The Sugarhouse Blues

by Mariah Stewart

  He turned and looked over his shoulder. “Ready?”

  Des nodded. As I’ll ever be.

  He put the bike in gear, and the low growl became a rumble as he eased the machine onto the driveway. At the end, he paused for the one car on the road that was headed toward town. Des expected Seth to take the left that would have them following the car into Hidden Falls, but he surprised her by turning right.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I thought we’d take the long way home. Hold on.”

  The bike took off and gradually built up speed. Des ducked her head behind Seth’s shoulders to keep the wind from her face, but after a few minutes, she looked up to see the countryside flash by. It was like watching a slide show. Seth took the curves and dips in the road like a pro, and before she knew it, she was leaning her face against his shoulder to catch the air.

  Up hills and past farms, fields green with emerging corn, ponds surrounded by ducks and geese, and fences where horses hung their heads over the top rails to see what the commotion was before dashing away as the bike passed by. She leaned into Seth’s leather-covered back as they rounded the bends in the road, and she tried really hard—unsuccessfully—to ignore how solid and strong his body felt against hers.

  She realized they’d approached Hudson Street from the opposite direction when they passed the house Barney had once identified as the house where her lost love, Gil Wheeler, had lived. Seth slowed the bike, then turned into Barney’s driveway and drove straight up to the carriage house. He cut the engine, then turned around.

  “So whatcha think of your first ride on a Harley?” His face was so close to hers she could feel his breath on her cheek. He removed his shades so they were eye to eye.

  Des knew if a woman stared too long into those dark pools, she might be lost forever. A smart woman would look away.

  It was a long moment before Des heeded her own advice.

  “It was fun,” she said truthfully. “I liked it. A little unsure at first, but it was fun.”

  She got off the bike and took off the helmet just as Cara and Barney came down the back steps.

  “Whoa, check you out,” Cara called to Des. “Black leather, cool helmet. I must say, that biker chick look is very becoming on you.”

  Des laughed and took off the jacket, handing it back to Seth, who appeared very amused.

  “I’m sure I have massive helmet hair, and I doubt that’s becoming, but thank you. I think.”

  “My, I haven’t ridden one of these in years,” Barney said as she joined them in the driveway.

  “You used to ride a bike?” Des’s eyes widened.

  “Oh yes. Your father went through a stage where he thought he was James Dean. It was very short-lived because Mother was horrified, but for those few months, we did have fun.” Barney patted the handlebars. “Nothing quite as masculine and dangerous as this little number, but enough that it set many a girl’s heart on fire when Fritz drove it around town, I assure you.”

  “Just what Dad needed. Something else to attract girls.” Des wondered if J was one of those girls who was lured by the sound of the engine and the little bit of danger it represented.

  “I daresay it worked its magic on more than one of the locals.”

  “So, Barney. Want to hop on, take a spin around town?” Seth asked.

  “Not today. I’m hardly dressed for an outing, but thank you.” Barney gestured toward her low-heeled shoes and pretty shirtwaist dress. “I have a luncheon with friends. But another time, yes, I’d love to.”

  “You name the day and time, and I’ll be here.” Seth turned to Des. “I’ll let you know how things work out with the new dog.”

  “I really appreciate you taking her in. I honestly don’t know what I’d have done.” She handed him the jacket, which he stored in a covered bag behind the passenger seat, and the helmet, which he fastened over the area where Des had been sitting. “Thank you again.”

  “I’d say anytime, but you might take me up on that.” Seth grinned. “Just kidding. It’s always okay. Barney, don’t forget. Anytime goes for you as well. And Cara, you’re welcome, too.”

  “I’d go on that thing. Definitely.” Cara nodded.

  “ ‘That thing,’ ” he repeated as if wounded.

  “Your lovely bike,” Cara corrected herself, unwittingly digging the hole deeper.

  “Cara, a Harley is not lovely.” He held a hand over his heart.

  “I should shut up.” Cara laughed and turned toward the house. “See you around.”

