The Carriage House (13 page)

She dried her face with a paper towel and touched her fingers to her mouth. And smiled. It had been a hell of a kiss.

She glanced back at the cat. “Couldn't you at least give the box in the bathroom a try?”

Maybe the night on her own would inspire Tippy Tail to depart from Tess's camp bed. Tess would be back in the morning. She'd search the cellar and identify what she'd seen that had transformed itself, at least in her mind, into a skeleton. She wasn't cutting and running.

She switched off the lights and went outside, thought about knocking on Andrew's door and taking up his offer of a guest room. But that would be a mistake. She needed to get herself back to familiar territory and process the past twenty-four hours, not set herself up for even more to sort out.

The wind gusted, whistling in the trees. Even in the dark, she could see the white and pale lavender blossoms on the lilac hedge whipping around in the stiff breeze. She shivered and jumped off the steps. Time to clear out.

There was a loud creak and a
whomp.

Her heart raced. She stopped, not moving. What the hell was that?

The bulkhead door. She relaxed slightly. Davey must not have secured it properly and the wind had blown it up and back down again. The latch, she recalled, was in rough shape. The thing probably hadn't been used in years.

But what if she was wrong?

She doubled back and unlocked the kitchen door, ran inside and dumped her mason jar of lilacs into the sink. She took the jar with her back outside, slowing her pace. Her eyes were reasonably adjusted to the darkness.

It couldn't be a ghost. Ghosts didn't use the damn bulkhead. They could go through the cracks in the walls. They were
ghosts.

She opened her car door, figuring that whatever she did, it would be with a gas pedal under her foot. She set her mason jar on the passenger seat and snatched up her cell phone. Maybe she should just call it a day and get the damn police over here. Tell them she thought she'd seen a skeleton last night, heard something tonight, and let them have a look.

Harley Beckett came through the lilacs, and Tess dropped the cell phone and grabbed her mason jar. “Was that you I heard?” She slid out from behind the wheel, back onto her gravel driveway with both her jar and her cell phone. “You're lucky I didn't throw my jar at you.”

“Back inside.” His expression was dead serious, his tone uncompromising. He pointed to the kitchen door. “Go.”

Tess didn't move. “Why? What's going on?”

“I heard something. Back inside. I'm not arguing with you.”

“It was the bulkhead door. The wooden latch is rotted.”

She could see him gritting his teeth. “At least wait in your damn car.”

“No. I'm going with you.” She proceeded past him into the grass, then stopped, handing him her mason jar. “Here, you're the ex-cop. You'll know how to use this better than I will.”

“I'd rather have a .38.”

But he took the jar and apparently gave up on convincing her to do what he said, because he pushed ahead of her without a word. They walked through the tall grass between her yard and the lilacs, their fragrant scent overpowering now, strangely disquieting.

As Tess had anticipated, the bulkhead door was unlatched, and another strong gust lifted it an inch or two, then banged it back down again.

“My father and Davey must have left it like this,” she said.

Harl eyed her, his expression intense as he apparently considered the situation and her role. He wouldn't necessarily top her list of people she'd want looking after one of her kids. He pointed to her. “Hand me your cell phone.”

“Why? You're not calling the police, are you?”

“Haviland, you're a pain in the ass. I don't know what Andrew sees in you. Give me the phone.”

She handed it over. “What did you hear? Do you think someone was back here, sneaking around in my cellar?” She took a breath, the taciturn nature of Jedidiah Thorne's descendants enough to unravel anyone. “I'm beginning to think this place
is
haunted.”

“I'm calling Andrew.” Using what he had left of his right thumb, he banged out a number. “Thorne? Harl. She's fine. We'll be right over.” He clicked off the phone and handed it back to her. “Let's go.”

“No way. I'm going back to Boston. It was the
wind.
I see now where Dolly gets her active imagination, from you and her father.”

Harl snatched the cell phone out of her hand, hit redial. “She's arguing. I'll come stay with Dolly. You come here and haul her ass over. My woman-hauling days are long gone.”

Tess set her jaw. “I'll be gone before he gets here.”

She had him, and he knew it. Unless he used physical force, he couldn't stop her. “All right. Good. Go.”

“You can't expect me to stick around out here with two strange men—”

“Nope. You're being smart. Get in your car and go.”

She eyed him suspiciously. He didn't have the subtlety or patience to try persuasion, but this was giving up too easily. “What are you going to do?”

“I've got a chest of drawers I need to finish painting.”

A flat-out lie, and they both knew it. There was nothing she could do. She wasn't telling him about the skeleton, not now, not here. What if it had been him she'd heard, trying to sneak into the bulkhead? He wouldn't have known she'd doubled back to lock her door. After all, what did she know about Harley Beckett? Or Andrew Thorne, for that matter.

She had no good options.

