Secrets of the Lost Summer

by Carla Neggers

  Maggie had jotted down a name and address.

  “Dylan McCaffrey,” Olivia said, not recognizing the name. “Ever hear of him, Jess?”

  Her sister bit into an apple. “Uh-uh.”

  It was a San Diego address. Far away for the owner of a wreck of a house in Knights Bridge to be living.

  Olivia slid the card under the edge of the pitcher of forsythia. She didn’t care where Dylan McCaffrey lived or why he’d bought the house up the road. She just wanted him to clean up the place.

  Two

  The note was handwritten on a simple yet elegant white card decorated with a sprig of purple clover. It came with a half-dozen color photographs in a matching envelope, also with a clover sprig. Dylan McCaffrey pushed back his chair, put his size-twelve leather shoes on his desk and contemplated his twentieth-story view of San Diego, which, on a good day, such as today, was nothing short of breathtaking.

  Who the hell was Olivia Frost, and where the hell was Knights Bridge, Massachusetts?

  Dylan read the note again. The handwriting was neat, legible and feminine, done in forest-green ink—probably a fountain pen.

  Dear Mr. McCaffrey,

  We’ve never met, but I’m your neighbor in Knights Bridge. I own the center-chimney 1803 house just down the road from your house.

  Dylan stopped right there. What was a center-chimney house, and why was he supposed to care?

  He gritted his teeth and continued reading:

  You might not be aware of this, but your house is in rough shape. The structure itself isn’t my concern, but the yard is. It’s overgrown and strewn with junk, including, as you can see from the enclosed photographs, a discarded refrigerator.

  He had lined up the photographs side by side on his dark wood desk. He glanced at the leftmost one. It did, in fact, show a rusted white refrigerator cast on its side amid brambles and melting snow. The fridge had to be at least thirty years old. Maybe older. He wasn’t an expert on refrigerators.

  He returned to the note:

  I understand if you’re unable to clean up the yard yourself and would like to offer to do it myself, with your permission. Of course, I’ll waive any liability if I get hurt, and if I find anything of value, I’ll let you know.

  My family runs a small business in town that specializes in architectural reproductions and components—doors, windows, mantels and so forth. We’ve been in Knights Bridge for generations. I would hate to get the town involved in this matter. I look forward to putting it behind us and meeting you one day soon.

  Thank you so much,

  Olivia Frost

  Whoever she was, Dylan suspected Olivia Frost thought the man she was writing to was old, or at least feeble. He was neither. He had to admire how she managed to offer help at the same time she threatened to sic the town on him, an outsider. His main issue with her note, however, was more immediate and direct.

  He didn’t own property in Knights Bridge, Massachusetts.

  He dropped his feet back to the floor and tapped a few keys on his laptop, pinpointing the town on a map of Massachusetts. It was on the northern edge of what appeared to be a large lake, the largest by far in the small New England state.

  He sat back.

  Knights Bridge and Olivia Frost still didn’t ring any bells.

  He was about to zoom in for a closer view when Noah Kendrick entered the sprawling corner office. The door was open. Noah and Dylan had been best friends since first grade in a Los Angeles suburb. Noah, the genius geek. Dylan, the C-student hockey player. Now they were business partners, except it wasn’t that simple. Dylan owed Noah his livelihood and maybe even his life. Noah said the same thing about Dylan, but it wasn’t true and they both knew it. NAK, Inc., was Noah’s brainchild, a four-year-old, highly profitable high-tech entertainment software company named for him—Noah Andrew Kendrick. Dylan had just helped put it together and keep it together. He knew how to fight. Noah didn’t.

  “What’s up?” Noah asked.

  Noah had on, as always, a black suit. He didn’t care that he looked like an undertaker. He thought black made him look older and tougher. He was thirty-three, but even in his suit, he looked much younger. He was fair and angular and had to be coaxed into sunlight. He was deceptively tough and fit—a fencer and a brown belt in karate.

