Читать книгу A Bolt from the Blue - Maggie Wells - Страница 9

“I don’t know how this could have happened. We’ve never had any trouble before.”

Diana threw her hands up to emphasize her distress. Hope’s sister had never discovered the power of a soft-spoken word, or subtle prompt. In this, they were alike. The Winston girls both sprang from the bigger-is-better school of thought, but they had different agendas. Hope liked to stir up trouble. She railed against all forms of restraint, particularly those sanctioned by their parents. Diana liked to swoop in and play the dutiful daughter, a role she played to the hilt.

Hope cradled the ginormo-super-grande caramel macchiato from a drive-thru as if she might absorb energy through the paper cup. She’d stopped on the way to meet the fire inspector at the house, knowing she’d need fortification against the inevitable onslaught.

They stood in the courtyard, Hope’s bland beige rental car parked across from Diana’s gleaming white Mercedes-Benz. The coffee was barely lukewarm, but Hope didn’t care. The drink was caffeinated, and holding the cup kept her from slapping her semi-hysterical baby sister.

“The whole place could have burned to the ground! Then what would we do?”

Diana didn’t seem the least bit concerned by the thought that the occurrence might have killed Hope. For her part, Hope had to admit escape didn’t sound too terribly bad at the moment. She was tired. Her feet hurt. Hell, everything hurt. All she wanted was a few more hours of sleep, but a nap didn’t appear to be a possibility. Her sister was an early riser and believed everyone else in the world should be as well.

Diana had been up and at the house at the crack of dawn, only to find the place cordoned off with caution tape. After a nearly sleepless night, Hope had been awakened by the bleat of her mobile phone. There was nothing as bracing as waking to the sound of her sister in full meltdown mode. Opera singers dreamed of hitting some of those notes.

When she first arrived, Diana had been fretting about the yellow caution tape stripping the finish off the old front door. Since then, she’d gone off on tangents railing against Mother Nature, the village’s emergency services, and even God Almighty. Hope tuned most of the harangue out when she got down to the lawn service hired to prune the trees.

Two hours sleep. Three, if she counted the bit when she drifted off before the storm. Jet lag. Shock. No wonder she couldn’t hang on to the thread of the conversation. What she and Diana had been engaged in for the last thirty minutes could not be considered conversation. Mostly, this was a one-woman show.

The Diana Monologues, Hope decided. A smile curved her lips as she added a tag line: Fifty-two ways my sister has screwed up my life. Again.

“This isn’t funny!” Diana paced the sun-faded pavestones. “This could cost hundreds of dollars to repair. Thousands!”

Hope hid her smirk by taking a sip of the tepid brew. Her sister clearly hadn’t the first idea how much extensive renovations cost. Particularly on an older home. And why should she? Whenever she tired of the house she was in, Dickie bought her a new one. Of course, he probably spent Diana’s money. Lord knows, he didn’t come into the marriage with much more than a prominent family name and perpetual entry to the North Shore Club, thanks to one or more ancestors among the founding members. Comparatively, the Winstons were considered new money, having only belonged to the club for a single generation.

Watching her sister rant and rave now, Hope decided she preferred the full-stop panic. At least her alarm had been genuine. For a moment there, Diana exhibited something that might have been mistaken for actual concern.

But she didn’t waste time fooling herself. Hope knew any familial feeling they had for each other was superficial at best. She couldn’t hold the distance against her. Hope didn’t have an overabundance of affection for her sister, either. Their outlooks on life were diametrically opposed.

The moment she knew Hope was okay, an edge of accusation and plain old-fashioned pettiness had crept into Diana’s tone. The return to normalcy took place with astonishing speed. Hope merely stood by as she carried on with her one-sided arguments knowing sooner or later, they’d circle back to the inevitable conclusion.

Hope was somehow to blame for their latest bout of misfortune.

Gripping the cup tighter, Hope narrowed her eyes and focused all of her energies on parsing Diana’s ramblings. She wanted to be sure a lack of sleep wasn’t making her paranoid.

“One night. You weren’t in this house one night and look what happens!”

No. Not paranoid. Pushing away from the door of her car, she rolled her aching shoulders back. “Yes, well, I’ve long been cultivating the ability to control the weather. Sorry about the oopsie. I guess I need to work on my lightning skills.”

“You aren’t funny,” Diana said tartly.

Hope treated her to one of the Gallic shrugs she knew drove her sister to the edge. “I was simply accepting responsibility for my actions.”

