by Delia James
With all this ringing around my head, I did what anybody would do. I put the Jeep in gear and started driving, right out of town to Hampton Beach.
* * *
This late in the year, the beach was fairly deserted. Nobody was out on the water except one very determined guy on his boogie board. The sands were almost as empty. There was just me, a family flying a rainbow-striped kite, and a couple out walking their golden Lab. I sat down and wrapped my arms around my knees. The fierce wind whipped around my head, and I breathed the salty air deeply as I stared at the gray breakers. I willed all that fresh, cold air to clear the clutter out of my brain and my conscience. I wished I had someone to talk to. I wished there was somebody I could talk to. But everybody I could say anything too was either busy or mad at me or missing in action.
Well, almost.
“Meow?” Alistair, who hadn’t been there before, was rubbing against my elbow. I took this to be the feline equivalent of penny for your thoughts.
“What have I done, Alistair?” I said. The wind whipped a few locks of hair in front of my eyes. “Frank’s mad at me. Kenisha thinks I’m hiding things from the police. Which would be really unfair, except I am hiding things from the police. I can’t concentrate on making a living because I’m trying to solve a murder, and I may be trusting all the wrong people.”
“Meow!”
“Of course I don’t mean you. But I don’t know if I can handle this, Alistair.” I folded my arms on my knees and rested my chin on them. “Maybe I have just gone too far.”
Footsteps thudded against the hard-packed sand. A lean man in black running shorts and a bright green T-shirt thudded past. He stopped short, turned and doubled back.
That’s when I saw it was the younger Sean McNally.
“Anna! Thought that was you.” Sean crouched down so we were more or less eye level. He was breathing hard, and despite how chilly it was, there was a sheen of perspiration on his forehead.
“Sean! What are you doing out here?”
“Day off,” he told me. “The weather was so great, I thought I’d get a run in. Mind if I sit down?”
“It’s a free beach.” I gestured to the sand.
Sean folded his long legs and settled next to me. “Hello, big guy.” He scratched Alistair’s ears, completely unfazed by seeing the cat with me. Alistair graciously permitted this familiarity.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
Sean nodded, but he didn’t push further. There are people who have a restful presence. Sean McNally was like that. He just sat beside me, looking out at the waves and catching his breath. I guess being a professional bartender, he’d learned when to talk and when to just keep quiet and leave someone to her own thoughts.
The problem was I didn’t much like my own thoughts right now.
“They arrested Jake,” I told him.
“I know,” he said. “I heard he made bail, though, so that’s something.”
When it came to the speed of spreading news, the Internet had nothing on the small-town grapevine. “He didn’t do it.”
“I know that, too. Jake’s old-school. Believes in nonviolent resistance. If he really had a problem with Jimmy, he’d just sit on his doorstep, probably with six or eight friends.”
“And sing ‘Kumbaya.’”
“Oh, he’d definitely sing ‘Kumbaya.’ I’ve heard him do it. It’s better when he’s had a couple beers. Miranda plays a mean banjo accompaniment.”
I completely believed that. “Why am I doing this, Sean?”
“What?” he asked. “Sitting on a beach with a bartender and a cat?”
“Merow,” muttered Alistair.
My mouth twitched. Not that I was close to smiling. Now was definitely not a smiling time. “Getting involved in other people’s problems again. My grandmother’s stuck in it, too, and all my friends. And it’s all my fault.”
Sean scratched his bearded chin thoughtfully. “Let’s try that last part again. How did it get to be your fault?”
“Because I’m the one who could have walked away and didn’t. I’m the one who . . . decided to maybe not say something I should have. So I’m dragging them all in with me.”
“Wow. That’s one heck of a superpower you’ve got there, Anna. I had no idea.”
I glowered at him. “That’s sarcasm, isn’t it? You’re being sarcastic at me.”
