Better Homes and Hauntings

  “Most people don’t need hand signals to listen when their best friend is speaking, they just pay attention, whether it’s critical or not,” Jake grumped.

  Deacon sighed and turned. “Cindy, I’m sorry. It seems that our plans for expanding the guest room into a collectibles room are not possible due to a structural issue. Would you mind looking into an alternative space in the family wing? Maybe the bedroom on the southwest corner of the third floor?”

  Cindy nodded and gave Deacon a sunny smile. “Absolutely. That’s no problem.”

  Jake sputtered indignantly, “Wha—Why does he get ‘That’s no problem’ and a smile? I asked you to do the same thing, and you threated to grout my face.”

  “Because he explained it to me in a rational, polite fashion,” she said. “And he signs my checks. Also, I like him better than you.”

  Dotty by Nature

  JAKE AND CINDY eventually calmed down because Deacon offered to share some of his ill-gotten cookies from Marie. Delicious baked goods were the great workplace hostility equalizer, no matter how unorthodox the workplace.

  The days that followed were strained, with Cindy and Jake pointedly avoiding each other in the house and ignoring each other completely at dinner unless asked a direct work-related question. Deacon and Nina had to find something to talk about, or meals would have been completely silent, convent-like affairs. So they talked about their mutual love of Flash Gordon, which led to an in-depth discussion of 1980s cartoons and Nina’s inappropriate attachment to Popples. Nothing, including baiting Jake about the size of his Garbage Pail Kids card collection, could draw the other two into the conversation. Nina was grateful that Deacon was willing to return to the servants’ quarters at a decent hour each night; otherwise, she would have been better off having dinner with the garden statuary.

  When Jake wasn’t around, Cindy became her usual talkative and cheerful self. Without a TV to keep them entertained, the ladies usually retreated into the female staff quarters each night to watch DVDs on Cindy’s laptop while snacking on popcorn and sodas liberated from Deacon’s stash. Cindy had a weakness for old black-and-white movies, anything involving Bette Davis, Billy Wilder, or Alfred Hitchcock—although considering their surroundings, they did skip Psycho. They wanted to be able to shower without a buddy system.

  They fell into a daily routine—wake up at six, group breakfast and discussion of plans for the day’s progress, wait for the construction crews to arrive on the ferry at eight sharp, work until five, break for dinner and progress reports. Lather, rinse, repeat. Anthony’s arrival each morning seemed to bring normalcy, or at least good cookies. Marie’s much-appreciated contributions were kept in an R2-D2-shaped cookie jar on the shared kitchen counter.

  They weren’t exactly gelling as a team.

  Deacon threatened to send the lot of them to some sort of hellish team-building retreat involving trust falls and high-ropes courses, but that seemed counterproductive to the whole completing construction on deadline objective. And they were getting the work done. The rooms were being systematically and meticulously cleaned, their contents catalogued. The grounds crew had cleared the debris and were digging new beds and reseeding the lawn. Anthony’s people were through with making sure the roof wouldn’t fall on their heads and were finally getting around to structural changes.

  According to Jake, Vi had led a rebellion against Deacon at the EyeDee office when he’d tried to organize a retreat with his staff involving a rock-climbing wall. He’d almost lost his graphic-design department. And the use of his left foot. Vi did not suffer fools or trust falls gladly.

  As for Nina, she suffered through the same dream on the nights she’d worked herself into exhaustion and slept deeply. It was always the same. She made the bed, arms trapped her from behind, and she felt hands close around her throat. And just when she couldn’t bear the pressure around her neck another moment, she was underwater, watching her hands floating above her head. She didn’t know what she was supposed to be learning from this dream. Or even if she was supposed to be learning something or her subconscious was just sort of a jerk.

  So she avoided going into the house, keeping her back turned to it whenever possible so she wouldn’t see imaginary people-shapes roaming the roofline. The dread she felt about potential dark-figure sightings outweighed any curiosity about the wonders inside, even when Cindy described the broken-down solarium with its old copper pots full of long-dormant soil. She had plenty of excuses for not going inside, since her work involved the yard. But the house loomed at the edge of her awareness, a constant foreboding presence that gnawed at the edges of her concentration while she worked the soil. She could swear she felt it watching her, nudging at her, trying to get her attention, like a child tugging at his mother’s skirts.

