by Mary Brady
So close. She was so close to all the answers. If she could get Hale to trust her, to open up...
When she shivered almost violently, she remembered she was cold, her fleece suit was damp and her underwear wet.
She put her bag on the old carpeting and flipped on the space heater that stood on the slate floor in front of the old fireplace. Standing in the glow she let it warm her. Well, her ankles. The heat didn’t rise much farther than her kneecaps.
She didn’t have to lie to Hale. She had already told him she was a reporter. Maybe she had fudged just a bit by telling him she wanted his side of the story. She already knew his side of the story and she wasn’t going to be fooled by the face-of-innocence thing. What she wanted was to build her story, her series of stories, on what made such a man tick. How did small-town Maine’s smiling baby boy get to be a billionaire swindler in Boston in thirty-three short years?
Still shivering in spite of warming ankles she pulled her bag closer and shed her wet clothing.
All right, so Hale had only been charged and convicted by her fellow reporters and not a court of law. But as far as that man was concerned, every good reporter knew the percentages on where there’s smoke there’s fire. Where there was the suspicion of huge amounts of misappropriated money, there was some kind of malfeasance committed by someone.
Dancing in the cold she pulled dry underwear from the bag...
But no one had interviewed him. The person closest to him, his partner, had been interviewed and she was freely, if meekly speaking out, though only after his attorney had thrown her under the bus.
How deeply into Hale’s personality did the creepiness penetrate? When one swindled men and women who had worked at hard-labor jobs all their lives, did it take more of a deeply rooted problem than if one swindled fellow white collars?
...and soon the primal relief of dry underwear loosened a knot in her stomach. When that happened some of the old courage and determination, each threaded with a touch of recklessness, had her quickly sliding on her last change of clothes.
She was going to go kick some swindler butt.
Slow down, she thought as she snapped her jeans. Take some time to think this out. She looked around at her surroundings. The fireplace where the heater sat was in the wall to the left of the door and had been capped, either because it didn’t work well or to keep out the winter cold and errant wildlife. The heavy four-poster bed with its dark blue curtains had been placed against the inner wall to the right of the door and beyond it were matching chests of drawers.
On either side of the bed was a large braided rug and portraits of, she supposed, family members hung on most of the walls.
Several feet beyond the end of the bed were two tall windows. Between the windows was a washstand, a commode, with an ewer and bowl sitting on top. Unreasonably she hoped there was no chamber pot in the small cupboard of the stand; she had seen a flush toilet here, after all. The washstand had a granite top and above the towel bar was the picture of a woman.
She walked away from the heater to read the legend.
The nightstand, it seemed, was made for Millie Mauston when she first came to the mansion on Sea Crest Hill in 1889 as Mrs. Colm McClure. The Maine granite top of the stand weighed about eighty pounds and the chest was made of black walnut at her request. Millie, a bright young woman with a head of thick dark hair was pictured beside the legend. The birth and death date said she was twenty-four when she died.
Young. Too young to even get to experience her nightstand for long. Addy turned toward the bed and wondered if Millie had slept there.
“Well, Millie, I hope I get a chance.”
Right now it was time to find out some dark and sturdy info about Zachary Hale. Dark because readers and therefore editors liked the juicy stuff and sturdy because the tale of intrigue surrounding her last conquest in Afghanistan turned out to be diaphanous at best.
The lights flickered out.
Dark. Why had she used the word dark?
Didn’t matter.
If Hale had not locked the door to the loft, she’d take that as a signal she was welcome for a nice fireside chat.
He would not, after all, expect her to sit up here with only the glow of her computer screen and when that went dead, to sit in the rural Maine blackness.
She groped around.
And where was the damned flashlight?
She stopped for a moment in the pitch black.
She used to be nice. She had friends once. She held the door for old men. She used to carry her elderly neighbor’s trash to the chute. Though for a while a year and a half ago, the best she could muster was to find a neighbor kid to carry it for her. She had been too busy pursuing a story, too busy trying to gain the status few reporters ever touched. And she had done it, been on the top of the heap, the star news reporter everyone envied, in orbit with those who might be up for a Pulitzer Prize, everyone said.
Crash and burn would have been a good outcome compared to the embarrassing punishment she had gotten from the press she used to hold so dear.
She searched again for the flashlight.
Aha! On the edge of the bed. The room brightened as she flicked on the beam.
She shrugged into a second tank top and cropped cardigan. When she clutched the sweater around her chest, she cringed at how not warm these clothes were. It was still seventy-five degrees in late September in Boston this year and maybe when the storm passed and the sun came back out, it would be sixty in Maine before the snow started.
With another shiver, she grabbed her laptop and headed down the stairs. Zachary Hale, here I come, she thought.
If her last dry underwear got wet in the storm because he threw her out, so be it.
CHAPTER THREE
ZACH HELD HIS cell phone to his ear and listened as his attorney warned him that there was a reporter in town asking about him.
