That Night on Thistle Lane (19 page)

The man she’d overheard in Boston on Friday—Julius Hartley, the private investigator tailing Noah—was standing at the checkout counter, quizzing Greg Hughes, the teenage son of the owners.

Hartley had on a dark blue shirt, light khakis and light canvas shoes, as if he were about to step out onto a golf course.

He set a large coffee-to-go on the scarred wood counter. “Sleepy Hollow here has one bed-and-breakfast,” he said. “I stopped by and guess what? The owners are in Montreal for the week. Doesn’t New England have short summers? How can you run a bed-and-breakfast if you disappear for one whole week in August?”

“It’s kind of a hobby for them,” Greg said from behind the register. He was an avid reader of science fiction and a recent high school graduate, on his way to Bowdoin College in Maine. “They’re professors at UMASS. They go to Montreal this time every year.”

“Got it. I understand a new place has just opened up on some back road.”

“Carriage Hill,” Greg said, taking Hartley’s money. “It’s not really a bed-and-breakfast. It caters to events. Weddings, showers. You know. Anyway, the owner’s out of town right now, too.”

“I see. Well, luckily I’m not staying. I just need directions to Elly O’Dunn’s place. I understand she’s selling some of her goats.”

Phoebe tensed. How did he know about her mother? What did he want with her?

“You’re interested in buying goats?” Greg asked, skeptical.

“Sure, why not? What’s the O’Dunn farm like?”

“Simple. A few acres, a couple of sheds, a house that has plumbing and electricity but not much else.”

“A stove?”

“Yeah, a stove. I guess.”

“You guess?”

“You haven’t met Mrs. O’Dunn yet, have you?”

“No, I have not,” Hartley said. “There are restaurants in town?”

“One right now. Smith’s. You can walk to it from here. There are more within easy driving distance. We have a good range of take-out food here at the store.”

“Good to know,” Hartley said without enthusiasm.

He left with his coffee, and Phoebe darted out of the store, giving Greg a quick wave. When she reached the sidewalk, Noah’s mystery private investigator/stalker had already crossed the street to the common and was making his way into the shade of a trio of sugar maples. He sat on a bench. He didn’t look to be in a hurry.

Remembering that he didn’t know she’d overheard him or even had been in Boston, Phoebe took a breath and slowed down, crossing the street as she would if she had done what she’d planned to do—buy a bottle of wine to go with a quiet dinner at home. No meetings, no family, no friends, no goings-on.

No Noah.

She’d dreamed about him. She didn’t know what that meant but she’d awakened in a sweat and went out to the garden at dawn, calming herself by dead-heading her flowers. Noah Kendrick was off-limits. They’d gotten caught up in the drama of their night together, the thunderstorm, the moment of recognition that their identities were no longer secret.

His life was in San Diego. Hers was in Knights Bridge.

He was a billionaire with a fancy for Hollywood starlets, and she was a small-town librarian who loved her job and was devoted to her family. No Hollywood rakes for her. No men at all, lately.

And Noah was Dylan McCaffrey’s and now Olivia Frost’s friend. Phoebe was, too, and she wasn’t about to complicate their lives by getting involved with him.

Which was getting way ahead of herself but it’d been an intense dream.

She walked across the lawn, past the Civil War monument, her normal route back to the library, but instead of continuing to the opposite street, she paused in front of Julius Hartley. She couldn’t let him drive out to her mother’s place on the pretense of buying goats from her. That wasn’t going to happen, Phoebe thought. It couldn’t happen, and she wasn’t waiting to get Noah out here to take care of it.

“Phoebe O’Dunn,” Hartley said, looking up at her from the bench. He took a sip of his coffee. “Town librarian and survivor of the Titanic. That was quite a dress the other night.” He sat back and grinned at her. “You can breathe, Phoebe. Your secret’s safe with me.”

She gave him what she hoped was a cool look. “How did you know?”

“I’ve been here in Sleepy Hollow for four hours. I know a lot about you and your little town.” He pointed with his coffee. “I even read the plaque on your Union soldier. It’s my job to find out things. I’m good at it.”

Phoebe plucked a maple leaf off a low-hanging branch. He’d said he’d find out who she was, and he had. “Your name’s Julius Hartley. You’re a private investigator from Los Angeles.”

