The Carriage House

“We’re not even a mile from the village.”

“You don’t think she’s odd?”

“Harl, we live here.”

“Well, our great-great-granddaddy didn’t off anyone in your living room.” He shook his head, his white ponytail trailing several inches down his broad back. He’d let his hair grow since giving up police work. It had turned white a few years after he’d come home from Vietnam, and he’d gotten into bar fights over people saying the wrong thing about his white hair. Andrew had participated in a few of them himself. No point sitting out a bar fight, not in those days.

Harl dumped the dead plant leaves in the trash. “I have to tell you, Thorne, my instincts are all on high alert. You find out how she ended up with that place?”

“Not yet, I haven’t asked.”

“Ask.”

Harl left for his shop, and Andrew went in to shoo Dolly up to bed.

He read her two Madeleine books and a few pages of The Hobbit, but she was preoccupied with her missing cat. She’d pulled out all her stuffed cats and put them in bed with her, leaving very little room for Andrew to sit next to her for their nightly reading.

“Maybe Tippy Tail’s gone on an adventure like Bilbo,” Andrew said, referring to The Hobbit.

Dolly shook her head, her big eyes brimming with tears. She smelled of a fruity bubble bath that he found particularly nauseating, and she hugged three stuffed cats close to her. “She’s dead, Daddy. I know she’s dead.”

He breathed deeply. A six-year-old shouldn’t know so much about death. “Tippy Tail can take care of herself. She’s tough. Trust her, okay? Cats like to have their kittens where little girls can’t find them.”

“Not Tippy Tail.”

“Yes, Tippy Tail.”

“Harl says we can put up posters. I can draw a picture of her, and—and if somebody sees her, they can call us, and we can go get her!” She sniffled, perking up. “Do you think that would be good, Daddy?”

For someone who hated cats, Harl was going out of his way to find this one. “Sure, Dolly. We can do posters in the morning.”

She nodded eagerly, her mood transformed now that she had a plan. This quickly led to indignation. “I don’t think Tippy Tail should have runned away. I’m a princess. She’s supposed to obey me.”

“Cats don’t obey anyone, Dolly. That’s why they’re cats.”

She snuggled down into her pillow, a black-and-white stuffed kitten pressed against her rosy cheek, fat tears on her dark eyelashes. She shut her eyes. “Can you read to me some more?”

Andrew read The Hobbit until she drifted off. He was aware of his own voice in the silent, still room. It was a kid’s room, simply furnished and not overly childish. He wasn’t about to redo it every year. There was an oak dresser Harl had refinished, a round mirror, a bulletin board covered with pictures of cats and fairies, crates of toys and stuffed animals, handheld computer games and a long pegboard overloaded with baseball caps, sequined shawls and at least six different crowns.

Above her bed was a framed cross-stitch Beatrix Potter D that Joanna had done when she was pregnant, teasing herself even then about “turning domestic.” But she’d been happy, excited about their child. Ike Grantham had been off on one of his escapades, not a factor in their lives, although they knew him because they lived in Beacon, where everyone knew the Granthams. Only later, after his sister started dating Joanna’s boss, Richard Montague, did Ike mention how he could help her train to climb Mount McKinley. “If you can chase a toddler around the house, you can climb a mountain.”

Andrew shut The Hobbit, a weighty, oversize edition. He didn’t know how much Dolly understood, but he enjoyed reading to her. Harl never did. He could sit still for hours working on a piece of furniture, but not for more than five minutes with a children’s book. He was back in his shop now, working. Some nights he’d work until dawn.

What was Tess Haviland, Andrew wondered, doing in her carriage house? It had no furniture, lousy wiring. Was she one of Ike’s women? Andrew had been too busy today to ask around town. If anyone would know, it would be Lauren, and Lauren Montague was about the last person he’d want to ask anything. She felt guilty about her brother’s role in Joanna’s death even though Andrew assured her there was no need. Joanna had wanted to climb Mount McKinley. It wasn’t just Ike’s doing.

