Better Than Gold
Mary Brady
Mia Parker’s restaurant-in-progress is the best shot Bailey’s Cove has at survival.That is, until a two-hundred-year-old skeleton is unearthed onsite.It doesn’t help that the investigator—sexy, guarded anthropologist Daniel MacCarey—instantly charms her to distraction. Add in rumours that the remains belong to a pirate—and that his treasure might be buried nearby. Mia’s trapped in the mystery that jeopardizes everything.Despite the risk to his own career, Daniel can’t resist offering to help Mia. Nor can he fight the attraction that reels him in. And working together, they may find a treasure better than any other…
A life-changing discovery
Mia Parker’s restaurant-in-progress is the best shot Bailey’s Cove has at survival. That is, until a two-hundred-year-old skeleton is unearthed on-site. It doesn’t help that the investigator—sexy, guarded anthropologist Daniel MacCarey—instantly charms her to distraction. Add in rumors that the remains belong to a pirate—and that his treasure might be buried nearby. Mia’s trapped in the mystery that jeopardizes everything.
Despite the risks, Daniel can’t resist offering to help Mia. Nor can he fight the attraction that reels him in. And working together, they may find a treasure better than any other….
Daniel made himself let go of Mia’s soft warm hand
What he wanted to do was take that hand and put it against his heart to tell her how much he had hated leaving her so early this morning, how much he loved to touch her, have her touch him.
What he needed to do now was to keep his hands, his lips and everything else off her. She did not need his hang-ups in her life.
She looked away and instead focused on the documents in front of her. “Liam Bailey’s account of maintaining law and order in the early eighteen hundreds is a combination of fascinating and dead dog boring.”
“I don’t suppose he built a tomb and walled a man up in it.”
She sputtered out a laugh. “hope not. He and his legend have messed me around enough.”
“Remind me not to cross you.”
“Oh, please, you have crossed me too many times to count.”
He stopped studying the file in his hand and gave her a wry look.
“Okay. So some of the times you crossed me, I liked it.”
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much to the readers of my books.
Come to Maine this time! Mia Parker has been out in the world, and she knows her small hometown of Bailey’s Cove is rare and special. The people value friendship, family and the legend of their pirate founder—and his treasure. When Daniel MacCarey arrives here, his intentions are not to instigate a treasure hunt that may destroy the town, nor does he set out to break Mia Parker’s heart—but will he do both?
I hope you enjoy Mia and Daniel’s story as they each face their demons and search for their own treasure.
I’d love to hear from you. Visit my website at www.marybrady.net (http://www.marybrady.net) or write to me at mary@marybrady.net.
Warmest regards,
Mary Brady
Better Than Gold
Mary Brady
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mary Brady lives in the Midwest and considers road trips into the rest of the continent to be a necessary part of life. When she’s not out exploring, she helps run a manufacturing company and has a great time living with her handsome husband, her super son and one cheeky little bird.
To my husband and son, who are always there with love and encouragement. To my family of friends and fans, especially my siblings and cousins, who help fill my stories with real life and love.
And to good-hearted pirates everywhere. Argh!
Acknowledgments
A heartfelt thank-you to the people of the state of Maine, where I have built a fictional town on their beautiful coast without so much as a by-your-leave.
Contents
Chapter One (#u6f1b5d49-ec73-52c6-a794-184db7cc119e)
Chapter Two (#uce1649a9-ca88-5136-8e54-cb6023fcde64)
Chapter Three (#u11360496-40cc-5965-8eb0-2c8981a2c964)
Chapter Four (#u491211a1-25ad-51a8-a2a7-d404772cce0f)
Chapter Five (#uc47a43d8-24b8-5483-9fcd-691986893edf)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
A STARTLING thwack reached Mia Parker where she stood on an upended bright orange bucket, chipping away at eighty-year-old plaster.
“Holy crap. Oh, holy Jesus, save us!” Charlie Pinion’s irreverent bellow buffeted her, and the pry bar she had been using clattered to the floor.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” This cry from another, the ordinarily sane member of her construction crew, concerned her more than the first.
“Hey, what’s going on back there?” She hopped down onto the old wooden floor and headed from the storefront section of the building toward the rear of her future dining room. The two areas were divided by a twenty-foot-long, four-foot-thick wall with open doorways on each end. Storage closets were tucked into the ends of the dividing wall. An odd arrangement, but the building was two hundred years old, so many opinions and various needs had altered the floor plan over the years.
Mia stopped in what was left of the doorway and tugged the dust mask from her face.
Charlie stood, posed like a burly statue, raised sledgehammer still clutched in his pudgy fists. He gaped at something his large body blocked from her view. Beside him scrawny Rufus Boothby slowly drew down his mask to tuck it under his neat red goatee.
The workers had demolished most of one closet and stripped the plaster, lath and support frame from the far side of the dividing wall. In the middle where the closets terminated stood a column of gray granite. Another oddity. There should be no column in that wall.
“Charlie!” Stella LaBlanc’s excited shout came from the direction of the newly installed Women’s Room in the hallway past the kitchen area. “Charlie, you big creep, I told you to wait ’til I got back.”
She rushed out tugging at the zipper of her jeans as she sped across the room. “The treasure! You found the treasure! I knew it had to be—”
The dark-haired woman threw up her arms as if to ward off something and skidded to a halt between the two men, her ponytail flipping forward over her shoulder. Then slowly she lowered her hands and leaned forward a bit. “Oh, wicked cool.”
Mia tried not to get too excited about what this trio had found. Being their keeper, making sure they stayed on task, was practically a full-time job. Plus the residents of Bailey’s Cove, Maine, had been searching for the treasure of the pirate Liam Bailey for two hundred years and no one had found a trace. She didn’t expect that to change today.
Stepping up to the group, Mia followed their collective gape to the exposed column of rough granite, three feet wide and deep and taller than Charlie.
What the heck?
Then she saw the hole, waist high—and inhabited.
Mia blinked and blinked again. No matter how many times she closed her eyes and opened them, she didn’t see anything but hollow eye sockets staring out from a foot-wide gap where Charlie had knocked away the stone with a sweep of the big hammer.
“Holy— Oh, my God. I can’t believe it. You’re right, Charlie. Holy—er—cow.” Her words fell into the silence as she gawked with the rest of them at what she could not possibly be seeing.
A skull. Inside the hole. A human skull, not that she was any expert, but it didn’t seem all that hard to assume at that moment in time.
Light from a naked ceiling bulb bathed the dull brown skull, highlighting the emptiness where someone’s brain used to be. Mia closed her mouth and looked up at Charlie.
Charlie let out a shuddering sigh and the heavy hammer hit the dusty floor with a sharp crack.
“Hey, Charlie, you really know how to find ’em,” Rufus said, slapping his impossibly thin thighs, sending up a puff of dust.
“You gonna run away like you did when you found that rat?” Stella teased the big man.
“Wait, let me get your skirt and frilly apron,” Rufus tossed out.
“You can’t make me be a wench,” Charlie almost squeaked out.
“Charlie, nobody’s going to make you dress up like a wench for the restaurant opening. And hush, you guys. Leave him alone.” Mia wanted to glare at the pair of hecklers, but all she could do was stare at the skull, a bit horrified herself.
Slowly Mia closed the distance between her and the column of stone and crouched for a better view.
Rufus, named well because of all his red hair, hunkered down beside her. “Hey, boss, not much of a treasure, heh?”
“There’s a body in the wall of my new restaurant.”
“Seems appropriate for a place that’s gonna be called Pirate’s Roost. Nice and creepy,” Stella added.
Creepy was right. Mia shrugged off the feeling.
“You suppose anyone wondered where he went when he didn’t come home?” Rufus asked with a chuckle that sounded more like bravado than anything else.
“Come on. Somebody died. Let’s have a little respect.” Mia knew this skeleton was going to cause her all sorts of trouble with the remodeling, more delays, more cost, but it was a person, after all.
“Died a hundred years ago if you ask me,” Rufus muttered, straightening and stepping away. “Wall’s probably been here that long.”
The building had been part of the frenzied construction that went on during Maine’s early statehood and incomplete records had the building as a hotel. The only available plans for the building did not show this wall or the closets.
Mia looked from Rufus to Stella. “You two take Charlie and get out of here for a while.”
“With pay?”
“We’ll see.”
“Good enough.” Stella nodded back.
“We’re gone,” Rufus added, tugging Charlie away with Stella’s help.
Murder? Mayhem? Death?
The skull looked old. Old bones were good, weren’t they? She rubbed her plaster-coated hands on her dusty jeans.
“Rufus,” she yelled after the fading voices of her workers, “call Chief Montcalm.” The chief of police in Bailey’s Cove for the last five years was a hands-on kind of guy, a real good law officer, and he’d want to know about this.
“Ah-yuh, boss” came the distant reply.
She stared into the hole.
Are you just a skull or a whole skeleton? If this was just a skull, maybe the column of rock was a sacred place, some beloved relative’s shrine. Please don’t let it be some murdered guy. She didn’t have time for intrigue. She had a restaurant to open before the tourists began to head north; hungry tourists.
Inching closer, she leaned down again. Darkness filled the recess and made it impossible to tell if there was more than just the skull, and her flashlight didn’t help much.
If she could just get a better look...
She tugged a small chunk of loosened rock away with the tip of one finger. A prickle up the back of her neck made her look over her shoulder, sure the chief would be standing there, fists on his hips. When she saw she was still alone, she extracted another of the pieces Charlie’s hammer knocked loose.
Through the enlarged hole, she could see there were other bones in the confines of the stone-and-mortar coffin, more of the skeleton. The column was a crypt.
Carefully, she placed the chunk on the floor and straightened. “Sorry, buddy, whoever you are. I’m sorry you’re in a wall. I hope it’s just some kind of weird burial and that nothing evil happened to you.”
Keep it simple. No muss. No fuss. Get the bones out. Get the demo finished. Get Pirate’s Roost open and ready for the tourist flood in a few weeks—six and a half, if she had her way, the first week in June. If that happened, she’d keep her shirt and her house, too.
And maybe the town of Bailey’s Cove could capture a few of those tourist dollars to help plump up the coffers of the failing small town, population fourteen thousand and shrinking.
She jumped as her phone began to chime from her pocket.
“Hello, Monique. How’s your day going?”
Her best friend since, well, practically birth, half of M&M, sighed big before she answered.
“Mrs. Carmody just left the shop.” Monique huffed. “She wants to sue us because we can’t get the stains out of her fake Persian rug. How about yours?”
“Nothing special. I have a skeleton.”
“Don’t we all. I told her she should keep the cat out of that room or at least change its food.” Monique continued her thread about one of the dry-cleaning business’s customers.
Mia chuckled. “Mrs. Carmody’s lonely. Maybe she feeds the cat that food so she can haul her rug back in to you. She likes you.”
“She could spill chocolate on one of her wool blazers or something.” Monique paused and then let out a small shriek.
Mia laughed.
“What do you mean you have a skeleton? Of course you have a skeleton, but that’s not what you’re talking about, is it?”
“Turns out there’s a column of granite in that dividing wall in my future dining room.”
“And?”
“And Charlie knocked a hole in the column.”
“And he found a skeleton? A people skeleton?” Monique gasped exaggeratedly. “Who is it? How’d it get there?”
“I don’t know any of that but it looks old. The granite’s a crypt, a tomb, I guess.”
“A tomb?” Monique swallowed loud enough for Mia to hear.
“Weird, huh?” Mia ambled out into the storefront area, lowered herself to sit in the dust and leaned back against the wall letting the sunshine filtering in through the dirty window warm her.
“You win,” Monique said after a thoughtful pause. “I won’t complain any more today. Any idea how he, she, it died? You find a musket ball or a hatchet or anything?”
