The Sense of Reckoning Read online

  “Dad told me you asked me to come by to help,” said Chip.

  “Oh, right.”

  Millie rolled her eyes at Pritchard’s back and gave Chip a friendly smile, then returned to polishing.

  Pritchard gestured with the clipboard he was holding. “Come with me.” He left the kitchen and strode down the wide gallery that ran through the middle of the house toward the front door. “The Furnesses are having a party—last-minute thing, guest of honor just showed up yesterday. Ship from Italy, and train and car from New York. You’d think he could have given them a little more warning.”

  “They’re having a party for a foreigner?”

  “Well, it probably won’t be much of a party for him since he doesn’t speak much English, but he brought a painting that Mr. Furness bought. Mr. Furness is pretty pleased with it.” Pritchard looked at the clipboard. “Mrs. Furness wants fires laid in all the public rooms in case it gets chilly this evening.”

  “Not likely to get chilly with this weather.”

  “She says she wants fires and she’s the boss. Go on then.”

  Chip turned toward the back of the house.

  “And mind you make them so they’re not smoky!”

  Chip waved an acknowledgement.

  Chip had made up fires in the other first-floor rooms, with the last one to lay in the library. The door had been closed and Chip had postponed, thinking Mr. Furness must be in there and that he would wait until the room was empty, but then he had seen Mr. Furness outside talking to Pritchard. Perhaps the door had been closed accidentally. He knocked tentatively on the door and, getting no answer, opened it and entered with his basket of wood.

  A young man—in fact, just about Chip’s age—stood at the window in an almost military stance, his arms held at his sides, his fingers curled. He had exotically dark hair and olive skin. A slight softening of his hard edges would have made him handsome, but his lean frame was a little too angular, his features a little too sharp.

  Two wing chairs that were normally drawn up to the elaborately tiled fireplace had been moved in front of a large window framing a glorious view of Frenchman Bay. The chairs flanked a small table on which rested three champagne glasses. On the table, facing away from Chip, was a painting on an easel.

  “Sì?”

  “I just came to lay the fire.” Chip gestured to his basket.

  “Sì.” The dark-haired boy clasped his hands behind his back. “Faccia pure.” He waved imperiously toward the fireplace.

  Chip crossed to the fireplace, knelt, and began arranging the kindling.

  After a moment, the boy said, “Aspetterò in veranda,” and walked stiffly to the door and disappeared into the hall.

  Chip finished laying the fire and then crossed to the easel to see what was on it.

  It was a painting of a young woman—dark hair loose around her shoulders, dark eyes meeting his. Her dress was plain but rich-looking, probably silk, puffed crimson sleeves slashed to release a spill of white fabric, the only decoration a pendant of gold, garnet, and pearls. Behind her, in muted colors but intricately wrought detail, was a landscape of rolling golden hills and columnar trees and, at the end of a winding road, a distant castle. Her expression was weary and vulnerable, hinting at a life that hadn’t lived up to the luxurious promise of the bucolic setting.

  In a moment, Chip was transported back almost a dozen years, to the day he had seen his mother framed in the hotel kitchen window. The Maine pines had stood in for those manicured European trees, the hotel boathouse for the Mediterranean castle. Her dark hair had been down, her dark eyes turned toward him. And that look of almost-hidden sadness was the same.

  Chip lowered himself onto one of the chairs and stared, entranced. He leaned forward, expecting the realism to fragment into dots of color, but even inches from the canvas, the painting held the same fidelity. He sank back into the chair.

  In the years since his mother had disappeared, Chip had schooled himself not to think of her, since to do so was only a source of misery. He had quickly learned not to ask his father questions about her, and had eventually learned not to ask questions even of himself. The pain of her absence was like a finger snatched away, in a moment of inattention, by a spinning blade. The initial numb shock of seeing a hand so deformed was quickly overwhelmed by a bright shock of pain and then replaced by the dull throb that in the end resolved itself into the leaden acceptance of the loss. He had adjusted his expectations of what life could offer in the face of that loss.

  But the lady in the painting was a balm to the pain. He almost felt as if he could reach out and take the delicate hand with the fine, slender fingers in his. The furrow in his brow smoothed, and his mouth relaxed into a smile.

  Chip was not quite so lost in the painting that he missed the tread of light steps in the hallway. He leapt to his feet a moment before the door opened and Millie entered, a small tray tucked under her arm. She let out a little yelp when she saw him standing behind the easel.

  “Chip Lynam, what are you doing in here?”

  “Laying a fire.”

  “And admiring the new painting, looks like.” She crossed the room and stood beside Chip, the sleeve of her black dress brushing his arm. “Pretty, ain’t it?”

  He nodded. “Yes. She looks like …”

  Millie looked at him expectantly. When he didn’t continue, she prompted, “Like what?”

  Chip blushed. “Oh, I don’t know. Like a princess, I guess.”

  Millie raised her eyebrows at Chip, then turned back to the painting. “The man who sold it to the Furnesses sent his son all the way from Italy to deliver it. Good-looking boy. That’s what the party’s for, to show it off.” She moved to the table and put the empty champagne glasses on her tray. “Seems like they’ve got enough paintings already, but I guess folk like that don’t think in terms of ‘enough.’’’

