The phone rang. “The American Hotel, Emma speaking. How may I assist you?”
In front of the desk, a couple huffed and puffed impatiently to be seated for dinner, the woman leaning on the countertop as if proximity to Emma would magically make something open up sooner.
“Mom, it’s me. You’re not answering your cell.”
Emma glanced under the desk to see if she even had her phone, then checked the time. Close to nine. “It’s been nonstop, hon. Where are you?” Even over the din of the lobby and bar, Emma could hear that Penny was someplace loud herself.
“I’m at a friend’s house. I’m going to sleep over.”
“What friend?”
“Mindy Banks.” Before Emma could protest, Penny said, “Robin’s here and I really want to spend time with her.”
Emma bit her lip. Robin was a sweet kid—at least, she had been a sweet kid before whatever metamorphosis this year had led her to ditch Penny for those fast girls. How could Penny think it was okay to sleep over Mindy’s house?
“Penny, the last time you were at that house you left with a police escort. You’re not sleeping there. And I don’t want you biking home this late. I’m calling a cab to pick you up.”
“It’s only nine!”
“Text me the address and be outside the house in half an hour. Don’t make me call Angus because I will send him inside to pull you out of there.” An idle threat. There was no way she’d wake Angus up for that task. She’d have to leave work.
“Come on, Mom. I need a life!” Penny hung up.
Yeah, you and me both, kid, Emma thought. A waiter signaled to her that a two-top was open. “Your table is ready,” she said to a couple hovering near the desk. Emma was relieved to lead them to a spot in the back of the bar. Maybe the night would finally shift into autopilot, and she could look forward to getting home. Home to deal with her recalcitrant daughter. Yes, that would be a lovely way to cap off the day.
Back at the desk, she checked her cell phone to see if Penny texted back to confirm that she would take the cab in half an hour. Nothing.
“You know, this hotel is not big enough.”
Emma looked up to find the old woman—Ms. Winstead. She was dressed in all black, a diamond brooch on her jacket. Her lipstick was a bright reddish orange, and the Hermès scarf around her neck featured the identical shade. She was probably only five foot five or so but something about her seemed towering.
She was the last person Emma wanted to see.
“Good evening, Ms. Winstead. Do you need something in your room?”
“I was saying, young lady, that this hotel is not big enough for the two of us. How do you expect me to sleep under this roof knowing there is a thief at the helm?”
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Was she for real? Sadly, the answer seemed to be yes. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Ms. Winstead. But this is my place of employment and I’m happy to assist you if you need something.”
Across the room, the handsome couple disentangled themselves, stood from the couch, and walked arm in arm to the front door. Emma felt a pang.
Ms. Winstead leaned closer. “This will not be your place of employment for long.”
“Excuse me?” Emma said.
“I’m having a little chat with your boss tomorrow morning to make sure he knows he has a fox guarding the henhouse. I don’t think he’ll be pleased. Do you?”
“My mom sucks! She says I can’t sleep over. She’s sending a cab for me.” Penny rolled her eyes at Robin, who laughed on cue. They sat on the deck of Mindy’s house overlooking the harbor filled with yachts and sailboats. Penny couldn’t believe she had to leave when she was finally having fun.
“When?” Robin asked, as horrified as if Penny had said her mother was sending her off to do hard labor.
“At this point? A half an hour or so.”
“You can’t go! It’s so early.”
Penny nodded. She didn’t want to leave, despite the weird thing that had happened downstairs earlier in the night. For the first time, she felt like she fit in. It was so different than Memorial Day weekend. She’d felt bad that night, inferior, because she couldn’t help comparing Mindy’s place to her own ramshackle house by the railroad tracks. But thanks to Henry, everything had changed.
