It's a Wonderful Wife (23 page)

Nathaniel hesitated. He took a drink of his Tang. Then he finally looked directly at Jesse.

“There's a twenty-four-, sometimes forty-eight-hour window of opportunity to hack into someone's computer after they die, before a family member or business partner thinks to erase the search history or wipe the hard drive clean or simply take it off-line. So I slipped in through that window and took a little look around Stapleton's computer and found this,” he said, gesturing at the papers scattered between them again.

Jesse scrubbed his face in an attempt to scrub away those images, then folded his arms over his chest and looked directly at his protégé—whom he obviously didn't know a damn thing about. “Would you mind telling me,” he said quietly, “how you would even
know
about that window of opportunity, much less how to hack into someone's private computer?”

“I was set for college because I was a kick-ass football player, but my little sister wasn't very good at sneaking through the line to sack the quarterback. So when we couldn't find any schools that gave full scholarships to kick-ass cellists wanting to major in education, I finally just invented one for Tessa and worked nights at a hacker's den to fund it.”

Jesse had met Tessa several times, since she taught in Manhattan at a private elementary school and would often stop by the office. “And she never found out?”

Nathaniel snorted, even as he grinned and shook his head. “I think she's having too much fun pretending she doesn't know, but I'm fairly certain she figured it out by her sophomore year. I suspect that's why she's promised me lifetime babysitting once I have kids, but she said she's limiting it to two at a time if they're boys.” Jesse saw Nathaniel pull in a breath, and when he blew it out he was all business again as he started sorting through his pile of papers. “The main reason I felt I needed to tell you this stuff in person is—”

“Wait,” Jesse said, holding up a hand on a sudden thought. “When did you read the newsfeed that said Stapleton is dead?”

“The article about the body being found came out yesterday, but the identity only came out in this morning's feed.”

“Did it make it into this morning's
print
newspapers, too?”

“And it's on the national news,” Nathaniel said with a nod, “because of where he was found, which is smack in the middle of several estates of the famous and wealthy. And because of the weird way he'd been— Hey, where are you going?” Nathaniel asked, having to shout the last part because Jesse was already halfway out the camper door.

Jesse sprinted around the camper and up the narrow trail to the antenna. “I need to shut this off,” he said when Nathaniel caught up with him. He opened the door for the solar power system and scanned all the dials and switches. “Did Cadi receive any calls or texts when you were with her?”

Nathaniel reached past him and turned a dial, then flipped two switches. “No,” he said as a humming stopped at the same time several lights on the panel started flashing. “Why?”

Jesse closed the door and headed back down the trail. “If it made national news, then Stanley Kerr also knows Stapleton is dead. But I need to buy myself some time to think before he calls Cadi and tells her it's safe to go home.”

“Yeah. That's probably a good idea,” Nathaniel said as he followed, “as Mr. Kerr is the main reason I felt it was important to come here in person.”

They entered the camper and Nathaniel immediately went to the table and sat down and started leafing through his papers again. He stopped and pulled out one page and shoved it in front of Jesse when he sat down.

“I was able to learn through a source better left unnamed that Ryan Stapleton was found . . . planted on his property,” Nathaniel said quietly. “Vertical, head pointed down, naked, and with only his feet and legs from the knee down—or rather up—visible.”

Jesse wasn't sure what he was looking at, until halfway down on the page of run-on words he saw
Miami, Florida,
and then a date from nine years ago.

“The scenario struck a chord, and I remembered seeing something similar in Stapleton's research on Stanley Kerr,” Nathaniel continued softly. “So I started doing a little research of my own on Steven Shasta.” Nathaniel shifted uncomfortably, then rested his arms on the table and clasped his hands together. “You remember the Miami crime boss? Well, it appears that about a month after the restaurant execution, he was found planted upside down on his estate about two hundred yards from his house, naked, with just his feet visible. The difference between that body and Stapleton's is that both feet of the Florida man had been beaten to bloody pulps. It's too early to know about Stapleton, but the autopsy from Florida indicated that guy had still been alive when he was buried.”

Jesse moved his gaze from the page in front of him—that he wasn't even seeing—to the pile of papers under his assistant's arms, then over to the laptop peeking out of the soft-sided leather briefcase, then finally to Nathaniel. “Is there any way anyone can find out that you were inside Stapleton's computer?”

