The Burnt Island Burial Ground Part 9

"I hope you don't think I'm a creep or something. You just seem cool. I promise I have zero interest in stealing you away from your fiance."

The last sentence was so emphatic that it hit Lindsay like a slap. Not only was it ridiculous to be mentally cheating on Warren with a guy she barely knew, it was doubly ridiculous to have thought for a moment that she was in the same league as Adam.

"Oh, no," she spluttered. "I wasn't implying... It's just that I'm tired. I'd love to go to dinner with you sometime as friends. Just not tonight."

"Great," Adam said, his face lighting up. "Are you free on Sunday night? Sunday's the worst day around here. Everything's closed and I usually don't have any work to keep me occupied."

"I'm working this Sunday night, 3 p.m. to 11 p.m."

"Well, what about the following Sunday?"

"Um, I think I work the eleven to seven s.h.i.+ft that day," Lindsay said slowly.

"Perfect! I'll meet you right here next Sunday," he said, pointing to the ground where they stood. "You can pick the place, since Mount Moriah is your home turf."

"We'll probably have to go to New Albany, since the Mex-Itali and Bullards are both closed on Sundays. Everything else is just pizza or fast food. Since you've lived in Europe, how do you feel about somewhere really upscale and glamorous, like the Olive Garden?"

"Do they still have unlimited breadsticks?"

"Yes."

"Count me in. Here, take one of my cards so you can call me if anything changes. The one with the +1 is my U.S. number."

She turned it over and read it out loud, "Business Security Consultant? And you're based in Bratislava and Berlin? What are you, Jason Bourne?"

"Something like that," he said with a sly smile.

"Sounds like it might take awhile for me to get you to divulge all your secret ident.i.ties and the names of the people you've a.s.sa.s.sinated," Lindsay said. "Good thing we'll have unlimited breadsticks."

"Do you have any more of those?" Owen asked, pointing the empty plate that had, until a few moments before, contained some of the leftover nutty buns from Lindsay's birthday. Her father had stored them in the freezer during her extended emotional crisis and sent them with her that afternoon as a housewarming present.

"Yeah, they're in the big Tupperware on the counter," Lindsay replied.

She was sitting at the paper-strewn kitchen table of her house the afternoon after her encounter with Adam alongside Mike Checkoway, Owen's father and Anna's brother-in-law. Owen had ostensibly come along to "hang out" with Kipper, but Lindsay suspected that the abundance of sweets she usually kept in stock might've influenced his decision as well.

Mike watched his son grab a nutty bun and a tennis ball and head out the back door with Kipper. "I know everybody thinks I don't feed him, but I do. I swear. He's like that plant from Little Shop of Horrors that just keeps getting bigger the more you feed it."

"It's all right," Lindsay said. "The more of those he eats, the fewer I'm going to have to jog off later today."

"In that case," Mike said, rising to grab another nutty bun for himself. "I'll do my part in saving you the extra mileage."

"Thanks so much for doing this," Lindsay said. "It's kind of exciting to be hiring an employee. I've never hired anyone to do anything before."

After years of practicing law in Chicago, Mike had moved to North Carolina a few months before and recently pa.s.sed the bar exam there, allowing him to practice law in his adopted state. In Chicago, he had specialized in setting up charitable foundations for large corporate and private philanthropists. In Mount Moriah, however, he did a bit of every kind of lawyerly work, from wills and adoptions to, in Lindsay's case, an employment contract for Dunette Oxendine.

"Sure you have," Mike said, removing his reading gla.s.ses, his jewel-green eyes twinkling with mixture of curiosity and amus.e.m.e.nt. "What about a housecleaner?"

"Nope."

"That's impossible. Everybody's hired somebody at some point. What about when you've had work done on your house? Like, say, this huge renovation project," Mike said, gesturing to the expanded kitchen and the hallway leading to the new sitting room, bedroom, and bathroom that had been added to accommodate Simmy.

When it was built, Lindsay's house had been a one-room schoolhouse, but it had been renovated years before and turned into a small one-bedroom, one-bathroom dwelling. The new s.p.a.ce that had been added for Simmy had almost doubled the square footage of the original structure, but John had made the changes with such sensitivity to the original design that it was difficult to tell where the old house ended and the new addition began.

"I've always done the small stuff myself, and John has helped with the bigger stuff," she shrugged.

"But you pay him, right? So you've hired people before."

"Nope. I couldn't afford him. He lets me just pay for the materials. I helped him and Rob rehab their house when I first moved here and I help out at the Tatum family Christmas tree farm a couple times a year. Besides, John owes me money for babysitting Rob all the time."

