One Night in Boston (3 page)
He picked up the telephone and dialed the number for Jacque’s Café.
*
Across town, the voicemail at Spectacle ‘Scapes hadn’t stopped taking messages all morning. Dillon Murphy wound two fingers around the thick mop of dark blond hair at his neck and pulled it into a ponytail with a practiced motion. Pencil in one corner of his mouth, he studied his calendar, a dog-eared black notebook. He couldn’t wait until his secretary came back from vacation next week. The office, the bills, even the coffee went to ruin without her.
He checked the board beside the door. He had two guys over in Newton working on a walkway and another three starting a set of gardens for the mayor. With his partner, J.J., home taking care of a new baby, Dillon had to head over to the west side himself. He needed to finish up an estimate for a couple looking for a refurbished lawn and gardens. He grabbed a pair of wrap-around sunglasses and strode outside.
The squat brick building housing Spectacle ’Scapes faced the Charles River, a prime location just outside the city limits. He slowed for a minute and glanced up at the green and white sign above the door, the window boxes along the front, the stamped concrete porch, and the clean, narrow walkway. He straightened the collar on his monogrammed polo shirt, made sure the tail was tucked into the tight black jeans he always wore, and pushed the sleeves up above his biceps. The tail of a red and orange python tattoo crept down his left shoulder, but he didn’t worry about hiding it. Women seemed to like it; guys usually admired it. Dillon stole a look at the sky and frowned at the storm clouds rolling in.
Some called the Boston landscaper charmed. Some called him plain lucky. Others called him brilliant, a thirty-one year old horticultural genius. Most everyone who knew Dillon, however, admired him for the company he’d built from the ground up. Six years ago, he’d been driving around in a beat-up Chevy with a few well-worn tools in the bed and ratty homemade business cards in his pocket. He’d spent more days than he could remember knocking on doors and mowing lawns to get by. Today, Dillon hauled his six-foot, four-inch frame up into the roomy cab of a special edition Ford pickup truck, lettered on the side with his company’s green and white logo. A trailer in matching colors, housing a quarter-million dollars’ worth of equipment, sat locked in the adjacent garage.
“Hard work,” he’d answered once, when a reporter asked him his secret. Wrong answer, apparently. The young woman, doing a piece on the city’s young entrepreneurs, had frowned at him. People didn’t want to hear that anything worthwhile took buckets of sweat, he realized later.
They want to believe I grew up with money, or that I inherited a million dollars from a crazy uncle, or that I’m some kind of felon with cash stuffed under my bed
. A work ethic like Dillon’s, which meant you didn’t rest until your customers were happy, or you lived on leftovers and worked three jobs if you had to, didn’t sit well with the majority. He knew that now. It still didn’t bother him.
He turned up the radio as he pulled into traffic.
When you come from nothing
, he thought,
you’ve got nothing to lose
. He’d always loved working outdoors, always loved making green things sprout from the earth. Discovering that he had a talent for the business side of landscaping had just been a pleasant surprise.
Dillon programmed the couple’s swanky Wellesley address into his navigation system. A few seconds later, the automated voice instructed him to turn left at the next light. He obliged, tapping along on the steering wheel to Lynyrd Skynyrd singing “Sweet Home Alabama.”
His cell phone rang. Wresting it from its leather holster on his hip, he checked the ID screen.
“Hey, J.J. How’s the kid?”
“Sleeping, eating, and pooping, that’s about all.” The other partner of Spectacle ‘Scapes laughed. “Where you headed this morning?”
“West side. Guy called for an estimate yesterday.”
“Ellis Casterline?”
Dillon stomped on the brake as some idiot in an Aston Martin tried to squeeze in front of his truck. “Yeah.” He swore in aggravation and tapped on the horn. As much as he loved Bostonians’ bottomless pockets, the congestion of downtown he could do without. “How’d you know?’
