1 A High-End Finish (19 page)

Although the air was cool, the sun had grown warm, so I took off my sweater and stared up to see if there were any clouds in the sky. That’s when I noticed that the window of Mac’s apartment was halfway open. I took that to mean that he was in there, even though I hadn’t seen him since he’d moved in. His big black SUV was parked in front of my house, another sign of his presence. As I continued to wrap twine around stalks of herbs, I began to fantasize about his lifestyle.

Was he hunkered down writing a new book? Did he work all night and sleep all day? I wondered if he knew many people in town, the best places to eat and shop, and whom to call for deliveries. Did he realize that our town was a magnet for New Age foodies and health nuts? Did he care? Was he a vegan? I hoped not, although it was none of my business. But, really, what was wrong with a little red meat, anyway, as long as the animal was raised humanely?

He hadn’t said so, but maybe Mac had moved here to join our well-known and very active Zen Buddhism society. They had a lovely retreat, the Sanctuary of the Four Winds, north of town up near the redwood forest. There the Zen acolytes trained and meditated under the guidance of Kikisho—he had the one-word name because he was said to be as famous in his world as Cher was in hers—and prepared themselves for the next phase. Whatever that was.

Many of the tourists who came to the sanctuary were into all sorts of other disciplines, including transcendental meditation and multiple-life regression. And if those didn’t float your boat, there were spas on Main Street dedicated to aura-color enhancement, chakra cleansings, and sacred-stone healing.

And then there were a few space cadets who showed up wearing backpacks in anticipation of the mother ship carrying them off to the astral plane.

Not that I was judging, but Mac didn’t seem like the type to hook up with a spirit guide for a quick trek out to planet Flerb.

Okay, maybe I was judging a little.

Whatever Mac’s reasons for moving here, he would certainly enjoy some fresh produce—wouldn’t he? I found a small basket and gathered up some lettuce, tomatoes, onions, broccoli, and an artichoke, and tossed in a bundle of herbs. Getting into my mission, I went inside and found a box of tasty crackers and a small round of cheese I hadn’t opened yet. I added a chocolate bar for fun and then climbed the stairs to his apartment.

I knocked on the door and waited. It was a full minute before Mac opened the door and I sort of wished he hadn’t. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair was sticking straight out from his head as if he had been pulling on it for hours. He wore a faded, out-of-shape T-shirt and a pair of plaid shorts that hung loosely on his hips. The outfit might’ve been sexy if the rest of him was a little more pulled together. But again, I wasn’t judging.

“What?” he said, looking startled. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Are you all right?”

“Fine.” He glanced out the door to see if there was someone else with me. “Working. What do you want?”

I held out the basket. “I thought I’d bring you some fresh—”

“Hey, thanks,” he said, grabbed the basket, and shut the door in my face.

“You’re welcome,” I said to the door. So much for rattling the beast’s cage. At least he’d said thanks. And now he would eat well—if he even remembered he had food.

•   •   •

A few days later, I was making a salad for dinner when I happened to glance out my kitchen window and noticed three very big, extremely muscular men walking up the stairs to the guest apartments. Were they from the police department, coming to clean up the rest of Wendell’s apartment? Were they friends of Mac’s? Or maybe enemies? They were awfully big and potentially fearsome.

I dried my hands quickly and jogged out to the garden. “Hi, guys. Can I help you?”

The biggest one, who was leading the pack, leaned over the railing and smiled politely. “No, ma’am, but thank you. We’re here to see Mac.”

Don’t hurt him,
I wanted to say, but didn’t dare, for fear of him turning on me. The guy was huge and bald and wore a skintight black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He could’ve been a world wrestling champion for all I knew. Or a paid assassin. He pounded on Mac’s door and stood back to wait.

The other two men weren’t quite as large, but they were still intimidating. One wore a black bomber jacket and looked like he might’ve been part of a motorcycle gang. The third was dressed sedately in a pressed shirt tucked into blue jeans. He didn’t look particularly mean, but you never knew. Maybe he was the brains behind the muscle.

I worked up my courage and called out to them, “I don’t know if he’ll answer the door. He’s been very busy lately.”

Just then, Mac swept the door open and the three men greeted him with hoots and howls. There were manly hugs with a lot of backslapping and arm punching. But the truly surprising thing was Mac himself. He looked wonderful. His beautiful thick hair was brushed back neatly. He looked rested and clean and handsome, and completely straight-arrow in a navy pullover sweater and khakis. This was no longer the eccentric writer yanking his hair out for the sake of his art.

“Dude, what is this place?” the motorcycle guy said, glancing around.

