by Mary Brady
Because Christina had heeded the warnings she had not run out of fuel. Every day mobile devices of all sorts could be found lined up in the reception hall of Cora plugged into power strips charging for owners who weren’t so lucky as to still have fuel, or who had no power at all since Harold descended.
“I’ve learned my lesson well and good, ah-yuh,” someone else said.
“How’s Kimi Applegate dealing with everything? Does anyone know?” Addy heard the words but the speaker didn’t register.
“Her husband’s parents came and picked her up yesterday. She’ll be staying with them until she can get back on her feet.”
“Will she rebuild her pottery studio here in Bailey’s Cove?”
The conversation continued around her.
“Oh, goodness, I hope so. When her husband died, I thought she’d leave, but I think she decided to stay because she liked our town and she said she loved the ocean. Of course things could change.”
Addy admired the people, but didn’t say so. The folks of this town seemed to truly enjoy each other. They weren’t just residents; they were members of an extended family who cared for the welfare of each other.
And what she was doing could take away an important part of the community. Keeping Zachary Hale in people’s minds, even in a good light, could lead to a devastating outcry if...
The doorbell rang just as Addy took a mouthful of the sautéed carrots. Christina got up but when footsteps sounded in the hall, she sat back down. In the doorway to the dining room, a woman Addy had never seen before appeared looking frazzled. Small with bangs and a dark ponytail, the woman’s thin face showed worry lines, making her look older than she probably was. She searched the table until her eyes rested on Addy.
The table of people went silent.
“Did you think we wouldn’t know, that we wouldn’t find out that you were using us, pretending to be friendly when all you wanted was a news story?”
The woman plopped a computer down in the middle of the table so the others could see it.
The story Addy sent in a few hours ago would have hit the internet by now. If Richard Smally believed in nothing else, he believed in getting things in the pipe sooner rather than later.
She had given the story a working title of Breaking Away from the Pack. It spoke of a man becoming a billionaire and living in a small town.
One by one, the faces turned toward her, all except the child.
Christina raised a hand. “Stella, there must be something more to this story. Addy?”
“May I see?” Addy asked standing up from the table.
Mrs. O’Brien turned the computer to face her.
“Hale in Hiding by Adriana Bonacorda with Jacko Wilson.” The headline horrified her and sharing a byline with Jacko could only mean trouble.
The article started out with the edited question she had originally asked Smally. “Is Hale a stand-and-fight kind of guy or a flight risk?” She had posed the question to interest Smally, not to make any sort of accusation, but that is exactly what it seemed like she was doing.
And it would seem like that to all these people.
Jacko’s edited-in part read “...and plots like the one Hale has been accused of often begin by a big ego thinking they can treat other people’s money as their own. While there is no information as to why a billionaire would divert investors’ money for his own use, it is only a matter of time until the motive, if it is there, will be uncovered.”
It would not matter which part of the article could be attributed to Jacko Wilson, those words were going to harm Zach and leave her in a bad place with the folk of Bailey’s Cove. Zach would know for sure she was here to get close to him and tell everything she found out.
“How could you do this?” questioned one of the twins.
Addy scanned the group, giving eye contact to those who would look at her, passing over the rest. The O’Briens looked at her as if she were a tragic figure.
Heaven help her, she might be.
“Will this get a lot of attention?” Mrs. O’Brien asked.
“Most likely, as it touches on two important developing stories. How the citizens of Bailey’s Cove are doing after the hurricane and Hale and Blankenstock’s alleged mishandling of people’s money.”
“Why do you care? Why should anyone care about Bailey’s Cove? And why do you care about Hale and Blankenstock? Did you lose money? Is that it?” asked the inquisitive twin.
“As far as Bailey’s Cove, people love to have someone to care about, someone to say prayers for, to wish well, people to help.” Addy thought of her sister. “That’s why they want to know about the town.”
“You could be reporting on a missing jumbo jet or on the mudslides in Oregon. Why are you really here?” Michael Murphy studied her, reminding her these people were not sharks, but folks who cared about their town and about Zachary Hale.
“I came here searching for Zachary Hale. I wanted to hear his side of the story.” Which was true now. “I’m glad I’m in Bailey’s Cove because I can see and feel what’s going on here, how the town works as a unit for the good of the community.”
“Why—why do you get to decide what is news and what’s not?” The frazzled woman who brought the story to this dinner table could hardly get the words out.
“I haven’t got the power to make decisions like that. I don’t get to decide which stories are news and which are not. The people who want to know make the decision, the readers. My editor puts it out there and the usual subscribers can see it if they are interested, but it’s the readers who make the news go viral.”
“But you can influence millions and millions to make the decision that he is someone worth hating.” The twin.
“Yes, Addy. Why do you care about him?” Christina asked.
Why did she care about him? Because he was the kind of man who should populate the world. With their children. She sighed. She’d never thought about children of her own before, and now...she was so lost.
