Carla Neggers - The Carriage House

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."

He shook his head as if there was no understanding her and returned to his work, fixing drinks for the university students. Beers, mostly. He placed the frosted glasses on a scarred tray that he carried to their tables. When a guy complained about the delay, Jim Haviland pointed a finger at the door and offered him subway fare home. He was in no mood. Usually he'd just hand complainers a towel and offer to pay minimum wage if they thought he needed more help.

When he returned to the bar, Tess told him about no one having heard a peep out of Ike Grantham in a year, and Joanna Thorne dying in an avalanche, and Jedidiah Thorne dying at sea. He listened to every word as he continued to work. Then he said, "You mean even the sister hasn't heard from this rich flake?"

"That's right."

Davey, who'd managed to listen without interrupting, sighed. "A year's long enough for what's crawling in that cellar to have turned him into bones. Jesus, Tess. You couldn't have given me a heads up before I went in there?"

"I was thinking I'd imagined it. When you didn't see anything, I hoped that was the all-clear."

"Oh, thanks. Set me up for a goddamn heart attack. Plumber drops dead on top of skeleton. Real nice. You should have said, ‘Davey, Pop, you mind looking over in that corner there, make sure I didn't see a skeleton last night after all?'"

Tess ate more of her stew. He had a point. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"I know I'm right, and the hell you're sorry."

"It was an awkward moment."

"Tess, getting a piece of meat stuck in your teeth is an awkward moment."

"Davey, okay, I get your point."

She frowned. Something had caught her eye at the back of the pub. A movement, a reflection. She spun around on her stool.

"Damn."

Andrew Thorne was at a table at the far end of the bar. He had his back to the wall, in the shadows.

Tess stiffened and glared at her father. "Why didn't you tell me he was here?"

"Who?"

"Who, my foot. Andrew Thorne. My neighbor."

"He's here? Oh, yeah. I didn't recognize him."

Tess breathed in through her nostrils. It was a bald-faced, unabashed, deliberate lie, and he didn't care if she knew it.

He scooped ice into a glass. "You don't tell me things, don't be surprised I don't tell you things."

"This is not a time for fair play's turnabout, Pop. I trusted you!"

He leveled a fatherly gaze on her and didn't say a word.

"Got what you deserved," Davey muttered, sipping his beer.

Tess jumped off her stool, heat rushing to her face. She pushed past the students and kicked an out-of-place chair on her way to the back of the bar. She pushed up her sleeves. She was still in her work clothes, hot, her skin suddenly hypersensitive.

Andrew had an empty beer glass and bowl of stew in front of him. He looked up at her, his eyes very blue, steady. He leaned back in his chair with a confidence she wouldn't have expected from him being so deep into her own turf.

She wanted to throw something. "What do you think you're doing?"

He kept his eyes on her. "Having a beer and a bowl of stew. I hear the clam chowder's excellent, too."

"Earlier." She'd barely stopped for air, could feel her hand touch the corner of the table, uncontrollable energy surging through her. "At Old Granary outside my office. What were you doing there?"

He stretched out his long legs, eyes, that amazing blue color, still pinned on her. She wasn't sure he'd even blinked. "Checking out John Hancock's grave."

"Bullshit, you were spying on me. Why?"

He shrugged. "Because Ike Grantham gave you the carriage house next door."

"He didn't give it to me. I earned it."

"And because you say you found human remains in the cellar."

Her breathing was shallow, rapid. She could taste the dirt and the dust from that night, see the skull, its yellowed teeth.

She spun around and yelled to her father, "Pop, throw him out."

"You don't like him, you throw him out."

Davey had turned around in his stool, his back against the bar, a smirk on his face as he watched the show-which only further infuriated Tess.

She flew back around at Andrew, her hand still on the corner of his table. "Get up, Thorne. You have no business being here. If you wanted to check me out, you should have come up to my office and knocked on my door. You should have asked me to take you here."

His eyes narrowed, fine lines at their corners, a muscle working in his jaw. "I have a six-year-old daughter, Tess. I'll do what I have to do to make sure you're not a threat to her."

"Get out. "

He folded his hands on his flat middle and didn't move.

Tess knew she was out of control, didn't care. This was her father's pub, her space. Andrew was insinuating himself into her life, deliberately trying to throw her off balance because he didn't trust her. Or because he had something to hide? Possibilities came at her. Damn, she'd stepped on a hornets' nest all right, and now they were mad and swarming.