“So you’ve been busy, too. Who told you? Noah Kendrick? Dylan McCaffrey? Loretta Wrentham?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She dropped the leaf into the grass. “I want you to leave my mother alone.”

“I can’t go look at her goats?”

“No, you can’t.”

Hartley got to his feet, casually, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “You’re tougher than you look, Phoebe O’Dunn.” He drank more of his coffee. “It’s not apparent at first. You come across like a mild-mannered redhead in a pretty little sundress and sandals, but you’re a pit bull when it comes to protecting your mother and your sisters. Who protects you?”

“We all look after each other.”

“What about Kendrick? Are you looking after him now, too?”

“I’m not discussing Noah or anything else with you.”

“Except for your mother’s goats,” Hartley said, clearly amused. “Okay. I left my thumbscrews in California.” He squinted toward the library, where two young children Phoebe recognized were running down the steps ahead of their very pregnant mother. “I wonder what their favorite books are. I was a creepy little kid, I think. I liked Edgar Allan Poe.”

“At four?”

“I was a little older. Eight, maybe.” He winked as he turned back to her. “Consider that a telling clue, Phoebe. Are you going to tell Kendrick I’m in town?”

“That assumes I’m in contact with him.”

“Yes, it does.”

She tilted her head back and eyed him. “What are you doing in Knights Bridge, Mr. Hartley?”

“Right now I’m drinking coffee and enjoying a pleasant summer afternoon.”

“Are you here because of me—because I danced with Noah?”

“You two did steal the show the other night. Noah’s friend Dylan is marrying a local girl. Olivia Frost. You know that, of course.”

Phoebe hadn’t expected that response. Was he here because of Olivia? Because she was engaged to Dylan?

“Whoa. Easy there, Phoebe. No fainting.”

“I’m not close to fainting.” She straightened her spine. “If I even think you’re here to cause trouble, I’ll notify the authorities.”

Hartley laughed. “Trouble? You have a good imagination, don’t you? I guess being surrounded by books would fire up the creative juices.” He paused, studied her again. “You and Kendrick the other night. There was some kind of connection. Some sizzle between you two.”

“We were in the land of make-believe.” Phoebe immediately regretted her comment. She couldn’t let this man get to her, couldn’t engage him—especially about Noah. “I have to finish up at work. You’ll leave my mother alone, right?”

“Sure. No problem. Relax, Phoebe.”

She didn’t respond and ducked under the low maple branch.

“Does Kendrick know it was you the other night?” Hartley called to her, his voice soft but no less cocky. “A billionaire could solve all your problems.”

Phoebe spun around at him. “I don’t have any problems I can’t solve on my own.”

Hartley grinned at her. “Sure you do. We all do. We all have dreams, too. I’ll bet even you have dreams, Phoebe O’Dunn.”

Even you.

He crushed his coffee cup in one hand, kept his eyes on her. “Noah Kendrick could make your dreams come true, don’t you think? Then there’s your sister the caterer, your twin sisters the theater majors and your eccentric mother. They all have big dreams. What about you, Phoebe? Do you have big dreams or little dreams?”

She knew she should just walk away but didn’t. “There’s no such thing as a little dream.”

“Maybe so. A small-town New England librarian and a California billionaire. Dreams don’t get bigger than that, do they?”

He was overstepping, and Phoebe saw that he knew it. She met his gaze, drew on her experience with the public and her natural reserve to keep her emotions to herself. “Why are you here, Mr. Hartley? Are you making sure we locals don’t take advantage of Noah and Dylan? Are you looking for information on them for a client? For some blackmail scheme? Is that what this is about?”

“How would you work your mother’s Nigerian Dwarf goats into blackmail?” Harley laughed, then waved a hand at her. “Easy, Phoebe. I’m harmless. Go back to your musty books.”

She didn’t know if he was trying to be funny or deliberately insulting. She took a breath and watched him walk in the opposite direction across the common, back toward the country store. “You still can’t pretend you’re interested in buying any of my mother’s goats,” she called to him.

He held up a hand without turning around, signaling acknowledgment of her statement more than acquiescence.

She headed back to the library, dialing the cell phone number Noah had given her. When he picked up on the second ring, she hardly waited for him to say hello. “He’s here,” she said. “Your guy. Julius Hartley. He’s in Knights Bridge.”