Mike chewed his nutty bun thoughtfully. In repose, his face looked somewhat fleshy-full lips, wide-set eyes, and a broad forehead. A wrinkle creased his forehead as he concentrated, and Lindsay could see the flecks of gray in the dark stubble on his chin. He was the opposite of chiseled and closer to 50 than 40, but he retained a definite allure, like a piece of well-built antique furniture that, given a good polish, would s.h.i.+ne.

"Aha! I've got it. Owen said you hired him to walk Kipper when you're working." He smiled broadly, his large white teeth gleaming.

"But I'm paying him in doughnuts and brownies, so it doesn't count," Lindsay countered. "I declare myself the winner of this debate."

"On a technicality!" Mike protested.

Lindsay smiled. Her friends.h.i.+p with Mike had gotten off to a rocky start when he had drunkenly kissed her at Anna and Drew's wedding. Since then, however, the two had fallen into a camaraderie built around a shared love of American history, Mount Moriah's quirks, and trivial, good-natured arguments.

"Speaking of technicalities, how's the lawyering going? Are you staying busy?" Lindsay asked.

She knew that Mike was only happy when he could remain in constant motion. His wife, Jocelyn, had died of a neurological disease a few years earlier, and her careful financial planning had left Mike and his son with a very large amount of disposable income. Since then, the pair had crisscrossed the globe in what amounted to an extended, hyperactive holiday. At Owen's prompting, however, Mike had finally agreed to move to Mount Moriah to give his son a more stable upbringing and a chance to graduate from a regular high school. His friends had worried that the pace of life in the tiny town would be too slow for an adventure junkie like Mike, but so far he seemed to have managed to find ways to occupy his time.

Mike shrugged, running his hands carelessly through his salt-and-pepper hair. "It'll take a while. In the meantime, I'm researching scuba trips for me and Owen to do during his summer vacation. Oh, and did I tell you I bought a plane? It's a Piper PA-28. Two seater. I got my pilot's license a few weeks ago. It was actually pretty easy."

"You just up and bought a plane?" Lindsay asked. Even though she had by now become accustomed to Mike's sudden, capricious obsessions and hobbies, announcements like this still managed to surprise her.

"Yeah. When we moved here, I finally decided to sell our condo in Chicago. Prices in the South Loop had really skyrocketed since Jocelyn and I bought the place, and I guess penthouses with a lake view are pretty rare, so even after I gave a bunch of money to the charities I'm on the boards of, and bought the new house here, and furniture and stuff, there was so much money left over..."

"I know what that's like. Plane money just burning a hole in your pocket." Lindsay teased.

Even when Mike said things that might've sounded boastful if they'd come from a different source, he had an "aw shucks" quality that managed to come across as artless and unaffected, as if his own good fortune continually caught him by surprise.

"I didn't mean it like that. Houses here are just really cheap and planes really aren't as expensive as everybody thinks. It was a couple years old, so it cost less than a lot of cars. Oh, speaking of houses, I could use your advice on something. You know Morgan Partee, whose family owns Partee Auto World?"

Lindsay nodded.

"Well, Morgan and his wife have been looking for a house worthy of North Carolina Piedmont royalty, which, from what I've seen, is how they think of themselves. Anyway, they'd been searching for months and couldn't find anything in Alamance County sufficiently grand for them until a couple of weeks ago. Bingo. Perfect house. Their realtor, who helped me and Owen find our house, called me a couple days ago and asked me to do the closing for them. I guess Mr. Portofino, who she usually uses for closings, got arrested for indecently exposing himself from a highway overpa.s.s, so they were in a bit of a bind."

"No way. Portofino did the closing on my house. He's really, really hairy. And he has those weird teeth," Lindsay said, putting her index fingers up to her mouth and pointing them downward like tusks. "Are they charging him with a misdemeanor? Because in his case, that should really be a capital crime. People's actual eyeb.a.l.l.s are at stake."

"I've never met the guy, so I'll have to trust you on that one," Mike said. "Anyway, what was I saying?"

"Sorry. You were doing the closing on the Partees' house..."

"Oh yeah," Mike said, picking up the thread of his story again. "So they'd been looking forever, and suddenly this luxurious mansion with acres and acres of land in New Albany comes on the market-pool, stables, six bedrooms. The house needs a lot of updating, but it was listed at just under $550,000, which is a really good price for that amount of land, so they pounced. Anyway, I show up for the closing, and who should be selling the house, but Owen's new girlfriend."