Diana rolled her eyes. “Don’t be absurd.” The jacket of her pastel pink Chanel suit pulled tight across her shoulders when she crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t understand why we have to wait out here.” She flicked a hand toward the open front door. “For Heaven’s sake, it’s our house.”

Heaving a weighty sigh, Hope repeated the response already given three times. This time, she delivered the reasoning in a deliberate deadpan. “We can’t go in because we don’t know if it’s safe to do so.”

“Well, we don’t know it’s safe for that man to be in there.” Diana threw her hands up again. “What if he falls through the floorboards? We’d be liable,” she said, warming to her latest argument. “He could sue us, and we’d lose everything we own.”

Hope snorted at the thought. Even if the fire inspector fell through the floor and broke every bone in his body, it would take one hell of a lawsuit settlement to burn through their combined net worth. “Lucky for us, the fire was in the walls and not the floor.”

Diana whirled to glare at her. “I’m glad you’re finding this all amusing.”

Inhaling deeply, Hope let her hands fall to her sides, her fingers forming a crown over the top of her coffee cup. “Di, I’m tired. A little scared,” she added. “My feet hurt, I haven’t eaten in God knows how long, and I slept a total of three hours last night.” She waved an arm toward the house. “I’m virtually homeless—”

“I told you Richard and I have plenty of room,” Diana interrupted.

“—and believe it or not, I do not actually have the ability to control the weather.” The macchiato kicked in and she picked up even more momentum. “I think we both know I don’t have control over anything.”

“Hope—”

But she was running at full rev. “Again, not my fault, Diana. I have no idea why Mother and Daddy made me Executor.” A hot rush of tears filled her eyes. “Ha! Joke’s on me, right?” She wiped an escaped tear away with the side of her hand. “They got what they wanted. I’m here, doing their bidding.”

Her sister took two long strides toward her but stopped shy of entering Hope’s personal space. “This is hardly the time—”

“Stop.” Hope made a slashing motion with her hand. “Don’t lecture me on what’s appropriate, and what isn’t. Don’t try to tell me what I should feel or when I should be feeling whatever you want me to. Do not try to control me. You won’t have any better luck than Mother.”

“I’m not trying to control you.”

“Then stop chastising me. I’m not a child.”

Diana reared back. Two spots of color rose in her cheeks. She stiffened as a mask of carefully controlled composure slid down over her face. “No one would ever mistake you for a child. You should do something about your hair. Don’t they have any decent colorists in Paris?”

Her sister’s preoccupation with her hair was the last straw for Hope. “Oh, for pity’s sake! Why are you obsessed with my hair?”

“I am not obsessed with your hair,” Diana said, indignant. “I can’t understand why you want to go around looking...old.”

Hope thunked the coffee cup down on the hood of the car. “I am not old. I’m fifty-one!”

Diana’s eyes went wide and she raised both hands as if she could ward off the march of time. “Hush!”

She narrowed her eyes at her sister’s perfectly coiffed hair. When they were younger, Di’s had been a bright, coppery shade of red. Now, she wore a stunning, but far more muted, shade of auburn. Almost the exact shade her own had been once upon a time.

She’d stopped coloring when John was diagnosed. Devastated and desperate, she’d gone on a tear. She started with eradicating everything non-organic from their lives. She bought only vegetables grown in local gardens, and eschewed all other processed foods. Now she could see the irony in purging everything chemical from the house while the man she loved underwent round after round of grueling chemotherapy. But she did the only thing she could think to do at the time. She needed to protect him, however she could.

Watching John die made Hope realize she had been fooling herself for years. No one was in control of their own destiny. Hand of God, fickle fate, or karma. Didn’t matter where the buffeting blows came from, the only thing that counted was where you ended up when the reeling was over.

She was preparing to light into her sister when a voice from beyond stopped her. “Mrs. Elliot?” Both Hope and Diana turned toward the house to find the fire inspector standing outside the front door. “Looks like you’re okay.”

Okay? She looked okay? Hope glanced down at her clothes. Charcoal slacks and a floaty silver sweater shot through with a thin metallic thread. Usually, the ensemble garnered a number of compliments, particularly on how the colors made the platinum streaks in her hair shine, but that was in Europe, where men appreciated a woman with some...seasoning. Not here in the good old U.S. of A., where youth—or at least the appearance of youth—was the key to eternal happiness.

“Lady Elliot,” Diana replied in her haughtiest tone.

A flush rose up Hope’s neck. She didn’t bother trying to mask her cringe when she realized her sister thought she was schooling this poor man on how to properly address members of the British peerage. She didn’t have the heart to tell Diana title stuff didn’t even play in jolly old England anymore. At least, not with anyone who had anything better to do than keep track.

