, I admit. But, I haven't gone broke." She grinned at him. "Not yet, anyway."

"If you're trying to make me think you're sensible, you're already off on the wrong foot."

"I'm not trying to make you think anything."

"Aren't you?"

He was naturally taciturn, she decided, which made him seem gruff, even unfriendly, but he smiled at her, sending her insides humming.

He went on. "You let Ike Grantham pay you with a haunted carriage house that probably should have been bulldozed fifty years ago."

Undeterred, Tess ground fresh pepper onto her chowder. It smelled almost as good as her father's, although there were no pats of butter melting into the thick, creamy base. "I don't care if it's haunted. I don't believe in ghosts."

"Even after last night?"

She smacked the pepper grinder back down on the table. "I did not see a ghost last night."

"You thought you did."

"No, I didn't, and saying so isn't going to make me change my mind." He was direct, not a man to beat around the point he was trying to make, a characteristic Tess ordinarily would find appealing. Not, however, at the moment. "I grew up with know-it-all men. You can't intimidate me."

"I'm not trying to intimidate you. I'm just stating the facts. I know you saw something, Tess. I could see it in your eyes."

She snorted. "What do you know about my eyes?"

His went distant, and he said, "Not enough, no doubt."

Her throat went dry. "Then you can't-"

"Tess, you weren't just afraid of what you might have seen in that cellar. You were afraid of what you did see."

"I was, was I?"

Her hot look and sarcasm seemed to have no effect on him. "Yes."

"It doesn't matter what you believe. I know what I saw, and it wasn't a ghost."

It was a skeleton, and she almost told him about it. Only the thought of what she'd do if it turned out to be an obvious plastic skeleton left over from Halloween, a prank, stopped her. The teasing would be unending. She'd never live it down, and somehow, some way, Davey and her father and the rest of the guys at the pub would find out. She'd be getting skeletons for her birthday, Christmas, Valentine's Day for years to come.

"Go ahead. Think whatever you want to think." She decided to redirect the subject. "Do you want me to check on Dolly?"

"No, she'll be back any second. She likes to wash her hands about six times. When she was three and four, the bathroom runs could get awkward, but she manages well now."

"Her mother…" Tess spooned up some of her chowder, which was hot and generous on the clams. "I don't mean to pry."

"Joanna died three years ago. She was caught in an avalanche on Mount McKinley." Andrew tore open a packet of oyster crackers, focused on them as he spoke. "It was several weeks before a rescue team could bring down her body."

"That must have been awful." But at least, Tess thought grimly, there was no possibility it was Joanna Thorne's remains she'd seen last night.

Dolly returned, and they talked about the boats in the harbor, the different kinds of seagulls. Not about her mother, dead in an avalanche the past three years.

They paid for lunch and started back to Tess's car, with Dolly, well fed and reenergized, skipping ahead. "It's a gorgeous day," Tess said.

"Have you made up your mind about the carriage house?"

She smiled. "Not yet."

But as she drove back to the point, her good mood dissipated and she knew she'd have to confront whatever was in the dirt cellar. Alone. And soon.

She dropped off father and daughter at their front door. Andrew was studying her suspiciously, and a quick peek in the rearview mirror suggested she was noticeably pale. It would be another rotten night. Too much thinking, especially about Andrew Thorne and his wife lost in an avalanche, his ancestor lost at sea, his neighbor with a dead body in the cellar. The Thornes had crummy luck.

"If you need help with your window," Andrew said evenly, "give Harl or me a yell. We'd be glad to lend you a hand."

But there was something in his tone she wasn't sure she liked. She pretended not to notice as she turned cheerfully to his daughter. "I'll keep an eye on Tippy Tail and her kittens, okay, Princess Dolly?"

The girl nodded, solemn. "They're just babies. They need peace and quiet."

She climbed out of the car, and Tess could see Andrew biting back a smile as he shut the door. He leaned into her open window. His eyes were that amazing blue again, a mix of sea and sky, warm, mesmerizing. "Let me know if you'd like the guest room."

Definitely, she thought, her life would be easier if her neighbor were a nasty troll, an s.o.b. But she smiled, gripped the steering wheel. "Thanks. I'll let you know."