Lighthouse Reef (A Pelican Pointe Novel Book 4) Page 6
Olivia Whitney piped in, “A bet? Oh yes, I think I’ll wager, too. What about you, Kay?”
Kay sighed, clearly annoyed with her sister. “Of for goodness sakes, we’ve been here two whole days and haven’t seen anything like a ghost. I’m not losing my money.” But when Olivia gave her a scowl that clearly said dare, Kay gave in. “Oh why not? She won’t leave me alone until I do.”
“You’re kidding?” Logan said as he looked around the table then zeroed in on Kinsey. “You should know up front, I’m not easily frightened, nor am I some snooty, uptight Boston woman who is easily upset if my stuff is moved around during the day.”
“Is that a yes or a no then?” Kinsey challenged, clearly backing the man into a corner.
“Fine,” Logan uttered.
Jordan sighed, eyeing the concerned on the faces of the Isaksons and the Whitney sisters. “It’ll be fine. Scott’s not a malevolent at all. You’ll be just fine here, more than fine,” Jordan repeated. “Nick and I are determined to see you enjoy your stay.” In an attempt to direct the conversation to less divisive topics, Jordan prompted, “Now, Mr. Isakson, why don’t you tell us again, what it is you do for a living over in Sacramento?”
Chapter Five
After taking a hot shower, as exhausted as he was from his trip, Logan had decided to settle into his antique-looking, king-sized bed with the hope of finishing John Grisham’s latest release, the one he’d picked up two days earlier in the Rome airport to read on the plane.
But surrounded by the color of melon walls a softer shade of ripe cantaloupe, he found himself studying the beach-themed photos that hung on the walls. There were pictures of craggy cliffs amid seashore landscapes. However, the one that caught his attention was a black and white of the Smuggler’s Bay Lighthouse in its prime. A group of workers stood around its base looking as if they were proud of the finished product. Logan estimated the date of the photograph to be either 1936 or ’37, which would fit with what he knew about its history. He studied the faces of each man, a dozen in all, and the way they were dressed. A sense of pride swelled inside his chest. His grandfather, tall and lean, stood in the center with his arm draped on the shoulders of the men standing on either side of him in obvious camaraderie. And why wouldn’t there be a sense of fellowship? The men had built the Smuggler’s Bay Lighthouse.
Logan wondered if he could make an offer for the group photo. There were other items placed around the B & B for sale. Paintings done by some woman named Lilly Seybold. Handcrafted necklaces of beads and stones strung together by a Drea Jennings. So why wouldn’t the photographs be up for sale as well?
His hostess had referred to his room as the Scallop Suite, mostly because it offered an attractive, hand-stenciled border with a series of calico and lion’s paw shells painted along the wall near the ceiling.
He was about to settle back into the pillows when he heard the unmistakable sound of what could only be described as a woman in the throes of passion coming through the walls. It could’ve been his imagination. But just in case, he slipped on his headphones anyway. This way, if the newlyweds got any louder he’d be able to put the activities going on beyond his room out of his head. It wouldn’t take much more of those kinds of sounds though to bring Kinsey Wyatt to mind.
He reminded himself he was done with feisty women. While the conscious mind grew more determined, the subconscious weakened.
His last thought before dropping off to sleep was Kinsey’s sexy legs, that off-the-shoulder top she’d worn at dinner. Letting the book fall to his chest, he snored softly with visions of slipping that lime green outfit off Kinsey Wyatt’s body and getting her out of those yoga pants.
Thoughts across the hallway from Logan Donnelly veered in a completely different direction. Kinsey got out her calculator. She tallied her monthly expenses, subtracted her income from Hartley and checked the balance in her checkbook. Even with the additional income from Murphy’s Market, she’d still be cutting it close each month.
But Kinsey had a plan.
She’d have to find her mettle and overlook what the town would think of her. If she planned to succeed here, she couldn’t let things like that matter. After all, hospital and doctor bills didn’t wait for the stars to line up. Desperate times required desperate measures.
Tomorrow at lunch, she’d go talk to the owner. For a week now, she’d heard a few rumors about an opening. Troy had told her as much. She’d have to bite the bullet, she supposed, and forget about nerves.
Unfortunately, Kinsey didn’t see any other way around dealing with her staggering debt.
A couple of hours later a noise woke Logan from a deep sleep. Either someone had come into his room or jet lag had caused him to hallucinate. A man stood at the foot of his bed fully dressed in an unbuttoned blue oxford shirt over a yellow Tee with his hands stuffed down in the pockets of khaki shorts. He wore his brown hair short in a military-style cut.
“How the hell did you get into my room?” Logan snarled at the man about the same time he reached for something, anything he could use for a weapon.
All of a once, his cell phone on the nightstand lit up and began to ring. “If you’re the fucking press, I’m going to sue your ass this time for harassment! I’m tired of this shit. Leave me the hell alone!”
“Not everything revolves around you,” the man said quietly. “You need to stop thinking it does. You might try opening your eyes, see what’s real and what isn’t.”
“What the hell does that even mean? I want you out of here. Now!”
