Kingdom by the Sea (Romantic Suspense) (22 page)

“I was tightening
a few loose bolts,” he said, motioning vaguely toward the bookshelves.  “Ginger
and Hazel hire me from time to time for jobs like that.  Fix the water
fountain, plug up a hole or two, things like that.”  Nodding, Nicole eyed the
aisle that Mac had emerged from; she saw a closed tool box overturned on the
floor.  She had to assume that the loud crash she had heard a few moments
earlier had been from Mac, perhaps dropping his tool box. 

“Then you’ve
finished with Nina’s porch?” Nicole asked.

“No, not yet,”
Mac replied.  Which Nicole found strange.  Why leave a job you were working on
before it was finished, and go work on another job?  Unless it was because
Ginger and Hazel were paying customers, and Mac was fixing Nina’s porch as a
favor.  But still, why were both these jobs coincidentally located wherever
Nicole was at a given time? 

No.  She quickly
countered that last thought in her mind.  She was becoming paranoid, and
definitely too jumpy. 

Still, her
indefinable irritation with him seemed to linger.  “Well, it’s nice seeing you,
Mac,” she said, quite generically, and move past him to the stairs.

Nicole wrapped
past the sitting area on the first floor, and down the hall that led to Hazel
and Ginger's office.  She knocked lightly on the door.  Waited.  Tried again,
but no one answered.  Hmm, was Ginger in the rest room?  Just as she turned to go,
she heard a scuffle behind the door.  It was a muffled sound of movement, and
then something dropped, something that sounded heavy and metallic like a
stapler.

The door opened,
but only part way before it banged into something.  “Oh!  Um...hang on...”
Ginger said and noisily dragged a piece of furniture or something across the
floor.  Apparently whatever it was had been obstructing the door—had it been
placed there deliberately to keep people from entering?

Before she could
mull that over, the door opened all the way and revealed Ginger smiling
tremulously.  Betna Doyle, from the Preservation League, stood several feet
behind, by the window sill.  Both women appeared flustered.  Betna's face was
flushed, the dark rose of her cheeks like stains on her caramel skin.  She
smiled feebly and then reached for her tote bag.  “Hi Betna...” Nicole began,
but the woman was clearly anxious to leave, not to remake their acquaintance. 

“Hello,” she
hurried and gave a brief wave to Ginger.  “See you soon, I have to run.” 

“Wait—” Ginger
called after her.  Appearing distracted, she glanced at Nicole, and blinked
rapidly at her.  “What did you need?” 

“Um...” 

Ginger's eyes
shifted to the corridor; she obviously had her mind on catching up with Betna,
not chatting with Nicole.  On the spot, Nicole improvised, “I just needed the
copier.”

“Oh!  It's
upstairs.  It's at the opposite side of the floor than where you sit.  That's
probably why you didn't notice it.”

“Thanks,” Nicole
said with a smile.  “I really appreciate it.”  No sooner had she said the words
than Ginger was moving past her, scurrying down the corridor to catch up with
her friend.

What now? 

Well, why not use
the photocopier now that she thought of it?  She could make copies of the
materials that had her aunt's notations and take a closer look at them at
home.  Maybe something would click if she tried to sort this out.  Who knows,
maybe Michael would help her.

By the time she
got home, set dinner down for Puddle and changed into fleece pants and a
hoodie, Nicole had become skeptical of her own notion.  Maybe she had been
looking for a message that wasn't there.  Maybe she only
wanted
to
believe that Aunt Nina was trying to communicate something important in her
various notations.

Either way, she
laid the photocopies out for Michael on the coffee table.  “So what do you
think?” she said, sitting down beside him.

“Can you think of
any reason why your aunt would underline these particular phrases?” he asked,
pointing to the words “
North
Tower
” and “old house”?  Helplessly, she shook
her head.  “And next to '
North
Tower
,' she wrote '1923.'  Hmm...I wonder why
the year 1923 is relevant.”

