Kingdom by the Sea (Romantic Suspense)

by Jill Winters

  “Mac...!” Nicole smiled and touched her palm to her heart. “That's really sweet.” She was genuinely touched. For some reason, it seemed to be a uniquely special compliment. She glanced up at Michael, whose smile was tight. He appeared uncomfortable somehow.

  Suddenly Mac dropped his hammer, sending it clacking down the steps. He scrambled to catch up with it. “Well, we won't keep you,” Michael said, guiding Nicole past Mac.

  Turning, Nicole waved goodbye; Mac saluted back and eyed Michael almost warily.

  Men were so weird. If they weren't staring each other down for no apparent reason, they were bonding instantly against Lifetime. Where was the happy medium?

  Either way, Nicole was in a hopeful, blissful mood this morning. If she were as cynical Cameron, or as sarcastic as Alyssa, she would probably say that it was all too good to be true.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Over the next few hours, the sun's umbrella had snapped shut and a biting wind had ripped down from the sky, with a gush of cold rain in its clutches. The thunder made a sound like the sky had opened up.

  Nicole sat at her usual table at Tinsdale. The storm outside blew sheets of rain against the window; they splashed hard then broke apart, sliding down the glass in anguished defeat.

  As she continued to read, she learned that the keeper of a neighboring lighthouse—called Stage Harbor Light—hid liquor underneath the floorboards during Prohibition. Apparently, during an inspection of the premises, an inspector had noticed the loose floor boards, but didn't bother to check beneath them.

  A crack of thunder sounded as Nicole turned the page.

  She gasped.

  The letter 'L' was written in purple pencil on the margin. Nicole skimmed the page, but couldn't find any obvious link between the letter and the text.

  Two pages later, she came upon the letter 'F'.

  Suddenly she was startled by a loud bang. She jumped half an inch in her chair. The sound had definitely come from inside the library, not outside. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw no one around. It was as if a book had dropped or maybe something heavier, like a chair. She waited, but heard nothing else, so she turned back to the papers in front of her.

  She was beyond confounded by these markings, which were so clearly in her aunt's handwriting. They appeared random…but were they? Nicole had assumed that Aunt Nina hadn't even gotten this far in the research materials.

  Drumming her fingers on the table, she deliberated for another moment before pushing out her chair. She was going to ask Ginger. If anyone would know how far Aunt Nina had gotten with the lighthouse collage, it would be one of the Bloomingdale sisters.

  For some reason, these letters were nagging at her—plus the two underlined passages she'd found the other day. There was something deliberate in these markings. Almost...cryptic. It was like Nina was trying to say something—but what? And to whom?

  On her way to the stairs, Mac suddenly came out from an aisle of bookshelves and appeared in her path. “Oh!” Nicole gasped, realizing right after that perhaps she was too jumpy today. But still, he’d startled her. In fact, what was he doing there now? The last she’d seen him he was working on repairs at the house.

  “Sorry there, Nicole,” Mac said with almost a smile (he always appeared a bit too sad for a full smile). “I hope I didn’t scare you.”

  “No, no…well…actually you did.” She tried to keep her tone light, but for some reason, Nicole felt a little annoyed. Or maybe just disconcerted. Either way, she found him less than humbly charming at this moment. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.

  “I was tightening a few loose bolts,” he said, motioning vaguely toward the bookshelves. “Ginger and Hazel hire me from time to time for jobs like that. Fix the water fountain, plug up a hole or two, things like that.” Nodding, Nicole eyed the aisle that Mac had emerged from; she saw a closed tool box overturned on the floor. She had to assume that the loud crash she had heard a few moments earlier had been from Mac, perhaps dropping his tool box.

  “Then you’ve finished with Nina’s porch?” Nicole asked.

  “No, not yet,” Mac replied. Which Nicole found strange. Why leave a job you were working on before it was finished, and go work on another job? Unless it was because Ginger and Hazel were paying customers, and Mac was fixing Nina’s porch as a favor. But still, why were both these jobs coincidentally located wherever Nicole was at a given time?