“Nah. Just a small splash of irony.” He smiled. “Listen, I don’t know your grandmother that well yet, but I know Val and I know Julia. If they’re in this thing, whatever it is, it’s because it’s where they’ve decided they want to be.” He cocked his head toward me. “Maybe you need to decide that, too.”
“Maybe I do. Maybe I have. Maybe I’m just . . . scared.”
“That’s normal. Change is scary. So is getting involved. Involved means attached and attached means if it doesn’t work, more people than you get hurt.”
“So, what do I do?”
“Either don’t get involved or make sure when you do, it does work.”
“Wow. Words of wisdom. You’d make a great bartender.”
“Nah. I’m allergic to corn nuts.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. It’s something in the seasoning. I swell up like a balloon.”
“Well, I promise never to feed you corn nuts.”
“Thank you.”
There was a pause. We both watched the waves for a while. The wind whipped my hair in front of my eyes again. I pushed it down.
“My friends think you want to take me out.”
Sean nodded, clearly giving this statement some careful consideration. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
He smiled. “Fair enough.”
“What do you think?”
Sean watched the ocean for a while. The guy on the boogie board wiped out and surfaced a moment later, shaking water out of his hair. “I think I’m going to plead the Fifth,” said Sean. “For now.”
“It’s not nice to keep someone in suspense.”
His smile turned positively mischievous. I had the sudden, terrible urge to stick my tongue out at him. Not that what I did was a whole lot better.
“Why me?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Not sure yet, but I’m pretty confident we’ll figure it out.” Good grief, it was like he could make his eyes twinkle on command.
“I’ve always had terrible luck with guys,” I tried.
“Bet none of the others were charming Irish bartenders.”
He had me there. “My life’s a little messed up right now, and it’s looking like if I stay in town, that’s going to become a permanent condition.”
“You’re helping friends,” he said. “Sounds like the good kind of messed up to me.”
“You’re not going to be talked out of this, are you?”
He shook his head slowly.
“I’m not saying yes,” I warned him.
“Are you saying no?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “No. I’m not. It’s just . . . things really are complicated.”
“Well then.” He got up, dusted himself off, and held out his hand. I took it and let him pull me up. “We’ll just have to see if we can make them simpler. Hey, I hear there’s this swell party happening over at Northeast Java this evening. I was going to head over and drop off a bottle of that new moonshine Dad found. Would you like to come?”
“I would, but I promised . . .” I stopped. I stared. Not at Sean, exactly, but at the idea that was blossoming inside me. “Sean, is your dad working at the hotel today?”
“I think so. Why?”
“Because I need him to get me in to talk to Kelly Pierce.” Yes, Grandma was talking to Gretchen, and hopefully that would land me an invi
tation to the archives, but I still needed to talk to the food and beverages manager who liked her midnight omelet with extra cheese, and it might be better if her employers didn’t know. It would have been best if I could have arranged something away from the hotel, but I’d wasted enough time this day. The clock was very much ticking.
Sean cocked his head at me. “Should I ask why you need to talk to Kelly?”
“Ummm . . . no.”
“Okay,” he said. “But there is one thing I am going to ask.”
I felt the blood drain from my cheeks. “What’s that?”
“Where’d your cat go?”
30
To say Old Sean was pleased to see me and his son walking into the Harbor Rest’s bar together was something of an understatement. I swear he was ready to break out the champagne and toast the happy couple right there. And this wasn’t just me. My Sean saw his dad’s grin and turned a truly remarkable shade of red.
No, I did not actually call the younger Mr. McNally “my” Sean. That far gone I am not. Especially not after I saw the broad grin and the broader wink his dad gave him when Sean said he was going to go home to shower and change and he’d meet me at Jake’s party.
Despite the fact that Old Sean clearly regarded my request that he take me to Kelly Pierce by the route least likely to be seen by any Hildes as a feeble ruse to hide the depth of my feelings for his son, he did agree. I followed him carefully, carrying two very full take-out cups down into the hotel basement.
