by Mary Brady
While Mrs. Confrey talked and Addy wrote, her heart tried to keep itself together. By the time the police arrived, she was sure they could not tell by looking at the two of them who had been traumatized by the nefarious scamster, she or Mrs. Confrey.
An hour later when the police were sure they didn’t need her anymore, she walked away from the swank home and climbed into her newest tiny rental.
“Hi, Savanna, I hope you get this message before I arrive. Tell the girls Auntie A. is coming and she’s bringing presents.”
She tucked her phone away and headed for the nearest mall.
She’d spend some time playing with her nieces and her sister, then she’d polish the already written article on Hale and Blankenstock, mostly Hale, and get it to her editor for tomorrow’s Sunday edition.
Tomorrow was another day and another story.
There be treasure in Bailey’s Cove. A legend to be told, in a careful way so as not to create a gold rush, of course.
If she filled her life with enough distractions, she might not have to think about how good it had been to have Zach hold her in his arms again to kiss her, even if it had been over in minutes, rather than a lifetime.
At the mall, the store she stopped in front of had fairy-princess dresses and pink and blue ponies. Seemed about right.
CHAPTER TWENTY
ON HER WAY back from her early-morning hike, Addy had picked up a copy of Monday’s paper. She had also picked up a copy of Sunday’s paper the day before. She never missed a paper copy of those with her personal byline. Call her sentimental, but she liked her first paper to come from the newsstand and not the pile of leftovers at the office.
Smally had put her on the front page of the business section on Sunday with no Jacko Wilson additives to change the flavor. The response had been the best she’d ever gotten from readers, some for and some against her, but a reader was a reader.
Her first impulse had been to pick up her phone and call someone. Who? was her next thought. Savanna, if she was up, was most likely making pancakes with the girls. They had invited her to come for Sunday pancakes, but she had said another time.
The person she really wanted to call was Zach. He was on her mind always. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing his face.
Every day since she had spent the night in his bed with him, no bed was good enough. She slept in the recliner of her living room wrapped in a quilt.
She hurried up to her condo to enjoy a longstanding tradition, coffee and a newspaper. She loved hers in the sunny breakfast nook with a glimpse of the harbor—a glimpse if one stood on the table and the day was crisp clear.
She spread the paper out, flattening the crease with her hands. Then she made coffee, poured in cream and sat down.
The business section was, of course, her first priority.
But even before she looked at the section to find what she wanted to see, she knew there would be no joy no matter what she found.
Jacko Wilson’s byline was front and center. Smally had run a counter article with Jacko, as always, skimming along the edge of libel. He almost accused Zach of beating Carla with a legal stick.
Reading the article was like watching a train wreck. She couldn’t unglue her eyes until the cars had all derailed, or in this case the last accusation had been made.
By Wednesday morning, it was clear their editor, Smally, was going to keep pitting them against each other on the internet and in print.
It was a clever idea and had already brought in an unprecedented number of readers to see what Jacko’s next veiled accusation would be, and her rebuttal.
She had been unable to get anywhere near Zachary Hale or Carla Blankenstock and neither had Jacko. She did get a follow-up on the record with Gwendolyn. Tomorrow’s rebuttal had already been penned using the woman as a character witness against Mr. Spielmann, or Mr. Blank-mann, as Jacko had begun calling him, because he hadn’t turned up yet.
Addy called Zach and left yet another message asking him to at least speak with her about what Jacko was writing, give her a hint as to where he thought the other reporter was getting his material so she could more easily counter it.
When he didn’t pick up yet again, she took the rental car and pointed it north.
* * *
ZACH LISTENED TO Addy’s newest voice mail, punishing himself with the sound of her voice. He could call her, but what could he say? “Sorry, just wanted to talk to you. Doesn’t mean anything because the wheels of justice move slowly. Go live your life and I’ll see you in ten years in the Boston Common like we planned that day in the loft”?
If she remembered at all.
The FBI had questioned him thoroughly. It took longer than Hunter was comfortable with, but Zach had said to let them play the game as long as they wanted. If he had something to hide they could all be surprised by it.
Hunter had let him know that wasn’t very funny, but he appreciated that Zach had still found something to make a joke about.
Every day was spent trying to straighten out the mess. Carla had retreated and refused to reiterate what she had said that day in her office.
It was Hale against Blankenstock now and he had been painted badly. Carla had asked for an across-the-table meeting with him set for this afternoon. Their attorneys would flank them. Hunter would be there with two of the people from the Chicago office.
They would stare at one another across the conference table at Hale and Blankenstock, which had been chosen as neutral ground as the offices were being used for nothing else at this time.
Eight people to discuss something that should never have happened and that should be able to be solved by a discussion between two friends.
Instead of the truth, each side would lay out threats under the guise of offers. The other side would repel the threat with an offer of their own.
It had taken three days just to settle on a meeting site. The first offer Carla’s side had made was binding arbitration, which Hunter had turned down quickly and succinctly without consulting the rest of the team.