He headed downstairs, picking up Dolly’s sneakers and the odd toy on the way. He wasn’t much of a taskmaster. He settled into a battered, comfortable leather chair in the den and flipped on the ball game. A stiff wind off the water beat against the tall, old windows. A little atmosphere, he thought with amusement, for Tess Haviland’s first night on the point.

Six

By ten o’clock, Tess was thinking about calling it quits and heading back to the city. But she’d had two glasses of wine with the Brie-and-cucumber sandwich she’d picked up at the bakery, along with her scones for the morning, and she was too sleepy to drive.

She was tempted to get a hotel room for the night. The wind howled and whistled, rattled doors and windows, and her avocado refrigerator was making strange wheezing noises. And it was dark. She was used to streetlights.

All she needed now were a couple of bats.

Or a ghost.

“Now, stop that,” she said aloud, her voice echoing in the big, empty room. She was sitting cross-legged on her sleeping bag. She’d set up camp on the wooden floor just over the kitchen threshold, close to the bathroom and the side door, which would take her straight out to her car.

She had a battery-operated lantern Davey had given her for her birthday one year, a camp mat for padding and her portable white-noise machine with a choice of sounds: ocean, dolphins and whales, a tropical rain forest, a mountain stream. She hadn’t bothered turning it on. Nothing would drown out the sound of that wind.

She shifted her position, casting dramatic shadows all around her. She wasn’t used to such a huge, dark, cavernous space.

She’d tried leaving the kitchen light on, but it flickered and cast a green glow that made her avocado appliances look sickly. The plan was to have a cup of chamomile tea and read until she felt sufficiently sleepy, then switch off the lantern and not look around, just burrow in her sleeping bag and wait until morning.

She was beginning to regard it as an insult that Ike thought this place suited her. Maybe Susanna had a point. And her father and Davey. How much could she get for it?

She heard a sound, somewhere close. She set her mug of tea on the floor and held her breath, listening. What now?

Barns have snakes…

It was probably just a squirrel or a skunk in the lilacs. She’d picked a big bouquet of them and put them in an old mason jar she’d found in a cabinet, feeling rather warm and fuzzy about her carriage house. That was before the sun went down.

This wasn’t the city. She had to expect night sounds she might not recognize. She’d never gone to summer camps in the wilderness. Her father’s idea of an excursion was a subway trip to Fenway Park—and the occasional picnic on the beach right across the street from the carriage house.

There it was again. Tess exhaled, relaxing somewhat now that she knew what it was she was hearing. A meow. It was coming from the cellar, up through the trapdoor.

Dolly Thorne’s missing cat, Tippy Tail. It had to be.

Tess debated ignoring the meow, but it came again, loud and whining. The poor cat was obviously in some kind of distress. And even if the animal was just being obnoxious, she could easily go on all night. Tess flipped on the white-noise machine, but it didn’t mask the cat’s noises, or the wind.

With a put-out groan, she got to her feet and flipped on the kitchen overhead, its greenish light making her feel even more isolated and alone than her lantern. She was wearing warm-up pants and a T-shirt to sleep in, but the cracked linoleum floor was cool on her bare feet.

She walked over to the trapdoor. “Kitty?”

There was no answering meow.

“Kitty, kitty.” She knelt on the floor beside the trapdoor, but had no intention of lifting it and peering into her dark pit of a cellar. “Tippy Tail, hey, are you down there?”

A plaintive, utterly miserable yowl came up through the floorboards. Definitely a cat. No self-respecting, murdering Yankee ghost would make that kind of noise.

Tess swore softly. She had no choice. She couldn’t leave the poor thing down there to fend for herself. What if she were hurt? How would Tess explain a dead cat to little Princess Dolly?

What kind of coward would leave a distressed cat alone in a dark, dank cellar anyway?

Tess sat back on her camp bed and put on her sneakers, then grabbed her lantern and headed out the kitchen door. The trapdoor was out of the question. If she fell off the ladder or it came apart under her, she’d die down in the cellar like a rat.

This reminded her to grab her cell phone off the kitchen counter.