“Heard the message come in.” J.J. made a hushing noise, a sound totally uncharacteristic of the swaggering, beer-drinking buddy Dillon knew. He bit down hard to keep from making a comment on J.J.’s balls taking a vacation since the baby had arrived.
“Yeah, well, it sounds like a good job,” Dillon said. “He wants the entire backyard redesigned. Couple of acres of gardens, walkways, double-level patio for entertaining…”
J.J. returned to the phone, tough-guy voice back in place. “You know who Casterline is, right?”
“Wouldn’t know him if I ran over him. Why?”
J.J. whistled, long and loud. “One of the top ten richest guys in the city, man. Stockbroker, I think. Has a private jet, couple of vacation homes. You get this contract wrapped up, you can count on it paying our bills for the next year. Better than that, though, he’ll tell all his friends about us. Easy Street, baby.” J.J. whooped, setting off a fresh spell of wailing from the newborn. “Shit. Anyway, good luck.”
Dillon found the tree-lined street and turned at a wrought-iron gate that read “Regency Way.” He squinted at the numbers on the brick mansions in front of him.
Jesus, J.J.’s not kidding
. “Hey, I’ll talk to you later, man. You up for going out tonight?”
“Thought you were goin’ to the Deveau Ball downtown.”
“I’m gonna stop by for an hour or two, do a little networking.” Dillon slowed and flicked on his right turn signal, easing alongside the curb in front of number fifty-seven. It was one of the largest houses on the cul-de-sac. “I’ll be outta there by ten.”
“All right, give me a call later on, then.”
“See ya.” Dillon slipped the phone back onto his hip and reached for his clipboard. He spent another minute or two taking in number fifty-seven’s circular drive, the three-story house, gazebo, brick walkways curving around to the back. His practiced eye assessed the place at over three million, easy. Probably closer to four or five. A familiar shiver of excitement crept into his blood. Though Spectacular ’Scapes had several high-end accounts, the prospect of landing another made Dillon feel like a kid stealing candy from the corner store. He wasn’t sure he’d ever feel any different.
Pushing open the door, he slid to the ground, long legs taking a stretch and size-twelve feet clad in leather work boots taking their time as they walked to the doorstep. He stopped halfway there to examine some white hydrangeas.
Nice job
, he thought, looking at the mature trees and bushes planted around him.
Whoever did the original landscaping here knew his stuff
.
“Hello, there.” The lilting female voice jerked his attention back up again. Standing in the open door of the house stood a slender young woman. “Are you here to meet with my parents about the landscaping?”
He tried to nod. He meant to answer. But as his gaze fell upon her, he couldn’t speak at all. Dillon Murphy, never at a loss for words, jammed both hands into his pockets and stared at the girl. Eighteen, maybe twenty at the most, she stood there blushing in the morning light. One hand rested on her hip as she dropped her eyes and flirted without saying a word. He’d seen the smile and the pose a hundred times on a hundred different women in and around the city. It wasn’t the flirting that struck Dillon speechless.
It was her hair.
Red spiral curls framed eyes the shade of the ocean at dawn. She’d stuck most of it into a bun atop her head, but stray curls fell down across her forehead and neck.
That hair…
He’d only known one other girl with hair like that, fire-engine red, dangerous-when-you-got-too-close hair. In another life. In another place. Something heavy struck at Dillon’s heart, and a fist reached into his stomach and threatened to bring up his breakfast.
Maggie Doyle.
Maggie.
Mags.
Oh, God.
In his mind’s eye, the out-of-control curls framed another face, this one damp with tears. Damn him if her last words didn’t come back to him too angry, sorrow-laden, old beyond her years. He tried to close his ears against them and failed. One fist opened and closed, and his fingernails scraped at the clipboard he still held.
He hadn’t talked to his stepsister in almost six years. He hadn’t seen her in longer than that. Didn’t mean he’d forgotten about her; Jesus Christ, far from it. He’d just tried to respect the space she wanted after… well, after the operation.