“I don’t even want to think about how this guy died. It’s all too—”
“Spooky and gross,” Monique said, concisely defining what Mia was feeling.
Mia rubbed at the dust on her forehead. “You probably called for a reason, Monique.”
The sudden close blare of a siren wailed practically at the front door. Mia pushed up and brushed off her butt. “The chief is here.”
“Don’t hang up yet. I called because I wanted you to come over later. Granddad brought us a lobsta.”
“I was planning to work until—”
“Six-thirty. Be here by six-thirty-five.”
“I’ll be there.” Mia would have stayed every night until she couldn’t lift a hand or the pry bar if her friend didn’t look out for her.
“I want all the details tonight. You and the chief have fun, now.”
“Thanks for the dinner invite.”
“Somebody’s gotta keep you alive. We’re depending on you, ya know. Bye.”
Mia said goodbye, wondering if the undertone of melancholy in her friend’s voice was real or coming from her own panicked emotional filter.
A moment later, the police chief and two officers strode in and her three workers came stumbling after. One officer stayed at the front door, the other headed straight for the back of the old stone-and-clapboard building.
Chief Montcalm marched toward her, a purposeful expression on his face. He looked about fifty years old. Steel-gray hair, penetrating dark eyes with salt-and-pepper brows, almost creaseless forehead, nose slightly crooked. Fetching in a middle-aged sort of way and hadn’t changed an iota in his nearly five years he’d been in Bailey’s Cove.
“Ms. Parker?”
Mia straightened. His words felt like a command and she almost saluted, but tucked her curly shoulder-length light brown hair behind her ear instead.
“There’s a skeleton in there.” She pointed at the wall her crew had been demolishing.
The chief nodded as if he judged this source reliable, then gestured toward Stella, Rufus and Charlie. “You three, wait outside on the benches, and don’t be flagging down passersby on Church Street to yammer at them about this.”
The workers’ faces fell in unison and Mia had to keep a smile to herself. She knew each one of them wanted to rocket off to their personal corner of the town to tell anyone who would listen what they had found. She was equally sure the chief didn’t want any more people tramping through here, and the townsfolk of Bailey’s Cove would invite themselves in and do a whole lot of tramping if they thought there was something interesting to see.
“Has anyone touched anything since Charlie’s hammer?”
“Um—er—” He knew. How’d he know? She dipped her chin. “I moved a few pieces of stone so I could get a better look, but nobody touched the bones.”
Chief Montcalm nodded and motioned with one swipe of his hand for her to follow. She hurried after him, grateful he’d deal with this matter decisively, no dithering. That should save time. She’d have everybody back to work, possibly as soon as a few hours.
The chief strode to the hole in the wall, crouched, unclipped the flashlight from his belt and shined the beam in past the skull. After a moment, he stepped back and shook his head.
“What, Chief Montcalm?” Murder? Mayhem? Plague? She stopped her mind from rushing to the wild places.
“I know you’re in a hurry to get this project completed, Ms. Parker, but I’m going to have to delay things until we have all we need from here.”
“I—um. I understand.” What could she say? This was a person in her wall. But how long would the delay be? A couple of hours? All day? She almost shuddered to think of what more work stoppage would do to the opening date. If she missed the first migration of tourists, she might never be able to keep the Roost open. If the Pirate’s Roost didn’t stay open, what would that say about Bailey’s Cove as a place to visit. If the tourists didn’t come, the town would continue to shrink and fade.
The chief stepped over to where she waited. “We can start processing the scene, but I want everybody out of the building while we get to work. We’ll get you and your people back in here as soon as we can.”
“Has the body been here a long time do you think?” Mia asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“Most likely a long time because whoever did this used granite and not brick. Brick if it were easily available would have been a lot less work. You probably know this building’s history better than I do.”
She doubted that, but she knew he wanted her take. “The building was first built as a hotel and restaurant in around 1818 by the town’s founder. It has been many things including abandoned for about two decades from the mid 1970s until ’95 then it was a political headquarters. Recently, it was, of course, the yarn and crafts store. I don’t know how long this wall’s been here.”
The chief scribbled as she spoke, and then he looked up and gave her an even gaze. “I suppose we ought to let your crew go soon.”
“Charlie at least. Before he bolts anyway. He found an occupied rat’s nest last week. Took off across Church Street to Braven’s for a beer in the middle of the afternoon and didn’t come back. I had to coax him to work the next day with Pardee Jordan’s donuts. Juvenile, ah-yuh, but that’s Charlie.”
Chief Montcalm lowered his eyebrows. She suspected he already knew everything she was babbling at him about, but he listened anyway. That’s part of what made him a good police chief.
“My people will get statements from all of you,” he said when she shut up. “We’ll check and see if there’s any identification on the body.”
“Do you think there might be? Even if it’s really old?”
“I could see what is probably clothing remnants. Something to identify the remains could be in there. What’s left of the clothing will at least give us a more accurate time frame.”
A man in paper coveralls entered burdened with equipment, presumably to record the scene and gather clues. Chief Montcalm turned to face Mia. “I’m gonna have you wait out on the porch with the others.”
“But I thought I’d stay and...”
Another of his crisp gestures and she turned to join the others on the porch.
* * *
IN A DIMLY lit room in St. Elizabeth’s Manor nursing home in Portland, Maine, Daniel MacCarey pulled the chair up to the bedside of his elderly aunt. “I’m here, Aunt Margaret.”
He took her delicate hand in his and pressed softly.
The quiet sounds of evening at the nursing home clanked and moaned as his great-aunt Margaret breathed softly. Her eyes fluttered open and then closed.
The flowers he had brought to brighten her room three days ago were beginning to fade. The faint smell from the lilies lingered in the air the way her Chantilly perfume had in her stately old home long after he had moved her to St. Elizabeth’s. He had wanted someone to be with her all day and not just on Sunday afternoons, holidays and the rare evenings when he could get there to visit her before she fell asleep.
The nurse had called him an hour ago to come. “She says it’s time.”
The call hadn’t been a surprise. Margaret Irene MacCarey was ninety-two. Three weeks ago she started looking tired, stopped attending activities with the other residents, eventually stopped leaving her room. A few days ago, they wanted to move her to the acute-care facility, but she had insisted they call for the hospice service to take over her care.
No one had argued.
“I’m sorry, I have to go, Daniel.”
Margaret’s feathery words came so softly he thought at first he had imagined them, until he saw her eyes open, a faint smile settled on her delicate features.
He brushed his fingertips across the back of her hand. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
She closed her eyes and when she didn’t open them, Daniel found himself hoping for more time with her. He patted her hand.
She turned her hand over to squeeze his. “Scare you, did I?”
“You’ve been scaring me since I was a boy. Why should today be any different?”
Slowly, her eyelids lifted again. “You’ll be fine, Daniel.”
“Of course I will.” His only living blood relative was about to let go of his hand for the last time. He leaned forward in his chair and repeated for both their sakes, “Of course I will.”
“Funny. It never occurred to me until it was way too late—” she paused and took a breath “—that when I left, you might end up the last of us. Alone.”
She breathed quietly for a minute and then continued. “I’m sorry. I always had your dad and then I had you. Couldn’t you just find a woman who doesn’t want children? Or even a man, for goodness sake.”
“You’re so progressive for such an old lady, Aunt Margaret.”
“I’m serious about you finding somebody.” She squeezed his hand again. “And I have to try one more time. Just because you won’t be having any more children doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody out there who doesn’t want to spend the rest of her life with you.”
“I’ve got my work.”
“You’ve got classrooms full of those transient college students.” Her voice was weakening, becoming more breathy.
“I’ve got many things in the works,” he said.
“You are so nice to try to let me leave in comfort.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“You’re all I’ve got left to do. I’ve finished everything else.” Her voice came out raspy and halting.
“Don’t worry about me,” he repeated.
“I’ve no worry left in me. I just see things more clearly these days.” She paused and her gaze drifted to a photo on the shelf attached to the wall beyond the foot of her bed. The framed picture of a soldier with his arm around a beautiful young woman had kept vigil over his aunt for as long as Daniel could remember. The young woman was Margaret MacCarey in the 1940s with her fiancé, before an enemy bullet had immortalized the soldier at age twenty-four.
Margaret had lived a very long time with the pain of a broken heart in her eyes and sometimes, when she thought he wouldn’t notice, on her face. Loving that much when it was futile and hadn’t been good for him, either.
“So what they say about hindsight must be true.”
She turned her head slowly to look at him. “Hathaway left me when I was almost twenty-two and it wasn’t until a couple decades ago that I realized I wouldn’t have had to find another love of my life. I could have been happy enough with a substitute, as long as the man loved me. I would have had a companion. You could have had a cousin or two. That is my only real regret.”
The words came more and more slowly and Daniel found himself leaning closer and closer to hear them.
“Promise me and promise yourself, you will pursue your dream.”
“I promise, Aunt Margaret and I will love you always,” he whispered in the quiet left when she stopped speaking and barely breathed.
“Hathaway.” Her eyes drifted closed and a moment later her breathing stopped.
Daniel had no doubt the man who had won and kept Margaret MacCarey’s heart had just come and taken her hand to lead her away to eternal happiness and peace.
He smiled and swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. She had always been a great lady. He’d miss her.
Daniel leaned back in the chair. In the quiet, he clenched and unclenched his fists. Several emotions fluttered in and out. Most seemed natural and even expected when a loved one passed, but the appearance of anger took him by surprise. He wasn’t angry with his great-aunt Margaret, or fate, or even himself. The dark feelings were just inexplicably there.
He looked up to see the nurse in the doorway. She took a few seconds to gather that Margaret MacCarey had passed and came quietly into the room.
Gently she placed fingers on his aunt’s wrist. “Are you all right?” she asked him.
“I am.” He would be soon, after this knot in his gut went away.
“We loved her here, you know.”
He nodded slowly. “Everybody loved Margaret MacCarey.” He spoke carefully. This nurse did not deserve to feel his anger.
“You can stay as long as you like.”
“Thank you. The arrangements are all made.” He gave her a smile. “She saw to that. Said all she and I had to do was show up.”
“Sounds like our Margaret. I’ll make the phone calls to get things started. You let me know if you need anything. Oh, wait. I have something for you.” She reached into her pocket. “Miss MacCarey said you wouldn’t know anything about this. Insisted when I came on shift that I keep it for you because she was going to be leaving. She said it would be up to you whether or not you kept the secret.” The nurse shrugged and handed him a small worn velvet pouch tied with tattered ribbons.
“Secret?”
“She didn’t explain and I figured you’d know.” She glanced at Margaret’s quiet form. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” He held the lavender velvet pouch for a moment. His aunt was always full of charm and warmth, but there was always a mysterious side to her, things she would almost say before stopping. He had assumed it had to be something about Hathaway. Now he wasn’t so sure.
“Put on the call light if you need anything,” the nurse said as she laid a hand on his forearm and then left him alone holding his aunt’s last secret.
After another moment, he untied the frayed ribbon holding the small pouch closed. Inside was a note.
My dear, Daniel, you will be getting a package from my attorney in the near future. Please, promise me you will live a long and fulfilling life as I did. Even in the darkest night, all is not lost.
Love,
Your Aunt Margaret
He upended the pouch into the palm of his hand and out fell a ring, a woman’s ring, gold with a large pale blue stone surrounded by diamonds.
Lustrous, expensive, the kind Great-Aunt Margaret would have happily worn, yet he had never seen the ring before this moment.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU’RE LATE.”