Arbitration could be like flipping a coin. There were no court proceedings and the arbiter could be influenced by anything at all. The decision was final except in rare cases. Carla’s team offered it, Hunter had said, because having a fifty-fifty chance of winning was much better than they had without it.
Hunter and his team had uncovered something the FBI refused to confirm or deny. Carla’s husband’s identity was bogus. According to Hunter the man was a computer genius who dropped out or was kicked out of two prestigious institutes of higher learning, so they were dealing with the aftermath of genius gone wrong.
When Zach wanted to give up, he remembered he’d let down the people who trusted him to invest their money. Even he didn’t have the wherewithal to cover the losses incurred by Carla and her husband.
Every day was exactly the same. The proceedings against Blankenstock got nowhere and the day ended with him in his penthouse overlooking Boston. The place he had called home for the last five years, the place where he accepted no visitors, suddenly seemed lonely.
Every night he poured a glass of expensive whiskey and every night he failed to drink it. He’d give up every dollar and every advantage if all this would be resolved so he could go beg Addy’s forgiveness and for her to give him another chance.
To tell her how much he loved her.
* * *
SARAH O’BRIEN, a member of the Goldens, slipped her coat off and pushed it into the chair to prop up her back. “You were close to him,” she said across the table from Addy.
Was she close to Zach? Addy wondered. She was closer than she had ever been to a man, yet here she was, in his hometown while he was in hers. Life was quirky.
She had spent almost a week in Bailey’s Cove coaxing treasure information from the inhabit
ants. She had come to know the people at Braven’s Tavern, where many patrons sat on the same bar stool almost every day. She even got Michael the owner to tell her why it was called a tavern, which traditionally offered food, and not just a bar. “I could tell you we do offer food and show you a menu of our frozen entrées or I could just say, simple. It’s been Braven’s Tavern for two hundred years and it seemed a bit too soon to change a name that seemed to work so well.”
She laughed and agreed Braven’s Tavern seemed like a great name.
She scanned each of the seven the Goldens as they all sat at a large table in the corner of the tavern and already she realized they were there because they wanted something from her, not because she had been trying to get them to meet with her.
“What would you like me to do?”
“Get us in to see the basement.” Evelyn Miller a tall woman, with erect posture and a head full of steel-gray hair almost demanded.
Yeah, get them into the basement and they’d see all the collapsed walls and the hole where the treasure had been. Zach hadn’t even let the contractor back in after their find.
Hunter had been elected by Zach and the chief as official treasure keeper until it could best and most safely be revealed to the town.
Addy had sworn her secrecy about the treasure being found, but she had vowed to tell the legend of Bailey’s Cove. Her secrecy sworn, she had the privilege to know Hunter had installed the treasure in the large, usually empty safe in his office and the only person he told was his fiancé, also sworn to secrecy.
“Will he turn you away if you ask?” she said to the table of people.
Shamus Willis, one of the town’s four Shamuses, cackled. “He might.”
“We’ve been pestering him for about a decade about the treasure,” Alfred Hammond chimed in. Rotund, fringe of white hair, scalp red, face flushed and unlit cigar stub between his teeth. He was a delightful throwback, the kind of thing that gave small-town charm. “We thought he was wearing a ring from the booty, but it turned out to be something his mother had made for him based on a sketch of hers. It was different, you know. Not like the smooth flashy stuff of today.”
“Ask him again,” Addy prompted.
“We did, but he said it flooded down there and it might not be safe,” Camden Flynn, gnarly looking, the longtime boat captain, said sounding skeptical.
“So he’s concerned for your safety.”
“But that’s why we need to get down there,” Mrs. Miller said with some urgency.
“Okay, I didn’t know you all were so freaky when I joined. Are you hoping for another body like the one they found in the wall of the Pirate’s Roost?” asked Babe Dawson, probably eighty plus and the newest member of the group.
“No. No body,” Evelyn said as she elbowed Babe.
“We think the old wall will be exposed—”
Sarah shot Camden a look of dire warning as he spoke.
“Those old walls can tell us how the early settlers carved out basements for storage,” Sarah interjected. A clear diversion.
Addy kept a smile to herself. She let them think she too wondered how basements had been constructed by their ancestors. “Can’t it wait until things are dried out?”
“We want to see it before too many people try to clean everything up and all the archaeological information is gone,” Edwin Beaudin put in. He was another old salt and the man who had said “he’s not who you think he is.” As stoic as he was, he wasn’t much of a liar. Addy wished with all her heart she had known that about him her first day in Bailey’s Cove.
All at once it seemed as if everyone at the table started talking.
It was said they should perhaps go through Hunter Morrison, the man’s attorney; that Heather Loch from the museum might help them and where was Heather today, she should be here; maybe they should get Cammy who cleaned up on Sea Crest Hill to help.
