Kingdom by the Sea (Romantic Suspense) (24 page)

As
Michael stood, he set Puddle gently to the floor.  “First of all, I realize
you're trying to tease me,” he began, coming closer.  “But don't ever call me
'the Mikester' again.”  Mischievously, he squinted down at her, came even
closer.  He ran his hand around her waist, then slid it lower.  His voice was
soft and low when he said, “You've been warned.”  The doorbell rang and Puddle
jumped to attention. 

“Shoot,
they're here!” 

“What
do you mean 'shoot'?  This was your idea.”

“I
know,” Nicole mumbled.  “I'm just dreading the uncomfortable portion of the
night when Vickie comes on to you like you're a gigolo and she's got a coupon.”

At
that, Michael laughed.  “Wow...that bad, huh?” 

Nicole
shot him a sideways glance.  “It was impossible to have a normal conversation
last time.  Didn't you notice?”

“It was kind of
embarrassing,” he admitted. 
To whom?
Nicole wondered.  Was Michael
himself shy about that kind of fawning?  Or was he embarrassed for Vickie,
who'd been beyond obvious?  “I felt sorry for the guy,” he added. 
Ohhh. 
Of
course.  Embarrassing for
Todd
, the eunuch husband who sat through it
all and watched.  “She'll probably behave this time.  Probably already moved on
to the next guy who caught her attention.  Let's just stay focused on our
mission,” Michael said.

“Okay,” Nicole
agreed.  “Obviously.”

“We get the
information and we say goodnight.”

“I'll fight the
urge to pull out Monopoly.”

Grinning, he
said, “Glad we understand.”

Puddle trotted a
few steps behind when Nicole went to answer the door.  “Oh, how sweet!” Vickie
cooed.  “You have a dog now!  Awww...”  She ran her long acrylic nails through
Puddle's fur.  (The undiscerning canine had the gall to arch her back and enjoy
it.)  “Male or female?”

“Female,” Nicole
told her.

“Too bad.  Males
like me better,” Vickie said, then winked at Michael. 

Automatically,
Nicole's mind made its assessments. 
Vickie: cheap and obvious.  Todd:
spineless giraffe.  Puddle: undiscriminating.  Myself (at the moment): bitchy
but harmless.

A half-hour
later, the four of them were in the living room, sipping wine and making small
talk.  Michael sat beside Nicole on the sofa; Vickie and Todd sat in armchairs
opposite each other.  “I was so thrilled when you called today and invited us
over!” Vickie reiterated enthusiastically when the conversation hit a stumbling
block.  “It was so fun the last time!”

“It was,” Nicole
agreed disingenuously.  “And thanks for the cake.  You really didn't have to,
but it looks terrific.”  Vickie had brought a chocolate coconut cake for
dessert.

Vickie waved,
flashing a shock of pink nails through the air.  “My pleasure.  I just had Todd
pick it up at the bakery.  Michael—do you like chocolate?”

“Sure, who
doesn't?”

“Todd doesn't.  He
breaks out from it.”

“Not always,”
Todd injected.  “But I do try to stay away from it unless it's a special
occasion.”

“I've always
found chocolate to be incredibly sexy,” Vickie threw in, smiling widely.

Call her overly
astute, but Nicole took this as her cue to switch gears, because who knew how
long a tangent into the sensuality of chocolate would take?  “By the way,
Vickie—it's such a small world.  Ginger mentioned to me the other day that she
used to baby-sit you.”

Vickie appeared
startled by the subject.  “Ah, yeah, that's true.  Boy, I haven't thought of
that in so long.  Ginger and Portia both used to baby-sit me, actually.” 

“Honey, you never
told me that,” Todd said.

Briefly, she
rolled her eyes.  “Why would I tell you that?”  She reached for a celery stick.

“You two didn't
know each other back then, I take it,” Michael said conversationally.

“No,” Todd said,
“I didn’t move to
Chatham
until sophomore year of high school.”  He sat up
straighter and got an almost righteous kind of look on his face.  For a moment,
Nicole thought he was about to tell the “story” again about sitting next to
each other in geometry class. 

