Better Than Gold (5 page)

She wasn’t even a part of his life and already he could do her harm, he thought, as he went back inside the building. Flashes of old memories, the smiling face of a little boy, the feeling of proud parents when the child was born. And the pain when it all fell apart.

CHAPTER FIVE

M
IA
PLUCKED
HER
keys from under the seat and was about to start her SUV when a shadow blocked the sun coming in the side window. Mickey Thompson, one of the teenagers who had been loitering across the street, grinned in at her, one of those half ogle, half goofy kid grins only a fourteen-year-old could manage.

She lowered the window. “Mickey, why aren’t you in school?”

“We got a late start today and the bell don’t ring for another ten minutes.”

Which meant he’d be late and didn’t much care. “What can I do for you?”

“Can we go in now that the cops have taken the police tape down?”

“The building is private property. You don’t get to go in without an invitation.”

“Who do we have to ask?”

“Me.”

“So can we go in?”

“You can go to school.”

Another shadow joined Mickey’s. Between Mickey and his friend Tim O’Donnell, they had nearly a bushel of shaggy brown hair.

“What’d she say?” the other teen asked.

“She said to go to school.”

“Now,” Mia said, and as the teens moved off slowly, they balefully eyed the building with secrets they weren’t being allowed to poke around in. The trickle before the flood.

Right now, she had to get away from Daniel MacCarey and the destruction he could cause in her life, and she needed to marshal her mental troops before she dived back into a pirate-infested pool.

One person in town would sympathize with her.

Apex Cleaners, where Monique worked, shared an old aluminum-sided strip mall with the Cove Real Estate Agency, a pharmacy, three other small businesses and two empty stores. As Mia approached, the front door of the cleaners popped open. Mrs. Carmody, the lonely cat lady, emerged and streaked to her car, leaving Monique standing in the doorway holding the rug.

Mia waved and Monique rolled her eyes.

“Hey, I heard he’s good-looking. Is that true?” Monique asked as she led Mia into the dry cleaners after putting the rug in Mrs. Carmody’s trunk.

“If by him, you mean Dr. MacCarey, the answer is yes.”

“Dr. MacCarey, eh?”

“Anthropologist,” Mia said as she leaned her elbows on the service counter.

“Good enough.”

“Good enough for what?”

Monique stood on the other side of the counter and took up what she must have been doing before Mrs. Carmody arrived, shoving incoming laundry into bags and labeling them.

“Good enough for you,” she said as she gave a couple of shirts an extra hard shove. A harsh gesture for Monique, who was usually a gentle soul.

“You are not talking about what I think you’re talking about.”

“You bet I am. If you don’t want him, I’ll take a crack at him.”

“No, you wouldn’t. And what’s going on with you?”

“Oh, nothing, really, nothing.” Monique made dismissive circles in the air with her hands.

“Monique.” Mia stilled her friend’s hands.

“Okay, I thought I got a new regular customer, but... Never mind.”

“Never mind it’s not important, or never mind you don’t want to talk about him right now.”

“Can we just do
never mind
for a while?” Monique’s eyes held a pleading look.

“Okay.”

“Did you hear Mac and Sally are engaged?” Monique asked over-brightly.

“Does that mean he’s done saying he’s sorry for taking you on the worst date ever?”

“What do you mean? You thought getting champagne up my nose was a bad time?” Monique shoved more laundry in a bag.

“I thought running out of gas and having to be rescued in the middle of the harbor was the best part.”

“Mia, what if it could happen for me? After all this time, I find a guy right here in Bailey’s Cove? I get to marry, live happily ever after right here at home.” Monique got all dreamy-faced. “I still believe, you know.”

Mia shrugged and smiled. “Who knows? Your heart may wander right into bliss.”

“So what are you doing here instead of being over there with him? Hiding so
you
won’t fall in love?”

“Hiding so I won’t commit murder and then brick the wall back up with an anthropologist inside.”

“You are so totally bad.”

“I wish.” Mia leaned her elbows on the counter. “I wish.”

