Topaz Dreams

by Patricia Rice

  “I’m pretty sure the Lucys will call this sleeping with the enemy,” she said lightly, covering her neurosis about lying, cheating, conniving men. Ray had stolen from her. Assbutt had beat up on Syd. Prior boyfriends had used her connections to better themselves. . . And Kurt wanted her home. If only she could learn to separate sex from emotion—she’d probably be a basket case. “And we still don’t know how safe Syd and the kids are. I think it’s better if she has extra protection.”

  “I need to be on call here,” he admitted grumpily. “Once my mother returns, I can hand the reins over to her and Monty, but neither of them alone can handle every situation that comes along.”

  “You need to hire a trainee manager. Don’t you ever take vacations?” She shimmied into the dress she’d worn for dinner.

  He rubbed his bristled jaw and thought about it. “I go into the city at least once a week when I know I have backup. Does that count? You’ll have to meet my mother before you’ll understand why a trainee never lasts.”

  “You ever thought of quitting?” Teddy knew she was overstepping boundaries, but she liked this uptight innkeeper. He deserved better.

  “Every minute of every day,” he admitted. “The condo project was to be my escape, until that fell through. All I have left is Hillvale. Once the new shops and apartments are profitable, the town won’t have to rely on the lodge’s income, and I’ll be free. My mother can run the place into the ground, if she likes.”

  Amazed that he’d let her this far inside his head, Teddy didn’t immediately reply. She understood his dream. She just didn’t agree with it. But she didn’t know all the history here. She leaned over and kissed his bristly jaw. “I’ll send Thalia the Friendly Spook up here to help you.”

  He snorted, pulled her down for a better kiss, and let her go. He climbed out of bed to walk her to the door. “I should have sent a driver for you so you couldn’t escape.”

  “Which is why I drove myself, thank you very much.” She smiled at his masculine growl, kissed him again, and fled before she changed her mind.

  The drive back to town only took a few minutes. She could see the nightlight she’d set up in the shop through the front window. Entering, she stopped to open her senses in the quiet. Everyone appeared to be asleep. It was peaceful here in the half-light, with no one nattering at her. She wasn’t the heavy-duty extrovert that Syd was. She needed moments like this to fill her creative well. She hadn’t designed a piece of jewelry in weeks, but the hours with Kurt had inspired her. She needed to get back to work.

  The crystals in her display case gave off their own lambent light. Harvey had hung the straps of a few of his walking sticks on hooks along the front wall. The crystals he’d used in them weren’t particularly powerful and provided no illumination. She suspected they were tourist souvenirs, not his real pieces. She’d admired the carved handles of the staffs several of the Lucys carried. If she stayed here, she should probably ask Harvey to make her one.

  If she stayed here.

  Her heart pounded a little faster at the possibility. That was probably a bad sign—especially if she sued the guy who owned the town, the one she’d just slept with. Would she ever learn?

  She ran her finger over the newly-cleaned shelves ready for inventory. Syd had painted a board white and used calligraphy and purple paint to write Teddy’s Treasure Trove on it—decision made.

  She wasn’t quite ready for her lonely bed—with her sister in the same room, just as if they hadn’t left twenty years ago. Life was passing them by. They needed to move forward.

  She sat at the oak table and opened her laptop to test if the internet had been installed as promised. Smiling with satisfaction when the connection worked with the password the cable company had given her, she checked her e-mail. She had the standard responses from her office staff, but the one that caught her eye was from DCD-Baker—David and Cynthia Devine-Baker, their parents. Her timing must have been close to perfect to reach them this quickly.

  To Teddy’s shock, they gave her Thalia Thompson’s e-mail address and said last they’d heard, she was living in Monterey. Thalia was alive? Then who had been hidden in the rafters? The one thing the coroner had been certain about was the body was female. Thalia was the last female who’d lived here.

  She e-mailed the information to Walker so he could check on it in the morning.