At 6:42 p.m. Mia shed her old wool coat and shook the rain off on the porch to keep the hardwood floor of Monique Beaudin’s foyer dry. The expression on her friend’s delicate, oval face said worried friend, no trace of anger. That would be Monique, the M to her M. Mia wasn’t sure she had ever truly seen her angry.
“Hey.” Mia stepped inside and toed off her shoes. “I thought if I hung around, Chief Montcalm would eventually let me back in.”
Monique raised her naturally perfect dark blond brows.
“Well, he didn’t,” Mia continued as she tucked her damp hair behind her ears. “He had a couple of his people put that yellow police tape across the doors and they all gave me the stink eye as if they thought I was going to break into my own place as soon as they drove away.”
“So, did you?”
“I would have, but Chief Montcalm scares the bejeebers out of me.”
“Well, relax.” Monique took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, accompanying the breath with flowing hand movements.
“I wish I could relax, turn it off like you do. I wish I could.”
“Practice. Practice and maybe a nice glass of sauvignon blanc will lighten the mood.”
“What makes you think my mood needs lightening?” Mia stiffened her shoulders as if miffed, and then slouched.
Monique bubbled out a laugh and led the way to her neat, frilly living room. “Sit. You need it. I’ll drop dinner into the pot and I’ve got everything else ready.”
By the time they were finished drinking their second glass of wine, lobster shells and remnants of Monique’s handmade bread lay strewn on the serving tray between them.
To pay the lobster its due and because they were both starving, most of the meal passed in silence broken by such things as “Oh, this is so wonderful” and the cracking of shells.
“So are they going to let you back in soon?” Monique asked as she placed her neatly folded napkin on the table.
“I hope so. Every hour the police lock me out, the more pitifully behind I get. I need my crew back in there tomorrow to have the place ready by next Monday because the finishing crew is due to start.” Mia sat forward with her elbows on her knees. “What if all this is for nothing?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if we’re too late to build the town up, to make a difference. Building Pirate’s Cove will bring in a few tourists, but it’s only a start. We need more motels and shops, even more restaurants. And it wouldn’t hurt to have some boating business, sightseeing or something like that. If Pirate’s Roost fails, especially before I get a good start, will the rest give up?”
“Funny you should mention boating.” When Monique sank back against the cushions of the navy couch, Mia realized the usual spark in her friend’s bubbly personality seemed to be dim tonight. It hadn’t been her imagination earlier on the phone. “What’s going on?”
Monique let out a sigh that sounded like defeat. “I hate to bring it up because it’s like an old broken record in my life.”
“I’ll get my Victrola,” Mia said. “Come on out with it.”
“Well, when Granddad stopped by to leave our dinner—” Monique gestured toward the remains on the table. “He told me he was moving south, before the snow flies next fall. Says too much of the town has gone so he might as well go, too.”
Mia leaned forward, put her stockinged feet on the floor and clutched a frilly chartreuse throw pillow to her chest.
“What happened this time?” The threat Edwin Beaudin, a longtime widower, had been making since Monique’s mother had died two years ago weighed heavily on his granddaughter.
“There’s a for-sale sign on the Calvins’ lobster boat. You can guess how it went after he saw that. Says he might as well give up bee-un ah Main-ah.” Monique used her grandfather’s heavy Maine accent. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he goes. I wish I still had Mom. He’d stay for her.”
Mia’s heart ached, but...” Maybe you and I will have to make him stay.”
“You know my granddad. He’s more stubborn than you are.”
“That’s what I’m depending on.”
“You have an idea?” Monique’s expression brightened and so did Mia’s heart.
“I have a skeleton, and a crew that needs a nanny. What if he still felt like he was a necessary part of the Bailey’s Cove community?” When Edwin Beaudin lost first his wife and then his daughter, he lost the will to battle the elements, pollution, poachers and the competition for the ever-dwindling supply of fish and lobster. “And I need the shoulder of a big strong man to lean on.”
“You?” Monique laughed out loud. “Need a shoulder to lean on?”
“I’m glad I’m so amusing.”
“Well, you’re so ‘I can do it myself’ that I never thought I’d ever...ever...ever hear you say those words. Lean on someone, especially a man and especially after Rory.”
“I’d like to think I’ve forgiven myself for agreeing to marry a guy who would give me a ring he paid for with my money and have the guts to ask for it back when he changed his mind.”
“I’m sure you think you have, honey, but trust me, you still don’t lean on anyone for anything.”
“I lean on you.”
“That’s because I feed you.”
“There is that.” Mia put her elbows on her knees again. “But besides fishing or hauling in a big lobsta for his granddaughter and her friend, what does Edwin Beaudin like better than to rescue someone?”
“Nothing. He’s been rescuing me my whole life.” Monique’s big blue eyes opened wider in dawning comprehension.
“Do you think he’d be interested in supervising those three workers for me, keeping Charlie out of the bar? I can’t pay him much up front, but as a former boat captain, he can keep a crew in line.”
“He might.”
Mia felt some of the same tentative hope she heard in Monique’s voice.
Monique’s shoulders sagged again.
“What?”
“Granddad’s right about so many of the old-timers leaving. What if he’s right about getting out of town, building a life of some kind away from here? What if it is time to give up?”
“Giving up on Bailey’s Cove means, giving up our hometown having a place in Maine’s heritage. All we’d have left are the fading memories. No one would care or, after a while, even remember the folks who worked so hard to make this a viable town, your ancestors and mine. At least half the people in Bailey’s Cove have a relative who settled somewhere around here.”
“But do you think it’s worth it to beat yourself up to get the restaurant finished? Wouldn’t it be easier to leave it all behind?”
“I’ve been out there in the world and there is truly no place like home. No place like home.” She clicked her stockinged heels together. “And I plan on fighting for it.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“And I know for sure my workers need an overseer because I can’t be there every minute. Finding a skeleton in the wall is not going to make them work more diligently. If it’s okay with you, I’ll ask your granddad.”
“He’ll clamor to help you, at least for a while.”
“For a while is good enough for now. A Mainer stays in Maine unless there is a really compelling reason to leave. He’s a Main-ah right through to his salty old core.”
Monique pushed up from the chair and carried the tray to the kitchen. “I should be reassured by that, ’cause it’s hard to imagine him on a golf course or a beach somewhere under a palm tree with an umbrella drink in his hand.”
Monique returned with a bowl of grapes glistening with water and another bottle of wine. After pouring them each another glass, she plopped down on the couch and brushed her flowing blond locks back with the crook of her arm. “Why do I have to lose everybody in my life?”
“I came back.”
“You did, and I love you for that.” Monique held a grape in her mouth, making her cheek puff out. “Do you think Pirate’s Cove will make enough of a difference?”
“A small one.” One of the things Mia loved about Monique was her friend’s penchant for asking the hard questions. “But we have to start, to invest time and sweat equity somewhere, to regrow our town. I’d say money, but right now it’s the bank in Portland’s money, not mine.”
“Do you suppose the police’ll call you tonight with any news?”
“I don’t know what the procedure is. I don’t know if they’ll call me at all. If they don’t, the chief will get a new desk ornament. Me.”
“You’re such a toughie.” Monique plucked another grape from the bowl and ate it.
“And you’re such a girly-girl.” To make her point, Mia tossed a pillow with a beaded pink ruffle at her friend.
“What do you suppose will happen with the bones?”
“I don’t know. I guess they have to determine how old they are before anything is decided. I just hope they get them out of my wall quickly.”
Monique hugged the pillow and grinned. “I know what we need to take our minds off everything else.”
Mia waved both hands in the air. “No. No. Not your favorite subject.”
“Men!” Monique said and then gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Ha!” Mia leaned back and put her head against the crocheted doily draped over the back of the matching mauve chair. “Men. Had ’em, don’t need ’em.”
“You got robbed. That rat Rory should still be here.”
“Yes. I did and he should. But since I had it all and lost it—twice—”
“I wonder—” Monique put a finger to her chin “—if you’d still say that if another good man came along and rang your bell.”
“I’d ring his bell right back and send him from whence he came.”
“Whence?”
Mia expelled an unenthusiastic huff. “I’m fine just the way I am. Maybe if I want a man, I’ll go after Chief Montcalm.”
“He’s gotta be your dad’s age.”
“What about Rufus’s baby brother? He’s neither attached nor too old.”
“He just left for college, so that’d make you a cradle robber.”
Mia slapped the knee of the clean jeans she’d put on after her shower. “Well, that about exhausts the supply of men here in the Bailey’s Cove area. I think that’s why I moved back here. I wanted a peaceful life.”
Monique snorted. “So, that seems to be going really well.”
“Skeleton aside, in a few short weeks, I’m going to have the best restaurant for a hundred miles. I’ll have tourists clamoring for a meal as they head north and then again when they head south and I’ll have a nice cozy mortgage and a nice fat business loan to keep me warm.”
“You’ll get the chance to work even more hours in a day than you do now. You’ll have even more employees to keep on their toes, and more—”
Monique’s front doorbell gave its usual unenthusiastic dong-dong.
“Am I being saved by the bell?” Mia asked.
“That’s gotta be for you,” Monique said without any indication that she intended to get up. “Granddad’s already safely perched on his barstool for the evening and you’re here. That’s the entire list of people who might want to talk to me this late on a Tuesday night.”
“Won’t be for me, either. They’d have called me if they’d wanted me.” Mia patted the pocket where she kept her phone. The pocket was empty. “Or not. My phone’s in my work jeans.”
“How’d they find you here?”
“Because my social life is so grand as to have a total of three options, the Pirate’s Roost, my house or yours, and maybe because my kiwi-green SUV is parked in your driveway.”
“And is likely to be there all night because you drink like a fish.” Monique gave her a twitchy-faced smile and the bell rang again.
“Your doorbell is ringing.” Mia smirked.
“You’re closer.” Monique tossed the pillow back.
“I guess since you provided the lobster dinner, I can answer your bell.”
Mia got up, successfully taking a sip of wine as she went, and opened the door to find Officer Lenny Gardner on the stoop. One more for the short list of bachelors in Bailey’s Cove. She looked him up and down. How could they have forgotten fastidious Lenny? Everybody in town knew he would take either of them as his wife, and having grown up with him, neither of them wanted a man that badly. But the boy had certainly grown up to be a well-built man.
“Hey, Lenny.”
“Chief wants to talk to you,” said the police officer who did everything he could to make himself attractive, including aftershave and a smartly pressed uniform and, holy cow, he must lift pickup trucks at the gym. The ploy might even work if he weren’t so bossy.
“What did he find out?”
The cop eyeballed the wineglass in her hand. “I’ll drive you.”
She looked at the glass and then at him.
He shifted his gaze over her shoulder at Monique, who had come up behind her, and the expression on his face said her small ash-blond friend was Lenny’s first choice.
“I’ll drive you there and back,” he promised when he turned his attention back to Mia, this time with the pursed lips of judgment. “We can’t have you endangering the townsfolk.”
She stifled a two-and-a-half-glass-of-wine grin, but she couldn’t deny that he might be right.
Monique poked her in the back. When Mia turned, her friend tilted her head toward Lenny as if to ask, what about him?
Mia handed over the glass, made a deranged face and mouthed, “For you.”
Monique made a “call me” sign with her pinky and thumb. Mia nodded, grabbed her coat from the hook behind the door and followed Lenny to the squad. The chill in the night air sobered her a bit.
Be good to me, Chief, she thought.
“Lenny, what did the chief find out?” she asked once they were in the squad and he couldn’t dodge the question as easily this time.
“If Chief Montcalm wanted me to tell you, I’d have told you.”
That couldn’t be good. “No hints?”