“It’s a little piece of heaven,” Mac said, then noticed me watching them and grinned. “See? There’s an angel.”

I shook my head and walked back into the house.

A few minutes later while I was finishing up my salad, I saw Eric Jensen walk up the stairs to Mac’s place.

I’d heard some loud laughter and raucous voices coming from his apartment, but I couldn’t believe that one of my neighbors would’ve called the police so soon. I didn’t expect a confrontation, but I watched from the safety of my kitchen, anyway, and pushed open the casement window a few inches in order to hear the conversation as Eric knocked on the door.

Mac opened the door and grinned. “Hey, glad you could make it, Chief. Guys, this is Eric Jensen. You’ll all want to watch yourselves since he’s the chief of police of this fine village and won’t take crap from any of y’all.”

“At least he won’t cheat,” one of the guys shouted from inside the apartment.

“That’s what you think,” Eric said, chuckling.

Mac closed the door behind Eric, leaving me mystified.

But a minute later, I saw Hal bounding up the stairs. What the hell? I ran out to the garden and waved at him. “Hal!”

He glanced down. “Hey, Shannon. What’s up?”

“What are you doing here? Where’s Lizzie?”

“She’s at home with the kids. I’m going to Mac’s.”

“But why?”

“It’s his monthly poker game.” He rubbed his hands together in excitement. “See you later, kiddo.”

•   •   •

The poker game broke up around two in the morning—
not
that I’d stayed up watching and waiting to make sure everyone left at a decent hour. I didn’t care. I was a little surprised that Jane and I hadn’t been rudely awakened by any shouting or drunken laughter in the middle of the night. No, I just happened to wake up to get a glass of water and saw Mac walking with the other guys down the stairs and out to their cars. They were talking in low tones and I must say I appreciated their courtesy.

I had grown up playing card games with my dad and Uncle Pete, so I’d never considered poker some sort of esoteric ritual among men. But some of my girlfriends did and they were always peeved when they weren’t included. I had joined in plenty of poker games with my crew guys, and while I liked to play, I didn’t like to lose.

The one time I had put up a quiet stink about not being allowed to play in a big poker game was when a new builder came to town from Mendocino. He invited all the local contractors except me and another woman, a friend who was co-owner of a local plumbing company. I found out later that I had also not been invited to bid on a job he was about to start. That pissed me off and I let people know it. Not that I was all that powerful, but I was a firm believer in fair dealing, so suffice to say it never happened again.

In the case of Mac’s poker party, though, I was just happy he was making new friends in Lighthouse Cove and also inviting his old friends to be a part of our town.

And didn’t I sound like Little Miss Sunshine working overtime for the Chamber of Commerce? I finished drinking my water and went back to bed.

•   •   •

Jane had made coffee and was gone by the time I woke up the next morning. I walked outside with my coffee mug in hand to pick up the mail I’d forgotten to get the day before. As I strolled back to the kitchen door, I saw Mac waiting at the gate.

“Hello.”

“Morning, Irish,” he said, pushing the gate open. “I hope we didn’t keep you up last night.”

“Not at all,” I said. “You guys were pretty quiet. Did you have a good time?”

“Sure did.”

“Who was the big winner?”

“Hal.” He shook his head in disgust. “The guy’s got a computer inside his head.”

“I hope you didn’t lose too badly.”

“I never do,” he assured me. He grabbed something off the picnic table and handed it to me. “I wanted to return this to you.”

“My basket.”

“Yeah. Thanks for putting all that stuff together for me. You saved my life.”

I laughed. “I doubt that, but I’m glad you were able to use it.”

“No, I’m serious, you saved my life. The chocolate, the vegetables—everything. It was really thoughtful of you. Sometimes I get into a zone and forget to eat, forget to sleep, barely remember to breathe.”

“I’m not very creative, but I can see how that could happen when you’re really into the story.”

“Yeah, it happens.” He took a step closer and touched my arm with the tips of his fingers. “But you’re wrong. When I look around here, I see creativity in everything you do.”

“Oh.” Self-conscious now, I glanced around at the garden, the house; tried to see it through his eyes. “I guess you could look at it that way, but it’s nothing like what you do.”

He laughed softly. “You have no idea.”

I smiled. “Anyway, if you’d ever like to take something from the garden, you’re more than welcome to—”

“I’m dazzled by you, Shannon Hammer.”

“You are?”

“Yeah,” he said, moving closer. His fingers skimmed up and down my arm and brushed my hair back off my shoulders. “I forgot to eat and sleep and breathe because of you. I dreamed of your green eyes.”

