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But from her reception desk angled in a corner of the upper gallery, Ella saw him before he’d taken the first step down the curving staircase to the first floor.
“You can’t go out in this weather without a hat, Mr. St. Cloud. Here, take my umbrella.”
“I’m fine, Ella.”
Sylvie strolled out of her office with a smile threatening her lips, ostensibly to turn toward the butler’s pantry–type coffee room, but she hesitated at the upper stairway rail. Hale gave her a “Don’t go there” look, which she ignored, and then she had to cut off some laughter when she saw the lavender umbrella Ella was holding out to Hale.
“We can’t afford to have the boss come down with the flu or worse,” Ella told him. “You’re the engine around here, Mr. St. Cloud.”
“It’s Hale,” he told her for about the thousandth time. Her mannerisms and rigid office protocol tickled Declan, who flirted outrageously with her, but they just made Hale feel tired and impatient.
He glared again at Sylvie, who simply lifted her hands and turned away, her shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter. Though Hale had no interest in Sylvie other than as his right-hand woman, he sometimes wondered why he couldn’t have chosen someone more like her as a mate than Kristina. She seemed, at least as well as he could ascertain, to have a strong sense of herself and what she wanted and where she was going. Kristina, on the other hand, was losing confidence daily, and he didn’t know what, if anything, he could do about it.
It was all he could do to circumvent the lavender umbrella as he headed downstairs. He was just about to push through the glass double doors to the outside and dash across the parking lot to his SUV when his cell phone started singing the default ring he’d chosen for his sister-in-law. Grabbing it from his pocket, he glanced at the caller: Savannah.
“Hey, Savvy,” he answered as he gauged the strength of the rain. A deluge. Maybe he’d been too hasty in ignoring Ella’s umbrella.
“Hi, Hale. I need to talk to you some more about the Donatella homicides. Go over some Bancroft Bluff records again. Sometime today convenient for you?”
That caught him up. He’d been expecting to hear something about the baby. “Something happen?”
“We’re going over the case again, and I volunteered to talk to you and your grandfather again, in fact everyone from your side of the partnership associated with the Bancroft Bluff project.”
“Ahh . . .”
“Would you rather have someone else?” she asked, misinterpreting his reluctance.
“No. Hell.” He made a face. It was just that the last thing he wanted to do was rake all that up again. Not that he didn’t want to find the killer. It was enough to freeze the blood the way the Donatellas had been executed, and it filled him with rage whenever he thought of the person who’d taken the lives of his friends. If going over all their testimony and files again would help, fine. “My grandfather should be in this afternoon. How does one o’clock sound?”
“Can we make it two?” she suggested. “At your offices.”
“That’ll work,” he said.
With that he ran out to his TrailBlazer, hitting the remote several times and reaping the reward of flashing lights, which let him know the doors would be open. He slammed himself inside, then switched on the ignition as beaded water broke and ran down the sleeves of his jacket, and drips slid down his neck and under his collar.
He drove first to the residential demolition site on the Promenade, the walkway that ran in front of Seaside’s oceanfront houses. Finding a parking spot across the street, he waited a few moments, looking at the house they were about to tear down, with its once proud, now tired and worn wooden siding and porch. It had been a very nice home once, but years of pounding wind and rain and sand had beaten it down. The new owners wanted something modern and gleaming, and though Hale was a fervent believer in giving the customer what they wanted, in this case he’d tried to talk them into saving something of the original beach cottage architecture to keep with the surroundings. His advice had fallen on deaf ears.
Seeing the new owners, the Carmichaels, he climbed from his car and jogged across the street, meeting them on the front porch. They were young and wealthy, and Ian’s grandfather was friends with Declan. Hale shook hands with both Ian and Astrid, who was six months pregnant. He could hardly talk about the house at all for all the questions Astrid asked him about his “own” pregnancy. How was Savannah feeling? How was Kristina doing? Were they excited? Had they picked out any names? Did they think Savannah would go past the due date? How late did they plan to go before asking about being induced?
“I don’t really know,” Hale admitted when confronted with this last question.
“I bet you’re just so excited,” she declared. “Oh, my God. If I was as close as you are . . .” She made a squealing sound and looked delightedly to her husband.
Ian put an arm around her and asked Hale, “So, when’s the demolition?”
“Should be next week, barring unforeseen circumstances.” This was old news, and Ian was clearly just trying to turn the conversation away from babies and to something else.
But Astrid would have none of it. “As soon as my little girl comes along, we’ll have to get together. If you move closer to Seaside, they could go to the same schools together. You should really consider it.”
“Leave him alone,” Ian said good-naturedly. “Now, about that outdoor planking. You don’t think it should be wood?”
“Not if you want it to last,” Hale said, leading them through the house, up the stairs, and out to the deck that overlooked the ocean. They discussed the merits of some of the new products on the market. Then Astrid brought the conversation back to babies, and by the time Hale left, he had a mountainous headache. No breakfast this morning, and he needed food.
He left them and drove into Seaside, heading down Broadway and crossing the bridge to stop at the Bridgeport Bistro to pick up a Dungeness crab and Havarti sandwich on an onion bun and a Coke to go. He took them back to his office and ate at his desk. Ella had clucked at him when he’d returned, his dark hair slick with rain, and for half a second he’d seriously thought about acting like he was shivering and hacking up a lung just to see what she would do. Instead, he’d shut his office door and settled at his desk, and that was where Declan found him when he knocked lightly on the panels, then stuck his head inside.
“Did you pick me up a sandwich, too?” he asked, seeing the remnants of the waxed paper that had been wrapped around the sandwich and pinned with a toothpick.
“You need to call me and let me know.”