Time to get to the heart of things before they agreed on a plan to storm the mansion.
Addy stood. “So let me get this straight. We’re all talking about treasure.”
Beer spewed, there were several gasps, and a fist slammed into the table.
Then there was dead silence.
Sarah O’Brien cleared her throat. She eyed the rest of the tavern, but only Michael, the bar’s owner, was there and he was giving his attention to cleaning the beer taps. “We don’t want it for ourselves. If we did, we would have come after it years ago.”
“You knew.” It was Addy’s turn to be astonished.
“Course we knew. You think I would’a hung around with these clods if we didn’t have something to bind us together?” Camden Flynn, the cloddiest of the bunch said to the laughter of the others.
Babe poked him in the back.
“Thought you knew our secret, didn’t ya, Chief?” Edwin Beaudin said as he looked over Babe’s shoulder. Chief Montcalm must have entered on his silent cat feet.
The chief stepped up to the table pursed his lips and shook his head, looking duly impressed that there was something about the town that he hadn’t known about.
“Why didn’t anyone ever say anything?” Addy asked.
“There’s no mystery in a treasure found,” the chief said, and they all nodded.
She couldn’t argue with that.
“And we were kind of saving it in case we needed it,” offered Mr. Miller, not related in any way to Mrs. Miller.
“And we need it to fix up Bailey’s Cove or the hurricane might be the end of us,” said Cam Flynn as he scratched the back of his hand against his whiskers.
“I don’t suppose any of you have considered the treasure has an owner and he has to agree to the treasure’s distribution,” Addy said watching them as she spoke.
“We’re not worried about Mr. Hale.” Evelyn stopped and looked directly at Addy who had sat back down at the table. “We never were.”
“Yeah, I get that now.”
Heads nodded.
“I came to tell all of you, you can stop looking for Mr. Marsh. He was found wandering on the road south of town,” the chief stated.
“Third time since the storm,” Mrs. O’Brien exclaimed.
“Didn’t know where he was, did he?” Mr. Beaudin asked.
“Tell Mrs. March not to worry. We’ll all look out for him from now on. If he’s with one of us, we’ll let her know, or we’ll just bring him home,” Cam growled out, emotion clogging his voice.
All heads nodded.
“Thanks, folks.”
“I’ll walk out with you, Chief Montcalm.” Addy leaped up and followed the law officer outside, sliding on her blue peacoat as she went.
The air was crisp and the wind light, a perfect sunny day.
“Has there been any movement?” She didn’t have to finish the question. The chief knew she was asking if there was any movement on where the indictments would fall in the case against Hale and Blankenstock.
These kinds of things can take months, even years to figure out. The chief didn’t bother to say so because they both knew.
“Our financial editor said there would have been no way to discern the info without tearing the records apart. If Mr. Hale had spent his time sifting through them to double-check Ms. Blankenstock, there would have been no new investors.”
The chief didn’t respond at all.
“I believe Zachary Hale is a good man and I’m trying to give my readers a chance to know that.”
His features relaxed. “I will tell him what you’ve said.”
“I’d be there at his side if he’d let me.”
“He’s got a lot of ground to defend, Adriana.”
“Still...”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “He knows.”
“Thank you, Chief Montcalm.” Addy sidestepped him to ge
t to her car.
“Good day, Addy.”
She turned back to see him smiling and she nearly leaped with joy and relief. He believed in her.
If she could just see Zach. Tell him how much he mattered to her and how much others’ opinions of him did not. Ask him for his forgiveness for her part.
The chief might put in a good word for her, she could only hope.
The shielding she had built up around her heart to get her through every day crumbled and she ran for her rental car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SHE WAS BACK at her office at the paper, the early-winter sun was shining and for the first time in a long time, she thought her life might begin to come back together. She had just put the finishing touches on the article about an old town in Maine when her sister called.
“Addy, it’s all back. Every cent of what I lost.”
The SEC and the FBI had been working hard to recoup whatever moneys they could from every source and to spread it out among the investors who had lost so much. She never thought her sister would come out so well, but she heaved a sigh. With Savanna taken care of, all that left was to report the happy endings and enjoy getting her old office back. She spun in the chair.
A draw had been declared between Adriana Bonacorda and Jacko Wilson when the readers grew tired of financial scandal and had moved on to the newest headlines. All of Boston and the wider world lie outside her window and several story ideas at her fingertips.
The good life.
She opened a file labeled SI’s, story ideas she had been collecting over the years. That folder went to wherever her office was. The folder was fat and juicy and ready for picking through.
A man appeared in the doorway of her office, a chauffeur, by the dress of him. Mr. Smally had told her they were sending a car to take her to the two-o’clock awards ceremony, but the guy was early. She looked at her watch. Way early. It wasn’t even noon yet.
“Yes.”
“I am to deliver this to you personally, ma’am.” He handed her an envelope, small, cream colored, not sealed but with the flap tucked neatly inside.