Kingdom by the Sea (Romantic Suspense) (30 page)

“There
must be a switch somewhere,” Michael maintained, even as the glow from the
kitchen dwindled with each inch of descent. 

He
knew that Nicole felt safe with him.  As it should be—of course he wouldn’t
hurt her.  Generally speaking, he may be a total bastard in some ways, but he
would still find a way to protect her in this. 

Finally,
they landed on the cement floor and Michael sighed.  “I can't see a goddamn
thing.”

“I
should have brought a flashlight,” Nicole grumbled.  “Let me go back up and
find one.”  She leaned against the wall to guide her and just like that she
said, “Wait!  I think I feel a switch!” 

Suddenly
the basement was cast in a dim haze of light.  “Nice work, babe,” Michael
blurted with a smile, and she smiled back at him.  She sidled up close to him
again. 

And
then she screamed.

“Holy
shit,” Michael muttered, and then held an arm back to keep Nicole from coming
closer.  “It's a body.”

“Oh my
God,” she whispered, her head buried in Michael's shoulder.  “It can't be...” 

Even
to her own ears, her voice was a frantic kind of whisper, a scared kind of
prayer.   It couldn't be except that it was.  The body of a man sprawled on the
floor about twenty feet away.  His face was bluish and distorted looking, and
his eyes wide open as if he were staring at them with rapt attention.  Despite
the dim lighting, the distance between them and the man's frightening
appearance, Nicole recognized him.  Gripping onto Michael's shirt, she said, “I
think that's Abel Kelling!”   

“Oh
my God,” Michael said, his voice low, as if he didn't want to disturb the
dead.  And there could be little doubt this man was dead. 

Suddenly
overwhelmed, Nicole swallowed down a lump of emotion.  Seeing death like this,
up so close, was devastating in a way—chilling, saddening.  Especially someone
whom she had seen so recently.  When had Abel come back to the house?  With
Nicole being so diligent about security now, how had she missed it?  How had
the alarm system missed it? 

Unless
there was another entrance?  One from the outside—?

“Abel? 
You're sure?”  Michael hadn't met Abel, but Nicole had told him all about him,
including how he had stood her up at the Squire. 

Glumly,
she gulped and nodded.  “Now I see why he never showed up for lunch.”

“Stay
here,” Michael ordered gently and walked toward the body.  “Suffice it to say,
he's dead…” he remarked and reluctantly prodded the lapels of the man’s coat. 
“No ID.  Unless it's in his back pocket and I'm sure as hell not anxious to
look.”  Horrified, Nicole grimaced.  Just the thought of turning over this
lifeless body to rifle through pockets… 

She
squeezed her eyes shut, tried to will her breathing to relax.

“Jesus,
he's
really
dead,” Michael muttered, coming back over.  Even though his
words were matter-of-fact, Nicole could tell that he was just as bewildered as
she.  Not that Michael was one to get rattled, but he was definitely stunned. 
Still, as she observed her own trembling hands, she envied his composure. 
“What the hell,” he said, pulling her close into his arms.  “One day he's
inviting you to lunch and now, here he is.” 

“
In
a sepulchre there by the sea,
” she murmured.

***

Some
time later the police arrived.  They came with the county medical examiner and
eventually took the body away.  Once the commotion had cleared, Detective Crier
remained in the foyer, talking with Nicole and Michael.  “So then you don't
know how he died?” she asked Detective Crier.

Crier
shook his head, looking defeated.  “M.E. says it's hard to say yet.  There are
no obvious signs, no blatant wounds.  Could be natural causes, of course.  At
this point, there's no reason to assume otherwise.  And of course, I'm sure the
temperature down here considerably slowed down rigor mortis and everything
after.” 

Crier's
words were a macabre cluster of jargon that Nicole couldn't indulge; she didn't
know anything about rigor mortis or the “everything after,” and even the
thought sickened and scared her.  “I still don't understand how Abel could be
down there in the first place,” she said now.  “Without me even knowing it? 
There must be an entrance from the outside somehow?”

