Mrs. P.’s eyebrows rose slowly at the earnestness in my voice. “My dear, other people go to New Braunfels to have a good time floating down the Comal River in inner tubes. It does make me wonder that your idea of a good time is to go to Comal Cemetery.”
“Hey, it’s never a good time until you go hunting for dead people, Mrs. P.,” I quipped. “Everyone knows that.”
Her eyes lit with mirth. “How did you fare, then? Did you find all the dearly departed Suttons you wanted?”
She gently turned me back toward the door as she spoke. I took the hint. I was to rid my legs of flour before reentering her carefully guarded front room.
“I did,” I said as she opened the front door for me and we stepped out onto the porch, with its classic Haint blue ceiling. I pulled my phone from my bag, showing her a handful of photos, including the gravestones for Sarah Bess and Reginald. The last photo was of the gravestones of James and Nell Sutton, Pippa’s paternal great-grandparents.
“I need to ask why James and Nell aren’t in the same row as James’s parents, or his siblings and their spouses. I’m wondering if James didn’t initially expect to be buried in New Braunfels, being that he went back to England for so many years and fought in World War Two as a British citizen.”
“You’re spot on as usual, Lucy, as my great-granddad would say,” came a voice from behind me.
THREE
Pippa Sutton, wearing a white blouse under a sedate black blazer, a pencil skirt, and low heels, was rounding the far corner of the wraparound porch. Her hair was pulled back at the crown and fell past her shoulders in chardonnay-hued waves. A simple strand of pearls was at her neck, and gold studs adorned her ears. The leather-covered iPad she was holding to her chest halfway covered a brass name badge.
I’d seen her wearing this uniform of sorts a few times. I also sensed the now familiar frustration underneath her professional smile. Pippa, the owner and chief operating officer of multimillion-dollar Sutton Inc., was filling in for the events manager again.
Since Pippa prided herself on saying all Sutton employees, herself included, had working knowledge of every job within the hotel, I wouldn’t have thought twice about her being the de facto events manager—if the chronically absent employee hadn’t been Roselyn Fischer Sutton, Pippa’s beautiful, intelligent, talented, and, based on what I could tell from all my dealings with her, completely self-absorbed mother.
Mrs. P.’s quick glance reminded me to be careful showing my annoyance with Roselyn in front of her daughter.
“Pippa thinks so highly of you, dear,” she’d said to me only last week, “and the fact that Roselyn hasn’t been as … well, as reliable as usual, is embarrassing and upsetting to her.” Mrs. P.’s face had briefly clouded, and I could tell it was upsetting to her as well.
I couldn’t lie—I wasn’t the biggest fan of Pippa’s mother, especially when she dumped more responsibility on her daughter’s already busy shoulders. Yet I had to give Roselyn a good deal of credit. She’d never stopped working in her thirty-year career, despite marrying her wealthy hotelier boss, Bracewell Sutton, when she herself was a newbie event planner. Nine years into their marriage, after Bracewell had died tragically in a skiing accident, Roselyn hadn’t needed to continue working. Her husband’s will had seen to her every need, though the Sutton hotel business had all gone to Pippa, Bracewell’s only child and heir. And yet Roselyn had kept working, proving herself an accomplished and in-demand event designer year after year as she helped her young daughter learn the business and prepare to eventually take over Sutton Inc.
It was strange; women like Roselyn Sutton usually made me want to throw them a ticker-tape parade and hold them up as a poster child for fabulous, hardworking, impressive women, yet there was something about Roselyn I couldn’t quite warm to, no matter how hard I tried.
Oh, and the fact that she was adamant about not wanting her side of the family included in Pippa’s genealogy project? Yeah, that didn’t really help my opinion of her, either.
I’d had clients whose family members weren’t interested in my work many times before, of course. However, they usually changed their tune once they understood the wonders of how their family came into being, struggled, persevered, and grew over the centuries. In Roselyn’s case, however, no matter how excited Pippa became at each interesting Sutton-family tidbit I uncovered, she remained dispassionate, even occasionally becoming snappish whenever Pippa suggested I could do the same for her family tree.