“No. Mine really is invisible. I can get in and out without anyone knowing I was even there.”

“And is any of this,” Jesse asked, tapping the pile of papers when Nathaniel leaned back, “actually
on
your computer?”

“No. I printed everything directly off the Internet. And even though it was a computer in Jamaica that looked inside Stapleton's, I wiped my entire hard drive clean anyway. And before I backed out of that window, I also wiped Stapleton's hard drive clean.” He used his eyes to gesture at the papers. “That's all there is. Somebody would have to start a brand-new search from the very beginning, and then they'd have to know what to go looking for in the first place.”

Jesse very slowly started gathering the papers into a pile. “So what is it going to cost me to wipe
your
memory clean?” he asked conversationally.

He heard a soft snort. “Yeah, about that; while sitting on your beach trying to convince myself that I would also survive the boat ride back to the mainland, I decided I really did deserve the keys to the Boeing. But I changed my mind after Miss Glace stopped to talk to me.”

Jesse quit gathering papers. “Talk about what?”

Nathaniel shook his head, one side of his mouth lifting as he slipped his hand inside his briefcase and pulled out a book. “She asked if I'd ever built a treehouse. And when I told her I'd built one with my dad when I was six, she offered to design me my very own home in exchange for taking one of my vacation weeks this summer to come back here and work on the treehouse you're building.”

“Why?” Jesse cleared his throat to get rid of the frog and started gathering papers again. “Did she say why?”

“I asked her why. I told her I know what it costs to have a house designed because I've been writing the checks for yours. And even taking into account that the price lessens in proportion to the size of the house, I tried to point out that her offer still didn't make sense. And she laughed and said, ‘You probably won't think so by the end of your week's vacation,'” he repeated, trying to pitch his voice to sound like her. “‘But sometimes, Mr. Cunningham, competition-crushing executives
and
their assistants need to be six years old again.'” Jesse saw the kid's face darken. “I hate to admit it's the second time she's tripped me up, but putting it together with her offer about your office, I finally got it.”

Nathaniel snatched up the pile of papers in front of him just as Jesse was reaching for them. “So here's
my
offer to you,” he continued calmly. “Instead of the keys to the Boeing, I'm willing to give myself a virtual lobotomy in exchange for you agreeing to keep this one. She's the real deal, boss,” he said gruffly. “I think she's . . . good for you.
And
,” he added, holding out the papers but not letting go when Jesse tried to take them, “since I can't have you thinking I'm a complete idiot, I also want a Disney cruise to Castaway Cay for six adults and one child, and the Lear to go pick up my mom and dad in Iowa and then fly us all to the departure port and back.”

“Who's the child?”

“Tessa and Lionel just took in a five-year-old foster kid.” He grinned, still not releasing the papers when Jesse gave a little tug. “Ajax's only been with them for a few months, and he's already declared that he's staying.”

“So you'll forget everything you found in your research in exchange for taking your family on a Disney cruise?”

“No, that's for my nearly drowning getting here. Forgetting everything is in exchange for you keeping Miss Glace.”

“Deal,” Jesse said at the same time he gave a sharp tug on the papers. He stood up, gathered all the pages into one pile, then strode to the kitchen. He stopped and opened a drawer and grabbed a lighter, then headed outside. “Is there anything in these I should read that I haven't?” he asked as Nathaniel followed.

“You know all the important stuff.” Nathaniel stopped beside Jesse in front of the small metal fire pit. “I'm just the messenger; what you do with the message is up to you.”

“This is what I'm doing with it,” Jesse said, crouching down and setting the papers on the ground. “And then I'm wiping
my
memory clean,” he added, pulling a sheet from the pile and crumpling it up. He tossed it in the pit, set it on fire, then picked up another sheet.

Nathaniel crouched beside him and started helping.

“What was the book you pulled out of your briefcase?” Jesse asked, tossing a couple of sticks on the growing flames when the sea breeze sent embers of burning paper into the air.

Nathaniel chuckled. “Your missus pulled it out of her backpack when I boarded that bathtub posing as a boat and said I just might get that raise if I'm the one giving it to you.”

