Harlequin Superromance November 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2
Page 67
“Do you think anything of value was taken?” Doyle asked as Lenny prowled, checking the other rooms and windows.
“Just the integrity of the crypt. They didn’t even take the stupid hammer.”
“We’ll ask around the neighborhood and find out if anyone saw anything. Do you know if the back door was left unlatched?”
“Are you kidding?” She made a conciliatory gesture toward Officer Doyle. “Sorry. Since the chief told me on that first day I needed to be vigilant, I have been.”
“We’ll take the hammer and dust it and the door for prints. There isn’t much else we can do,” Lenny said as he reentered the back room.
“I think we have to check with Dr. MacCarey also. He’s in town and should be here soon,” she said.
As she studied the debris, she noticed some of the granite pieces were streaked with brown. She wondered if the lines were random or purposeful. She sucked in a breath.
“Are you all right?” Lenny moved to her side.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” She smiled to cover any alarm. Was the brown someone’s blood?
Lenny’s radio squawked something Mia couldn’t make out. He turned away and answered the call.
“Is he coming?”
It took Mia a moment to realize the other officer was speaking to her. “Who? Oh, Dr. MacCarey. I’m sure he is. I can have him call you, if you need to leave.”
“Are you all right here by yourself?” Lenny asked.
“I’m good.”
“Then we’ll be back to take your statements when we can,” Lenny said and then executed a crisp turn and was gone, Officer Doyle hurrying to catch up, carefully carrying the big hammer sheathed in plastic over his arm.
“No problem. I’ll let Dr. MacCarey know,” she said aloud with only herself as an audience. The officers had gone to deal with lawbreakers elsewhere, and Daniel would be here unless he ran away because he had been kissing the enemy.
Too bad on many accounts if he ran. She had been looking forward to reading the records with an anthropologist whose experience might offer insight—and she wanted him.
Hunkering down over a larger piece of stone, she looked more closely. Clearly demarcated brown wavy lines stretched across the gray. The lines could be random. They could also have been put there by someone. Maybe they were some kind of old paint, not blood.
What if it was blood?
She had seen no markings on the outside of the crypt.
What if the man had been alive when he was placed in the wall? What if he were trying to leave a last message? Even a dreaded pirate did not deserve that fate.
Horror washed over her until she began to tremble and almost fell back into the dust and rubble.
At the sound of footsteps she stood and moved away.
“What’s going on?” Daniel demanded and then quickly raised a conciliatory hand. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
When she didn’t answer, he took hold of her arm and turned her gently to face him. “What’s wrong, other than the obvious?”
She shrugged a shoulder, wondering where the prickly side of this man came from, but let it drop and pointed a finger toward the largest chunk of granite. The patterns in the discoloration seemed easier to see now. Even in the dim light of the dangling bulb the markings looked purposeful.
He bent down beside the debris and shined the beam of his flashlight across the stones until it landed on the large one. “The markings don’t look random.”
“There’s another one.” She pointed across the scattered pieces to a similarly large piece with more brown lines.
“Random or not, it makes a difference until we know for sure,” Daniel said as he continued to scrutinize the debris.
“I’m so sorry this happened, Daniel.”
He stepped over debris until he stood at her side. Then he tugged her chin up until he could see into her eyes. “Are you all right?”
“I’m good.”
He ran his thumb across her lips. “That response sounded automatic.”
All she could think now was, Touch me, touch all of me.
“I’m afraid the instant answer is almost always the one I give these days.” She moved away before she stepped up and demanded he put his arms around her.
“Do you suppose the man was still alive when he was walled up?” she asked as another shiver of horror swept through her.
“I’ll have to take a closer look at all the pieces before I can make any sense of the discoloration.”
She heaved her shoulders and sighed. “I just wanted to sell great seafood and a passable hamburger to the tourists.”
He was already absorbed in the scene and might not have heard her sad lament. Just as well.
She left him to assess the damage and went to stand in the front window to be sad alone. Falling night brought out twinkling lights in the harbor and in the town.
It all looked so peaceful, so normal, and she loved every brick, boat and brown dog in the town.
As the reassuring thoughts filtered through her head, it occurred to her she should be rejoicing. Some of the questions the site had raised had been answered by several swipes of the big hammer. There was nothing else in the crypt. There was no treasure buried there.
Was it so terrible to want things to be normal?
She wasn’t even sure she knew what normal was supposed to look like. It certainly couldn’t be finding the man in her wall had been buried alive.
Normal certainly wasn’t being attracted to the man who had swooped in, helped trash her world and would sail out again as soon as he finished with Pirate’s Roost.
When she reentered the back room, Daniel was studying one of the pieces of granite. He looked up at her as if he had something he needed to tell her.
“Did you find answers?”
“No, but I still have something I need to tell you.”
Oh, that thing he tried to tell her in the records room.