  Of course, Nina suspected that telling the others these thoughts would result in the loss of her job and a one-way trip to the loony bin. So she took to working with her earbuds in and music blasting to keep herself distracted.

  Nina’s growing friendship with Cindy was a comfort to her. She didn’t ask why Nina was always up long before early-riser Cindy was out of bed. She simply accepted the cup of coffee Nina had brewed and asked Nina random questions, about the day she had planned, about her parents, anything to draw Nina out of her contemplative funk and into the real world. Nina came to admire Cindy’s practical nature, her snarky sense of humor, her refusal to back down from a project, even when it was intimidating as all hell. Cindy Ellis had steely spine to spare. If she could just get Cindy and Jake to stop fighting like rabid squirrel monkeys every time they made eye contact, life on the island would be relatively peaceful. Almost.

  FRIDAY MORNING WAS witness to yet another Cindy-Jake blowup. Anthony and Nina were standing outside the broken remains of the greenhouses, discussing how they might restore one to working order immediately so that she would have some indoor potting and workspace. Deacon had taken a break to give his input. Nina found the timing a little suspicious, since Deacon mentioned that he was supposed to be on an international conference call involving Guam that morning. Yet there he was, making suggestions on using the UV-treated glass in the panes to create the most growth-friendly environment for Nina’s seedlings.

  “Really, a regular old greenhouse will be fine,” she assured Deacon. “These methods have worked for centuries. If it isn’t broken, there’s no reason to fix it.”

  “Well, with that sort of thinking, we would still be playing Atari and telling people how we feel face-to-face instead of posting it to our EyeDee status,” Deacon teased her. “In which case, I wouldn’t have any money, and you wouldn’t be here with me right now, so . . . there.”

  Nina snorted. “All right, all right, order your fancy-schmancy glass.”

  “You’re a very open-minded Luddite,” he told her, in a tone he clearly meant as a compliment.

  “I am not a Luddite!”

  “The brick-sized phone you’re carrying around says otherwise.”

  Nina lightly smacked his arm, which made Deacon throw his head back and laugh. And suddenly, Anthony found a reason to walk around the greenhouse, giving them a moment alone.

  Deacon cleared his throat. “Cindy says you two have been watching movies on her laptop every night. If you want, you could use my office in the house. I have a flat-screen installed, and there’s a generator in there to power it. It would probably be more comfortable than crouching around a computer.”

  Nina gave him a brilliant smile. “That’s so sweet of you! But we couldn’t use your office. That wouldn’t be—”

  “Deacon!” Jake yelled, rounding the greenhouse with Cindy nipping at his heels. “Will you tell this woman that the crews will finish the wall treatments in the ballroom when they finish them and not before?”

  Deacon and Nina groaned in unison. Nina adored Cindy, she really did, but she wished that her favorite organizer would pull some sort of naked revenge on Jake and get it over with. The rising sexual tension was starting to bec
ome disruptive. Also, her standing wager with Anthony had them sleeping together by the end of the month or she lost thirty bucks.

  “I have buffing and polishing the ballroom floor on my timeline for this week, Rumson. It’s one of my crew’s first major interior jobs. I can’t help it if you didn’t coordinate with my schedule when you pulled Anthony’s guys out of the ballroom and reassigned them to the kitchen. I have a schedule to keep!”

  “A part of the rear kitchen wall was on the verge of collapse from water damage!” Jake exclaimed. “We just found the problem on Wednesday. What was I supposed to do, ask Anthony to ignore it so the crew could keep painting the ballroom?”

  “Well, I didn’t know that, because you didn’t bring it up at the morning meeting,” Cindy shot back.

  “Because you don’t ever talk to me at the morning meetings!”

  Cindy frowned. “Well, that is a valid point . . . But a better alternative might have been to hire more people to work on the kitchen and the ballroom simultaneously, so we don’t fall behind.” Cindy looked to Deacon. “If you’re OK with more people being hired, that is.”

  Deacon shrugged. “As long as they pass the security checks.”