“Nope. 
We've checked the perimeter for root cellar doors and ground level windows. 
Nothing.  Only way appears to be through the kitchen.  Let me ask you, Miss, is
there anything of value in the house?”

She
couldn't help but puff out a breath of incredulity.  “Well, a lot of things—to
an extent.  I mean, Aunt Nina had lots of books, some antique furniture.  Oh,
and her jewelry.”

“That's
here in the house, too?”

She
nodded.  “For now.  It really belongs to my sisters...and also my mom and
Beth.”

Detective
Crier scribbled briefly in his pad.  With a cursory tone, he asked, “Who's
Beth?”

“My
aunt.”

Quietly,
Michael interjected, “Nina had two sisters, then?  Your mom and Beth?”

Initially,
Nicole nodded without real comprehension.  Then Michael's words sank in. 
Nicole wasn't the only one with two sisters, and neither was Ginger or Hazel. 
Aunt Nina herself had been part of a trio of sisters. 
Three sisters.  Three
sisters lighthouse?  Three—

“Welp,
I suppose that's all I need,” Detective Crier said and abruptly flipped his pad
closed.  “Once we get the official report from the M.E., we'll know more and
hopefully we'll find someone to make a positive identification.”   

“But
I told you, it's Abel Kelling.” 

“I
know, but you said you really didn't know him too well.  It's just a formality,
but since there's no wallet or ID...  Anyway, like I said, it's probably a case
of death by natural causes.  The only strange part about it is not knowing the
body was here.”

“Or
how
he got here,” Nicole said again—not sure why Detective Crier wasn't more
stymied himself, even though she'd pretty much belabored the point by now.

“I'm
thinking your aunt might have given him a key?  The code to the alarm system? 
Seeing as how they were an item for a long time, as you said.”  At first Nicole
was going to concede the point, but then she recalled how Abel had shown up at
Tinsdale, specifically asking her for the key.  When she relayed this to
Detective Crier, he looked decidedly confused.  “When was this?  How long did
you say you've been in town?”

“Two
weeks or so,” she reiterated.  “But the conversation I'm referring to was just
this past week.”

Even
more confused—or maybe just disbelieving, she couldn't tell which—Crier tilted
his head.  “Miss Sheffield...I'm afraid not.”

“What
do you mean?” she asked a bit defensively. 

A
chill frittered up her spine when he explained: “Because this body is over a
month old.”

***

Later,
Nicole leaned against the kitchen counter, fiddling with the handle of her
coffee cup, trying to gather together the threads of her mind. 

Unsuccessful,
she eventually looked up at Michael, who was watching her.  He set down his
Santa mug and crossed over to her.  “So let me see if I understand this,” she
began.  "Either the man who came to see me at Tinsdale wasn't Abel
Kelling, but rather someone
pretending
to be—because the real Abel
Kelling was lying dead in my basement.  Comforting thought, by the way. 
Or—
more
realistically
—
I'm mistaken about the identity of the dead man.  After
all, he
was
sort of
...
well...” 

She
stopped herself from saying “decayed” or something equally devastating—and yet
at the same time, she couldn't bear to trivialize the shadows of what they'd
seen by describing the deceased as “worse for wear.”

“Either
way,” Michael pointed out, “we're dealing with one real Abel Kelling and one
guy who looks a helluva lot like him.  Right?”

“So I
really haven't cleared anything up,” she admitted.  “You know, it's so ironic. 
I was ready to pack my bags and leave that night I was grabbed on the beach—and
at that point, I had no reason to assume I was still in any kind of danger. 
And
now...
I know I might be in serious danger yet going home is that
last thing on my mind.”  She searched his eyes with determination.  “I have to
find out the truth of all this, Michael.  I’ve gone too far with this now to
turn around and just try to forget everything.”

“I'll
help you,” he said.  “You know that.” 