“She’s here,” he said as he took a loaf of bread and a package of cookies from the grocery bag and placed them on the kitchen’s island countertop.
“At the mansion? That’s not a good idea.” His attorney, Hunter Morrison, sounded worried and he probably had reason to be.
“She ran her car off the road following me up here.”
Hunter snorted. “I guess leaving her in the ditch to sit out a hurricane might have been a bit much. I don’t suppose she did it on purpose.”
Zach thought of how far her car had left the road, how frightened she had been when he had hauled her out and wondered if anyone was that desperate for a story. “I doubt it.”
“You don’t have her in the loft with you.”
It was a nonquestion that begged a negative response. “I put her in the house. We’ve got power now. If Owen did his job, the generator is functioning and there’s plenty of gas.”
“Well, the old guy’s intentions will have been good.”
Zach snorted this time. He didn’t trust Owen Calloway to be a perfect groundskeeper, but he trusted the old guy and his wife not to meddle and not to gossip. Those two qualities made his only close neighbors gems.
“At any rate I’ve got plenty of wood. As long as the fireplace works, and according to the contractor there should be barely a puff of smoke even in a hurricane. We’ve got food and hot water.”
“You might find Delainey and I squatting up there one of these days.”
Hunter had a new fiancé who enriched his life in every way and Zach was glad that kind of thing worked for the two of them.
“Anytime. Anytime,” Zach said putting a bag of apples and one of oranges on the counter beside the bread. “And I’ll keep the reporter at arm’s length.”
“A little farther away might be better.”
“Maybe she’ll stay tucked in the house.”
“They predict the storm could stall.”
<
br /> “I’ll feed her once in a while.”
“Be careful of what you feed her. She has a lot of good journalism to her credit, but her last story has been labeled as a desperate grab at a Pulitzer. She’s been down and out since, so she’s most likely very hungry.”
“I’ll slip food under her door.”
Hunter laughed. “Yeah. Be careful and good luck, Zach.”
“Thanks, and I meant it about you and Delainey.”
He signed off with another promise to be wary.
Zachary McClure Hale in loyal and patriotic fashion had been named after his grandfather Zachary Hale and an ancestor by the name of McClure who had brought his wife and infant to the very young United States of America in the early 1800s.
By time and attrition the McClures of New England had either died out, or a few, but not many, had left Maine and lost interest in the family heritage. Virginia McClure, his grandmother, had drilled into him that a Mainer knew where he came from and he protected that legacy. For most of Zach’s adult life, it had been up to him to maintain the ancestral home and the antiques within.
The old McClure mansion was his to look after, but caring for the heritage home had not been a burden. Money to keep the house in good repair was also not a problem. At issue, he had little time for the place and there was scant interest outside himself for keeping it in the best historically accurate repair.
He didn’t begrudge the time he gave. The loft above the garage had become a place to retreat, where he didn’t usually allow people to follow him. Since the time when control had been bequeathed to him, there had never been a reporter and never a woman here other than Cammy Logan, who cleaned the house and the loft and kept a keen eye on any repairs or issues that occurred with either.
Reporters he usually met at a café or his office. Women he wished to entertain in private, he met at restaurants or posh hotels. His penthouse condominium in Boston was also private territory.
The mansion on Sea Crest Hill he kept to himself, until today.
He’d deal with this reporter exactly how he’d dealt with those in Boston. She’d get referred to his attorney for a blanket statement neither confirming nor denying any wrongdoing at Hale and Blankenstock. He gave the loft a quick inspection. The windows were specially installed to withstand a strong nor’easter and even an occasional branch or bit of debris. He was hopeful they would hold out in a hurricane.
The interior with its old blond wood of the 1950’s had withstood time and even come back into fashion a few times. The light-colored paneled walls gave the place a feeling that it was larger on the inside than out. And it was a welcome and necessary refuge he needed in his life.
He had updated the appliances last year and made sure the bed was large and comfortable. Cammy had added a pillow here and there, a few fabric wall hangings and a handmade quilt on the back of the couch to soften the man-effect, but he had to admit they added more comfort.
Zach had barely finished the conversation when the lights flicked out again. He’d have to check the generator.
He grabbed the flashlight and a baseball cap from the ones on the wall pegs and headed down the stairs where he donned a dry jacket from a hook in the garage. Then he sprinted toward the generator shed.
The wind slapped him and the rain did its best to blow him off course as he approached the shed, where behind the lawn mower, weed whacker and other tools to maintain the exterior of the old home, would sit the rarely used generator that powered the essentials of the house whenever necessary. Right now all he needed were two rooms.
When he got inside, out of the storm, the shed smelled of old wood, fuel and age. Built sometime in the middle of the last century the wooden frame could withstand a direct hit from a hurricane if it had to.
The bright beam of his flashlight spread out, illuminating the shed as he closed the door behind him. The fuel cans sat lined up behind the lawn mower next to the generator. Zach moved the mower and grabbed a can of fuel. The can lifted easily. Empty. The second can, same as the first.