These two men had no more reason to trust her than she did them. Less. She'd lied to them. What would they think if she drove out of here and Harl went down to her cellar and found the skeleton?

At least she was well aware that kissing Andrew had no bearing on anything.

“Call me if it turns out there was someone out here,” Tess said, and gave Harl her cell phone number as she started toward her car. She glanced back at him. “But it was the wind.”

He said, “Tess, I have your cell phone.”

“Well, damn it, give it to me.”

He tossed it to her, studying her closely. “You want your mason jar back, too?”

“No, you can keep it.”

Her cell phone rang in her hand. She clicked it on, and Andrew said, “Drive carefully.”

She almost caved—but she couldn't tell him about the skeleton. Not here in the dark, with Harley Beckett watching her every move, suspicious, not after the scare she'd just had. She couldn't rely on instincts, not this time. She had to
think.

“I will.”

“I can't leave Dolly here alone, not if there's even a chance there was someone out there. Harl doesn't want to call the police?”

She lowered the phone and asked him. “Harl, do you want to call the police?”

“To do what, fix the latch on your bulkhead?”

She returned to Andrew, edging her way to the car. “He says no.”

“Tess,” he said softly, “what happened last night?”

“Snakes.” She cleared her throat, sticking to her story even if she knew he didn't believe it, never had. She'd tell him the truth when she could, not now. “I was worried about snakes.”

She climbed in behind the wheel, got out her keys, tried two before she got the right one into the ignition. Andrew hadn't yet hung up. Neither had she.

“Tess.”

She licked her lips, her throat burning. “I'll be back in the morning.”

Silence.

“Tell Dolly that Tippy Tail ate all the food she brought her.”

She clicked off and backed out of the driveway, wondering how long it would take before he and his cousin, both or one at a time, searched her cellar. Would they wait until daylight?

What if they already knew a skeleton was there and decided to move it? What if they'd put it there? What if one had and the other didn't know about it?

She was getting carried away. They wouldn't be making such a big deal about why she'd screamed last night if they had any responsibility for the skeleton. They'd get her out of town as fast and quietly as possible, then make their move. They wouldn't invite her to dinner. Andrew wouldn't have kissed her.

What if they were suspicious of
her?

Her mind was racing. She couldn't think coherently.

She pulled in to a well-lit gas station on a busy main road and called Susanna Galway.

“Susanna? Good, you're home.”

“Where else would I be on a Saturday night? What's up? How's the haunted carriage house?”

Tess couldn't get a word out. Her throat was so constricted, and suddenly she couldn't seem to get any air. She made a choking, gurgling sound.

“Tess?”

“I found a skeleton in my cellar.”

The words came in a rush, and Susanna sighed. “Well, damn. Human?”

“I think so.”

“You
think
so? What do the police say?”

“I don't know, I haven't called them.”

“Their number is 911. Easy to remember.”

“Susanna…”

“I'm hanging up. You call me after you've talked to them.”

“There are complications—”

“Ghosts, I know. And you're not sure what the hell you saw. You don't want people thinking you're a weenie or the sort of woman who conjures skeletons out of thin air. Yeah, I know all the complications. You've also got a rich eccentric who's been missing for a year.
Call the police.
”

She hung up.

Tess stared at her dead cell phone. Then she dialed the police.

“A
skeleton? Hell, I was hoping for buried treasure.”

No one took well to Harl's dubious sense of humor. Andrew glowered at him, but Harl shrugged, unrepentant. They were all on Andrew's back porch. Harl, Andrew, two cops—and Tess. Andrew didn't think she looked the least bit contrite. She'd cleared out, called the police, and met them back here, before he and Harl had had a chance to work out who'd do the first search of her cellar. Harl took no pains to hide his flashlight and the pick and shovel he'd collected from the toolshed.

“You go on,” he told Andrew now. “I'll stay here with Dolly. I've already done the dead-body-in-the-basement thing in my day.”

The officers, two regular patrolmen on the small Beacon-by-the-Sea force, had already questioned them about the flapping bulkhead. Harl stuck to a recitation of the facts, without editorializing or speculating. He'd heard something earlier in the evening and investigated, discovering Tess and the unlatched bulkhead catching in the wind. Nothing else.

Andrew had nothing to report. Given the position of his house, he hadn't heard the bulkhead, or whatever it was, but had spotted Harl out back. They'd conferred briefly, and Andrew waited on the back porch with the phone in case the police were needed.

“I couldn't leave my daughter here alone,” he'd said without looking at Tess.

Neither he nor Harl mentioned last night's bloody-murder scream, snakes or ghosts.

Tess led the police across his yard, taking the long way around the lilacs. Andrew followed at several paces. A skeleton. For the love of God.

“How did you manage to sleep last night after finding human remains?” the older of the two officers asked. His name was Paul Alvarez, and he had a good reputation, even by Harl's standards.