“Where did you
live before that?” she asked.

“Uh, the
Buffalo
area,” Todd
replied.  Unexpectedly, his face pinched, as if Nicole had just summoned a
demon.  “I was an orphan,” he muttered.  “I don't like to talk about it.”

“Oh, sorry...”
Nicole said, feeling awkward.

“Yeah, the
Bloomingdales babysat me when I was just a little bitty thing,” Vickie said and
let out a peel of laughter.  It sounded artificial and forced.  Nicole was
starting to think that Vickie Finn was just one of those people who laughed out
of habit, whose throat trilled out a rippling noise of glee for lack of
anything else to contribute at a given moment. 

Then the words
struck a chord—Vickie calling herself a “little bitty thing” when Ginger had
described her as “a very fat child.”  The two didn't quite go together.  “So I
hear you’ve got The Hermster doing repairs around here,” Vickie remarked. 
“Rumor had it that he and your aunt were always
very
close.” 

“Close friends?”
Nicole said hopefully.

Vickie shrugged. 
“People always wondered if there was more to it—you know, if there was a
history
there.” 

A romantic
history?  Between Nina and Mac?  Nicole supposed it was possible, but even so,
it was surely a moot point by now. 

Besides, Nicole
had her heart set on dredging up a different bit of ancient history at the
moment.  Now she tried to steer the conversation back on track as suavely as
possible.  “But back to Portia…” she said with basically no transition. 
“Um…what's she doing now anyway?”

Shrugging, Vickie
reached for a baby carrot.  “Now?  Beats me.  She used to work for a travel
agency in
Connecticut
, I think, but that was like twenty years ago.”

“Oh,” Nicole
said, nodding casually, “I just thought maybe Ginger or Hazel mentioned it—you
know, in conversation.  Since she is their sister...”   

With a snort,
Vickie said, “They're not likely to bring up Portia.  A
lot
of bad blood
there.”  After a sip of her wine, Vickie licked her lips after and said, “So
you two seem pretty cozy.”  She all but cooed the words—totally changing the
tone and direction of the conversation.  It was understandable to a point.  The
Bloomingdale sisters were probably a dull, stale topic to her by now.  But that
was just too bad. 

“About Portia...”
Nicole began, then sensed the lack of subtlety in her own voice.  She cleared
her throat and tried to take it down a notch.  Otherwise, she'd just sound
desperate to gossip about a topic that had already been abandoned.  “Um...more
wine?” Nicole encouraged with an angelic smile.

“Wait, 'bad
blood'?” Michael interjected (throwing Nicole a lifeline).  He gave a brief,
wicked smile to Vickie that coaxed her to elaborate.  “Sounds like there's a
good story there.”

Predictably,
Vickie tilted her head and attempted to smolder at him.  Then she said, “Well,
if you like a good dirty sexy story...then this one will probably leave you
cold.”

Apparently it
went like this:

Rosemarie Martins
married John Bloomingdale in 1947.  John had been a cod fisherman when the two
had met, but shortly after the wedding, he'd begun working at the local bank
with Rosemarie's father, Theo.  Daughters Hazel and Ginger came along shortly
after, only a year apart, while their sister, Portia, was likely a surprise,
born a good eight or nine years later.

The house on
Orchard Street
originally
belonged to Rosemarie's parents.  She and John moved in with them, and lived
there until the Martins both eventually died.  While the girls were growing up,
Rosemarie had developed a talent for baking—particularly cookies, which always
earned her heavy praise at the Church potluck.  With encouragement and word of
mouth, Rosemarie's baking eventually turned into a local cookie business, which
she ran out of her home.  Soon she was providing baskets of homemade cookies
for town functions and social gatherings.  When John Bloomingdale died
suddenly, Rosemarie threw herself into the business even more. 