Owen did outside maintenance and kept the gasoline rotated and stocked in the shed for emergencies, or he was supposed to keep the fuel stocked. Today two cans stood full and all the spare cans were dry as “bones guarding a pirate’s treasure,” Owen would say. That meant there was enough fuel to fill the generator with a bit to spare. Apparently Owen had mowed and weed-whacked all summer and he was always “Ah-yuh, goin’ ta get more gas tomorra.”
If the reporter used the space heater, the lights, her computer and who knew what else the woman would plug in, the gas would last less than a day. This storm was not going to pass for at least thirty-six hours.
He rubbed the back of his neck as he considered the fix Owen had left him in. A day. Maybe a day.
He dropped his hand to his side. By himself, he could make the generator last several days.
He should have left that woman in the ravine. Other than claiming to be a reporter, he had no idea who she was and didn’t want to find out. Grandmother might frown on his spare hospitality, but he hoped the woman would sit huddled in front of the space heater, burn up the gas with a hair dryer and use her laptop as long as the power lasted and then sit in the dark under a quilt and wait out the storm.
He poured gas in the generator, and when he pushed the start button, it snapped from silent to loud in an instant.
That was luck.
With his hands over his ears, he stood waiting to make sure the old thing continued to run, that nothing had clogged during the year or so of only being started as a test from time to time.
Two things were “at leasts” today. At least he had gotten back from Boston in time to get the house closed up and at least the woodpile out under the tall white pines behind the house had been stacked high and straight.
He’d have a heat and light source when the gas burned up.
What he wouldn’t have for the day or two it took for the storm to pass was peace from a sensation seeker. Now all he had to figure out was how to keep Ms. Bonacorda in the dark, literally, when the lights went out.
These days most reporters he came into contact with were gossip seekers who could take a corn-flake-sized bit of banal and build it into a sensational story. Worse, when a story was written with enough adjectives or read with enough enthusiasm it would be considered by the masses to be gospel. He wondered how many adjectives this woman had in her cache.
He let his hands fall to his sides disgusted with himself. Whatever and whoever this woman was, he had gotten into the mess with Hale and Blankenstock, and he knew the world was going to demand answers from him.
Answers were going to be tough to come by.
Convinced the generator would continue to run, he turned to leave and spotted the note tagged to the door.
Me and Margaret Louise are hunkered down and well taken care of. Don’t you worry about us. You come over if you want to. It was signed Owen and Margaret Louise.
He had no choice but to smile. “Well taken care of” meant the two of them were holed up with enough food for a small regiment and plenty of scotch for the whole army. Owen knew creature comfort and he deserved them, and Margaret Louise knew how to cook, therefore the food in Zach’s freezer...
He tugged the hood of the jacket back on over his baseball cap and stood in the doorway of the shed. He was fascinated, watching the show presented by nature. Lightning flickered in various degrees of strength for almost a minute before it abated to small flashes.
In the near dark, he saw no light coming from the room where he’d sent the reporter. He could have gotten lucky—maybe she’d gone to sleep already.
He doubted it as soon as he thought it.
When he sent her away, she had looked shocked and might have left in a disappointed huff. She might even have been foolish enough to go back out in the storm to
see if she could rescue her car. He could have told her that car was going nowhere until O’Reilly’s tow truck hauled it out of the ravine. She was lucky she hadn’t gone in a few yards farther up the road, as that part of the ravine ran down the steep side of the hill.
She must have thought he was story-worthy to risk her neck and she helped shore up the old mansion without question.
Did those things make her someone he’d be interested in knowing or someone he should lock out of the loft and hope she went away without actually damaging the old home and contents? His grandmother had loved the mansion on Sea Crest Hill and his own mother had rejected it as the shabbier side of life.
He turned and gave the generator a last visual once-over. Satisfied, he shifted the cap so the storm had less of a chance to blast rain into his eyes and headed out.
The wind whipped the pine trees relentlessly over his head and the rain pelted down as he fled sure-footed along the stone path to his refuge. In five minutes he’d have a fire going and a glass of finely aged red wine in his hand.
Hopefully that reporter was tucked away in the four-poster bed, her computer in her lap, capitalizing on someone else’s misfortune.
* * *
WHEN ADDY HEARD the sound of boots tread on the steps to the loft above the garage, she drew herself up to her full five foot five inches and whispered encouragement to herself. There was a time when no man could make her back down, but this man had already shown signs of ignoring her and had all but thrown her over his shoulder and carried her off to his cave.
One of his many talents, no doubt, along with the ability to talk, bully and cajole people out of their money, was to carry women off. Already he had shown her that murdering her to keep her out of his business was not plan number one. If he wanted to kill her to shut her up, he could have just left her in her car. She might have been silenced by a flying tree limb or been washed off down the hill into the ocean if he had left her to fend for herself.
Most likely he just planned to stick her up in beguiling Millie McClure’s room full of antiques and ignore her.