“I didn't,” Tess answered.

“You'd convinced yourself it was a ghost?”

“I didn't know what I saw. I still don't. Maybe it was nothing. I
hope
it was nothing.”

Even now, Andrew thought, she wasn't ready to commit. He could understand. The eye might see a human skeleton in the dark while the mind refused to accept it, especially in a haunted house once owned by an eccentric heir no one had heard from in a year.

“Well, let's take a look.”

Paul Alvarez led the way down the bulkhead. The younger cop, Mike O'Toole, was on the pale side, looking as if he very much believed in ghosts as he and Alvarez made their way into the dirt cellar. Andrew stood in the doorway to the dirt cellar, Tess a few steps inside. She was agitated, arms crossed on her chest as if to keep herself from shaking, but spoke calmly, with determination. She pointed deep into the cellar. “It was back there, by that old bed frame.”

Andrew glanced around at the cellar with its low ceilings, dirt floor, water pipes, heating ducts, old furnace, junk. Jed's carriage house had potential, but it was a money pit. What had Ike been thinking when he gave this place to Tess? Despite his many flaws, Ike wasn't the sort Andrew would expect to bury someone in a dirt cellar—or end up buried in a cellar himself like a dead skunk. That he didn't deserve.

But if it was Ike, he hadn't buried himself down here.

Andrew shook off the thought and all its implications. First things first. Maybe Tess's imagination had gotten the better of her. He wanted to be in there with shovel and pick himself, poking around in the dirt.

O'Toole grabbed an old rake handle and ran it around over the dirt floor. Tess glanced back at Andrew, her eyes as pale a blue as he'd ever seen. “It's not there.” She sounded tense, not relieved. “I was so sure…”

She pushed deeper into the cellar, pointing, squatting herself and searching. Andrew watched her, not the police. She was in control of herself, surprised and tense at finding nothing. Alvarez and O'Toole expanded their search, scanning the rest of the cellar with their high-powered flashlights.

There was no skeleton. No skulls, no bones. Nothing.

“Maybe someone snatched it,” Tess said. “Maybe that was what the noise was.”

The two cops weren't going there. “It's an empty, run-down, old house with a bad reputation. It was your first night here, you were down here alone under difficult circumstances…” Alvarez shrugged. “Are you sure it was a human skull you saw?”

She sighed. “Yes.”

“But that doesn't mean that's what it was,” he said.

“No, you're right, it doesn't, especially under the circumstances. That's why I didn't say anything right from the start—I wasn't sure myself.”

They came out into the laundry room. O'Toole's color was better. Alvarez said, “There's not much more we can do at this point. I'm sorry. If anything changes, let us know.”

“Fair enough. Thanks.”

When they got back to Andrew's house, Harl was still on the porch with his pick and shovel. Andrew figured his cousin wouldn't rely on a police search of the cellar. He'd have to take a look himself before he'd be satisfied.

Tess, still pale and edgy, finished up with the police. After they left, she said without looking at Andrew, “I should get along back to Boston.”

“Not so fast.” He pulled out a chair at the table on the porch. Harl had put out two beers. Andrew opened one and set it on the table in front of the chair. “Sit.”

Harl tilted back in his chair and eyed Tess, who looked ready to bolt. “I wouldn't argue. I've seen that look in his eyes before, about two seconds before he hit a guy over the head with a beer bottle. Five stitches.”

Andrew gritted his teeth. “Harl.”

“It's true.”

“It's not true. He didn't need five stitches, and it was self-defense.”

Harl shrugged. “So's this.”

With a groan of frustration or confusion, or both, Tess swooped down onto the chair. Her body was rigid. She crossed her arms on her chest and sat at the very end of the chair, as if she'd spring up and out of there any second. She leveled her pale blue eyes on Andrew. “I know I should have mentioned the skeleton sooner.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Harl said.

Andrew stayed focused on Tess. “Why didn't you?”

“Because I'd intended to check the cellar myself to make sure before I told anyone. I didn't want to upset people or end up looking like an idiot if it was nothing. When Davey and my father showed up and didn't find anything, I decided to wait until morning and bring a friend.” She didn't flinch at his hard gaze. “I procrastinated.”

“Now what?”

She lifted her shoulders and let them fall, exhaling, suddenly looking tired. “Now? I don't know. I guess it's more likely I didn't see anything than someone slipped into my cellar while I was at dinner and stole human remains. It's easier, and more logical, to believe what we heard was just the bulkhead catching in the wind.”

Harl snorted. “If you'd said something sooner—”

“But I didn't.”

Andrew stayed on his feet, angry with himself, with her. But he shoved his anger down deep, concentrated on the problem at hand. “Did you think Harl or I might have something to do with it?”