Recalling her
reading, Nicole said, “Okay, the
North
Tower
was originally
part of the Chatham Lighthouse on
South
Beach
.  This was back
when
Chatham
still had
two
light towers.  And then—oh, I just remembered something!  1923 was the year
that the
North
Tower
was moved from
South
Beach
to
Nauset
Beach
.”

“
Nauset
Beach
,” Michael echoed
thoughtfully, “was that a special spot to your aunt?  Or to you?”

With a shrug,
Nicole replied, “Not that I recall.  I know we went there a once or twice
growing up.  I remember that the waves were really high, but other than
that...”  Michael grabbed a pen and jotted down the letters, side by side: O W
L F 

“
Slow
?” he
suggested.  “Or
flow
? 
Flow
?”

“
Owl
?”
Nicole said.  “Or maybe...
fowl
? 
Wolf
?”

“Hmm.  Let me ask
you.  There must be some reason you're so focused on these notes from your
aunt.  What are you thinking?”

“I'm not sure,”
she admitted.  “I think maybe she's trying to tell me something.  I know how
bizarre that sounds.”  Expecting Michael to exhibit some kind of incredulity,
Nicole waited for him to slant his gaze or furrow his brows.  But he didn't. 
He just listened, waited.  She went on, “But I can't shake the feeling that
these notes are part of some bigger picture.”

“Almost like a
puzzle?” he suggested. 

Biting her lip,
Nicole nodded slowly.  That was it.  “But wait.  If Aunt Nina had something to
tell me, why not just come out and tell me?”

“Maybe she
couldn't.  Maybe she wanted to tell you something that was—I don't want to say
secretive
—but
private.  Personal, somehow.  Maybe it's not something she could come out and
say, or blurt out in her will.  Maybe it was something she needed you to put
together yourself.”

Nicole became
hopeful again.  “Michael, do you really think so?”

He motioned to
the table.  “Do we know that these are all the letters?”

“God, I didn't
think of that.  There could be more.”

“Sure, why not?  You're
not done getting through the research materials yet, right?”

She shook her
head.  “Almost.  So you don't think my imagination has run wild?  That salt air
and isolation have gotten to me?”

“I don't see how
you're isolated.”  He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers.  “You've got
me.”

She pressed into
him and kissed him again, then locked her mouth deeply with his.  Michael's
lips were like a promise of passion and breathlessness to come.  When they
broke apart, he ran his fingers over her cheek.  

“There's a puzzle
here.”  His voice was almost husky when he said, “If you want, I'll help you
figure it out.” 

Soundlessly, she
sighed, feeling both blissful and eager.  Not for the first time, Nicole felt
lucky to have found him. 

She didn't stop
to think until much later that, actually, he had found her.

***

“What does
'close' mean?”

“It means I'm
close, Lucius—so back off and let me work.”

Back on his boat,
Michael had had no choice but to pick up the call.  If he didn't start
pacifying Lucius, he ran the risk of the fool jumping into the mix and doing
something impulsive.  As it was, he was obviously getting jittery and had
already left two messages.

Lucius barked,
“You're taking your sweet time.  I would have had fifty paintings by now in the
amount of time you've spent in that house already.”  Michael's jaw tightened;
he hated being watched.  “You were supposed to get inside the almighty fucking
fortress of a house and get it.  It wasn't supposed to take this long
already.” 

“Earning a
person's trust takes time.  I don't expect you to know about that.  It's not
like earning someone's annoyance, which you're a pro at.  Where are you right
now, anyway?”

“Close enough,
don't worry about it.  Do you even know where the thing is?”

“Well, it's not
hanging on the wall, dumb-fuck.  But...Nina Corday did leave her niece a sort
of road map.  It's hidden somewhere, just not in the house.”  That part Michael
didn't actually know, but he hoped it would make Lucius back off a
little—thinking they were on the delicate verge of things.  