Dillon let out a long breath. After spending most of his adult life trying to atone for a teenage mistake—and failing—he’d put everything about Maggie out of his mind for good.
Today, it looked like she wasn’t going to stay there.
Noon
Clutching her purse, Maggie climbed the steps leading to Elmhurst House. Flowers and shrubs along the sidewalk and chintz curtains on the windows and doors did their best to give the place a cheerful air. Still, the brick looked shabby in places, and weeds jabbed their unwelcome fingers through the asphalt parking lot. The sign above the door needed a new coat of paint. A vacant-eyed man sat in one of the porch chairs. He nodded as Maggie passed, but whether it was a greeting or simply the accent to a beat inside his head, she couldn’t be sure.
She signed in at the front desk and took a visitor’s pass. Then she made her way to the back parlor, her mother’s favorite room in the spacious residence. A nurse Maggie didn’t recognize stood near the door, head bent close to an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Maggie scanned the space, taking in the wing-backed chairs, the dusty piano in the corner, and the prints of beaches and birds that hung on the walls. The air, heavy with perfume and the smell of stale medicine, made her throat close up. She took her time, letting her gaze fall on the details of the room though she knew them by heart.
Hillary Doyle sat in the far corner of the parlor, facing the window. Maggie deliberately took the long way around the room and tried to work up her courage. She patted her sides and smoothed imaginary wrinkles from her clothes. Halfway there, she stopped to rescue a vase teetering too close to a table edge. Still, she arrived at her mother’s side too soon.
“Hi, Ma.”
The thin woman with bobbed auburn hair didn’t answer. Her eyes stared ahead, unblinking. Lips moved with little pats and puffs as she chewed on words without letting them out. Bare feet poked from beneath a wrinkled denim dress. Every fingernail on one hand was painted in pale pink polish. The other five fingers remained bare, with nails chewed down to skin and cuticles stained with dried blood.
Oh, God. Please let her know who I am. Today of all days, I need that. I need her.
“Ma? It’s Maggie.” She laid a hand on her mother’s arm.
At the touch, Hillary started and pushed her hair back from her forehead. She turned toward Maggie with a small jerking motion. Then a strange light began to glow in her face. Her cheeks pinked. Her lips curved up. It was as if a switch had flipped somewhere in the wiring of her mother’s brain. No matter how many times she saw it happen, it still astounded Maggie that her mother could be confused one moment and her old, sane self the next.
“Maggie! You caught me on a bad day.” Hillary brushed at a damp spot on her dress with an embarrassed laugh. “I spilled iced tea down the front of myself at breakfast.” The words were careful, deliberate, as if she were snipping them off like thin bits of thread. But they were coherent, to Maggie’s relief. Coherent and lilting in the gentle cadence she remembered from childhood. The sliver of fear inside her heart fell away.
“This is lovely, you know,” her mother went on. She gestured toward the window. “Just lovely.”
Maggie wasn’t sure if she meant the visit or the morning or the view of the lawn outside. Or the color of the curtains. Or a memory running around inside her mother’s head. But she smiled all the same. “It is, isn’t it?” Maggie pulled a chair close and let her purse slide to the ground. One nervous foot bounced on the faded carpet.
“You’re early today.”
“I know. And I’m sorry I didn’t let you know sooner that I was coming. It was…sort of last minute.” She hid one hand beneath her leg and crossed her fingers that the next few minutes would be easy. That her mother wouldn’t slip off to a private world halfway through the conversation.
“Ma, I wanted to ask you a couple of things. About Dillon.”
Hillary’s eyes moved down toward her lap, where her fingers moved in random patterns. “He was such a good-looking man.”
Maggie might have argued with that on another day, but she nodded and hurried on. “Do you know where he is now? Is he still living in Boston?”
The woman began to sniffle, and a single tear rolled down to the tip of her nose, where it balanced without falling. “I miss him so much.”
“Me too,” Maggie lied. “That’s why I wondered if you knew where I could find him.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Hillary said, with such sadness in her voice that Maggie wanted to cry herself. “I thought you knew. He’s gone.”