“Be glad you didn't show up here sooner,” Jesse drawled, “or you really would have had an interesting ride across the reach. So the book's a field guide?”

Nathaniel crumpled the last sheet of paper and tossed it on the fire. “No, it's a guide to beekeeping.” He stood up and wiped his hands on his borrowed sweatshirt as he looked out at the cruiser bobbing on its mooring, then flashed Jesse a grin. “So can I drive on the way back?”

EIGHTEEN

Jesse stood with his hands on his hips and scowled up at Paul, who was methodically disassembling three long, sweaty, and obviously wasted days of work. “Let me go ahead and take the chainsaw to it,” Jesse called up to him, “and we'll just start fresh. I bought twice as much lumber as Ray said I should need for this very reason.”

“But we can reuse this lumber,” Paul said without looking down. “And it'll only take me a minute”—
because it's already falling apart on its own
, Jesse was pretty sure he heard the boy add in a muttered whisper. “You could work on the mast if you want,” Paul added out loud.

Another Mainer—this one only
sixteen
—giving him busywork, Jesse realized as he walked to Cadi's old skiff and scowled down at it. For the love of God, he'd built four major cargo berths in the last six years; how in hell hard could it be to build a treehouse? “You had plans for those berths,” he muttered to himself, “and a small army of engineers. And I don't remember you touching any tools.” He picked up the tall cedar sapling he and Paul had cut down and dragged through the woods behind the ATV—that he was supposed to peel the bark off of with something called an adze, which he'd bought off Ray two days ago. “It would have been nice if it came with instructions,” he added.

“What's that?” Paul called down.

“I was just saying it would be nice to have a set of plans.”

He saw Paul shift his stance in the large, gnarly old oak and look down at him. “I suggested that to Mrs. Sinclair yesterday, sort of hinting that she could help us draw up some, seeing how she's getting your whole house laid out from just drawings in a sketchpad. But she laughed and tapped my forehead and said we need to see the treehouse in our minds. She said they're organic structures, and the tree we pick should tell us what it's going to look like.”

Jesse was pretty sure it wasn't supposed to look like two blind drunks had built it. “And when you built the one with your dad?” he asked.

He saw the boy shrug. “We used scrap wood to build a small cabin on the ground, then used the excavator to hoist it onto beams we'd run between three ash trees.” He shot Jesse a grin. “One of the trees snapped in a Nor'easter that winter, and we never saw the treehouse again until the snow melted and we found what was left of it clear over in Fender Cove.”

Jesse scanned the shoreline surrounding the small, crescent-shaped gravel beach, then squinted up at Paul again. “Maybe we picked the wrong tree. What about that big bad boy over there?” he asked, pointing toward the other end of the cove. “It doesn't have half as many gnarly branches as this one, but there's another good oak beside it we could run a couple of beams to.” He glanced toward the point of land protecting the small cove from the choppy reach. “I don't think we could get your dad's larger barge in here with the excavator on it, but I'm pretty sure Jason Dean's barge could get in during high tide,” he added, looking up again. “And his pylon-driver might be tall enough to hoist a small cabin up on the beams if we don't set them too high.”

Paul was shaking his head before Jesse even finished. “Dad said he checked all the trees along the beach when he off-loaded the lumber with you, and he told me this was the best one,” he said, patting the thick trunk beside him.

This from a man who'd set
his
treehouse on a rotten tree. Was there a reason Little Miss Leave Me Alone couldn't at least have helped them pick which damn tree they should use before banning him from the lower bluff until his house was all laid out?

Did she honestly believe he didn't leave his nice warm bed—and her—every morning before she even opened her sexy baby blues to run down to the bluff and peek?

“I got a couple of buddies who couldn't find jobs this summer that I bet would come help us,” Paul said. “They're not losers or lazy or anything,” he rushed on when Jesse realized the boy thought he was scowling up at him instead of squinting. “It's just that their parents wouldn't let them work during school because they wanted them to make good grades to get into college, so all the summer jobs for anyone our age were already taken.”

“Your father doesn't strike me as a man who wouldn't care what you got for grades,” Jesse said. “So how come he let you work during school?”

Paul slashed him a broad grin. “Because I'm already a genius.” The boy changed his stance and drove the claw end of his hammer into a board and pried on a nail. “I've gotten straight A's since grammar school.”

