Kingdom by the Sea (Romantic Suspense) (10 page)

Michael
looked bemused.  “Over that?”

“Well,
I just thought there would be lots of groaning and sweating,” she explained. 
“You know, like when I tried it.”

He
laughed.  “Nicole, it wasn't that heavy.”

“I
guess I'm weak—no, what I mean is: I have strong character, and that's where it
ends.  By the way, have you eaten?” she said suddenly.

“No. 
But I wouldn't be opposed to it.”

“Good,
the pizza will be ready soon.”  Meanwhile, she reached down for the papers
behind the hutch.  When she smoothed them out she saw that they were
handwritten, but it was not her aunt's penmanship.
 I’m sorry for what’s
happened.  It can be fixed, if you trust me—

Abruptly
she halted her reading and coasted her eyes to the bottom of the page.  It was
a letter to Nina from Abel Kelling.  It was private, she reasoned and folded up
the paper.  Once she slid it into a drawer of the hutch, she went to join
Michael in the kitchen.

Soon
they were both seated before a so-called veggie lovers’ pizza. 

“I
feel bad taking your dinner like this,” Michael said offhandedly, then took a
huge bite of the slice in his hand.

“I
can see it's a moral dilemma.  It's destroying you from the inside out.”  He
eyed her with mischief and kept on eating.  “I'm glad you came by,” she added,
“it's so quiet here at night.  I have DVDs and music, but there's no real
'people noise.'”

“Would
you want it?  I like the deadly silence out on the boat.”

“Speaking
of your boat...at the police station the other night you mentioned that you
worked in a garage?  That's how you know about engines?”

“Yeah,
back when I was in high school.  That's how I got my first car actually.  I
fixed up an old Chevy Nova that was there, paid a couple hundred for it.”

“But
you don't still have it,” she guessed.

“Of
course I do.”

“Really?”

“Are
you kidding?  I'd never part with that car.”

“How
did you get interested in cars anyway?” she asked.

“To
be honest, I'm not that interested in cars,” he said.  Which confused her.

“But
you were a mechanic...” she began.

“Because
I was good at it.  But how I came to realize I was good at it?  It's been so
long, I’m not sure.  I guess I've always been more hands-on, plus my dad was a
carpenter, so maybe that's where it came from.”

Nicole
jumped on this track.  A person's history made him more real—and she realized
that she was eager to get to know the real Michael King.  “Your parents are
from
New
York
,
right?”  When he responded by squinting at her, she explained, “You mentioned
being from
New York
the other night.”  God, she hoped Michael wasn't starting
to think that she had memorized every word he'd said at the police station.

“Oh. 
Right,” he replied with a nod.  “Yeah, my parents both grew up in
New York
.  This pizza is
good, by the way.  I would ask if you're into cooking, but the frozen pizza box
in the recycle can probably answers my question.”

“Please,
I'm a terrific cook.  For your information, I can also make frozen lasagna and
frozen chicken wings.”

He
grinned at her.  “I'm just teasing you.”

“I
know.”

Michael
added, “Actually the only thing I can make is chili, and I only know one way to
make it.”

“Old
family recipe?” she probed.

“Are
we back on my family?”

Suddenly
self-conscious, Nicole tried to soften her prying with an almost flirtatious
smile.  She might be coming on too strong—but hopefully had not reached Vickie
Finn levels yet.

“All
right, what do you want to know?” he said.

“Um...is
your family still in
New York
?”

“My
parents are dead.”

The
words fell like a rock to the floor. 

“Oh...”
Nicole began.  “I'm so sorry...I...”

“It's
okay,” Michael assured her, “please don't feel bad.  My dad died when I was a
kid.  My mom died about six years ago—but she had lung problems her whole
life.”  Since he didn't mention how his dad had died, Nicole didn't dare ask. 
No wonder Michael was not tripping over himself to talk about his family. 

She
spoke gently.  “Is it just you and your brother then?”

Carefully,
Michael paused. 

Forgetting
for just a moment the lie he had told her the night they met—the one about
having a brother in law school.  When he had discovered that Nicole Sheffield
had a sister in
Law
School
, he'd contrived that detail to give them
something immediately in common.  One thing Michael knew was that when people
thought there was an overlap in the personal details, they immediately felt
closer to you. 

And
just now, for a second, he had forgotten his own lie.  Holy shit, was he
slipping? 

“King,”
Nicole said, as if testing the word.  “What kind of name is that anyway?”

“A
four letter one.  Boy, you're full of questions tonight.  Are you writing an
article?”

With
a laugh, she shook her head and said, “I'm sorry!  I'm grilling you.”  She had
this girlish kind of giggle.  And the truth was, he found her genuinely
likable.  Of course that didn’t change anything.  Now, twisting the stem of her
wine glass, she appeared reluctant.  “I'm sorry,” she said again.  “You're my
guest and you're entitled to your privacy—shrouded in secrecy and obscured by
opacity.”

“
Huh? 
Damn...you try to have dinner with an English major but what's the point?” 
Now she was giggling and her green eyes were sparkling again; this was good. 
“It's just hard for me to talk about my family, that's all,” he added.  Though
it served as a stall tactic, it wasn't untrue.

“I
understand,” she said.  

“Good—so
I can eat my pizza now?“

“You
have been,” she pointed out with a smile.

When
Michael got back inside his boat, he found only blackness.  He tossed his keys
onto the bench seat by the window.  Pulled off his sweater and T-shirt, and
tossed them in a ball on top of the keys.  Walked toward the narrow cot that
was unfolded from the wall.  Pushed off his shoes, stripped down to his boxer
briefs, and unceremoniously flopped down on his bed—which was a lot more
comfortable than it looked. 

