Making Magic (9 page)

Mel’s laugh was infectious. “Sounds like fun. What did you sing?”

Thea frowned at her sister. But today was to be devoted to Mel. Grace would keep after her until she caved and performed for the bride-to-be.

“Jake, Jake, Earthquake. Jake, Jake, Beefcake. Jake, Jake, Cupcake. Jake, Jake, Hotcake,” she sang. It wasn’t a tune, just a singsong that cascaded up the scale to the last word, which was delivered dramatically with arm flourishes and hair tossing like some kind of pre-teen pep squad. She remembered Becca’s throaty alto weaving through her own soprano and the bubble of Becca’s laughter at the end.

Mel’s hand was over her mouth. “Oh my.”

“They did it at
every
opportunity, including this dance they had one year at the festival,” Grace said, raising her eyebrows. “And I
wasn’t
the girl dancing with Jake, I must point out.”

Thea had to smile. “No, but whoever it was, she wasn’t dancing. She was murdering his poor feet.”

“I think I like this Becca. I haven’t met her, have I?”

Thea shook her head. “She died.” She knew her voice had gone flat. “A long time ago.”

“Oh.” Mel was looking from Grace to her and back. “I’m sorry. She must’ve been very young.”

“She was,” Grace said. “Very.”

The sound of hammering echoed around the hollow. They heard Daniel yell something down to Nick, who stood on a ladder below him.

Grace sighed dramatically. “Well, personally I prefer my men a bit darker than our illustrious sheriff.” Her gaze was on her husband in the distance. “Jake is so very
blond
and—”

“Hey!” Mel pointed to her own very short blonde hair.

“Not you, but on guys it looks so…”

“Annoying,” Thea stated, hoping to steer the conversation away from Jake and Becca. Jake’s hair really wasn’t his best feature anyway. She liked his eyes, which were the color of good whiskey.

Grace sipped her tea, those green eyes of hers watching Thea over the rim. “Well, I like dark with a hint of wicked. Blond is so clean-cut and… What’s the opposite of dangerous?”

Jake is plenty dangerous, in his own way
, Thea thought. She knew that he had been crying yesterday before he interrupted her. Either he didn’t realize that she could tell, or he didn’t care. But his grief, for Becca, for his father, for Pops, had been apparent. And that had cut her to the core.

“Oh, with the scruff he’s got going, he has a definite ‘bad boy’ vibe,” Mel chimed in, rubbing her chin. “And his hair isn’t really blond. It’s more gold. Kind of tawny.”

That was true, but Thea didn’t want to think about Jake’s hair, or any other part of him. She rubbed Bailey’s ears. The dog seemed to be asleep in her lap, but acknowledged the attention with a twitch of her eyelid. “Is there a reason that the wedding is on a Wednesday?”

Mel laughed. “Thea doesn’t want to talk about our nice ex-sheriff, does she?”

“He’s not an ex-sheriff yet,” Grace said.

“You said he was quitting. Is it because he got shot?” Thea realized how that sounded. “I mean, because of the injury? He seems fine.”

“No,” Grace said. “I think he has his own reasons, but it’s not the wound.”

“From what Daniel tells me, there’s a lot of good-old-boy type corruption around here,” Mel said.

“It’s the peril of elected office. You’re under constant pressure to campaign and keep your contributors happy, while fighting for better equipment and trying to keep people in the county safe,” Grace said. “He’s been good for the county. Most of the people really want him to stick around.”

“Oh, look! They finished with the fairy lights on the gazebo,” Mel exclaimed.

Grace turned her attention back to the garden. “It’s all perfect, Mel. Those lights and lanterns are the crowning touch.”

“I hope so. I never knew there were so many little details you had to handle.”

“From what I’ve heard, the only thing you have to get right is the actual marriage, Thea chimed in. “The rest of it is just icing.” Grace nodded her agreement.

