“This will be your office,” he said. “Hester has it set up so that she works here Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then Tuesday and Thursday in the Carmel Gallery, but that’s just her way of doing things, not anything set in stone. Feel free to do what works best for you.” Pretending everything was going as planned was a lot like lying and made him sick to his stomach. But for now he had no choice.
“How long did you say Hester has been the bookkeeper here?”
“She’s been with Peter from the beginning.”
Diana had heard the story about why Hester was leaving from her mother, who’d heard it from Cheryl, who’d most likely heard it from Andrew, who’d heard it from Peter. She liked getting her information a little closer to the source. “And why is she leaving now?”
He reached behind her and turned off the office light, then closed the door. “Her husband, David, died a couple of months ago after a long god-awful battle with cancer. He went through chemo and radiation—and everything else mainstream medicine could do for him—and he wasn’t in remission six months before the cancer showed up again.
“Hester couldn’t deal with the suggestion by David’s doctors that he begin hospice. Which made her an easy target when a woman came into the gallery to buy prints for an alternative medicine cancer clinic she and her husband had opened in Big Sur. The woman got Hester to tell her about David and what he was going through. One thing led to another, and by the time the woman left the gallery, she’d convinced Hester they could cure David no matter how far his cancer had spread, completely contradicting what David’s oncologists had told them.”
“The same kind of thing happened to my uncle and his wife,” Diana said. “The family tried to tell them they were being scammed, but who are you going to believe when you’re being bombarded with a parade of people coming to your house telling you about their miracle cures?”
“Her friends did some investigating and discovered the doctor had closed his first clinic under a cloud of ongoing charges of health care fraud. Hester’s way of dealing with that kind of information was to stop seeing her friends.”
Michael led Diana into the main part of the gallery. “When David died last Christmas, she fell apart. It was like she was trying to climb a greased pole to get out of her depression. She got into the habit of staying up all night and not coming to work until one or two o’clock in the afternoon. Then, because she was falling behind on her work, she would stay until midnight. She stunned everyone when she put up her house for sale, and told Peter that as soon as she took care of some unfinished business, she was moving to Oregon to be with her sister.”
They wandered from room to room, Diana stopping to stare at prints that caught her eye, Michael telling her behind-the-picture stories. The majority were ocean scenes, but several of her favorites were portrayals of day-to-day life along the coast, the subjects surprisingly eclectic, going from sheep grazing in the shade of an old barn to monarch butterflies wintering over in a grove of pine trees. There were portraits, too, almost all of them showing the subject in contemplation. The work was sentimental but not mawkish, the kind of art that broke through a snarky critic’s opinion to grace the walls of cottages and corporate offices alike, because it spoke to the person who loved it.
In the last room on the main floor, tucked between a picture of a robin stretching to capture a red berry and one with a couple walking hand in hand on a moonlit beach, was a portrait that struck her with such force she couldn’t stop staring. The image was simple, a young girl sitting on a fog-shrouded beach, her back to the artist, her chestnut hair blowing gently in a breeze, her arm draped lovingly around a dog that leaned tightly into her side.
“Recognize her?” Michael said.
Diana frowned. “The girl?”
“The dog.”
She looked closer. “Is that Coconut?”
He nodded. “In one of her few quiet moments when she was a puppy.”
“Then the girl must be Shiloh.”
“It was her first day back after three weeks in the hospital. She desperately wanted to spend it at the beach, but Jeremy had arranged for a visiting nurse to stay with her at home. He had a meeting that he either attended or lost a job that was in the bid process. Peter happened to overhear what was going on and offered to spend the afternoon with Shiloh—if she would sit for him. She knew she was being manipulated and that sitting for Peter was more a way to keep her from overextending herself, but she also knew it was the only way she was going to get what she wanted.
“While she tried to see the humpbacks that had been reported in the area through the fog, he sketched. This was the result of that day.”
“I love that story,” Diana said. “And I love the way I feel when I look at the picture. Even though you can’t see her face, you can tell how special that moment was and how much it meant for her to be there.”
“I’ve known a lot of people who feel they’re coming home when they’re at the ocean, but none like Shiloh. My mom told her she must have been a mermaid in another life.”
Diana had never known a guy her own age like Michael and wasn’t sure how to respond to him. His kindness was real. And natural. As much a part of him as his lopsided smile. She could picture him turning down a date with Taylor Swift if Shiloh or his mother or Jeremy or Peter or anyone he knew needed him. What kind of twenty-nine-year-old man was like that? And why? “She sounds like a special little girl.”
“Not so little anymore. She’ll be twelve in a couple of months.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
Michael stared at her through narrowed eyes for what seemed like a long time before saying anything. “She’ll like you.”
