Lighthouse Reef (A Pelican Pointe Novel Book 4) Read online

  Once the pilot lifted the door and Logan descended the steps, he had a brief urge to get on his knees and kiss the California ground, even if it was nothing more than asphalt. It had been twelve years since he’d set foot on California soil. But by the time someone pointed him in the direction of his waiting pickup, a four-door, champagne-colored F-150 Ford, luckily the temptation to make an ass out of himself had completely passed.

  He flung his garment bag over his shoulder and headed in the direction of the truck. As the rest of his luggage, the tools he’d brought, and other personal belongings were transferred from the belly of the chartered jet then loaded into the pickup, he spotted a Native American man, wearing civilian clothes, walking his way. Logan assumed the man was Ethan Cody. It had to be Cody because the deputy sheriff was the only one who knew he’d be here at this time and place.

  The two men eyed each other before Cody held out his hand in welcome. “Logan Donnelly?”

  “And you must be Deputy Cody,” Logan assumed, reaching out his good left hand to awkwardly take Cody’s extended right. “How’s the newest addition to the Cody family?”

  Ethan stared briefly at the cast on the man’s broken right wrist and hand. But at the question about his four-month-old son, he grinned from ear to ear. “Nate? Nate’s outstanding. He’s gained another ten ounces since his last checkup. Kid eats all the time.”

  Logan picked up on the man’s body language. “What’s up? I mean I’m glad to have a welcoming committee but a little surprised at the gesture.”

  “There’s something…uh...I probably should’ve mentioned it before now. It’s why I decided to meet your plane. We need to talk. What happened to your hand?” Ethan finally asked. “Won’t it be a little difficult to remodel a lighthouse with a broken wrist?”

  “It’s a long story,” Logan answered while studying the other man. “That’s why I’ll have to hire help…locally. What’s this about, Deputy?” Logan asked, about the time he saw Cody scrunch up his mouth.

  Ethan shifted his feet. “Uh…there’s something you need to know.” He scratched his chin looking more uncomfortable by the minute. “I’m no longer a deputy, not since the first of the year.”

  “I see…the book thing? You could’ve said something in the email,” Logan grumbled.

  “I should have,” Ethan agreed. “But to tell you the truth, I felt like it was something I needed to tell you in person once you got here, especially since you’d already made up your mind to buy the lighthouse.”

  “Then I need the name of the guy taking your place.”

  “Man by the name of Garver, Dan Garver. Been a deputy for about three years now, green and inexperienced as they come, but a decent enough guy. Not only that, Pelican Pointe is new territory for him. Dan hasn’t even moved into town yet. But he will once he grows tired of making that long commute back and forth in traffic every day from Santa Cruz to come in and handle disputes.”

  Not much Logan could do about the turnover or what had already taken place so he simply nodded and grunted. But Ethan still seemed uncomfortable. “What else is on your mind?” Logan asked.

  Ethan ran a hand through his raven-black hair he’d taken to wearing even longer than he had when he’d been a member of law enforcement. “You needn’t bug Garver about anything. For one, the guy knows nothing about your particular case. Do you remember my brother Brent? He’s still county sheriff. If you want, I’d be happy to take you over there now, sit down with him and go over the case file. But…nothing has really changed since our last email. And since I no longer have access to—”

  “You want me to meet with your brother?” Logan surmised. “Not a bad plan. It’s just—”

  “What? You want to do it another time?” That surprised Ethan. “You seemed eager enough in your emails.”

  “I do appreciate the offer, but right now, I’m so beat I can’t think straight. After landing at Kennedy this morning from Rome, I hopped a charter here. I haven’t slept in almost…” Logan looked at his watch. “Twenty plus hours. I don’t even think I can manage to stay awake on the drive to the B & B tonight. So if it’s all the same to you, if the offer still goes, how about I check into a hotel here in Santa Cruz for the night, grab some shuteye, go in first thing in the morning, sit down with Brent then? That way I have a chance to get my thoughts together. Right now, they’re scattered as hell.”

