Halt at X: A North of Boston Novel

by Sally Ann Sims

  “Thank you, Margo.”

  He kissed her on the cheek, and they admired each other in the mirror. When she turned toward him, he kissed her on the mouth tentatively, as if he were asking her a question. She leaned into him as an answer. A solemn bell rang at the mansion entrance, signaling the first of the guests arriving. They separated. Frank went to the front door and Margo to the powder room under the stairs.

  It sure looked like she was kissing back, thought John as he emerged from behind the Japanese screen to fetch drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

  Bomi, Honor, and Cliff arrived together. Frank made the introductions for Bomi, who kissed Margo’s hand. John appeared with champagne flutes on a tray. Two other kitchen staffers circulated with trays of clam fritters, smoked salmon balls, oysters wrapped in bacon, vegetable crudités, and eggplant caviar.

  The next wave of guests and P-H staffers arrived, including Lucinda, Aden, and Jennifer. Faculty materialized, and the crowd flowed into the Pecan Room. John removed the 60-year-old rosewood-and-maple chessboard because guests were parking their drinks on it. Cliff Plunkett, taking up his position at the hearth, proposed a toast.

  “To our newest Board member. Bomi Singh. Welcome to Peabody-Hawthorne!”

  Bomi nodded during the subdued clapping that followed, then everyone sipped champagne. Aden noticed several surprised smiles among the guests and double takes at the flutes.

  “Hey,” Aden whispered to Lucinda, nodding to his champagne flute. “It’s the good stuff. Did someone make a mistake?”

  Lucinda smiled. “No. Cliff’s footing the bill tonight. I don’t think he wanted to look cheap in front of our new movers and shakers.”

  “Here’s to Cliff,” Aden said, lifting his glass slightly in his direction.

  The Welds were the first of the donors to arrive, with Vanessa in tow. Lucinda was grateful they left Tangiers at home, but who would guard Aden from Vanessa? She was poured into a magenta-and-white print dress with a molded sweetheart neckline. And she was wearing shoes this time. With four-inch heels. Every male head turned when she removed her wrap.

  “Uh oh,” said Aden.

  Bomi stepped forward to be introduced to the Welds. The Fargills and Dovers arrived. Then Bettina Collins and her friend Della. The party grew and spread from the Pecan Room to the foyer to the library. Frank kept the Fargill and the Dover crews close by him in the library. The Welds gravitated to Lucinda and Aden, as did Bettina and Della. Honor joined them in the Pecan Room. Jennifer mingled with the alumni and donors from the city by the buffet setup in the formal dining room across the hall from the Pecan Room. Tara Whitcomb and Margo Flushing flitted among the donors and alumni like bees pollinating a field of buttercups. Champagne flute in hand, Vanessa pursued Aden, who took refuge in the kitchen for fifteen minutes.

  Vanessa, gently shunted away from the kitchen entrance by one of the wait staff, perched on a curvaceous chair by an antique writing desk in the alcove and called Cameron on her phone. When Aden emerged from the kitchen, he looked up and down the hall then headed for the Pecan Room and slipped in next to Lucinda in a cluster of folks in a thick horseshoe around the fire.

  “And so,” Bomi said. “This business I build in IT outsource fraud protection really catches on and provides me with the chance to move here to your wonderful town.”

  “What sort of a role do you see for yourself on the Executive Committee, Mr. Singh?” Tara asked. “You have such a cutting edge business background.”

  Bomi turned toward Tara, smiling briefing at Honor as his eyes passed over her.

  “I take this opportunity very seriously,” he said. “This, how do you call it? This duty of care? I have been entrusted. On your Board. I feel we need to ensure integrity and accountability in education.”

  “He also has an extensive background in finance that he’s too modest to announce,” Honor said, making eye contact with Lucinda. “We will greatly deepen our Board oversight resources with Bomi on the team.”

  Oh, interesting, Lucinda thought, filing this away. Was Honor disillusioned with Don Keegan already?

  “And I also wish to help increase some international exchange opportunities, especially for business students in South Asia.”