Thankfully, I felt my irritation with Roselyn abate when the creases between Pippa’s eyes began to dissolve, humor washing them away as she took in my floured jeans.
“What did you do? Insult Chef Rocky when he was making his fresh pasta?”
I explained about Hyacinth, the flour, and the cemetery. Then I showed her the photos of her own family’s gravestones, stopping as before at the ones honoring her great-grandparents.
Pippa smiled at me. “You know, even though I can barely picture my great-granddad in my mind anymore, I have two strong memories of him. One was him smoking his pipe while reading the newspaper in the back parlor”—she tilted her head toward the Sutton’s interior for emphasis—“and the other is him telling me how he had never intended to come back to the States until he met my great-grandmother.”
She smiled wistfully and pulled her iPad closer to her chest. “To be honest, Lucy, most of what I know about him is actually from the letter you found a couple of weeks ago.”
“Hey, I’d never have come across it if you hadn’t insisted I see the dovetail joints on that seventeenth-century writing desk,” I said, holding my hands up in mock outrage. “You’re the one who told me the joints were best viewed up close. Heck, you practically made me pull the drawer out fully.”
Pippa’s laugh was surprisingly throaty, hinting at the warm and open personality hidden beneath her reserved exterior.
“Well, you made the mistake of telling me you share my obsession for antiques, so that’s on you, my friend,” she said. “Still, I’ve probably pulled those drawers out a good dozen times over the years and never noticed anything. It was you and your lucky genealogist’s touch that made the letter reveal itself.”
The letter, which was unfinished, had been written by Pippa’s great-grandfather to one of his friends in 1967. It had somehow fallen behind the drawer, never to be completed or sent. When I’d extracted a folded sheet of stationery from inside the slightly crumpled, yellowed envelope, we saw James Bracewell Sutton embossed at the top, and James’s precise penmanship filling the front of the page and half of the back.
Mrs. P. looked at us with fondness. “I happen to think you two girls were meant to find that letter together,” she said. “And what a romantic tale it told of how Mr. James and Miss Nell met back in 1943.”
I put my hand to my heart. “It was super romantic. Both of them on leave in London. He in the RAF, she one of Eisenhower’s secretaries. Literally colliding with each other in the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel, so hard his flight cap fell off, and she caught it.”
Pippa and I exchanged dreamy sighs. “The scene keeps running around in my mind, too,” she said.
Mrs. P. laid her hand on my arm and said, “You do really have a gift for opening up the past, my dear,” and I felt my cheeks glowing with pleasure.
“On that note,” I said, “Pippa, I was going to wait until tomorrow to tell you about something else I discovered, but I don’t think I can now.”
Pippa and Mrs. P. both looked at me expectantly.
“I was able to locate some of your great-grandfather’s war records,” I told her. “He wasn’t just in the RAF during World War Two—he was also in the SOE.”
Pippa’s brows knitted. “What’s the SOE?”
“The Special Operations Executive,” I said, noting that Mrs. P., a fellow history lover, was nodding at my side. “Your great-granddad worked in intelligence.”
“He was a spy?” Pippa said.
I nodded, then changed
that to tilting my head side to side. “Maybe,” I conceded. “SOE agents did a bunch of jobs within intelligence, but it’s highly possible he was a spy. I’m still waiting on the records I requested, which include his time in the Royal Air Force as well.”
Pippa’s eyes, which reminded me of the color of fresh jalapeños, went a half shade brighter. “I wish my dad could have heard all of this. My granddad, too.”
“Me too,” Mrs. P. said, patting Pippa on the arm.
“And I wish I’d been able to meet your great-granddad,” I told Pippa. I put my hand to my heart in history-geek ecstasy. “I would’ve asked him so many questions about the SOE.”
Pippa nodded vehemently in agreement, and the chuckle that always seemed to live in the back of Mrs. P.’s throat erupted as she put her arm around my shoulder for a squeeze.