Diana dipped her chin to hide the flush of pleasure that swept her cheeks. She was used to guys saying nice things about her hair or her eyes or her body, but never about who she was inside.
“Is the original painting available?” she asked, suspecting a Peter Wylie original would cost what her house would cost. If she still had a house.
“If it were, I could have sold it a hundred times.” Michael reached out to tap the right-hand corner of the frame to straighten the infinitesimally crooked print. “Peter gave it to Shiloh.”
They’d talked about Jeremy and Shiloh during lunch, too, so Diana knew the basics. Still she sensed there had been a lot left unsaid. She’d been filled with curiosity, but didn’t push for answers. It was obvious Michael felt protective of his friends.
She moved to the final wall of pictures in what logically would have been the living room before the house was converted.
“Why two galleries?” she asked, standing in front of a picture of a sea otter.
“The Carmel gallery was too small to handle originals and prints. Peter considered moving up the coast to Half Moon Bay, but it was too far away for him to spend more than a day or two a month up there. He likes to meet the people who buy his pictures. Personal contact is important to the way he does business.”
“I think it’s great that you wound up working with him. Having the two of you hit it off must have felt like a great gift to your mom.”
“It was hard in the beginning,” he admitted. “Especially when my dad wanted to get back together with my mom, and it seemed to me and my brother that Peter was the only thing keeping them apart. But then I saw it for what it was, and instead of getting sucked into taking sides, Paul and I got out of the way so they could work it out themselves. Julia was a big help.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Julia?” He laughed. “Not even close. Not only is she married to a best-selling writer, she has a houseful of kids and lives three thousand miles away.”
The name connected. “She’s the owner of the beach house that Jeremy is working on.”
“She insists she’s its caretaker, that the real owners were and alw
ays will be a couple named Joe and Maggie.”
“That’s the way I felt about the house my great-grandfather built. He and my great-grandmother willed it to my grandmother and then when she died, I bought it from the estate. I considered myself the caretaker for the next generation.”
“It must be great to feel that kind of connection.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “It did.”
Michael came to a set of stairs. “There’s a one bedroom apartment on the second floor with a great view of the boardwalk. It’s where I used to stay when I came home from college during summer breaks. Living so close made it convenient to learn the business. Of course I didn’t have a clue that it was a setup. I was being groomed to take over running the galleries when Peter and my mother toured Europe every other summer.”
Before she thought how it would sound, she blurted out, “So, working here during the summer is all you do?”
Michael laughed. “That, and getting my PhD, and traveling, and substitute teaching for a couple of years, and writing environmental blogs for several—”
She held up her hands in surrender. “Any more and I’m going to feel like a slacker.”
She looked to the top of the staircase. “Is this how you get to the lighthouse part?”
“There’s another set of stairs off the kitchen that takes you up there.”
“Can I see?”
“Sure—but it can get claustrophobic.”
“I don’t mind. I was stuck inside a paper-mache cow for four hours and did okay.”
“You don’t expect me to let that one go.”
She pulled the elastic band from her hair and shook her head. “I was in Future Farmers of America in high school and we made an overly ambitious float for the Fourth of July parade. The cow was supposed to be animated, but the motor stopped running just as we pulled into line. Which meant we either settled for second place—again—or put someone inside to manipulate the head and tail by hand. That someone turned out to be me.”
“The parade lasted four hours?” Michael had an insane urge to touch her hair to see if it really was as soft and silky as it looked.
“Oh, there’s more.” She grinned. “The hole I crawled through wouldn’t stay closed so someone came up with the brilliant idea to use superglue. Of course all this happened before they told us that an alarm had gone off at a bank on the parade route and we wouldn’t be allowed to start until they made sure it was safe.
“So, I either stayed inside the cow or they cut a hole in its belly. Which meant we would have a mutilated nonfunctioning animated cow as the main feature on our float. This was the first time in three years that we actually had a chance at first place. You can understand why no one was anxious to cut me out.”
Michael showed her the apartment and it was everything she could do to keep from asking about the rent, knowing there was no way she could afford it. Not only was the apartment the perfect size, it was fully furnished and decorated in all her favorite colors.
They left the apartment and went down the hallway to another locked door. This room held the circular steel stairway. Every riser creaked and groaned; the sides came in closer and closer as the tower narrowed. Finally, they reached the top. Michael unlatched a window and swung it open before he moved aside so Diana could join him.
“Oh, wow,” she said, leaning forward until she could see the entire coastline over the rooftops of the single-story homes between the gallery and the beach. Sailboats skimmed the sun-dappled water, a dozen surfers lazily rode their boards as they waited for a wave. “Wow, wow, wow. I’ll bet you used to spend a lot of time up here. I know I would.”
