Keepsake (8 page)

"Do you have any idea who could be doing these things, Quinn?" the widow asked, looking more tentative than he'd seen her before. "Any idea at all?"

Quinn said with a tight smile, "I don't want to brag, but I can think of a dozen people who'd be happy to heat up the tar, and another dozen who'd be thrilled to carry the feathers."

Despite his concern, the priest was amused enough to chuckle. Not Mrs. Dewsbury. "Quinn Leary, you're coming with me to my son's house for Christmas. You will celebrate the holiday with us—with people who like and respect you."

Quinn couldn't resist a smile. "They don't even know me."

"It doesn't matter." The widow gave Quinn a look of pure affection, then turned to the priest and said, "Father, this man is an angel from heaven. You have no idea. My son adores me—but my son is in finance; hammers and screwdrivers frighten him. Gerald wants to pay handymen to do the work, but he knows I won't accept that. With Quinn, it's different. He makes it easy for me to take advantage of him."

Touched by her declaration, Quinn nonetheless stuck to his guns. Though he would never admit it to the widow, he had no intention of leaving her beloved house unguarded and vulnerable while she was away.

Sensing an opportunity, Father Tom jumped in with an offer of his own. "You're welcome to join us at the church for Christmas dinner, Quinn. You can mash the potatoes, serve 'em, eat 'em, or all three; we don't stand on ceremony. Everyone with nowhere special to go is invited."

Quinn accepted at once. "I'll not only serve dessert, I'll bring dessert," he added. "How many pies you need?"

"Oh, that's not—six would be fine."

"Done," he said with a smile.

He had the perfect excuse to remain behind on Christmas.

****

Quinn replaced a worn-out faucet and corroded trap in the first-floor bath in plenty of time to shower, slap on some aftershave, and head out to his rendezvous. It would be his most provocative gesture so far: having an elegant lunch in town with one of its best-known citizens. Whoever hated—or feared—Quinn enough to hang an effigy on the town Christmas tree was bound to go apoplectic over that one. Quinn felt grimly satisfied that all was going according to plan.

More or less.

He kept coming back to Olivia. She hadn't been part of his original plan, which was to flush out whoever had the most to lose from seeing him return to Keepsake. Over the years, and especially during the last few weeks, he had thought about Olivia, naturally, but mostly it had been in terms of nostalgia: she'd been part and parcel of his youthful drive to excel.

But last night? Last night he'd been much more focused on her laugh and her eyes and her
... well, not her IQ, in any case. And today as he ditched his rental in the town parking lot behind the bank, he didn't care if her last name was Bennett or Sinkelheinkenschtein. He simply wanted to be with her again.

He had it all worked out. They would have lunch at Entre Nous, an intimate bistro that had caught Quinn's eye. It was the kind of place you took a woman like Olivia Bennett. They'd linger over a bottle of wine, laugh about the spelling bees, and with any luck he'd line up another date—this time at night, by God.

Whistling a soft tune, he made his way down wet sidewalks and slushy streets until he found her shop. The brick building once had been a single-truck fire station, so it had a funky kind of charm. With its slate roof pitching steeply toward the street and its big front window divided by dozens of small square panes, it looked like something out of a
children's fairy tale. Quinn was especially glad to see that they'd kept the original door, carved with the initials K.F.D. in elegant Victorian script.

He pulled open the heavy green door, jangling some bells above it, and stamped his hiking shoes on a mat inside the threshold. There were a couple of customers in the shop, and a fresh young thing cutting material from a bolt of cloth, but
... no Olivia. It rocked Quinn, the wave of disappointment he felt. Then he spotted her hurrying down a narrow open staircase that ran alongside one wall. She grinned and waved, and like a deep-keeled sailboat that's taken a knockdown, Quinn felt himself righting again. The whole thing couldn't have lasted more than five seconds. He found the intensity of it pretty damn scary.

In the bright sun that poured into Miracourt, Olivia looked night-and-day different than she had in the candlelight of a drawing room—not as overtly seductive, and yet no less appealing. Chalk it up to the fuzzy sweater and flowing skirt she wore, but somehow she seemed more... straight up-and-down. More normal, more wholesome, more approachable. Or maybe it was her eyes or the way she smiled. Whatever it was, she looked glad and it made him feel good.

"What do you think?" she asked, turning half way round.

"Very nice indeed," he answered under his breath, and then he realized she meant the shop.

The shop was nice, too. He didn't know much about fabric—zip, to be precise—but he knew enough about rich people's taste to know that the stuff around them appealed to it.

"What does the name mean?" he asked, just to have something to say.

"Miracourt? It's an old-style French bobbin lace—similar to
lille
lace." She batted her eyes and added, "I'm sure that makes it all much clearer to you."

He cocked his head and gave her a penetrating look. "Ohhh, yeah."

One thing Quinn did remember about her: She never lost her cool. And yet here she was, for the second time in twenty-four hours, with heightened color in those nicely shaped cheekbones of hers. Feeling suddenly confident about the prospects for that nighttime date, he murmured, "So—are we all set?"

"Let me get my coa
t," she said, and off they went.

T
o the drip-drip-drip of melting snow, they strolled past storefronts decked out for the season, with Olivia grading every windo
w display they stopped to view.

"Not enough vertical."

"Needs a backdrop."

"
Great
use of color."

Window shopping, that's what they were doing. Quinn was utterly charmed by the concept; he'd never done it before. He threw a five-dollar bill into a Salvation Army bucket and thought to himself,
I
could get used to this.
He was especially pleased
that
Olivia was inclined to saunter. That wasn't the drive-ahead girl he remembered at all.