Still, it was all
pretty quaint—until one of Rosemarie's creations—the
Ginger-Hazelnut-Butterscotch-Biscuit, named for her two daughters at the
time—became her most coveted recipe, and eventually, her “secret recipe.” 
Rumor was, several food companies had approached Rosemarie about buying the
recipe, and even considered a product line in her name, but no deal was ever
reached.  Whether Rosemarie had been considering the offers, or flat-out
refused in order to protect the recipe as a family secret, it was impossible to
say now.  The only thing Vickie Finn
did
know for sure was that the
Ginger-Hazelnut-Butterscotch-Biscuit had been at the heart of the Bloomingdale
sister feud.

Portia
Bloomingdale had always been more rebellious than her sisters—which wasn't
difficult considering how staid both Hazel and Ginger were.  Perhaps because of
the age difference, Portia had never formed a strong connection with either
one.  Or, perhaps because she was the baby of the family, she was overindulged,
spoiled—and her older sisters had resented it.  According to Vickie, their mom,
Rosemarie, had spent a portion of money she'd made from her cookie business to
buy the house on the corner of
Main Street
and
Old Harbor Road
, which was now
Tinsdale Library.  Apparently, the house had once been intended for Portia.  At
the time, Hazel was married to local schoolteacher Walt Baker and living in the
Orchard
Street
house with her mother and Ginger.  And Portia had just been drifting with no
real direction.  Rosemarie had purchased the house for Portia as a way to keep
her in
Chatham
. 

Although the
property had been intended for Portia, the deed was never put in her name and
Rosemarie died before Portia ever became the true owner.  In Rosemarie's will,
she left everything to her eldest, Hazel, the most responsible, the strongest,
and the one Rosemarie must have believed would be most judicious and practical
in the way things were divided and spent.

The problem with
Hazel was that she could be unbearably opinionated.  Even her husband, Walt,
had very little presence when his wife was beside him.  Her way was the right
way, the one way.  Ginger, being more passive by nature, was able to
accommodate Hazel's personality well, but Portia locked horns with her older
sister constantly.  In fact, Hazel had even threatened to evict Portia from the
house on
Main Street
unless she kept it neater. 

Finally, Portia
left
Chatham
, without even
leaving a note.

It wasn't until
about ten years later that Ginger and Hazel heard from their little sister
again.  Apparently, Portia had wound up in
New York City
and become
determined to break into the ever-vague “entertainment business.”  After years
of failed attempts, waitressing jobs, and dumpy apartments, Portia had come up
with a desperate notion—a scheme really.  She returned to
Chatham
.  Returned to
the home she'd grown up in, in which Hazel and Walt still lived with Ginger,
and life looked just as she left it.  Ostensibly she'd come looking for a
reunion or reconciliation, but Portia was really after something else.  The
family's most prized possession: their mother's secret recipe for the
Ginger-Hazelnut-Butterscotch-Biscuit.  Convinced that Hazel had it under lock
and key at the house, Portia wheedled her way into the sisters' graces to
search for it. 

While Ginger was
welcoming to Portia, Hazel regarded her more suspiciously—despite even Walt's
encouragement to forgive and forget.  During Portia's brief visit, she spent a
lot of time coaxing Ginger to move out, telling her of the life she could have
apart from domineering Hazel. 

Ultimately, the
tension between Portia and Hazel culminated when Hazel caught Portia snooping
in the attic room, trying to pry open a sealed antique chest.  Hazel had
accused her sister of theft and kicked her out.  On her way, Portia again urged
Ginger to make her escape.  Probably she had done it more to hurt Hazel than to
help Ginger.  Either way, it was barely a few months later when Ginger picked
up, took a bus to New York City, intending to move in with Portia and begin a
new life.  

Regrettably, as
rumor had it, Hazel was not entirely incorrect about their younger sister. 
After several months of living with Portia, Ginger came to realize that the
woman truly was an irresponsible, unreliable flake.  Opportunistic and even
dishonest. 

The problem was,
how could Ginger just come back?  When she had left
Chatham
, she had turned
her back on Hazel—according to Hazel. 

Hazel had warned
her that if she went to live with Portia, Ginger would be making an irrevocable
choice against the family's legacy.  The statement had been ripe not only with
emotional implications, but financial ones, as well.  Yet Ginger had gone
anyway.