  “Thanks again, Seth,” Des said. “For everything.”

  “You’re welcome.” He put his glasses back on, covering the softness in his gaze as he looked at Des. He turned the engine on and put the bike into gear.

  “I’ll be in touch,” she told him. “About the dog.”

  Seth nodded, and blew a kiss to Barney, causing her to shake her head and laugh out loud as she blew one back.

  “My, my,” Barney said as Seth turned onto Hudson Street and disappeared behind the trees. “That did take me back.”

  “You never told us Dad had a motorcycle.” Des turned from the street as the sound of the bike faded.

  “I’d pretty much forgotten about that time. It was one of those things that just wasn’t done, you know.” She took Des’s arm as they walked toward the house. “Back in my day, guys who rode bikes were considered daring and dangerous, which I suppose was the attraction.” Barney smiled. “Still is, I guess. That aura of danger can be very appealing.”

  They reached the bottom of the steps.

  “Or it can be frightening, if you’re not up to the challenge it might represent.”

  Barney’s words rang in Des’s ears for the rest of the day. The questions that grew from that one simple comment were ones Des wasn’t sure she could answer.

  Wasn’t sure she wanted to answer.

  Was she hiding behind the wall of friendship, using any excuse she could think of, to avoid a deeper relationship with Seth?

  No risk, no reward? Was she honestly okay with that?

  Was she more comfortable with a guy like Greg, because he seemed so much safer? Because deep inside, she knew she could never have those deeper feelings for him?

  And if the answers were yes, and yes, what did that say about her? Why did the thought of a relationship with Seth, one that went beyond friendship, frighten her?

  She knew why. What she didn’t know was what, if anything, she wanted to do about it.

  * * *

  Des wandered into the office the following morning and found Cara at the desk, a sheet of paper in front of her, a pen in her hand, and a dark expression on her face.

  “Why so glum?”

  “I just got off the phone with James Ebersol at the Balfour Group.” Cara glanced up at Des. “These numbers are horrifying.”

  Des walked around the desk and leaned over her sister’s shoulder.

  “Two hundred dollars an hour?” She picked up the sheet of paper where Cara had jotted down her notes. “Are you sure you heard him correctly?”

  “Nothing wrong with my hearing, Des. These guys are priced way beyond anything we could ever pay. That two hundred starts when they leave the office. They fly from Columbus, Ohio—business class. If they stay over, for whatever reason, we pay to put them up plus their hourly rate.”

  “So they’re making two hundred dollars an hour while they’re sleeping? Who gets paid like that?”

  “Apparently James Ebersol and crew. They usually travel as a party of two, by the way. Ebersol likes to personally inspect every potential project. And of course, he’s accompanied by one of his artisan craftspeople. For the theater, he said he’d probably bring his ace plasterer.”

  “My brain is still stuck on two hundred dollars an hour. Is that hourly for each person?”

  “I was in so much shock, I didn’t ask. But it really doesn’t matter, since we can’t afford to pay that for one person. Oh, and the minimum they charge fo
r their report is five thousand dollars. We are so screwed.” Cara turned all the way around in the chair.

  “Okay, so we need a plan B.” Des sat on the corner of the desk.

  “I’m working on one. Give me a little time to think this through. First I need to call Joe. He knows everyone.”

  * * *

  At two in the afternoon, at Cara’s request, all three Hudson sisters met up with Joe in the theater lobby.

  “So tell them what you told me.” Cara nudged Joe. “When I asked you if you had to repair really old plaster, who would you call.”

  “Same guy I always call,” Joe replied. “Giovanni Marini.”

  Cara gestured impatiently. “Tell them why.”

  “To start with, he’s ancient—don’t tell Barney I said that. He’s in his seventies. He’s been doing plaster jobs for more than sixty of those years. He told me once that starting on his eighth birthday, growing up in Italy, he studied with his grandfather, who was a master plasterer.”

  “And you think he can fix that?” Allie pointed to the ceiling.