Lenny kept his gaze straight ahead, both hands on the wheel and didn’t comment. When they arrived at the police station, he escorted her inside with a hand in the middle of her back. If she hadn’t known him long enough to have seen him tinkle in the sandbox when they were four, she might have pointed out just how politically incorrect that old-fashioned gesture was. For all she did not like about Lenny, he wasn’t a chauvinist. He meant the gesture in the same polite and helpful way he would if she were his grandmother.
There was a lot to be said for homegrown Maine boys in today’s world. Maybe Monique should snap him up.
“Ev’ning, Ms. Parker.”
The chief greeted her plain-faced in the doorway of his office and gestured her to a visitor’s chair in front of his desk. That couldn’t be good, either. If he wanted her to sit down before he told her anything, he must be expecting an untoward reaction.
“Thanks for calling me in, Chief.” She wondered if she sounded sober. She hoped so.
As she settled into the chair, she heard the door click shut behind her. Whatever he had to say, Mia was sure she didn’t want to hear. But, let it rip, like a Band-Aid off tender flesh.
That was definitely the wine.
The chief sat down in his chair and placed his hands flat on the old-fashioned green blotter. “I thought you might like an update.”
“Oh.” She bunched her shoulders and then let them sag. “I’m ready, Chief Montcalm. Lay it on me.”
“We’ve removed the body and brought it here to our small crime lab. There was no ID with the body, but we did determine from the clothing remnants the body has been there for a long time.”
She almost stood. “If the body’s gone, can I have my building back now?”
“I’m afraid not. The crypt and the surrounding area will need to be studied.”
He tried to make his words sound kind and conciliatory, but she slumped in her chair.
The chief officially calling it a crypt somehow made things seem more creepy or maybe the wine was... She stopped the thought and brought her mind back and tried hard to listen, the way he did when she spoke.
“Since the circumstances are suspicious by nature of the body being in the wall, this has to remain a police matter. I called in the state’s criminal investigation division.”
More people, more time. She dropped her chin to her chest. Of course he called the CID and processing an old skeleton most likely moved slowly through the state system. So they would probably not be there tomorrow. Her brain buzzed with calculations of lost time and the impact delaying the work would have on getting the restaurant open, especially if the state investigators couldn’t get here until, say, Monday.
She might have to cancel the finishing work set up for next week, go bankrupt, move to the poorhouse and let the town of Bailey’s Cove be completely taken over by a population of non-Maine city dwellers seeking to escape on the weekends and for a week or two during the summer.
It wouldn’t be so bad if these people were all lovely friendly people who wanted to visit a great small town and then go quietly away, but there was that ten percent who couldn’t help leaving their mark by damaging what wasn’t theirs. The town council had decided to take things slow and Mia agreed with them. If too many visitors arrived before the town’s infrastructure was upgraded, Bailey’s Cove wouldn’t be able to protect itself and could turn into a place the natives would not recognize.
Then when the tide of visitors ebbed, the town’s two-hundred-year-old structures like Braven’s tavern, Pardee’s Donut shop, the town founder’s home overlooking the town from up on Sea Crest Hill, the boathouse, even the docks would all bear the marks of these visitors. No amount of tourist dollars would make up for that kind of damage. Meanwhile Edwin Beaudin would have packed up and left Pied Piper–like because townsfolk listened to Monique’s granddad.
“Ms. Parker?”
She snapped her gaze up. Two glasses of wine next time and that would be it. She swiped the back of her hand over her forehead.
“I get it. More people, more time. Okay.” But she didn’t get it. She didn’t get how she was going to do this. Her life wouldn’t end but getting back on her feet could take half a lifetime and she’d have to do it away from Bailey’s Cove, out there where life had definitely not been good to her. In Boston, where she had completed her college degree, she had been downsized from her job and lost the first love of her life. In Portland, her home state, she’d lost another job and gained a fiancé who eventually left her.
The chief gave her a look that spoke of an apology.
“What now?” she asked. She’d let the chief finish first, then she’d don her rags and go find a bridge to live under.
“Because of the age of the case, the CID expects to be here in two weeks, three at most.”
Mia took a big gulp of panic. The partially demolished wall was the center of everything. Even if she were allowed to demo and build around the wall, the work would come to a disastrous halt by the end of two weeks for sure. “That long?”
“And I can’t let you in the building until they give the okay.”
The big darkness hovering in the background inside her head began to descend over her thoughts. “I can’t go in at all? Not at all?”
“And they’ll need the scene for at least a day or two after they get started.”
She couldn’t help fidgeting in the chair. She’d already spent her savings, dug deep into the bank loan, and the teeny tiny trust fund set up for the historic building’s renovation would evaporate if the project failed.
Her fingernails suddenly looked too long and she had the urge to bite them all off. Something she hadn’t done in over a decade.
“So do you have any idea who that is in the wall?” The chief’s tone was quietly demanding.
She looked up. “Who it is? No. Should I?”
“You’ve done research on the building.”
“I know some of the building’s history, but I have no idea who might be in the wall. Do you?”
Chief Montcalm frowned. “It needs to be considered that this might be the remains of someone from very early in the town’s history.”
She snapped her gaze up to meet his. “How early?”
“I don’t really know anything for sure, but I can ask the CID if they will allow me to call the university. The university might send someone here to check out the site sooner than two or three weeks.”
“Call them!” She huffed out a breath and shrugged. “Sorry, if you call them, I might get those three workers off the street and back on the job sooner. Will the state let the university take over the site?”
He gave her a solemn nod. “If the university is interested, they could send a forensic anthropologist.”
“And the state will agree?” Some of the two-to-three-weeks darkness started to lift.
“An anthropologist would most likely be called in on the case anyway and someone could be here as early as tomorrow, most likely Monday.”
“So, this anthropologist might come and go before the CID could even get here.”
He leaned forward over the top of his big wooden desk. “There is always the chance the anthropologist could be here longer. They like to be thorough, but they would definitely start sooner.”
“And you want my input?” Her wine addled input.
“You have the most at stake and obviously, the sooner I get your input...”
“Call them. Please call and see if they’ll allow the university to send someone.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m feeling very sober now, sir, and I’d be very grateful if you called. The least that might happen is Bailey’s Cove would learn more of its history. More history might mean we could bump up the flow of tourists a bit.” She stopped talking when she realized she was speaking uncensored thoughts. “I’m sorry. If you made the call, I would be grateful.”
“First thing in the morning then.”
The chief might be Mr. Inscrutable, but the little twitch in his temple told her he had more to tell her. “Is there something else?”
“Yes, and I thought it was only fair to warn you so you wouldn’t be caught off guard, and things got out of control.”
She tucked her fingers under her thighs. “Out of control how?”
“I don’t know who the person in your wall is, but I do know this town. I doubt anything less than a forensic analysis will convince them the body hasn’t been in there...for...say...”
She gasped. “...the full two hundred years.”
“See how easy it is to jump there?”
“But what if it is?” Too many thoughts buzzed in her head. “Two hundred years? You don’t think that might be the man himself.”
A glint of a smile showed in Chief Montcalm’s eyes. “It’s best we leave any conjecture out until the university people gather the facts.”
Having a part of Maine’s history in her wall would be radically good for the long-term value of her restaurant, as long as treasure-hunting frenzy, as happened in the past, didn’t tear the town apart first. A murdered man from long ago. So long ago...
“Liam Bailey? In my wall? A town founder? The pirate in my wall?” She quickly put a hand to her mouth. “Sorry, sir. You’re right. It’s so easy to go there.”
CHAPTER THREE
DANIEL DOWNSHIFTED and turned off the highway onto the road leading to the small town of Bailey’s Cove. Monday morning hadn’t dawned early enough to suit him. Sleep had been nearly impossible since last week when his aunt had died.
Anger was the last thing he expected at her death, but that’s what he got and it hadn’t gone away.
When he had closed his eyes, the nights had been no match for the darkness of these feelings and he paced or put on his athletic shoes and ran on the deserted campus.
Any rational person would do as his aunt suggested, go out and find someone to share a good life with, but it had been four and a half years since he had been a totally rational person.
Today he’d hurried out of his condo and left in the dark for the two-hour drive and his morning appointment with the chief of police in the old coastal town.
He edged his hybrid into the gawker’s pull-out overlooking the small town and got out. Still too early to meet the chief of police, he leaned against the warm hood, arms folded over his chest, and watched the foggy pink dawn progress.
He felt different, indefinably changed since Margaret MacCarey had died, as though he had been perched on the edge of something for these last few years and her death pushed him over into unknown territory.
Even the clothes he now wore were out of his usual style. No open-at-the-throat button-down shirt, no casually unzipped polar fleece vest or even khakis. Just a natty old gray sweater he hadn’t worn for years and a pair of jeans with holes as old as most of the students he taught. Instead of his professorish-type Rockport Walkers, he wore a pair of hand-sewn leather boots his aunt had given him the first time he told her he wanted to become an anthropologist and to see where people came from. By now the soles had worn down and were so smooth and thin that he might as well have been wearing moccasins. Someday he’d get them repaired.
He snorted softly. He was so far off the track he had planned to be on by the age of thirty. No tenure in his near future, not even a hint of a major project now or down the road. And here he was in this small coastal town assigned to another, at best, unremarkable cataloging of some small point in the history of Maine. That it was necessary and someone had to do it didn’t make it better.
The anger tried to swell but he took control and brought it back down to a simmer. The university had been and still was being infinitely patient with him, giving him time off when he needed to be with his wife and son and then his aunt.
He was grateful for their kindness.
The cool dawn breeze of early April brushed against his face with a fan of salty moisture. The cold and the town awakening under a mottled shroud of morning mist gave him a feeling of agitated contemplation. Whoever this was found in the wall, he was eager to get started and finished.
His department chair had wisely reassigned Daniel’s classes as of today. “You’ll get a call soon. And pack a bag,” his boss had said last week. “We need to get you out of here for a while.”
He had gotten the call in the form of a succinct voice mail. “Dr. MacCarey, this is Police Chief Montcalm from Bailey’s Cove. During some remodeling of a building, human remains where found in a wall. Since you have consulted on previous archeological finds in the state of Maine, the head of your department referred me to you, and the state crime lab has authorized you to assess the scene.”
A follow-up phone call had set today’s appointment.
Daniel looked at his watch. Twenty minutes until his appointment with the chief. He might as well spend the time inspecting the site. A look at physical evidence could do more than two days of futile browsing for information about Bailey’s Cove. All he knew was Archibald Fletcher had founded the town in the early 1800s, the population of the coastal town was just over fourteen thousand and the average temperature this time of year got up as high as fifty degrees.
Not very helpful.
He pulled the car out onto the road and coasted down the hill into town. As the road’s descent into town flattened out somewhat, he passed two gas stations, one across the street from the other, and a hardware store with a pair of moose antlers mounted under the peek of the gable. A combination law and accounting office, a few abandoned buildings came next and then, flanked by pine trees, a small but proud-looking old wooden church that now lodged the Bailey’s Cove Museum.
The church and the other buildings to his left had the gray-blue of the foggy harbor as backdrop. The ocean, the livelihood for many Mainers, would appear beyond when more of the fog lifted.
As he continued, the buildings leading to the town center were of varying age, some painted white, some redbrick and one pink tattoo shop. Most of them sat shoulder to shoulder lined up along clean streets that seemed to speak of a town that cared about its appearance. As he entered the middle of the town, one motley brown dog sniffed at something in front of the white-painted wooden building that housed Pardee Jordan’s Best Ever Donuts and then moved next door to investigate the front door of an old wood-and-redbrick tavern called Braven’s.
This was the kind of downtown that might someday support ornate lampposts, brick sidewalks with trees and flowers in planters. None of which would look out of place and all of which might wipe out the true character of the old town.
To Daniel’s right and across the street from Braven’s tavern stood the building he was looking for, an old three-story structure with a white-painted facade.