  No. She quickly countered that last thought in her mind. She was becoming paranoid, and definitely too jumpy.

  Still, her indefinable irritation with him seemed to linger. “Well, it’s nice seeing you, Mac,” she said, quite generically, and move past him to the stairs.

  Nicole wrapped past the sitting area on the first floor, and down the hall that led to Hazel and Ginger's office. She knocked lightly on the door. Waited. Tried again, but no one answered. Hmm, was Ginger in the rest room? Just as she turned to go, she heard a scuffle behind the door. It was a muffled sound of movement, and then something dropped, something that sounded heavy and metallic like a stapler.

  The door opened, but only part way before it banged into something. “Oh! Um...hang on...” Ginger said and noisily dragged a piece of furniture or something across the floor. Apparently whatever it was had been obstructing the door—had it been placed there deliberately to keep people from entering?

  Before she could mull that over, the door opened all the way and revealed Ginger smiling tremulously. Betna Doyle, from the Preservation League, stood several feet behind, by the window sill. Both women appeared flustered. Betna's face was flushed, the dark rose of her cheeks like stains on her caramel skin. She smiled feebly and then reached for her tote bag. “Hi Betna...” Nicole began, but the woman was clearly anxious to leave, not to remake their acquaintance.

  “Hello,” she hurried and gave a brief wave to Ginger. “See you soon, I have to run.”

  “Wait—” Ginger called after her. Appearing distracted, she glanced at Nicole, and blinked rapidly at her. “What did you need?”

  “Um...”

  Ginger's eyes shifted to the corridor; she obviously had her mind on catching up with Betna, not chatting with Nicole. On the spot, Nicole improvised, “I just needed the copier.”

  “Oh! It's upstairs. It's at the opposite side of the floor than where you sit. That's probably why you didn't notice it.”

  “Thanks,” Nicole said with a smile. “I really appreciate it.” No sooner had she said the words than Ginger was moving past her, scurrying down the corridor to catch up with her friend.

  What now?

  Well, why not use the photocopier now that she thought of it? She could make copies of the materials that had her aunt's notations and take a closer look at them at home. Maybe something would click if she tried to sort this out. Who knows, maybe Michael would help her.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  By the time she got home, set dinner down for Puddle and changed into fleece pants and a hoodie, Nicole had become skeptical of her own notion. Maybe she had been looking for a message that wasn't there. Maybe she only wanted to believe that Aunt Nina was trying to communicate something important in her various notations.

  Either way, she laid the photocopies out for Michael on the coffee table. “So what do you think?” she said, sitting down beside him.

  “Can you think of any reason why your aunt would underline these particular phrases?” he asked, pointing to the words “North Tower” and “old house”? Helplessly, she shook her head. “And next to 'North Tower,' she wrote '1923.' Hmm...I wonder why the year 1923 is relevant.”

  Recalling her reading, Nicole said, “Okay, the North Tower was originally part of the Chatham Lighthouse on South Beach. This was back when Chatham still had two light towers. And then—oh, I just remembered something! 1923 was the year that the North Tower was moved from South Beach to Nauset Beach.”

  “Nauset Beach,” Michael echoed thoughtfully, “was that a special spot to your aunt? Or
to you?”

  With a shrug, Nicole replied, “Not that I recall. I know we went there a once or twice growing up. I remember that the waves were really high, but other than that...” Michael grabbed a pen and jotted down the letters, side by side: O W L F

  “Slow?” he suggested. “Or flow? Flow?”

  “Owl?” Nicole said. “Or maybe...fowl? Wolf?”

  “Hmm. Let me ask you. There must be some reason you're so focused on these notes from your aunt. What are you thinking?”

  “I'm not sure,” she admitted. “I think maybe she's trying to tell me something. I know how bizarre that sounds.” Expecting Michael to exhibit some kind of incredulity, Nicole waited for him to slant his gaze or furrow his brows. But he didn't. He just listened, waited. She went on, “But I can't shake the feeling that these notes are part of some bigger picture.”