“It’s even better at night, especially in winter when it’s clear and there’s a full moon and the air is crisp and cold. I used to imagine this was a real lighthouse on an isolated point of land and it was just me and the seagulls.”
“I’m not sure I could do that—be a lighthouse keeper, I mean. I don’t mind being alone, but not for more than a day or two at a time.”
Michael spotted something to his left. “Look over here,” he said, pointing.
“Give me a hint what I’m looking for.”
“Just keep watching.”
Nothing happened. “I don’t see anything.” And then she did. “Oh my God,” she grabbed his arm. “Is that a whale?”
“It is.”
“Why is she coming up out of the water like that?”
“It’s called breaching, and she could either do it all day or come up one time and disappear.” He’d forgotten how great it felt to share the excitement of someone discovering the magic of the ocean for the first time.
“This is just so friggin’ cool.”
He liked her enthusiasm almost as much as he liked that she hadn’t immediately let go of his arm. She was so close he could feel her warmth and smell a trace of lavender in her hair. A sobering thought threaded its way through his mind. The more confident he made her feel about fitting in, the harder it was going to be to tell her she didn’t. “Once you’ve been here a while, you’ll get used to it.”
“No, I won’t.” And she wouldn’t. This was too special.
“There—” He pointed again, only this time straight out in front of them.
She looked in time to see three whales breeching together and laughed in excitement. “I never, not in a million years, dreamed I would see something this special. Thank you so much for bringing me here.”
It was impossible not to get caught up in her energy. “What else have you seen since you’ve been here?”
She looked at him. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“Otters? Dolphins? Pelicans?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t seen anything, unless surfers count.”
Michael glanced at his watch a second time and frowned.
“Your meeting—I forgot.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it more than he would have believed before he’d met her. “It’s something I can’t get out of.”
She took one last look, as if snapping a mental photograph, then maneuvered herself into position to climb downstairs. “Thank you,” she said again when they were back in the main part of the gallery.
“All part of the new employee package.” He cringed. Could he sound more inane? Michael set the alarm and locked the back door. He paused to watch her cross to the car before he stepped off the porch and followed, recognizing the hole in the sand he’d dug with what he’d told her that day, and knowing the deeper it went, the more disastrous it would be when the sides caved in.
Chapter Six
“I DON’T WANT to lose Diana,” Peter said. “There has to be a way we can handle this without involving her.”
“I’m listening,” Michael said. He didn’t want to lose her either, and not just for the obvious reasons.
“I don’t want you to listen, I want you to figure it out.” Frustration, as alien to his personality as pessimism, permeated Peter’s words.
Michael shifted the phone to his other ear as he crossed the living room. In the lengthy process of becoming more friends than relatives, he and Peter had reached the point that they never minced words with each other. “We’re in over our heads, Peter. We don’t have a clue what we’re doing.”
“Tell me again what happened that made you suspicious.”
“How many times—”
“Indulge me. This is how I work things out.”
Michael tolerated Peter’s request because he understood where it was coming from. Peter no more wanted to believe Hester had been stealing from the business than Michael did. Maybe there was something they’d failed to see, something that could provide another explanation for all that missing money.
“When the owner of West Bay Images called last week, he said he couldn’t get Hester to return his
calls or answer his emails. He told me they hadn’t been paid in three months, and that they wouldn’t ship the new prints we’d ordered until we made a good-faith payment on the current bill.”
Peter let out a barely audible groan. “He must think we’re on the verge of bankruptcy. Jesus, that kind of rumor could destroy both me and the business.”
“Do you want me to finish, or have you heard enough?” Michael asked.
“What I really want is for you to tell me how the hell I could have missed something so obvious.”
“You didn’t see it because you didn’t want to.” He could have added, and probably should have, that Peter was not only too trusting, he was a lousy businessman. Michael would bet six months salary that Peter hadn’t looked at the books in months, if not years. He signed whatever Hester put in front of him, no questions asked.
“I can’t stop thinking about Hester taking the money. Why would she do something like that? Why didn’t she just come to me if she needed something?”
“Maybe she was afraid you would try to talk her out of paying for all those treatments for David.”
“That doesn’t make sense. She had insurance. Everyone who works at the galleries has top-notch insurance—the best my broker could find for them.”
“Doesn’t matter. No insurance company will cover treatment at a non-accredited facility.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I did some snooping around last week and discovered that neither the doctor nor the hospital where David was treated were legit. You needed a magnifying glass to read the disclaimer, but it was there.”
Peter groaned. “And that’s where the money went? To some scam artist?”
“I don’t know that for a fact, but I think it’s a damn good guess.”
“So how do I clean up this mess? Where do we stand with West Bay Images?”
The Cottage Next Door Page 4