This was all provided she didn't call Beacon-by-the-Sea quits the first chance she got.
Her gaze drifted to a row of gleaming garden spades. She could rebury the skeleton and pretend she'd never found it. It was tempting. But wrong. She needed to verify what she'd found, then call in the proper authorities to have the remains identified and suitably buried…and determine how they'd ended up in Jedidiah Thorne's carriage house.
Maybe the skeleton was properly buried. Maybe whoever it belonged to had wanted the cellar to be his final resting place. Or hers.
Tess shuddered, turning her attention back to tool kits.
Andrew joined her in the narrow aisle. He was relaxed, at home amidst tools, nails, cans of turpentine, fifty different kinds of nuts and bolts. The service people all knew him and called him by his first name.
She regarded him with sudden suspicion. "You aren't a plumber or something, are you?"
"Architect." He had a five-pound bag of kitty litter comfortably under one arm. "More or less. You look relieved. Why? Do you have something against plumbers?"
"No. It's nothing. Never mind." But she was smiling, because Jim Haviland, Davey Ahearn and their pals in construction had no use for architects. "I suppose we should get Tippy Tail an extra cat dish. One for your house, one for mine."
Andrew shrugged. "I just use an old margarine tub."
Dolly darted up the aisle. Not one to be left out, she'd hopped in Tess's back seat, her father up front. She was just as at home in the hardware store as he was. She tugged on Tess's sleeve. "I know the dish Tippy Tail wants!"
"I guarantee," her father said wryly, "it will be fit for a princess's cat."
Tess laughed. "Anything's a step up from a margarine tub."
Dolly lobbied for engraving and heavy porcelain, but Tess prevailed when she found a heart-shaped red plastic dish and suggested it matched the sparkly red hearts in Dolly's crown.
"You're quick, Tess."
Andrew had slipped in behind them, not making a sound. His voice was low, resonating in places she didn't want to think about while picking out cat dishes. She'd needed more sleep. A lot more sleep. She turned, her arm brushing his, sending a current right through her. "I have clients. I've learned the art of negotiation."
"I think you and Dolly are kindred souls." He smiled, but didn't move back out of her space. "You both like to have your way."
They dumped everything in her car, and Dolly jumped up and down, wanting chowder on the pier. "I like that idea myself," Tess said. "It's a beautiful day. We can walk." She glanced at Andrew, who hadn't said a word. "Unless you have something else you need to do."
"No." His daughter slipped her hand into his, and Tess couldn't tell what he was thinking, something she found unsettling as she was usually good at reading people. He was especially difficult because he was so self-contained. "Nothing important."
Dolly giggled, slipping her free hand into Tess's. "I like you, Tess."
"I like you, too, Princess Dolly."
They walked over to the pier, lined with cedar-shingled buildings that had been converted into upscale shops. With the beautiful May weather, tourists and locals were out in droves, fishing boats, sailboats and yachts setting out across the picturesque harbor. Dolly wasn't here to sightsee. She wanted chowder and dragged Tess and her father to a cozy, cheerful restaurant. They got a small table overlooking the water. Father and daughter sat on one side of a booth, Tess on the other.
The sun sparkled on the water, bright-colored buoys bobbing in the light surf. Tess smiled at the view. "It must have been wonderful growing up here."
"Dolly seems to like it," Andrew said.
"What about you? Did you grow up in Beacon?"
"Gloucester."
He wasn't the most talkative man she'd ever met. "Your family's been in this area for generations-"
"The Thornes have. They settled on the East Coast in the 1600s."
"Tell me about them," Tess said, eager for a distraction.
"What's to tell? Jedidiah's the only one in the history books. You know what happened. The rest of the lot were the usual mix of bums and heroes. Sea captains, revolutionaries, privateers, fishermen, a few solid citizens." He broke open a crusty roll. "The old cemeteries around here all have a Thorne or two in them."
"What happened to Jedidiah after he killed Benjamin Morse?"
"Prison."
Tess sighed. "I meant after prison. I know he headed west."
"He made it out to San Francisco. As the story goes, though, he couldn't stay away. He came home, called by the ocean, supposedly broke. He worked in the shipyards, got married, had a couple of kids. People had mostly forgotten about the duel. Benjamin Morse, they'd decided, was a man who'd needed killing."
"What a cold thought. We leave those decisions to a jury, not mobs or popular opinion." Tess stopped herself, since Andrew Thorne didn't need a lecture from her. "What happened to the wife?"
"Adelaide Morse." He set his roll on his bread plate. "She became a rich widow."
Tess looked out at the harbor, tried to imagine it in the mid-nineteenth century. "How did Jedidiah die?"
"He was lost at sea."
She almost choked, tried not to overreact. "When?"
"I don't know the exact date. Around the turn of the century, I believe."
"Then he's not buried here in Beacon?"
"No."
"But there's a record of what happened to him-"
"Not really. He went out in a fishing boat by himself and never returned." Andrew shrugged, matter-of-fact. "I figure that was his way of letting go."
Lost at sea. Alone. With no witnesses, no record. No body. Tess noticed Andrew watching her through narrowed eyes. She suddenly wondered if he and Harl knew there was a body in her cellar, suspected she'd seen it-suspected it was their unfortunate ancestor and wondered if she planned to stir up trouble.
She focused on Dolly and the harbor, counted buoys and seagulls. When their bowls of chowder arrived, Dolly immediately decided she needed to go to the bathroom. Tess offered to accompany her. The little girl shook her head. "I can go by myself." She jumped off the bench, then turned back to her father as she adjusted her crown. "Don't put crackers in my chowder. I hate crackers in my chowder."
She pranced off to the bathroom. "Well," Tess said, "she does have a mind of her own, doesn't she? And obviously a great imagination."
Andrew gazed out the window, a breeze churning up the surf. "Independence and imagination aren't necessarily a safe combination. Her life might be less complicated if she were one or the other, not both."
"Think of her as a ‘creative risk-taker.'"
"Is that what you are?"
"I suppose. I used to work in the design department of a major corporation, but I went on my own almost two years ago. It's been fun, unnerving at times, I admit. But, I haven't gone broke." She grinned at him. "Not yet, anyway."
"If you're trying to make me think you're sensible, you're already off on the wrong foot."
"I'm not trying to make you think anything."
"Aren't you?"
He was naturally taciturn, she decided, which made him seem gruff, even unfriendly, but he smiled at her, sending her insides humming.
He went on. "You let Ike Grantham pay you with a haunted carriage house that probably should have been bulldozed fifty years ago."
Undeterred, Tess ground fresh pepper onto her chowder. It smelled almost as good as her father's, although there were no pats of butter melting into the thick, creamy base. "I don't care if it's haunted. I don't believe in ghosts."