Whiskey Island (8 page)

He smiled. It was a sexier smile than she remembered, not quite the smile of an old friend. “Still the same old Case, huh? Cutting me off when I get too close to the truth.”

“What are you doing back in Cleveland? Your folks are gone. You were living in God’s country, and you traded California sunshine for this?”

“I did.” He didn’t elaborate.

Someone rested a hand on Casey’s shoulder, and she turned in surprise.

“Casey?” Peggy looked apologetic. “The baby-sitter said she had to go, so I paid her and sent her on her way. She says Ashley is sleeping soundly, but I can take a break and check on her, if you’d like.” Her eyes flicked to Jon.

Casey made a quick introduction. “Peg, do you remember Jon? You were still little when we graduated from high school.”

Peggy smiled politely, then her face lit up in recognition. “I
do
remember. You used to read to me. You did a mean
Cat in the Hat.
” Peggy and Jon exchanged a few pleasantries until Casey excused herself and pulled her sister off to the side. “You don’t mind checking on Ashley?”

“No, but the place is hopping. The two tables over there—”Peggy pointed “—and the two in the corner all need to be checked. I know some other people want chowder.”

“Go ahead and see how she’s doing, and take a break while you’re at it. I’ll take the tables. Then we can set up the baby monitor in the kitchen to listen if she wakes up.”

Casey watched her sister leave, but she was really preparing to finish her conversation with Jon. The evening had taken a surprising turn, and she was off guard, a feeling she didn’t like.

When she faced the bar again, the evening had taken an even more surprising turn.

Jon Kovats was gone.

6

M
egan had a second floor apartment in a tasteful brick building off Edgewater Drive. The neighborhood was convenient. She could stroll north to the lakefront for recreation or south for shopping. Although venerable maple trees blocked most natural light, the apartment did have wide windowsills that she filled with plants, a breakfast nook with built-in benches and a bedroom large enough for an antique cherry sleigh bed. She had bargained ruthlessly for the bed with a Lorain Avenue antique dealer, and she had repaired and refinished it herself, adding a cherry dresser and mirrored vanity as she came across them in similar shops.

The apartment was decorated in flea market and garage sale treasures. A collection of novelty teapots lined a shelf in the kitchen. In the bedroom, a Fiestaware pitcher on the vanity sported fresh flowers, even in the winter. The sleigh bed sported a Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilt made of 962 hexagons cut from colorful feed sacks produced during the era when her apartment had been built.

Late one night she had counted the hexagons, and halfway through it occurred to her that other women her age had better things to do.

Megan loved the apartment, but she loved the solitude more. As a child and teenager, she had never had a room of her own. Privacy had meant five full minutes alone in the bathroom. She had shared a bed with Casey or Peggy—occasionally both, during thunderstorms. Even now, although she relished being alone, on most nights the bed felt empty, particularly when it rained.

On Thursday morning she awoke to a drizzle that sounded as if it might turn to sleet between one drop and the next. She lay in bed, arms folded under her head, and stared at the ceiling.

She had prepared Rosaleen’s Irish stew last night, leaving it to simmer in an electric roaster. At noon, as her first act as the saloon’s newest employee, Casey—with Peggy’s help—would serve the stew and other menu items to workers from local factories who darted in for lunch and a pint of Guinness or the city’s own Crooked River Ale. Somewhere in the great beyond, their great-great-grandmother would preen with ghostly pride.

Megan wished she could be there to help instead of setting off to see Niccolo Andreani. She had tossed and turned much of the night, and the drizzle hadn’t been the only thing disturbing her. She had thought about her sisters. Casey, who had unexpectedly come home to stay. Peggy, who had come home, too. Then she had pictured Niccolo exploring Whiskey Island, where once upon a time their great-great-grandmother had searched for wild onions, picked asparagus stalks along the railroad tracks, lamented the lack of fish in the foul, gasoline-slicked Cuyahoga River that flowed in front of her shanty on Tyler Street.

But it wasn’t Rosaleen Donaghue’s ghost that Megan feared.

Since wishing had never accomplished anything, she forced herself to get up. An hour later she was cruising the Ohio City streets.