“One
thing I know is that the man who showed up at Tinsdale was the same man who was
at the reading of the will.  At Cedric Davy's office, in
Boston
.  Ugh, I'm so
confused,” she said, burying her face in her hands.

“Me,
too,” Michael agreed.  “But no matter what, the guy in the basement—whether it
was Abel or a look-alike—he was obviously here looking for something.”

Softly,
she gasped.  “You think he knew about the treasure?”

“It's
possible.  And if he knew about the treasure, well, who else might?”

“Oh
my God, Michael—what are we gonna do?”

He
folded her into one of his warm, strong hugs.  “We'll do the only thing we
can,” he said.  “Find the treasure first.”

Usually Michael
and Nicole slept well together, with her body curving perfectly into his, but
tonight his arm was draped over her possessively, protectively.  At some time
in the night, they both awoke touching each other.  She squirmed against him
and he stirred back.  With a hand on her abdomen, he pressed up against her. 
Heat rose between them, pure carnality, as Nicole made a soft moan and Michael
dipped his fingers below the waistband of her panties and pulled them down. 
Moments later they were clinging to each other, tangled together in a sexual
frenzy. 

Eventually, she
sighed, and her eyes drifted shut.  Her breathing became rhythmic.  Idly,
Michael ran his fingers up and down her arm, unable to get back to sleep.  His
mind was wildly awake, darting from one theory to the next as to how to clean
up the mess he had started.

When he was sure
Nicole was deeply asleep, he moved quietly from her bed and into the hallway. 
The answer had to be in that library.  With Nicole being a librarian and Nina
Corday's obvious love of books herself—plus the fact that the library held so
many paintings—well, it just made sense that the culmination of all this be
somehow found in there.  And wouldn't the library be the room Nicole would be
most drawn to?

Uncomfortably,
Michael acknowledged his own weakness.  He was edgier now than he had been
since this whole thing started.  Because he cared too much about figuring this
out.  Before Nicole got hurt.  Had the corpse in the basement really been a
random case of natural causes?  No way.  Too coincidental, considering what
Nina Corday had been hiding.

Michael
might not know all the pieces yet, but now he had every reason to think the
person running this job—whoever Lucius was reporting to—was dangerous. 

Damn
it, this was never what he'd wanted.  He should've known better than to get
mixed up with anything involving Craig Lucius.  But at the time it had sounded
like a perfect, even easy way to re-coup the money that Michael had cost
Caleb.  All he had to do was get inside the house using charm not force, find
the Demberto painting of “a girl in a blue dress,” and take it.  Done. 
Simple.  A victimless crime.

Only
not quite.  Suddenly it was way too complicated. 

At
this point, if it weren't for Nicole, he'd cover his bets and go.  Logic
dictated that he get out now before the cops started to look into his
background, before they discovered that none of the Michael Kings in
Massachusetts was him.

What
a mess. 

Arturo
Demberto had been a moderately successful painter at the turn of the last
century.  A “lost” work of his today could be worth around two million dollars,
maybe more illegally, but Michael was not too involved in the art world and
didn't care to be.  His cut was supposed to be cash up front, and walk away. 
Whoever had tapped Lucius for this mission had somehow known that Nina Corday
had come to possess the Demberto. 

Obviously
Michael had overestimated his own ability to turn the tables on Lucius.  He
thought he would come here and basically taking over this whole thing, on his
terms, but he'd really been kidding himself.  He'd never anticipated getting so
close to Nicole, spending this much time with her.  He'd never figured it would
take him this long to find the hidden Demberto amid the other works in the
house, or even under a bed, in a wall safe, something. 
Face it
, he told
himself now,
you were thinking in goddamn clichés. 

And
now time was closing in and he still had no idea where the thing was.  What if
Nicole was on the verge of ending up like the guy in the basement?  Balling up
his fist, Michael felt tension tighten his very bones.  No, he wouldn't let
that happen.