Flirting With Pete: A Novel

by Barbara Delinsky

  She was avoiding the place. She didn’t need an esteemed colleague to tell her that. She was making a statement to this dead father of hers that she resented being acknowledged only when he died and that she didn’t need his three-million-dollar townhouse. She was keeping him waiting. It was as simple— and as childish— as that.

  *

  Saturday morning, she awoke feeling brave. She wanted to think she was also in grown-up mode, though she feared that was asking too much. Defying the conventional wisdom that said she was going to an upper-crust part of Boston and ought to dress the part out of respect for her father if nothing else, she left her face utterly naked, put on skimpy running shorts and a cropped singlet, and pulled the length of her strawberry-blond hair through the hole in the back of her rattiest baseball cap. After lacing on well-worn running shoes and grabbing her darkest, trendiest wraparound sunglasses, she set off for Beacon Hill. She had barely gone two blocks when, chagrined, she jogged into a U-turn and ran back home for the forgotten key. Tucking it, her cell phone, and a water bottle into a slim fanny pack, she set off again.

  It was a gorgeous morning. At barely nine o’clock, there were nearly as many runners as cars. She ran at a comfortable pace down Commonwealth Avenue under the shade of aged maples and oaks that dominated the center mall. After jogging in place at a red light on Arlington Street, she entered the Public Garden. Indulging herself, she circled the pond, passing swan boats that were just coming to life, parents pushing babies in prams, other children running ahead to toss pebbles into the water. Each plunk brought a crowd of ducks that dispersed as soon as the ducks realized the pebbles weren’t peanuts.

  When the circle was complete, she continued on to the intersection of Beacon and Charles. On a whim— a final defiant one, a last-ditch effort to thumb her nose at the spirit of Connie— she took the time to run down the whole of Charles Street. Making a right at the end, she ran up Cambridge Street, huffed up Joy Street, and turned onto Pinckney for the downhill trot.

  She had always liked Pinckney Street. It had the same brick and brownstone row houses as the rest of the Hill, with the occasional wood frame house tossed in for added charm. It had the same long, narrow alleyways that were brick-paved and walled, the same window boxes filled with flowers, the same shapely grillwork at windows and doors.

  By the time she was a good way down the hill, though, her legs had suddenly had enough. From Pinckney, she turned left onto West Cedar, then left again into Leeds Court.

  The road was cobblestone. It stayed narrow only long enough to clear the walls of the abutting West Cedar homes, then split into an oval around a center grove of hemlocks and pines.

  Breathless and sweaty, Casey jogged past parked cars, glancing at her inheritance with each casual turn. Sandwiched in with its neighbors, the townhouse faced west from the Court’s deepest point. Built of wine-colored brick, now ivy-clad, it rose four stories above a subbasement level. The first two stories had tall windows and glossy black shutters; the third-floor windows were gabled; the fourth floor was smaller, a cupola.

  Casey had always been intrigued by that fourth floor, such a sweet thing perched atop the gables. She had always imagined it to be a charming little hideaway— and she still did. But her eye didn’t linger there for long. There was so much more to see.

  Window boxes on the first and second floors were vibrant with pink flowers. A waist-high iron fence enclosed a tiny front yard, each side of which had ground cover of little blue flowers surrounding a tree in white bloom. Dogwood, Casey guessed— but only guessed. She wasn’t a tree person, or a flower person, for that matter. She had never had to be, because her mother was the expert. Unwilling to compete, Casey had let flora pass her by. What little she knew of it she had absorbed by osmosis.

  If she took a wild guess, she would say that the flowers in the window boxes were sweet William, though she wasn’t sure how she came up with the name. Whatever, they were beautiful. They were carefully tended and full, putting to shame the geraniums in the neighbor’s window boxes on the left and the pansies in the neighbor’s boxes on the right. She assumed that Connie’s gardener, who reputedly loved the house, was the one responsible here, and let herself admire his work longer than she might have if she thought Connie had planted the flowers himself.

  It was a final stalling tactic. But time was passing. She didn’t want to be at this all day. She had other things to do.