“Oh, dear.”

“It’s all good,” he said, smiling as he leaned in and kissed me. It was such a surprise that I held my breath for a few seconds. But then I relaxed and gave in to the sweet excitement of having a man’s lips on mine. Something stirred inside me. Attraction, of course, but more than that. Electricity. Happiness.
Wow.

When he stepped back, he was still smiling.

“Well. Um.” Apparently I had forgotten how to speak.

He chuckled. “I know what you mean.”

I shook my head. “It’s just . . . well, that was unexpected.”

“But kind of awesome, right?”

I laughed, charmed by him. “Definitely awesome.”

“Good.” He grabbed my hand companionably and walked me up the steps to my kitchen door. “I’m going back to work. I’ve got a great new character in this book. Jake Slater has finally met a woman who befuddles him completely.”

“Really? That sounds like fun.”

“It is,” he said, sounding gleeful. “They’ve just met because her bicycle brakes failed.”

“Oh,” I said, baffled that he would use the story of how the two of us met in one of his books. “Isn’t that sort of a low-tech complication for Jake Slater?”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “But it’s such a refreshing twist on the tired cliché of car brakes failing, I couldn’t resist.”

“Well, I hope he solves the mystery.”

He opened the kitchen door, caught me in a quick embrace, and kissed me again. While my head was still spinning, he said, “I’ll keep you posted.”

Thursday morning I finally felt good enough to get back to work on the Boyers’ job site. My shoulder was still a little iffy, so I didn’t plan to go crazy with a sledgehammer or carry a bag of cement around. But I was perfectly capable of stripping old wallpaper or soaking balusters in paint-remover solution if the situation called for it.

I told myself that even if Joyce Boyer showed up today, I could handle her. I was stronger now, and surely enough time had passed that she had calmed down about Jerry Saxton and all of his women. At least, I hoped so.

“Hey, boss,” Wade said when I walked up the new front stairs to greet him on the porch. “What do you think?”

“Stairs look good and feel solid,” I said. “And I love that siding.”

“Better than the lattice, I think.”

“Much better.” I walked back down the stairs and, from the walkway, studied the new base of the house. “I’m glad it worked. The Boyers will love it, too, don’t you think?”

“Since it was your idea, I completely agree.”

I smiled. Many Victorian porches were built high above ground level and a common way to hide the underbelly was with latticework panels. We had gone a different route using thin vertical siding reminiscent of traditional wainscoting. When it was painted glossy white to match the front porch banister and railings, it would give a look of upscale elegance to the house.

He leaned against the post. “So, what’s up?”

“What needs to be done, Wade?” I asked. “I’m here to work. Nothing too strenuous because my shoulder’s still a little screwed up. But I had to get out of the house and I want to stay busy. I promise I won’t slow you down.”

“I’m not worried about that and, besides, it’s your call, boss. You can work on anything you want.”

I glanced at the front door, already stripped of six old coats of paint. “It’s a miracle we’re close to being on schedule after all that’s happened. I’d like to try to keep it that way.”

“Okay. I’ve got Todd and Billy starting on the foyer today, so let’s stick to that area. How about if you go to work on the newel post?”

“Sounds good.” He pushed the door open and we walked into the foyer. The thick carved post at the bottom of the main staircase was one of the highlights of the entryway.

“Most of the ornamentation is in good shape,” he said, “but a few of the carved pieces closest to the base are damaged. And there are so many coats of old paint, you can barely see the detail.”

“Okay.” I studied the newel post. While much of the damage to the wood was due to the normal wear and tear of aging, I also noticed some tiny termite holes and some shredding near the base, just as Wade had said. We’d already tented the house, so I wasn’t worried about termites anymore. The shredding could’ve been caused by a sharp-clawed family pet or a rambunctious child who liked to kick things. Either way, it would have to be fixed.

“I’ll remove the ornamental medallions first, strip off the paint layers, and get them cleaned up. Then I’ll deal with the post itself.”

He nodded. “I’ll leave you to it.”

It was a small but time-consuming job. It would have to be done by someone eventually, so given my current disability, it made sense for me to do it. That way, I wouldn’t be taking one of the guys away from a job requiring heavy lifting.

I went back to my truck to pull some tools out of the small chest I’d brought with me.

“Well, well, she finally shows her face.”

Joyce Boyer. My back straightened at the sound of her voice. She didn’t sound happy, but I knew I’d have to run into her eventually. I turned and said, “Hello, Joyce. Good to see you.” It was a lie, but a necessary one. She was my client, so it was past time I made nice with her. If I kept the conversation centered on the job, we would get along fine. “Things are looking good, don’t you think? And we’re right on schedule.”

