Deal Breaker

by Patricia Rosemoor

  Filling the travel cup with coffee, she said, “I overslept. I need to get going.”

  “Not before you eat something. And we’re going together, remember?”

  So he was still planning on coming with her. She popped a strawberry in her mouth and made an impromptu sandwich of the cheese and bread, wrapped it in a napkin and slid it into her shoulder bag.

  Picking up her coffee, she said, “I can eat while I drive. We need to take both cars so I can go from Widow’s Peak straight to the office.”

  “Then let’s get on the road.”

  Trying to keep her mind from wandering to anything personal, Hailey led the way to the vehicles, and once inside her car, turned on a CD loud enough to blast away any unwanted thoughts about Bryce and their lovemaking from her mind. An impossible task, it seemed.

  But the moment they left their vehicles on the Widow’s Peak drive behind Mike Anderson’s truck, Bryce put an arm protectively across her back and she was lost.

  Then the front door opened and Mike looked from her to Bryce. “You here as a professional consultant?”

  “Something like that.” Bryce held out a hand and shook Mike’s. “Plus I wanted to satisfy my curiosity. Old buildings are my life.”

  Again Hailey wondered why he lived in a high rise if that were true.

  But Mike seemed to buy it. “Come on in and take the tour, then.”

  “I’ve seen the house,” Hailey said. “Most of it, at any rate. How about starting up at the widow’s walk and working our way down. I never got up there the other day.”

  “Widow’s walk it is.”

  Mike took the lead up the staircase to the second floor. Hailey fell behind slightly, indicating Bryce should go ahead of her. The house felt alive again, yet when she glanced at the doorway to Violet’s room, she felt no pull. Mike opened the doors to the stairs and went up. Brushing her so that she shook inside, Bryce gave her a hot look that told her he’d felt it, too, before following Mike. Quickly climbing the narrow steps up to the covered widow’s walk, all wood including the railings, Hailey stopped dead at the top.

  “Quite a view up here,” Bryce said.

  “Yep.” Mike pointed to a spot across the lake. “There’s your place.”

  Hailey wasn’t looking across the way. She wasn’t looking at anything. Instead, she was concentrating on the flowery scent that teased her…

  Was Violet up here trying to tell her something?

  She looked around. The widow’s walk would hold half a dozen people at most. An antique mahogany bench with carved leaves decorating both back and front snugged up against the only wall, placed on the south side. An odd addition to the widow’s walk. However, having been protected by the wall in the back and the roof overhead, the beautiful bench was still in credible shape. Hailey tried to imagine Violet sitting there for any length of time while looking out to the lake. Or perhaps while reading a book. The bench must have had some such purpose. With a cushion and a couple of pillows, it would make a perfect retreat.

  “Well, what do you think, Hailey?” Mike asked. “Is this a selling point or what?”

  She started and focused beyond the railings in three directions, past what were magnificent views of the lake and surrounding estates.

  “The view is a great selling point, but the railings probably need to be replaced.” She pulled her camera from her bag and took several shots, including one of the bench. Then she traded the camera for her recorder. “Widow’s walk needs a safety inspection and a paint job. Plus a cushion and decorative pillows for the bench.”

  They went downstairs to the bedroom level and started with Violet’s room. She pulled out her recorder. “The master bedroom is in dire need of fresh paint and new linens.”

  By the time they got to the third of the dozen second-floor bedrooms, Mike was squirming when she continued her observations.

  “You gonna record everything that’s wrong with the place?” he asked.

  “If my doing so bothers you, I could take notes on my phone, although keying them in would take even longer.”

  “Either way, it’s going to take forever to get through all these rooms.”

  “You could give Bryce the twenty-five-cent tour of the house while I make my notes, then do whatever it is you need to do around here.”

  “Not a bad idea. And if you run into Aunt Violet, just leave her be.”

  “Sure,” Hailey said, wondering about his attitude. What made him so resistant to what he could view as whimsy.

  “I’d like to see more than the house,” Bryce said, turning to wink at her without Mike seeing. “I ought to take a look at the other buildings on the property, too.”

  Hailey’s pulse sped up a notch, but she tried to ignore it. He didn’t mean anything by it. Their marriage had simply been convenient for both of them. The sex, too, at least for him.

  “Yeah, sure, we can check out the other buildings,” Mike said. “And then we can have a couple of beers on the porch.” He looked to Hailey. “Take your time.”

  “Good. I like to be thorough.”

  And she could use some time alone with the house. Good thing Bryce thought about those other buildings. The men began going through bedrooms at triple speed, while she continued to make her notes. By the time she’d made notes on all second-floor bedrooms and bathrooms, plus the kitchen, laundry and powder room on the first floor, the men seemed to have finished inside.

  “Wait a minute,” she heard Bryce say. “What about the basement?”

  “What about it? There’s no living space down there.”

  Hailey entered the foyer where they were stalled out just as Bryce indicated a radiator. “But there’s a boiler.”

  “Yes, we should at least have a look at the mechanicals,” she agreed, trying to ignore the sense of discomfort she always experienced in this area. “Not that I’m an expert, but I don’t even know if your aunt or uncle ever had the electric converted from fuses to breakers.”