  Taking water from the fanny pack, she swallowed a mouthful, capped the bottle, returned it. In the process, she found an old stick of Juicy Fruit gum. Not caring that it might be stale, she peeled off the wrapper and folded it into her mouth.

  Chomping defiantly, she straightened her shoulders, opened the iron gate, and strode toward the house.

  Chapter Two

  The walk was paved with bluestone. A side path on the left led to a stairway to the lower level. Walking straight ahead, Casey climbed four stone steps. The front door and its sidelights were made of wood, painted the same glossy black as the shutters. The doorknob, knocker, and kickplate were all of polished brass.

  Heart in her mouth right along with the wad of chewing gum, she fit the key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door. She had memorized the entry code, but there was no hum to say that the alarm had been tripped. Aware that it might be a silent one— and loath to set it off and bring in the police— she hurried through a tiny entryway into the foyer.

  It was dark inside— dark wood, dark carpet, dark walls. She hated that.

  But the air was cool against her heated skin, and that she loved.

  Pulling off her sunglasses, she raised her head to better see from under the bill of her cap, and looked frantically around. She found the keypad for the alarm on the wall to her left, but its lights showed a steady green. Either the last person leaving had forgotten to turn on the alarm, or someone was with her in the house.

  “Hello?” she called, hooking her sunglasses on the neck of her singlet. Before her, left to right, were a hallway leading back, a stairway leading up, and a pair of doors that were slightly ajar. With her sunglasses off, the place wasn’t quite so dark. The foyer and stairs bore Oriental rugs woven in burgundy, olive, cream, and black. The newel post and the banister rising above it were mahogany. The walls were caramel in color. Everything was clean and well kept.

  Feeling grubby by comparison, and sweating now from nerves, she wiped beads of perspiration from her nose with the heels of her hands. Tucking the gum in her cheek, she called out another cautious, “Hello?”

  Her voice had barely died when she heard footsteps running up a flight of stairs at the back of the house. They were light— no oversized thug here, and besides, she figured, an intruder would have slipped out the back. This had to be the maid.

  Waiting, Casey had barely taken in an oak sideboard flanked by carved wood chairs when a woman ran in from the hall. Her eyes were wide and her face pale. A fireplace poker hung from her hand.

  The running should have prepared Casey. A traditional maid in a discreet gray uniform, with dignified gray hair to match, wouldn’t run. She might walk briskly, but she would be proper about it.

  There was little that was proper about this maid. Granted, her khaki shorts were nowhere near as short as Casey’s wisp of nylon, and her polo shirt was clean and pressed, but it was tucked in none too neatly at the waist. She wore white sneakers with crew socks rolled down. Her hair was pulled up from her face into a haphazard ponytail that was nearly as dark as the mahogany banister.

  The smoothness of her skin said that she wasn’t any older than Casey. Nor, truth be told, did she look any more composed than Casey felt deep down inside. For all her running, she looked pale and confused, frozen in place.

  Casey softened instantly. “Meg Henry?” she asked. That was the name on her list.

  The woman nodded. Girl, Casey amended, deciding that she wasn’t even thirty.

  “Who are you?” Meg asked in a frightened voice.

  “Casey Ellis
. Dr. Unger’s daughter.”

  “Whose daughter? Are you Ruth’s?”

  “No. I’m Caroline’s.”

  Meg swallowed. “I’m sorry. I don’t know who Caroline is.” Taking a step closer, she peered under the bill of Casey’s cap and caught her breath. “Freckles.”

  “Yes.” It was one of the disadvantages of going without makeup. “I have those.”

  Meg broke into a smile.

  Not sure what to make of that, Casey said, “I inherited this place. I was told that you come with it. But it’s Saturday.” She glanced at the poker. “Did he make you work Saturdays, too?”

  Meg put the poker behind her. “I work every day. If I didn’t, who would take care of him?”

  Casey didn’t remind the girl that Connie was gone. There was something fragile about her— a look in the eye, a tilt of the head, the slight hunch of her shoulders. “Didn’t he give you any time off?”