It didn’t take long to find Niccolo’s house, although she examined his neighborhood first. As a girl she had made a game of transforming old houses in her mind, imagining them with fresh coats of paint and colorful gardens. She had envisioned herself on a wide front porch, pouring tea or lemonade at a table draped in billowing floral prints. She had clipped magazine photos of gingerbread encrusted balconies and overflowing window boxes and used them to paper a corner of the bedroom she shared with her sisters. Whenever she could, she had stared at the photos and escaped briefly from a less gracious reality.

She hadn’t thought about that game for years. Now she saw evidence that others played it, too. The homes she passed were in various stages of renovation, but clearly some of them were in the hands of artists.

She parked the old Chevy in front of Niccolo’s house, but she didn’t get out right away. Since Barry had take Niccolo home from the emergency room, he’d given Megan directions. But he hadn’t given her any information about the house. She stared at it now, at two wide stories and a porch large enough for a flock of children.

A family home.

She hadn’t thought of Niccolo as married before. He’d been shot, but he hadn’t called home afterward. He had accepted Barry’s ride to and from the emergency room, as if there was no other choice. He had been out walking alone. He had come back to Whiskey Island later in the evening without a wife in tow.

Now, as Megan tried to adjust her thinking, the door opened and a head of dark hair preceded a bare arm groping for a rolled up newspaper. The head lifted, and she saw that it belonged to Niccolo, who, in spite of a temperature near freezing, was wearing cutoffs and a white T-shirt.

She’d known the morning was still young. What she hadn’t known were Niccolo’s habits. Now she wished she’d thought this through. He looked like a man who was just pulling himself together after a good night’s sleep, a man who probably didn’t want company until after his first cup of coffee.

And what about the wife that surely went with a house this size? What about the kids?

She sat very still, hoping that Niccolo wouldn’t notice her. When he disappeared back inside, she would drive away. She would come back later, when she wouldn’t find a Mrs. in a bathrobe or a gaggle of toddlers in last night’s diapers.

She was too late. Niccolo, newspaper clutched to his chest, was squinting at the Chevy. On the night of the carjacking it had been parked right next to Casey’s Mazda, and Megan had no illusions he wouldn’t recognize it. “Charity,” with her rust-patched doors and four shades of blue, was unmistakable.

Niccolo was probably barefoot, or she imagined he would have marched right out to the street. She sighed and opened her door to make sure that didn’t happen. She took a few steps, then stopped, shielded by Charity’s long hood.

“I can come back.” She didn’t have to shout. The front yards here were shallow, and his house sat close to the street.

“Why?”

For a moment she thought he was asking why she wanted to. It seemed surprisingly unwelcoming.

He grimaced. She imagined the cold was beginning to take a toll on his bare legs and arms. “Megan, I meant why come back later? You’re here now. Come on in.”

“You’re sure? I’m not going to surprise anyone?”

He frowned, and she could tell he was having trouble putting that together pre-coffee. “You mean, like a wife or a live-in girlfriend?” he asked at last.

“That was on the menu,” she admitted.

“I live alone except for a mouse or two. And they’ve been served with eviction notices.”

The specter of the wife in floor-length chenille vanished. “I could wait until you’ve had coffee,” she offered.

“Come have some with me instead.”

That sounded like a bonus, and she started up the walk. “I suppose you recognized the car.” She joined him on the porch. “Charity’s one of a kind.”

“Charity?”

“Peggy named her.”

He held the door wide. “Why?”

“Half the time, when I get more than a mile from my apartment and turn off the engine, she won’t start again. She’s always been that way. She starts fine when she’s parked in front of my apartment building or the saloon.”

“I’m moving slow this morning. Subtlety escapes me.”

She moved past him into the hallway, then turned and grinned. “Charity begins at home.”

He groaned.

She couldn’t blame him. In her family, there were a thousand corny jokes just like that one. The Donaghue psyche was glued together by humor. Without it, all of them would become hopelessly despondent.

