by Sarah Graves
Sugar. What the …?
“Hello.”
She looked up. A little boy, maybe ten years old, stood in the doorway to her inner office, where she met clients.
The boy, scrubbed so clean he practically glowed and with an obviously fresh haircut under his kid-sized baseball cap, wore a blue blazer. Under it he wore a white dress shirt and a striped silk tie—a real one, not a clip-on. His slacks were belted, and from the way they broke just so over his oxblood shoes, they had obviously been tailored for him.
“Hello. Who are you?” She got up, brushing sugar granules from her fingertips while the kid went on eyeing her somberly.
“Steven. My mother calls me Junior.” The boy blinked once, slowly. From the white bits around his mouth, she gathered that the ones on her carpet were from something that he’d been eating.
“Are you going to let the bad men kill my father?” he asked.
His voice held an odd, remarkably unchildish undercurrent of menace. Then it hit her, who he must be. Oh, for Pete’s sake.
She should have known; under that new haircut of his, the kid’s ears stuck out a mile.
Just like his dad’s.
“Hi, Jake. Sorry we’re a little early.”
Steven Garner Sr. appeared in the doorway behind his son. “I slipped the guy downstairs a little something; he let us up,” he confided.
Unlike the boy, he did not look freshly laundered. He wore rumpled slacks over white high-top sneakers that had seen better days, a polo shirt with dryer wrinkles still in it, and a blue cotton warm-up jacket with an egg splotch on the front.
“I saw Baumann in the lobby just now,” she said, and watched Garner’s face tighten with anxiety.
The kid was still staring at her. “You hungry?” she asked him, despite the evidence of a recent meal—a doughnut, probably—around his lips.
The boy nodded; what little kid wasn’t always hungry? “But my mom doesn’t let me …” he began as she brought out the bagel.
“Steven,” his father told him gently, “go sit down over there and eat the bagel, okay? Go on,” he repeated as the boy looked doubtful. “I’ll make it okay with your mom.”
The boy rolled his eyes, giving Jake the idea that making things okay with his mom generally wasn’t so easy. But he did as he was asked.
“And don’t do anything else,” his father told him, which Jake thought was a little strange. The look he gave the kid was odd, too: stern, but with a thread of fear in it. “Just sit.”
“Come on,” Jake said, waving Steven Sr. back into her inner office, which was even more spartan than the outer one.
The desk was a gray metal cube squatting in one corner, the chairs like ones in the Motor Vehicle Department’s waiting area, square and serviceable. No pictures or diplomas hung on the walls or stood on the desk; venetian blinds covered the windows.
All business here, the room’s bare, utilitarian chill said clearly. She sat at her desk, gestured at the seat in front of it, and watched Steven Garner sink onto it gratefully.
“So. How can I help you?”
Although she already knew. His hangdog expression, a mobbed-up minion down in the lobby … even the security guard had known enough to go deaf and blind with Baumann around.
Garner, by contrast, was just a low-level errand boy, the kind of guy who lived for the moment he would be invited along on a truck highjacking.
And who would die waiting, because guys who were always as much in need of cash as Garner was could never be trusted. So she would be his last hope, and his next words would be …
“I need money.” He glanced up at her. At his day job he was a school photographer, she knew.
Not exactly a big earner. “A lot,” he added, “of money.” He leaned across the desk. “Because they’re going to kill me if I don’t get it to them.”
“Yeah, so I just heard. But I’m not in the business of—”
Loan-sharking. Or whatever you wanted to call it. “I help people take care of their money, you know?” Jake said carefully. “Invest it, diversify it …”
Launder it, get it out of the country. She’d set this appointment up only as a favor to one of those other clients, and she was already regretting it.
“Yeah, I know,” Garner conceded. “I just thought …”
“How much are we talking about?”
He looked up, his eyes alight with hope for a moment. But when he saw her expression, his own face fell again. “Fifty.”