  Her parents verified they’d never sold the building, that Kurt’s rental agent, Xavier Black, had been handling maintenance and rentals while the Thompsons lived there, and they’d lost track after that. Mail to Malaysia didn’t happen and their business affairs went to a banker, who apparently knew nothing about the rental. That was typical of them to not even inquire.

  But they were enthusiastic about showing the pottery and asked that any sales go to the nonprofit they were currently working with, of course. Teddy was fine with that. Pricing the pottery might be a little tougher. She e-mailed and asked for suggestions for people who might help with that, although she didn’t have a lot of hope for a response.

  She flipped through the office messages. Most were routine. A few were voice mail text, mostly from customers. She needed to respond to them soon. One was a message from an unknown number asking if this was the number to reach Teddy Baker.

  No, it was her office number, for Theodosia Devine. How many people knew they were the same person? Not many, and those few knew her personal number. She shivered and lost her satisfaction in finishing up her routine.

  For a moment, she debated e-mailing her mother’s cousin, but instinct balked. “Hey Thalia, is that you?” she whispered at the still air.

  An owl hooted in reply.

  She’d ask Walker in the morning what she should do.

  June 30: morning

  * * *

  Kurt pried another filthy painting off the wall of the town hall and added it to the stack. He’d hated this uninspired montage of bad art for a long time, but Monty had been the one who had to look at it. Given permission to clean it up, Kurt was happy to do so. The physical exercise beat another mindless work-out in the gym.

  “Some of those pieces give me the creeps,” Monty admitted, working on the other side of the hall. “Is that gallery person coming back to tell us which ones we can relegate to the trash can?”

  “Hell if I know. You’d think one of the Lucys would know about art.” Kurt studied the bare—filthy—wall and figured a good coat of white paint would work wonders.

  He’d rather demolish the whole place, but even he had to admit that this building had been here since the late 1800s and probably still had redwood logs in the walls. It would make a quaint tourist attraction if restored.

  He’d spent his teen summers working on San Francisco’s historic housing under Lance’s tutelage. Not one of them had been log structures. He’d have to do some research.

  “Daisy may know art, but she just comes by and steals pieces when they start corroding,” Monty said. “I’m pretty sure the Elaine person pointed out the more valuable pieces. Sam probably kept a list.”

  They both looked at the disorganized stack of frames. “We should have asked her before we took it down.” Kurt scowled. He’d been more interested in stripping down to bare walls.

  “We were probably supposed to wait for Teddy’s sister to decide which pieces she needed for decorating.” Monty went to his office and returned with bottles of water. “Not that it’s any of my business, but are you sure you want to get involved with Teddy? Those two are Lucys if I ever saw them.”

  “Lucy in the existential sense of interfering females, or are you attributing them with superpowers?” Kurt drank his water and scanned the barren front room of the town hall, looking for more things to tear down. If he couldn’t bulldoze the entire town yet, ripping off ugly would make a good start. Not wanting to hear his brother’s answer, he continued, “I’m not a eunuch. Unless you have someone to replace me at the lodge, I need a life. Teddy will be back in the city by fall, winter at the latest. Works
for me.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that. I thought for certain Walker would leave the instant he found out what happened to his father, but he gave up his fancy LA place to live here. Samantha ought to be working with a university, but she’s settling in. I think the crazies are coming home to roost.”

  “Walker isn’t crazy. He lost a son and wife in LA and had reason to leave.” Kurt swigged from his water, then set it down on the counter to tackle a wall of ugly pamphlet holders. “Teddy and Sam aren’t particularly crazy. They just talk the same language as the Lucys. That’s a female thing.”

  Monty snorted. “Right, you keep on living with your head in the sand, and you’re going to get your ass kicked. You think they made up that ghost?”

  “You think Mariah’s really keeping them from haunting the lodge?” Kurt countered. He applied the back of his hammer to yanking the old plywood off the wall.

  “Hell if I know.” Monty parroted Kurt’s earlier reply. “But she looks good while she’s doing it, and we have no more howls and rattles, so I’m happy.”