  “Well, that is a valid point, too,” Jake agreed, his tone stiff and reluctant. “And something I probably should have done anyway.”

  Cindy’s eyes rolled just a tiny bit as she huffed, “And I will start talking to you at morning meetings, so we can avoid situations like this in the future.”

  Jake pursed his lips, as if he was considering the offer. “That would be nice.”

  Cindy nodded. “So we’re good?”

  Jake stuck his hand out for a shake. “Yes.”

  Cindy’s blond eyebrows rose. “Don’t push it.”

  “Well, at least they’re solving their own problems now,” Deacon said. “They’re a little loud about it, but it’s still progress.”

  Nina had her hand over her mouth to suppress the laughing fit the whole scene had caused. Deacon tugged at her wrist gently, pulling her fingers away from her lips, but before Nina could comment, Jake’s head snapped up, a curious expression on his face. “Did you hear something?”

  “The sound of the waves?” Nina suggested, glancing toward the house.

  “The wind?” Deacon added.

  Jake shook his head. “No, for a second there, I thought I heard someone calling my name.”

  Cindy turned toward the house. “Maybe someone on the construction crew?”

  “No, it was a woman’s voice.”

  “Isn’t this how Clue starts out?” Nina asked. “And House on Haunted Hill? And The Haunting?”

  Deacon said, “I think The Haunting was more about sleep-deprivation psychosis.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” Cindy muttered.

  Nina stared at Deacon, eyebrows raised. “The Haunting? Really?

  “I like movies!” he said, his tone more than a little defensive. “And I heard that crack about a tiny posable Liam Neeson the other day. You stay away from my action figures.”

  Nina gave a grin that could be construed as sassy—saucy, even. “I make no promises.”

  Jake stared at a small figure circling the corner of the house, his eyes wide. “Uh, Whit?”

  Deacon’s normally composed visage slipped into a more natural irritated expression as he followed Jake’s line of sight.

  The group turned in unison as a penny-bright voice called over the expanse of lawn. “Yoo-hoo! Jake! Deacon! Didn’t you hear me calling?”

  A tall, willowy woman in enormous tortoiseshell sunglasses and a hair-camouflaging, rainbow-streaked scarf was standing at the edge of the gardens. She made a surprising sprint over the grass, apparently unfazed by skintight jeans and worn red cowboy boots. Nina had never before thought of the word scampering to describe the movements of a human being, but there was no other word for the lithe, hyper steps that propelled her across the grass. She was hopping up and down despite her multitude of bags, waving her arms and grinning like a mad jackrabbit as she ran.

  “Deacon!” she shouted. “I’m here!”

  Deacon ground his teeth and glared at Jake, who threw up his hands in a not me posture. “Hey, I told her not to come.”

  Nina and Cindy perched on the lip of the fountain to watch this new development play out. Who on God’s green earth was this person, and why did Deacon have that pinched look, as if he’d just swallowed licorice jelly beans?

  “Maybe she’s an illegitimate fortune-seeking half sister?” Nina suggested.

  “Crazy-ex-girlfriend-slash-disgraced-Victoria’s-Secretunderwear-model?” Cindy countered quietly.

  Nina tried again. “Or maybe a perfectly nice but very eager Mary Kay sales rep.”

  “Hi!” The mystery woman dropped her bags—everything from an old army duffel to a classic Louis Vuitton suitcase—to the ground with a thump. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  Deacon scowled. Nina and Cindy exchanged uncomfortable glances. Should they all suddenly find something else to do so their employer could tactfully eject the newcomer from the island? Nina moved closer to Deacon, feeling the urge to soothe his clearly jangled nerves.

  “Trust me, Flower Power, don’t get in the middle of it,” Jake muttered, pulling her closer to Cindy. Engrossed by the unfolding scene, Cindy didn’t think to step away from him.

  “How did you get here, Dotty? I thought I bribed every boat captain between here and New York not to give you a rental or a ride out to the island.”

  “Deacon Francis Whitney!” the woman, who seemed to be both Dotty by name and dotty by nature, shot back. “You always say that! And what sort of greeting is this for your favorite cousin!”

  Cindy snickered, murmuring Deacon’s middle name under her breath. “Francis.”