“Stop, Di,” she said, her voice quiet but firm.

Taking a step toward the house, she smiled at the man. He was small and slender. The kind of man whose physique never quite filled out after puberty. He held out a large clipboard with a number of official-looking documents and gestured for her to come closer.

“Good news and bad,” he told her as she reached out to take the documents from him. “Good news is, this old house is running off three circuit boxes. Most likely because of additions made over the years, and to upgrade to meet modern electrical demands.”

He glanced nervously at her sister. Hope stifled her exasperation as Diana came to a halt behind her and started to read over her shoulder. She’d done the same thing at every meeting they had with the people involved with their parents’ estate.

“The team shut down the main, which will keep the other two breaker boxes safe from a power surge when the service is restored. The big problem was the box at the back of the house. From what I could read on labels, that box handled most of the main floor power with a few exceptions. You’ll want an electrician to look at everything before you even think about switching the main back on.” He paused and scratched his head thoughtfully. “If you need the names of some service providers in the area—”

“Not necessary,” Diana interjected, but Hope cut her off at the pass.

“I already have a referral.”

Both the inspector and her sister turned to look at her, but only one of them appeared pleased to hear the news.

“You do?” Diana inquired, incredulous.

“Excellent!” The inspector beamed at her as he leaned in and pointed at the form on top of the pile. “If you’d sign this acknowledgement, I’ll leave copies of my assessment for you, your insurance adjustor, and your contractor.”

“Who? What contractor?” Diana demanded. “How can you possibly have a reputable referral? You’ve hardly been in town for twenty-four hours.”

“And yet, seems like a lifetime,” Hope muttered as she scrawled her signature on the form.

The gentleman chuckled, but her sister did not. He shot Diana another sidelong glance, then peeled back the first page. “And initial here, here, and here.” He indicated to spots he’d already marked with an X. She did as he instructed, and the man flipped to the last of a thick sheaf of papers. “And sign this last one here.”

Diana made a grab for the clipboard. “You can’t honestly expect her to sign such a document without reading it first!”

Hope yanked the paperwork back. “I’m the reckless and wild one,” she growled. Without sparing her sister a moment to launch into formal protest, she signed her name with a flourish. “Took me less than twenty-four hours to set the house on fire, remember?”

“Hope!”

The inspector took the clipboard and hurriedly started disassembling the triplicate copies. “Thank you, ma’am.” He shuffled a few into a stack. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

Hope smiled, amused by the man’s haste. He was clearly of a mind to evacuate before any explosion could occur. But she knew exactly how to defuse the D-bomb. Turning to her sister, she widened her eyes imploringly. “I’ll call the referral I have, but I’m sure you and Richard know some others to call. We’ll need more than one estimate.”

Diana blinked, caught off-guard. “Of course.”

“Would you make a few calls?” She waved a weary hand at the stacks of paperwork. “I’ll handle the paperwork, call the insurance, and collect a few things I left behind last night, but I’m sure you know the best of the best when it comes to having work done.”

“Oh, certainly.” Diana sniffed and tipped her chin up a notch. “You can’t be too careful, you know. My friend Melinda hired someone to renovate her kitchen. They came in one day, completely demolished the place, stripped the place down to the bare floor and the studs, then they never came back.”

Hope gasped. “A nightmare.”

“Unbelievable nightmare. Her cook quit.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Refused to work in such conditions.”

The corner of the inspector’s mouth quirked, but Hope kept her expression suitably grave. “Hard to cook without the proper appliances.”

“Her housekeeper left, too,” Diana added, a gleam of glee shining in her dark eyes. “Of course, I didn’t think the housekeeper was much of a loss. I always had to ring the bell twice before she could stir herself to answer the door.”

“Like the postman,” Hope said solemnly. Diana’s perma-smoothed brow tightened in an attempt to frown. Her sister was never quick with the pop culture references. Another thing that set them apart. Hope had been known to hold entire conversations using only lines spoken in movies, and Diana had never once caught on. “Run and make your calls, darling, then I’ll catch up with you after I’m done with mine,” she promised. “We want to get this resolved as soon as we possibly can.”

Diana shot the fire inspector one last disdain-filled glance. “Fine. Yes. I’ll do that.” Hitching her handbag higher on her arm, her sister gave her a perfunctory nod, then turned on the sensible heel of her bone leather pumps. “I’ll be back in one hour.”