Chief Montcalm had been correct. The building wasn’t hard to find. It was the only one in the small downtown with police tape crisscrossed over the door. Or it had been crisscrossed. The end of one piece flapped in the morning breeze.
Bay windows flanked the glass-and-wood front door. Five wood-framed windows sat evenly spaced across the span of each of the building’s second and third floors. Benches sat on the sidewalk on either side of the two-stepped stoop.
He parked and got out. With the tape disrupted, the chief must already be there. Good. The sooner he got started, the sooner he’d get to work and then be gone. Going down to Boston and spending time alone seemed like a wise idea right now. Much better than inflicting the surliness he couldn’t seem to shake on a town of unsuspecting people.
He ducked under the remaining police tape and stepped inside the building. The ceiling had been stripped, part of one wall had been torn down. The partially demolished wall divided the large front room from the back area, and was likely the place where the body had been found.
No chief, only silence.
A door on the far left wall probably led to a stairwell, and if this had been a hotel, there was likely a matching stairway in the back room for the staff to use. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling by a cord, shedding feeble light in the large open space.
There was nothing in this room except an upended orange bucket with loose plaster and a pry bar lying on the floor nearby.
He moved quietly across the open area. On the other side of the wall was another large room with ladders and tools scattered around. Two boxes crossed with police evidence tape sat near one of the ladders, which meant the chief had done as he’d said he would and returned the remains to the scene. This room had the same dim lighting as the other room, and...
Bent over and leaning toward a column of granite that must have been behind the demolished wall was a woman with a flashlight in one hand. Her short blue peacoat hung open and draped over her hunkered form. Her brown hair looked as if it was streaked with honey and fell forward so he couldn’t see her face. What he could see was her peering into a hole that had been knocked in the granite. The hole that had to be the one that had held the skeleton.
Slowly, she reached a hand up as if she was afraid something inside would bite her. What she might do is to contaminate the site. He didn’t need any more of that than had already been done.
“Please, don’t touch that.”
* * *
STARTLED, MIA YANKED her hand back and tried—too fast—to stand up. She lost her balance, flailed her arms in a desperate attempt for control, but stumbled and plopped backward onto the dusty floor, her flashlight skittering out of reach.
From the floor, she said a brief silent thanks that whoever this was, it was not Chief Montcalm.
“Who are you?” She tried to make her words sound like a demand, as if she stood face-to-face with the intruder and wasn’t looking up at him from such a disadvantageous position.
“Daniel MacCarey,” he replied with a speculative expression on his face lit by the harsh light from the ceiling bulb. This had to be the man Chief Montcalm said was coming from the university.
“The chief’s not here yet. You can wait outside,” she said because she didn’t want him to witness the indignity of her having to get up and clean off her butt.
He didn’t respond nor did he go away.
“You’re early.” She worked hard to remain pleasant, because she certainly wasn’t getting any nice back from this guy.
“And you’re tampering with evidence.”
“Old evidence.” She kept her tone even.
“Tampering with a protected archeological site.” When he walked toward her, the bulb hanging from the ceiling spread better light on his face, his scowling face.
Scowl or not, it was a great face. Rugged. Two or three days’ worth of very dark beard growth. Hair a bit too neat for her liking, but tousled by the morning’s wind. Dark brown, almost black eyes, if the light coming from above gave a true indication.
He stopped in front of her, tall and lean, and relaxing his frown he held out his hand.
She studied him a second longer. Warm, comfortable in an old gray sweater and jeans with holes. Shoes of good leather, scuffed on the toes. Monique would like this one. Heck, she liked the look of this one herself, and she didn’t like many.
He frowned again and started to pull his hand away, but she reached out and grabbed hold. His warm palm met hers and his fingers wrapped securely around her hand. Indeed, strong. He pulled her from the floor as if she weighed as little as her twenty-year-old-waif self, not her current self with eight more years of growth. There had to be muscles under those raggedy clothes. Maybe even a six-pack. Ooooh. She hadn’t seen one of those in a while. Maybe she wouldn’t even let Monique meet this one.
...for crying out loud...
She steadied herself, let go and stepped back. This was the guy who could let her get her people back to work, maybe as early as this afternoon, so she gave him her brightest smile and resisted the urge to pat the dust off her butt.
“When the chief told me the university was sending a professor from the anthropology department, I...well...I sort of thought more gray hair and possibly a larger waistline. Guess I should have taken the time to visit the website.” She wanted to wink. Heck, she wanted to wolf whistle. She just smiled harder.
He frowned. “What are you doing in here?”
So much for making light of an awkward situation. “I’m waiting for Chief Montcalm. He should be here anytime now.”
“Waiting with your hand in the hole?”
“Yes. You caught me with—” Deciding not to be part of the let’s-be-grumpy game, she refused to look at his scowling face and softened her tone. “If anyone has reason to be annoyed, it’s the guy in the wall—er—boxes. He’s been waiting a very long time to be discovered.”
“Did you move anything or touch anything?”
Now she looked up at him. “I wanted to. I wanted to tear the whole wall down and put in a dining room, but I’ve been waiting, I think rather patiently, doing everything I possibly could that didn’t involve actually doing the work in here that has to be done. I have a business I’m trying to get up and running.” All right, maybe she would play grumpy.
“And I have to decide whether or not there is historical significance to this site.” He didn’t look very pleased with the prospect.
She eyed him for an a-ha moment. “You drew the short straw.” She raised her eyebrows to make the statement a question.
This made his face relax. Made him handsome.
A hint of a smile curled his sharply carved masculine lips. “You’re right. It’s not your fault they sent me to...”
“...a town the world seems to have forgotten?” she finished for him.
“I don’t really mind being here. It looks to be a charming place.”
She tried to gauge his sincerity and couldn’t decide. “It could be a charming town again, will be, if we can make some changes.”
He held out his hand toward her, this time in greeting. “I’m Dr. Daniel MacCarey. I teach anthropology at the university.”
She took his hand readily and shook firmly. His handshake was a genuine palm-to-palm and not the fingertips she often got, and strong.
“Mia Parker. I’m trying my best to help build up Bailey’s Cove, make it, if not a destination, at least a stopping place on the central Maine coast.” She winced as her words came out sounding like the pitch she had given to the town council when she was seeking permission to renovate the historic building.
“Good, the introductions are all finished. We can get started right away.” Chief Montcalm strode into the back room and gave them each a nod of greeting. He shook Mia’s hand and then Dr. MacCarey’s, giving each of them a direct and steady look in the eyes.
Mia held in a grin at seeing Dr. MacCarey stand up a little straighter, pull his shoulders back a bit. The chief had that effect on people.
The dark-blue-uniformed chief stopped at the cardboard boxes containing the remains removed from the hole. She’d seen the contents of the boxes already, at the police station. They gave her the creeps.
“Everything we removed from the site is in these evidence boxes. After the initial incursion...” He stopped and looked at Mia.
“As far as I know—” She held up her hands. “No one has touched a thing since your team took the skeleton and clothing away. I haven’t let my workers back in after they first made the hole and—” she glanced over at Daniel “—no one that I know of has been in the building until I came in this morning.”
Chief Montcalm glanced at her flashlight, its beam shining a spotlight on the door of the back-room stairwell. She walked over, plucked it up and flicked off the beam.
“Everything seems to be in order,” Dr. MacCarey said as he gave Mia another glance.
The chief seem satisfied and shifted his gaze to Dr. MacCarey. “Strict crime scene protocol has been followed, so there should be little that would compromise your investigation. Any questions?”
“Not at the present,” Daniel answered. “I might have some after I check out the site.”
When the chief glanced at her, Mia shook her head.
He handed Dr. MacCarey a small portable data-storage device. “This is all the photographs and information we have. I assume you will be taking the boxes of evidence with you when you leave.”
Dr. MacCarey nodded and pocketed the thumb drive he most likely thought of as quaint, like the rest of the village was going to seem to him. Quaint. Old-fashioned. Out of date. Used up.
Not if she could help it.
“Then I’ll leave you to it.” Chief Montcalm secured his hat on his head in preparation to face the wind again. “If you need anything, you have my number.”
He turned to Mia and said, “Put the tape back in place when you’re finished. The natives are restless and it might help keep them out for a day or two longer.”
A blink later, the chief’s back, as he was hurrying around the dividing wall, was all there was to be seen of him, and another moment later, the squad car’s engine started up.
“Succinct sort of guy, isn’t he, Dr. MacCarey?”
“Direct and to the point, and call me Daniel if you don’t mind.” He studied her as he made the request. “What were you looking for when you were peeking in the hole?”
She snorted. She had prepared herself for the ax to fall. What he offered instead was curiosity. “Thanks for not ratting me out to the chief.”
“I would have if I thought you had disturbed anything.”
“Fair enough.” Was that what she had been doing? Until she had peered into the hole this morning, she had tried not to think about sticking her fingers in where they didn’t belong. “Well, I was—um—looking for treasure I guess.”
“That would be why Chief Montcalm said the natives are getting restless? Treasure?”
She wasn’t sure she should tell him the town’s closely guarded obsession. Muddying the waters, when they didn’t need to be mucked up. “Like the chief said last week, the university would be looking for facts, not wishful thinking.”
“And?”
The one word was a snippy demand and she wanted to grab it and toss it back. Instead she took a deep breath. “Most people from outside the town are not aware of the fixation the folks around here have with the story of our town founder Liam Bailey.”
Daniel drew his brows together before he spoke.
“Bailey? I thought the town’s founder was Archibald Fletcher.”
“And the people around here are more than happy to let the world believe that.”
“Bailey must have been quite the figure for them to have kept him alive, so to speak, for all this time.”
“You really don’t know the legend?”
He shook his head slowly as if replaying the information he had on the town and its occupants past and present.
“Well...” Mia hedged. “I know a little about the town, but I don’t want to—”
“—skew the data with hearsay.”
“That’d be about it. If the chief didn’t tell you, maybe I shouldn’t say anything.” She wondered how long her nose had grown with that one. Though it wasn’t an out-and-out lie. She worried that telling him about Liam Bailey now might delay things. But not telling Dr. MacCarey was sure to make things take longer, because if or when he found out the guy in the wall could have been a pirate, he might have to redo some of his work based on new information.
And it would be dishonest to deliberately leave out what might be a significant detail.
“I’ll find out eventually.” He seemed to be able to see the war going on inside her head. “I can probably ask a few of the townsfolk. Someone is bound to know in a place this small.”
“If they haven’t made the leap yet because the chief hasn’t spilled the beans, they might now that you’re here. So unless you can prove conclusively it’s not, the town is going to think these old bones belong to one of the town’s earliest settlers.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Because that’s what they so desperately want to believe...but they would never have told you. You’re an outsider and he’s our most, I’m going to say treasured, missing person, the person any one of them would give a month’s lobster take to find.”
“Wouldn’t they want the mystery solved as to who this is?”
“It’s not really about the mystery. It’s about the man and his legend. His life and his fate are the fodder for lively conversation after two or three beers.”
She could almost see the gears turning. He was thinking this might not just be your average citizen who got boxed up in the wall. His face lost more of its tightness and took on the look of anticipation. Grumpy was much better for her time line. Chief Montcalm said forensic anthropologists liked to be thorough. This one had switched from mostly disinterested to almost eager. Thorough was sure to follow.
“So do you think this could be a historical figure?”
She looked up at him for a long moment and almost reached out a hand toward him. This time she wanted to snatch back every word she’d said since he had frightened the flashlight out of her hand
She pressed her lips together for a moment before she replied, “I hope not.”