But Michael
did
believe that the painting was within his reach, and that Nicole had no idea
what she possessed.  Earlier, she'd been almost apologizing for her notion of a
puzzle left by her aunt, but Michael didn't consider it the least bit crazy. 
It actually made perfect sense.  Not risking telling Nicole straight out, Nina
Corday had left her a trail of clues.  A treasure map in a way.

There was a lot
of money at stake.  But money aside, Michael was in deep here.  Even if he wanted
to bail on the job, he couldn't.  Unless he wanted Lucius to try to get the
painting himself, and Lucius would surely use force to do it. 

Immediately,
Michael suppressed the thought. 
I won't let that happen. 

“No shit, there's
a map?” Lucius exclaimed now.  “Let me see it!  Bring it to me.”

Michael rolled
his eyes.  “Not literally a map.  Just that...”  What was the point of
divulging more?  The more Lucius was told, the more he insinuated himself into
every corner.  “Her aunt left clues, let's put it that way.  I'm helping Nicole
figure them out.  She trusts me.” 

The last part was
said as a deliberate reminder to Lucius of why Michael was in this thing in the
first place.  Like any con, each player had his role.  Lucius was the
middleman; Michael was the front man.  And some mysterious person in
Chatham
who had
orchestrated this was the money man.  Now Michael was starting to get concerned
about Nicole, to the point that it dominated much of his thought.  It was just
a matter of decency, really.  Lucius was a dangerous wild card, even without a
mysterious silent partner involved.  There was no reason why Nicole should get
hurt.  If Michael could decipher the trail that led to the painting, he could
lift it before Lucius—or anyone else—got too impatient and tried to take it
first. 

***

As Craig Lucius
turned around, he shoved his cell phone in the front pocket of his blue jeans. 
Although, the other man observed, to call them blue jeans was an exercise in
poetic license.  The greenish grime threatened to bleed out all of the faded
denim.  And his shirt was a tapestry of wrinkles.  Lovely.

The observant
man, who went by his middle name of '
Alvin
' in all his dealings with Craig
Lucius, studied his confederate, noting, not for the first time, that working
with him was just barely palatable.  Lucius was uncouth and indiscreet.  He
smelled like urine-soaked cigarettes and made Medusa look like a Revlon
commercial.  But he was not without his redeeming qualities as a criminal. 

With a network of
crooked hustlers in his proverbial Rolodex, Lucius had feelers out even as far
as forgery and smuggling.  He was less intelligent than one might hope, but
also more capable than he looked.  It was an odd combination, but so far, one
that had stood the test of time. 

The two had met
three years ago during a museum heist in which both men had had an
interest—along with several other parties.  While Lucius had fenced a few of
the stolen pieces from that heist,
Alvin
had had a much greater distance
from the whole affair than that. 
Alvin
prided himself on being a thief
three or four times removed; it took time and intelligence to enjoy that kind
of profitable distance.  

What was at stake
now, though, went beyond money.  This came down to freedom.

Apparently this
con man whom Lucius had brought on board was essential to the job.  To gain
access to Nina Corday's house without attracting attention, that was key.  A
break-in would not do, and would raise too many questions.  The fact that this
man, Michael Corso, had absolutely no link to
Alvin
was even more
essential.

Alvin
simply had to
get the painting before anyone else did.  Otherwise...

Alvin
shuddered.  He
had taken pains to ensure his success in this venture, and there was no point
entertaining notions of failure.  With determination, he knew: he would
never
go back to his old life. 

Now
Alvin
sat back in the
hotel chair and pondered the recap Lucius provided.  How clever of Nina Corday
to hide the truth in a mess of clues, rather than simply exposing what she knew
outright, upon her death.  This might work out even better than he hoped.  It
sounded like Nicole Sheffield was more naive than she appeared to be on paper,
or even in person, from
Alvin
's brief encounters so far.  Graduated the
University
of
Chicago
, even had a
master's degree and yet—apparently too sheltered—or gullible—to suspect a
thing.