“If he hadn’t already passed, no doubt you would have talked him to death, dear Lucy,” Mrs. P. said. “Now, stay out here and get yourself rid of that flour so the two of you can try some Napoli old fashioneds. I’m going to go see where our young bellboy has got to. We have a newly married couple scheduled for check-in at any moment.”
She gestured for Pippa to go inside like an impatient mama duck herding her wayward duckling. My floury jeans and I were left outside under the rapidly darkening sky, enjoying the warm glow I always felt after giving clients news that made their faces light up like Pippa’s had.
FOUR
My glow didn’t warm me for very long, though, since the sun was setting at a breakneck pace. I began to shiver as I brushed at the flour on my jeans, puffs of white erupting with each stroke.
We’d had a mild winter thus far, and with the weather giving me a sunny, cloudless sixty degrees as I jaunted out to the cemetery in New Braunfels, I hadn’t needed more than a down vest over my cashmere sweater. Now, as my jeans began to lighten to a slightly faded dark blue, I gazed up at the hotel, looking forward to warming up properly in such beautiful surroundings.
I loved the huge wraparound porch on the first floor and the deep veranda on the second, both of which gave stunning views of the water from the south side of the house. The rooms on the north side afforded an equally pretty view, allowing guests to look out over the expansive and colorful English-style knot garden created by Sarah Bess, who’d been an avid gardener.
Built in 1895 by Reginald Sutton, the house had remained in Sutton hands for a hundred twenty-five years and counting. Yet like most big, old houses, the upkeep had become harder over time. With Pippa’s vision, it had been carefully and thoughtfully overhauled into twenty beautifully appointed rooms, with a state-of-the-art day spa and a restaurant featuring Chef Rocky, one of the hottest new chefs in the country.
It wasn’t long after Pippa opened the hotel, which had easily racked up the four stars they’d been awarded for luxury, that she’d decided to hire me.
While I couldn’t say I was overjoyed that she’d found me through the publicity surrounding me back in November, when I used my genealogy skills to help save Senator Daniel Applewhite from being killed by his fourth cousin, twice removed, I was thrilled I was getting the younger generation interested in knowing about their ancestry. At twenty-four, Pippa was only six years my junior, but even so, finding a whip-smart young professional who wanted to research her family tree made me all kinds of giddy.
Almost the moment the last ray of sun streaked across the sky, the hotel’s white fairy lights popped on. Strings of them encircled the trunks and crawled up the limbs of nearby crepe myrtles, bigleaf maples, and pawpaw trees, dramatically accentuating their leafless states. Softer landscape lighting then made the evergreen magnolias and fringy Montezuma bald cypress trees positively glow from the inside, sending droplets of warm light bouncing off the water of Lady Bird Lake. Carriage lights and more landscape lighting came on around the hotel itself, transforming the Hotel Sutton from charmingly welcoming to utterly romantic.
Despite myself, I felt an annoying prick of tears behind my eyes. New Year’s Eve was rapidly approaching, and with it the charity gala the Suttons would be hosting at the hotel. Of course, I’d be with Serena and Josephine, two people who always made my life better and brighter, but they would also be cozying up by the stone fireplace with their boyfriends. Essentially, I would be hanging with the four of them, sipping champagne and trying to ignore the couples’ lovey-dovey gestures while I played the fifth wheel.
My best friends didn’t know it yet, but I was planning on disappearing to my room within seconds of shouting “Happy New Year!” along with the crowd of well-dressed revelers. Oh, sure, I could get a pity kiss from Walter, Serena’s longtime love, or Ahmad, Josephine’s latest besotted boyfriend, but that wasn’t what I wanted, and I didn’t have a special someone of my own to kiss me as the clock struck midnight. Not anymore, anyway.
A few weeks ago, for two hours and three long, amazing kisses, I thought I’d had a special someone in the form of slightly insufferable, history-loving FBI agent Ben Turner—though when I first met him, I couldn’t have imagined enjoying those kisses for even one second. Ben and I had locked horns spectacularly during our first couple of—okay, several—meetings, but I admit, by the time I’d helped him discover who was threatening Senator Applewhite’s life, I’d fallen for him.
