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It was Laura's laughter she heard first after descending the stairs and wandering toward the south terrace. It made Margo stop. That's what had been missing the past couple of days, she realized. Laura's laughter. She'd been too tangled in her own miseries to notice. However Josh's presence got on her nerves, she had to be grateful—he'd made Laura laugh again. She was smiling when she stepped out and joined them.
"What's the joke?"
Josh merely leaned back with his water glass and studied her, but Laura reached for her hand. "Josh is always telling me some horrible secret crime he committed when we were kids. I think he does it to terrify me about what Ali and Kayla are pulling off under my nose."
"The girls are angels," Margo said as she sat down at the round glass table under an arbor of sweetly blooming wisteria. "Josh was the devil's spawn." She spread foie gras on a toast point and bit in. "What's the crime?"
"Do you remember that night when you and I went out to Seraphina's cliffs with Matt Bolton and Biff Milard? It was summer, we were just fifteen. Kate wasn't with us because she was a year younger and couldn't date yet."
Margo cast her mind back. "We double-dated with Matt and Biff a lot that summer. Until Biff tried to unhook your bra and you bloodied his nose."
"What?" Josh immediately came to attention. "What do you mean he tried to unhook your bra?"
"I'm sure you've attempted the maneuver once or twice, Josh," Margo said dryly.
"Shut up, Margo. You never told me he'd tried to…" His eyes took on a warrior's glint. "What else did he try?"
Laura sighed and decided she was enjoying the salmon cakes more than she'd anticipated. "Nothing worth you flying to Los Angeles to hunt him down and shoot him like a dog for. In any case, if I'd wanted him to unhook my bra, I wouldn't have punched him in the nose, would I? To get back to the story, tha
t was the night we heard Seraphina's ghost."
"Oh, right, I remember."
Margo helped herself to more pate. It was the Tiffany porcelain lunch service today, she noted. The Monet pattern with its cheerfully bright blue and yellow. And to set it off, a silver vase filled with yellow frangipani from the greenhouse. Her mother's touch, she thought. She'd used the same china, the same flowers when she allowed Margo to have the tea party she'd so longed for on her thirteenth birthday.
Was it, she wondered, her mother's quiet, unspoken way of welcoming?
With a shake, she brought herself back. "We were sitting on the cliffs necking."
"Define necking," Josh demanded.
She only smiled and stole one of the matchstick potatoes from his plate. "There was a full moon, and all this lovely light on the water. The stars were so huge and bright and the sea went on forever. Then we heard her. She was crying."
"Like her heart would break," Laura added. "It was intense, but very soft, like something carried up into the air. We were terrified and thrilled."
"And the guys were so spooked they forgot all about scoring and kept trying to get us back to the car. But we stayed. We could hear this whispering and moaning and crying. Then we heard her speak." Margo shivered remembering it. "In Spanish."
"I had to translate because you'd been too busy painting your nails in class to pay attention to Mrs. Lupez. She said, 'Find my treasure. It waits for love.'"
Even as Margo sighed, Josh was chuckling. "It took me three days to teach Kate how to say that without fumbling it.
The kid never had an ear for languages. We nearly fell off the ledge laughing when the two of you started to squeal."
Margo narrowed her eyes. "You and Kate?"
"We planned it for a week." Since she didn't seem that interested, he forked up her salmon cake and transferred it to his own plate. "She was feeling pretty left out when you two started dating. I got the idea when I came across her sulking on the cliffs. Everybody knew you two hung out there with Dumb and Dumber, and I thought it would cheer Kate up." He swallowed and grinned. "It did."
"If Mom and Dad had known you'd taken Kate scrambling down the cliffs to cling to a ledge at night, they'd have murdered you."
"It would have been worth it. It was all you two talked about for weeks after. Margo wanted to call in a psychic."
She winced. "It was just a suggestion."
"You started looking them up in the phone book," Josh reminded her. "And went down to Monterey and bought tarot cards."
"I was experimenting," she began before a laugh bubbled out. "Damn you, Josh, I blew every penny of my spending money that summer on crystals and palm reading when I'd been saving desperately for sapphire studs. It would have served you right if I'd stumbled on the secret of Seraphina's lost dowry."
"Never existed." He pushed his plate away before he ate more and regretted it. In any case, how could a man eat after that hoarse, sexy laugh of hers had driven a spike of lust into his gut?