In a merry mood, she reached behind him and gave a little yank on his ponytail. "What's
this
thing all about?" she asked.

And then she slipped her arm through his.

She had Quinn on the ropes. He didn't know which of the hits to respond to first; all he knew was that he never saw them coming. He lied about the ponytail, making something up about a centennial celebration back in
California
, and as for the arm that was looped through his—he decided simply to savor the heat. So bemused by her was he that he hardly registered the occasional glare aimed his way.

They reached the turnoff for the bistro, but Olivia had other ideas. "That Entre Nous is such a pretentious little place," she said, which naturally made Quinn feel pretentious as well. "Let's grab a couple of deli sandwiches and go back to your car. I have a surprise for you that I think you'll really like."

His disappointment fell away, replaced by curiosity, and he agreed to the terms of her counteroffer. They picked up two monster pastramis on rye and a couple of cartons of milk, then doubled back to the parking lot. He wasn't crazy
about driving Olivia around in a lowly pickup truck—hence the choice of a restaurant in town—but she didn't seem to mind.

"Is this the one that got the windshield bashed in?" she asked as she climbed into the passenger seat with their food.

Ah, Keepsake.

"The very same," he said, giving her a bland look. The expression on her face was guileless, but he decided that she was simply a damn good actress. "So. Where to?"

"The gardener's cottage," she answered, breaking into a sudden, broad grin. "I think you know the way."

At first he said nothing. Then, quietly, "You can't be serious."

"Of course I'm serious!" she said, laughing, and then she realized that he had no stomach for going there.

"Quinn, it doesn't look anything like when you and your father lived in it," she said in a more earnest tone. "It's a guest house now. My mother has done it
completely
over. Really, you won't make any associations at all."

Annoyed that she seemed to think he was an emotional wimp, Quinn put the truck in gear and said, "You misunderstand my reluctance. What I mean is, do your parents know you're doing this?"

Even worse. Now it sounded as if he were worried about coming over to play without her parents' permission. Frustrated, he said, "Liv, haven't you noticed? I'm public enemy number one in this town. I'm assuming that your parents are on the long list of people who'd like to see me leave, not the short list of people who're glad to renew an old acquaintance."

"I have no idea how my parents feel," she said, dismissing the subject. "They're not in the habit of saying."

He wasn't surprised; they never
were
in the habit of saying. "You heard about the effigy?"

"Yes, I did. I wasn't going to bring it up."

"Then why did you bring up the windshield?"

"I wanted you to know that I knew. It was less painful to do that with the windshield than with the effigy."

Jesus. Definitely
not
a
California
girl. Dizzy from breathing the rarefied air of her Yankee scruples, Quinn sighed and said, "All right. We will go to the gar—guest house."

The drive out of town was short; upper
Main
wasn't that far from the quaint shopping district. The street itself took a sharp turn past a rather grand driveway flanked by two massive granite gateposts—the entrance to the Bennett estate. For reasons he couldn't define, Quinn had so far avoided that end of
Main
. Hastings House, a block or so down the hill, was the nearest he'd gotten, and even there, Quinn had felt edgy.

Olivia punched in a code and the heavy iron gates that blocked the drive swung slowly open. Quinn drove through them, noting with satisfaction that the landscaping had suffered since his father's tenure. It wasn't so much that the big copper beech was gone—over that, he felt genuine sorrow—as that the grounds simply didn't look loved anymore. Not the way his father had loved them. Francis Leary had been devoted to his job as gardener for the Bennetts; he'
d loved every hosta, shrub, and
ivy leaf as if it were his own. Like a country doctor, he had felt the need always to be there, which is why he rarely went out on his one day off.

And then came the discovery of Alison in the quarry, and the first round of questions from the police, and the humiliating confrontation between his father and Olivia's father immediately afterward. Quinn could still remember every word of it. There had been no presumption of innocence, no strong expression of support by Owen Bennett; only a cold, seething declaration of shock and anger.

After that came the coup de grace: Francis Leary was fired. Owen Bennett wanted him and Quinn out of the house within twenty-four hours. Quinn could still see his father standing in the small living room of the cottage with his head bowed, just
... taking it. Quinn had been so frustrated by his father's meekness that he had charged at Bennett with every intention of knocking him down and killing him, but his father had called him back with a single syllable: "
Son."

Such memories consumed Quinn as he parked the truck in front of the cottage that had been built expressly for lucky gardeners to live in. Farther up the winding drive was the main house, blessedly obscured from Quinn's view by a massive bank of rhododendrons. With any luck he'd be able to get in and then out of the cottage without the Bennetts being any the wiser.

Maybe to Olivia the house looked different, but not to Quinn. True, the paint scheme had been changed from a drab gray to a pleasing slate
blue with ivory trim and ruby-
red shutters. But from the
gingerbread gables to the dia
mond-paned casements, the Hansel and Gretel cottage looked like
... well, like home. Home before the troubles came and forced them to leave it forever.

"You're very quiet, Quinn, and it's making me nervous," Olivia said as he stared at the impossibly charming house.

Quinn tried to lie himself out of his mood. "I thought I heard a mourning dove calling, and it's way too early in the year—that's all."

Olivia seemed relieved. "Come on in, then. You won't believe what I've got for you." She scrambled out of the front seat and by the time Quinn caught up with her, she had fished a key from her bag and was letting herself in.

She was right: The cottage didn't look or feel or even smell the way he remembered. The plain white walls were gone, and so was the vague but pervasive mustiness. All the dark trim had been painted out, and floral wallpaper made the place look both cozier and yet somehow larger than when he lived there. There was more furniture, much of it rattan and wicker. The lighting was warm and discreet, the refinished floors gleamed like spread honey.