She needed to talk to Zach, needed to know how he reacted to this article. She would not beg forgiveness for Jacko’s words, but for her need to write about his story, her need to put the truth out there at his expense.
“Excuse me.” She stood. “Dinner was wonderful. It was a pleasure to meet everyone.”
She grabbed her place setting and as she hurried away toward the kitchen sink, they invited the newcomer to sit in Hunter’s empty chair.
“More than enough,” she heard Christina say.
It occurred to Addy, there was nowhere she could not be as easily replaced. Her profession dictated what friends she would have and she found out after Afghanistan, for how long. They were gone. Her family had been fractured by her father’s desertion from before Addy could remember, and her mother’s many marriages. Savanna only approached her because, as a member of the press, she might have some influence. The hole, if any, she left in those groups closed up the minute she stepped out of the room, so to speak.
All she had left was Adriana Bonacorda.
She was not going to let herself down, ever again.
She placed her dishes in to soak and went to the hall closet where there were coats and shoes.
A light rain fell as she started up Treacher Avenue. She pulled the waterproofed canvas tightly around her and tugged up the hood.
On Church Street a few cars passed her. None was Hunter Morrison’s car coming home and one was a police cruiser that turned onto the road leading up Sea Crest Hill. Zach would not be alone when she arrived. So be it.
* * *
ZACH CLOSED THE damper of the fireplace. The flames had gone out, the embers had died. Every time the flames had warmed him he thought of Addy. The loft had never been as welcoming as it had with her there.
Now that she was gone it seemed there was no need for the
extra warmth of the fire. Power had returned to Sea Crest Hill, and the baseboard heaters came on to take the edge off the chilly air.
Nothing would ever be as it used to be.
“Micky Thompson, one of the town’s teenagers is a ne’er-do-well, but surfing the internet appeals to him.” Hunter typed into his computer as he spoke. “He’s set up an auto search for Zachary Hale, et al, and has his system alert him to any new occurrences. He got a hit about forty-five minutes ago.
“The facts are truthful and spare and most of them are about Bailey’s Cove and not about you, but the allegations are as good as accusations,” Hunter said as he sat in front of his laptop reading what Adriana Bonacorda had written along with her cohort.
Zach came to stand over Hunter’s shoulder and read the article.
“What’s the reaction like?” Zach asked.
“It’s getting a lot of hits.”
“What about the comments? Everything you would expect?”
“You mean negative.”
“I mean nothing unexpected.”
Zach crossed his arms over his chest. “I feel as though I should answer, as if I should be out there with some kind of response, at least a presence with which people could interact.”
“You might feel like that now, but there are too many legal and personal ramifications.” Hunter turned and looked up at Zach. “You need to stay removed from the spotlight.”
“How am I supposed to do that? Those people invested because I advised them to. I assured them that they could trust Carla.
“One thing it’s not is greed. She didn’t need the money.” Neither of them needed the money. Carla came into hers by way of a family trust. Zach had taken a small shipping company in Portland his grandfather had owned and steadily poured every earned penny back into the company until six determined years later, his corporation owned fleets of ships on both coasts, moving commodities across the oceans. He sold the company and opened the investment partnership with Carla Blankenstock; he had known they’d be good at it.
Dealing with people rather than always putting out fires in international shipping matters seemed like a kind of retirement. He had a great rapport with people and Carla was a financial genius. Their partnership started out well and grew quickly.
“I need to be back in Boston.” He needed to speak with Carla.
“This isn’t like every other problem you’ve faced with Hale and Blankenstock or anything you’ve taken on in your shipping company. This is personal. What’s the closest the two of you have ever been?”
“You mean did we date, have sex, fall in love. None of the above. We had business lunches and dinners, but rarely without a client or two with us. We often traveled on different airlines and always had separate hotel rooms.”
“She never behaved inappropriately?”
“She’s married. I don’t think it’s personal.”
“I don’t think we should drop that as an option.”
Zach knew his attorney had a lot experience and that he could trust him a hundred percent. “Hunter, I understand. There was one thing. I thought we should expand into real estate, but she nearly panicked when I brought it up and I’d never seen her like that before. I tried to talk to her, but she said she knew too many people who had gone down when the market crashed. It was as if she was afraid of something.”
“Did that cause a rift?”
“I tabled the idea and it seemed settled. If she’d stolen the funds by then and knew that any irregularities were bound to show up, especially as we got into something new, like real estate, that might have caused her worried reaction.”
“For whatever reason she’s doing this, unless she’s totally unhinged, she can’t possibly think she’ll get out of this unscathed. The FBI’s forensic accounting team will uncover whatever is going on at Hale and Blankenstock.”
There was a firm knock and the door to the loft opened. Chief Montcalm entered looking solemn, hat in hand.