Thea remembered the question she had asked before she was distracted. “Speaking of little details, why a Wednesday wedding? Is that something Italian?”

Mel laughed. “No. Saturday is the big day over there, like everywhere else. Wednesday is for my mom and dad. They have commitments every weekend until almost Christmas and they’re sticklers for keeping their promises.”

“So those festivals where they perform are only on weekends?”

“Usually,” Mel explained. “Sometimes longer if there’s a holiday.”

“Where are they now?”

“Spokane. Or they were. Actually, right about now they should be in Wisconsin.”

“They’re driving from Washington state?” Thea said in disbelief. “Are they afraid of flying?” Like Jake, although his was more of a control issue than a phobia.

Mel laughed. “No, not at all. They have to be in New York this coming weekend anyway, and they need their trailer, so we’re kind of on the way.”

Grace laughed.

“I said ‘kind of’.”

“Another festival?” asked Thea.

“A really big one. The New York Renaissance Faire in Tuxedo—about an hour north of New York City.” There was a touch of longing in Mel’s voice.

“Do you miss performing?” Thea said.

“A little. Mostly it’s seeing new places, meeting new people,” Mel said. “I
love
to travel. Luckily, so does Daniel.”

“The way you two met, I suppose traveling is part of the deal,” Thea said.

“Absolutely. But one of the best parts of going somewhere new is coming home.”

“And this place has never looked better,” Thea said. “It is amazing what some tender loving care can do.”

The whole house was a delight, a mixture of old and new styles, but still lovingly decorated to acknowledge its historical significance. And the porches were wonderful. Mel clearly loved wind chimes.

“Restoring it—actually cleaning up the entire hollow—was kind of cathartic for everyone,” Grace said. “But Mel and Daniel have done a great job redecorating the interior.”

Thea was determined not to mention the Taggarts or what had happened to Pops because of them. Today and tomorrow had to be all about wedding, wedding, wedding. But Grace had promised Thea that afterwards she would take her up to the cave that their Granny Lily had used as a workshop long ago. The Taggarts had been using it as a meth lab when Nick and Grace discovered it, but much of the original workshop had survived.

Thea looked up the ridge to the clearing where Mel and Daniel had brought down two Italian thugs bent on stopping Mel from publishing a story about deadly corporate misconduct. The mountain had seen its share of excitement this past year.

“There are some challenges with a house this old,” Mel admitted. “But the basic structure was solid and the Taggarts hadn’t done too much damage.”

The two-story Victorian farmhouse had been built at the end of the nineteenth century, but the house that Grace and Nick lived in on the other side of the ridge was firmly rooted in the twenty-first. It looked Victorian, but Pops had built it to take advantage of green technology and made the farm into a model of sustainability. The entire mountain belonged to the Woodruffs—actually to Grace now—along with the family herb business that had begun with Granny Lily. There were also Daniel’s thriving apiaries, one here in the hollow and one up on the farm.

Grace rented out cabins up there and used what Pops had called plant walks to educate people about the flora and fauna of the mountain with a folksy kind of charm. Daniel had taken up where Pops had left off and he and Mel planned to publish a book of Pops’s old stories and fables, called
Firefly Tales
.

Thea smiled. Pops would be proud. But their father would be furious if he ever remembered that he had intended to break Pops’s will and parcel up the mountain to developers. She picked up the plate of sweet rolls Ouida had sent over for them.

“
You’ll let us stay on the mountain with Pops and you won’t make him sad anymore!
”

And he had. He had left the mountain alone until Pops’s death had broken that compulsion. If he hadn’t been in the midst of the worst legal battle the company had ever faced, he would have gone after the mountain with a vengeance even before the funeral. It didn’t matter what the will said if you could keep throwing lawyers at the problem.

But this time her father would not remember. This time she was not a desperate, grief-stricken child, but an angry, experienced lawyer who knew how to wield words like a weapon. This time, he would forget how much he hated this mountain.