  Dylan was the opposite. He was thirty-four but looked older. He and Noah had met in first grade and graduated high school the same year, but Dylan had repeated kindergarten after his mother decided she should have held him back a year to begin with. The school didn’t disagree. Everyone said it was because of his September birthday. Maybe, but he’d never been a great student.

  He’d discovered ice hockey in fifth grade. No looking back after that. After twenty years on the ice, finishing up in the NHL three years ago, he was fit, scarred and lucky to have all his teeth. He could clean up a yard in New England if he needed to, even a yard with a refrigerator in the brambles.

  Unlike Noah, Dylan wore jeans and a sweater. No suit, black or otherwise, today. He only donned a suit when necessary, such as when he had to be a fly on the wall for one of Noah’s meetings and warn him that someone was a jackass who should be thrown out the nearest window.

  Not that Dylan had ever thrown anyone out a window or ever would. He could give the heave-ho to most people he met. He knew how, and he had the strength. His gift, however, was his keen instinct—at least compared to Noah—for people who were looking to cause trouble.

  He sighed at his friend. “I didn’t buy a farm in Massachusetts when I was drinking Guinness one night, did I?”

  “Not that I recall. Have you ever been to Massachusetts?”

  “Boston Garden when we played the Bruins. Since then, I’ve visited Alec Wiskovich a few times. He’s a former teammate. Otherwise…that’s it.”

  Noah leaned over his shoulder. “Go to street view.”

  Dylan did, and in a moment a quaint village with clapboard houses and shade trees materialized on his screen.

  “No horses and buggies, at least,” Noah said. “Who’s the letter from?”

  “Louisa May Alcott.” Dylan handed over the note card.

  Noah gave a low, amused whistle as he read. “Do you have a great-uncle Dylan McCaffrey? Maybe Olivia Frost confused you with him.”

  “No.”

  Noah, of course, knew that Dylan had no family left on the McCaffrey side. His father, an only child, had died two years ago. His grandparents were gone, too.

  “Maybe it’s a long-lost uncle,” Noah said, placing the note next to the photos lined up on Dylan’s desk. “I bet Miss Frost will fly out here and smack your hand with a ruler if you don’t clean up the place. What’s The Farm at Carriage Hill?”

  “The what?”

  “It’s on the card. See?”

  Noah tapped a finger on the back of the note card, The Farm at Carriage Hill printed in dark purple lettering. Dylan had missed it. He did a quick search but nothing came up anywhere in Massachusetts, never mind Knights Bridge.

  “I guess a farm would explain the chives on the front of the card,” Noah said.

  “I thought it was clover.”

  “Chives are more romantic than clover, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about chives or clover.”

  Noah grinned. “Good luck. Let me know if you need my help.”

  “With moving the refrigerator or figuring out why Olivia Frost thinks I own this house?”

  “Either one,” Noah said.

  He withdrew from Dylan’s office. His own was just down the hall, at least for the moment. NAK had gone public late last year. He and Noah had both made a fortune in the process, but NAK as a public company was different from it as a private company. The tight team of the early years was transforming into something else, and Dylan wasn’t sure what his new role would be, or if he’d have one. He’d always been willing to walk away when Noah no longer needed him.

  He looked out at the view of his adopte
d city and dialed Loretta Wrentham, his lawyer and financial manager.

  He worked for another two hours, then drove out to his house on Coronado Island, a two-story tan stucco built in the 1950s. Kidney-shaped pool out back, the Pacific in front. Loretta arrived thirty minutes later, glanced at the note card and photographs from Olivia Frost that he’d arranged on his coffee table, then walked straight across the living room to the beveled glass door that led onto his front porch. At five-nine, Loretta was almost as tall as he was, slender and impeccably dressed. Her silver curls were cut short, emphasizing her wide brown eyes, high cheekbones and strong chin.

  “You inherited the house from your father,” she said, cracking open the door. She wore expensive jeans, a silky top and heels that didn’t seem to bother her but would kill most other women half her age. She glanced back at him. “I assumed you knew.”

  “How would I know?”

  “He was your father, Dylan. Didn’t you two talk about these things?”

  “No. What about a mortgage?”