The amount he’d named shocked even her. “Thousand? You’re into them for—”
“Yeah. Don’t ask me how it happened, okay? It happened the way it always happens. You lose, you chase your losses, next thing you’re on their shoot list.”
Only Baumann didn’t say shoot. “I’ve got a family. You saw the kid; he’s a good boy.”
Right, she’d seen the kid because she’d been intended to see him, maybe feel a little sorrier for Garner. She did, too.
Just not fifty grand’s worth. She was about to say so when a small head peeped around the doorframe. “Dad?”
Garner frowned. “I told you, siddown out there, okay? Wait for me, I’ll only be a—”
The boy didn’t move. His big, not-quite-innocent eyes took in the room with its clinical lack of decoration, the metal cabinets and the shelves stuffed with file folders.
He didn’t smile. He looked … sly. “Steven, maybe you could just sit down in the chair out there until your father and I are finished here,” she said gently.
His eyes didn’t change, their expression calm and knowing. It gave her a chill, suddenly, realizing that the boy understood what his father was doing.
That he was begging for his life. But he’d come to the wrong place, because the only thing she knew for sure about Garner was that if she did lend him money, he would never return it.
Heck, he hadn’t paid the mob back, and they were willing and able to kill him on account of it. So what chance would she have?
The boy went back to the outer office. She got up and closed the door. “What have you got?”
“What?” Garner looked confused. “I … What do you mean, what have I—”
“House? Car? Anything? A coin collection? Has your wife got any good jewelry?”
He was shaking his head. “There’s the house, but it belongs to my wife. It was her parents’ place, and anyway, what would you want with—”
She sat across from him again. “You’re not getting it, what I’m saying to you. I don’t want it. But they might.”
Despair filled his face. “Just … you mean …”
He glanced at the door, beyond which his son waited. Right now the kid had a roof over his head, a place to go at night.
And tomorrow maybe he wouldn’t. But his dad would be alive. “Steven, I’m suggesting you offer them something. It’s harsh, I know. But it’s the best I can do for you right now.”
Or ever, she didn’t add, but he understood. When he got up from the chair he moved like an old man.
She got up, too. “A house is a big thing, Steven. If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll take it.”
“Yeah,” he said bitterly. “If I’m lucky.”
She didn’t offer to put in a word for him. It wouldn’t have done any good. He knew that, as well. He opened the door to the outer office, then turned.
“Listen, I was thinking I might take the kid out for lunch, maybe to a ball game. You know? But …”
He spread his hands helplessly.
He was tapped out, of course; his last twenty to the guard downstairs, probably. Without a word she opened her desk’s top drawer and drew out five hundred-dollar bills.
She crossed the room and handed them to him. In the outer room, the little boy sat in a chair with his ankles crossed and his hands clasped in his lap, waiting. Watching.
“Thanks,” Steven Garner said, stuffing the bills into the inside pocket of his cotton jacket. “C’mon, kid.”
They turned to go. She follo
wed them to the door, hoping Garner wouldn’t decide to just take a flyer out the propped-open window at the end of the corridor.
He didn’t. As they moved away down the hall, the little boy glanced back over his shoulder before they disappeared into the elevator. Those eyes …
Jake shivered, not liking the expression in them and glad when the elevator closed. And that was the last she ever expected to see of them:
Steven Garner Sr., his boy, and her five hundred bucks.
But she was only two-thirds right.
CHAPTER
1
HER NAME WAS JACOBIA TIPTREE—JAKE, TO HER FRIENDS—and on that bright day in July twelve years after the Manhattan meeting, she was scraping loose paint off the porch steps of her big old house in Eastport, Maine, when the guy on the bike went by again.
Or she’d thought the paint would be loose, anyway. But as her son Sam always said, hope springs infernal, and the reality was something else again. Meanwhile:
Pedaling slowly, looking right at her, the guy on the bike frowned as if he’d just sniffed a spoiled carton of milk. He was decent enough looking otherwise, clean-shaven and neatly dressed.