  “Breakers,” Mike assured them.

  “Good,” Bryce said, “but we still should have a look.”

  “It’s filthy down there. No one’s touched the place for years.”

  Why was Mike so set against going down there? Hailey wondered. “We won’t touch anything, then.”

  Bryce slapped Mike in the shoulder. “C’mon, it’ll take only a few minutes.”

  “All right!”

  Truth be told, Hailey could skip this one, but her sense of dread was growing exponentially the longer she stayed in the foyer, so she quickly followed the men through the mud room to a wall that housed a secret panel, and then down the stairs. Not that she was able to leave the dismaying sensation behind. Her unease festered as she entered the dank, dark and very creepy basement. A single lightbulb lit the area giving her just enough light to see the myriad spiderwebs.

  “Told you there was nothing to see.”

  Rather than arguing with Mike, Bryce went straight to the breaker box and checked inside, then took a good look at the hot water tank and ended up taking a panel off the front of the boiler.

  As quick as he was, Hailey couldn’t wait to get out of there. She shifted her gaze around the big open space, which was probably only half the footprint of the house. The walls seemed to be crumbling, one of the windows was boarded up and a pile of old bricks sat between two doorways.

  She took out her recorder. “Basement needs an overhaul. New electric for lights and at minimum, masonry work and a paint job.” Then she asked Mike, “Why the doorways?”

  “One goes to the outside, the other to the old coal bin.”

  “Coal?”

  “That would have been the fuel of choice, even in the fifties,” Bryce said. “Done here. Everything actually looks like it’s in good shape.”

  “Well, hallelujah!” Mike said, leading the way back up the stairs.

  Hailey had to admit she was glad when she got back to the first floor. She continued on straight into the dining room, checking not only for t
hings that needed to be done but also for anything that was obviously missing. She didn’t want to think that Danny had just taken something that had belonged to Violet when she’d found him the night before, and she was relieved not to see anything obviously disturbed.

  The men’s voices faded. The front door opened. Mike was taking Bryce outside, which would leave her in the house alone.

  She decided to go back to the widow’s walk. Although she’d smelled the scent of violets, she hadn’t gotten any kind of strong impression. No sense of darkness like she’d gotten the night before. Even so, she’d felt Violet—her spirit must have wanted her to see something. The men’s presence had no doubt interfered with her sensing what that might have been.

  After glancing out a window to see Mike on his cell phone walking away from the house, Hailey made straight for the staircase and the widow’s walk.

  But if Violet had a message for her earlier, it must not have been important enough to linger. To her disappointment, the only scent that teased Hailey’s nose was a fishy smell coming off the lake.

  BRYCE lingered near the front door for a moment. Mike was making a call to his sports supply store to check on a delivery. Apparently it was nearly impossible to get a signal in the house itself.

  With Mike’s attention elsewhere, Bryce slipped back inside. As Mike had speeded up the tour, Bryce had glimpsed something he wanted to check out.

  A scrapbook in the front parlor.

  His psychic ability had always been limited to hearing others’ thoughts when it chose to kick in. And yet, when he’d touched the scrapbook, he’d sworn his fingers had tingled. Now sitting in one of the upholstered armchairs, he pulled the massive book onto his lap.

  The contents surprised him.

  Rather than a collection of family photographs as he’d expected to find, the book was filled with decades of Geneva Lake history—newspaper clippings and brochures and entertainment programs. Page after page was filled with glimpses of the past in Lake Geneva and Williams Bay and Walworth and Fontana—all the towns around Geneva Lake.

  Why had he felt such an overwhelming need to come back inside and check the scrapbook? Bryce wondered as he turned page after page. Violet had been a recluse after her husband’s death, so had this been her way of connecting with the outside world?

  Nothing in the scrapbook seemed extraordinary.

  Nothing until he got halfway through the book.

  Then a sense of urgency made him turn pages faster and faster until he got to the newspaper clipping with the headline: LOCAL WOMAN DISAPPEARS.

  This was it. This was what he’d been meant to find.

  Pulse quickening, Bryce sat frozen staring at the article about his mother’s disappearance. It detailed the police department’s fruitless search and his family’s grief at the loss, not to mention their frustration at not knowing what had happened to their loved one. Just reading it brought back that next morning when Dad had awakened them to tell them the news. He’d been sick then.

  Sick with despair.

  With grief.

  With guilt.

  He was sick now, as if he were reliving that awful day.

  The photograph of his mother wasn’t a professional portrait but a snapshot of her in a happy moment. Lush dark hair spilled around Mom’s face to her shoulders, and her smile was radiant. Posed in front of a flower bed, she wore a white, lace-edged blouse and a fine chain holding four tiny birthstone wheels—one for each of her children. Bryce remembered the present he and his brothers and sister had bought for her that Mother’s Day, the very day Grania had taken this photo.

  Bryce knew he’d returned to the parlor so that he could see this…but why? How?

  What could possibly have drawn him back to the scrapbook?

  “LOOKING at Violet’s photos?” Hailey asked as she came downstairs and saw Bryce staring at the scrapbook in his lap.