I’m used to basements being cold, but as soon as Old Sean pushed open the door at the bottom of the service stairs, it felt like I was walking into a steam tunnel. A very noisy steam tunnel painted the color of cold oatmeal and full of men and women in gray-and-white uniforms who barely glanced at either of us as we edged past them.
Next to the locker rooms waited an open door (also oatmeal colored) with MANAGER painted in black on it. Inside, Kelly Pierce sat at a battered metal desk that was as piled with paper as Martine’s. She was typing madly at a laptop keyboard while talking on the phone jammed between her shoulder and her ear.
“Please, Luis. We’re in a bind. Yes . . . yes . . . you’re my hero. We’ll see you in an hour.”
Old Sean knocked on the doorframe. Kelly glanced up and waved us in.
“Miss Pierce, this is a friend of my son’s, Anna Britton,” Old Sean told her.
“I don’t suppose you have any experience waiting tables?” she asked me.
“Not since art school.”
“Damn. I’m three servers down for dinner rush and my substitute chef has just informed me that we only got half the steaks we ordered today, and we might be about to run out of our most popular vodka, and the soda dispenser in the coffee shop’s on the fritz,” she announced. “What can I do for you?”
“I, um, got your name from Martine Devereaux.” I held up one of the paper take-out cups. “I brought coffee?”
She glared at me, and then at Old Sean, and then at the coffee. We all waited. I might have held my breath.
Kelly gestured with two fingers. “Give it here.”
I did. Sean winked and beat a hasty retreat while Kelly pulled off the to-go cup lid and downed a healthy swallow. “Ah,” she sighed. “Thanks. I needed that.” She took another long swallow. Wow. She could give Frank a run for his money. “All right, you can stay, and you got five minutes. What do you want?”
“I was hoping I could talk to you about Jimmy Upton.”
Kelly grimaced. “What do you want to know about the little grunge-meister?”
“Umm . . . that may have done it right there.”
She shook her head. She also took another gulp of coffee. “I’m new in town,” she said. “I only took this job six months ago. If I’d known what I was walking into . . .” Something came up on her screen. She swore and started typing faster one-handed than I can with both. “No, no, no! We need thirty-six cases, you . . .” There followed some more drastic language and some more frantic key clicking.
“There have been problems?” I asked.
“There are always problems with a restaurant, and it’s worse in a hotel, because you’re dealing with room service and catering for major events and maybe a coffee shop and all that.”
“I’m guessing Jimmy didn’t make things any easier?”
She made a face like she was drinking pure lemon juice. “Jimmy was a hotshot, and he was a hustler. That’s okay; you get ’em in a kitchen. A good executive chef can usually put them in their place. But Jimmy was in a league of his own.”
“I heard he was good.”
“That’s part of the problem. He really was. His food was amazing. He probably could have been great.” She eyed what coffee remained in her cup. “And he wasn’t a complete jerk. I saw him down by the service drive a few times. We get some homeless down there. Jimmy was passing out sandwiches and cards for the shelter. He said he’d been on the streets and nobody ought to be that hungry.”
This was something no one had mentioned yet. “Does anybody know how he wound up on the streets?”
She shrugged. “I never asked and he never offered. But my guess is his temper and his ego got in the way of him working real steady.” She took another sip of coffee, and this time she eyed me over the rim with the kind of thoughtfulness that made me distinctly uncomfortable. “Who did you say you were with, Miss Britton? Aside from the McNallys?”
I’d been expecting this question, or something like it, and I’d even gotten an answer ready. “I’m not really with anybody,” I admitted. “But, well, my family is friends with the Hildes, and, you know, I heard things are tough right now and I . . . I don’t know. I thought maybe I could help, or something.” I smiled at her. Innocent. Sunny. As harmless as Grandma B.B. with a lollipop.
Yeah, right. Kelly wasn’t buying it either. At least, not entirely. She set the coffee cup down and she sighed.