He turned away and surveyed the area, the partially torn-down dividing wall, large open space, doors on either end of the room, one to the stairway and one to the kitchen, a hallway leading past the kitchen to the restrooms, a back door leading to an alley.
“I had planned to take pictures, inventory everything, box it up and be gone.” He seemed to speak to himself, as if thinking all this would have to change.
Her chest squeezed harder and she breathed to try to make the feelings of dread go away. The pressure did not ease.
“You could still do that,” she said, trying to feel some hope.
His dark brows came together. “Why don’t we start with you telling me about the man you suspect this might be?”
“I—um—don’t suspect anything.” Which was mostly true. Other people suspected Liam Bailey, the pirate who had helped found the town of Bailey’s Cove, never left, never ran away as the official records seemed to say. She wanted to bite her fingernails, but took a deep breath instead.
“What is your guess?”
“I didn’t think people like you worked on guesses.”
“Like me?” He rubbed at the neck of his shabby sweater.
“Anthropologists. Um—university—er—types.”
The corner of his mouth turned up and a different type of clenching started, this time in her lower belly. He was even better-looking when he smiled.
“Then let’s call it a hunch.” He stared steadily at her. Thorough seemed to be taking over. “What’s your hunch? Tell me all you know about this early settler.”
He used his gaze to pin her to the spot, but she wiggled free and retreated to the middle of the room where there seemed to be more air.
“I don’t do hunches very well, either. My hunch that I should build a restaurant in a historic building because it might attract tourists is turning out to be a less-than-stellar idea.”
He reached a hand toward her. “May I borrow your flashlight, please?”
She flipped it to him. He flicked on the beam and shined it in the hole.
She couldn’t stop the pirate thoughts as they buzzed through her head. Maybe it was Liam Bailey who had been in that hole, crypt, tomb, whatever it should be called. Becoming part of the legend, having the pirate in her wall, would be grand for the long-term value of her restaurant, but at the same time devastating to the construction project, and the project would have to be finished to gain any benefit. And if treasure hunters overran the town as they had in the past...well, she didn’t want to go there.
“People died from various causes back then,” Daniel said as he continued to shine the light in all directions in the foot-wide gap knocked open by Charlie’s sledgehammer blow. “Trauma and disease mostly, and a few from old age. The records, such as they were, when paper and ink were scarce and made fragile by time, will most likely be few.”
He stood and handed the flashlight back to her.
“So what are you saying? We might never know who this is for sure?” Relief and disappointment?
“Too early to know. I’ll start with the archives at the Bailey’s Cove Museum. They will probably have more information than the university has.”
“No.” She grabbed his forearm. If she sent him away she’d only make things worse. This guy had to know what the people of the town would think, would do.
He stopped and looked at where she held his arm and she dropped her hand and let out a long breath. He needed to know if he stirred up the town, he’d have to fend off the treasure hunters.
“Is that coffee?” He pointed to the thermal carafe on the floor, one cup upended on top of the pot’s lid.
She nodded. “Fresh. I brought it with me in case I got to go back to work this morning.”
“Do you have another cup?”
“Yes, sorry, and I have manners, truly I do. Would you join me for a cup of coffee?”
“I’d like that.” He smiled full-on bright and swooning came to mind.
...as if...
She headed for a closed door of the someday kitchen, glad to have a place to hide for a second to regain some of her decorum.
“Mia.”
She stopped and turned. “Yes?”
“You might want to...” He mimed brushing off his butt.
Decorum, yeah, right. “Thanks.”
She hurried through the door and made sure it closed before she began cleaning off the seat of her jeans and the back of her coat. She so-o-o should not be distracting herself with the hot professor, no matter how great his smile was, not when life as she knew it might soon be tossed into the Dumpster outside the back door, along with all the rest of the useless debris.
She leaned against the old sink, pressing her hands against the cold porcelain. If she gave him all the information she had, he could take his boxes and leave. No, he’d investigate the site thoroughly first.
She pushed off. Get back out there. Nothing would happen until she did. A smile. It was just a smile, she told herself and brought her guard back up.
Several ceramic coffee mugs rested in the dish rack. She grabbed one, shoved a handful of cream and sugar packets into the pocket of her coat and headed back out to face fate or the enemy or whoever this guy turned out to be.
He stood, pensively staring at the gap in the wall. When he turned to face her, she shook her head at the flash of warmth that she could not stop as it spread through her.
“Let’s go outside,” she said as she approached. “It’ll be warming up some by now.”
With the carafe and cup in his hand, Daniel followed her out to where benches on the old sidewalk flanked the front doorway.
“You can see the harbor better from that one.” She pointed at the bench to the right of the doorway.
“Very nice. Very Maine,” he said as he sat down on the far end of the white-painted bench where he could see the boats, gulls and Mainers doing what Mainers did every day.
She sat on the other end and held out her cup as he loosened the lid of the carafe and poured.
“Cream or sugar?” She reached into her pocket and then held out her hand with the packets on her palm.
“Black.”
She wasn’t surprised.
He sat back and as he gazed out over the harbor, she studied him. His profile, with well-defined nose, sharply defined upper lip and full soft bottom lip, looked good in the morning sun. Who was she kidding? He probably looked good in just about every light—or maybe very little light—like maybe that of a bedside lamp.
Hmm. She put her coffee on the bench near where he’d placed the carafe and folded her arms over her chest. These were things she definitely shouldn’t be thinking about when her future was at stake.
She turned her attention to the endlessly changing but always wonderful view five blocks or so away on the docks at the end of Treacher Avenue. The water of the bay sparkled dark blue, and the fishermen and those who serviced the boats hurried around in their morning scurry, some starting their day, some already well into it.
A woman with a baby stroller stopped as she waved to someone on a boat in the water, but the boats were too far off to see who waved back. The town’s stray brown dog stopped and sat beside her until she moved on and then so did he.
His cup sat beside hers and he had leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “It’s like an artsy movie.”
“Evidence that life does go on even in a small town the world has never really noticed. I don’t ever get tired of it,” Mia said as she relaxed into the view.
“One of my fondest characteristics of people from Maine. They appreciate where they are.” Dr. MacCarey, Daniel, looked more relaxed, seemed to have forgotten he was in a hurry to get the job done and get out of town.
“Would it be so bad if we never knew who the man in the wall was?” And everybody’s lives could return to normal?
She had stirred up more than she had ever planned. She had to get this guy to let things go. To get out of town no matter who was in that wall.
She could hear the little angel on her shoulder reproaching her even as she had the thoughts. Integrity! You’ve got nothing if you don’t have integrity.
Phooey.
CHAPTER FOUR
MIA RUBBED HER shoulder and asked Daniel, “Do your records mention Liam Bailey?”
“He was an early landowner. The assumption is made that the town was renamed after him, but there is no record as to why.” Dr. MacCarey, Daniel, withdrew his gaze from the harbor and turned it on her. His eyes were definitely that deep dark earthy brown, the kind created to hold sensuality and mystery at the same time, and right now they held a keen kind of interest.
“Anything else?” The words croaked a bit when she spoke, so she picked up her coffee cup to break eye contact.
“The library at the university has some factual information, but it’s pretty—” he paused “—bare-bones.”
She sputtered coffee and had to wipe her mouth on the back of her hand to keep from dripping on the front of her coat. “Bare-bones. I can’t believe you said that.”
He held her gaze again as he spoke. “Even anthropologists use humor—from time to time.”
She shouldn’t have looked at him again. His face was definitely much more relaxed than when he’d first arrived. He looked more accessible.
“I tried to find information about Liam Bailey.” She turned away and forced herself to search the harbor for something to latch on to. After only a moment, she spotted what she knew, even from this distance, to be the Calvins’ boat, the Lady Luck, the one with the for-sale sign. So much for luck.
“There doesn’t seem to be any information out there, not about our Liam Bailey anyway,” she continued, and then realized she had a white-knuckle grip on her coffee cup.
“It’s hard to find specifics about someone from two hundred years ago.” He sounded pensive. “Unless they were famous or notorious.”
Famous or notorious. If he never found out Archibald Fletcher was a usurper and not the original founder, he’d have no reason to suspect this body was anything more than a minor mystery, just a minor player sealed up in a wall, and Dr. MacCarey would leave out of boredom. Archibald Fletcher had a gravesite, after all, and had never gone missing. Liam Bailey, the ship’s captain who originally started the settlement and called it South Harbor, had a story, a legend.
It wasn’t boredom that made the townsfolk leave. It was desperate circumstances. The Calvin brothers weren’t just selling the boat. They were selling their traps, their federal permit, their livelihood, and diminishing Bailey’s Cove by yet another good family.
Mia quietly sipped her cooling coffee.
“Does your museum have more information?”
This time when he brought up the museum, she looked into his eyes to see if she could read what might be in his heart. He matched her gaze beat for beat with the deep earthy color that seemed to warm her soul and body. She snapped her gaze away—again—before she embarrassed herself. Drooling would not be good.
“The museum does have a little information, but much has been lost to time and the salty air.”
She should just send him there, not tell him the secrets of the town. Heather Loch, who ran the museum, would not tell him tell more than a few facts and maybe he’d be satisfied with that.
“But you know. Don’t you?” His tone grew soft, seductive.
...and she was such a sucker.
“It’s much more interesting when one thinks of Liam Bailey as...the town’s founder, and not Archibald Fletcher.” She sighed. “And as...”
“As?”
She didn’t dare so much as a look at him right now. “As a privateer.”
“A privateer in the early 1800s was usually a—”
“Pirate,” she finished.
He laughed out loud. As much as she hated it, she liked the sound. He had a nice laugh, friendly, with a touch of boisterous.
“I know. I know.” She grimaced.
“So the town’s secret is a pirate’s treasure?”
“I feel like such a traitor.”
“You don’t think I would have found out?” His voice carried a teasing lilt now.
“Maybe, but it would have taken you a couple of years to pry enough information out of the folks around here to be able to put things together and come up with pirate’s treasure.”
“Why do I get the feeling you have much more to tell me about this pirate?”
“Because you’re smart.”
“That’s true.”
When she chanced a glance, there was a hint of a smile in his eyes. “And humble.”
“So my Aunt Margaret used to say.” The corners of his mouth turned up again.
“I need to know you understand, the more I tell you, the more I feel my remodeling project slipping away. The more I hold off telling, the more dishonest I feel, but right now it’s no longer a matter of betraying a town’s trust. If this town doesn’t survive, there will be no one to betray.”
He looked at her for a long time, as if measuring her, and then said, “Mia, I will be judicious with what you tell me.”
She dipped her chin in acknowledgment. “That Liam Bailey founded the town of Bailey’s Cove, and that he had been a privateer, seem to be anchored in truth, as far as the people of Bailey’s Cove know it. What has been passed down through the generations is that there was a young woman in whom Bailey showed a particular interest, and she in him. Some say he was paid off by the young woman’s disapproving father, Archibald Fletcher, and with the cash in his pocket couldn’t get out of town fast enough. He was never heard from again. The story goes, Fletcher maintained Bailey went back to sea and some say he went west to find gold.”
“You don’t think that’s what happened?”
She gave a sharp laugh. “I have no idea. The other side of the story is the girl’s father started the rumor that all Bailey wanted was her substantial inheritance, and what really happened was the man had Bailey killed. It isn’t much of a leap to get from that to Liam Bailey being entombed in the wall of the hotel he built as part of the settlement’s initial push to become a town. Ironic.”
She held up her coffee cup in a sweeping motion and continued. “As you can see, Bailey’s Cove hasn’t grown too terribly much since that time, so we can’t blame the world for ignoring us.”
He poured more coffee. “And the treasure?”
“Ah, the treasure. It’s custom here in Bailey’s Cove, like prayers before a meal or removing your hat before entering someone’s home. You don’t tell outsiders about Liam Bailey and especially not his treasure.”