  “There isn’t one. He paid cash. It wasn’t an expensive property.”

  “What about property taxes? What about upkeep?”

  “I’ve paid property taxes on your behalf. They’re not high. Upkeep…” Loretta grimaced. “No one’s lived in the house for a while. It was unoccupied when your father bought it shortly before his untimely death. Upkeep is minimal, just enough to prevent the pipes from freezing.”

  “Who was the original owner?”

  “A woman by the name of Grace Webster. I should say she’s the most recent owner. The house was built in 1842. The original owner would be dead by now for sure.”

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  Loretta grinned as she pushed the door open wide. “Oh, yes.”

  Dylan leaned against the back of the couch. His house, a few blocks from the famed Hotel del Coronado, was professionally decorated in shades of cream and brown. Restful and sophisticated, supposedly. The yard, too, was professionally landscaped. No junk.

  “What do you know about this Grace Webster?” he asked.

  “Not much. She’s in her nineties.” Loretta stepped onto the porch, her back to him as she took in the view of the Pacific. Finally she turned to him. “Her father bought the house in 1938, after the state forced everyone out of their hometown to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir.”

  That had to be the lake Dylan had seen on the map.

  “Quabbin,” Loretta continued, still clearly amused, “is a Native American word that means ‘place of many waters,’ or ‘meeting of the waters.’ It refers to the Swift River Valley, which was laced with three branches of the Swift River and multiple streams—the perfect location for a reservoir.”

  “Loretta,” Dylan said.

  She waved a perfectly manicured hand at him. “Miss Webster’s ancestors settled in the valley in the mid-1700s. Two hundred years later, she and her family were forcibly bought out, along with everyone else in four towns, so the state could dam the valley and let it fill up with fresh water for metropolitan Boston. It’s one of the most egregious examples of eminent domain in U.S. history. I’d love to fight that case now.”

  Dylan had no doubt, but he was lost. “How did you find all this out?”

  “Internet. Our Grace is quoted in an interview with some of the last living residents of the valley before it was flooded. She’s a retired high school English and Latin teacher. She never married.”

  Dylan considered his predicament, and the note from Olivia Frost. He couldn’t even guess why his father had bought the house, or why there was a cast-off refrigerator in the yard.

  He joined his attorney and friend on the porch. A vibrant sunset filled up the sky and glowed on the Pacific across the street. “What do I do?” he asked.

  “It’s your property,” Loretta said, gazing out at the sunset. “You can do whatever you want. Sell it, renovate it, give it away. Move in.”

  “Move in? Why would I move in?”

  “I don’t know. You could take up chopping wood and picking blackberries.” She crossed her arms in front of her in the chilly wind. “Those are blackberry vines in the picture of the old refrigerator, aren’t they?”

  “I have no idea what they are.”

  “Blackberry vines have thorns.”

  Other vines had to have thorns, too, but Dylan really didn’t know or care. “What did my father pay for this place?”

  “A pittance. He wrote a check. The house is a wreck but it sits on seven acres. Knights Bridge is out-of-the-way, in part because of the reservoir. It’s not like the area grew up naturally around a big lake. Quabbin didn’t exist when the towns were settled. Look on the map. You’ll see what I mean.”

  He had, and he did.

  “What’s the name of this farm again?” Loretta asked.

  “The Farm at Carriage Hill.”

  “Quaint. And the owner?”

  “Olivia Frost.” Dylan ignored the cool wind as he watched joggers on the beach. “Why did my father buy a house in Knights Bridge, Loretta?”

  “That,” she said, dropping her arms to her sides, “is your mystery to solve. If I were you, I’d let sleeping dogs lie and hire someone to clean up the yard, then quietly sell the place or give it away.”

  “You’ll check out this Olivia Frost?”

  “First thing when I get home. Right now, I’m going for a walk on the beach and enjoy the last of the sunset.” She headed to the steps but stopped before descending, again looking back at Dylan. “You’re not worried about this woman taking legal action, are you?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Good. An old refrigerator and whatnot in the yard aren’t a serious concern.”