But this was his third trip past her home in the last half-hour. And each time he went by, he’d been staring at her in that same unpleasant, almost accusing way.
Still holding the scraper, she got up, trying to recall where she’d seen his sour expression before. That she had seen it she felt certain, but on somebody else’s face.
A similar face. The guy turned the corner, not looking back. She stood there another moment, wondering. But then with a mental shrug she knelt by the steps once more and returned to work.
After all, it was nearly the Fourth of July, and the remote island town of Eastport—three hours from Bangor, light-years from anywhere else—was full of tourists. No doubt the bicyclist was one of them, and she really had seen him around, somewhere.
As for his riding by so often, maybe he liked the house. She had when, upon finding Eastport over a decade ago, she’d fallen instantly in love with the old place. Now from the porch steps she pictured it as she’d first seen it:
An 1823 white clapboard Federal with three stories plus an attic, it had three red-brick chimneys and forty-eight windows, each with a pair of green shutters. Among its other selling points were a huge yard, a fireplace in every room, and original hardwood floors.
Unfortunately, it had also been a wreck. Under nearly two hundred years’ worth of charm lay nearly as many of neglect; she’d had to get the wiring redone and the chimneys rebuilt, and it had needed painting.
All of which she’d had done, for an amount slightly less than it would’ve cost to bulldoze the place and start over. Back then, she’d known no better; nowadays, mostly from necessity, she was a halfway decent home-repair enthusiast.
But it wasn’t only about money. Scrape off enough old paint, patch enough plaster, sand the wood floors and rehabilitate half a hundred antique windows plus shutters, and you too could begin feeling that maybe—just maybe—you’d rehabilitated yourself.
Too bad the half she was any good at was so rarely the half that needed doing. This time, she’d decided to paint all the parts of the house that she could reach and farm out the high work. The plan had seemed reasonable as she was formulating it.
But for one thing, the porch was massive. So there was a lot of old paint to scrape off before the new could go on. Also, the peeling bits clung like barnacles. Wielding the tool, she went at them with fresh energy; they hung on for dear life.
“Grr,” she muttered, but they couldn’t hear her, and even if they could it would probably only make them more obstinate.
As she thought this, the guy on the bike appeared again, pedaling along. Dark hair, striped red-and-white polo shirt, blue jeans … in his middle twenties, maybe, she thought.
The bike was a balloon-tired Schwinn from the fleet of them that were available for rent downtown, with a wire basket up front, fake-leather saddlebags, and a bell.
Brring! She wouldn’t have thought a bike bell could be rung threateningly, but he managed it.
“Hey,” she began, taking a step toward the street.
Climbing sharply from the waterfront, Key Street featured big antique houses fronted by huge maples lining each side. It was the very picture of a traditional Maine coast town’s prosperous old residential area. Scowling, the guy stood on the pedals and pumped, speeding away through it.
Once more she felt she knew him from somewhere. But there wasn’t much she could do about it, so when he’d gone she returned to removing a ton of porch paint one stubborn chip at a time.
Soon a warm, salt breeze, sunshine like pale champagne, and the faint cries of seagulls over the bay had all but erased her memory of the bike guy … until, just when she’d really forgotten about him, he came back yet again, half an hour or so later.
Using a belt sander, she was at last making progress on the job. Under the power tool’s howling attack, the paint came off in clouds of sawdust.
And that was more like it. She’d finished the first step, begun on the second, and shut the sander off to replace a clogged belt when someone behind her cleared his throat meaningfully. On its own, her hand moved to grab the sharp-edged paint scraper.
“You won’t need that.” His voice was New York–accented.
She stood, turned, and took a step toward him, forcing him to move back fast.
“You’re on private property. And I want you to leave now.”
The fellow smiled at her. Not a pleasant smile.
More like a baring of teeth. “Yeah, I guess you would.”
Close up, he appeared clean and neat, with a careful shave and a recent haircut. “But hey, not everyone gets what they want in this world.” The smile slid into a smirk.
