Secrets of the Lost Summer (15 page)

“I don’t know the McCaffreys,” Grace said finally.

Olivia didn’t want to push the older woman to say anything she would later regret, or to upset her. They returned to the sunroom. Her grandmother had arrived to take Grace to one of their exercise classes. Olivia got out of there, not sure why she’d stopped in the first place. She only knew that she was now madly curious about Duncan McCaffrey’s reasons for turning up in Knights Bridge.

His son had to be, too.

Olivia started her car. Dylan would be back. Even if their kiss had been a passing moment not to be repeated, he had unanswered questions about his father.

He wasn’t finished with Knights Bridge.

After a long run on the beach, Dylan met Noah and Noah’s date, an aspiring actress, at the Hotel del Coronado down the street from his house. They had drinks on the sundeck behind the romantic landmark hotel, with its red-shingled Victorian domes and white-on-white exterior. Dylan stayed through a glowing sunset over the Pacific, then left Noah and his date to enjoy dinner on their own and walked back to his house.

He ate a sandwich and dragged out his father’s trunk again. His search wasn’t as cursory this time, and he wasn’t as impatient. He’d spent his first few days back putting out fires for Noah and trying to convince himself that he didn’t need to know any more than he already did about his father’s house in Knights Bridge.

“Just get rid of that house,”
Loretta had told him upon his return from Massachusetts.
“Get rid of it and forget about Knights Bridge.”

Not so easy to do, Dylan realized now. Dreaming about kissing Olivia Frost again didn’t help. He’d woken up thinking about her every night since he’d been back in San Diego.

He dug his father’s old laptop out of the trunk and fired it up out on the porch. The night was warm and still, the tide out as couples walked hand in hand on the silver sand of the beach. Dylan stifled an unbidden image of himself with Olivia and focused on the laptop screen. He’d never wanted to dip into his father’s life. He’d died suddenly, with no time to prepare—no time to burn the classified papers, as it were. Dylan had quickly discovered he needn’t have worried. If his father had secrets, he hadn’t bothered to write them down or put them onto his computer. His “official” treasure hunts had all been taken over by his partners and colleagues. He wasn’t the type to get bogged down in details. He would gather what information he needed, then establish a clear mission and take action.

Dylan had checked with his mother when he’d arrived back in San Diego, but she was of little help. During their brief marriage, she and his father had focused on the present.
“I wasn’t meant to be part of his life forever,”
she’d told Dylan.
“I think I always knew that.”

He noticed a file cryptically named “1938” and sat up straight as he opened it and scanned the brief entry:

In early September, 1938, a private luxury hotel on Arlington Street in Boston was broken into and an aristocratic stash of three rings and a necklace, some or all reputedly given to the Ashworth family by Queen Victoria, were stolen. The owner of the jewels, Lord Charles Ashworth, was knocked unconscious but later brushed off the theft, offering only a modest reward for return of “several family heirlooms.”

Rings: diamond-and-sapphire; diamond cluster; diamond-and-ruby. Necklace matches the diamond-and-sapphire ring.

A major hurricane struck New England three weeks after the theft. Then came the Munich Pact, the Nazi German invasion of Czechoslovakia and the start of World War Two.

Ashworth survived the war. The Ashworth jewels have never been recovered.

Dylan put his feet up on the porch railing. “Well, well.”

He couldn’t remember his father ever going after stolen jewels, but why not? The Ashworth jewels had to be worth a fortune. He did a quick internet search of Lord Ashworth. He was a British viscount who’d died forty years ago. One marriage, no children.

No mention of the jewels, never mind the heist in Boston. Too distasteful? Too obscure? They didn’t exist?

A quick search wasn’t going to do it and he needed to do more digging?

Dylan reread the file as Noah walked up the porch steps, his black suit coat hooked on one finger over his shoulder. He nodded back toward the Hotel del Coronado. “I took her home. She said she had to read
Alice in Wonderland
for a graduate course. You don’t think she was blowing me off, do you?”

“She’s a graduate student?”

“English.”

Dylan supposed it was possible. “Does she know you’re rich?”

“No. At least I don’t think so.
Alice in Wonderland,
Dylan?”

He grinned. “She was blowing you off, whether or not she knows you’re rich.”

Noah sighed and sat up on the porch rail, draping his coat next to him. He had on a black shirt, too. “I think I’m depressed.”

Noah wasn’t depressed. Dylan gave him a beer.

“How the hell old is that laptop?” his friend asked.

“It’s an original. Still runs.”

Noah took a long swallow of the beer. “What’s on your mind, McCaffrey?”

Dylan handed over the laptop and let Noah read.

