The Carriage House (14 page)

Lauren staggered into Richard's study and poured herself a scotch. No water, no ice. She didn't want to bother with a glass, just drink straight from the decanter, but knew her husband could wander in at any moment. He was due back from dinner with friends. She'd left early, pleading a headache. Since they'd arrived in separate cars, it wasn't a problem.

She'd planned everything so carefully, just not Tess returning to the carriage house that way.

The whiskey splashed over her hand. She was shaking uncontrollably. Her teeth chattered against the glass as she gulped, the scotch burning on its way down.

Ike.

She wanted to scream his name. She wanted to sob and beat her fists against the wall, smash glasses, throw over furniture. Her brother was
dead.
She'd hoped, prayed, pleaded with God that she wasn't right.

He was in the trunk of her car in a black plastic trash bag.

Her brother.

Dead.

Just as she'd known he was since that day he'd told her he was off to the carriage house and would see her later.

She sank onto the leather chair, spilling scotch on the arm. It beaded, and she flicked it off with her fingertips then licked them. They still tasted of her surgical gloves.

Her brother, dead in the carriage house cellar.

She hadn't been sure until tonight. She'd guessed…known. But this was different. Now it was real.

“Lauren?”

Richard's voice penetrated her like a hot, sharp knife. She fell back against the chair, wanting to slip down to the floor, through the rug, between the cracks in the cherry floorboards, all the way down to the basement, where she could lie in the dark stillness until death claimed her. Who would know? Who would care?

“Lauren, are you still up?”

She could hear his footsteps out in the hall. She straightened, wondering if he'd smell the dank carriage house cellar on her, if he'd smell death.

He stood in the doorway. “There you are. Darling, have you heard? I didn't want you to hear it without me here—”

“Hear what?” She rallied, noticed her hands weren't shaking as she drank more scotch.

Richard came toward her, his expression filled with concern and compassion. He took her glass away, as if she might not handle what he had to tell her. “The police called on my way home. Lauren, they've been out to the carriage house.”

“Wh-what?”

“Tess Haviland's claimed she found a human skeleton buried in the cellar.”

Blood pounded in her head. The room spun. Richard, more gentle than she'd ever seen him, took both her hands. She thought she might vomit. “What are you talking about?”

“It's ridiculous. Paul Alvarez said so himself. They didn't find anything, but he wanted you to know, in case this woman is up to something.”

“What could she be up to?”

“Nothing, I'm sure. That's how the police think, that's all.”

“Ike thought the world of her—”

“I know, I know. It all must have been her imagination. Let's go to bed, shall we? Get rid of that headache of yours, once and for all?”

“Oh, Richard. I love you, do you know that? You're the best thing that's ever happened to me.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she felt drunk, stupid, even after a few sips of scotch. “Will you make love to me tonight?”

“Of course, darling.”

She giggled. “'Darling.' That's so retro.”

But he took her by both hands, lifted her to her feet and led her upstairs.

 

After he made love to his wife, Richard put on his bathrobe and stood in the shaft of moonlight slanting in the windows overlooking her gardens. The poodles were asleep on the white chaise longue. He could have opened a window screen and pitched them out, one by one.

Sex had steadied him. Centered him. He could think now.

Lauren had fallen asleep. She'd clawed at him, almost drawing blood. They'd never had such raw, unrestrained sex. She'd been uninhibited, almost wanton. He'd responded in kind, exulting in the effect he was having on her. Instead of her usual ladylike shudder when she came, she'd screamed and thrashed.

He could handle Lauren.

It was Tess Haviland who worried him.

T
ess sensed someone was watching her. She rolled over in the twin bed in the guest room and came eye-to-eye with a stuffed black-and-white cat in the hands of Dolly Thorne. The little girl giggled. “Her name's Kitty. I've had her since I was three years old.” She was wide-awake, still in her pink pajamas with kittens all over them, her coppery hair tangled. No crown. “Daddy said not to wake you up.”

“I'm awake,” Tess croaked, squinting at the bedside clock. Seven. Not bad, but she was exhausted. Too much tossing and turning, thinking about kisses and skeletons, kittens in her bed, men and intruders. She struggled not to seem grumpy. “Well. Good morning.”

“Will you play stuffed animals with me?”

“I need coffee first. Okay? Your dad's up?”

“Uh-huh. He's taking a shower.”

Tess didn't even want to think about it, but before that command reached her sluggish brain, the picture formed of Andrew's lean, taut body naked under a stream of hot water. She'd been awake for all of thirty seconds and already was off on the wrong foot. If she didn't get a grip, today would be just as tumultuous as yesterday. It might be, anyway—Susanna Galway was planning to show up first thing. Tess had called her before going to bed.

“Cops hate missing bodies,” Susanna had said. “Of course, they want to believe you didn't see anything.”

Tess didn't like the idea of a missing body herself. She focused on Dolly. “Let me pull myself together. Then we can see what's what.”