Maggie froze. “What do you mean, gone?”
She can’t mean dead. She can’t mean that. I would have heard something. Someone would have found me and told me
.
Hillary’s gaze found Maggie’s and held it. “He died. On October eighth. In a car accident.”
Maggie let herself breathe again. “That’s John you’re talking about. Your second husband.”
He drove himself into a telephone pole after one of his nightly stops at Lester’s Bar and Grill,
she added silently.
Eight years ago
.
Hillary began to cry. Her shoulders shook and tears ran down both cheeks. She made no sound.
“I’m sorry,” Maggie said, not sure whether she was angrier with herself for upsetting her mother or for not directing the conversation in the right way. She patted Hillary’s hand and waited for the crying jag to pass.
The clock above the unused mantel struck twelve-thirty, and Maggie shifted in her chair. She had so much to do, so much to take care of, and no time. Never any time. She dug a tissue out of her purse and wiped away her mother’s last tears.
“Do you remember Dillon? John’s son?”
Hillary’s eyes watered again, but the tears stayed where they were. “Of course I do. Troublemaker, that one was. I was so glad when he made it out of school without killing himself on his motorcycle.”
Maggie grinned. Now they were both talking about the same person. “Yeah. Do you know where he is now? You told me once that he’d moved back East, started a business.”
Hillary frowned. “Yes. I do remember that. That was so long ago, though.”
Please remember, Ma, Maggie willed. Remember something. Anything. She waited.
Hillary’s fingers scratched at her collarbone, pulling the dress away from her pale skin. “It’s hot in here.”
Maggie’s took her mother’s hands in both of hers. “Tell me about Dillon. What kind of business did he start?”
The switch flipped again. Calm, clear eyes focused on her daughter as Hillary spoke. “A landscaping business, of course. I can’t remember what he called it. Something silly. Something that rhymed…or…I don’t know. I told him to change the name, but I don’t think he ever did. Stubborn man, you know. Like his father.”
Maggie felt sweat dribbling down her spine. She didn’t want to talk about Dillon, the person. She didn’t want to think about him as having emotions or personality traits that could get under your skin. She didn’t want to remember the crinkles around his eyes or the way his hair flopped down his back. She didn’t want to recall the way he’d teased her and let her tag along until she got too big and it embarrassed him to admit he had a kid sister. She didn’t want to think about him at all, except in the sense that maybe he could bail her out of her financial troubles. She didn’t want a brother again. She didn’t need one. She just needed someone with a few thousand dollars. Someone who owed her a favor. Dillon did.
“Is he living in Boston?” But Maggie had waited too long. Hillary turned back to the window, where she stared with a gaze so ferocious that she might have been watching the second coming outside or the end of the world. For all Maggie knew, she probably was.
“Ma?”
But the conversation was over. Hillary hummed under her breath and said nothing else.
One corner of Maggie’s mouth twitched in frustration. She stood, kissed her mother goodbye, and let herself out the back door, dropping her visitor’s pass in the torn cardboard box.
A landscaping business, huh?
It was small, but it was something. Maggie pulled out her cell phone as she slid into her car. Thunder rumbled a warning above her as she put the Honda into gear and headed for home.
“Neve? Do me a favor. Get a listing of all the landscaping businesses in Boston. Suburbs, too.” She’d start there and work her way out. “Print it out for me. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” She skidded through a yellow light and headed toward Hart’s Falls, muttering a prayer under her breath and eyeing the clock with every turn she made.
*
Twenty-seven minutes later, Maggie careened back into the gravel drive of Doyle Designs. She turned off the engine, swigged a warm diet soda left over from yesterday, and picked up her cell phone again. She had the other number programmed in, as well. Unfortunately. Clutching the receiver in a hand slippery with sweat, she punched the button and waited for the Bay Bank manager to pick up. She had to buy some time. Even a day or so.