  Deacon turned to glare at her. “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw middle-name-shaped stones, Cynthia Agnes Ellis.”

  “Stupid background checks,” Cindy muttered, kicking at the dirt with the toe of her bright white sneaker.

  “Who’s up for a drink?” Jake asked brightly. “We’ve been working for a whopping two hours. We deserve a break. Come on!”

  Nodding, Deacon forged a path to the main house, not stopping to see if anyone was following. Nina frowned, dropping her hammer into her tool kit and trailing reluctantly after him. She stood on the doorstep, staring into the house, her pale lips pressed into tight lines.

  “It’s just a house, Nina,” Cindy assured her. “I’ve been working here for days, and I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary. I’m not saying that you’re being unreasonable, because I had all those same feelings when I got here. But really, it’s just a house with terrible ambience.”

  Nina scrubbed a hand over her face. “I hate feeling this way. I hate being scared all the time, freezing up every time someone walks up behind me.”

  Cindy’s golden eyebrow lifted. “Are we still talking about the house?”

  Nina shook her head. “Not really.”

  Cindy put her hand on Nina’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Well, later, after we’ve figured out what the hell is going on with Deacon’s scarf-crazed cousin, we will break out the bottle of tequila I have stashed in my room, and you will tell Auntie Cindy all about it, OK?”

  “It will take two bottles.”

  Cindy hip-checked her. “That’s the spirit.”

  “Please don’t say ‘spirit.’ ” Nina groaned as Cindy led her through the towering oak doors.

  The Fall of the House of Whitney

  NINA WAS SO caught up in goggling at the expansive entry hall that she stumbled over the threshold. Cindy’s day crew was going to have their hands full with this place. The beautifully inlaid parquet floors were blanketed in a carpet of gray dust. The walls were heavy dark wood and dirty beige plaster, relieved occasionally by a panel of gold leaf. The pressed-relief ceilings were impossibly high, with arched entryways to every room and warren. Every step echoed as Nina moved farther into t
he house.

  The empty fireplace at the far end of the entryway was dark and dirty. She could make out lighter places on the faded cream silk wallpaper where paintings had once hung. There were a few spots on the tables where rings of dust clung to the surface, indicating that some little objet d’art had once stood there but had been snatched years ago.

  Even with Deacon’s money, how would they ever make this place feel cozy? It was more than a matter of a few throw pillows and a photo collage. How were they ever supposed to make this tomb into a home? And then, she remembered, Deacon didn’t really want a home. He wanted a showplace, and this house was definitely suited to that task.

  “I know it doesn’t look like we’ve made much progress,” Cindy said. “Mr. Whitney wanted me to zero in on key areas of the house before we really got down to business.”

  Nina could see it in her head, the way it used to be, shining gold leaf and gleaming dark wood. She imagined what sorts of flowers would look best in an explosive arrangement over the round marble-top table. She would use freesia, for their sweet, light perfume, and the citrusy delight of commuter daylilies.

  “So the decorating style was called Le Goût Rothschild, which, as far I can tell, means ‘cram as much overpriced crap into your living space as possible,’ ” Cindy said, with the bored yet reverent air of a historical-society maven chosen to give summer tours of the Gilded Age monuments on the mainland. “Unfortunately, generations of Whitneys have been sneaking into the house over the years and picking off the most obvious valuables, whatever was left after the bank took its share from Gerald. But Mr. Whitney insists that he wants to keep the style a bit more contemporary anyway. Everything else is going to be restored and scattered around the house or shipped off to said thieving relatives.”

  As Cindy led Nina toward large double doors on the left, from behind which could be heard the murmur of male voices, Nina’s attention was captured by the dark grand staircase that swept majestically from the center of the room to the next landing, splitting in two before ascending to the second floor. It was the sort of staircase that an old black-and-white movie queen might descend wearing a Charles Worth–style gown, to be swept off her feet or devastated by some heartless cad. Had Catherine Whitney ever come down those stairs to make her entrance into a room full of admirers? Her tenure as mistress of the house had been so short. And it sounded as if she’d been so unhappy while she was here. It was doubtful that Catherine had much opportunity to make good memories.