  Meg nodded. “Whenever I wanted, but I never wanted much. Dr. Unger was a dream to work for.” As she said the last, her eyes filled with tears.

  A surrogate daughter, Casey instantly thought, noting that Meg was very much her own height and weight. A surrogate daughter who could clean.

  So Casey would fail him in that, too. Cleaning had never been one of her priorities.

  Hands in her back pockets, she drew in a deep breath. She smelled leather. She smelled books. She smelled warm, damp earth. She really smelled that. Frowning, she homed in on a planter just behind the newel post. It was filled with Spanish moss and a riot of fern.

  Meg followed her gaze, quickly apologetic. “I gave them too much water. Jordan isn’t in today, and I’d been thinking all week that they looked dry. He must have watered them yesterday.”

  Jordan was the gardener— Jordan from Daisy’s Mum, according to Casey’s list. She assumed that Daisy’s Mum was one of the area’s chic all-service little flower shops that had cropped up to care for yuppies’ plants. Connie Unger wasn’t a yuppie, but if Daisy’s Mum was good and if Jordan loved the house, who was Casey to argue? Her own brown thumb was another mark against her.

  “I mopped up the spill,” Meg was saying. “It’s just that the soil will smell until it dries out. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Casey assured her and took another long breath, this one held uncertainly. Totally aside from the surrogate daughter issue, she didn’t know what to do with a maid. This was the first one she’d ever had. “I’d like to look around. Why don’t you go on back to… cleaning the fireplace?”

  “I was just about to dust books. Do you know that between the library and the den, there are nine hundred and twenty-three books?”

  Casey was impressed. “Sounds like you’ve dusted those books more than once.”

  “I have,” Meg replied with pride. “There’s nothing worse than looking for a particular book, climbing way up, pulling it off the shelf and getting a faceful of dust. That’s how it was when I first came to work for Dr. Unger. Mrs. Wheeler was too old to climb up and dust the books. Would you like a cold drink? Dr. Unger always liked iced tea.”

  “Not me,” Casey was happy to declare. “I’m an iced coffee person. But I’m fine for now, thanks.” She gestured toward the doors on her right. “I’ll just wander.” She turned, heard a gasp, looked back.

  “Your hair,” Meg said. “I couldn’t see it from the front. I didn’t expect the color.”

  With a smile and a shrug, Casey went on into the living room. It was a long, narrow room with high ceilings and two distinct halves. The front half held armchairs and love seats in velvet and brocade, side tables in marble and wood, tall lamps with handsome ivory shades, while a grand piano dominated the rear half. Each section had its own Oriental rug, and though there were subtle differences in their design, they leaned heavily on burgundy to match the room’s theme. Sheers covered windows that looked out front and back; they were flanked by draperies that flared out over the floor. At the edge of the draperies, catching light from the windows, large Boston ferns spilled from elegant iron stands.

  Casey checked the side tables for photographs. She hadn’t expected to find any of her, but she might have liked to see ones of Connie’s other relatives. Because of his aloof and unsentimental nature, people might assume there were no relatives, but he had to have come from somewhere. If pictures did exist, this would be the place for them— and if not pictures of his relatives, then ones of Connie as a boy. Old sepia prints would have fit a room like this. There were none here, though. Nor were there any on the piano, a handsome thing with its lid raised high.

  Handsomeness notwithstanding, she couldn’t begin to guess what the asocial Cornelius Unger had done with this room. She didn’t imagine that he had come in here often. The furniture seemed unworn and the piano was probably just for show. There were aged oils of forests and fields on the walls, and interesting bowls and candlesticks on the tables, but the room looked to be the work of a decorator. She doubted that anything here held special meaning for the man who had been her father. Forget photographs; there was absolutely nothing of a personal nature here.

  Backing out of the room, she stood in the foyer for a minute and looked up. If personal was what she was looking for, “up” was where she would find it. The thought of that unsettled her. “Up” was his private space. She didn’t know if she was ready to invade that.