“No thanks to you.”

I smiled, despite wanting to smack her. “True enough. I was on the disabled list for a while there, but Wade and the guys did a great job while I was gone. I’m back now and feeling a lot better.”

“Well, la-dee-dah,” she said nonsensically.

My smile was a tight line. I ignored her to rifle through my tool kit for a thin putty knife and a small hammer. So I guess Joyce knew how to hold a grudge. I just wasn’t sure why I was the focus of her rage. If she was so angry about Jerry cheating on her, she should’ve been relieved not to have to deal with him ever again.

I found the putty knife and also grabbed my favorite pink work gloves. I decided to take a utility knife, too, just in case the old paint was so thick that it might take off some of the wood when I pried the ornamental pieces away from the post. I could slide the utility knife in between the post and the ornamental piece and cut the paint without damaging either.

I pushed the tailgate closed and turned. Joyce was still there, standing right in my path.

“I’m not finished with you, Pinkie,” she said, exaggerating the nickname.

Pinkie.
Because of my gloves? What. Ever. I couldn’t work with a client who hated me, though, so I decided to nip her attitude in the bud here and now.

“Look, Joyce, if you’re angry at me because of Jerry Saxton, you should know that—”

“Aha. So you admit you were trying to steal him.”

Steal him?
“Are you kidding? I didn’t even know him. I definitely didn’t like him. I was set up on a blind date and you probably heard what a success it was.”

“I heard you kicked him.”

“Yeah, because he attacked me.”

“No way.”

“Oh, guess you didn’t hear that part.” I looked at her quizzically. “I’m not even sure why you care about him. He was a creep and a womanizer, and while I’m sorry he’s dead, I’m not sorry he won’t be around to attack another woman.”

Her hands fisted in frustration. “He didn’t attack women.”

“If that’s what you think, you’re deluding yourself.”

“You didn’t understand him like I did.”

“Really? You understood him? So you knew that he was dating numerous women at the same time and making promises he had no intention of keeping? And despite your claims, he did hurt women. He threatened them. I guess you’re lucky you weren’t one of them. But you didn’t understand him quite as well as you think you did.”

“You don’t know anything. Jerry was fun. He was a good listener. And he was a wild animal in the sack.”

“Stop.” My stomach pitched and I held up my hand. “Too much information.”

“You’re just jealous.”

“Trust me, I’m not. Besides, you’ve been telling everyone in town that you hated him, so why are you suddenly defending him to me?”

“Because he cheated on me, the jerk! I could’ve lived with it, but thanks to you, everybody in town found out.”

They found out because Joyce had blabbered it all over the place, but she wouldn’t appreciate my pointing out the obvious. Instead, I said, “I truly didn’t know you were involved with him and, besides, I had no intention of ever seeing him again after that night.” Since her brain didn’t seem to be functioning, I added slowly, “He would’ve been all yours.”

“Except somebody killed him,” she said sullenly. “It was probably you.”

“It wasn’t.” There was no reason to continue this conversation. Joyce was unhappy and confused and I couldn’t convince her of the truth. “I’ve got to get to work. Despite your personal feelings toward me—which are unfounded, by the way—I still want to do the best job possible on your house.”

“I should fire you.”

I stopped and stared at her. “Why?”

She scowled. “Because I’m mad at you.”

“Please don’t be. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I suppose not.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’m just so bummed.”

“Why?”

She sighed. “You’ve met Stan, right? Well, Jerry was a Greek god compared to Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Stan.”

“I’ve really got to get to work.” I rushed back to the house and ran inside before she could give me one more appalling fact about Jerry’s prowess or Stan’s lack thereof.

Inside, I shook off the vibes from the confrontation and concentrated on the job. Folding a couple of old towels on the floor to protect my knees, I went to work on removing the newel post ornamentation. I was left blessedly alone for two whole hours, plenty of time to pry away the twelve carved wood medallions that had graced the four sides of the thick post for as long as the house had been standing.

I stood and stretched for a long minute to ease the stiffness in my legs from kneeling for that much time. Stacking the medallions on a sturdy piece of discarded drywall, I carried them out to the front porch, where a large plywood table and a couple of folding chairs were set up to do any of the detail work we occasionally had.

The table also held the stack of blueprints Wade and I referred to whenever there was a question of taking down a wall or ripping up a floor. The architect I worked with always redrew an updated, clean version of the blueprints whenever I started a new job, but I kept the old sheets as well, for reference.