"Wait, Jess Philpot was selling the house?!"

"That's right."

"How does she own a mansion? She's a teenager!" Lindsay said.

"It's her grandfather's. He gave her power of attorney," Mike replied. "She can make any and all business decisions on his behalf."

"But doesn't POA only apply if he's incapacitated? He was totally with it." Lindsay sometimes helped her patients and their families navigate difficult end-of-life decisions, so she was familiar with advance directives and the other legal paperwork involved in ensuring that the person's final wishes were carried out.

"Durable power of attorney is the most common kind," Mike agreed, nodding. "That's what you're thinking of. It only kicks in under the specific provisions the grantor stipulates, like incapacity due to illness or death. But in Jess's case, the POA was what's called 'general.' Basically, in the eyes of the law, she is Otis Boughtflower."

"Why would he do that?" Lindsay wondered. "It's one thing to get your affairs in order, but it's pretty unusual to entrust hundreds of thousands of dollars in a.s.sets to a girl who's still in high school."

"I know, but that's not even the weirdest part. When Jess saw me, she freaked out. She took me aside and begged me not to tell her parents that her grandfather's house was being sold. She told me that as soon as he realized he was dying, he moved out of the house and into the hospital specifically so he could try to sell it before he died. He named her as his agent so she could complete the sale if he didn't live long enough to see it through."

"Weird," Lindsay said.

"The whole thing was bizarre, for sure, but perfectly legal. Apparently Boughtflower was trying to liquidate all his a.s.sets."

"I've seen Boughtflower in action with his daughter and her husband. He treated them like children when it comes to money, and yet he lets an eighteen-year-old handle a half-million-dollar real estate transaction? It just doesn't add up."

"Owen thinks the world of Jess, and, honestly, she's grown on me. She's a lot smarter than she lets on, and nicer, too, actually. But I don't understand it, either."

"So, did you go through with it?" Lindsay asked. "I would've been nervous to be a part of something that shady."

"I did think about backing out, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with the sale, the POA, or any of the other doc.u.ments. I went through everything with a fine-toothed comb, and it was all in perfect order. The proceeds from the sale are all going into a trust, and the beneficiary of that trust won't be named until Boughtflower's will is unsealed."

"I suppose that'll be any day now. He died last night," Lindsay said.

"I didn't realize that," Mike said. "Well, I guess we'll find out who's getting the money pretty soon then. Jess says she doesn't know, but that her grandfather told her it's not her. Maybe he's leaving it all to his daughter and just wanted to save her the ha.s.sle of selling everything?"

"I don't think Margo's going to see a penny of that money," Lindsay said.

"Really? She seems all right from what I've seen. Not much going on personality-wise, but she's definitely devoted to her family as far as I can tell. Yancy, Jess's father, is a different story. I'm guessing this whole elaborate thing with giving the POA to Jess and keeping the will a secret is because Boughtflower doesn't want him to get his hands on the money. If Margo knew about it, she'd just tell her husband. She's nice, but spineless, and I bet Yancy would get the whole story out of her in five minutes flat. I don't know Yancy very well, and I'm all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, but that guy could use the benefit of somebody's fist in his face."

"Anna suggested as much. She said he's a racist?"

"Yeah. Nothing I can pinpoint, mind you. Just subtle stuff. Like telling Owen he should run track instead of going out for the tennis team. I might be over-thinking it because of having been in an interracial relations.h.i.+p. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff Owen's mom and I went through when we got together." He paused, a bittersweet smile playing across his handsome features. "You remind me of her, you know. A pain in the neck, but a cute one."

Lindsay rose and walked over to the sink, so Mike wouldn't see how unsettled the remark made her. Although she'd been as firm as she could in setting the boundaries of their relations.h.i.+p, it was obvious that the attractive widower still carried a brightly-burning torch for her. He constantly complimented her appearance and seemed to find her endlessly clever and fascinating. The comparison to his former wife, who Lindsay knew he thought of as the perfect woman, was the highest compliment he could pay. Worse still, she found she'd come to crave the constant verbal affirmation that Mike provided to her. His compliments, despite their occasional quirkiness, coupled with his unveiled adoration of her gave her self-esteem a regular jolt of positive energy, just as she'd been electrified by the s.e.xual frisson she thought she'd felt between herself and Adam.

