Part 3 (1/2)

Nick pulled from the kiss and gave her his ”Evie eye.”

She shook a finger his way. ”You get five points for fuel conservation, Boy Toy, and minus ten for noise pollution.”

Nick shook his head. ”Love you, too, Meyers.”

I chuckled, leaned into him, and noticed, in one of my upstairs windows, Dante crossing his arms and frowning down on us.

Hah, a jealous ghost. What a spook.

A minute later, I spotted Dad's six-year-old Volvo, and behind him, Aunt Fiona in her 1963 Corvette Sting Ray. The ultrarare one with the split window. I wasn't sure what the original color might have been, but suns.h.i.+ne over the years had mellowed it to a warm purplish red.

I surmised that her car was one of two reasons why she and Dad didn't get along. One: she and my mother were witches together, which/witch Dad would rather forget and didn't know I knew. And two: Aunt Fiona owned a car that my practical (read: stuffed s.h.i.+rt, though you didn't hear that from me) father coveted, but would never lower his frugal, Connecticut Yankee standards to buy.

Both reasons amused me.

After quick h.e.l.los, conversation being stilted between Dad and Aunt Fee, we headed for my shop. ”Nick?” I asked. ”Can you help me take in these boxes?”

”What are they?” Eve wanted to know.

”Vintage-and I use the word loosely-donations from our neighbors.”

Everyone grabbed a box and together we brought them in. ”Put them in the first hea.r.s.e stall,” I said.

After we finished stowing boxes, my father indicated the interior of my shop. ”So what do you think?”

No longer the storm cloud who'd growled when I told him I was quitting my well-paying, prestigious job in New York to open a vintage dress shop, he asked my opinion with pride.

”Dad, it's gorgeous.”

If I hadn't been forced to work out my two weeks' notice, he might never have approved my foray into self-employment. But making him Clerk of the Works while I was gone netted me a beautiful building and a father who now respected my career move.

He rocked on his heels. ”Amazing what a construction crew forced to answer to a stubborn academic can accomplish.”

Nick slapped him on the back.

”I didn't know you had it in you,” Aunt Fiona said. ”Good job, Harry.”

Working together had equalized our relations.h.i.+p. Dad wasn't treating me like his ten-year-old mothering her siblings, and I wasn't feeling sorry for him.

The exercise had taught me that his aimless-widower and absentminded-professor routines appeared only when his comfort was at stake. A ploy I would swallow no longer.

Harry Cutler was as vibrant and sharp as ever. He'd proven it by acing my renovations. ”Did you have a hard time getting the hea.r.s.e upstairs?” I asked. ”I wish I'd seen it.”

My father looked toward the anomaly in my ceiling. ”All I did was watch,” he said, but it was amazing.

Huge, double doors were cut between the two floors. Upstairs, you could grab iron rings to haul each half door back and look down on the first floor.

The block and tackle hanging from the ceiling above the double doors were used to haul things, like hea.r.s.es, up there for storage. The construction crew had done exactly that before beginning construction on the lower level.

As a result of the architectural anomaly, I'd given up on the idea of having a finished ceiling down here and had the exposed boards cleaned, stained, and finished.

I liked the look.

”That hea.r.s.e is incredible,” my father mused. ”The workmans.h.i.+p is impeccable.”

”It's collectible,” I said, tongue-in-cheek. ”I'll give you a great deal.”

Dad about choked, but when he recovered, he wore a familiar expression. ”From the day you're born till you ride the hea.r.s.e, ain't nothin' so bad it couldn't get worse. Author unknown.”

”A quote for every occasion,” I said. ”I shouldn't be surprised that you have one for a hea.r.s.e, as well.”

Eve hooked an arm through mine and dragged me toward the stairs. ”So let's go crack open the secret room, already.”

”Sc.r.a.p,” I said. ”We may need a flashlight or nine. There's no electricity up there, now that the circuits are split.”

Nick snapped his fingers. ”I'll be right back.”

He returned with a good-sized box and set it on the floor by the stairs. ”These are NiCad Fluorescent Area Lights, but I've used them, so I don't know how much battery time they have left. Here's where you switch them on. I hope they help.” He checked his watch and kissed me. ”Gotta go, ladybug. Got a plane to catch.”

”Stay safe,” I said, nervous as always when he and my brother, Alex, his partner, went off on an FBI a.s.signment.

My father nodded. ”Tell my son to take care, too. Alex and I talked on the phone this afternoon, but tell him, again, will you, Nick?”

”Yes, sir,” Nick said, shaking my father's hand.

Scary when you didn't know what kind of danger they were getting into. Nick kissed me once more outside, a ravenous ”I'll miss you like h.e.l.l” kiss.

I really didn't want to let him go-we were like s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing in the night-but I didn't have a choice. ”Will you be able to call this time?” I asked.

”I will if I can. I don't know yet where we're going.”

”And if you did, you wouldn't tell me.”

He tapped my nose, traced my lips, and walked away.

I stood in the doorway until his Humvee disappeared, then I turned to the people I loved, standing at the bottom of the stairs, watching me with concern.

”I'm fine,” I said. ”Alex and Nick will be, too. Let's go open the secret room.”

Six.

For me, elegance is not to pa.s.s unnoticed but to get to the very soul of what one is.

-CHRISTIAN LACROIX My father, carrying the box of NiCads, indicated that we ladies should precede him up the stairs.

”Ever the gentleman, Harry,” Fiona said, going first. She liked getting her kicks by baiting my father with slip-st.i.tched compliments that he could take either way.