By Familiar Means (24 page)

“Kenisha . . .”

But she just turned and walked down to join Pete beside the battered Toyota Corolla without once looking back.

26

“How are you holding up?” Frank asked as he came up beside me.

“I'm not,” I confessed. “The only reason I'm not collapsing into a quivering heap is generations of Blessingsound Britton pride.”

“I hear that.”

A number of ideas that really should have shown up earlier suddenly assembled themselves inside my tired mind. “I didn't stop to think. This must be so hard for you, after your aunt.”

“Actually, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Maybe it's karma; I don't know.” Frank shrugged. “I mean, somebody helped me find out what really happened to Aunt Dorothy, and maybe kept me from going to jail. Now I get to turn around and help somebody else.”

Almost the first thing I learned about magic was the threefold law. What you send out into the world comes back to you, tripled. This has a lot of implications.

“I just wish my karma was to find all my lost socks,” I muttered.

“Yeah. That, too.” Frank chuckled.

“So what did you really go back for?” I asked. I mean, it's conceivable he really did need to wash his hands, but I doubted it.

Turns out I was right. “You saw those two women sitting up front when we came in? The ones with all the papers piled on the table?” he asked. I nodded. “One of them was Christine Hilde, Gretchen's daughter, and, incidentally, the marketing director for Harbor's Rest.”

I let that little fact settle into place. I hadn't recognized her from my drawings, but now a fresh puzzle piece slid into place in my mind. “If you noticed that, then you must have noticed that the other woman was Kelly Pierce, the hotel's food and beverages manager.”

“No,” said Frank slowly. “She's not somebody I know on sight.”

“Well, doing marketing for a big hotel is not exactly a nine-to-five kind of job,” I said slowly. “There could be lots of reasons they'd be meeting away from the office at one in the morning.”

“Sure,” agreed Frank. “All kinds of reasons.”

“I take it that's why you stayed behind when I left with Pete and Kenisha? To try to find out exactly which reason it was?”

He smiled, just a little. “You begin to understand my methods, Watson. Ashley, our waitress, is friends with one of my interns. I asked her if she maybe happened to notice what all those papers they were passing back and forth were about.”

“Any luck?”

“Unfortunately, between Russian Literature 210 and a table full of attention-hungry frat boys, all Ashley noticed was that the pair of them were very, very happy.”

“Happy like maybe they were about to score a big deal with a major hospitality chain?” We had known Shelly Kinsdale was talking to at least one Hilde. Maybe now we knew which one. “But . . . if the deal for selling Harbor's Rest fell through, what would they be happy about?” I asked. But as
soon as the question was out of my mouth, I knew. “They're going to set up a new place with Dreame Royale backing.”

“And it's probably that luxury boutique hotel Shelly was telling us about,” agreed Frank. “The question I've got is are they going to build somewhere new, or are they planning on taking over the Harbor's Rest when it goes bankrupt?”

I grimaced. “Either one would make for a few awkward Sunday dinners.”

“Awkward enough that Christine might be trying to keep the plans a secret.”

“Awkward enough that Kelly Pierce might be paying Jimmy Upton off to keep his mouth shut?” I suggested.

“That, too,” agreed Frank. “Something to sleep on. Come on, let's get you home.”

We climbed into Frank's very used Honda Civic. He started it up on the third try and got it to reverse on the second. I huddled in the passenger seat and tried to find some neutral topic of conversation to hold us for the drive. I failed.

“Frank, we haven't had a chance to talk about the lease,” I said as he pulled out of the parking lot and signaled a right turn.

“You're not going to let that go, are you?” Frank stopped to let a cluster of young men blunder across the street. They might have been the frat boys from the diner. “Look, Anna, I'm glad to let you live in the cottage. I don't want to sell it, and I've got another ten months on my apartment lease. It's better to have somebody taking care of the place than just letting it sit empty. Okay?”

“No, it's not okay.”

“Why not?”

I did not have a good answer. I looked out at the passing buildings, all closed down for the night. “Karma,” I said finally. “And neither one of us knows what's going to happen tomorrow. Maybe you get hit by the crosstown bus and the cottage gets inherited by your greedy second cousin Arthur who turns around and sells it to a developer and me and
Alistair are thrown out onto the sidewalk in the middle of the New England winter.”

Frank laughed. “I'd say don't be ridiculous, except for two things.”

“Which are?”

“One is everything I've seen happen to you since you got to Portsmouth.”

“What's the other?”

“I really do have a second cousin named Arthur.”

I'd think about that later. “So, you'll give me a lease? A real grown-up legal lease with rent and tenant obligations and landlord obligations and everything?”

“With all the bells and whistles. I'm sure your lawyer can even tie it up in red ribbon if you want.”

