Page 2 of Tourist Season
Chewing my bottom lip, I turn my attention to my phone on the counter, logging into my sock puppet account for the Undiscovered Truths private message board, an amateur onlinesleuth group I keep occasional watch on. This particular group was the most active in trying to find me after I first disappeared, and every now and then my name still comes up on their site. I open the general thread where the primary conversations occur and scroll through recent posts. There’s chatter about a cold case in Washington State. Some about a serial killer who was murdered in Louisiana. A few missing people. But I find nothing specific or concerning in the stream of messages over the recent posts. Certainly nothing that mentions my fucked-up past. Even stories like mine simply fade away in time. It’s easier to disappear when you don’t have any family left to keep your memory alive.
With a relieved sigh, I make a note in my phone to pick up more hair dye before I set it down and step into the shower.
It’s just after noon when I leave the cottage on the southern edge of the estate’s extensive grounds. With Bryce’s mangled bone in my bag, I head toward Lancaster Manor, an imposing stone structure that casts a shadow of generational wealth across Cape Carnage. Even more intimidating than the house itself is the man who resides there. My favorite person in the town. My best friend.
I’m one of only two people who can simply walk into his home.
There’s nothing to greet me when I enter the foyer. A little spike of fear hits my veins. There’s usually a constant curtain of sound that seems to warm the austere stone: classical music, or old movies, or Arthur talking to himself in a low rumble. But there’s rarely silence.
“Arthur …?” I call out as I enter the formal living room. There’s no answer. I frown and continue toward the library, where he spends most of his time reading beside the fire, even in the warmer weather. “Arthur … I’m here to make you some lunch …”
I’m just starting past the hallway that leads to the kitchen when Arthur springs from behind a statue with a knife clutched between his teeth, which is quite a feat for an octogenarian with a walker.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Arthur—”
He steadies himself before grasping the handle of the blade to brandish the weapon at me. “Who are you?”
“It’s me. Harper.”
He rolls a step closer with the walker and twists the knife in a threat. “If you’re here to steal from me,I’ll cut you—”
“I’m not here to steal from you. I’mHarper. Your gardener. I live in the cottage.” A fleeting wisp of confusion passes across Arthur’s weathered face at my words. “I’m here to make you lunch. Just like I do every day.”
“Lunch …?”
“How about your favorite sandwich today? Pastrami on rye. Are you hungry?”
Arthur blinks, his thick white brows lifting as the fog seems to fade just enough that he lowers the blade. A little piece of my heart seems to fall with it. I reach my hand out and he stares at it as though trying to uncover the secrets beneath the lines that cross my skin. “Harper,” he finally says as he lays the handle of the knife on my palm. “Of course. I thought you were a thief.” When I raise a brow in doubt, his eyes narrow. “Someone is coming in here and stealing from me.”
I try to keep my expression neutral as I take his arm and turn him toward the kitchen. “What makes you think so?”
“My shoes went missing.”
“Someone stole your shoes?”
“Yes.”
“Why …?”
“They’re Stefano Riccis,” he grumbles, as though I should know what that means.
“And someone would want to take them because …?”
“Because they’reStefano Riccis,” he says, rolling his eyes as though I’m the biggest pain in the ass to walk the earth. “They’re exquisite.”
“Okay,” I say as we enter the kitchen and I guide him to the breakfast nook. When he’s settled, I lay my bag down on the marble island before washing my hands. “So someone stole your exquisite, used, old-man shoes. But on the off chance someonedidn’tbreak in to take your beautiful shoes, I can have a look for them later, just in case you misplaced them. Anything else?”
“My Swarovski Signum sugar bowl.”
I blink at him. “A sugar bowl. Someone stole yoursugar bowl.”
“It’s an expensive piece.”
“Are we talking Pauly’s Pawn Shop expensive, or international black market sugar bowl expensive?”
Arthur glares at me, but I know how much he enjoys being needled. It’s the reason we became friends in the first place.
When I came to Carnage four years ago, I didn’t know I was supposed to be intimidated by his curmudgeonly attitude and considerable wealth, and he found that endlessly refreshing. “Pauly wouldn’t know a Wassily from a Modway knockoff, you uncouth wretch.”