  Bryce shook his head. “Come take a look for your self.”

  Considering she’d been on her way to do that very thing, Hailey quickly took in the article about his mother’s disappearance.

  Her mind flicked to the other night, to the translucent figure she’d so briefly seen among the dust motes.

  Could it be?

  She sat on the chair arm next to Bryce as he continued to page through the scrapbook. There were several more articles about Alice’s disappearance, the articles getting less and less space as the search for the missing woman ground to a halt. Then the contents changed tone, once more reflecting happier events in the area. Normal, everyday things. As Hailey continued turning pages, the sense of urgency waned only to be amped up when he went back to the first article with the photograph.

  Staring at Alice McKenna’s long dark hair, Hailey let the uneasy thought gel. What if the spirit she’d glimpsed so quickly had been Bryce’s mother?

  “Everything in this book is about an event that happened in this area.” Bryce’s intake of breath was audible. “Why would she have these articles about my mother?”

  “I don’t know.” Not for certain. She was only guessing at something so awful she couldn’t voice it, at least not yet. “Was your mom good friends with Violet?”

  His dark expression made her want to put her arms around him and let him lean on her.

  “Mom and Violet? Not that I know of. I never saw them together or anything. Then again, I was away at college that last year, so I’m not sure.”

  He sounded defensive…

  Before she could probe a little, she heard footsteps on the porch. Regretting not being able to finish this conversation with Bryce, Hailey vowed to do it later. He quickly closed the book, returned it to its table just as the front door opened. Later, she would tell Bryce everything. By the time Mike entered and spotted them, they were on their feet and she was looking around as if for faults that needed to be addressed.

  “So are you done?”

  “Not quite. I still have a couple of rooms on this floor to go through.”

  “What do you think?” he asked Bryce.

  Bryce started, as if he were just jerked out of his own private thoughts. “About what?”

  “About how much getting this place in shape is going to cost me.” Mike was sounding exasperated.

  Hailey said, “I’m not even finished looking.” Had he really thought they could figure it out on the spot? “After which I have to make a written list of everything I believe the property needs, so that nothing is missed.”

  “Then Hailey and I will put our heads together,” Bryce said. “Give us a few days to get a proposal together.”

  Mike scowled. “I’ll get those beers.”

  “And I’ll get back to work,” Hailey said.

  “I take it you didn’t run into any ghosts,” Mike said as he headed for the kitchen.

  “Not today.” She turned to Bryce, who still wasn’t himself. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  But he wasn’t looking at her. He was lost somewhere in the past. His expression was odd.

  He looked…guilty.

  Chapter Eleven

  Thinking about Bryce’s reaction to the articles about his mother in Violet’s scrapbook, Hailey regretted his pain. What she didn’t regret was not telling him what had happened to her the night before. Then he would be thinking the same thing she was, that the woman killed in the house had been his mother. She would have to tell him that.

  Eventually.

  She had a lot to think about before she opened old wounds again.

  Rather than going straight to the office, she decided to stop at home to see how Danny was doing. Hopefully he’d gotten the groceries. It wasn’t that she was stopping to check. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him with her fifty dollars. It really wasn’t.

  Trying to convince herself of that, she turned onto her block and saw two men on her porch. She took her foot off the accelerator and let the car slow to a crawl. Both men were familiar. One was Danny, of course.

  The other wa
s Iceman.

  Her pulse began to race. What was the loan shark doing here in Lake Geneva?

  She hadn’t forgotten Bryce’s theory that, whether he knew it, Danny had something to do with her being dumped in the river. And Reilly had said he was going to have a talk with Iceman.

  Is that why the loan shark was here, to threaten Danny because the heat was on him?

  Only when he drove off did she give the car some gas and pull up to her house. Danny had already gone back inside. She gripped the steering wheel for a moment to steady herself. Then she left the car and went to face her brother.

  She found Danny in the kitchen, putting food away in the fridge. That he had bought food with the money she gave him made her feel a little better. Now if only he an explanation for his visitor.

  “What was Iceman doing here?”

  “You saw him?”

  “He was leaving as I drove up. What did he want, Danny? Did he threaten you again? Or did you invite him here?”

  “No! Neither one. He came to find me because he figures I have new resources.”

  “What?” Now he had her address, which didn’t thrill her.

  Danny said, “His words, not mine. He’s trying to get me in a big-stakes game. I told him I’m not interested.”

  “Is that the truth?”

  “What do you want me to say, Hailey, that I don’t want to gamble anymore? That the urge is gone? It’s not. I have to fight it every minute. But I didn’t invite Iceman to Lake Geneva. He came looking for me. I told him that I’m not planning to get in this game. I’m trying to change. For you. I even have a job interview on Friday.”

  “With who?”

  “Ray Anderson. He’s short a bartender.”

  Thinking that would only be another temporary job with no payoff for the future, Hailey kept that opinion to herself. Work was work. If Danny got the job, that would be a step in the right direction.

  “Good,” she said. “Then I’m happy, Danny. I just don’t want to see you get yourself in trouble again.”

  “I won’t!”

  “Iceman didn’t make any more threats, did he?”