He gave her an honest and open look of interest.
“The chief said he knew that when the university showed up, tongues would start flapping. Well, he actually used the term ‘troublesome gossip.’ That your arrival would give folks ideas about digging for treasure...again, and that didn’t turn out so well for the town last time.”
“So if the pirate buried his treasure and then was killed before he could dig it up...”
“Bingo. Until now, it was just a body in the wall. Chief Montcalm asked me not to talk to anyone about it, which I didn’t, well, mostly I didn’t. He made my workers quake in their boots, so I’m sure they only told a couple dozen people what they saw.” Something about this man made her want to spill her guts, to bare all. Oh, for pity’s sake. “Since the place hasn’t been raided, I believe official word has not leaked out from the chief’s department. The chief’s people say the bones are old. Will you be able to tell how old the remains are with carbon dating?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Oh, wow. That might be very helpful.”
“I’ll be able to tell the age of the body to within a couple hundred years.” He shot a disarming grin at her and some unseen barrier between them seemed to fall away. “Carbon dating so touted in the media is much more accurate when dating eras—when it’s confined to thousands of years. Some archeologists believe it’s been fine-tuned to be able to pinpoint up to within a few hundred years, but it’s always under scrutiny. Telling how old a person was at the time of death is relatively easy nowadays, but the decade or even the century gets dicier. Though finding pirate’s treasure might help.”
“Oh, please, don’t. Please, don’t.” She was absolutely sure she didn’t want to hear his answer, but she had to ask the next logical question. “If you suspect this is Liam Bailey, will you bring in a team of people?”
“I could, but usually the more people, the more time spent processing a site, and more confusion.”
“So you might still be able to get what you need and leave today?”
“The more I hear about Bailey, the more complicated this investigation is getting.”
Mia blew out a breath. “Of course it is.”
She might have to gag that angel on her shoulder.
* * *
WHEN DANIEL GLANCED at the woman beside him on the bench, she looked deflated, as if she were tired of shouldering the bravado necessary to keep a project this size on schedule.
“Was it something I said?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, it was.” Her light blue eyes reflected the morning sky and for an instant he thought he might be able to gaze into them over a cup of coffee or even a glass of wine. Something he never thought he’d do again—stare into a woman’s eyes.
He quickly changed his thoughts. “I think I said something like, the more I hear, the more complicated this whole investigation is getting.”
“That’s the gist.”
“Wouldn’t finding out a pirate was buried here be beneficial for the town, a tourist attraction?”
“Yeeees,” she drew out the word. “The town needs the monetary boost tourists will bring. Skeletons were not part of the timeline for—well—for profitability.”
He watched her closely, trying to figure out if there was something else behind her words. On the surface they seemed self-serving, but there was also an almost bleak tone to her voice, which made him suspect there was much more. “Earlier, you mentioned a dining room. A restaurant?”
“That’s my goal.”
“Are you a chef?”
“Oh, no. Creating food takes more imagination and certainly more skill than I have. I’m a businesswoman. Can’t you tell?” She gestured to her demolition attire. “Hotel and restaurant management.”
“Does the place have a name?”
She gave a soft snort. “I chose it before all this got started and now I’m a bit mortified. I thought I’d be clever and call it Pirate’s Roost.”
Her smile, though embarrassed, shined bright like the sun off the water. It was clear to see she was proud of what she was doing here, had great hopes for success.
“So a pirate in your wall would complicate things?”
She brushed the toe of her shoe against the concrete of the sidewalk. “I’m on a tight timeline. There have already been so many delays, and if the Roost is not finished in time to draw tourists this season it will be hard to keep things going over the winter. Plus things can get a little sketchy around here when the hopes of treasure stirs things up.”
“So if I got out of the way, the Pirate’s Roost might have a chance to stay on schedule.”
“It would help a lot.”
“I’ll check out the crypt. I might only need a few days with the site, a week at the most.” She might have masked a gasp with a cough, but he wasn’t sure. “I’ll need to get the contents of the boxes examined to see what the remains can tell me.”
He sat back and watched the goings-on in the harbor. Sometimes gathering information on a site meant letting the indigenous population say what they needed to say. He let silence ask the next question.
“I really need to get the demo and remodeling finished as soon as possible.”
He nodded.
A dingy bounced against the hull of one of the fishing boats as someone on board worked to secure it to the side of the boat.
“In a way,” she continued, “the town’s survival depends on getting the village brought up to the twenty-first century. This is, we hope, the first of many projects.”
“And if this turns out to be a pirate who hid a treasure?” He glanced at her. “Will the whole town turn up?”
She leaned her chin in the palms of her hands. The sun glistened golden in her hair and the wind blew the loose curling locks across her cheek, made pink by the morning breeze. He wanted to tuck the hair behind her ear. He wanted to tell her everything would be all right, but he knew he did not have that power anymore, in fact never had that power.
“Not all of the folks here are crazed by pirate lore, but enough to make my life difficult, and maybe yours.” She nodded across the street at the two teenagers with their heads together. Their glances kept turning to where he and Mia Parker sat on the bench.
“You’d like to toss me out of town, wouldn’t you?”
She snapped her eyes to his face. “Yes.”
He laughed at her honesty. “Then I’d better get started on finding out about what went on in there.”
“Please do.” She picked up the empty coffee cups and carafe and stood.
“I need to do the preliminary examine by myself.” And then, so there could be no misunderstanding, he added, “I’d like it if you left for a half hour or so.”
There was a time in his life when she would have been just the type of woman he would have sought out. She didn’t have to give him any information he had not found at the university, but she did. She could have been bitchy about wanting him to get in and get out, but she wasn’t. Yet, if she had come into his life years ago, he would have hurt her, too, just as he had Mandy.
“I have a few things to do. I’ll be back in thirty minutes...or so. My phone number is inside, on the back wall.”
He notched an eyebrow.
“That way my workers have no excuse not to call me when they need me.”
She walked quickly away and he wondered how much she had invested in this project, and even more, how valuable a historical site this might turn out to be. The more significant each of these factors, the greater their problems would be.
With a toss of her head, she flicked the hair from her face and climbed into a small green SUV.
He wondered how she’d feel about him and the guy in the wall if she knew the state had given the university, and therefore him, the power to keep her site for as long as he deemed necessary. How she’d react if the university asserted its right to the Power of Eminent Domain. With that power, they could buy her building at fair market price, which in this depressed town would pay her only a fraction of what she had already invested in the remodeling.
She wasn’t even a part of his life and already he could do her harm, he thought, as he went back inside the building. Flashes of old memories, the smiling face of a little boy, the feeling of proud parents when the child was born. And the pain when it all fell apart.
CHAPTER FIVE
MIA PLUCKED HER keys from under the seat and was about to start her SUV when a shadow blocked the sun coming in the side window. Mickey Thompson, one of the teenagers who had been loitering across the street, grinned in at her, one of those half ogle, half goofy kid grins only a fourteen-year-old could manage.
She lowered the window. “Mickey, why aren’t you in school?”
“We got a late start today and the bell don’t ring for another ten minutes.”
Which meant he’d be late and didn’t much care. “What can I do for you?”
“Can we go in now that the cops have taken the police tape down?”
“The building is private property. You don’t get to go in without an invitation.”
“Who do we have to ask?”
“Me.”
“So can we go in?”
“You can go to school.”
Another shadow joined Mickey’s. Between Mickey and his friend Tim O’Donnell, they had nearly a bushel of shaggy brown hair.
“What’d she say?” the other teen asked.
“She said to go to school.”
“Now,” Mia said, and as the teens moved off slowly, they balefully eyed the building with secrets they weren’t being allowed to poke around in. The trickle before the flood.
Right now, she had to get away from Daniel MacCarey and the destruction he could cause in her life, and she needed to marshal her mental troops before she dived back into a pirate-infested pool.
One person in town would sympathize with her.
Apex Cleaners, where Monique worked, shared an old aluminum-sided strip mall with the Cove Real Estate Agency, a pharmacy, three other small businesses and two empty stores. As Mia approached, the front door of the cleaners popped open. Mrs. Carmody, the lonely cat lady, emerged and streaked to her car, leaving Monique standing in the doorway holding the rug.
Mia waved and Monique rolled her eyes.
“Hey, I heard he’s good-looking. Is that true?” Monique asked as she led Mia into the dry cleaners after putting the rug in Mrs. Carmody’s trunk.
“If by him, you mean Dr. MacCarey, the answer is yes.”
“Dr. MacCarey, eh?”
“Anthropologist,” Mia said as she leaned her elbows on the service counter.
“Good enough.”
“Good enough for what?”
Monique stood on the other side of the counter and took up what she must have been doing before Mrs. Carmody arrived, shoving incoming laundry into bags and labeling them.
“Good enough for you,” she said as she gave a couple of shirts an extra hard shove. A harsh gesture for Monique, who was usually a gentle soul.
“You are not talking about what I think you’re talking about.”
“You bet I am. If you don’t want him, I’ll take a crack at him.”
“No, you wouldn’t. And what’s going on with you?”
“Oh, nothing, really, nothing.” Monique made dismissive circles in the air with her hands.
“Monique.” Mia stilled her friend’s hands.
“Okay, I thought I got a new regular customer, but... Never mind.”
“Never mind it’s not important, or never mind you don’t want to talk about him right now.”
“Can we just do never mind for a while?” Monique’s eyes held a pleading look.
“Okay.”
“Did you hear Mac and Sally are engaged?” Monique asked over-brightly.
“Does that mean he’s done saying he’s sorry for taking you on the worst date ever?”
“What do you mean? You thought getting champagne up my nose was a bad time?” Monique shoved more laundry in a bag.
“I thought running out of gas and having to be rescued in the middle of the harbor was the best part.”
“Mia, what if it could happen for me? After all this time, I find a guy right here in Bailey’s Cove? I get to marry, live happily ever after right here at home.” Monique got all dreamy-faced. “I still believe, you know.”
Mia shrugged and smiled. “Who knows? Your heart may wander right into bliss.”
“So what are you doing here instead of being over there with him? Hiding so you won’t fall in love?”
“Hiding so I won’t commit murder and then brick the wall back up with an anthropologist inside.”
“You are so totally bad.”
“I wish.” Mia leaned her elbows on the counter. “I wish.”
“Ms. Parker, I wish you’d at least help Ms. Beaudin when you’re here,” Mr. Wetherbee, the shop owner, said as he appeared between the beaded strands of the curtained doorway leading to the back room. “If I had both of you to do the job, I might get a good day’s work done around here for the money I pay this little slacker.”
Monique tossed a lightweight laundry bag at the shopkeeper’s head in reply.
Mr. Wetherbee haha-ed good-naturedly and continued out the front door, leaving the bag where it had fallen.
“You don’t need him,” Mia said, still leaning on her elbows.
“Except he owns the store.”
“Minor detail.”
“I suspect he pays me so much because he wants me to have enough money to buy the store from him someday.” She tossed another filled bag into the canvas cart of waiting laundry and turned on Mia with a long sigh. “So back to you. You wanna kill a guy that cute. Must be a really good reason.”
“I made it clear to him about how important it is for me to get back in there and get the job done, but he’s so...so...”
“Ah, anthropologist-y?”
“I think I hate him.”
Monique looked up from the label she was scribbling out. “’Cuz he wants to get things right?”
“Maybe, but maybe because he’s good-looking and he’s funny.”
“A bone-and-pot-shard guy is funny? Since when do you not like funny?”
“Oh, please.” Mia clapped her hands to her cheeks and squeezed her face into distorted horror.
“Would he be just exactly the kind of person you’d want if you ever looked for another man?”