Well, almost everything. As much as Penny tried to enjoy herself, to let go and be like everyone else at the party, she couldn’t quiet her mind. The party was just Robin, Mindy, Mindy’s lapdog friend Jess, and a few boys from Pierson High, including one kid, Mateo, whose family was from Spain and whose older brother Nick was infamous for wrecking the Porsche convertible he’d gotten on his sixteenth birthday.
Penny joined everyone playing beer pong in the rec room on the third floor, but she kept leaving to wash her hands. She’d accidentally touched the bottom of one of her shoes when she’d taken them off to sit by the pool, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. When she came out of the bathroom the third time, she found Mateo waiting for her.
“Hey, you don’t like to share?” he said with a smile. He had very dark eyes, and there was a certain thrill to seeing them focused on her.
“Share what?” She hid her hands behind her back. They were dripping wet, because her OCD made it impossible for her to use the same towel all the other guests used.
Mateo put one hand against the wall and leaned his body in close to hers. “Whatever it is you’re doing in there. You have blow?”
She told him no, she absolutely did not. She didn’t have anything. Then he leaned in even closer and kissed her. She opened her mouth—was it to protest? And his tongue pressed inside. She jumped back, ducked under his arm, ran up the stairs to the first floor, and rushed out to the deck.
She was still trying to process it when Robin came looking for her.
“The taxi is here, but you still have time for this.” She handed her one of the white pills. “You might have to leave the party, but the party doesn’t have to leave you.”
“Thanks,” Penny said, pocketing it for her next dismal stint at the historical society. “You’re such a good friend.”
Emma had been working out her frustrations on Murf’s black-and-red dartboard since the summer she’d spent behind the bar there. It had once been a reliable cure for all that ailed her, as the original owner put it. Tonight, distracted by Bea Winstead’s threats, she was completely off her game.
The idea of Bea actually going after her job! And, worse, going after what belonged to Penny. She thought of Penny’s face the day she’d said, “Why does life have to suck all the time?” And what had Emma told her? That sometimes good things happened. Well, something incredible had happened. Now it was Emma’s job to protect it. And she would—no matter what it took.
Her previous two darts had lodged in the wall. She tossed a third. Total crap. She didn’t bother keeping score on the cracked green slate propped up against the wall on a bench. Someone else’s game was still etched in chalk underneath a logo that read THE CRICKETEER.
A crowd of people walked in and she waited for them to go past her before tossing her next three darts. On the jukebox, Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black” played. The door opened again, bringing in a rush of hot air. And an unwelcome face.
Please don’t see me.
He saw her.
“Hey. Emma, right?”
“What are you doing here?” she said to Bea Winstead’s friend. Or relative? She had no idea why the guy was with Bea. Nor did she really care. She just didn’t want him in her bar.
“Drinking, like everyone else.”
“Can’t you do that at the hotel?”
“I’d like to get drunk away from my employer.”
Employer? “What do you do for that woman, exactly? Never mind—I don’t want to know. And I don’t want to spend time with Bea Winstead’s evil henchman. So, please, find someplace else to drink.”
“No offense, but I think you’re overreacting,” he said. “Let me buy you a beer.”
“I a
lready have a beer,” she said, retrieving it from the bench where she had all but forgotten it. She took a long swig.
“I’m Kyle Dunlap, by the way. Evil Henchman is just my stage name.” He held out his hand. She ignored it.
“She’s trying to get me fired, you know.”
“She doesn’t want to get you fired. She just wants the house. Actually, what she really wants is the art. She worked with Henry Wyatt his entire career. She’s known him for, like, fifty years. This whole thing doesn’t make sense to her.”
Emma set down the bottle and said, “You know, I see people like you and that woman every summer. You waltz into town with your sense of entitlement, your greedy need to make this place your playground. And the second something takes a little too long or doesn’t go right, you attack.”
“First of all, I don’t know why you’re lumping me in with Bea Winstead. I just work for her.” He looked around the bar. “I’m basically the same as you.”
“Oh, is that right?” she said. “Do you have a kid?”