I did want, as a matter of fact. “Frank, it's not that I don't think you're being generous . . .” Really generous. Even if you factored in what amounted to caretaker duties, it was much too generous for me to accept under any circumstances, especially when those circumstances involved Frank lending me his jacket and helping me with the police and everything.

“It's okay, Anna. I get it. You don't want to feel like you owe anybody.”

“Karma,” I said again.

“Karma,” he agreed.

We'd left the downtown, and instead of historic houses and brick storefronts and converted warehouses, we passed individual homes sheltered by the grand old trees that were part of what I loved about this town. In the daylight, the summer green would be fading to reveal the red and gold fall splendor. Now, though, they were just all the different shades of gray and ashy white.

“Penny for your thoughts?” said Frank.

“Not worth it.” I looked out at the street and the pools of light and the surrounding darkness. The truth is, right then I was thinking about that Hopper painting
Nighthawks
, the one of the people at the lunch counter after dark. Except in
my mind, that lunch counter was populated with Hildes: Christine and Gretchen and both sons, with Kelly Pierce bringing in cups of coffee. I thought about all those different arguments I had drawn up in my attic. But I also thought about Chuck and Jake and how they cleaned out their attic before we could go in and make sure the place was ghost-free, maybe even before it stopped being a crime scene. I thought about Kenisha and Pete and how they were both very smart and very sure there was more going on with Jake and Miranda than met the eye.

The Galaxie was parked in the cottage driveway. The lights were on inside the house. Grandma B.B. was home in there, and probably waiting up for me, most likely with Alistair curled up on her lap.

Frank pulled us up to the curb and shut off the engine. He also dug into his pocket. I thought he was going for his notebook again, but instead he held out a penny in two fingers. He dropped it, and I caught it automatically.

“Spill,” Frank said.

I shot him an irritated glance, but it didn't last. “I don't know.” I turned the penny over in my own fingers a few times before I tucked it into my purse. “I don't want to . . .”

“I like Jake and Miranda, too,” he said softly. Neither one of us was making any move to get out of the car. “But that doesn't mean they haven't maybe made some . . . mistakes.”

“Like selling marijuana out the back door forty years ago?”

“I was thinking there might be something more recent. Something you've decided you can't tell Pete and Kenisha, at least not yet.”

I didn't look at him. I couldn't. Thank goodness we were sitting in the dark and he couldn't see how my cheeks were burning.

“Anna, you know, whatever it is, you can trust me.”

I wanted to. Frank was a friend, and I liked him. But he was also a journalist, and whichever way it went, this was a huge story. I did not want to hurt Jake and Miranda. I
wanted to keep seeing them as nice people who just wanted to help the community and the people who worked for them. There was one problem.

“Is there any way to find out how Jake and Miranda bought that building?” I asked. “I mean, that's a pretty amazing piece of real estate. I know one of their baristas got a social media campaign going . . .”

“Oh, yeah. That'd be Chuck. I saw some of that. Very smart.”

Chuck. I stared out at my lovely, peaceful cottage. Chuck had developed an online coffee connector. Except, what if . . . what if it wasn't just coffee that he was connecting people to? And what if Jimmy had found out? I closed my eyes. What if Blanchard had been right all along? What if this wasn't about real estate or riverfront development or family business? What if it was exactly what it looked like?

“Anna, you've got something. What is it?”

“I don't know,” I said slowly. “I mean, I know that thanks to Chuck, Jake and Miranda have been doing really well lately, but buying and renovating a historic building takes a major outlay.”

Yes, I said it, but I didn't like hearing it.

Frank let out a long breath. “Okay. Okay. But, remember, you're the one who said Jake had no problem going down in that tunnel. If he and Miranda were involved with Jimmy's death, why would they take you down there?”

I nodded, but I didn't feel any better. “Frank, I'm going to tell you something, but you have to swear you'll keep it out of the paper until we've had a chance to check it out.”

I was doing this. I was hiding crucial evidence. I was lying to the police and my coven sister. But I was also trying to keep a kid who said he just wanted to marry his girlfriend and provide for his new baby from getting his name smeared.

“Okay, I swear,” said Frank.

I told him about the ghost-hunting expedition and about Chuck and what Chuck had told us. “But now that we've seen Kelly Pierce and Christine Hilde, it changes things,” I
said. “Because if there's something bigger going on, it might not be Jake and Miranda who are in it with Chuck. It might be Christine and Kelly.” Because funding a new hotel, even with Dreame Royale backing, was going to take cash, and lots of it.

Frank let out a long breath. “That's a lot to conclude from one meeting in a diner.”

“But it's not just one meeting.” It's a vision of a payoff, with Jimmy in the middle between two women.

“Anna,” said Frank. “This thing with Chuck. You really should tell the police.”

“Not yet,” I said. “Please. You promised. We just need a little more time.”