“Please let it be two,” Hope said under her breath. Mustering a tired smile, she accepted the packets of papers from the inspector. “Thank you for coming so promptly.”

“My pleasure, Mrs. Elliot.” He ducked his head, then made a beeline for his car. “Good luck!”

Hope snorted as she pulled the last strip of caution tape off the doorframe. “Thanks. I’m gonna need some.”

* * * *

As the only son of a proud Irish-Catholic family, Michael McInnes was blessed with five saint’s names. Three, he’d been saddled with at birth—Michael, James, and Thomas—which covered his father and both grandfathers. At the time of his confirmation at St. Bartholomew’s boys’ school, his mother insisted he take Finial to honor her only brother and Luke because he wrote her favorite of the four gospels. Until the day she died, his sainted mother had been the only person allowed to use any, or in a few cases, all, of the five names.

Everyone else called him Mick.

Everyone except his daughter. Though she was grown and a parent in her own right, she still called him Daddy. Something Mick loved and hoped never stopped.

“I know you have a lot on your plate, Daddy, but she seemed like such a nice lady, and I don’t think she knows anyone around here,” Kelly said, the earnestness in her tone keeping shy of wheedling. “I hate the thought of her picking a name out of the phone book and then getting fleeced because she has money.”

Mick tipped his head up to speak into the tiny speaker embedded above the visor in his truck. “You don’t know she has money,” Mick pointed out. “I thought you said the house belonged to her parents.”

“Yeah, but I saw some of her stuff. Whether she has any money at the moment isn’t the point. If she doesn’t, she will once that house is sold.”

“Stuff?”

“Shoes, purse, big honking diamond earrings laying out there right beside her makeup bag,” she expounded.

Mick cringed, his fingers tightening reflexively on the wheel as he envisioned the scene his daughter sketched out for him. As much as he hated that she ran into burning buildings for a living, he was also uncomfortable knowing her job made her privy to some of the most vulnerable moments those people would have in their lives. Most people were grateful for the assistance rescue services provided, but a few—thankfully few—became angry and lashed out.

Just last year, the fire and rescue had been sued for simply doing their job. The homeowner failed to secure their property after the windows had been broken out for ventilation. But when some opportunistic asshole felt the need to help himself to taking, the jackass homeowner dared to imply the robbery had been perpetuated by one of Kelly’s fellow firefighters, and the accusation stuck in Mick’s craw.

Every day those men and women put their lives on the line. And what thanks did they get? Some fat lawyer spouting off on the evening news about no one being above the law. The judge had been unsympathetic to the homeowner, but the suit cast a pall of suspicion over the department and other suburban units. Wealthy suburban homes were chock-full of temptation. Particularly when a person was a single parent trying to make ends meet on a civil salary and a child support payment anyone would deem pathetic, and the jackass made only sporadically.

Kelly sighed heavily, jolting him out of his thoughts. “Listen, I don’t know that she’ll call. I only gave her your phone number and wanted to give you a heads up.” She paused and her voice turned wistful. “Beautiful old house. I drive by every day on the way to the station. Always wanted a peek inside, but I have to tell you, what I saw last night wasn’t pretty.”

He put on his blinker and pulled into the single-story brick building McInnes Electric called home base. Eager to lighten the mood, he asked, “Shag carpet and foil wallpaper?”

“Built around World War II. Looks like they updated in the 60s or 70s. Breakers, not fuses, but I saw ‘Zinsco’ on the panel and the name kind of stuck in my head.”

Mick lunged forward, then fell back when he stepped on the brake too hard. “Zinsco?”

“Yeah. Wasn’t there something about those?”

After letting up enough to roll the rest of the way into his usual parking spot, Mick stopped. “Yeah, they stopped making them because they had a tendency to melt down.”

“Ah. Something tripped a trigger,” she murmured. “I guess all those days of ditching school and tagging around after you are finally paying off.”

He chuckled and put the truck in park. “You mean the days you told me you were too sick to go to school?”

“Yeah, those.”

“Maybe you did learn a thing or two.” He spoke directly into the Bluetooth microphone, even though he knew he didn’t have to. Some things were hard to get used to. Talking on the phone anywhere and everywhere was mind-boggling. Having an entire call without talking into a handset was even harder to grasp.

Pun intended.

“If she calls, I’ll talk to her, but I honestly don’t know when I could work an inspection into the schedule. The week is fairly booked up.”

“Even if I tell you she’s pretty?”