“I tell you what,” Jesse said, making the boy stop prying to look at him. “You decide you'd rather wear a suit than drive an excavator, you come see me the moment you get your college diploma.”

“Now what has Nathaniel done?” a deep, familiar voice said on a chuckle, making Jesse spin around to see Ben and Sam emerging from the woods. “To have you already hiring his replacement,” Ben continued as they strode onto the beach.

“What in hell are you two doing here?” Jesse narrowed his eyes at them. “No,
why
are you here? I told you last night I'd see you tomorrow at Jen's bon voyage party.”

Ben sobered. Sam didn't have to, because he already looked . . . hell, he looked angry enough to make Jesse stay rooted in place.

“We've been calling your cell phone since six this morning,” Sam growled.

“My antenna's down,” Jesse said calmly. But then he stiffened. “What's wrong? Is it the kids? Did something happen?” he asked, only to realize too late neither man would be here if anything had happened to Hank or Rose.

Ben stopped in front of him. “The party's been called off.”

“Why?”

“Because it's hard to wish someone bon voyage when they've already left,” Sam said.

“What? Why would Jennifer leave early?”

“I'm guessing it was Mike's idea,” Ben added tightly, his features also turning deadly, “to make sure we couldn't stop them from leaving
together
.”

Okay, none of this was making sense. “What's going on?” Jesse whispered. He looked behind him, then backed up and plopped down on a large rock. “I thought Jen and Mike didn't . . . They act like two wrestlers circling each other every time we have a family gathering. Hell, Jen emailed me when I was in Europe a few weeks ago and said
my nephew
was a chest-beating jerk—and she wasn't referring to Hank.”

Ben walked over and collapsed on a nearby rock, then scrubbed his face with both hands. “That would be about the same time,” he said, sounding as haggard as Sam looked, “that Mike started threatening to torch her sloop.”

“But when he finally realized he couldn't talk her out of going,” Sam interjected as he sat down on another rock, “we think he started talking Jen into taking him with her instead.”

Well, shit; now they had
two
young people to worry about. Jesse shot to his feet. “When did they leave? They couldn't have made it out of the Gulf of Maine yet. I've got her course charts on my laptop. Come on, my cruiser can catch them.”

Ben leaned forward and grabbed Jesse's wrist before he even took a step and yanked him back down on the rock. “It's a damn big Gulf, and knowing Mike, he had Jen set a course to Nova Scotia to throw us off.”

“Did you call the coast guard?”

“And tell them what?” Sam asked. “That two consenting adults have set sail on the best-equipped, fastest sloop on the planet, but could you search 35,000 square miles of open water for their worried families, anyway? Oh, and when you find them, could you please drag their sneaky asses home so we can lock them in their rooms until they're
thirty
?”

“Ah . . . Mr. Sinclair?” Paul asked from about ten yards away. “Seeing how you have company, I can come back tomorrow to work on the treehouse.” He glanced toward the company under discussion, then back at Jesse. “Or I can spend the afternoon taking it down by myself.”

“No,” Jesse said with a shake of his head. “I don't want you up in that tree if no one's here, in case you fall.” He hesitated. “If I let you take the ATV back to camp, can you figure out how to turn on the cell phone antenna? I'm pretty sure it's just a matter of flipping two switches. There are instructions on the inside of the panel door,” he added, remembering from when the installers had given him a run-through of how everything worked.

“Oh, sure, no problem,” Paul said, backing away. “Do you want me to swing by the bluff and tell Mrs. Sinclair you've got company?”

Jesse sensed more than saw Ben and Sam perk up. “No, I'll tell her. Thanks. I'll call you later and let you know when to come out again,” he added, causing Paul to give a wave over his shoulder as he jogged to the ATV parked up on the knoll.

“Yes,” Sam said dryly, “we were hoping to meet the
little missus
.”

“You know the little missus we're talking about,” Ben added. “The one the harbormaster said we could have ridden out to the island with if we hadn't missed her by just an hour?”

“How
did
you get here?” Jesse asked instead of answering.

“Mr. Hatch was kind enough to point us toward an enterprising young man who happened to have the keys to his father's lobster boat,” Sam said, a hint of a grin making him look a little less haggard.