  They pried the pamphlet holder off the wall just as Teddy and Syd arrived, followed by Goth One and Goth Two, although Kurt noticed their hair wasn’t as black as before. And the kids wore normal jeans and colorful shirts instead of black. He was sure that was a statement of some sort, but he was more interested in Teddy. She’d washed out the worst of the black, leaving her mane of curls lighter with a definite sparkle of red.

  He smiled his approval, then leaned over the counter to investigate the stuffed creature the youngest was showing him. “An octopus? Where did you find an octopus?”

  The kid shoved his thumb in his mouth. His sister answered for him. “Momma got us presents at the aquarium. We went there before. It’s neat.”

  “The aquarium is a lot of fun,” he agreed. “Will you be drawing fish for the art show?”

  Mia beamed. “Could we? I got colors.”

  “You planning on turning the walls into canvas for the kids to work on?” Syd asked, looking around at the bare walls and filthy paint.

  “We could paint on this,” Mia suggested, pointing at the plywood they’d just removed. “It’s already got stuff on it.”

  Kurt froze. The panel was the same size as the triptych panel. Teddy sent him a glance and skirted around her sister and the kids to where he balanced the old wood with his hand. “No, it couldn’t be,” she whispered in shock, crouching down to look closer.

  Kurt peered over the top. There were definitely colors on it.

  Monty and Syd looked over Teddy’s shoulder.

  “That’s the town hall,” Monty said, pointing at one of the squares. “That’s the bluff stairs that go up behind here. Don’t know who that is walking down them.”

  “Orange curls,” Teddy said, sounding a little sad. “She looks a lot like our mother.”

  “Are you saying this is a piece of the priceless triptych we almost mangled off the wall?” Monty asked. He lifted it a lot more carefully then he had earlier and carried it over to the window where the light could hit it.

  Kurt got down on the floor to examine it closer once Monty propped it against the wall. “Yup. Looks just like the other one, dull cracked colors and all.” He glanced up to see Mariah standing outside and Sam crossing the street. “The posse is arriving.”

  “How do they do that?” Monty asked as Teddy and Syd went to the door to flag them down. “Maybe we should advertise Spook Art and send the women into the streets for the tourists to figure out.”

  Teddy turned and winked. Halloween Hillvale, she’d suggested. Kurt wasn’t ready to give up his dream of luxury living. Art walks were good for city dwellers. Spooks. . . not so much.

  He rummaged under the counter, found some old flyers and colored markers and handed them to the kids. “Practice drawing fish on here until we decide where to put them, okay?”

  Entering and recognizing what they were looking at, Mariah stripped off her café apron. With care, she used it to dust off the decades of filth and cobwebs. “Which idiot Null thought priceless art made a good pamphlet stand? They’ve put staples right through it!”

  “If this is Lucinda’s, then it’s at least half a century old.” Teddy sat down where Kurt had been to examine the images now that they were less dusty. “Any number of blind idiots could have repurposed it. The better question might be why she painted on plywood.”

  “Tempera,” Sam explained. “Lucinda was experimenting with medieval tempera for some reason and needed a hard surface. No one wanted a mural on their walls, I’m guessing. A town hall would be the ideal place to display a large piece like this, but Hillvale had no mayor or public building fifty years ago. This was probably someone’s home and shop, like yours.”

  “But there’s city hall in the picture,” Teddy pointed out. “She painted a triptych to go on the walls of a building she imagined?”

  “So if I’m understanding this legend,” Syd said in disbelief, “half a century ago this famous artist drew a painting of places that didn’t exist and of our mother’s cousin walking down the bluff before she was born?”

  “Well, Thalia might have been an infant at the commune fifty years ago. That’s where our parents grew up. I don’t think Thalia was a lot younger than Mom.” Teddy leaned over to examine the details. “If this is supposed to be an image of ten years ago like the other, the kiln was still working. She’s carrying a fired clay pot.”