Mick rolled his eyes. This wasn’t the first time Kelly had tried to play matchmaker in the years since he and Madelyn split. Probably wouldn’t be the last. His daughter hadn’t let her own failed marriage sour her on love. Something Mick envied, because he couldn’t say the same. Sure, he’d dated a bit in the last fifteen years. If a person could count a handful of dinners, some scratch-the-itch sex, and a couple of one-night stands as dating. But love?

Been there, done the marriage thing, got taken to the cleaners, and left with little more than a sullen teenager and a mortgage large enough to choke a horse.

As soon as the divorce was final, he’d sold the house in the ’burbs, moved the goth rock poltergeist once known as his kid back to the old neighborhood, and got down to the business of getting on with things. All without the pesky complications brought on by infectious diseases like love.

“I can’t afford her kind of pretty, baby.”

“Not that I’m suggesting anything anyone would have to go to confession over—”

Mick smiled. Warning each other away from confession rather than temptation was their bit. A remnant from his days as an altar boy. “No, never.”

“Anyway...heads up. Your daughter has been pimping you out again.”

“Exactly what every father dreams of hearing.”

“I meant professionally.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Love you, Daddy.”

“Love you, kitten. Get some sleep.”

He killed the engine but remained exactly where he was, left hand gripping the steering wheel, keys clutched in his right. Closing his eyes, he spoke the same simple prayer he uttered every time his baby called him safe and sound and on her way home from a shift. “Thank you for keeping her safe. Thank you.”

Gathering his energy, he roused himself enough to grab the margarine tub of leftover spaghetti he’d brought for his lunch from the passenger seat and rolled out of the truck. Busy or not, he’d be spending most of his day in the office. Not his favorite thing to do, but he had month-end books to hand over to his accountant, and a pile of mail and other paperwork he’d been ignoring for too long. With Stevie and Pete fully trained, certified, and handling most of the day-to-day service calls, he was free to do other things. The problem was, he wasn’t exactly sure he liked handling the office side of things. Frankly, paperwork was damn boring.

Mick unlocked the front door and flipped the light switch with his elbow before pocketing his keys. The fluorescents hummed to life, illuminating the simulated wood grain paneling lining the narrow entry. His ex-wife had hated these offices. She’d begged him to let her update them, but he’d never seen the point. His clients never stepped foot in them. People didn’t wander in off the street looking for an electrician. In the end, he’d lured her away from the thought of redecorating this space in favor of giving their family room a complete overhaul. When they sold the house in Forest Glen and moved to the suburbs, she left every stick of furniture behind, claiming the pieces she’d needed so desperately just a couple years before wouldn’t “go” in the new house. The house she had to have, then walked out of one day and never looked back.

Not even to see her daughter.

Tossing the container into the ancient fridge in the kitchen/supply closet, he rid himself of thoughts of his ex by exhaling out a loud, gusty breath. He kept blowing until his lungs were completely empty, then filled them again by inhaling slow and steady through his nose. For the most part, he didn’t think the family counseling he’d forced Kelly to take part in after her mother left had done much to give his daughter clarity or comfort, but he had to admit the breathing tricks the shrink suggested kept him from going off the deep end a number of times. These days, he did them almost reflexively.

Stress was bad for the health, right?

Logically, Mick knew at the half-century mark that he wasn’t anywhere near being old, but the mailings from retirement associations were hard to ignore. There was nothing like the news of a classmate’s a heart attack to bring a guy’s mortality into sharp focus. He might not be old, but he sure as shit wasn’t young. And dating and all the B.S. surrounding it—those were games best left to those with fewer clicks on the meter. His daughter might like to play with fire, but he’d spent his life trying to contain the sparks he generated.

Paperwork proved to be the ticket. Updating accounting software and gathering receipts proved to be mind-numbing enough to make the morning fly by. Hiring Stevie and Pete had been Kelly’s idea, and he had to admit, the move had been a good one. Until they came on, he hadn’t realized how far in over his head he was on the business end. Though technically his second cousins, or something, the boys had called him Uncle Mick their whole lives. Stevie was a year older than Kelly and Pete a year younger, but both boys had been drifting along in dead-end jobs before his daughter stepped in and set the three of them on course.

Getting the Tweedle Brothers, as he liked to call them, through apprenticeship had been fairly arduous. In truth, the process consumed what patience parenthood hadn’t claimed, but they were certified now and gaining confidence all the time. As a matter of fact, the boys got through the morning appointments with only four phone calls between them. This was progress. At this rate, he might be able to take a full week of vacation in a year or five. And who knows, maybe in another decade or three, he’d actually think of retiring. The sky was the limit.