The Carriage House

Sixteen

His Pentagon appointment was on hold.

Richard poured himself a scotch as he absorbed the news. Jeremy Carver had delivered it personally, calmly. He was in Richard's chair in the study now, watching his reaction. "Once we have a definitive answer on your brother-in-law's whereabouts, we can move forward," Carver said. "The senator believes it's in everyone's best interest to wait."

"The senator? Or you?"

"I speak for the senator."

"Yes, of course."

Richard tried to keep the contempt out of his tone. He was smarter and more educated, did more important work than almost anyone else he knew, yet he always had to go through the mind-boggling boredom of pretending he was just a regular guy who didn't think himself above anyone else. Anti-intel-lectualism reigned. He had no doubt if he weren't married to a Grantham, he wouldn't be on his way to Washington.

He sipped his scotch, felt it burn all the way down, waited a moment for the burning to subside. It was late evening. Lauren was with her book club. He'd hardly seen her at all today and wondered if she regretted last night. Maybe she was embarrassed. He smiled a little, thinking of it. To have sexual as well as intellectual power over her was something to relish.

But he had no power over Jeremy Carver. None at all. Carver would bail without hesitation. It wouldn't matter that Richard was the best mind for the job, that his experience and knowledge were without parallel. Carver only cared about what was good for his boss. Nothing else mattered. Richard admired that level of clarity. He seldom operated in such a simple, black-and-white world.

Someone had Ike's body.

Someone.

"Would you care for anything to drink? There's iced tea, sparkling water, springwater. Lemonade, too, I believe."

Carver shook his head. "No, I need to get back to Boston. I have a plane to catch."

"To Washington?"

He nodded. "I'll keep in touch. Listen, the minute we hear from Ike, or your wife tells us how we can get in touch with him, we're back in business."

"Lauren doesn't know where her brother is."

"No? Well, I think that's weird."

"You never met Ike," Richard said simply.

"We all have our family problems. The senator won't hold a difficult brother-in-law against you. But a scandal? A goddamn missing dead body? That's something else."

"I can't control Ike Grantham. That's putting an unfair burden on me."

"Yeah? Welcome to the big leagues, Dr. Montague."

Richard took another swallow of scotch, didn't even feel the burn. The light was dim in the study, producing no shadows whatsoever, the air outside still, gray with impending rain. "And Tess Haviland likely saw nothing in that cellar."

"Maybe, maybe not. Either way, I can't help but question her timing. You're up for a Pentagon appointment, and she's finding dead bodies in the cellar." Carver got to his feet, pointing at Richard. "She could be a problem for you."

"You mean that she's making trouble for me deliberately," Richard said quietly. "That assumes I have enemies."

Carver grinned and started for the door. "We all have enemies, Doctor, even a bright, important guy like you." He patted the door frame, turned and winked. "Produce Ike. Let me check out this Haviland woman, see if someone's paying her to make your life miserable. It could be one of the senator's enemies, you know."

"I'm an expert on terrorism, Mr. Carver, not politics."

"I know. Why do you think I'm here?"

Tess awoke in a panic. She was in her own bed in her own apartment, fighting a terrible sense of urgency, a crawling anxiety that defied rationality. She tried to focus on the familiar shifting shadows in her half-dark bedroom, the sounds in the courtyard outside her window. But her mind charged ahead, her heart racing. She couldn't breathe.

She was stuck with a run-down nineteenth-century carriage house. She owed taxes on it. It was haunted. Its previous owner hadn't been heard from in over a year. The taciturn descendant of the convicted murderer who was haunting it lived next door.

He had a daughter who thought she was a princess and a white-haired cousin who probably had posttraumatic stress disorder.

A stray cat had delivered kittens in her makeshift bed.

She'd kissed Andrew Thorne and talked to him as if she could fall in love with him with no effort at all.

Under the circumstances, she could hardly blame herself for making up a dead body in the cellar.

Except she hadn't.

Tess could feel the panic welling up in her, the urge to hyperventilate, run. She kicked off her blankets to ease the sense of suffocating.

She'd seen bones. A skull. Human remains. A dead person.