Kyle shook his head. “No. No kid. But I did get an earful from yours earlier today.”
That got her attention. “You saw Penny? Where?”
“I was waiting at the—it’s a long story. I was on the street and she came up to me. She said you weren’t going to take the house because Bea Winstead was hassling you and she wanted me to tell her to back off.”
“Penny said that?”
Kyle nodded.
Emma bit back a smile. She has more nerve than her mother, that’s for sure. Maybe it was time to change that. “I’m not backing down,” Emma said. “Bea Winstead is wasting her time.”
“Look, I can see things from your point of view, okay? One minute you’re busting your ass catering to these rich assholes, and the next minute, you’ve got a multimillion-dollar waterfront house. What a windfall.”
“I never asked for this,” she said. “But it could be life-changing. I’m a single mother. I work seventy hours a week to support my daughter, save for college, and pay rent on a house I’ll never be able to afford to buy.”
“So you’re not married?” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s none of your business. But no, I’m divorced. Long divorced.”
“Yeah. I’ve never been married.”
Emma shook her head. She couldn’t care less about his marital status. Was he missing the point of this conversation? “Do you have any idea what even a tiny house costs in this town these days? This used to be an affordable place to live. I was born here. My parents were born here. But it’s like…you know the old story about putting a frog in boiling water?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“If you put a frog in boiling water, he’ll jump out. But if you put him in tepid water and slowly turn up the heat, he won’t realize what’s happening and he’ll be cooked to death.”
“Why are we talking about frogs?” Kyle said, picking up a dart.
“Because I am the frog! All of us who have lived here a long time are the frogs.”
He tossed the dart and hit the bull’s-eye. She hated him.
“Emma, I hear you. I’ve been working for Bea for five years now, and believe me, I put up with a lot of shit. But let’s say she pulls a Henry Wyatt and drops dead at the bar tomorrow over her glass of sauvignon blanc. And then let’s say it turns out that she left everything to me. Here’s the headline: ‘Park Avenue Socialite and Art Patron Leaves Multimillion-Dollar Estate to Assistant.’ Do you honestly think that wouldn’t be questioned?”
“That’s a paranoid way to look at things.”
“I’m just saying Bea isn’t the only one asking questions. She’s just the only person close enough to the situation to get involved.”
“So you’re defending her?”
“I’m telling you she’s not a bad person. She can be a pain in the ass, but she’s not malicious. She’s acting in her own self-interest and I guess in the interest of her friend. This isn’t really about you.”
“No, it’s not about me. It’s about my daughter, because you’re forgetting Henry Wyatt left the house to her. I know it looks crazy, okay? It seemed crazy to me when I heard it. But it’s legitimate. I never asked for it, I never imagined it, but it happened. And I’m not going to let some woman swoop in from Park Avenue and take it away from her.” Emma downed the rest of her beer, set the empty bottle on the bar, and walked out. The air was soupy with humidity, more like August than June. She breathed deeply as she followed Division to the water. How dare he come into her bar and try to justify Bea Winstead’s behavior?
“Emma, wait up,” he called from behind her. She ignored him, crossed the street, passed the Bay Street Theater, and walked by the shops leading to the pier. When she looked back, she saw he was following her.
She stepped over a low wooden plank and sat down on a bench at the edge of the water. Far offshore, dozens of lights winked from a cluster of boats.
She crossed her arms, staring off into the distance. “Go away,” she said.
He sat on the far end of the bench, giving her some space.
“You seem like a nice woman,” he said. “And your kid seems like a good kid. I’m not trying to upset you. I’m just trying to tell you what you’re really up against. She’s not some cartoon villain. This is complicated.”
She turned to him. “It’s not complicated. It’s very, very simple. My daughter inherited the estate. This is all legit. So don’t patronize me.”
Sean’s water taxi skimmed slowly to a stop in front of the dock, and she jumped up. “Sean!” she called. “Can you give me a lift?”