  “We’ll be keeping him very busy,” Honor said. She tossed out a few comments about the important contributions of new and faithful donors alike and how with everyone’s help the college would transform soon to university status. Lucinda resolved to touch base with every new donor, her usual agenda at these parties, and headed for the library.

  She passed John on her way in.

  “Busy night,” she said.

  “Very busy,” he said. “I hope you’re enjoying it.”

  “Everything tastes fantastic, John. Bang-up job.”

  He paused and smiled, startled, she guessed, by the compliment.

  “Thank you, Lucinda. I’m glad someone noticed.” He hurried away to oversee the final dessert prep.

  Frank glanced up when Lucinda neared his circle by the hearth. They had managed to spend most of the evening in separate rooms, but she knew that if she didn’t introduce herself to his corporate crowd he’d hold total sway over those relationships, whether they were purely business or more than that. She felt in her gut the relationships were more than straight-up business. But what else were they exactly?

  There was an unguarded moment when she noticed Frank’s first reaction to seeing her in his inner circle, as if she were a blast of bus exhaust. He had a harder time these days deleting emotion from his face. She used to not have much of an effect at all on him — she remembered those first few staff meetings when he barely looked at her. This is progress. Or was it just bringing her closer to termination? Danger?

  “Ah, our Development Guru, Ms. Lucinda Beck. Gentlemen.” Everyone around the tight circle introduced himself in turn.

  Roger Fargell shook her hand painfully hard. “I’m afraid we have to apologize for keeping your man tied up most of the evening.”

  “No apologies needed,” she said. “It’s wonderful to welcome the cream of the business community to Peabody-Hawthorne.”

  At that, someone from Dover turned to Roger, and they swung back into the debate they were engaged in when she walked in. Something about the tech futures market.

  A man eyed her from the edge of the circle. Same height and coloring as Frank but with an appealing mustache and much less fierceness of brow. He didn’t appear connected to the others in the circle, although he followed the banter attentively. Lucinda pulled back from the nucleus of Frank and his satellites of CEOs and senior managers and introduced herself.

  “Sean Wickes,” he said in response. “Great to meet you. You don’t… . This is not really my crowd.”

  What was he going to say? Lucinda wondered. You don’t look like the monster my father made you out to be?

  “Are you with one of our new donor companies?” Lucinda asked.

  “I’m just coming on board at Fargill,” Sean said distractedly, looking over at his father every few minutes. She excused herself as soon as was socially polite and left the library.

  Lucinda circulated until she felt certain that every donor felt personally attended to. She, Aden, and Jennifer had split up the donor list ahead of time to make sure they got to everyone. Then she checked in with Honor who was headed toward the library. It was past midnight.

  “Great job,” Honor said. “It’s wonderful to see so many new enthusiastic faces.”

  “Yes, I’m pleased with how it turned out. Bomi was a big hit, huh?”

  “I think he may be able to help us should the need arise,” Honor said. Then she glanced around and pulled Lucinda into the cramped old butler’s pantry by the stairs and shut the door.

  “Don Keegan has disappeared. Or is unreachable,” Honor said. “I don’t want to talk tonight with all these donors coming out of the woodwork. Let’s talk after church tomorrow.”

  “Ok,” Lucinda said, noticing Honor appeared uncharacteris
tically unglued, her gaze jumpy and her hair texture choppy rather than sleek. Maybe too much champagne? “How was your night?”

  “Good. I got Chester Mulholland to hold court in the Pecan Room for a while, but I didn’t like that Frank kept himself in the library most of the night.”

  “That’s what I mean. That’s his whole orientation,” Lucinda said.

  The door opened, and Aden appeared, surprised at who he saw. “I was expecting a rack of coats.”

  “We’re just leaving,” Honor said. “See you tomorrow, Lucinda.” She left the butler’s pantry, ran into Pat Weld, and began another animated conversation.

  “She never quits,” Aden said, smiling. “How about you?”

  “I’m done for the night. Are you leaving?” Lucinda asked. He nodded.

  Aden brought Lucinda her coat. She told him about Don being missing as they walked down the front steps.

  “Not good,” Aden said. “Is Don ok? What else did she say?”