“Hey, Sissy! Quit hogging those,” Daniel said.

Thea almost dropped the plate. Daniel was hanging over the railing holding out his hand. She quickly handed the plate to him.

Nick joined them, sitting down on the porch steps with a glass of orange juice. “We hard-working wedding designers deserve some refreshments. And a break.” He wiped his forehead.

“I want to know about that nickname, ‘Sissy’.” Mel said. “Sister, I assume?”

Daniel laughed. “Nope.”

“Daniel had trouble with his ‘th’ sounds when he was learning to talk. ‘Thea’ came out as ‘see.’ He would run around after me yelling ‘SeeSeeSee’.” Thea said.

“Ah,” Mel said. “Got it. Cute.” She reached over to ruffle Daniel’s hair and he swatted her hand away.

“So…Sissy-in-law,” Nick said.

Thea rolled her eyes. The thing about nicknames was the less you liked them, the more they stuck.

“Any news from Hartford we should know about?” Nick asked. “Not that we own any stock in the company.”

Thea had seen him poring over online stock reports and business news back at the farmhouse. It had only been a matter of time before he asked. But now?

“I was planning to update you guys after the wedding,” she said.

“Yes, Nick. No business talk before the wedding,” Grace said. “Today is all about Mel and—”

“Why not?” Daniel chimed in. “Is this about the…that case you were working on?”

Thea looked at Grace, who shook her head. Her siblings had kept their word not to talk to anyone about what she’d been up to. She’d been right to trust them.

“It’s over,” Thea said. How simple that sounded. Five years of her life and very little to show for it.

“Four billion worth of over,” Nick said, eyes on his wife. “I thought it might be more than a coincidence that you got freed up to come for the wedding.”

“Four billion?” Mel repeated. “Those guys got Hartford for four
billion
?”

Thea stood and put Bailey carefully down on the porch. “Four billion is nothing.” She leaned back against the railing. “It’s less than the money they made off their illegal activity in the first place. They still made a profit.” She couldn’t say what she really wanted to.
And people died. How’s that for justice?

Mel looked suddenly upset and Daniel put a hand on her arm.

“I’m sorry,” Thea said. “This is why I didn’t want to talk about it. It didn’t… It wasn’t enough.”
It will never be enough.

“But as an attorney for the company you…” Nick studied her for a moment then looked at Grace. “Oh, I see.”

“Well I don’t. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?” Mel asked.

Daniel patted her hand. “It’s—”

“—complicated.” Grace finished.

They smiled at each other, but Mel still looked baffled.

“It was a rather unusual case,” Nick said. “A number of highly placed individuals at Hartford came forward as Qui Tam whistleblowers, which means they get a cut of the settlement.”

“But some are donating theirs to the victims’ families,” Thea interrupted. “The rest have to keep their share to make up for the fact that they might never work in the industry again.”

Nick nodded. “The DoJ had a rock-solid case, which is why this is the biggest settlement they’ve ever gotten out of Big Pharm. And there are still tons of victim lawsuits pending.”

Mel looked from face to face. “Okay, maybe it’s pre-wedding jitters, but I’m totally confused now. As an attorney for Hartford, don’t you want—”

“I don’t work for Hartford anymore,” She checked her watch. Her dad would have opened the letter sometime yesterday. “As of twenty-six hours ago.”

Grace looked relieved.

“That’s great.” Daniel’s voice was a bit shaky. “Great,” he repeated. Thea looked up to find his eyes glinting. “We need to celebrate.”

“You don’t understand. There’s really nothing to celebrate. This isn’t even a bump in the road to Hartford. Anything that happens to their stock price will be temporary. They will probably give…” She struggled for which title to use. “The CEO will probably get a bonus because the settlement was a lot less than it could have been.”

“No, Sissy, you don’t understand.” Thea blinked as Daniel came up the porch steps and pulled her into a tight hug. “It means you’ve really come home. Finally.”