Her heart thumped. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.” She took another step. “You’ll have to go, or I’m going to call the police and let them take care of you.”
At this he let out a laugh of genuine amusement. She was gripping the paint scraper very tightly, she realized.
“ ‘Call the police,’ ” he repeated. “That’s a good one.”
“Okay, that’s it. I mean it, you need to go.”
She searched her mind for an exit strategy, not wanting to turn her back on him. Besides, the screen door at the top of the steps was locked so the dogs wouldn’t barge out through it.
Oh, the hell with it. Back in Manhattan, half the pedestrians on the sidewalk were pushier than this guy. Scraper in hand, she advanced on him.
His hands went up in a conciliatory gesture. “Okay, I get the idea. You don’t want to hash over old times.”
She followed him to the end of the sidewalk. He got on the bike, rode it in a tight circle, then braked hard, skidding.
“I guess if I were you, I wouldn’t want the past coming back to bite me, either. Not if I’d done what you did.”
Speechless, she could only stare.
“But it has,” he continued. “What’d it say in that famous guy’s play? ‘Murder will out’?”
She found her own voice. “You’ve got the wrong person. Now please take your nonsense and—”
His hands gripped the handlebars: smooth skin, pristine fingernails. “I know you, though. And what you did. Anyway, you’ve got until the fourth,” he added. “When it’s over, you will be, too. Over, that is.”
As he spoke, a little cloud sailed across the sun and the sky darkened suddenly. The breeze stiffened, and all at once the gulls’ cries sounded hostile.
“That play-writing guy had it right,” said her unpleasant visitor. “ ‘Blood shows up again. Murder will out’.”
He began pedaling slowly away. “And now,” he called back as she stared after him, “right now, it’s here and it’s outing you.”
Brrring!
SHE WAS STILL SHAKING WHEN SHE GOT INSIDE. LOCKING the back door, she hurried to the front to be sure the screen really was on the hook.
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It was, and the bicycle guy was nowhere in sight. Her heart hammering, she checked the dogs and found them both asleep in the laundry room, the coolest place in the house.
Not that they’d have been any help. At thirteen, Monday the black Labrador was too ancient to be roused by much, and Prill the Doberman would be inclined to kiss a burglar to death.
Meanwhile, her husband, Wade Sorenson, and her grown son, Sam, were out fishing together; her father, Jacob Tiptree, and her stepmother, Bella Diamond, were away for the morning, too.
So for now she was on her own with this. Whatever this was; maybe nothing. But who was the guy … and what could he want?
Back in Manhattan, it might not’ve been so strange. Some of her clients there were so crooked that when their sons went to prison, they regarded it as the equivalent of graduate school.
But eventually she’d wised up, throttled down, and left the city behind, along with an ex-husband so faithless that the only thing she could depend on about him was that she couldn’t depend on him.
By contrast, the old house in Eastport could be depended on for many things: faulty plumbing, a foundation that was fast rotting into the ground, and a bad fuse box, for instance.
When she moved in, the old plaster was falling down anywhere that the antique wallpaper wasn’t holding it up. The floors were indeed lovely, but so uneven they resembled the heaving deck of a storm-tossed ship. The bath was a mildewed horror, the woodwork needed refinishing, and the roof leaked, so the gorgeous old tin ceilings were lacy with rust.
In other words, the place was exactly like her ex-husband, Victor, only fixable. So naturally she’d fallen for it.
Now she looked around at the big, bright kitchen with its high, bare windows, pine wainscoting, and scuffed floor. Even as old-fashioned and faintly shabby as it was, due to her stepmother Bella Diamond’s efforts the room always glowed as if lit from within by the spirits of Betty Crocker and Holly Homemaker.
And the old things in it—the soapstone sink, the pass-through to the butler’s pantry—just made it more familiar and comforting. But with the arrival of the bike-riding stranger, the past abruptly took on a threatening edge. And what had he meant about her having until the fourth? Had he actually been threatening her?