“Where are you?”

“At the library. We close early on Tuesday.”

“Wait for me there.”

*

Phoebe headed up to the attic and into the hidden room, hot and stuffy even with the cooler, drier air. It’d be another ten minutes before Noah would get there from Carriage Hill. She opened the corner door, light streaming in from the window, no sign of Julius Hartley on the common. Did his reasons for following Noah east have anything to do with Knights Bridge? With Olivia or Dylan, or their upcoming marriage? Phoebe couldn’t even guess. Noah and Dylan lived in such a different world than the one she knew.

Whatever he wanted, she hoped Hartley was on his way back to San Diego.

She certainly didn’t need him skulking around town ahead of the fashion show.

She would have to decide soon about using any of the dresses created by her mystery seamstress, exposing this room to town scrutiny.

She heard footsteps on the worn attic floor and assumed it was Vera, who was staying late to sort a new box of donated clothing for the fashion show. She’d been happily pulling out silk scarves when Phoebe had ventured up to the attic. “I’ll be right out,” she called, quickly shutting the corner door by the window. She hadn’t told Vera yet about the hidden room.

“It’s me, Phoebe. Noah.”

Oh, damn.

He was just outside the door that the freestanding closets had concealed. She’d pulled them away and left the hidden door—now not-so-hidden door—partly open. He had to have noticed. Not that he realized she was hiding anything. Which she wasn’t, not really. She was just taking her time before she revealed her discovery.

She was suddenly sweating, her heart racing, as if the mysteries of her unknown seamstress somehow revealed deep, dark secrets of her own—as if Noah would be able to see through her defenses.

Except she didn’t have any deep, dark secrets.

“Phoebe,” he said, his voice very near now. “Are you—”

“I’m right here.” She opened the door wide, not surprised to find Noah standing there. She smiled, feeling ridiculously nervous, even selfconscious. “You’re not a ghost.”

“No, I’m not a ghost.”

“What did you do, drive a hundred miles an hour to get here this fast?”

“I was almost to town when you called. The library’s closed but your assistant let me in. Can I come in?”

She nodded. “Of course. It’s hot in here. I was just about to leave.”

Noah stepped into the tiny room. Since she’d closed off the window by shutting the corner door, the room was almost dark. She switched on an old lamp she’d dragged in from another part of the attic. It didn’t offer much light as he glanced at the shelves and baskets of fabric and sewing supplies, the trunks and garment bags, the dresses she’d pulled out and left draped on a chair.

“I didn’t expect this in a library attic,” he said. “The dresses you and Olivia and your sister wore to the masquerade came from here?”

“This room’s something of a mystery,” Phoebe said, keeping her tone neutral. “I didn’t realize it existed until a few weeks ago. I haven’t told anyone else about it. I stumbled on it when I was chasing marbles.”

“Something for a librarian to do. Chase marbles.”

His tone held a hint of humor, but she could see his focus and suspected he was trying to keep himself from pushing too hard, jumping on her for immediate answers about her encounter with Julius Hartley.

She ran a finger along the edge of the old sewing table. “It’s as if whoever created this room just stepped out, but I’m guessing it’s been decades. I want to know who she was. Is, maybe. Someone in town, someone who left town?”

“Any clues?”

“Not many. She studied French and was clearly fascinated with Hollywood, and she could do anything with a needle and thread. She must have made her own patterns for most of these dresses.”

“You found your Edwardian gown here?”

Phoebe stood back from the table. “It’s one of the first ones I came across. I had it and the dresses Olivia and Maggie wore cleaned—”

“But you didn’t tell them about this room.”

“Right. I will, though.” She waved a hand. “You’re not here about an old sewing room, and it’s not why I called you.”

“You said Julius Hartley is here in town.”

“I saw him at the country store. He took a coffee out to the common and I talked to him there.”

Noah steadied his gaze on her, his eyes a deep navy in the dim light. “What did you two talk about?”

His stillness, his control struck her as incredibly sexy, but she kept her reaction to herself and repeated her conversation with Hartley. She left out only his comments about dreams.

When she finished, she picked up a sequined dress she’d draped on a rickety metal chair. “You’re sure you don’t know Hartley or anything about why he’s following you?” she asked, folding the dress, a design of peach silk crepe, sequins and fringe.