  “Yes, I think he could.” Joe turned to Cara. “Didn’t you say the recommendation from this outfit in Ohio was to hire some pretentious plaster person? An ‘artiste’?”

  “Yeah. We need a ‘master at the art of plaster.’ So I started thinking, who is this guy, this artiste. And where did he get his experience? I called Ebersol back and asked him, what makes your guy so good, so much better than anyone else? And he said, well, he trained in Italy with a master craftsman.”

  Cara looked from Allie to Cara.

  “Anyone here think that maybe Mr. Marini’s grandfather/master craftsman might be about as good as the Balfour Group’s master craftsman?”

  Joe scoffed. “Hands down, sight unseen, I’d put my money on Marini any day.”

  “Definitely worth a shot,” Allie agreed.

  “We should at least talk to him,” Des said.

  “We’re going to.” Cara took her phone from her pocket and checked the time. “In about two minutes.”

  In less than that, Giovanni Marini came into the theater whistling a tune that Des vaguely recognized as an old Frank Sinatra song. He was short, wiry, and dressed in a T-shirt and shorts that showed off his bowed legs. He cheerfully introduced himself, then wasted no time by pointing overhead.

  “That’s the patient?”

  “That’s the one.” Joe stood next to the man, dwarfing him.

  Without missing a beat, Giovanni climbed up the scaffold. He walked the highest plank as if he were walking to his car, nonchalant, taking his time, all the while staring straight overhead. From time to time, he touched the ceiling, running his hand over the damaged area. After twenty minutes or so, he made his way back down as casually as he’d gone up.

  “Looks like the work of Jack O’Brien,” he told Joe. “Jack and his brother were doing a lot of plasterwork when I first came here.”

  “How can you tell?” Des asked.

  “A master plasterer’s hand is like a signature. He uses a certain amount of pressure, mixes his plaster in his own way. I’ve repaired a lot of O’Brien’s work over the years. I’m familiar with his mix.”

  Cara asked, “If we asked you to do the repairs up there, what would you do?”

  “Assuming you want me to match the original, I’d take a chunk of plaster out, see what mix he used. Jack had three mixes he liked. One for walls, which he wouldn’t have used here. The other two”—he shrugged—“could be either.”

  “How could you tell them apart?” Cara followed his gaze as he looked upward.

  “Some have more plaster, some more or less water, depending on what he was looking for. Sometimes more gypsum, sometimes a little more lime, sometimes vice versa.”

  “What’s the difference?” Des asked.

  “A higher concentration of lime would take longer to set up. Gives you a different finish.”

  “Why one over the other?” Des persisted.

  Giovanni shrugged. “Personal choice is the best answer I can give you. You get to know what a job calls for after you’ve done it long enough.”

  “So how would you go about repairing that mess up there?” Cara asked.

  “Well, first you have to scrape off whatever is loose, then you decide what mix you want. You apply it, you smooth it off. You can use your hands or a trowel, whichever gets you what you want, however many layers you think you need.”

  “Now the big question, Mr. Marini. What would you charge to work on that ceiling?” Des’d almost been afraid to ask, but surely he couldn’t be as much as Ebersol’s plasterer.

  Giovanni stared at the ceiling for a few moments. “Well, you know, it’s domed there in the middle where some of the damage is. I’m going to need to bring in a carpenter to work on the other side of the ceiling, replace the lathe if it’s wet.” He turned to Joe. “You could probably do that for me, right, son? Check out the lathe?”

  “The roofers already looked at it. It’s dry up there now. The roof only leaked that one time, and we got right on it.”

  “Good, good.” Giovanni nodded. “You won’t be insulted if I check that myself, though.”

  “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.” Joe smiled.

  “So say we just have that one domed section, and that flat part over there on the right . . . maybe eighty-five an hour. That takes into consideration I’ll be matching the plaster mix exactly to the original, of course.”

  “Eighty-five dollars an hour,” Des repeated.

  “Too much?” Giovanni asked.

  “No, no, that would be fine.” Des glanced at Cara and Allie. “What do you think?”