Laying out the medallions, I took a closer look with a magnifying glass and decided that, yes, I could save them all. They would have to be soaked in solvent and stripped completely so that no layer of paint remained. When they were cleaned up, I would use wood filler to patch any damaged areas and then sand them until smooth. After that, the newel post itself would get the same basic treatment and then the medallions would be reattached to the post. Once the entire staircase was stripped down, we would stain and varnish everything to a high-gloss finish.

“Well, hello there.”

I looked up to find Stan Boyer grinning at me. “Hi, Stan. Good to see you.”

“House is coming along.”

“The guys are doing a great job,” I said, and brought him up-to-date on the work they’d done that he might not have noticed.

“I’m real pleased with everything, Shannon.”

“I’m glad. You’ve got the bones of a beautiful home here.”

He leaned his hip against the table. “I saw Joyce corner you earlier. What were you two talking about?”

“Oh.” I thought fast. “I was just telling her that we’re right on schedule. How are you doing? I saw you at the pub the other night but didn’t get a chance to say hello.”

“I’ve been around.” His eyes twinkled. “You’re the one who’s been missing.”

I smiled ruefully. “True. I’ve been nursing a shoulder injury, but I’m better now and happy to be back at work.”

He scuffed his shoes on the ground a few times. “Listen, I want to apologize for the last time we talked. I sent you on a wild-goose chase that turned ugly.”

“I’ll say it did,” I said lightly, trying to match his casual tone. But
ugly
was putting it mildly. Because of Stan’s phone call last week, I had come over here to do him a favor and found Jerry Saxton’s dead body instead. Both Mac and Eric had suggested that maybe I’d been lured to the basement to find Jerry’s body. If that were true, then Stan would’ve played a part in luring me.

“I heard you got called down to the police station,” he said.

“Sure did,” I said mildly. “They hauled me down there and asked me a lot of questions.”

He grimaced. “Yeah, they asked me a bunch, too.”

Since he seemed to be in a talkative mood, I went ahead and brought up the one thing I’d been dying to know the answer to. “What happened that afternoon, Stan? You told me on the phone that your neighbor telephoned you, but the police said later that none of them would admit that they called you.”

Frustrated, he raked his fingers through his sparse patch of gray hair. “I didn’t lie to you. I did talk to my neighbor’s daughter. Daphne said she was out walking the dog and passed my house on the way to the beach. The dog took off running and ended up sniffing around the side.” He pointed toward the back of the house. “Over there. He started barking and wouldn’t stop. When Daphne caught up with him, she could hear water running, so she called me on my cell.”

“Didn’t the police interview her?”

“Well, here’s the thing.” He looked embarrassed again. “She took off that night for San Francisco to catch a red-eye for her semester abroad in Spain. It was hell getting in touch with her right away because she was going to go hiking around the country for a week or so before starting classes. But they finally got hold of her and she told her story just like I said. So that let me off the hook.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“You and me both, girlie.” He gave a cursory glance at the medallions I was working on. “I’ll let you get back to whatever you’re doing.”

“Okay.”

Stan walked away and I went to work stripping the medallions. I placed them neatly at the bottom of a big plastic bucket and carefully poured the solvent over them. I estimated that they would need a few hours of soaking to get rid of the paint and varnish they’d been coated with. I tucked the bucket under a window on the porch and taped a piece of paper to the side that said, C
AUSTIC
S
OLVENT
AT
W
ORK
.
D
O
N
OT
D
ISTURB
.

I thought about my conversation with Stan. I hadn’t learned anything except that he hadn’t been lying about the reason he’d called me that day. I still didn’t know why he’d told me he was in San Francisco, but decided I didn’t want to know. I’d already heard way too much about his and Joyce’s personal relationship. I didn’t need to know more.

As I was stowing my tools back in my truck, my cell phone rang. I checked the number and groaned out loud. I didn’t dare let it go to voice mail, though, because that would exact a worse punishment than if I just faced the music and took the call. “Hello?”

“My family room ceiling is leaking. I’m having a very important dinner party tomorrow night and this has to be fixed.”

Gracious as always,
I thought. “Hello, Whitney,” I said.

“I’ll expect you to be here in fifteen minutes.” She hung up the phone.

What a charmer. Here was the thing about Whitney Reid Gallagher. She and Tommy and their three children lived in a gorgeous, modern Victorian-style home near the Alisal Cliffs. Their beautiful, trendy housing development was called Cliffside. My father had built many of the Cliffside homes over the past twenty years, including Whitney’s. So in her little mind, this made it okay for her to call me whenever anything went wrong in her house.