"I don't make up stories. Chew-bee does." She looked next to her, as if someone was standing there, and frowned deeply, her brow furrowing. She pointed a finger. "Now, Chew-bee, don't make up stories!"
Andrew set her down, and she ran past Harl, off down the hall to visit everyone else in the building. She was a great favorite, and her people skills, Andrew hoped, would make up for her propensity for crowns and tall tales.
Harl slouched in the doorway, arms folded on his chest, tattoos showing. "Bank robber, huh? I bet Miss Perez loved that."
"Oh, yes. She did say she managed to nip the bowing and curtsying in the bud, and she appreciated not seeing Dolly in a crown today."
"Yeah, I had to peel it off her head. She was major-league pissed. I don't know what the hell's wrong with wearing a crown to school. Rita Perez is an ex-nun, you know. No sense of humor."
"She was very diplomatic." "I'm serious. An ex-nun." "Did you ask her if she's a former nun?" "No, but I can tell." "Harl, Dolly can't tell her friends you're a bank robber. She can't wear crowns to school. She can't make her friends bow and curtsy. That's got nothing to do with whether or not Rita Perez was ever a nun."
"She was," Harl said. Andrew said nothing. His cousin grinned. "Did she really think I was a bank robber?" "I don't know. Maybe." "You tell her I'm an ex-cop?" Andrew got to his feet. Some days, he wondered at the twists and turns his life had taken. How the hell did he get here, in picturesque Beacon-by-the-Sea with a six-year-old and his white-bearded, white-ponytailed, reclusive cousin? And no woman in his life?
He thought of Tess, and sighed. "I told Miss Perez you'd been in Vietnam. She thinks you should explain war to Dolly."
Harl snorted. "Forget that. That's chucklehead thinking, telling a six-year-old about war. Dolly's fine."
"Miss Perez thinks so, too. So do I."
"Then do we have a problem?"
Always cut-to-the-chase Harl. Andrew grinned at him. "Only if the cops come after you for robbing banks. God knows what Dolly's classmates are going to go home and tell their parents."
"Ha, ha, ha," Harl said, and left.
Andrew went out into the center hall to say goodbye to his daughter. She was bounding down the stairs from the lawyers' offices on the second floor, snacks she'd bummed clenched in both hands. "I'm going to Boston this afternoon," he told her. "Harl will give you dinner tonight."
"Can he make macaroni and cheese?"
"Sure."
She ran outside, and Harl, hovering at the entrance, said, "Boston?"
"Yes. Tess Haviland lives on Beacon Hill and works on Beacon Street, and her father owns a bar in Somerville. Every carpenter, plumber and electrician in metropolitan Boston knows Jim's Place."
"She'll be pissed, you spying on her."
But Harl approved, and Andrew shrugged. "I'm investigating."
"You want me to go, and you stay here and make the macaroni and cheese?"
"No, I'll go."
Harl grinned. "Yeah, I figured." He started down the street, tugged Dolly's single braid. "What's this about me being a bank robber?"
"That was Chew-bee."
"Chew-bee? That little rat. Tell her I'm going to throw her in the harbor."
"It won't matter," Dolly said dramatically. "Chewbee will swim right out of there."
"Chew-bee's a pain in the neck."
"I know, Harl. She just doesn't listen."
Harl glanced back at Andrew, knowing he was listening, and winked. Dolly might be imaginative and motherless, but two cousins from a rough section of Gloucester weren't doing such a bad job of raising her. If her first-grade teacher thought otherwise, that was her problem.
Right now, Andrew had more to worry about than Dolly's tall tales. He shut down his office, got in his truck and spread out his map of Boston on the passenger seat. He might have been to Jim's Place years ago, maybe even broken a few beer bottles and chairs there.
But maybe not. Somehow, he was sure if he'd ever met Tess Haviland before, he'd have remembered.
Seventeen
The early news was on the television above the bar at Jim's Place, and Davey Ahearn had just slid onto his stool. Tess had hoped she'd beat him into the pub. She tried to ignore him. Her father was taking an order at several tables pushed together, crowded with university students. She had no doubt he'd spotted her. He always knew who came in and out of his place.
She tried not to look furious, out of control and just plain frazzled. She was getting behind in her work, and it had been one of those days she was bombarded by calls, faxes and e-mails. Even her regular mail was more than usual.
But that wasn't it. What had tipped the scales was seeing Andrew Thorne down in Old Granary Burial Ground, walking among the tombstones and glancing up at her window.
Spying on her.
By the time she'd charged down her four flights of stairs, around Beacon to Park and down Tremont, into the centuries-old cemetery, he was gone. She'd packed it in for the day and headed to Jim's Place.
"You're in deep shit," Davey said, never mind that she was pretending she hadn't seen him. "A skeleton. Jesus H. Christ, Tess."
"Davey, I'm not in the mood."
"Jimmy heard last night. He's been waiting all day for you to show up and ask his advice. Me, I had an emergency kept me busy. Flooded basement. No skeletons."
She cast him a foul look. "You're making me sorry I came here."
"You're not sorry," Davey said. "You're never sorry. You take life one bite at a time, no worrying, no regrets."
"I have regrets." "Name one." "That you're my godfather." "Ha." Her father eased back behind the bar. Without a word, he spooned up a bowl of thick beef stew and set it in front of her. He buttered two slices of white bread, cut them in triangles, put them on a plate and also set that in front of her.
Tess said, "Pop, I've stirred up a hornets' nest." "Hornets? Hell, I'd take hornets any day over a goddamn dead body."
"It wasn't a body. It was bones. There's a difference."
He stared at her. "There's no difference."
"There is. A body is-" She stared at her bubbling beef stew, fighting for the right words. "Fresher."
"Oh, shit," Davey said. "There goes my appetite."
Tess was focused on her father. "How did you find out?"
"I have my sources. You know that."
Susanna wouldn't have squealed, not about a skeleton. "I could have moved to California. You don't know a soul in California."
"Why do me that favor?" He snatched the towel off his shoulder, started cleaning the wooden bar furiously. "No, stay here instead, step on dead bodies right under my nose and don't tell me. I love it that you didn't move away."
Tess was silent. It had never once occurred to her to move away. She had friends in San Francisco she liked to visit, but Boston was home.
"Eat your stew," her father snapped. "You look as if you haven't slept in days."
Davey went around behind the bar and helped himself to another bowl of stew. He was immaculate, his big mustache perfectly groomed. If he'd been wading in a flooded basement all day, he didn't look it. Probably had a date later on, Tess thought. A widowed bar-owner father, a twice-divorced plumber godfather. No wonder she had her issues with men.
And Thorne. What a sneaky bastard.
Davey returned to his stool, dipped a hunk of bread into the steaming brown gravy. "Worst I figured was snakes."
"What did the police say?" her father asked.
"They don't believe I saw anything."
"You want me to talk to them?"
"No!" She almost choked on her stew, which she'd mindlessly started to eat. She wasn't hungry. "No, Pop, that's okay. There's not much they can do, even if they did believe me."
Davey made ghost sounds at the other end of the bar.
"Pop," Tess said, staring at the hunks of meat in her stew, the fat carrots and potatoes. Her life didn't have to be this complicated. "Pop, why didn't you remarry?"
"What?"
"Never mind. It was a stray thought. You're right. I haven't slept well." She smiled at him. "The stew's just what I need."