  “Almost like a puzzle?” he suggested.

  Biting her lip, Nicole nodded slowly. That was it. “But wait. If Aunt Nina had something to tell me, why not just come out and tell me?”

  “Maybe she couldn't. Maybe she wanted to tell you something that was—I don't want to say secretive—but private. Personal, somehow. Maybe it's not something she could come out and say, or blurt out in her will. Maybe it was something she needed you to put together yourself.”

  Nicole became hopeful again. “Michael, do you really think so?”

  He motioned to the table. “Do we know that these are all the letters?”

  “God, I didn't think of that. There could be more.”

  “Sure, why not? You're not done getting through the research materials yet, right?”

  She shook her head. “Almost. So you don't think my imagination has run wild? That salt air and isolation have gotten to me?”

  “I don't see how you're isolated.” He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. “You've got me.”

  She pressed into him and kissed him again, then locked her mouth deeply with his. Michael's lips were like a promise of passion and breathlessness to come. When they broke apart, he ran his fingers over her cheek.

  “There's a puzzle here.” His voice was almost husky when he said, “If you want, I'll help you figure it out.”

  Soundlessly, she sighed, feeling both blissful and eager. Not for the first time, Nicole felt lucky to have found him.

  She didn't stop to think until much later that, actually, he had found her.

  ***

  “What does 'close' mean?”

  “It means I'm close, Lucius—so back off and let me work.”

  Back on his boat, Michael had had no choice but to pick up the call. If he didn't start pacifying Lucius, he ran the risk of the fool jumping into the mix and doing something impulsive. As it was, he was obviously getting jittery and had already left two messages.

  Lucius barked, “You're taking your sweet time. I would have had fifty paintings by now in the amount of time you've spent in that house already.” Michael's jaw tightened; he hated being watched. “You were supposed to get inside the almighty fucking fortress of a house and get it. It wasn't supposed to take this long already.”

  “Earning a person's trust takes time. I don't expect you to know about that. It's not like earning someone's annoyance, which you're a pro at. Where are you right now, anyway?”

  “Close enough, don't worry about it. Do you even know where the thing is?”

  “Well, it's not hanging on the wall, dumb-fuck. But...Nina Corday did leave her niece a sort of road map. It's hidden somewhere, just not in the house.” That part Michael didn't actually know, but he hoped it would make Lucius back off a little—thinking they were on the delicate verge of things.

  But Michael did believe that the painting was within his reach, and that Nicole had no idea what she possessed. Earlier, she'd been almost apologizing for her notion of a puzzle left by her aunt, but Michael didn't consider it the least bit crazy. It actually made perfect sense. Not risking telling Nicole straight out, Nina Corday had left her a trail of clues. A treasure map in a way.

  There was a lot of money at stake. But money aside, Michael was in deep here. Even if he wanted to bail on the job, he couldn't. Unless he wanted Lucius to try to get the painting himself, and Lucius would surely use force to do it.

  Immediately, Michael suppressed the thought. I won't let that happen.

  “No shit, there's a map?” Lucius exclaimed now. “Let me see it! Bring it to me.”

  Michael rolled his eyes. “Not literally a map. Just that...” What was the point of divulging more? The more Lucius was told, the more he insinuated himself into every corner. “Her aunt left clues, let's put it that way. I'm helping Nicole figure them out. She trusts me.”

  The last part was said as a deliberate reminder to Lucius of why Michael was in this thing in the first place. Like any con, each player had his role. Lucius was the middleman; Michael was the front man. And some mysterious person in Chatham who had orchestrated this was the money man. Now Michael was starting to get concerned about Nicole, to the point that it dominated much of his thought. It was just a matter of decency, really. Lucius was a dangerous wild card, even without a mysterious silent partner involved. There was no reason why Nicole should get hurt. If Michael could decipher the trail that led to the painting, he could lift it before Lucius—or anyone else—got too impatient and tried to take it first.