  “Sure. That’ll work. He’s aware you’re here now and will have the file all ready to go. But again, I emphasize, nothing’s changed in all these years.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Logan took out a rubber band from his jacket pocket, neatly ran his hands through his thick shoulder-length chestnut mane, bunching it up. He threaded the strands through the band, and then wound it tight into a neat ponytail. “But maybe I can change that.”

  “Look, I know how you feel—”

  Logan held up a hand. “Stop right there. Unless you’ve been holding back something personal in your emails, you couldn’t possibly know how I feel.”

  “Okay, you’re right. I don’t know. But you can’t expect after all these years to show up and answers will fall into your lap.”

  “The answers certainly haven’t fallen into the laps of law enforcement, now have they?”

  Ethan sucked in a frustrated breath. “After all these years, I’m not sure what you’re looking to find. But promise me when you go poking around, and I know you will, you won’t get a case of the stupids.”

  “Right now, my only claim to stupid includes buying a lighthouse and getting hyped because I think I can refurbish it to the way it was. Just ask the Lighthouse Restoration Commission. Even they aren’t so sure about me. But you’re probably right. After all, what could I possibly turn up after all these years that law enforcement hasn’t?”

  Logan’s sardonic tone didn’t go unnoticed by Ethan. “Just use common sense. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I’m here to restore what I hope to make into my home and studio, nothing more.”

  “Sure you are. If you plan to spend the night, you’ll want the best place Santa Cruz has to offer.”

  “I thought I’d try the Brinkerhouse.”

  Ethan laughed at that. “They tore down the Brinkerhouse more than a decade ago. These days it’s The Portola. Do you need me to draw you a map?”

  “I guess I do.”

  But about that time Ethan slapped Logan on the back. “By the way, how does it feel to be back in California?”

  “Right now…exhausting.”

  “How does it feel to own a lighthouse?”

  “I’m a California real estate owner...and that feels…like I’ve finally come home.”

  Pelican Pointe buzzed with the news. Some damn fool had gone and thrown hard-earned money away on the Smuggler’s Bay Lighthouse. The same lighthouse that hadn’t worked since Kennedy sat in the oval office.

  Not only that, but rumor had it old man Hartley, the town’s only lawyer, had finally gone senile and hired himself a replacement, a woman that didn’t even have a regular law degree but one she’d earned over the Internet.

  At the Hilltop Diner, a throwback to a 1950s malt shop, both events had given the longtime residents something to mull over. While they sipped coffee and dug into Margie Rosterman’s homemade cherry pie, they wondered what the hell the world was coming to.

  How could anyone think bringing back that dilapidated lighthouse was a good idea? In tough economic times like now what idiot would throw away his hard-earned cash on something so ridiculous? But then rumor had it that the guy that bought the place was some hippie artist with hair down to his ass and wore a gold hoop earring in his left ear. That’s probably why he didn’t know squat about finances. He certainly didn’t know anything about the town since the idiot man had bought it in an Internet auction put up by the Coast Guard.

  And how could anyone in town rightly trust having their wills drawn up by a ditzy woman who didn’t know a classroom from a computer, or a bequest from a codicil?
>
  The whole thing had tongues wagging from Ocean Street to Main. Ever since Kinsey Wyatt had first checked into the Promise Cove B & B three weeks earlier and waltzed into Pelican Pointe hoping to sweet-talk Hartley into a job, the townspeople hadn’t been able to stop talking about the two newcomers, one of whom hadn’t even set foot in town yet.

  But Kinsey Wyatt had. She’d heard all the scuttlebutt. In fact, Aaron Hartley, her new boss, had come clean about it her first day on the job. But today, he’d handed her the brand-new, shiny nameplate with black lettering that sat on her desk and read “Kinsey Wyatt” engraved at the top and “Attorney At Law” underneath. Kinsey had waited a little more than two weeks to get it. Since she’d just started her third week of employment, she was still settling in.

  It had taken her three interviews, which meant three trips down from her native San Francisco Bay area to convince the old lawyer she knew enough about wills and trusts and deeds to fill his shoes once he decided to hang up his shingle.