She rolled over onto her stomach and switched on the bedside lamp. Her first panic attack in months. They'd come often when she was just starting up her business, going out on her own. She'd told Ike about them. "Normal," he'd told her in that confident way of his. "Get yourself some kava. You'll be fine."

She didn't want to think about Ike.

Her digital clock switched from 4:59 to 5:00 a.m. Close enough to morning, she decided, and flopped over onto her back, staring at the ceiling, concentrating on her breathing. In for eight counts, hold for eight, out for eight. Her heartbeat slowed. Rationality returned. She flipped on her white-noise machine, her small bedroom filling with the sounds of the ocean. Not a good choice. She switched to a tropical rain forest. But it was too late, her mind already filled with images of kissing Andrew in the doorway of his daughter's bedroom, on the porch in the dark.

She hadn't conjured up the skeleton.

That was the problem. She wasn't that imaginative, or that crazy, and it wasn't a trick of the light or a damn ghost. It was a skeleton.

And now it was gone. The police had looked, she and Susanna had looked, Andrew had looked.

Davey and her father could have missed it. They'd been interested in pipes and heating ducts, not what was under their feet.

She wondered how close she'd come to catching someone charging out of the cellar Saturday night with a bag of bones.

She took herself back to that night after dinner, when she'd returned unexpectedly to lock the door. She'd meant to head straight back to Boston. Who had she told? Andrew. Harl. Dolly. But her car hadn't been in the carriage house driveway, so someone could have reasonably thought she'd cleared out.

"I'm a graphic designer," Tess muttered at the ceiling, "not a damn detective."

She rolled out of bed and pulled on running clothes, then gulped down a glass of orange juice in the kitchen and headed out into the cool, rainy Boston morning. The narrow streets of Beacon Hill were quiet at this early hour, slick with the overnight rain. It had tapered off to a chilly, steady drizzle. She jumped off the curb and ran on the street, the brick sidewalks too treacherous when wet. She went at a slow, steady pace to warm up, stopping on Beacon Street to do some stretches before crossing over to Boston Common, where she mingled with a few other early-morning joggers, working up a sweat, fighting off her demons.

When she returned to her apartment, she showered and stumbled into the kitchen in her bathrobe. She poured herself a bowl of corn flakes, cut up a banana and sat at the table below her street-level window. If she'd stayed at her corporate job, she could be above ground by now, in a bigger apartment. But Susanna had warned her about cash flow, maintaining a larger cash reserve now that she was a "sole proprietor."

She thought about lilacs and the smell of the ocean. Except for the complications, the carriage house was just what she wanted.

She finished her cereal, got dressed and headed over to Beacon Street. She loved being able to walk to work, not having to depend on a car. People were out walking their dogs now, but it was still only seven-thirty when she greeted the doorman at her building.

Susanna Galway was already at her computer. "God, you look awful," she said.

"Good morning to you, too."

"Tell me you saw a skeleton in your apartment last night. That'd be great. We could take you to a shrink and forget the police."

"No such luck."

Tess set her satchel on the floor by her chair. She could barely remember what she had to do today. Any client meetings? Something with her printer, she recalled vaguely. Normally she kept everything clear in her head and didn't have to consult her calendar.

"I've been roaming around on the Internet for info on your buddy Ike and those two next door," Susanna said.

That sparked Tess's curiosity. "And?"

"Nothing new on Ike. The Globe ran a picture of him and Joanna Thorne after her death. He was a good-looking son of a bitch, wasn't he?"

"Don't use the past tense."

Susanna ignored her. "Were you attracted to him?"

"No, I never had any romantic interest in him. I don't think he had any in me, either." Tess sank onto her chair, her thighs sore from running, or from planting catnip with Dolly Thorne yesterday. Dolly didn't do anything by half measures. "Ike's always struck me as a rather sad character, if you want to know the truth."

"Heir to a fortune, handsome, physical, sails, plays tennis, climbs mountains, has women falling all over him-except Tess Haviland of Somerville, Massachusetts. Sure, your basic sad character." Susanna tapped a few keys on her computer. "I can see how he could end up buried in an old dirt cellar."

"Susanna."

"Sorry. I keep forgetting you like the guy. You want me to pour you a cup of coffee?"

