Very softly, she hit the disconnect button.
For one long moment, she stood straight, shoulders back, chin up, fists clenched, hating them all. Then, leaning over her computer, she gave the program another nudge, tiny and subtle, but a nudge.
The phone rang again.
She answered and he said, “Come over.”
She stared at him.
“I’m sorry. I won’t say anything else. But come over. You need to practice.”
She nodded and hung up. She changed into dark clothes, pulled on a black hoodie and slid out into the entry. She debated; the front door would take her past the sitting room, where guests still sipped wine and chatted. The back door would take her past Benedict’s cottage.
She took a chance with the front door. She pulled her hood up over her head, slipped past and hoped no one saw her, or at least no one identified her. The door was a challenge. It creaked. But she got onto the porch without being hailed and after that, it was easy to slip through the hedge and into the yard next door.
If the bed-and-breakfast looked as if the Addams family inhabited it, this place looked like Hill House: haunted, abandoned, ill-treated.
But she came here anyway.
Because he’d told her to. And about this, at least, he was right.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The coach house at the Good Knight Manor Bed and Breakfast suffocated Benedict with its bric-a-brac and ruffles, china cups and flowered wallpaper. Yet tonight, Benedict felt at home. The evening had gone well. Very well. Better than he could have imagined. Sure, he knew that Merida was up to something, using him for some reason. Yet the wine had been excellent, the conversation scintillating.
He removed his jacket, his tie, his shoes.
And if that kiss was anything to go by, he’d be glad to let Merida use him any way she wanted, all night long.
His phone rang. For one brief, forgetful moment, he thought it was Merida. Then he checked the number.
His aunt. Last he’d heard, Rose and Albert were on a leisurely cruise across the North Atlantic to view the glaciers and fjords. Even if they were in a port, it was very late there and unless there was an emergency, those two believed in early to bed. He picked up. “Rose, what’s wrong?”
His aunt’s voice held that slight old age tremor she had developed. “Dear boy, it’s good to hear your voice after so long!”
Right away, his suspicions were aroused. “It’s only been a week since we spoke.”
“I know, but I recall the days when you lived with us and I saw you every day. I do miss that!”
“Hmm.” When his parents were killed, Rose and Albert took him in without a single sign of distress and raised him as their own, but Aunt Rose was not one to show affection. “Is Albert okay?”
“We’re both fine. We’re at sea steaming our way toward the Isle of Man. We may be in our seventies and leaving the corporations to you, but we like to keep our fingers on the pulse!”
Of course. The business. “What’s wrong with the corporations?”
“Where are you, dear?”
“In Virtue Falls, Washington.”
“What’s there?”
“Vacation.”
“I suppose if we are enjoying ourselves more than we should, you can, too.” The old age tremor grew more pronounced.
Sometimes it was hard for Benedict to believe that he was related to these people, that Benedict’s father, Troy, and Albert had been brothers, and that Rose and his mother, Carla, had been sisters-in-law. Troy had been the younger son, irresponsible, traveling the world, making friends everywhere, handing out the family fortune to anyone who told him a sob story. His mother had been the practical one, insisting they live where Benedict could attend school, making sure they had shelter over their heads and regular meals. Yet Carla had adored Troy and whenever she woke Benedict in the early morning hours and handed him his backpack, he knew he was in for some form of delightful madness. Good times. Even today he missed his parents, the love, the laughter, the spontaneous travels.
With Albert and Rose, it was all money, greed, profit and an almost psychotic disregard for the world, its people and its future. “What’s wrong with the corporations?”
“Dear, I was checking the records for the next board meeting…”
What her on-board Wi-Fi charges must be!
“—and something caught my eye. Just the tiniest niggle.”
“What kind of niggle?”
“The stockholders’ information and the actual records don’t match.” When it profited her, Rose pretended to be a feeble old lady, but she knew her numbers. “Dear boy, you ought to check it out.”
“All right. Send me the information. I imagine someone keyed something incorrectly.”
The voice tremor disappeared, and Rose sounded more like the woman who, with her husband, had transformed the family business into a multibillion-dollar corporation. “Heads will roll.”
“Of course.” She had drilled into him a simple truth: little discrepancies were sometimes harbingers of big trouble. “I’ll look it over.”
“Tonight?”
“In the morning. Give Albert my greetings, and enjoy your voyage.” He hung up, more annoyed than he should be, and flung one shoe across the bedroom. With a satisfying punch, it hit the wall inside the closet. When Benedict talked to Rose, she always made him feel as if he was a slacker, a disappointment, a failure. As Albert had once said in his hearing, his father’s son.
His parents’ deaths had changed Benedict. The joy was gone from the world, and by the time he had struggled up from the depths of his grief, he was living a scheduled life of education and work experiences. That was what Uncle Albert called having Benedict spend his summers in the company mail room: “work experiences.” Albert and Rose taught Benedict their values: earn a profit at all costs, make more tomorrow than today and be damned to joy, to leisure, to love. He had grown up responsible, the valedictorian, a man of measured tastes and careful passions.
Never again had Benedict experienced anything like his parents’ brand of delightful madness—until Merry.
Merry was dead, too. Yet lately, she had been on his mind, a sweet, sad ghost. He had never had the chance to say good-bye …
He wasn’t going to sleep now, so he might as well look over those reports.
*
Rose returned to their stateroom, where Albert sat at the desk, computer open, scrolling through the reports and making notations. “He’s found her,” she said.
Albert turned away from the screen. “Who? Benedict? Found who?”
God, Albert could be annoying. “Who do we not want him to find?”
“Merry Byrd? Impossible! Why would he even want to find her?” Albert asked the obvious question. “Where’s the profit in that?”
“Remember when he first met Merry? The way he acted?” Rose looked down at her hands. The skin was spotted, thin, wrinkled. Every bone, sinew and vein showed. “Business took second place to her and her do-gooding.”