Page 29 of The Lady on Esplanade
Her eyes widened.“Yes.Yes, it was.How did you know that?”
“There’s a bottle of it in the armoire where we found the doll.”
“You smell it at the house, don’t you?”Joan asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Beau answered.“We both do.We smelled it outside the house the first time we visited, and then again in the armoire where we found the bottle.”
She nodded before glancing behind her shoulder.With a lowered voice, she said, “If you wouldn’t mind telling me first anything you might discover about the doll?Honey is…a bit excitable.She’s always had delicate nerves, I’m afraid.Ever since childhood.We were both traumatized by our mother’s death, but Honey more so because she was so young.I’ve always protected her from anything unpleasant, and we’ve both grown used to our roles.”
“Of course,” Beau said as we all turned to see Honey approaching with two brown lunch bags folded neatly at the top.
“I wrapped them individually in foil so you can freeze them if you like.”
“Thank you so much.”I took my bag, thankful for the foil if only because it would slow me down and keep me from eating them all at once.
“We’ll be in touch,” Beau said.
We’d said our good-byes and had almost reached the truck when Honey came running after us, waving the newspaper that Beau had used to protect us from Zeus.“I think you forgot this.”
“Actually, it’s yours.It was on a side table.”
She thrust it at him so he was forced to accept it.“I know.But take it anyway.I don’t want Joan to know I’m talking about her.”She glanced over her shoulder toward the picture window.“She’s always been so sensitive, and I didn’t want to upset her further.Talking about Lynda is very hard for both of us, but especially for Joan.She’s always been such a mother hen, and I her dutiful chick.”Honey smiled.“It’s because of our mother dying so young, and Joan just had a natural instinct when it came to nurturing.It’s a shame she never had any children of her own, because she would have made an excellent mother.Because I’m the artistic one, she thought I needed special handling, but sometimes I think it’s the other way around.”
“So if we find out anything about the doll, you want us to tell you first,” Beau said.
“Yes.If you would be so kind.I took the liberty of writing down my cell number, just in case you need it.”She shoved it into my backpack, and made no move to head back to the house.
“Is there anything else?”I asked.
Her eyes, beneath thinly penciled eyebrows, met mine.“Lynda was right.About the house being haunted.We probably should have told you before you bought it, but we thought it might turn you off.It’s a little boy, and he likes to cause mischief, but he’s a happy little soul.We think it’s a great-uncle who died when he was six years old,during the influenza epidemic of 1919.His name was Patrick.”She smiled again.“I just thought you should know.”
“Thank you,” Beau said.“You weren’t legally required to tell us anything, so we appreciate it.I’m sure Patrick and I will get along just fine.”
She clapped her hands like a little girl, the gold bangles on her wrists jingling in tandem.“I was hoping you would say that.We felt so bad selling the house with him trapped inside without any friends.It’s good to know he won’t be lonely.”
We said our good-byes again, then watched as she seemed, in her long caftan, to float back to the house before we headed to the truck parked at the curb.
Beau cleared his throat.“There’s something I need to tell you.”
I braced myself.I didn’t believe—hadn’t even considered—that he would make any sort of declaration to me, or about me, or, well, anything to do with me, but still I found myself quieting my footsteps so that I wouldn’t miss a single word.
He stopped by the driver’s-side door but didn’t open it.“If Cooper is seriously interested in the Esplanade house, I need to make a full disclosure.”
I mentally sorted through all the things that could be so fundamentally wrong with a historic house that they would be detrimental not only to its renovation and restoration but also in finding a buyer who was interested in either one.
“It’s termites, isn’t it?”They were my biggest fear, up there next to black mold and a crumbling foundation, the trifecta of what could make the difference between restoration and demolition.For preservationists like me, any of those three issues was enough to make our knees shake.
“I wish.It’s a bit more, um, complicated than that.”
I stared at him in silence, my mind flicking through my grad school textbooks, searching for something else that could derail theproject.The mental reel stopped abruptly as I thought of one thing that wouldn’t be found in any historic-preservation textbook.“We already know about the ghosts of Sybil and Patrick.They seemed pretty harmless to me.Even Cooper didn’t think they were anything to worry about.”
“Right.And I agree.”He shifted his weight on his feet, then looked past me to the closed door of the house we’d just left.
“Is it the woman you saw at Café Degas?”
He shook his head.“No.I’ve only seen her that once, and that was while Cooper was with me.I have a feeling I’ll only see her again when I’m near him, which I’m happy to avoid.”
I frowned at him, but I was too anxious about what he wasn’t telling me to be angry.“So…?”