“Okay. I’m ready. Tell me.”
“This morning I spoke with my boss.”
“That old fuddy-duddy of an interfering man?” Mia paused. “Sorry, I don’t know your boss.”
“He’s a medium fuddy-duddy of an interfering man.”
Nervous energy made her laugh at his response, but she was sure she was not going to like what the duddy had to say.
“He wants me to forbid—”
She barked a not-amused laugh. “Forbid? He wants you to forbid?” Did this ever get better?
She started forward and he grabbed her and put his arms around her.
“Forbid anyone from entering the building until it is decided whether or not this is a town founder.”
She rested her chin on his chest and looking up at him with a grin, said, “You are so doing a terrible, horrible job. Just look at how many people have been in here.”
He grinned down and kissed the tip of her nose. “Maybe you should charge admission.”
She started to laugh. “If the duddy fires you, you can come and wash dishes in my— Wait!” She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed back to look into his face. “In my kitchen at home because I won’t have a restaurant kitchen.”
“The university sent me here because anyone with half a brain could do this job.”
“Your problem is you have a whole brain, but that’s nothing. Banks lent me a whole boatload of money to build a restaurant on this spot.”
“That seems to be going quite well.”
She patted his chest and moved away. “You can come with me when I go apply at a big-box store for a job.”
She laughed at all the ridiculous things in her life and then she laughed again because it was all she had.
“What’s going on?” Lenny stood in the doorway, looking most
fastidious shifting his gaze between the two of them.
“Just the usual, Officer Gardner,” she responded.
Lenny looked at Daniel and frowned. “I’m Daniel MacCarey. The university sent me to check out the site.”
“With a hammer?” Lenny asked in a serious voice.
“He didn’t do it, Lenny,” Mia interjected. “Someone broke in after Dr. MacCarey and I left yesterday afternoon, sometime during the night. I’d guess.”
Lenny gave a single nod. “I’m Officer Gardner.” Lenny stepped forward for a formal handshake with Daniel. “Dr. MacCarey, since the university has jurisdiction over the site for now, Chief Montcalm said we were to defer to whatever you say as far as how the site is to be handled. I’d like to check out the rest of the property if that’s all right with you.”
“The granite from the crypt may have significant markings on it and I’d like to handle the pieces myself,” said Daniel, pointing to the chunks and shards of granite.
“Whatever you say, Dr. MacCarey.”
Lenny’s radio squawked again and when he was finished talking he made arrangements to meet them at the station to get their statements.
“Thank you, Lenny,” Mia said when the officers were ready to leave. “I, we, appreciate the police department’s help.”
“We do our best, ma’am,” Officer Doyle added as they departed.
Mia hoped with all her might their best would be enough.
* * *
DANIEL DROVE UP the curving road, past the gawker’s pullout and away from Bailey’s Cove. The lights of the small town faded fast, and his world seemed to shrink down to the two hundred feet of roadway lit by his headlamps. Uncertainty seemed to lurk out there just out of sight in the eerie darkness.
So much had changed since the sun had come up over the cove yesterday morning.
Tonight, by the time the police had taken Mia’s and his statements, four hours had passed. A spate of petty crime, auto accidents and a domestic disturbance kept the officers on duty busy, and it was clear the scene at Mia’s restaurant would need to be left until morning.
Officer Gardner suggested Mia and Daniel go home for the night.
Daniel headed from the coast toward the highway. The closer he got to the interstate, the more he thought about the cold emptiness at his condo. He usually didn’t let his brain go there because in almost every quiet place he felt the same feeling of loss and emptiness.
Except for Bailey’s Cove.
He supposed it was impossible to watch your family fall completely apart and not have your heart regard most of the world as bleak and empty. “It’s not that I don’t love you, Danny, but every time I see your face, I see Sammy’s,” his wife had told him two years ago as she stood in the middle of the living room in their family home, suitcase in hand.
Now, in the span of less than forty-eight hours, the fragile, uncertain path of his life had crystal clear options. The call from his boss had been about more than protecting the site.
What he hadn’t told Mia was that their two futures were linked. Successfully proving the remains were Liam Bailey’s would put Daniel solidly on tenure track and negatively impact Mia’s chances of getting Pirate’s Roost up and running in time for the northerly trek of the tourists.
Worse, if he backed away, chose oblivion for his career, the university would send the newest PhD candidate, Elliot Smith. Smith would not care at all who was harmed in the handling of the scene. At least this way, Daniel might have a chance of getting the time schedule accelerated for Mia.
When he reached the highway intersection, he headed away from the university and from his condo. A motel or an inn had to be better than what he tried to call home, where he had paced the floors most of last night and where most of his memories seemed to have followed him.
At the highway’s next major crossroad, major for this part of Maine, the highway sign gave him a choice of an inn or a chain motel. He chose the inn because “some rooms with fireplaces” seemed like what he could use right now. Once he arrived at the inn, however, even a fireplace didn’t seem like enough to fix the emptiness.
