Twenty
Loretta took a bumpy, interminable red-eye flight from San Diego to Boston and arrived way too early. It was the middle of the night at home. She wanted to collapse onto the floor in baggage claim but figured some overzealous security type would arrest her. She didn’t even have a bag to claim. She’d rolled up a few things and stuffed them into a small carry-on. She didn’t know how long she would be staying on the East Coast. Not long, she hoped. She didn’t want to have to deal with laundry at Carriage Hill. She could just see herself asking for some Woolite so she could wash her undies.
She wheeled her bag to the rental car counter.
“How was your flight, ma’am?” the middle-aged guy behind the counter asked.
“Flight from hell, but I got here alive, so no complaints.”
He got right to taking care of business and telling her where she could find her car. Even so, she almost got lost. The car was a heap. She must not have specified “no heaps” when she’d rented it online. She shoved her bag onto the floor in front of the passenger seat and got behind the wheel and did all the checks. Blinker, headlights, wipers, emergency brake. She didn’t know if she was up to driving, but she was good to go and figured she would find out.
“If I crash into the side of a tunnel, it’s your fault, Duncan McCaffrey.”
She could almost hear his booming laugh as she started the car and inched her way out of the rental garage. She should have at least had coffee before venturing onto Boston roads. Weren’t there books about the pure hell of driving in Boston?
She’d slept in fits and starts on the flight, but the intervals of sleep had all been bad to awful. She’d kept dreaming about Duncan. Not sexy dreams. Sexy dreams would have been fine. These had been guilt-ridden dreams. She’d awaken with tears in her eyes, her heart pounding, and she’d choke back a cry of distress—absolutely not like her at all—and look around her to see if anyone had noticed. Of course, no one had.
“She’s Harry Bennett’s granddaughter. She’s Malcolm Bennett’s daughter. She lied to you, Duncan. You can’t trust her. You just can’t.”
“Right, right. I know.”
“My advice is just to get rid of her. Don’t ask a lot of questions.”
“Where are you now, Loretta?”
“What?”
“I want to picture you. Where are you?”
“Pacing in my kitchen in a bathrobe I’ve had for fifteen years.”
Loretta remembered how he’d laughed. He’d always gotten such a big kick out of her. He’d been so filled with life. She’d thought he had time—that they had time—and she’d wasted too much of those last weeks bugging him about Samantha Bennett. Duncan would have dealt with her in his own way, in his own good time. He hadn’t needed a La Jolla lawyer to harangue him about all the potential negative consequences of his impulsive hiring of a young woman who had followed him to a small Massachusetts town and omitted a few pertinent facts about herself.
Was Julius right? Was Samantha in Knights Bridge now to redeem herself?
Did she blame herself for Duncan’s death?
Loretta felt her throat tighten and pushed back the flood of questions, the memory of her unsettling dreams. She concentrated on getting through some maniacal Boston tunnel alive.
She needed coffee. A bathroom so she could wash her face and brush her teeth.
A decent breakfast wouldn’t hurt, but her body was convinced it was four o’clock in the morning. Whoever had thought red-eyes were a good idea, anyway?
The tunnel dumped her out in the city, and she missed her turn. Or maybe she’d already missed it and just hadn’t noticed. GPS wouldn’t do her any good if she didn’t turn it on. She always got lost in Boston. She hated the damn place, as attractive a city as it was. There were several different routes west, and she hadn’t taken any of them.
When she found herself on the city streets, she decided getting lost was a sign to take a break before continuing on to Knights Bridge. She parked on a promising-looking street, fed a meter a fortune and wandered into a small restaurant crowded with business people. She’d dressed all in black for her interminable flight and fit right in.
She sat at a small booth with romanticized pictures of Paul Revere on the wall above her. “He’s the ‘one if by land, two if by sea’ guy, right?” she asked her waiter, who looked like a bored college student.
“Who is?”
“Paul Revere.”
The kid obviously drew a blank. No idea the guy on the wall was Paul Revere, or probably even who Paul Revere was. College or no college. Loretta gave up and ordered a three-egg omelet with cheddar cheese, spinach and tomatoes, whole-wheat toast, orange juice and coffee.
“Do you want butter?” the kid asked.
“Yes, I want butter, and I want cream for my coffee.”
While she waited, she checked her phone and saw she had an unread text from Julius. He had Harry Bennett’s address in Boston. Beacon Street.
The man was a ferret. She wouldn’t want to try hiding anything from one Julius Hartley, Hollywood-Beverly Hills-Los Angeles private investigator.
She checked the map on her phone and saw Bennett’s address wasn’t far from her restaurant. She could pour some more money into her meter and walk over there after breakfast. Take a peek and then get back on the road. She examined her map further and realized it wouldn’t be that difficult to get out to Storrow Drive from Harry Bennett’s house. At least on the map.
And it would be a good idea to get a sense of Samantha Bennett’s roots—to better understand what she was like, what her motives could be, what made her tick.
Loretta almost wished she’d brought Julius with her, since he was better at that sort of thing than she was, but she knew she’d needed to come out here alone. He knew it, too.
The kid brought her plate. “That’s one massive breakfast,” she said.
He made no comment and withdrew. Next to her, two men in dark suits were discussing the Red Sox. Behind her, two women in dark suits were also discussing the Red Sox. Loretta smiled, feeling better already. She poured cream into her coffee, spread butter on her toast and settled into her booth for a good, long, enjoyable meal and then a leisurely walk to Harry Bennett’s Back Bay house.
Really, she was in no rush to get to Knights Bridge.