Were these feelings trying to tell her something was lacking between her and Warren? Warren showed his feelings through quiet action. He washed her car every Sat.u.r.day. He brought her a gallon of milk if he noticed she was running low. He flushed her radiators in the autumn so they wouldn't clang. Is that what she wanted from love? Dependability, respect, and a steady supply of dairy products? Or did she want something more-an unending stream of compliments, fiery pa.s.sion? Maybe all those things rolled into one?

"So," she said, shaking off the troubling thoughts and getting a gla.s.s of water from the sink, "you think Jess was just following her grandfather's instructions?"

"I have no reason to doubt her," he replied.

Lindsay turned back to face him.

"Lemme guess, you have a reason," Mike said, regarding her tell-tale frown with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"No, I don't have a reason. That's the problem. Something's off, but all I have is my Spidey sense, which is definitely tingling." She took a sip from her water gla.s.s. "I don't suppose Jess has ever mentioned anything about her family's money having been stolen? Or anything about a place called the Burnt Island?"

"Hmm... There's a village called Burntisland in Scotland. It's near Edinburgh. I remember going through there last summer when Owen and I were biking around the British Isles. What does that have to do with Boughtflower?"

"Just something he said right before he died. There's also a Burnt Island Lighthouse in Maine, and Burnt Island is a peninsula in Newfoundland. I Googled it. But the one I'm really wondering about is in North Carolina. Down near the Lumber River near Lumberton, there's a little road called Burnt Island, and I know for a fact that Boughtflower had been to that area at least once during his life."

"Was he doing business down there? Something to do with textiles?" Mike speculated.

"I guess you could say that. White sheets to be precise."

Mike looked puzzled, and opened his mouth to ask a question, but the sound of a hard knock on the front door interrupted their conversation.

Lindsay was surprised to see Warren's face framed in the small, gla.s.s rectangle on her front door. She still hadn't mustered the courage to return his calls, and he wore a scowl that let her know he'd noticed. She opened the door and let him in.

"So Mike's here?" Warren demanded, pointing to the car parked next to Lindsay's in the gravel drive.

"Uh, yeah. With his son," she hastily added. "Mike's helping me with an employment contract for Dunette."

"Who's Dunette?" he asked.

"Dunette's the home health aide I'm hiring to help out with Simmy."

With a sinking feeling, Lindsay realized that she hadn't yet told Warren about her new employee, nor that she was set to start working the following day when Simmy and Lindsay officially moved back into her house.

"When were you gonna tell me you'd moved back in? Or were you just going to wait until I found out from the officers I've had checking up on you every day to make sure you're safe?"

Lindsay touched his arm. "Sorry, okay? I messed up. I should've called you sooner," she said.

"I called Rob. I was so worried about you that I asked Rob to make sure you were okay," Warren said, his voice rising in volume.

"Don't say his name like that," Lindsay said.

Mike emerged from the kitchen sheepishly clutching his briefcase. "Hey, Warren. How are you?" Warren didn't return the greeting; he just glowered at Mike as he pa.s.sed. "Lindsay, I left the contract on the table. I'll just go out back and grab Owen, and we'll head out. Call me if you have any questions."

"Thanks a bunch. That was really nice of you," Lindsay called after him as he made a quick exit out the back door. When he was out of earshot, she turned to Warren. "I know you're mad at me, and you have every right to be, but there's no reason to be mean to Mike. He was just helping me."

He laughed bitterly. "Surprise. Single guys like to do favors for pretty women."

"It's not like that with him," Lindsay countered, but even as she said it, she doubted the truth of the statement.

"You know what? You're right. There's no reason to be mad at Mike. You're the one who's spent almost a week ignoring my calls. I'm supposed to believe that you're terrified of Swoopes, that you're deep in the throws of depression, but I come to find out everybody's just hanging out at Lindsay's having a good old time. You can't pick up the d.a.m.n phone to call me, but you can pull yourself together enough to call Mike to help you put together an employment contract for someone you apparently saw fit to hire without even mentioning it to me?" By now, Warren was full-on shouting.

"I can make decisions on my own, you know," Lindsay snapped. Even though she was well-schooled in techniques to diffuse hostile situations, somehow, when it came to her personal relations.h.i.+ps, she always seemed to fall back into old patterns of self-protection and stubborn refusal to yield ground.

"Like deciding to go back to work? And have a heart-to-heart with Rob? I bet you've returned Anna and Simmy's phone calls, too. From what I can see, my supposed fiancee has decided to move on with every aspect of her life that doesn't include me."

"I was going to call you. Tonight. Things have just been really weird and confusing ever since we got engaged. I'm not good at all of this, okay?"