  But after living here for a couple of weeks now Kinsey was convinced Hartley had finally relented for one simple reason. He’d given her the job because he hadn’t been able to persuade any other seasoned attorney, or newly graduated law student for that matter, to relocate to Pelican Pointe.

  The reason she’d been hired didn’t matter much to Kinsey. Because she’d worked too long and too hard to get here, she had decided weeks earlier to accept the stingy salary Hartley had offered her though and tough it out. The money would barely cover the rent. But who else would she find willing to give her a chance to practice law in the State of California with a degree from an online university?

  Because of the paltry paycheck, Kinsey had already decided to fill out an application at Murphy’s Market to supplement her income. Murphy’s needed a cashier and that was one thing Kinsey knew how to do with her eyes closed. Since she’d worked for one of the local Bay area grocery store chains since the day she’d turned sixteen, Kinsey was good with customers. Not only that, she knew how to work hard, knew something firsthand about making ends meet.

  At twenty-eight, Kinsey Wyatt had seen her share of tough times. Born to a single mom who had worked her butt off as a housekeeper for the Nob Hill crowd in the Bay area, Kinsey grew up learning how to stretch a dollar.

  In fact, growing up with a mom like Ellie Wyatt, Kinsey had learned a lifetime of frugal habits. When Ellie wasn’t scrubbing out other people’s toilets, sometimes for twelve hours a day working as a domestic, she picked up odd jobs cleaning office buildings at night. It wasn’t unusual for Ellie to put in an eighteen-hour day. In those early years, Ellie always brought her daughter along to work with her, at least until Kinsey had started school. As Kinsey grew older, mother and daughter might work until midnight only to get up to do it all over again the next day.

  During those early years, Ellie Wyatt had taught her daughter one thing. Rely on no one but yourself. Because Ellie believed in being her daughter’s role model, she practiced what she preached. She avoided getting mixed up with men. Of course, that mantra was mostly due to the fact that Ellie had never quite gotten over losing her heart to what she often referred to as the no-good, married son of a bitch who’d fathered her little girl. She’d never asked or received a dime of child support from the court system either. But then, Ellie couldn’t very well get a dollar out of a dead man. Not since the lying bastard had been killed in a car accident almost six months to the day after Kinsey had celebrated her first birthday.

  That meant raising her daughter alone fell on Ellie’s shoulders. Even if it was damned near impossible to do that on a maid’s salary, especially in pricey San Francisco, Ellie Wyatt had managed to survive and so had her daughter. They hadn’t even owned a car—until one of the families Ellie had faithfully worked for over the years rewarded their housekeeper—by leaving her a beat-up, old Ford Fairmont in their last will and testament. Kinsey had been thirteen at the time and remembered full well how they had celebrated when the estate lawyer had handed Ellie the keys. They’d climbed into the Ford and driven up and down the streets of their Tenderloin neighborhood until well past dark, stopping only to fill up the tank with gas and treat themselves to chocolate sundaes.

  In reality, the day-to-day struggles of mother and daughter might have been what contributed to how close the two were. That’s why when Ellie had been diagnosed with breast cancer in Kinsey’s senior year of high school, Kinsey had put her dreams of one day going to San Jose State and getting into law school on the backburner.

  In place of that, Kinsey had crammed her days with college prep and advanced placement courses figuring she’d be able to head off to college after her mother beat the big C. But when Ellie’s illness dragged on and on, and bills mounted, Kinsey stayed on at the grocery store. She also picked up odd jobs to make up for the fact that Ellie worked less and less as the disease progressed.

  Kinsey had to settle for sandwiching a sometimes sixty-hour work week into a community college closer to home. Being closer allowed Kinsey the flexibility to get Ellie to and from chemo therapy treatments, countless doctor appointments, and group support sessions. Even with everything happening, Kinsey managed to earn her Associate’s Degree in record time, and take whatever courses she could find online to finish out a four-year degree.

  But it still didn’t get her into law school.