Tess shook her head. "No, I'll get it. What did you find out about Harley Beckett and Andrew Thorne?"

"Andrew's in demand as an architect and contractor. Good reputation, at least nowadays. Quite the brawler in the past, if a profile of him in the Gloucester paper's to be believed." She rose, graceful as ever, even before eight in the morning, and crossed to the coffeepot. Tess hadn't moved fast enough. Susanna filled a mug with her super-strong brew and delivered it to Tess's desk. "Harley Beck-ett's another story."

Tess gratefully wrapped both hands around the hot coffee mug. "He's older than Andrew."

"And he volunteered for Vietnam."

"Volunteered? He wasn't drafted?"

"Nope. Signed up. He was shot late in his tour of duty. Had a rough time for a few years after he came home, then managed to get himself on the Gloucester police force. He stabilized, worked his way up to detective. Shot again a few years ago. Bank robbery. He ended up killing the guy who shot him." Susanna pushed back her dark hair with one hand, her expression serious, her skin so pale it was almost translucent. "It was some guy he grew up with."

"That must have been awful," Tess said inadequately.

"He quit and turned to furniture restoration a short time later."

"Ike Grantham had nothing to do with the bank robbery, I hope."

"No, but Beckett's done a lot of furniture restoration work for the Beacon Historic Project. He's mentioned on their Web site."

"I hate this," Tess whispered.

"Good. You should. Tess, not one thing about this mess sits right with me. You want my advice? Keep an open mind. Stay objective. Don't be a participant."

She thought of kissing Andrew and thinking of kitten names with his daughter, planting catnip with her. "Too late."

Susanna sighed heavily. "I know."

Andrew returned from a project site in Newburyport in time to meet Dolly on her way home from school. He was wet and muddy. Fog had settled in on the coast, and it had rained steadily since noon, a cold, miserable rain that felt more like early April than late May. On the whole, it fit his mood. He'd punished himself most of the day for letting himself get caught up in Tess Haviland's dramas. No woman he knew would have ventured into that cellar Friday night in the first place, cat or no cat. It was an indication, and not a good one, of the kind of personality with which he was dealing. In one weekend, she'd turned his calm corner by the sea upside down, with kittens and a skeleton and long, deep kisses.

He shook off the memory of the feel of her. That had been his doing, too, not just hers. He had misgivings, but he couldn't manage to summon up any regrets. If Tess marched into his office at the moment, damned if he wouldn't kiss her again.

He occupied the front and back rooms left of the center hall of a 1797 clapboard building in the village. It was not owned by the Beacon Historic Project, and thus he did not have to answer to Ike Grantham or Lauren Grantham Montague, just an ordinary landlord. He checked his messages, hearing Dolly calling hello to the real estate people on the other side of the building. She often stopped by on her way home from school. Harl, who accompanied her, would avoid coming inside if he possibly could, even in a nor'easter. He did so today, standing out in the rain. Just as well. Before heading to Newbury-port, Andrew had been to see Dolly's teacher.

His daughter burst into his office, a ray of sunlight, and jumped onto his lap. She was, at least, without a crown. She beamed at him. "Daddy, I went down the big slide today at recess!"

"That's what I hear."

"You know?"

She was indignant, even at six not one who appreciated anyone stealing her thunder. Andrew decided to get straight to the point. "I had a talk with your teacher today during lunch. Dolly, Miss Perez says you've been telling other children tall tales about Harl."

She frowned. "What's a tall tale?"

She knew what a tall tale was. They'd had a version of this conversation several times in her short six years. This was a stalling tactic, and Andrew didn't plan to let her get away with it. "You told the kids at school Harl's a bank robber."

Dolly hunched her shoulders and giggled, obviously pleased with herself, yet aware the adults in her life might not feel similarly.

Harl must have sensed they were talking about him. He showed up in the doorway, but didn't say a word.

"Dolly," Andrew said, "Harl's not a bank robber."

She uncovered her mouth and leaned in close to her father. She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. "It was Chew-bee. She says he's a bank robber. She told the kids he got shot. Daddy, did Harl get shot?"