Dolly obviously took this as confirmation Tess would play stuffed animals with her. She ran off skipping, her bare feet padding softly on the rug. Tess threw off her blankets and sat up in the Red Sox T-shirt and flannel boxers she'd worn to bed, struggling to wake up. The guest room was cute, its windows overlooking the ocean. From the old-fashioned flowered wallpaper, she guessed Andrew hadn't gotten around to renovating it yet. White curtains billowed in a cool morning breeze. Tess sat a moment, listening to the surf and the gulls, picturing herself hanging wallpaper with Andrew Thorne.

“Damn,” she breathed, shaking off the image.

She could hear him speaking to his daughter down the hall, a scene so ordinary it took Tess's breath away. He and Dolly were a family. She needed to keep her wits about her, not barrel in and mess up the life they'd created for themselves. At least, for someone unaccustomed to dealing with six-year-olds, she thought she was handling herself well with Dolly. She was a cheerful kid, not as combative and out-spoken as Tess had been at that age with her own mother's death still so fresh.

She used Dolly's bathroom down the hall, grateful she didn't have to share with Andrew, smell his soap, breathe in the steam from his shower. She picked bath toys out of the tub and opted for a shocking-pink towel with a big yellow fish on it. When she climbed into the shower, she imagined Andrew hearing the water running, picturing her the way she had him.

It had to be the skeleton. She trusted her instincts and impulses when it came to her work, but not men—at least not romantically. She could work with men, argue politics and baseball and otherwise hold her own, but romance, intimacy, falling in love…She shuddered just thinking about how many times she'd stopped at the precipice and decided, “No, not him,” and refused to jump.

She dressed in a pair of ratty work jeans and a fresh Red Sox shirt. She and Susanna would check the cellar themselves.

She had breakfast on the back porch with Andrew and Dolly, just cereal, toast and juice, but with the sunlight and the sounds of the ocean, it was perfect. Tess had half hoped she'd see Andrew and wonder what had gotten into her yesterday. Instead, she had to admit something about the man set her senses on fire. Even when he was pouring a cup of coffee, she noticed the muscles in his forearms, the angles of his face.

Dolly saw Harl working on her tree house, remembered her new window and scooted off. Tess smiled over the rim of her mug, enjoying her last sips of coffee. “I think I'm off the hook for playing stuffed animals.”

“Don't count on it.” Andrew sat across the table, studying her with the kind of frank intimacy that said he knew exactly how close they'd come to tearing off their clothes and making love last night. That said he remembered every detail of their kisses. “How are you this morning? Did you get any sleep?”

“Some, thanks. I need to get next door. A friend of mine is coming up this morning.”

“I'd like to take another look in your cellar,” he said.

She nodded. “Maybe we can figure out what it was my mind turned into a skeleton.”

Andrew didn't answer. He was, Tess realized, tight-lipped and controlled by nature, but not a man who missed a thing. Something else for her to remember. She set her mug down, part of her wishing she could stay here all day, going from coffee to iced tea to wine, not doing anything more demanding than playing stuffed animals with a six-year-old.

When they set out across the yard, Dolly ran over, torn between helping Harl finish the window in her tree house and checking on the kittens. Finally, she yelled over her shoulder, “Harl, I'm going over to Tess's house! I'll help you later. Don't worry, okay?”

Harl popped his white head out of the tree house door. “Go on. I'll see if I can manage without you.”

She giggled and put her warm little hand into Tess's. “Harl's funny.”

“You think so?”

“Yep.”

Andrew glanced at Tess as if to say Dolly couldn't be expected to know any better.

They took the long way around the lilacs, and when she saw the carriage house in the morning sun, Tess was struck by its graceful lines and picturesque setting. She could almost forget the police crawling around in her cellar last night. Had there been an intruder? Would the police want to talk to her again today, or anyone else? Ike Grantham was the previous owner, his sister the director of the Beacon Historic Project and the one who'd given Tess the key. Wouldn't they want to talk to Lauren Montague and at least try to get in touch with Ike?

Only if they believed there might have been a skeleton in her cellar, Tess thought. And they didn't.

She wondered if word of her call to the police had gotten around Beacon-by-the-Sea, if people would understand how she could have at least
thought
she'd stumbled onto human remains in the old Jedidiah Thorne carriage house.

Dolly skipped up the kitchen steps, but Andrew quietly moved in front of her, going in first.

“Oh my God,” Dolly screamed, panicked. “They're gone!
Daddy!
”

But he touched her shoulder and pointed into the bathroom. “No, they're not, Dolly. Look. Tippy Tail's moved them into the box.”

She placed a palm over her heart dramatically. “Oh my God, they're so cute!”

“Dolly.”

She glanced up at him. “I know, I shouldn't say ‘Oh my God.'”

“You really shouldn't.”