Monique sighed again and Mia knew she was hiding something, but played along anyway.
“Yes.” Now she threw her hands up imitating her friend. “Right. Fine!”
“And the kind you’d like to hop in the sack with.”
“No. No. No. I don’t want to go there.”
“Until hell freezes. I know.” Monique shook her head. “So why are you here if it’s not for my advice on how to land the big one?”
Mia sighed. “Moral support and he threw me out. I’m getting a complex—about being asked to leave my own place.”
“Maybe you should go across the street and talk to Delainey Talbot at Morrison and Morrison. She could probably get you in to see one of the attorneys today or tomorrow. They might help you get him out sooner.”
“I hope I don’t need an attorney and I certainly can’t afford those guys.”
“You want me to come over to the Roost...” Monique hunched her shoulders and flexed “...and tell that guy how it’s gonna be?”
Mia snorted. “No.”
“Then why don’t you go back and seduce that hunk right out of town?”
“Because I’m not sure you’re all right. Is it your granddad?”
“No, it’s not, and I’m fine.” Monique leaned on the counter across from Mia so their noses almost touched. “And don’t fall in love with your anthropologist, and if you do, don’t get your heart broken.”
Monique’s last words seemed as if they were personal. A guy? Monique and a guy? Why didn’t she know?
Mia put a hand on Monique’s. “Be good to yourself, my friend.” Don’t get your heart broken, either, Mia thought as the door rattled shut behind her.
She crossed Church Street, passed the redbrick building with a stately facade that housed the town’s most successful attorneys and walked north to Treacher Avenue. Daniel’s car still sat parked in front of the Roost, which made her frown as she continued.
From the corner of Church down Treacher to the harbor were the most colorful five blocks in town and her favorite to contemplate. The Three Sisters, three Victorian-style homes, sat in varying stages of neglect. Built for the daughters of a long-gone shipping magnate they sat side by side on Treacher Avenue not far from the docks. Each was a prime candidate to be turned into a bed-and-breakfast or a boutique by someone who had enough faith.
Next door to them was an artist’s studio still closed for the season and surrounded by pine trees and low-growing junipers. After that came an old shed falling into disrepair, languishing because of a disputed estate.
All the time as she walked, her thoughts bounced between the man at the Roost and Monique. She hoped her friend wasn’t dabbling in long-haul truck drivers again. That had not gone well for her in the past. And she hoped Daniel MacCarey would just plain go away.
When she reached the docks, Mr. Calvin the elder gave her a wan smile. She could tell he didn’t want to sell the family boat, either. Two other fishermen and the woman from the Marina gave her speculative looks making her wonder if the truant teenagers Mickey and Tim had been down here spouting tales of yo-ho-ho instead of being in school.
Everyone else gave her smiles and waves, lending her the encouragement she needed for when it was time to start back up the hill and get to work on Dr. MacCarey, if not on the demolition.
Although, what would do her really and truly good was if she got back to the Pirate’s Roost and Daniel MacCarey’s hybrid was gone. Maybe she could resume the special kind of lunacy she called her life, where the only workers she could find were slightly off balance, piles of bills were expected and she had teenagers drooling to enter the premises where a skeleton had resided for who knew how long.
The two women who had moved their yarn and craft shop from the building she was now renovating to be closer to the docks stood in the doorway of their shop. Pins and Needles sat directly across from the Three Sisters, positioned well if the Sisters were ever renovated.
“How’s it going, Mia?” one of them asked.
“I’m making good progress.” Mia used her standard answer to the question because Monique told her using marginally crappy would be off-putting to many people.
“I see you have company today.” Translation: Did you find out who the skeleton from your wall is yet, and if not when? Or: Who is this guy and is he married?
“I do.” Mia went on to ask about their week and they answered they had all the new inventory ordered for the spring tourist trade, hoping this year there would be better crowds than last year.
Mia waved and moved off before they could ask more about Daniel MacCarey. “Have a nice day, ladies.”
When she reached the corner of Treacher Avenue and Church Street, she scrunched her face at the sight of the professor’s hybrid still hugging the curb in front of her building.
She was sure she didn’t want to leave him alone with her future any longer and ducked under the single piece of tape still in place.
The air inside hung still with the musty smell of old building. The ax-strike marks on the exposed beams in the ceiling made the building look its age, as did the wide planks of the floorboards. It would be a charming place when she got it finished and there could be no ifs about it. She would get it finished.
It was quiet, almost spooky quiet.
“Hello?” Mia called into the silence.
She rounded the partially torn-down wall, and the room beyond was as quiet as— No, not a grave, not creepy quiet. Hushed as the eye of a storm, that hair-raising kind of stillness where the excitement and anticipation of a wild ride lived.
She ran a hand down the back of her neck to chase away the feeling giving her a chill.
A clinking sound put her in a dead stop.
A delicate tapping came from—
The basement.
She had been down there only twice.
Every chain saw massacre and Halloween movie played in her head as she gripped her flashlight. The hollowed out basement dug into the dirt and blasted into the stone was eerie and repugnant and would still be even if her pitiful flashlight became a host of floodlights.
The basement door at the far side of the old and soon-to-be-renewed pantry squeaked obligingly as she tugged it open. She shrugged that off, too.
Lights! Yes, the lights were on. Daniel was down there.
The smell of the old, dank, partial dirt-floor basement wafted insults at her nose as she started down. Vegetables and wine had most likely been stored here when the building was a functioning hotel.
She stopped halfway down and listened. “Daniel?” she called more timidly than she had intended.
The shrieking sound from the movie Psycho screeched loudly in her head.
Oh, shut up! she said to herself and continued down.
The light at the bottom of the stairs did a pitifully meager job of keeping the darkness at bay, and the tapping restarted.
“Hello?” she called tentatively. Chicken, she chided herself. “Daniel, are you down here?”
The tapping stopped. So did she, on the third step from the bottom. As quiet footsteps approached she couldn’t help the urge to flee.
Then Daniel stepped into the light shed from the ceiling bulb at the bottom of the steps and looked up at her. “Hello again.”
Shadows from the dim bulb deepened the contrasting planes of his face and the light danced in his dark hair. Feelings stirred inside her, things she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
She rubbed a hand on the thigh of her jeans.
“What are you doing down here?” she asked.
His expression grew more serious and he held up what she supposed were archeology tools. “Exploring to see if there are any other areas that might need excavating.”
“I hope not.”
“And why are you down here?”
“I just wanted to see if there is anything I can do to help...” Get you the heck out of my building.
“Have you done much exploring on this level?” His tone told her this was a hedge, an opening gambit.
“No.” Already she didn’t like the way this was going. “Just a couple of quick inspections. Why?”
“There’s a section of the floor that’s been dug up.”
Mia thought back to when she had toured the basement the second time to make sure it could be used for storage.
“One of the previous owners was doing something in the furnace room, but I have no idea what.” Or nothing she’d admit to—digging for treasure. Mia descended the last three stairs, and the smell of old dirt and mustiness grew stronger, until she stopped beside him. Then it smelled like—mmm—man.
“Not in the furnace room.” When he spoke she realized she might have zoned out a bit because he took a step away from her.
“Somewhere else? Oh, not rats. The digging didn’t look rodentlike, did it?”
His expression lightened and she knew she must be wearing what Monique called her hilarious horrified gape. She closed her mouth.
“In the old cold storage room, where the floor is still dirt and not concrete. Dug up with a shovel and probably a pickax. The dirt in that floor has been packed down by a couple centuries of use and neglect, so dug up by a very determined digger.”
“Freshly dug, I suppose.” She knew she should go inspect the hole, but she liked being just where she was. Maybe she even wanted to step closer, to take back that step he had taken away.
“Yes, and then someone tried to refill it, but you can imagine how that went. Ten pounds in a five-pound bag.”
Treasure hunters. She wondered if the trickle was already a full running stream. Or maybe just her three workers.
“I guess I should take a look.”
She envisioned Charlie, Rufus and Stella each with a pickax in their hands, or maybe it was Mickey and Tim. Smiling politely she stepped calmly around her guest. Was he just a friendly visitor? Or was he an enemy?
The old storage room, an erstwhile hold for potatoes, apples, turnips and anything that would keep in the earth-chilled room for the winter had previously had only stone walls, a dirt floor and a couple of old crates, no hole.
When she entered the back room, a shiver ran down her body. There was no mistaking the disturbance.
“Someone digging for treasure?” He sounded amused from behind her.
She wanted to punch him for that. Good thing she only had violent thoughts and not actions. Someone digging for treasure. There were already so many suspects.
Slowly, turning to face him, she said, “Please, don’t mention digging for treasure in this town. The people around here do not need any encouragement.”
He nodded. “You won’t get any argument from an anthropologist. Treasure hunters are a bane for any—er—archeological site.”
She laughed. “Thanks for not saying dig.”
“I’m finished down here for now if you’d like to go up where it’s warmer.”
“Warmer would be good.”
She put her flashlight in her pocket and they marched in silence across the old floor and up the steps. Halfway up she wondered if Daniel was watching her butt. She was a warm-blooded woman; she’d be watching his. What if he wasn’t watching? She wanted in the worst way to catch him in the act, whichever it was, but she trudged on wondering if her jeans were too tight.
Speaking of jeans. The more she saw how well this guy wore his holey ones, the more she liked them, and his raggedy sweater, as well. His slumming clothes. She couldn’t imagine his teaching clothes would look this good.
In fact, he probably looked really, really good with no clothes at all.
He followed her to the front room, where the morning light filtered in through the windows. She tried not to inhale too noticeably as he stopped beside her. Apparently, nothing could dampen her suddenly awakened sense of the male side of the planet. Unless, maybe, he decided to tell her he’d come to ruin her life completely.
“I have given a cursory check of the contents of the boxes. Are you interested in having a look?”
When she glanced at him, there was an unmistakable light of excitement in his dark eyes. Damn.
No, she didn’t want to see that light and she certainly did not want to see what was in the boxes. She wanted him to take those bones and rags and go. She wanted to move forward with her funky little life, finish the restaurant so the chef she had hired didn’t give up on her, so the banks to whom she promised payment didn’t come demanding what little she had. “Look at old bones and raggedy clothing?”
He grinned and his eagerness brightened. “That’s about the size of it.”
“Yes.” Okay, so she wanted to see them, get his opinion.
“I’ll bring the boxes out where the light is better.”
His gaze rested on her face. His eyes searching and...like expensive dark chocolate, like the moment of shadow just as the sun sets—they stopped the air moving in and out of her lungs.
She tore her attention away and took a gulp of air. “I’ll help.”
He picked up a box and moved away. She followed his lead and they carried the remains out and placed them on the floor in front of the window.
He had a very good backside.
“So I would guess people outside your department usually blow you off when you ask them to come look at your bone and rag collections,” she said. Maybe old bones would shock her back into sanity.
“Gave up long ago. Most prefer museum replicas.”
“That’d be my first choice. The woman who runs the museum here claims to be a descendent of Liam Bailey.” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Don’t pique his interest.
He pulled on a pair of disposable gloves, hunkered down and flipped open the lid of one of the boxes.
The light flared again in the professor’s eyes. He loved this, the hunt for antiquities, even if they were only old bones and tattered cloth.
“We could be looking in on a pirate.”
She hunkered down beside him. “I can see you on the deck of a two-masted schooner, long dark hair flowing in the wind, shirtsleeves billowing.” She touched his arm as if touching that sexy sleeve.
He leaned away from her touch and reached under the top layers of bags to pull out a large plastic bag containing remnants of brown fabric.
The bag and the sudden look of all business on Dr. MacCarey’s face dispelled all the visions in her head of the romance of pirates.
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