"That was a long time ago." Dolly had given up most of her make-believe friends in kindergarten, but not Chew-bee, most likely because she was handy to have around. Blaming Chew-bee was a sure sign that Dolly knew she'd stretched the truth beyond acceptable limits. "You need to stick to the truth, Dolly, okay? If you want to make up stories, that's fine, but you need to let your friends and teacher know they're made up."

"I don't make up stories. Chew-bee does." She looked next to her, as if someone was standing there, and frowned deeply, her brow furrowing. She pointed a finger. "Now, Chew-bee, don't make up stories!"

Andrew set her down, and she ran past Harl, off down the hall to visit everyone else in the building. She was a great favorite, and her people skills, Andrew hoped, would make up for her propensity for crowns and tall tales.

Harl slouched in the doorway, arms folded on his chest, tattoos showing. "Bank robber, huh? I bet Miss Perez loved that."

"Oh, yes. She did say she managed to nip the bowing and curtsying in the bud, and she appreciated not seeing Dolly in a crown today."

"Yeah, I had to peel it off her head. She was major-league pissed. I don't know what the hell's wrong with wearing a crown to school. Rita Perez is an ex-nun, you know. No sense of humor."

"She was very diplomatic." "I'm serious. An ex-nun." "Did you ask her if she's a former nun?" "No, but I can tell." "Harl, Dolly can't tell her friends you're a bank robber. She can't wear crowns to school. She can't make her friends bow and curtsy. That's got nothing to do with whether or not Rita Perez was ever a nun."

"She was," Harl said. Andrew said nothing. His cousin grinned. "Did she really think I was a bank robber?" "I don't know. Maybe." "You tell her I'm an ex-cop?" Andrew got to his feet. Some days, he wondered at the twists and turns his life had taken. How the hell did he get here, in picturesque Beacon-by-the-Sea with a six-year-old and his white-bearded, white-ponytailed, reclusive cousin? And no woman in his life?

He thought of Tess, and sighed. "I told Miss Perez you'd been in Vietnam. She thinks you should explain war to Dolly."

Harl snorted. "Forget that. That's chucklehead thinking, telling a six-year-old about war. Dolly's fine."

"Miss Perez thinks so, too. So do I."

"Then do we have a problem?"

Always cut-to-the-chase Harl. Andrew grinned at him. "Only if the cops come after you for robbing banks. God knows what Dolly's classmates are going to go home and tell their parents."

"Ha, ha, ha," Harl said, and left.

Andrew went out into the center hall to say goodbye to his daughter. She was bounding down the stairs from the lawyers' offices on the second floor, snacks she'd bummed clenched in both hands. "I'm going to Boston this afternoon," he told her. "Harl will give you dinner tonight."

"Can he make macaroni and cheese?"

"Sure."

She ran outside, and Harl, hovering at the entrance, said, "Boston?"

"Yes. Tess Haviland lives on Beacon Hill and works on Beacon Street, and her father owns a bar in Somerville. Every carpenter, plumber and electrician in metropolitan Boston knows Jim's Place."

"She'll be pissed, you spying on her."

But Harl approved, and Andrew shrugged. "I'm investigating."

"You want me to go, and you stay here and make the macaroni and cheese?"

"No, I'll go."

Harl grinned. "Yeah, I figured." He started down the street, tugged Dolly's single braid. "What's this about me being a bank robber?"

"That was Chew-bee."

"Chew-bee? That little rat. Tell her I'm going to throw her in the harbor."

"It won't matter," Dolly said dramatically. "Chewbee will swim right out of there."

"Chew-bee's a pain in the neck."

"I know, Harl. She just doesn't listen."

Harl glanced back at Andrew, knowing he was listening, and winked. Dolly might be imaginative and motherless, but two cousins from a rough section of Gloucester weren't doing such a bad job of raising her. If her first-grade teacher thought otherwise, that was her problem.

Right now, Andrew had more to worry about than Dolly's tall tales. He shut down his office, got in his truck and spread out his map of Boston on the passenger seat. He might have been to Jim's Place years ago, maybe even broken a few beer bottles and chairs there.

But maybe not. Somehow, he was sure if he'd ever met Tess Haviland before, he'd have remembered.