  “I don’t suppose that’s the two of you standing on the corner with glum looks?” Sam asked, glancing back at Kurt and Monty.

  Monty leaned in to see what Kurt had already found. He whistled. “Are you sure this couldn’t be someone imitating Lucinda’s work? Someone who was standing on the roof of Teddy’s shop ten years ago? Because this sure looks like the day we came to town to decide what the hell we were going to do with the mess we’d inherited.”

  “The day you turned twenty-one and came into your shares of the corporation,” Kurt said, remembering their despair. “Mom told us we were nearly bankrupt and if we didn’t do something, the town would disappear and the resort with it.”

  “And you said good riddance,” Monty said with a laugh. “You haven’t worn those cowboy boots since.”

  “That’s your football jersey you’re wearing. You said you’d accept the NFL offer and send money home to help, as if we were on welfare.” Kurt wondered if he’d made a mistake discouraging his younger brother from following a sports career.

  “Yeah, because I really needed one more concussion,” Monty said with sarcasm, reminding him of why they’d chosen the path they had. Monty had just got out of the hospital after a particularly bad tackle. Making the lodge profitable had seemed the safer course.

  “So, this is a specific moment in time.” Arms crossed, Mariah stood back to study the faded colors. “Aaron wasn’t in his shop then. It looks abandoned.”

  “Most of the town looked abandoned back then.” Kurt glanced out the window at the town today, with its colorful planters spilling with blooms along the boardwalk. Tourists roamed the streets, stopping to admire the displays in shops like Aaron’s. He had the window crammed with glittering jewelry, chandeliers and the kind of antiques that city dwellers coveted. Tullah’s Thrift Shop was equally eye-catching. Ten years ago, it had been a dusty pawn shop at best. The town wasn’t thriving, but it had improved under their guardianship.

  “A few boutiques, a ski shop, and you’ve built a profit center,” Teddy murmured.

  “That isn’t exactly what I want to hear,” he muttered for her ears alone. “High end dealers won’t want these shabby structures.”

  “I’m high end,” she retorted. “I love my shabby chic shop.”

  “With eccentric electricity and ghosts instead of insulation. Right. Tell me that come winter.” He turned back to the painting. “So, where do we store priceless art?”

  “The lodge vault?” Monty suggested. “Until it can be cleaned, valued, and insured at least.”

&n
bsp; The women objected, then began taking photos to blow up and hang with the one in the café.

  Teddy strolled off without a word, and Kurt’s gut sank. Surely she couldn’t be serious about wanting to keep that useless building when she could have an all new, luxury villa? What was wrong with women?

  Seventeen

  June 30: afternoon

  * * *

  Still irked by Kurt’s dismissal of Hillvale and his own damned history, Teddy opened the box her office had express shipped. “Do you think we should just stick with showing the crystals for now, or should I set out some of the less expensive jewelry?”

  “Jewelry,” Syd said decisively, removing crystals from the floor display case to add to the shelves she’d been decorating. “Show them how the crystals can be used, encourage them to wear pieces that accentuate their powers.”

  “But maybe not the aquamarine pieces,” Teddy said dryly, removing a jewel case from the box. “No point driving off the customers with honesty.”

  Syd leaned over to admire the pieces in the box. “I love the aquamarine. Maybe it affects different people different ways? How much experimenting have you done?”

  “Not much. Things kind of started falling apart about the time I learned the crystals might affect more than just me. I was thinking if I could scale back expenses by living up here for a while, I might have more time to explore.” Teddy sat back on her heels to admire the sparkle of one of her more elaborate necklace designs.

  “That’s a miniature chandelier. You need someone with size Ds to wear that. Did you design it for yourself?” Syd asked, picking through and finding daintier pieces to drape on her more slender frame.

  Teddy laughed. “Probably. I don’t really give it much thought when I start wiring up the sparkly bits. They just kind of call out to each other and I listen. So it’s my id doing the talking?”