Carla Neggers: The Carriage House

The carriage house was exactly as she remembered it from last March, its narrow clapboards also painted a slate blue, its own gnarled apple tree out front. She pulled into its short, gravel driveway. Well, she thought as she stared at the small house, maybe it was a little more run-down than she remembered.

And in early spring, the lilacs weren't in bloom. They were now, the bushes growing in a thick, impenetrable border on the back and both sides of the carriage house's small lot, carving it out from the rest of Jedidiah Thorne's original estate. She could smell the lilacs through her open windows, their sweet scent mingling with the saltiness of the ocean.

She shut her eyes. "All right, so the place is haunted. What do you care? With your imagination, you'd probably invent a ghost on your own. This way, you don't have to."

But leave it to Ike Grantham to give her a haunted house-and her to take it.

Andrew Thorne was not a happy man. He tried to convey this to Harley Beckett, his cousin and the one man on the planet Andrew would trust with his life- if he didn't kill him first.

"She's not in her tree house."

Harl grunted. "Then she's chasing after that damn cat."

He was flat on his back under a 1920s rolltop desk he was working on. Harl was the best furniture restorer on the North Shore, maybe in all of New England. His skills as chief Dolly-watcher, however, were currently under suspicion. Dolly was Andrew's six-year-old daughter, and when he'd come home from work-a long, aggravating day of things not going his way- he'd found her gone. And Harl oblivious.

Harl scooted out from under the rolltop and sat up on the spotless pine floor of the outbuilding where he lived and worked. He was particular. One stray dog hair or speck of mud, he maintained, could ruin a project, a touch of hyperbole few would dare point out to him. He was a Vietnam combat veteran and a retired police detective, and he'd never taken pains to make friends in Beacon-by-the-Sea. Neither had Andrew, but he got along with people better than Harl did. Which wasn't saying a lot.

Harl pulled his white ponytail from inside his habitual POW-MIA shirt. He had a white beard, shrapnel scars, parts of two fingers missing and a manner that was gruff on his best days. He studied Andrew for half a second, then sighed. "She's supposed to stay in the yard. She knows that."

"She won't have gone far," Andrew said with conviction, ignoring the twist of incipient panic in his gut. He hated not knowing where his daughter was.

Harl got stiffly to his feet. "Let's go. Hell, Andrew. Time I realize she can do something, she's off and done it. She never used to leave the yard without asking." He shook his head, plainly disgusted with himself. "I told her to stay in the yard not five minutes ago. I swear to God."

"You go out front," Andrew said. "I'll check back here."

"We don't find her in five minutes, we call in a search party."

Andrew glanced at the ocean across the street, and his stomach clamped down. He nodded, and the two of them set off.

Her neighbors, whoever they were, actually owned the lilac hedge. Tess recalled Ike explaining that to her. She reached out a palm and let a drooping cluster of blossoms brush against her skin. They were at peak, the tight, dark purple buds opening into tiny lavender blossoms, spilling their fragrance. Surely she could pick a bouquet. The hedge was obviously neglected, the lilacs in need of pruning and thinning. A few weedy saplings even grew in their midst.

"Here, kitty, kitty. Come, kitty."

A little girl's voice rose from the middle of the lilacs, just to Tess's left. It was high-pitched and cajoling, and a moment later, its owner pushed through to the narrow strip of overgrown grass on the carriage house side of the lilacs. She couldn't have been more than six, a sturdy girl with coppery braids, freckles and blue eyes that were squinted as she frowned, hands on hips. She hadn't yet seen Tess. "Come on, Tippy Tail." She stamped a foot, frustrated and impatient now. "I won't bother you! I'm your friend."

Tess noticed something in the girl's hair and realized it was an elaborate jeweled crown. She also wore denim overalls and a Red Sox T-shirt. Tess still had on her clothes from work, a suit that suggested creativity but also professionalism. She didn't want to look too artsy and end up scaring off the kind of clients she needed in order to stay in business.

The girl turned and saw Tess, but she seemed neither surprised nor curious. She was obviously a girl with a mission. "Have you seen my cat?"

"No, I haven't. Actually, I just got here myself." Tess hadn't dealt with many six-year-olds. "Is someone with you? Where's your mother?"

"She's in heaven." The girl's tone was matter-of-fact, as if she were giving the time. Tess pushed a hand through her hair. Lately, she'd been fretting about too much work, Ike Grantham and his carriage house and not enough about the rest of her life. She was thirty-four, and while she wasn't sure about children she'd had damn rotten luck with men of late. "Where do you live?" she asked.

"Over there." The girl pointed through the lilacs. "Harl's watching me."

Not very well, Tess thought. "Harl's your babysitter?"

"Yep."

"My name's Tess. What's yours?"

"Princess Dolly." She gave her coppery braids a regal little toss.

"Princess? Really?"

"Yep."

Tess relaxed slightly. A six-year-old who thought she was a princess was something she could relate to. "How did you come to be a princess?"

"Harl says I was born a princess."

Whoever this Harl was, Tess wondered about his judgment when it came to kids. But what did she know? She glanced at her yard with its strip of overgrown grass. Lots of places a cat could hide. "I take it you lost your cat?"

Reminded of her mission, Princess Dolly raised her shoulders and let them fall in an exaggerated, dramatic shrug. "Yes. That Tippy Tail. She's having kittens any day. Harl says I should leave her alone."

Okay, Tess thought, one point for Harl. "What does Tippy Tail look like? If I see her, I can let you know."

The girl thought a moment, her freckled nose scrunched up as she concentrated. "She's gray, except for the white tip on her tail." Her features relaxed, and she giggled suddenly, her eyes lighting up. "That's why I named her Tippy Tail!"

"Makes sense. You should run along home. I imagine Harl will be looking for you."

She rolled her eyes. "He's always looking for me."

This, Tess didn't doubt. "I can walk you home-"

"I can go by myself. I'm six." She held up the five fingers of one hand and the index finger of the other hand to prove it.

Tess wasn't arguing. "It was nice to meet you, Dolly."

"Princess Dolly."

"As you wish. Princess Dolly it is."

The girl spun on her toes and squeezed back through the lilacs.

As independent as Princess Dolly seemed, she still was only six and shouldn't be running around on her own, crown or no crown. If nothing else, Tess knew she should make sure Dolly got back to her royal palace and wasn't lost or otherwise in the wrong place.

She started to pry apart the lilacs, but heard a crunch of gravel behind her, then a man's voice. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?"

She whipped around, realizing she looked as if she was spying on the neighbors. "I'm not doing anything," she said, taking note of the man in her driveway. Tall, lean, dark, no-nonsense. His angular features, blue eyes and humorless look were straight out of the images she'd conjured of her nineteenth-century murderous ghost. But this man had on dusty work boots, jeans and a denim shirt, all definitely of this century. Good. A princess in the lilacs and a ghost in the driveway would have been more than she could handle.