  “I think I saw a washing machine, too.”

  Dylan could hear Loretta laughing all the way down the steps and across the street to the water. He went back inside, shutting the door firmly behind him. The sunset was fading fast. He sat on his couch and picked up the note card from where he’d left it and the half-dozen photographs on the coffee table. Loretta hadn’t asked to inspect them. No point, he supposed. He eyed the chives, or whatever the hell they were. They looked hand-drawn. The design, the use of color and the handwriting were contemporary and stylish, not old-fashioned, yet they also conveyed warmth, hospitality and rural charm. He wasn’t quite sure how his Massachusetts neighbor had pulled off the effect but it worked.

  He didn’t care how she’d pulled it off, either. Olivia Frost had written to him to ask—or demand—he move junk and a rusted appliance off property he hadn’t, until today, even suspected he owned.

  He scooped up the photographs and took them and the card upstairs with him to his bedroom, the drapes still pulled from last night. He hadn’t bothered opening them since he had left for his office before light, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He wasn’t spending a lot of time in his bedroom these days. A few hours for sleep, time to get dressed—that was it. He hadn’t had a woman in his life in a long time. Too long, maybe, but he wasn’t checking off days on a calendar.

  Not yet, anyway.

  He set the card and photographs on the end of his bed, then sat on the floor and rubbed his fingers over the black-painted hinges and latch of an old flat-topped trunk. A nomad at heart, his father had left behind few possessions. On his fiftieth birthday, he had quit his day job as a business consultant and spent the rest of his life—more than twenty years—as an adventurer and treasure hunter, tackling obscure mysteries on his own and with a small team of professionals and avid amateurs. He had never sought financial gain for himself. Prowling the world for lost treasures had been his passion more than a source of income. He’d just enjoyed the adventure.

  In the months since his father’s death, Dylan hadn’t dug through the contents of the trunk. He and his father had had a contentious yet solid relationship, but first the NHL and then NAK, Inc., kept Dylan’s schedule jam-packed, allowing little time to try to understand why Duncan McCaffrey had made
the choices he had, or to figure out what treasure hunts he had left unfinished. Dylan didn’t need the money. Money was one thing he had in abundance, and how could anything in the trunk bring him closer to his father now that he was gone?

  Dylan couldn’t imagine how long it would take him to properly sort through all the files, boxes, envelopes and scrapbooks stuffed haphazardly in the trunk. Hours and hours, and even if he had the time, he didn’t have the patience.

  And there was no guarantee he would find one word about Knights Bridge.

  He could send Loretta to Massachusetts to deal with the house and its offending yard, and with Olivia Frost.

  He lifted out a tattered stack of a half-dozen manila folders, held together with a thick rubber band. He shook his head. “Leave it to you, Pop, to complicate my life.”

  The rubber band was so dry and brittle it broke when Dylan tried to remove it.

  He welcomed the distraction when his landline rang. He rolled to his feet and picked up.

  “Check your email,” Loretta said. “I sent you some preliminary info on the woman who wrote to you.”

  “Are she and Grace Webster friends?”

  “Maybe, but Olivia Frost isn’t old. I can tell you that much.”

  Loretta was chuckling when she hung up.

  Dylan checked his email on his BlackBerry. Loretta had produced a photograph of his tidy-minded neighbor. It was taken at a formal dinner in Boston and showed Olivia Frost accepting an award. Apparently the owner of The Farm at Carriage Hill and artist of chives was also a successful, accomplished graphic designer.

  The picture was too small to see in any detail on his BlackBerry. He went back downstairs and fired up his laptop on the kitchen table.

  Olivia Frost had long, shining, very dark hair, porcelain skin and a bright smile as she held her gold statue and accepted her award. He couldn’t make out the color of her eyes. Green, maybe. She wore a sleek, rather businesslike black dress that came to just above her knees.

  In another picture that Loretta had found on Facebook, Olivia was more casual, dressed in a denim jacket as she stood in front of an old sawmill. Loretta’s email explained that the Frost family owned and operated Frost Millworks, a small, profitable company that did high-end custom work.