Afterward, as a thank-you for all the times Ben helped me and didn’t throw me in jail for interfering in a police investigation, I’d insisted on finding his mother’s Daughters of the American Revolution patriot so she could gain admittance to the historic service organization. I’d successfully traced Mrs. Turner’s line, proving she and Ben had not just one, but four Revolutionary War soldiers in their family tree who’d fought for America’s independence.
With a scowl, I slapped at another streak of flour, remembering how excited I’d been to send Ben the documents proving his genealogical connections, plus an extra attachment containing the filled-out paperwork for his mother to submit so she could finally become a member of the DAR. He hadn’t written me back instantly like I’d thought he would, though, and the hours of radio silence had quickly begun to crawl into the double digits.
When the total no-response time neared a full week, I realized I’d been ghosted. I didn’t even get so much as a curt thank-you text for my work, or for the photograph I’d emailed him of one of his Revolutionary War ancestors, fabulously named Ebrington Chaucer FitzHugh, who looked so much like an eighteenth-century version of Ben that it still made my breath catch to think about it. The two men even sported the same expression, making me wonder if Ben’s stern Fed Face had been passed down through genetics rather than learned working for the FBI.
Huffing out a breath, I attacked another large flour streak, as Ben’s blue eyes touched with green around the pupils flashed in my mind. The way they’d looked into mine when he’d leaned down to kiss me on the Congress Avenue Bridge, while Austin’s Mexican free-tailed bats were flying out from seemingly under our feet in a wave of flittering black wings. That kiss had been … wow. So were the two that had followed, with a promise of more to come, though I knew it wouldn’t be immediate since he had to fly out to DC the next day for some follow-up on the case I’d helped him solve. I hadn’t counted on him deciding the wait should be permanent.
Serena and Josephine, always having my back, had initially attempted to be positive.
“Maybe he’s on another assignment,” Serena had suggested at the time.
“Yes, love,” Jo had said. “It’s possible he’s deep undercover somewhere and can’t contact you.”
My reply was to remind them how Ben himself had told me he was a white-collar agent who never did any undercover work. To that, my friends had no other recourse but to march me down to Big Flaco’s Tacos for what Serena called “Break-Up Queso and Margaritas.”
“You can’t actually break up when you were never going out,” I’d said, scooping up a tortilla chip full of Flaco’s special spicy queso all the same.
Josephine ignored this and told Julio �
�Big Flaco” Medrano we would be following up our queso with “Break-Up Churros with Break-Up Mexican Dipping Chocolate.”
With that, Flaco, who made no frijoles about the fact that he considered me his fourth child, had pulled his aviator sunglasses down on his nose and eyed me with a penetrating look that would have had most people wondering if they should run for the hills, but which I knew was actually silent worry.
He’d liked Ben, too, which had made it worse.
“Suck it up, Lancaster,” I whispered to myself with heat, as the sound of a car’s wheels in the hotel’s parking lot jerked me out of my reverie. “If Ben isn’t interested, then he isn’t interested, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Get over it.”
Footsteps crunched on the pathway. They sounded labored, like someone was struggling with heavy luggage. Dollars to doughnuts, it was the expected newlyweds, and one or both of them had brought half their wardrobe.
Brushing the last remaining white streaks from my jeans, I jogged up the stairs. Seeing through the leaded-paned windows of the front doors that neither Mrs. P. nor the bellboy were in the foyer, I stopped, figuring I’d do the newlyweds a solid by holding the heavy door open for them. Grasping the brass pull, I waited, listening to the erratic scuffing noises coming from beyond the wall of shrubs that blocked the view of the parking lot.
“Holy cow, they must really have a ton of stuff,” I said under my breath. Looking out toward the parking lot, however, I saw nothing more than the shadows cast by fairy lights, shrubbery, and trees. Then one shadow began moving, slowly becoming larger and longer.
“Finally,” I muttered. Yet what staggered into view wasn’t a couple, but one man—balding, tall, and thin, sweating profusely, his face more ashen than the color of his suit. He stopped under a pool of carriage-lamp light and stared up at me, his gasping lips twisting into an odd expression.
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