  Reminding herself that the man was dead helped a bit. Ultimately, though, it was the force of her own curiosity that impelled her to climb the stairs.

  The banister was smooth and polished; if her father had touched it, his fingerprints surely had been wiped away. The landing at the top of the stairs was softened by large pots filled with plants. A room stood on either side of the landing; another staircase led up from its middle.

  Cautious, she approached the room on the left and looked inside. Done in shades of blue ranging from powder to navy, it had a large four-poster bed, a desk and chair, a fireplace, and an upholstered love seat. She might have liked the room— blue was her color— if it hadn’t felt so abandoned. Not even the cascading baskets of ivy that hung in front of the windows changed that. At the back was a bathroom. After a quick peek inside at plush blue towels, wallpaper that added apricot tones to the blue, and a powder blue robe— all of which looked brand new— she returned to the hall.

  The opposite room was his. She sensed it as she approached, saw it in the more worn look of the carpet at one end. The door was only barely ajar. Feeling like an intruder now, she pushed it a bit and peered around the doorjamb. The light was bright from windows front and back, but it fell on an interior that was decidedly dark. She stayed only long enough to make out potted trees by the windows, a heavy sleigh bed, a sitting area, a pair of dressers, and the bathroom door. Ducking back out and feeling instantly safer, she turned away and climbed to the next floor.

  There were no plants on this landing, but rather a single oil painting of a woodland scene, yet another staircase, and two closed doors. Opening one, she found a guest bedroom done in lilac— twin beds, a dresser, a love seat. The room’s main order of business, though, was storage. Cartons and storage bins filled most of the space. She found more of the same across the hall in a room done in beige. Since the beds here were bunked, there was even more storage space, and it was used.

  Casey was mildly daunted by the sheer number of boxes. Connie’s active files had been given to a colleague, but she suspected that an impressive number of books and papers remained here. The woman who had idolized him as a professional wondered whether he had left instructions for bequeathing his papers to a library. The woman who was dying to know the man himself wondered if there were personal items mixed in.

  She would look. She would have to. Even if she weren’t curious, she couldn’t sell the place until all of this was disposed of one way or another.

  Closing the door of the second room, she mounted the final staircase. Steeper than the others, it led to the cupola that she had admired from the street. />
  Here was a totally different feel, a small but open space with a domed roof, exposed rafters, light oak beams, and glass front and back. She looked out over the front of Leeds Court for a minute, before turning around to the back of the house. Behind a trio of potted ficus trees, a single sofa gazed out through glass sliders at a deck. The sliders were open; screens covered the space. Crossing the bare wood, she eased one screen aside and stepped out. The deck couldn’t have been more than twelve feet by twelve feet. It was floored with cedar planks and fenced in by a waist-high wall of the same. Plants and flowers were in abundance in long earthenware pots and in ceramic bowls glazed multiple shades of green. In their midst was one sad patio chair.

  Casey was struck by the loneliness of it.

  Chasing away a chill, she focused on the view. Treetops spread beneath her; neighboring decks lay on either side. Ahead, colored lime by trees, deep green by ivies, and reds and pinks by flowers and patio umbrellas, a succession of rooftops climbed east up Beacon Hill.

  A man stood on one. When her eye reached him, he waved. She smiled and waved back, then turned and faced her own house.

  Her own house. That’s what it was— for a short time, at least. The deck had potential and would surely increase the resale value. Add a grill, a table and chairs, and a handful of standing torches, and she couldn’t think of a better spot for a party. Of course, Connie hadn’t been a partyer. That was one of the many ways in which they differed.

  She did have his hair, though Meg Henry couldn’t possibly know that. The man had died at seventy-five, and for the last fifteen of those years, what little hair he’d had was white. For a long time before that, though, it had a blond sheen to it, and, way back, even before that, according to Casey’s mother, it had been Casey’s own strawberry blond.

  Casey also had Connie’s blue eyes. But she had her mother’s eyesight, which was perfect. So, while Casey had never worn glasses, Connie wore thick ones that had muted the impact of his blues and made them look less like hers as well.