  “I think we’ve found our artiste.” Cara patted Giovanni on the back. “When can you start?”

  They’d said good-bye to Giovanni, who promised to draw up a contract for the job over the weekend. Cara stayed behind to talk to Joe, and Allie and Des set out for the house.

  “That was a brilliant move on Cara’s part,” Des said.

  “Let’s hope Giovanni turns out to be just as good as Mr. Plaster Artist from Ohio.” Allie stubbed her toe on a section of raised sidewalk and yelped, stopping briefly to rub the sore spot before catching up with Des.

  “I bet he is.” Des felt pretty confident that Giovanni would be every bit that. “He’s going to have to be, because he’s all we can afford. We still need a painter, though.” The plaster may be the cake, but the decorative painting was definitely the icing. “And I have no idea where we’ll find one, if we’re cutting out Ebersol and his people. Dr. Lindquist didn’t have a second choice, did she?”

  “No, but I have an idea about that.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m working on it, Des. Let’s leave it at that.”

  As they approached their front walk, a car drove up and parked in the driveway of the house across the street. A tall man with thick white hair got out and disappeared behind the wall of pine trees that obscured the property.

  “Didn’t Barney say the woman who lived there died last year?” Des stopped halfway up the walk and turned around.

  “She did.” Allie watched for a moment, but the man didn’t return to the car. “Maybe he’s one of the kids.”

  “There’s only one of them around, Barney said. The one son died, the daughter’s in London, and the other son was in the army.”

  “That might be him, then.”

  “Or it could be someone set to rob the place,” Allie suggested.

  “Not in broad daylight.”

  “Are you kidding? People get robbed in broad daylight all the time.”

  They mentioned to Barney when they went inside that the empty house across the street seemed to have a visitor.

  “Oh.” Barney looked up from her book. “It could be Thomas.” She appeared to ponder the possibility before marking her page and closing the book. “Perhaps I should check.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Des said.

  “No need.” Barney rose from her
chair and slipped into the sandals she’d kicked off.

  “What if he’s, you know, a burglar?” Allie hung over the back of the love seat. “It might not be safe.”

  “I’ll take my trusty guard dog with me.” She snapped her fingers and Buttons hopped off the stool, where she’d been curled up for a nap.

  “Does she even weigh twenty pounds?” Allie asked.

  “Closer to fifteen, last time she was at the vet.” Barney headed out of the room, the dog at her heels. “I’ll just get her leash and we’ll go over and see what’s what.”

  “At least take your cell phone so you can call for help.”

  “Of course. I have you both on speed dial.” Barney’s voice trailed down the hall.

  “If you’re not back in ten minutes, we’re coming over,” Des called to her.

  “If, as I suspect, it’s Thomas, make it twenty,” Barney called back.

  “How would we know?” Allie asked as the front door closed.

  “We wait fifteen minutes, then we check it out.”

  “Agreed.” Allie put her phone on the desk. “I’ll watch the time. Fifteen minutes. Then we wander over just in case she needs backup. In the meantime, we can go through some files and see if we can get a lead on our painter.”

  They waited the full fifteen.

  “I think we should just go and make sure there’s nothing funny going on over there, Allie.”

  “All things considered, I think Barney is capable of taking care of herself. But it has been awhile. It wouldn’t hurt to just ring the doorbell.” Allie closed the file she’d been looking through and stood. “I’m beginning to think we’re never going to figure out who the theater’s artist was.”

  “It’s inconceivable there’d be no mention of him—or her—anywhere. We just haven’t looked in the right place. There has to be something.” Des was first to the front door, which she opened, then paused. “Think Cara wants to come along?”

  “Her car’s not here, so she’s probably not back from the gift shop. She said something about picking up a birthday card for a friend of hers in Devlin’s Light.” Allie slid her sunglasses onto her face and caught up with Des, who put her hand out to slow Allie as a car passed them, apparently not having noticed the pedestrians. When they reached the arched front door of the house across the street, Allie hit the doorbell without hesitation.