“I had a million reasons, all of which seemed to make good sense at the time. Look, I can't undo what I did. In hindsight, maybe I should have taken you down into the cellar last night and had you verify what I saw, or at least called the police.”

Harl suddenly rose, grabbed his shovel and pick and tore open the screen door. “The hell with it. What's done is done. Come daylight, I'll have a look down there myself. Andrew?”

“Dolly's going to a friend's house in the morning. I'll be over.”

“Tess?”

She swallowed and licked her lips, outwardly composed, but Andrew could only guess what was going on inside her. “I can be back here early—”

“You're in no condition to drive,” Harl said quietly. “Stay in the guest room. Trust me, Andrew doesn't have a bunch of bones stuck in the closets around here.” He grinned, winked. “I've checked.”

“That's not it—”

“It doesn't matter. Stay.”

He left, the door banging shut after him. Tess jumped, startled, on edge. Andrew could see how tough the past twenty-four hours had been on her, trying to sort out what to do about what she'd seen—or thought she'd seen. He tried to soften, but found he couldn't. He was pissed as hell. But badgering her over what she now knew she should have done wouldn't get them anywhere, and it wouldn't make him feel any better to make her feel worse.

“I convinced myself it was a nineteenth-century horse thief,” she said, not looking at him now. “Then when you mentioned at lunch that Jedidiah was lost at sea, I seized on the idea that maybe he didn't die at sea. Maybe the bones were his.”

“You're sure they were human?”

She nodded. “I took anatomy in art school.”

“Did you think this was all the work of a ghost?”

Her chin tilted up, catching the light, and he could see her color had improved. “It still could be. Maybe whoever's haunting the carriage house makes people see bones in the dirt, skulls, dead people.”

“But you don't believe in ghosts,” Andrew said.

“I believe in what I saw. It doesn't matter if it was a ghost, some kind of hallucination or real human remains. Well, it does matter, but that's not my point. I saw what I saw. Whatever it was.”

“What would you have done if the police had found your skeleton?”

She managed a smile. “Fainted.”

“Bullshit. You didn't faint when you practically fell on top of it last night when you were alone.”

“Let's say this is the scenario that I both wanted and dreaded—that the police didn't find anything. It means I get to look like a nitwit, but it also means whatever I saw last night isn't there anymore.” She took a swallow of her beer and got to her feet, steadier if not any less on edge. “I should get going.”

“I don't think so.” Andrew pointed to her beer. “I'll put a call in and have you picked up for driving under the influence.”

“I've had two sips!”

“Take a look.”

She held up her bottle and seemed surprised when she saw it was almost empty. Under ordinary circumstances, one beer wouldn't be a problem, but tonight wasn't ordinary—she was beyond the point of no return, and she knew it. “Damn. Your cat's still occupying my bed. I suppose I could borrow a couple of blankets and sleep in my car.”

“I told you, I have a guest room.”

Her eyes were steady on him, almost cool. “I'm still invited?”

He remembered the feel of her body against his and wondered if that was what she was thinking about, more than her nonexistent—or missing—skeleton. “Yes, but no more lies.”

“If you didn't believe my snake story, what makes you think you'd have believed I saw a skull in the dirt?”

“Tess.”

She breathed in, no hint she was the slightest bit afraid of him, how he'd react to her—or even particularly wracked with guilt over withholding what she'd seen last night. “I did the best I could under rotten circumstances. Look, I know you're ticked off because of the kiss, because it seems to you I should have come clean before we went that far—well, let's just chalk it up as one of those things. It happened. We don't need to make anything of it.”

That was not the right response. She saw her mistake instantly, but she was too late. He caught an arm around her, pulled her to him. “It wasn't just one of those things, not for me.” His voice was low and deadly, barely under control, and his mouth found hers again, a fierceness in him he couldn't explain, couldn't deny. His mouth opened, his tongue sliding between her teeth, his body pulsing, throbbing. He was in a dangerous mood. The taste of her, the feel of her, only inflamed him more. He slipped his hands under her shirt, eased his palms over her hot, smooth skin. “I could take you now. Here. Do you understand?”

She nodded, her eyes gleaming with passion. “Yes.”

She put her hands on his forearms at her sides, but instead of pushing him away, she urged them slowly up inside her shirt, until his thumbs were under her breasts. He eased them over her bra, brushing her nipples.

“You don't know what you're doing,” he said, his voice raw, his body on fire.

“I do know.”

This time, her mouth found his, her lips already parted. He pushed his hands back down her sides, wanted to scoop her up and carry her inside, but fought back the need. He made himself draw away. “I'll make up the guest room.”

She tugged her shirt back down and pushed a slender, strong hand through her short curls. “Are you sure that's a good idea?”

He smiled ever so slightly. “I think the guest room's an excellent idea.”

 

For the love of Christ.