“Listen, you want to help? Tell whichever of them you’re friends with that they need to get their collective act together. Have a family meeting, hug it out, spank their inner child, what-the-heck-ever. But unless and until the Hildes get it together, this place is going to collapse.” She said it fast, like she was trying to get all the words out before common sense caught up with her.
“Was that what you were telling Christine Hilde at the Friendly Toast last night?”
She tried hard to cover the shock of being seen by taking another long swallow of coffee, but it was too late. “Who told you about that?”
“Nobody. I love pancakes at one a.m.”
Another thing I’d learned from hanging out with Martine is that people in the service industries all have insane schedules. The idea of somebody out getting breakfast in the small hours of the morning did not seem at all strange to Kelly.
I made myself smile the smile I reserve for potential clients. “Or maybe it wasn’t about the family? Maybe you were talking about the new hotel Dreame Royale is going to be opening?”
Kelly groaned. “I am going to murder that . . . She promised she would keep the whole thing under wraps until Christine had a chance to present our final proposal.”
“Secrets this big are hard to keep,” I said. “I imagine a lot of Hildes would get upset if they found out you two were talking to Shelly Kinsdale.”
Kelly set her coffee cup down and leaned across the desk. “What do you want, Miss Britton?”
“I want to know if you are helping Christine open a new place, or if you’re planning on taking over Harbor’s Rest,” I said bluntly. “And whichever it was, did Jimmy Upton know?”
Kelly’s jaw dropped. Literally. Unfortunately, before she could collect herself, the door flew open and Dale Hilde strode in, his face as red as his blazer and his hair all but standing on end.
“Ms. Pierce! What is going on here!”
Kelly was on her feet before I could e
ven move. “Mr. Hilde. What’s happened?”
“What’s happened is you’re sitting here gossiping with your girlfriend while you’re on the clock.”
Kelly drew herself up and her eyes flashed, but Dale wasn’t paying attention. Instead he rounded on me. “Unless maybe you’ve come to apologize, Miss Britton?”
“Apologize? What . . . ?” I stammered.
“Mr. Hilde,” tried Kelly grimly. Oh no. I’d gone to far. She was going to tell him. I’d blown it.
But right then Kelly’s laptop beeped. So did the phone.
“You’d better take care of those, Ms. Pierce,” said Dale coolly. “Ms. Britton, you’ll come with me?”
I guessed I would. I picked up my purse and my cup of mostly untouched coffee and followed Dale out the door as Kelly hit the button on her phone.
“Yeah? Go. What? No, you . . . Who told you that?”
The door swung shut behind me, and I suppressed a sigh.
* * *
Dale’s office on the first floor was the polar opposite of Kelly Pierce’s loud, hot, crowded space down below. This was a deeply old-fashioned and serious place. The lamps were polished brass; the fireplace was actual wood burning, no gas logs here. The multipaned windows had been pushed open to let in the cool river breeze. The desk was the oldest piece of furniture in the room, plain and scarred and turned dark by long years of use.
As soon as I got inside, Dale shut the door. He also ran a shaking hand through his thick, dark hair.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Ms. Britton.”
“I’m sorry, but . . .”
He cut me off. “Thanks to you and your grandmother, my mother is sitting in her room sobbing into a handkerchief!”
“What?”
“I haven’t seen her cry since our father walked out. What kind of—”
“Hang on!” I help up both hands. “Look, Mr. Hilde, I’m really sorry your mother’s upset, but I’ve got no idea what the problem is.” Well, except for maybe that thing with Grandpa Charlie, but that was fifty years ago. It couldn’t possibly be that. Or Grandma asking if I could see the hotel archives. I mean, why would that be a big deal? Except, it wouldn’t take a lot to guess that I might just be looking for the tunnel entrance. But Gretchen Hilde was a tough businesswoman. Nothing like that could make her cry.