its owner pushed through to the narrow strip of overgrown grass on the carriage house side of the lilacs. She couldn’t have been more than six, a sturdy girl with coppery braids, freckles and blue eyes that were squinted as she frowned, hands on hips. She hadn’t yet seen Tess. “Come on, Tippy Tail.” She stamped a foot, frustrated and impatient now. “I won’t bother you! I’m your friend.”
Tess noticed something in the girl’s hair and realized it was an elaborate jeweled crown. She also wore denim overalls and a Red Sox T-shirt. Tess still had on her clothes from work, a suit that suggested creativity but also professionalism. She didn’t want to look too artsy and end up scaring off the kind of clients she needed in order to stay in business.
The girl turned and saw Tess, but she seemed neither surprised nor curious. She was obviously a girl with a mission. “Have you seen my cat?”
“No, I haven’t. Actually, I just got here myself.” Tess hadn’t dealt with many six-year-olds. “Is someone with you? Where’s your mother?”
“She’s in heaven.” The girl’s tone was matter-of-fact, as if she were giving the time. Tess pushed a hand through her hair. Lately, she’d been fretting about too much work, Ike Grantham and his carriage house and not enough about the rest of her life. She was thirty-four, and while she wasn’t sure about children she’d had damn rotten luck with men of late. “Where do you live?” she asked.
“Over there.” The girl pointed through the lilacs. “Harl’s watching me.”
Not very well, Tess thought. “Harl’s your baby-sitter?”
“Yep.”
“My name’s Tess. What’s yours?”
“Princess Dolly.” She gave her coppery braids a regal little toss.
“Princess? Really?”
“Yep.”
Tess relaxed slightly. A six-year-old who thought she was a princess was something she could relate to. “How did you come to be a princess?”
“Harl says I was born a princess.”
Whoever this Harl was, Tess wondered about his judgment when it came to kids. But what did she know? She glanced at her yard with its strip of overgrown grass. Lots of places a cat could hide. “I take it you lost your cat?”
Reminded of her mission, Princess Dolly raised her shoulders and let them fall in an exaggerated, dramatic shrug. “Yes. That Tippy Tail. She’s having kittens any day. Harl says I should leave her alone.”
Okay, Tess thought, one point for Harl. “What does Tippy Tail look like? If I see her, I can let you know.”
The girl thought a moment, her freckled nose scrunched up as she concentrated. “She’s gray, except for the white tip on her tail.” Her features relaxed, and she giggled suddenly, her eyes lighting up. “That’s why I named her Tippy Tail!”
“Makes sense. You should run along home. I imagine Harl will be looking for you.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s always looking for me.”
This, Tess didn’t doubt. “I can walk you home—”
“I can go by myself. I’m six.” She held up the five fingers of one hand and the index finger of the other hand to prove it.
Tess wasn’t arguing. “It was nice to meet you, Dolly.”
“Princess Dolly.”
“As you wish. Princess Dolly it is.”
The girl spun on her toes and squeezed back through the lilacs.
As independent as Princess Dolly seemed, she still was only six and shouldn’t be running around on her own, crown or no crown. If nothing else, Tess knew she should make sure Dolly got back to her royal palace and wasn’t lost or otherwise in the wrong place.
She started to pry apart the lilacs, but heard a crunch of gravel behind her, then a man’s voice. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She whipped around, realizing she looked as if she was spying on the neighbors. “I’m not doing anything,” she said, taking note of the man in her driveway. Tall, lean, dark, no-nonsense. His angular features, blue eyes and humorless look were straight out of the images she’d conjured of her nineteenth-century murderous ghost. But this man had on dusty work boots, jeans and a denim shirt, all definitely of this century. Good. A princess in the lilacs and a ghost in the driveway would have been more than she could handle.
“I’m looking for my daughter,” the man said. His tone was straightforward, but laced with an edge of fear. “She’s taken off after her cat.”
Tess managed a smile, hoping it would help relieve some of his obvious tension. “You must mean Princess Dolly and Tippy Tail, the gray cat with the white tip on her tail who’s to have kittens any day now. She was just here. The princess, not the cat. I sent her home about thirty seconds ago. She slipped through the lilacs.”
“Then I’ll be off. Thanks.” He started to turn, but added, “This is private property, you know. But go ahead and pick a few lilacs if that’s what you’re after.”
“It’s not. I’m Tess Haviland. I own the carriage house.”
Surprise flickered in his very blue eyes. “I see. Well, I’m Andrew Thorne. I own the house next door.”
“Thorne?”
“That’s right. Jedidiah was my grandfather’s grandfather. Enjoy.”
He retreated along the lilacs, not going through the middle of them the way his daughter had.
A Thorne. He’d obviously liked telling Tess that. Damn Ike. He could have warned her. But that wasn’t his style, any more than telling people he was off to climb mountains, explore rivers, sleep in a hammock on a faraway beach. He was a man who lived life on his own terms, and that, Tess supposed, was why, ultimately, she liked him.
But she’d rather he’d told her the neighbors were related to her ghost.
Using one of the keys in the envelope Lauren Montague had given her, Tess entered the carriage house through the side door, which led directly into a circa 1972 kitchen, complete with avocado-colored appliances. She hoped they worked. She could do fun things with an avocado stove and fridge.
She stopped herself. What was she thinking? She couldn’t afford to keep this place. She’d have to scrape to pay the tax bill, much less find any money for basic repairs and upkeep. The utilities bills must still have been sent to the Beacon Historic Project—she hadn’t seen an electric or a fuel bill. She’d have to straighten that out with Lauren Montague, whether she sold the carriage house or kept it.
This was exactly why she’d dithered for a year, Tess thought. She simply didn’t have the time or the money to deal with a nineteenth-century carriage house. Susanna was right. She should have insisted on cash.
She checked out the kitchen. Solid cabinets, worn counters, stained linoleum floor. Little mouse droppings. The fridge was unplugged. She rooted around behind