Lying
on his back, he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.  The roughness of
his skin wasn't exactly soothing.

Strange
effing night.  He had almost been put in the talking position rather than the
listening—the giver rather than the getter.  He could tell that Nicole trusted
him way too much already.  That was good, but still—he'd need to be more on his
guard with her.

Besides
that, her questions about his parents made his mind swirl now with thoughts he
had not indulged for a long time.  He hadn't even spoken of his mother's death
in years, if at all.  He really had had no occasion to, but saying it out loud
tonight...it had opened up a storage of random memories.  Memories of his mom,
Eliana. 

As he
lay in the blackness chasing sleep, he recalled a night years earlier.  He was
seventeen and had gone to pick his mother up at the restaurant where she
worked.  As Michael pulled into the parking lot, he saw two men hassling her. 
The shit-head restaurant manager had decided to lock up early and take off,
leaving Eliana alone to wait for her ride. 

Her
car had died two weeks earlier.  Michael had been trying to restore a junk car
from the garage for her, but in the meantime, was taking her to and from work. 
He had lied and told her that her shift overlapped with his free period at
school, but the truth was, he would simply cut the class or be very late.

After
Michael's dad died, Eliana and Michael had been all alone.  It didn't matter
that Eliana's parents were still alive and well.  Except for each other,
Michael and Eliana were truly alone.  The bus stop was at least a mile walk
from the restaurant, it was cold, and Eliana, who had been born with an
impaired lung, had always been slight.  Besides, it was just Spanish class he
was missing.  So he wouldn't speak Spanish; he'd live.

Now
the memory filled his mind, like a cloud of smoke that had been trapped behind
a closed door.  The door opened and it poured through, billowing out and
obscuring everything else.

He
remembered the sound of his tires crunching on the gravel as his car rolled
into the unpaved parking lot.  The place was diagonally across the street from
one of those highway-side rest stops, one that looked more like an elongated
barn, with only filthy, rundown bathrooms and soda machines.  That must have
been where the men had come from. 

Michael's
car had just pulled in; the two men were towering over his mom.  Eliana was so
small, like a wisping blade of grass.  One of the men had swung his arm around
her shoulders and was leaning into her.  The other was looking on, his stance
slanted.  Blind with fury, Michael barely skidded to a stop, jammed the gear in
Park and burst out of the car.

“Get
the hell away from her!” he yelled.  “
Now.
”  He may have been only
seventeen, but his voice was thick, his anger was virulent, and to protect
Eliana, apparently his fear factor was zero.

“Who
the fuck are you?” the leaning one slurred.

“Get
lost,” the other one barked, and then pulled Eliana closer.  Both of them
appeared sloppy drunk.

“Get. 
The Hell.  Away from her,” he repeated.  In that moment, Michael remembered,
his voice had sounded more deadly and threatening than he himself had ever
known it could be.  Without hesitating, he reached his mother's hand and tugged
her toward him.  The bigger of the two men tried to tighten his grip on her
shoulder and Michael kicked him in the kneecap.  He let out a sharp scream as
his leg buckled, and the other one started cursing and blustered forward.

“Go
to the car,” Michael told Eliana.

“Please,
Michael, let's just go...” she pleaded grabbing onto his coat sleeve after he
had released her.

“You're
not leaving,” the other man sneered and lunged back toward Eliana.  But the
second he took his eyes off Michael, Michael wailed him with his fist right in
the side of his face.  That was just where the blow hit.  The man fell to the
ground and Eliana was crying then, and pulling on Michael's arm. 
Let's go
,
she was saying, but Michael didn't budge.  Instead he kicked the man on the
ground hard in the chest.  The guy howled in pain, coiled up his drunken body,
as Eliana pleaded,
Michael, please—let's go.

Now,
even as Michael fell into a heavy sleep, his mind churned.  That night had
changed his life, changed the way he viewed himself, even though at the time he
wasn't fully aware of it.  He wasn't particularly violent or prone to fighting,
yet in that moment, he had seen that he could get what he wanted—that he was
powerful when he was fearless.  It was the beginning. 

***

On
the other side of town, in a four-story home overlooking the rocky southern
coast of
Chatham
, in a house with a grandeur that nearly eclipsed the
moonlight, a man barely recognized himself in the mirror.  At seventy-two,
Chester Northgate had the face of a golden raisin.  His hair was a dull white,
his teeth were false, his hearing was faint—but none of that was what troubled
him at the moment.  It was his eyes.  It was the fear he saw looking back at
him.

Several
minutes earlier, he had returned from his short nightly walk around his
estate.  It was an uninspired little something to keep his bones moving and his
withering muscles still of some use.  Now he stood in his front hall, which was
dark and moody and like the rest of the house, a deliberate homage to Gothic
elegance. 

Although
Chester Northgate spent only six months a year in
Chatham
—and the rest of
the time in
London
, or traveling—this home was his favorite.

Events
of the last couple months had changed the nature of things here.  Brought to
the surface things better left buried.  Had it even been months?  Or was it
less than that?  Sighing now,
Chester
worried himself—it was this persistent
uneasiness.  This ominous sense of some unknowable horror— a nefarious doom he
couldn't see, but that he was convinced was there, hovering.

Looking
in the mirror that hung beside the hundred-year-old grandfather clock,
Chester
stood,
transfixed, staring into the once round eyes that had wilted to half-moons. 
Finally his housekeeper, Edith Winchell, came up behind him. 

Standing
at about five feet eleven, Miss Winchell's reflection towered over his.  She
had a unique look, an exotic quality that made it hard to pin down her exact
origins—or her age.  Only
Chester
knew that she was nearly sixty.  She had
been his housekeeper for twenty-six years, his estate manager, and had become
his closest confidant.  She had also become his partner in something...
unspeakable.