Ben snorted. “The little snot charged us fifty bucks a head. In case you can't add,” he said, glaring at Jesse, “that's two hundred bucks to go
three miles
because you want
privacy
.”

Jesse sat up straight. “Wait, Emma and Willa are here? What about Hank and Rose?”

“We left the kids with Shelby in Keelstone,” Sam told him—Shelby being Willa's sister.

And also Jen's mom. Hell, she must be worried sick.

“No, Shelby's surprisingly calm,” Sam said, making Jesse realize he'd spoken out loud. “She was already mentally geared up for Jennifer leaving, but I think she feels even better about it knowing Mike's with her.”

“Great help that he'll be,” Ben muttered. “The first time Willa took us sailing on the
RoseWind
, we had to fish Mike out of the Gulf. And the second and
last
time he went, he got his hand caught in a slapping sail line and busted three fingers.”

“He was fifteen,” Sam said with a chuckle. “And he fell overboard when Jen pulled off her sweatshirt. He's almost nineteen now; I'm sure your boy's figured out how to keep his hormones from running roughshod over his brain.”

“Like you did when you sailed to Maine with Willa,
Daddy
?” Ben growled. “I swear if those two come back a year from now with a baby, I'm claiming all the proceeds from our bet for giving Bram his first great-
great
-grandchild.”

“Come on,” Jesse said with a chuckle, standing up and heading up the beach. “I want to see Willa and Emma.”

“We're going to have to find them first,” Sam said, following.

Jesse stopped and turned. “What do you mean? Didn't you leave them at my campsite?”

“No, we all came down that nice, smooth gravel path that stopped at a narrow ravine and turned into a goat trail. And when we reached a fork in the trail a few minutes later, the women went left looking for you and we went right.”

Jesse felt the hairs on his neck stir and looked at Ben. “Did you happen to tell Emma I'm over Pamela?”

“No. Why?”

“And did Emma and Willa hear Oren Hatch mention my little missus?”

“Well, yeah,” Sam said. “Why?”

Jesse bolted for the woods at a dead run. “Because the last thing I need right now is for them to welcome
Pamela
to the family!”

•   •   •

Cadi couldn't believe the progress she'd made since she'd found Jeff Acton and his cute little bulldozer building the gravel path from the landing to the bluff three days ago. Even though she hadn't dared steal him for more than a day, Jeff had not only managed to cut down the trees and move all the boulders from inside the house, the genius man had wielded his chainsaw like a carving knife and helped her build a crude but solid frame of the second floor from the trees. It had also been his idea for them to sneak over to Jesse's lumber pile down at the cove and steal enough boards to let her actually maneuver around the upstairs.

Heck, they'd even built a narrow catwalk connecting it to the top of the cliff.

Cadi straightened from stripping branches off the sapling she intended to use to show the final height of the roofline when she heard a deep, drawn-out growl and looked over to see her pet slinking along the bottom of the cliff toward a thick stand of bushes. She scrambled to her feet and scanned the woods at the other end of the house, listening as well as looking for movement. Trusting Wigs' eyes and ears more than her own, Cadi took off, zigzagging through the tape as fast and as quietly as she could, then broke into an all-out sprint and caught hold of a small tree to swing around the tight corner onto the trail. Honest to God, if Jesse was trying to get a peek at his house, she was—

Cadi nearly ripped her arm out of its socket using her grip on the tree to stop herself from slamming into the two women. They all three gasped in surprise, each of the strangers shooting to opposite sides of the trail and Cadi dropping to her knees to avoid colliding with the one that had shot left.

“Are you okay?” the woman asked, grabbing Cadi's arm to help her up.

“I'm sorry, we didn't hear you coming,” the other woman said, grabbing Cadi's other arm. “Are you hurt?”

“No. No, I'm fine.” Cadi took a step back once they let her go and bent to brush the forest litter off her knees to disguise the fact she was shaking. God, she'd nearly plowed over a visibly pregnant woman. “Are you lost? Or kayakers out exploring the islands?” she asked, straightening and wiping her hands on her thighs. “I'm sorry, but this one is private. There's some smaller islands just to the north and at least two that I know of to the south that I think are owned by the state.”