“Ms. Parker,
I
wish you’d at least help Ms. Beaudin when you’re here,” Mr. Wetherbee, the shop owner, said as he appeared between the beaded strands of the curtained doorway leading to the back room. “If I had both of you to do the job, I might get a good day’s work done around here for the money I pay this little slacker.”

Monique tossed a lightweight laundry bag at the shopkeeper’s head in reply.

Mr. Wetherbee haha-ed good-naturedly and continued out the front door, leaving the bag where it had fallen.

“You don’t need him,” Mia said, still leaning on her elbows.

“Except he owns the store.”

“Minor detail.”

“I suspect he pays me so much because he wants me to have enough money to buy the store from him someday.” She tossed another filled bag into the canvas cart of waiting laundry and turned on Mia with a long sigh. “So back to you. You wanna kill a guy that cute. Must be a really good reason.”

“I made it clear to him about how important it is for me to get back in there and get the job done, but he’s so...so...”

“Ah, anthropologist-y?”

“I think I hate him.”

Monique looked up from the label she was scribbling out. “’Cuz he wants to get things right?”

“Maybe, but maybe because he’s good-looking and he’s funny.”

“A bone-and-pot-shard guy is funny? Since when do you not like funny?”

“Oh, please.” Mia clapped her hands to her cheeks and squeezed her face into distorted horror.

“Would he be just exactly the kind of person you’d want if you ever looked for another man?”

Monique sighed again and Mia knew she was hiding something, but played along anyway.

“Yes.” Now she threw her hands up imitating her friend. “Right. Fine!”

“And the kind you’d like to hop in the sack with.”

“No. No. No. I don’t want to go there.”

“Until hell freezes. I know.” Monique shook her head. “So why are you here if it’s not for my advice on how to land the big one?”

Mia sighed. “Moral support and he threw me out. I’m getting a complex—about being asked to leave my own place.”

“Maybe you should go across the street and talk to Delainey Talbot at Morrison and Morrison. She could probably get you in to see one of the attorneys today or tomorrow. They might help you get him out sooner.”

“I hope I don’t need an attorney and I certainly can’t afford those guys.”

“You want me to come over to the Roost...” Monique hunched her shoulders and flexed “...and tell that guy how it’s gonna be?”

Mia snorted. “No.”

“Then why don’t you go back and seduce that hunk right out of town?”

“Because I’m not sure you’re all right. Is it your granddad?”

“No, it’s not, and I’m fine.” Monique leaned on the counter across from Mia so their noses almost touched. “And don’t fall in love with your anthropologist, and if you do, don’t get your heart broken.”

Monique’s last words seemed as if they were personal. A guy? Monique and a guy? Why didn’t she know?

Mia put a hand on Monique’s. “Be good to yourself, my friend.”
Don’t get your heart broken, either,
Mia thought as the door rattled shut behind her.

She crossed Church Street, passed the redbrick building with a stately facade that housed the town’s most successful attorneys and walked north to Treacher Avenue. Daniel’s car still sat parked in front of the Roost, which made her frown as she continued.

From the corner of Church down Treacher to the harbor were the most colorful five blocks in town and her favorite to contemplate. The Three Sisters, three Victorian-style homes, sat in varying stages of neglect. Built for the daughters of a long-gone shipping magnate they sat side by side on Treacher Avenue not far from the docks. Each was a prime candidate to be turned into a bed-and-breakfast or a boutique by someone who had enough faith.

Next door to them was an artist’s studio still closed for the season and surrounded by pine trees and low-growing junipers. After that came an old shed falling into disrepair, languishing because of a disputed estate.

All the time as she walked, her thoughts bounced between the man at the Roost and Monique. She hoped her friend wasn’t dabbling in long-haul truck drivers again. That had not gone well for her in the past. And she hoped Daniel MacCarey would just plain go away.

When she reached the docks, Mr. Calvin the elder gave her a wan smile. She could tell he didn’t want to sell the family boat, either. Two other fishermen and the woman from the Marina gave her speculative looks making her wonder if the truant teenagers Mickey and Tim had been down here spouting tales of yo-ho-ho instead of being in school.

Everyone else gave her smiles and waves, lending her the encouragement she needed for when it was time to start back up the hill and get to work on Dr. MacCarey, if not on the demolition.