Tess smiled at the father-daughter exchange. She was relieved to have her bed, such as it was, free of Tippy Tail and family. While Andrew and Dolly checked on them, she scooped up the lilacs she'd dumped out in the sink last night in her haste for a weapon, and tossed them into the trash. She glanced around the kitchen. The carriage house needed so much. She liked the idea of a country house, a weekend project, the physical work that would be involved. If the skeleton proved to her satisfaction to be nothing but a figment of her imagination, she could see herself keeping the place.

Then Andrew came out of the bathroom, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and she thought,
Maybe not.
Her neighbor could prove to be a bigger complication than whatever it was she'd seen in her cellar.

“Can I name the kittens?” Dolly asked her father in an excited whisper.

“Just for now. The people who adopt them will want to give them their own names.”

“I'm naming the black one Midnight,” she said.

“Okay, but we're not keeping him.”

“What if it's a girl?”

“Then we're not keeping
her.
”

They went back outside, and Dolly got a stick from the lilacs and decided to draw pictures on Tess's driveway while she and Andrew checked out back. In daylight, there was still no clear indication of an intruder. But no forced entry was necessary since the bulkhead only had a broken, rotted wooden latch, no proper lock.

Andrew tested the soft wood with his toe. “Harl's never heard anything back here before last night. Neither have I.”

“It wasn't me. I wasn't about to go back down there in the dark.”

His gaze settled on her. “What was your relationship with Ike Grantham?”

“He was a client. We were never friends, if that's what you mean. He's so charismatic and intense, it's not that easy to establish firm boundaries with him, but I'd say we did.”

“He gave you a historic oceanfront property.”

“As payment for work I'd done, and ‘oceanfront property' is a stretch. You know Ike. He's eccentric and impulsive. That's why it took me a year to get up here—I never really believed this place was mine. For all I knew he'd show up on my doorstep and demand my firstborn child or something.”

Andrew nodded, removing his foot from the bulkhead. “Ike's not easy to understand.”

“What do you think's happened to him?”

“It makes no difference to me. I haven't seen much of him since Joanna's death.”

“Then you weren't friends before—”

“No.”

He started back toward the driveway, and Tess exhaled, realizing suddenly that she'd been holding her breath. Joanna Thorne had died a terrible death, and Andrew wouldn't be normal if he didn't to some degree blame Ike Grantham for encouraging her. He didn't cause the avalanche, and he didn't make Joanna's decision for her. But Tess remembered how adept Ike was, how incredibly persuasive, at making people work outside their comfort zone. Maybe he'd led Joanna Thorne to believe she was ready for Mount McKinley when she wasn't.

Tess's cell phone rang in her jeans pocket, startling her but mercifully interrupting her train of thought.

“I'm in Gloucester,” Susanna said. “I'll be there in twenty minutes.”

“You don't need directions?”

“Davey drew me a map. He says he knows pipes, I know money, and I should take a look at this place. You've got him worried this time. Ghosts, nineteenth-century duelists, the neighbors.”

“You didn't tell him about the skeleton, did you?”

“Hell, no. Twenty minutes, okay?”

“I'll be here.”

Andrew glanced back at her. “Didn't tell who?”

“My godfather. You know, it's bad enough if it gets around Beacon that I called the police about a nonexistent skeleton in my cellar. If it gets around the neighborhood, I'll never live it down. Never.”

“Your friend's from your neighborhood?”

“Her grandmother is. Susanna and I share office space in Boston. She understands how I grew up, the only child of a widowed father in a tight-knit blue-collar neighborhood.”

He smiled almost imperceptibly. “Nothing stops you. Maybe you learned that growing up the way you did.”

“I suppose. With my father and Davey in my face all the time, I learned to think for myself. And losing my mother so young—she taught me that we all only have right now, this moment.” Tess looked up at the sky, picturing her mother sitting on the rocks by the ocean, just listening to the surf. It was one of the clearest, most reassuring images she had of her. She shifted back to Andrew and grinned suddenly. “On the other hand, it means I'm not very good with five-year plans, much to Susanna's distress.”

When they reached the driveway, Harl was thrashing his way through the lilacs. “I'm taking a chain-saw to these things.” He picked a leaf off his beard. “You two want me to keep an eye on Dolly while you take another look in the cellar?”

“I have a friend coming,” Tess said.

“So? I'll send her down.” He went over, plopped down on the steps and took Dolly's stick and drew a tic-tac-toe on the driveway. “I'll be O.”

Andrew touched Tess's arm. “Let's go, unless you think he'll scare off your friend.”

“Susanna? She's not afraid of anything.”

“No, no,” Dolly was saying. “You can't do two O's in a row.”

Harl frowned at her as if he didn't know any better. “Why not?”

“It's
cheating.
”

“Oh.” He drew fresh tic-tac-toe lines and handed the stick over to Dolly. “Then you go first.”

Taking that as their cue, Tess shot ahead of Andrew and headed back to the bulkhead.

 

The cellar again produced nothing. No skeleton, no evidence one had been snatched, no sign of an intruder, not even anything to suggest what Tess had actually seen the other night that her mind had transformed into a human skull.