Through the front window of her house, she could see Neve hunched over the keyboard, peering at the computer screen and downing ginger ale.
What’s wrong with her?
Maggie wondered, pressing her cheek to the phone.
Is she getting sick
? Now that she thought about it, Neve had been looking rather pale the last couple of days. God, she hoped her assistant wasn’t coming down with some sort of late-spring flu. She needed everyone in her corner right now, all the moral support she could muster.
Maggie slid out of the car and glanced at the farmhouse across the street. There, the six-year-old Carvalho twins played in the yard, ponytails coming loose and blowing in the wind. She fluttered her fingers and the girls waved back, four baby starfish splayed in hello. The pain that stung Maggie every now and again spread through her chest. Children. How she would have loved to have them, someday, but—
“Mrs. Doyle? How may I help you?” A deep, raspy voice broke into her thoughts. Thankfully.
“It’s Miss,” she corrected, before she realized that she should probably be more respectful to the man who held her only chance at avoiding foreclosure. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I mean, I’m not married.”
If I were, if I had a second income, do you think I’d be in this situation?
“Anyway, the reason I called is that—”
“Yes, I have your file in front of me.”
Uh oh
, Maggie thought.
He sounds too cool. Too professional
. Her heart dropped a notch.
“And I have to say, you’re not a prime candidate for an extension. Not at this point. Not from what I can see.”
Maggie took a deep breath. “Let me explain,” she began. “I can make the payments. I can. I just need a little time to get the money together. I’m a designer, see, and I have a lot of projects out right now, but…”
“Miss Doyle.” His voice was firm. Quiet.
She traced a spot of peeling paint on the door panel. She knew what he was about to say.
“I’m sure your lawyer has explained your options to you. Looking at your tax records and your income statements for the last six months—”
“It was a rough winter,” she interrupted. But she knew he didn’t care. His job was to run a bank. To collect mortgage payments. To take away homes and businesses, even dreams, if he had to.
“Well, I can appreciate that,” the man said, sounding almost human for a moment. “But for our bank to work out an amended payment schedule, we need to have your last three months’ mortgage payments in full. Plus the current one, which is due…”
She could hear him shuffling papers.
“…ah, today, actually. If you were up to date, see, then we could make changes for the future.”
The future
. Maggie would have laughed if her heart hadn’t ached so. She could barely see through the next twenty-four hours, yet this man was talking about weeks, months, years of her life that he could change with a single signature in his sterile Boston office.
“I understand.”
He cleared his throat. “Your attorney has notified you of the full amount owed, I believe? Including late fees, it totals fifteen thousand, four hundred and eighty dollars. Do you…ah…have that money?”
She wound two fingers into her hair and tugged at the curls. “Yes,” she said suddenly. “I mean, I will have. By this time tomorrow.”
What are you doing?
a bodiless voice screamed inside her head.
Why are you telling lies? It will only get you into deeper troubl
e. Rain began spattering onto the back of her neck as if God himself were shaking a finger at her sin.
“Really?” The bank manager’s voice brightened a little. “Well, in that case, we might be able to do something for you. If you can wire the money to the bank by tomorrow, I can put a stop on the foreclosure proceedings.”
“You’re open on Saturday?” she asked in a tiny voice.
“Our main branch is, yes. Until one,” he said again.
“Okay,” Maggie answered. “Then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll have it to you by tomorrow. I promise.”
He switched her over to a secretary who gave her a long list of numbers, including the precise amount she owed and directions for wiring the money up to Boston. Maggie jotted it all down on an envelope she’d grabbed from her glove box and said a swift goodbye.
One o’clock, huh
? She stared at her reflection in the car’s side mirror. A round, freckled face stared back at her, with too-thin lips and crazy red hair, the bane of her existence. She’d often wondered if her temperament followed the fiery color of her curls, if she hadn’t had any choice but to be stubborn and odd and independent from the moment she’d popped into the world almost thirty years ago.