  Never one to give up—Kinsey stumbled across another in-road to get where she wanted to go—she could enroll in law classes online. Once she learned that the State of California would let her take the Bar exam without an actual four-year degree from a traditional university, she had another goal. Even though online law degrees didn’t count in the eyes of the American Bar Association, if Kinsey could pass the California State Bar, she could practice law—by the back door method. She studied night and day and took every law course the online colleges offered. Then to her surprise, on her very first try, Kinsey Wyatt did what many law school grads couldn’t do. She passed the Bar. In order to practice law though, she had few options. One was to set up her own law office. Since her finances didn’t allow for such grand plans, if she could find someone to take a chance on hiring her, it would be a good way to gain valuable hands-on experience.

  It wouldn’t be easy. But then nothing had ever been easy for the Wyatt women.

  Six days after learning she’d passed the Bar though, she’d had to bury her mother. During that last year of her mother’s life, Ellie Wyatt had put up one helluva prolonged battle with the disease, which unfortunately had also racked up medical bills that resembled the national debt.

  For the past year, every dime Kinsey had earned and scraped together had gone to paying off the doctors and hospital. She wasn’t done, of course, but Kinsey came from a work ethic that rivaled none.

  So if she had to get three jobs here in Pelican Pointe to survive, that’s what she would do. If she had to stand on her head every day to convince Aaron Hartley she could write a will, she’d do that as well.

  In fact, when she got off work this afternoon, she intended to stop by Murphy’s to fill out that application. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d held down two jobs to make ends meet.

  With the nameplate, front and center, sitting prominently on her desk for everyone to see that happened to walk through Aaron Hartley’s front door—and there had been plenty of curious townspeople come to check her out—she felt like she’d finally arrived.

  Even though Kinsey had only been in town a little more than three weeks, she was still staying out at the Promise Cove B & B, which was getting expensive. Finances dictated she couldn’t stay there indefinitely. She wanted a place of her own anyway. Despite the fact Nick and Jordan had given her a major discount, the bill each week still strained her bank balance. Since her goal was to find a little house to rent close to town so she could walk to work, she had to watch her pennies.

  Thanks to Hayden Cody, the woman who ran Hidden Moon Bay Books and was married to the former deputy sheriff, Ethan Cod
y, Kinsey had a lead on that score. Since Ethan was now a published author, he’d given up his job in law enforcement several months back to stay at home to write full time and help with the couple’s new baby boy, Nate. And according to the new mother, the Codys were actively looking to move into a bigger place. Kinsey hoped she could talk them into letting her lease their little house. The Cody house not only offered a view of the water glistening off Smuggler’s Bay, it was the cutest little bungalow on the block.

  If the Codys changed their minds, there was one other empty house available just down the street from Hartley, on Landings Bay. It had belonged to a woman whose body had been found last year floating in the ocean. Since Aaron handled the probate, Kinsey had the inside track on what the Carr family planned to do with the house. But her boss had already indicated—twice—that Sissy Carr’s family intended to sell the property, not to rent it out.

  That left Kinsey back to square one when it came to finding an affordable place in town in her price range she could rent.

  “Want me to get out the can of Pledge so you can polish that thing?” Aaron Hartley teased from outside her “office,” interrupting Kinsey’s train of thought.

  Her “office” consisted of a small alcove with no door directly across from the man’s own study located inside Hartley’s place of residence, a Tudor style house that doubled as his business. It was anything but a typical home office setup. Aaron had furnished the little space with a pedestal desk, a laptop, a bank of waist-high filing cabinets filled with forty years’ worth of client information at her disposal, and a skinny credenza which held a collection of her own set of law books. Kinsey not only felt completely comfortable here, she felt like she’d fallen into her dream job.

  When she looked up at her seventy-eight-year-old boss, she couldn’t help feeling a little intimidated. Despite his repeated efforts to try to make her believe his mind was slipping, she knew better. The man could recite business and personal law backwards and forwards in his sleep. His knowledge of estate planning would be a go-to source for years to come.