  “They just got it?”

  “Yup, showed up yesterday, the carpenter’s coming this afternoon to hang it.”

  Chip felt what he could only describe as a twinge of jealousy. “They don’t need a carpenter, I could do that for them.”

  Millie raised her eyebrows archly. “If you’re Mr. and Mrs. Furness and a nail needs driven, you’re sure to want the nail-driving expert to do it.”

  “Who’s it by, do you know?”

  Millie shook her head. “Some Italian artist. Now if you’re done mooning over it, you’d best push off before Mr. Pritchard finds you lollygagging.”

  Chapter 22

  Garrick and Ellen sat in the lounge, Ellen morosely paging through her notepad and Garrick sitting with his fingers interlaced, seemingly relaxed but in fact attentive to any sound from the veranda. He had maneuvered Ellen into the chair facing away from the window, which proved to be fortuitous when he saw Ann’s faint form crossing the lawn and then saw her captured in the sudden illumination of the boathouse light.

  Ellen turned to look, but not before Ann disappeared behind the boathouse. “Wonder what that was,” she said.

  “Rodent,” said Garrick.

  “It would have to be a mighty big rodent to set off the motion detector,” said Ellen skeptically.

  “Perhaps a raccoon,” he said gamely.

  “Isn’t a raccoon a rodent?”

  “No. It belongs to the Carnivora order.”

  “Sounds like a kind of monk.”

  Garrick raised his eyebrows.

  Ellen tossed the pad to the floor. “He’s not coming tonight.”

  “One never knows. We shouldn’t give up so easily.”

  “Give up easily? We’ve been sitting here for almost an hour!”

  “I’m well aware,” said Garrick testily.

  Ellen stood and walked to the window. “Carnivora, eh?”

  Garrick stood up. “Let’s put the kettle on.”

  Ellen turned from the window. “I thought you wanted to wait for him?”

  “Yes, but not here. Maybe he’s feeling we’re being too demanding. Spir
its don’t like to feel constrained by human schedules,” he said, improvising. “We’ll have hot drinks and then come back and see if anything has changed.”

  “I’ve got to stop drinking tea in the middle of the night,” she grumbled.

  “Try hot water. It’s cleansing.”

  Ellen snorted.

  “Ellen.”

  “Oh, alright.” She headed for the kitchen. “Maybe there’s some herbal tea. You should try herbal tea. It at least has some taste to it.”

  “It’s like drinking an unpleasant potpourri,” he said.

  When they were settled in the kitchen with their beverages of choice, Ellen said, “This is just like the olden days, Garrick. I had such a crush on you. You were so handsome and dashing.”

  “You were just a child.”

  “I was seventeen. Old enough to have money of my own to hire you.”

  “Money you inherited from your father.”

  She stirred another spoonful of sugar into her tea. “It made Loring crazy that I used the money that way. But I thought that if you could help us communicate with Daddy, he would give us some tips for running the hotel.”

  “From what I understand, your father was probably not the best source for business advice, even if we had been able to contact him.”

  “Why weren’t we able to connect with him, do you think?”

  “From what you have told me, your father sounds like a man a bit disconnected, even when he was alive.”

  “Yes, Daddy was sort of a dreamer. But I wish we could talk directly with him and not have to get all our information secondhand through Loring.”

  Garrick shifted on the stool. “Ellen, is it possible that Loring doesn’t know the location of the lady—that he’s just pretending to have the information to be difficult?”

  Ellen shook her head. “No, Daddy told Loring everything. I wish he had told me. Maybe he thought I was too young.” She shrugged, but the pain of not having been included was evident in her downcast eyes. “Loring told me some of the stories after Daddy died, but not this one. Not where the lady is.”

  “How about your mother?” Garrick had been avoiding suggesting this on the off chance that the lady in question and Ellen’s father had had an illicit relationship, but he decided that, even as odd a family as the Lynams were, a father would be unlikely to share stories about his paramour with his son.

  “Have you sensed Mother?” asked Ellen, surprised.

  “No, but I haven’t tried to contact her, you always asked me to contact Loring.”

  “I wish I had known her, even a little bit. Poor Daddy. He always had the women in his life disappearing. His mother ... his wife.” She sighed. “In any case, Mother didn’t know where the lady was. At least that’s what Loring told me.”

  Garrick tried another tack. “Have you tried other means of locating this lady? Perhaps a private investigator. Or,” he scowled, “the internet.”

  “No, Garrick, I need you to find out from Loring, it’s the only way.”

  “Very well.”

  Ellen sipped her tea silently for a few minutes and then burst out, “Loring certainly took the quitter’s way out!”

  “Loring was always an unhappy man.”

  “Did you know he killed himself when he was exactly the same age as Daddy was when he died?”

  Garrick did in fact know this, but made a noncommittal grunt.

  “And he must have known I’d be the one to find him!” She gripped the hot mug of tea. “It took me forever to find a knife to cut him down.” Her voice began to quaver.