At the memory of Mia Parker’s bright smile and warm lips he knew he’d rather spend the night in Bailey’s Cove than any place else. He parked in the inn’s lot, and called the number he had taken from the back wall at Mia’s building. In the dark he listened as the phone rang.
“Promise me and promise yourself, you will pursue your dream,” his aunt had said to him and he had promised.
“This is Mia,” she answered and by her voice he could tell she wasn’t sleepy, either.
“It’s Daniel.”
CHAPTER NINE
“DANIEL, IS THERE anything the matter?”
The sound of Mia’s voice washed over him and he imagined the look of concern on her face. He knew he had made the right decision for this night. Go to Bailey’s Cove.
“I was driving and I realized it might be best to stay someplace local tonight. Can you recommend somewhere?”
“Come here.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Because?”
“Because I’d be putting you out.”
“I have a fire in the fireplace.”
He gave a soft snort. “I’ve been feeling cold.”
“I have a bottle of red wine I opened and plan on drinking by myself in a half hour or so.”
He thought he heard some sort of muffled protest in the background. She wasn’t alone. “I like red wine, but if you have company, never mind.”
“Come. I don’t really want to drink it alone.”
There wasn’t even a peep of a protest this time. “Where do you live?”
She gave him her address and added, “Halfway between Pirate’s Roost and the police station and six blocks up the hill on Blueberry Avenue.”
“I can find that. I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes.”
* * *
MIA TOOK HER hand away from Monique’s mouth and said, “Get out.”
“Was that him?”
Mia nodded and Monique shrieked.
The excitement of seeing Daniel again had started her heart racing the moment she heard his voice.
“How soon?”
“He said forty-five minutes.”
“Plenty of time for you to change.”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” She had donned a clean, button-front cotton Henley and her most comfortable jeans after a shower.
“Oh, please tell me you’re not wearing one of your ugly sports bras.”
Mia tugged the neckline of her shirt and looked inside. “They are not ugly. In fact, this one is a lovely shade of navy blue.”
“Faded navy blue. That makes it muddy blue. If I weren’t two cup sizes bigger than you, I’d take mine off right now and make you put it on. Sexy, fiery red, with lace edges and a front closure for easy access. And there isn’t even a man to see it tonight, or well any night, but I’m hoping soon.”
“Do you wear red lace all the time?”
“Red, pink, apricot, I vary the color with each day, yesterday I wore blue, but lace, pretty lace, not that stretchy stuff that gets those clinging fuzz balls.”
“It’s highly possible, you know, that I will be the only one ever to see my bra.” Mia laughed.
“You invited him to come here, to your home.”
“Because he sounded like he needs a glass of wine and a warm place. A couple glasses of wine and I’ll send him off to the Harbor Inn.”
Monique laughed and pinched Mia’s cheeks. “You’re so cute when you lie.”
“You are a very naughty woman. Does Lenny know?”
“Not yet, but I think he might be hoping.”
“Did he kiss you yet?”
“I think that makes you very lucky, Monique.”
“Yeah, all reserved and polite on the outside, and I suspect hot as a smithy’s forge on the inside.”
Mia smiled. “What if he is the one?”
“You know, every time I see him, I can’t help wonder the same thing. I think I’m ready to go sit at Mandrel’s and wait for him to come in for a late coffee. Give the gossips some new juice.”
“I think we both know Lenny is ready.”
“I hope so.”
“You’re a catch, Monique. Over and above your cup size.”
“Haha! Well, I’m leaving. I have a counter stool to occupy.”
“Don’t have the pie.” Mia gave her the usual warning about the almost irresistible pie at Mandrel’s.
“It’s only for lookin’. And I’m outta here.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Back at ya.”
Monique slid on her short leather jacket and hurried away.
Mia picked up the things that wouldn’t bother her if family and friends saw them, but seemed too messy for a real guest. She polished the two wineglasses she and Monique were going to use, brought more wood in, brushed her teeth because she had the time and wished she had some lace to put on instead of muddy blue.
Maybe it wouldn’t matter. They had gotten carried away earlier today. Maybe the mood would be totally different now.
The doorbell rang.
It had taken only thirty-nine minutes.
Mia rubbed her palms down the thighs of her jeans and put on her best not-nervous welcome face, and pulled open the door.
Monique thrust a handful of condoms at her and fled back down the sidewalk.
“Thanks,” Mia called after her friend.
Monique gave her a thumbs-up, dove into her car and peeled off down the hill.
Mia laughed when she opened her palm and looked at what Monique had brought. Flavored, extra sensation and added pleasure.
She hurried up to her bedroom with them, and then thought better of putting all of them up there. She came back downstairs and put a couple in the drawer of the table near the couch.