Although, what would do her really and truly good was if she got back to the Pirate’s Roost and Daniel MacCarey’s hybrid was gone. Maybe she could resume the special kind of lunacy she called her life, where the only workers she could find were slightly off balance, piles of bills were expected and she had teenagers drooling to enter the premises where a skeleton had resided for who knew how long.

The two women who had moved their yarn and craft shop from the building she was now renovating to be closer to the docks stood in the doorway of their shop. Pins and Needles sat directly across from the Three Sisters, positioned well if the Sisters were ever renovated.

“How’s it going, Mia?” one of them asked.

“I’m making good progress.” Mia used her standard answer to the question because Monique told her using
marginally crappy
would be off-putting to many people.

“I see you have company today.” Translation:
Did you find out who the skeleton from your wall is yet, and if not when?
Or:
Who is this guy and is he married?

“I do.” Mia went on to ask about their week and they answered they had all the new inventory ordered for the spring tourist trade, hoping this year there would be better crowds than last year.

Mia waved and moved off before they could ask more about Daniel MacCarey. “Have a nice day, ladies.”

When she reached the corner of Treacher Avenue and Church Street, she scrunched her face at the sight of the professor’s hybrid still hugging the curb in front of her building.

She was sure she didn’t want to leave him alone with her future any longer and ducked under the single piece of tape still in place.

The air inside hung still with the musty smell of old building. The ax-strike marks on the exposed beams in the ceiling made the building look its age, as did the wide planks of the floorboards. It would be a charming place when she got it finished and there could be no ifs about it. She would get it finished.

It was quiet, almost spooky quiet.

“Hello?” Mia called into the silence.

She rounded the partially torn-down wall, and the room beyond was as quiet as— No, not a grave, not creepy quiet. Hushed as the eye of a storm, that hair-raising kind of stillness where the excitement and anticipation of a wild ride lived.

She ran a hand down the back of her neck to chase away the feeling giving her a chill.

A clinking sound put her in a dead stop.

A delicate tapping came from—

The basement.

She had been down there only twice.

Every chain saw massacre and Halloween movie played in her head as she gripped her flashlight. The hollowed out basement dug into the dirt and blasted into the stone was eerie and repugnant and would still be even if her pitiful flashlight became a host of floodlights.

The basement door at the far side of the old and soon-to-be-renewed pantry squeaked obligingly as she tugged it open. She shrugged that off, too.

Lights! Yes, the lights were on. Daniel was down there.

The smell of the old, dank, partial dirt-floor basement wafted insults at her nose as she started down. Vegetables and wine had most likely been stored here when the building was a functioning hotel.

She stopped halfway down and listened. “Daniel?” she called more timidly than she had intended.

The shrieking sound from the movie
Psycho
screeched loudly in her head.

Oh, shut up!
she said to herself and continued down.

The light at the bottom of the stairs did a pitifully meager job of keeping the darkness at bay, and the tapping restarted.

“Hello?” she called tentatively.
Chicken,
she chided herself. “Daniel, are you down here?”

The tapping stopped. So did she, on the third step from the bottom. As quiet footsteps approached she couldn’t help the urge to flee.

Then Daniel stepped into the light shed from the ceiling bulb at the bottom of the steps and looked up at her. “Hello again.”

Shadows from the dim bulb deepened the contrasting planes of his face and the light danced in his dark hair. Feelings stirred inside her, things she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

She rubbed a hand on the thigh of her jeans.

“What are you doing down here?” she asked.

His expression grew more serious and he held up what she supposed were archeology tools. “Exploring to see if there are any other areas that might need excavating.”

“I hope not.”

“And why are
you
down here?”

“I just wanted to see if there is anything I can do to help...”
Get you the heck out of my building
.

“Have you done much exploring on this level?” His tone told her this was a hedge, an opening gambit.

“No.” Already she didn’t like the way this was going. “Just a couple of quick inspections. Why?”

“There’s a section of the floor that’s been dug up.”

Mia thought back to when she had toured the basement the second time to make sure it could be used for storage.