  “We couldn’t talk. It’s too public.”

  Lucinda and Aden walked out to their cars, which were parked in the administration lot to make room for the donors’ cars closer to the mansion.

  “I found out we’ve got someone else on our side,” Aden said.

  “Who, Bomi?” Lucinda. “I think it’s too early to say — ”

  “No. I spent an interesting quarter hour in the kitchen eluding Vanessa.”

  They approached Lucinda’s car under the overhead light.

  “John,” Aden continued. “He hates Frank. Hates the way he treats him. Hates his attitude. And he’s been doing his own snooping around.”

  Aden saw it first. A slip of paper tucked under the windshield wiper on the driver’s side. Frowning, he pulled the folded paper out and handed it to Lucinda.

  Orion always gets his prey.

  Lucinda handed the typed note back to him. “It’s gotten ugly, Aden.”

  She watched the fear deepen to horror on his face.

  * * * * *

  “Donald Keegan is not answering his landline or cell, and his daughter doesn’t know where he is,” Honor said.

  Lucinda settled mugs of coffee on the end table. The two women had just attended the first service at Plumcliff Congregational Church and decided to touch base afterward in Lucinda’s living room. Outside, sooty clouds pulled the underbelly of the sky even lower, threatening bone chilling rain or frizzling sleet. After placing tinder and kindling into a miniature pup tent shape, Lucinda lit a fire in the fireplace.

  Lucinda had begun attending services at the church again after Bart moved out. It was her childhood church, although her father had dismissed the place for what he called its hypocrisy, and, after her mother died, the family stopped attending. Bart had always been wary of religion — of houses of worship and the cult of the cross, as he called it. Peter eventually became a Buddhist, although that was shaky at this point. Their wayward sister Rene — who knew what she believed in? Mostly herself. But Lucinda returned to the church of her childhood looking for a place to just be. And maybe sort things out.

  Lucinda enjoyed the fellowship of Plumcliff Congregational and the gorgeous stained glass window of Jesus’ head, a dove, and sky paid for by an art lover after a thunderstorm blasted out the original plain glass window five years ago. From her second-row pew vantage point, she watched the bejeweled light play across the floor and up the wall on sunny Sunday mornings, although such modern embellishments were not typical of Plumcliff.

  Somehow, that space of pure bright color helped her acknowledge the new questions in her life. What had pushed her to Jay? What had happened with Bart? How would she treat herself now? How would she tell herself what happened in a way she could believe? To face these messy questions, if, not now, to try to answer them. She knew she had to work them out with Bart, not through some confession to someone whose business it was not. That Sunday, the clouds kept the glorious color within the panes. She had a cheerless feeling that it was already too late for her and Bart.

  Gabriel eyed Honor from his vantage point at her booted feet, peering up into her face, unsure what to make of this woman who had the nerve to overlook him. Lucinda, smiling at Gabriel’s intensity, knew Honor spent her pet affections exclusively a purebred Boston terrier and the Beagle mix she adopted from the Cape Tilton Humane Society Shelter. As a magnificent-looking cat, sporting a fur pattern like a silver-and-black designer throw, Gabriel was not used to being ignored.

  “It’s too soon for a missing-person report, but I’m worried. He’d just mentioned to me, I thought it was just to me, that he saw something ‘interesting’ in the quarterly numbers he’s been reviewing and wanted to meet with the finance committee on Wednesday. I was going to meet with him yesterday to brief on it, but he didn’t call back to let me know a time and place. Now there’s no answer. No response to e-mails. Cliff’s looking into it.”

  Lucinda added a few birch logs to the fire as it began to crackle and whoosh. Gabriel, giving up on Honor, stretched out on the hearth and closed his gold eyes.

  “Here’s something else. I got this note last night,” Lucinda said. “On campus property.” Lucinda handed Honor the paper Aden plucked from her windshield after the donor party.

  “May I keep this?” Honor asked after reading it. “We should inform the campus police.”

  “I called campus security already. They did not seem too concerned. ‘Some student prank,’ they said.”

  “I’ll contact Harris. The municipal police always listen to me,” Honor said crisply.