Noah set the laptop on a small porch table. “How did old Duncan come across the news of this heist?”

“No idea. I don’t know of any other unsolved jewelry thefts that caught his eye.”

“Why do you think this one did? The history of the jewels? The amount they’re worth? The Ashworths? Could they have hired him to find the jewels?”

“He wasn’t a private detective.”

“What’s a jewelry heist in Boston in 1938 got to do with a falling-down house in Knights Bridge?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

“And the reason would be…what?”

A good question, Dylan thought, suddenly restless as he dropped his feet back to the porch floor.

Noah drank more of his beer and studied his friend. “Let’s be honest here, Dylan. You don’t care about an obscure jewelry theft. You care about your father, and you’re attracted to this woman, Olivia Frost.”

Dylan didn’t argue with him, but he didn’t explain himself, either. He thought of Grace Webster’s collection of novels. “Maybe I’m just ready for my own adventure.” He rose, welcoming the breeze off the water. “You’re in good shape here, Noah. You have a team you can trust in place. You can manage without me.”

Noah was philosophical. “We’ve worked hard, and we’ve been lucky. Time to get our personal lives in order.”

“My personal life’s just fine.”

“But you are going back to Knights Bridge?”

Dylan looked out at the ocean, dark under the night sky. “I am.”

Fifteen minutes after Noah left, Loretta Wrentham breezed up the porch steps. Dylan had texted her about the laptop file. “I haven’t had any air all day.” She grabbed the last of the three beers Dylan had brought outside with him, one of which he’d drunk. She uncapped it and sighed at him. “You McCaffreys know how to drive a woman to drink. Not that I ever worked for your father. Just you.”

“Lucky you,” Dylan said with a wry smile.

She angled a skeptical look at him. She had on a crisp white shirt, slim jeans and red heels, as if she were coming from or going to dinner. “You aren’t getting into treasure hunting, are you, Dylan?”

“Not if I can help it. I just want to know about this property in Massachusetts.”

She glanced back at the beach, then again at him as she took a swallow of the beer. “I don’t have anything to add to what I’ve already told you. I wasn’t involved in your father’s purchase of the Knights Bridge house.”

“But you knew about it.”

“After the fact. He told me—because of you.”

“Because you’re my lawyer and financial manager.”

She eased out of her red heels and stood barefoot on the porch. “Correct.”

Dylan rose, facing the ocean. “What about the Ashworth jewels, Loretta?”

“You’ve been busy, I see.” She sank against the rail, next to him, her back to the water. “More nonsense. I didn’t know much about your father’s treasure hunts. While you were in Massachusetts I did some checking. Ninety percent of what he pursued came to a dead end—nature of the beast—or he just lost interest—nature of Duncan McCaffrey.”

“Whatever he was up to in Knights Bridge was different,” Dylan said.

Loretta studied him as she drank more of her beer. Finally she said, “Are you speculating or do you know?”

“Half and half.”

She set the beer bottle back on the table. She’d drunk maybe a third. “He never mentioned the Ashworth jewels. Not to me.”

Dylan shifted his gaze from the ocean and nodded to the old laptop, still open on the table. The screen had gone blank. “You can have a look at the file if you want.”

“Dylan…”

When she didn’t go on, he filled her in on what he’d discovered on his father’s laptop.

Loretta shook her head. “Dylan, I don’t know what to say. A 1938 Boston robbery, missing jewels—I can’t help you.”

“My father’s interest in Knights Bridge feels personal,” Dylan said, turning again to face the water. “I don’t think he bought the Webster house on a whim.”

“Maybe not.” Loretta turned with him, the porch light catching the lines at the corners of her eyes. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”

Dylan didn’t answer. It was obvious it was a beautiful night. “My father didn’t involve any of his usual partners and investors in whatever he was after in Knights Bridge.”

“No, he didn’t.” She stared out at the water. “Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. You have a life here, Dylan. Your father’s gone. You can afford to walk away from this house.” She shifted her gaze, leveling her dark eyes on him. “Maybe you can’t afford not to walk away.”

“The roof leaks but there are all these musty old books. Have you read
The Count of Monte Cristo?
”

Loretta frowned at him as if he’d lost his mind and finally sputtered into laughter. “I’m not even going to ask what
The Count of Monte Cristo
has to do with any of this. I’ve seen the movie. That’s enough for me.”

Dylan grinned at her. “Ever been to New England?”

“No.”

“This is the New England of historic houses, town greens, rolling hills—”

“I like San Diego,” she said stubbornly. “You live in paradise. If you want, I can take care of this house in Knights Bridge for you. You don’t have to think about it again.”