“You got it. Where to?” She pointed across the bay.
Kyle followed her to the landing steps. “Where are you going?” he said.
“To my daughter’s house,” Emma said. It was an impulse, but she wanted to make a point. What was the saying? Possession was nine-tenths of the law? “The house that your boss isn’t going to scare me away from. Go back to New York, Kyle. Just leave. You don’t belong here.”
Sean’s dog yipped loudly.
She moved to the helm of the small launch and held on to the metal rail, comforted by the rumble of the engine. Melville settled by her feet as the boat took off. Motion was good. Move forward. Don’t look back. But she did—just one glance.
Kyle Dunlap was there in the distance, watching her leave.
Chapter Fourteen
Bea had always been a firm believer in rising early. There was nothing like Park Avenue when the only souls stirring were the doormen hosing down the sidewalks. The American Hotel at eight in the morning, she found, had a similar tranquillity. There was not a sound from a single guest room, and in the lobby, the only movement was a handful of workers stuffing tea roses into silver vases. And in this quiet, when all seemed ordered and as it should be, she felt overcome by the charm of the place.
She found Jack Blake waiting for her at a table in the dining room where they served a continental breakfast. The space was narrow but bright thanks to the skylight. One wall was exposed brick, the other wood-paneled with long mirrors. The potted plants reached the ceiling, and some hung down, giving the place an airy, garden feeling. The tables were dressed with white linens and set with floral-patterned china.
Jack stood and pulled out a wicker chair for her.
“What a lovely place you have, Jack. I haven’t been here in many, many years but I’m pleased to see it hasn’t changed a bit.”
“Thank you, Bea. That’s the idea.”
“How much time do you spend in Sag Harbor?”
“Winters in Palm Beach, summers here. Sometimes Christmas too, but it depends on my wife.”
“I think it was the holidays when I met you in Palm Beach. Isn’t that right?”
He nodded. A waitress poured them coffee and set the carafe on the table. “Angela, bring us some croissants and the fruit salad, please.” He turned back to Bea. “So, what brings you out here and what can I do for you?”
Direct. She respected that. Small talk was overrated. “Well, Jack, unfortunately, I came out here under rather unhappy circumstances. Henry Wyatt was a dear friend of mine.”
Jack nodded. “He was a treasure in this town. A real shame to see him go.”
He was too good for this town, Bea thought. But she shook that away. She needed to stay focused.
“Henry and I go back fifty years. We built his entire career together. We were quite inseparable for a time.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Well, thank you. Now, I’m telling you this because for the past year or two, Henry was a bit reclusive. And I’m afraid one of your employees preyed on his loneliness for her own gain.”
Jack seemed to mull over Bea’s accusation as the waitress set pastries and a bowl of fruit on the table.
“Are you referring to Emma Mapson?” he said.
She wasn’t surprised to hear him identify her. Of course he would know about the house. Everyone knew about the house. The thing he did not know was how out of character this was for Henry and how all personal history and logic dictated that Bea should be the beneficiary of his estate. “Yes. Emma Mapson. She claims Henry left his estate to her daughter.”
“Well, it’s more than a claim. I understand there’s a will.”
Bea swallowed her frustration and took a deep breath. “Jack, you have to understand that Henry did not even like children. He never married. He was devoted to his art. Frankly, the closest thing he had to a wife in his entire life was myself, and his career was our child. As difficult as it was to think of it, we discussed what would happen to his work after his death. He had the idea of establishing a museum. Nothing was formalized, but at our age these conversations are more than idle chitchat. So you can imagine my surprise to hear that, out of the blue, he left everything to the daughter of one of your hotel employees. By her own admission, this woman barely knew Henry.”
“A surprising turn of events.”
It was a relief to hear him affirming her own feelings about the matter. Jack Blake had tremendous standing in the community. “It’s not just surprising, Jack. It’s suspicious. Frankly, I’m certain it’s borderline criminal.”
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