Zach recognized his flat-out disappointment and the harsh reality that he was left with. He had hoped, unreasonably, that the person at the door would be Addy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ADDY PUSHED THE hood away from her eyes and struggled up Sea Crest Hill. The road leading away from Church Street was steep and in spots slippery. More than once she realized she should have brought a flashlight or at least one of the walking sticks Christina kept in a pottery crock inside the front door of Cora.
She had been surprised to see more lights on Church Street when she left Cora, but even those did little good up the side of the hill. The houses along the streets had lights, but few front porch or yard lights reached as far as the roadway and walking was perilous at best.
When the grade steepened and her boot slid on the loose gravel, she stopped. She might be foolish to be racing up Sea Crest Hill on a whim. Zachary Hale may be guilty, but if she collected any more fair-weather friends, who would desert her at every change of fortune, she was crazy.
She started walking again and before long, the rain let up, leaving the air crisp and moist. It was too late to care about how she looked when she arrived, but drowned-rat status wouldn’t stop her from saying her piece when she got up the hill.
She pulled out her mobile phone and called her sister for distraction. The girls should be in bed by now and Savanna should be settling down with a book or a TV show. Addy was ashamed to say she had no idea what her sister did when her kids were asleep.
“Hey, sis,” Savanna answered. “What are you up to now?”
“Walking up a hill in the dark and the rain.”
“Are you always doing really strange things, or just when you call me?”
“Are you at Mom’s?”
“No, I couldn’t stand the thought of Mom telling me where I went wrong in life. Besides, you said I had nothing to fear.”
“You have nothing to fear from Zachary Hale. Savanna, I was wondering if I can come and visit you and the girls in a few weeks.”
“Uh. Something wrong Addy?”
“Maybe. I was just thinking that I might not be trying hard enough to stay connected with my family.”
“Who of us does? I mean, I am so connected to my girls, I’d die if anything happened to them, but I don’t keep track of my brother or you much at all.” She chuckled quietly. “And since the grandchildren came along, I can’t get rid of Mom. You ought to try it.”
“I think I should, er, keep better track of all of you. Who knows, you and I might even be friends someday.”
“You can start by telling me what’s going on.”
“I’m chasing a story.”
This time Savanna barked a laugh. “When weren’t you chasing a story?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be chasing them all the time. Maybe I should find something else to do for a living.”
“What? And make me give up telling my friends my sister is some big, important investigative journalist?”
“Never mind.”
“Adriana, I get it. Life seems to get so busy and people fall away.” Her sister’s tone was sober when she spoke. “I’ve grown up a lot. Being a mom does that. I’d like to have you as a friend. Call on us anytime. Come anytime. I can have the girls sleep with me and you can have their room.”
“Thanks.” Addy didn’t know what else to say.
“They’d love to have Aunt Addy visit. You and I could do pals stuff like lunch, you buy, and maybe even do something like an art museum. I’ve done enough discovery worlds and playdates to kill a sane person.”
“I’d like that.”
“I know you think you’re immune to the frailties affecting the rest of us, but be careful. Don’t catch pneumonia or anything, but go get ’em tiger.”
“Savanna, do you think I’m going after these stories f
or the fame and, well, glory?”
Her sister guffawed loudly. “Sheesh, I’ll wake the girls by laughing too loud if you insist on talking such nonsense. Many of your stories count, big sis. Toiling in obscurity so you won’t make too much glory, as you call it, would not expose the unfairness in the world. I applaud you and all like you who stick your necks out so the rest of us don’t have to.”
“I never knew you felt that way.”
“Mommy” came from the background from Savanna’s end.
“Did so. If you ever listened to me. Now go collect news. I gotta go. Love you.”
Her sister rang off after another muted call for Mommy, and Addy continued on alone in the darkness.
“Love you, too.”
* * *
THE CHIEF HAD to take a call from dispatch almost as soon as he had arrived. Zach and Hunter waited silently as the chief spoke with someone to whom he respectfully referred to as “sir.”
“Zach, Hunter,” the chief said by way of a greeting, once he put away his phone. “Sorry about the call. Where are we?”
“We were discussing why Carla Blankenstock would be doing what she’s doing.”
“Have you come up with anything?”
“Very little,” Zach said. “We disagree as to whether or not this is personal.”
“Does that leave greed?” the chief asked as he approached where the two of them stood at the window overlooking the road.
“Carla came into Hale and Blankenstock with solid backers and substantial personal wealth.”
“What if something happened to the wealth?” the chief asked.
“She’d come to me and tell me.”
“What if she felt she couldn’t?” The chief assigned no blame with his tone, just curiosity.
“What are you getting at, Chief?”
“Just making sure all the bases are covered here. She married a man after knowing him for only two weeks.”
Zach nodded, not surprised the chief knew this about his business partner and friend’s whirlwind romance, and then he pictured Addy. He never thought of himself as the romantic type until Adriana Bonacorda came along and changed how his brain was wired.