  ***

  As Craig Lucius turned around, he shoved his cell phone in the front pocket of his blue jeans. Although, the other man observed, to call them blue jeans was an exercise in poetic license. The greenish grime threatened to bleed out all of the faded denim. And his shirt was a tapestry of wrinkles. Lovely.

  The observant man, who went by his middle name of 'Alvin' in all his dealings with Craig Lucius, studied his confederate, noting, not for the first time, that working with him was just barely palatable. Lucius was uncouth and indiscreet. He smelled like urine-soaked cigarettes and made Medusa look like a Revlon commercial. But he was not without his redeeming qualities as a criminal.

  With a network of crooked hustlers in his proverbial Rolodex, Lucius had feelers out even as far as forgery and smuggling. He was less intelligent than one might hope, but also more capable than he looked. It was an odd combination, but so far, one that had stood the test of time.

  The two had met three years ago during a museum heist in which both men had had an interest—along with several other parties. While Lucius had fenced a few of the stolen pieces from that heist, Alvin had had a much greater distance from the whole affair than that. Alvin prided himself on being a thief three or four times removed; it took time and intelligence to enjoy that kind of profitable distance.

  What was at stake now, though, went beyond money. This came down to freedom.

  Apparently this con man whom Lucius had brought on board was essential to the job. To gain access to Nina Corday's house without attracting attention, that was key. A break-in would not do, and would raise too many questions. The fact that this man, Michael Corso, had absolutely no link to Alvin was even more essential.

  Alvin simply had to get the painting before anyone else did. Otherwise...

  Alvin shuddered. He had taken pains to ensure his success in this venture, and there was no point entertaining notions of failure. With determination, he knew: he would never go back to his old life.

  Now Alvin sat back in the hotel chair and pondered the recap Lucius provided. How clever of Nina Corday to hide the truth in a mess of clues, rather than simply exposing what she knew outright, upon her death. This might work out even better than he hoped. It sounded like Nicole Sheffield was more naive than she appeared to be on paper, or even in person, from Alvin's brief encounters so far. Graduated the University of Chicago, even had a master's degree and yet—apparently too sheltered—or gullible—to suspect a thing.

  Alvin rose to go. Even if he were not anxious to slip back to town unobserved, he still would not abide much more of this hotel room, which had acquired the stench of its in
habitant.

  Oblivious, Craig Lucius scratched himself now, and belched. Then he said, “So what now?”

  “Now we wait,” Alvin instructed. “But only for a reasonable amount of time.”

  Eagerly, Lucius nodded along. As always, Alvin tried to keep a poker face. But really, if Craig Lucius mistook this partnership as a burgeoning professional respect or anything of that nature—well, it would be a rather sad misjudgment on his part. After this was done, anyone who knew of Alvin's involvement would be a liability. And liabilities, of course, had to be eliminated.

  Chapter Thirty

  The next day, Nicole finished Josiah Hardy's diary. She pressed the last page flat on the table in an automatic gesture of finality. Admittedly, today had been different than her other days at Tinsdale, as she had been looking for more notations in Nina's purple pencil, rather than focusing on the diary itself. But she did not find any more letters written in the margins, or any other underlined passages.

  However, when she opened a skinny blue folder at the bottom of the stack that was on loan from the Chatham Historical Society, she soon met with a windfall of clues.

  Inside the folder was a copy of a newspaper article from 1955, folded in half. Nicole un-creased the pages and began to read. The article was about the lighthouse on Nauset Beach—Nauset Light— becoming automated, which meant no longer requiring a light keeper. The piece detailed the history of Nauset Beach: After battling decades of sea-beaten weather, Nauset Beach's trio of light towers finally retired in 1923, being replaced by one of Chatham's recently dismantled twin towers. The North Tower was sent to Nauset and effectively took the place of the Three Sisters Lighthouse, nicknamed for their appearance. The trio of towers that had once served together as Nauset's beacon of light, were called the “Three Sisters” because of the way they stood, like proper ladies in stiff white dresses with black bonnets.