Niccolo didn’t move past her. His eyes were friendly, but they were also examining her. Not with the calculating, barely restrained leer with which men often examined women, but with a keen-eyed, intelligent interest. “Don’t wander off the beaten path on the way to the kitchen. You might never be heard from again.”

“It’s a magnificent house.”

“You can tell?”

“Absolutely. Gothic Revival, right? Front gabled. Probably the original verge board trim, which I hope you’ll repair. Flattened Gothic arches holding up the porch.” She realized she was showing off. “I’m sorry, I like architecture, and I love old houses.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“Because it’s one thing to know things and another to go on and on about them.”

“That sounds like the highfalutin version of what mothers tell their daughters.”

“Which is?”

He raised his deep voice a couple of notes. “Never let a man know you’re smarter than he is, Megan. You’ll never catch a husband that way.”

“And here I didn’t even know I was trying to catch a husband.”

He smiled. “You’re apologizing for discussing my favorite subject. I’m intrigued.”

“Don’t be. I take a class every semester in something that interests me.”

“And architecture does?”

A lot of things interested her. Literature, philosophy, physics. She had never pursued a college degree, but someday, if she added up her credits, she might just discover she’d earned one along the way.

“I’ve taken a couple of architecture classes,” she admitted. “I’d love to see the rest of the house. But if you’d rather not…”

“I wish there was more to show off. The interior was a shambles when I bought the place, and I’m afraid most of it still is.”

If the hallway was representative of the rest of the house, Megan was afraid he was right. What plaster still remained clung in chunks to wall studs, and the exposed wiring looked lethal. The ceiling seemed to be new, which showed there had been progress, and a lovely antique light fixture, which had probably once been powered by gas, glowed above her head. The stairwell leading off to the right had once been painted, and either the paint was now badly peeling or Niccolo had begun to restore it.

“The stairs are a work in progress,” he said, as if he’d read her thoughts. “Four layers of paint, and I’m still not sure exactly what I’ll find underneath. I stripped two layers of vinyl and three layers of linoleum off this floor. The original was wide plank oak, but it couldn’t be salvaged. We’re down to the subfloor now. It’s solid maple, and I think, with some effort, I can refinish it.”

She glanced down. “Some effort” was an optimist’s sentiment. “It will be beautiful if you can find a way to save it.”

“Easy enough. You just take it board by board.”

She wasn’t sure she’d ever met a man capable of that much patience. A man who showed that much self-control, a man willing to delay gratification until a job was successfully completed, would be an outstanding lover.

The thought surprised her.

“Is it safe with all the wiring exposed?” she said, moving quickly onward.

“Perfectly safe. Nothing you can see is connected. I’m replacing the bad stuff a little at a time. I’ve wired the essential rooms. I’ll get to the rest in due time.” He stepped around her and started down the narrow hall. “Let me show you what I’ve done on the first floor.”

They ended the first floor tour in the kitchen, and by then Megan was more than impressed. The house was coming alive under Niccolo’s capable hands. He was turning a wrinkled, bent dowager into a charming and voluptuous maiden. All the bones were the same, but the layers of years were systematically peeling away.

“It’s hard to see, I know.” He pointed to a round table in the corner, and she dropped obligingly into a ladder-back chair where she could watch him.

“Not if you use your imagination. It’s easy to see around the knocked out walls and the torn up floors. I can picture what it looked like and what it’s going to look like when you finish.”

She examined the kitchen as she spoke. Niccolo was truly a craftsman, but he was not a decorator. No room she’d seen held more than a piece or two of furniture, and although the kitchen was moving along in the renovation process, there was little here to indicate the man’s personality. A refrigerator, two cabinets above a makeshift sink, particle board counters covered with rubber mats, a floor still covered with peeling tiles.

“I started in here, but you can see I’m far from finished.” He went to the counter beside the sink and removed a glass carafe from a coffeemaker. “Espresso?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m a coffee sissy.”

“Lots of milk?”

“And three teaspoons of sugar.” She laughed at his expression. “I know. I’m so ashamed.”

“Do you drink the real thing, or is it coffee crystals for you?”

“Oh, the real thing, if it’s in reach.”