  Lucinda smiled. Honor was always the no-nonsense lawyer, even when dressed for church in a drapey crepe jacket and skirt. Her mauve-shadowed eyes under her sleek navy dress hat scrutinized the spare note for the unobvious.

  Lucinda took the slip of paper. Giving it to the police seemed too something. Paranoid?

  “How are you going to give context for your worry if you don’t want to name names yet? I haven’t gotten enough to ‘line up ducks’ the way you want,” Lucinda said. “This is a fairly elliptical note.”

  “Well, it’s obviously a threat.”

  “Could be.” Lucinda wondered whether this person was watching her the night she released the flying squirrel into the barn loft.

  “Harris will listen to my hunches. They’ve proven true enough in the past to preclude any doubt in his mind.” Honor removed a little notebook from her purse and wrote something in it. “This was in the mansion parking lot after the party?”

  “Yes. And on Friday night, someone almost got me using a car as weapon. Not on campus property, but Babson Road. The car swerved off the ice toward my car and then kept going.”

  Alarm appeared in Honor’s eyes, cracking her veneer of cool neutrality.

  “Really? What happened? Where were you going?”

  “To Newcester. I ended up spraining my ankle getting out of the car on an awkward slope, but it could have been way worse. No, I didn’t get a license plate number,” Lucinda said, anticipating the next question. “And yes, I reported it.”

  “Any idea who’s doing these things?”

  “Of course, I’d like to say Warren or Frank, but it doesn’t add up. Warren doesn’t need to do anything to me to get ahead. If he just stays the course, he’s promoted. And Frank doesn’t think I have the power to make enough fuss to wreck his plans. Who would want to get me for just doing my job?”

  “Or that’s what they want you to think. That they think you’re harmless.”

  “Hmmmm,” Lucinda said. “More coffee?”

  When Honor shook her head, the ruby eye of her gold panther pendant flashed blood red.

  “Or unless Frank’s worked out some bigger scheme,” Honor said. “Look, there’s something beyond what we know about the money right now. That’s my bet. Either way, I’m talking to Harris, and he’ll be keeping more of an eye on you. That note could be just a scare tactic. And the car on ice could have been just that. No malicious intent.”

  Lucinda got up and
took the mugs into the kitchen. Honor followed her.

  “But I doubt it,” Honor continued. “Now I have to get moving. I’ll be in touch about Don, when I hear. Meanwhile, I’m bringing Bomi up to speed on what Don was doing. I think I’m going to want a second opinion on these numbers the way things are shaking out.”

  “I like Bomi,” Lucinda said. “He’s got good energy.”

  “Good energy.” Honor laughed. “Whatever that means.”

  “It means I bet you can trust him to help with the books,” Lucinda said.

  Honor smiled. “I’m glad you’re taking this calmly, but be careful.”

  Honor gathered up her purse and left, without Gabriel’s escort to the door. Lucinda refilled her mug and considered the afternoon ahead of her. Bart hadn’t called, although today was supposed to be The Visit. She wasn’t going to call and beg. Again. At least not so soon.

  She might as well go to the stable.

  * * * * *

  Salt Marsh Stable was quiet that afternoon. Tori had returned from Florida the day before. Thea was stripping and oiling bridles. She glanced briefly at Lucinda when she entered the tack room, then focused intently on a braided leather rein when Lucinda approached her.

  “Hey,” Lucinda said. “Don’t tune me out. I consider the matter dropped. I know you can make your own decisions.”

  Thea kept rubbing the leather.

  “Thea? I’m on your side, don’t forget,” Lucinda said, touching Thea’s left arm tenderly. “Where’s Tori? I heard she rolled into town yesterday.” Lucinda leaned back against the nearest saddle waiting for Thea to thaw. It didn’t take long.

  “She’s getting caught up in the office. Rolled in late last night,” Thea said.

  “How’s school going?”

  “Ok,” she said. She tossed her rag onto the lip of the sink and stretched her back. “Dad’s behind the vet school thing so he’s working on Mom. Plus no rent here if I work enough. Either way, he promised to help me get financial aid.”