  “Yes,” said Garrick tightly. “That was unworthy even of Loring.”

  “Daddy fought to beat the cancer as long as he could, but Loring never fought for anything! Just fought with the people around him. The people who loved him.” Ellen removed a tissue from one of the bulging pockets of her bulky cardigan and blew her nose.

  “Don’t be melodramatic,” said Garrick gently.

  Ellen replaced the tissue in her pocket. “Garrick, this hotel is the only tie to my family—to my heritage—that I have left. I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose it.”

  “I am hopeful that we still might obtain the information you need to avoid that eventuality,” said Garrick.

  Chapter 23

  Ann had hoped that she would become more attuned to Loring as he talked—that she would be able to pick up more of what he was communicating—but she found the opposite happened. At first, she could catch snatches of words or phrases, but after a while there were periods when she couldn’t hear anything. She could, however, still sense his ghostly presence at her side, and could often perceive his face, or at least his eyes, fading into and out of view. She strained to hear any syllable, and when that didn’t work she tried abstracting her attention in the hopes of, if not picking up words, at least picking up the overall sense of what he was saying. Neither approach was effective. There were times when his visual presence was stronger, when Ann sensed he was more animated by the story he was telling her, but this was not accompanied by a coinciding improvement in her ability to understand what he was saying. Soon, she lost the ability to discern even the occasional word and could sense that he was continuing to talk based only on a sort of modulated buzz coming from the place where she sensed he stood.

  Eventually, even the buzz stopped. She could see those gray eyes, faintly luminescent in the darkness, looking at her expectantly.

  “Loring, I’m sorry, I didn’t understand very much of that.”

  The gray eyes registered disappointment.

  “But ‘the lady’—it’s not a person. It’s a painting—is that right?”

  The eyes brightened and the spirit said something unintelligible.

  “I’m sorry, I still can’t—”

  You ... tomorrow. Then the voice faded back to a buzz.

  “You want me to come back tomorrow?”

  Yes ... light.

  “Yes, a light would be a good idea, I’ll bring a flashlight—”

  ... daylight ...

  “You want me to come tomorrow during daylight?”

  Ann sensed rather than heard his affirmative response.

  “Why?” she asked, with little expectation that she would understand his answer.

  ... show ...

  “You’ll show me the painting? That would be very helpful. Is it inside the hotel?”

  The spirit responded but Ann couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  “I’ll assume it’s inside the hotel, or at least nearby. Any particular time?” she asked.

  Anytime, she heard with surprising clarity.

  Ann pulled back the sleeve of her parka and pressed the button to illuminate the face of her watch. She was surprised that so much time had passed. “I need to leave now, but I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll wait for you near the front door of the hotel.”

  The spirit raised his hand to his forehead, a virtual tip of the hat, and then he was gone—a subtle change in the space he had occupied—and Ann felt herself to be very much alone.

  To avoid setting off the light again, she clambered over the railing at the far side of the boathouse, picked her way over the rocks that bordered the water until she reached the lawn, and then scuttled along the edge of the lawn back toward the road and the designated meeting place.

  Chapter 24

  Garrick stood in the chill gloom of the lounge, buttoning up his long black coat as Ellen ran her fingers fretfully through her hair. “I can’t believe he didn’t show up at all. Garrick, we’re getting nowhere. We’re going to lose the hotel, we only have two more days now.”

  Garrick put his hands in his pockets and looked toward the windows where, in the daylight, he would have seen the expanse of lawn and the vestiges of the croquet court for which the hotel had formerly been famous. “You really think this lady can help you save the hotel?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And you are not willing to employ other methods to find her?”

 
; “No.”

  He sighed. “Perhaps Loring wants to push his revelation of the lady’s location as close to the deadline as he can. I will bring all my resources to bear to attempt to convince him to cooperate.” Ellen followed him to the front door, where he removed the flashlight from his pocket and, with a nod of farewell, let himself out. He heard the click of the key in the lock as he descended the steps and made his way to his car, his flashlight illuminating an oval of leaf-strewn gravel.

  After he had gotten beyond the drive in front of the hotel, he lowered the front windows despite the cold, in case Ann called out to him from a hiding place along the road. He scowled. They should have established a clearer landmark for their rendezvous. He began growing concerned that he had passed the point where he had dropped her off and was contemplating whether he could back up or turn around without the benefit of headlights when he jumped at a voice from just outside the car.

  “Garrick!”

  Garrick stomped on the brake, his heart banging against his ribs. As Ann circled to the passenger side, Garrick massaged his neck to one side of his prominent Adam’s apple.

  Ann got in and eased the door shut. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing of interest.” He eased off the brake and the car glided forward.

  “Guess what I found out!”

  “Not now, wait until we get back,” said Garrick.

  “Can we turn on the heat, I’m freezing,” she said, rolling up her window.

  “Very well,” said Garrick, not taking his eyes off the road.

  Ann pushed the heater up to high. After a minute she asked, “Can you roll up your window?”

  “Very well,” said Garrick. He coasted the car to a stop, pressed the button to raise the window, and then resumed his stately progress down the road.