But the man continued to stand where he was. “You need to remember that promise you made. Your grandmother expected more out of you.” With that comment, the man vanished into thin air.
Logan didn’t have time to bristle at the remark. He barely had time to blink. “How the hell do you know about that?” he roared at no one.
After scrubbing a hand over his face, Logan swung his feet to the floor and stood up. Jet lag aside, it had to have been a dream. Yeah, that had been it. He’d awakened in a strange place, had been confused for a few seconds before he came completely out of sleep.
But just to be on the safe side, he took a walk around his room, checking the bathroom first before bending down to peer underneath the bed.
There was no strange man lurking anywhere. He dragged on his jeans without buttoning them and started for the French doors. He swung one open so that he could step out onto the expansive wooden deck. Stars dotted the night sky. He strode to the railing and looked down into the courtyard.
Logan spotted the man who had just left his bedroom walking along the pathway edged with sunny daffodils and purple pansies. In daylight hours the flowers would burst with yellows and blues. Now they were merely shadows swaying in the night breeze. Logan watched as the infamous Scott he’d heard so much about at dinner, stopped and turned, looked up. Scott glowered at him.
Like an idiot, Logan glared back.
Kinsey’s words from dinner taunted him twofold. “If you don’t believe in ghosts, you will before you leave Promise Cove.”
In a span of less than four hours, Logan realized he’d just lost eighty bucks on a sucker’s bet. He shook his head. He’d have to dig deep and remember that old adage next time he was tempted to wager against the house.
Didn’t he know the odds always favored the home team?
The smell of bacon blended with hazelnut coffee drifted to Logan’s nostrils making him sit up in bed. His stomach rumbled in anticipation of breakfast.
Crawling out of bed, one glance at the French doors had him remembering last night’s encounter. Scott Phillips had been real or as real as any dream he’d ever had about his past. But Logan knew damn well he hadn’t been asleep when Scott had spoken to him.
He’d liked to have blamed the incident on mental strain, maybe nerves at starting the biggest undertaking of his life while the pain of the past hovered over his head like Pigpen’s dirt cloud.
But he just couldn’t go there. Not yet.
Even though the renovation of a rundown lighthouse would more than likely take the better part of his summer and part of fall, he wouldn’t come unglued now over something the home team had tried to warn him about.
If he was lucky he might be able to finish the project by Thanksgiving. That was ambitious thinking he knew. But since taking that first step was at least getting here and settling in, he had to dig deep to regain that momentum. Before he could head in that direction though, there was something he had to do first.
The dining room was still packed by the time he’d showered. He’d even taken the time to shave in hopes he’d given the other guests time to eat and clear out. He wasn’t that lucky. Logan wasn’t antisocial exactly. But in this town, he intended to keep his guard up. So much so that he simply preferred to grab a meal in relative silence. That was impossible with the Whitney sisters or the noisy newlyweds or the second honeymooners. All of them kept up a steady stream of chatter about what activities they had planned for the day.
When Nick came in carrying a tray laden with pastries, Logan waved a twenty at him. “Nice haunted house you’ve got here,” he muttered to Nick. “When’s the next ride kick in?”
Nick grinned back. He lowered his voice. “What time did Scott put in an appearance?”
Logan glanced around the table to see if anyone had picked up on Nick’s comment. Luckily the others seemed to be engrossed in forming a day hike to take pictures of wildflowers. “I’d been asleep about two hours, I guess. It wasn’t even midnight. Scared the shit out of me though. I thought somebody had broken into my room.”
Nick took a seat next to Logan. “Sorry. I really am. I know we were joking around quite a bit last night at your expense, but you didn’t seem too interested in the topic. I actually thought Scott might not even bother with you. Kinsey sort of tried to tell you—how active he is around here. And Scott really is innocuous. He likes to help people.” Nick had almost said troubled people, but thought better of it. Since Logan’s face indicated he’d been shaken by the incident, Nick decided to table the teasing. “I’m sorry,” Nick repeated. “It’s obvious he’s upset you.”
Logan wasn’t about to mention what Scott had said to him, so he went another direction. “I spent some time in New Orleans about ten years back. There it’s hard not to get suckered into a few ghost stories while you sit around listening to the blues in all kinds of historical venues.” He spread his arms out wide. “But this is the last place I’d think a ghost would inhabit the rooms.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Why don’t you enlighten me over my eggs?”
Nick didn’t need much prompting. As the dining room began to clear out, he took Logan through how he’d met Scott in the same National Guard unit and how they had both ended up serving in Iraq. Then Nick explained how Scott had died there.
“A roadside bomb? But the guy looks—”
“All together? Yeah he does. I can’t explain it and wouldn’t expect anyone to believe it.” Nick went on to tell Logan about the promise he’d made to Scott, at some point in the heat of battle, to take care of Jordan and Hutton, unwittingly, in the event anything happened to him in Iraq. “I honestly think Scott had a premonition he wasn’t ever going home. But I have no idea when I actually pledged I’d come to Pelican Pointe to check up on his wife and daughter. Whatever karma was out there in the cosmos, I survived and he didn’t. After I got back stateside, I was diagnosed with PTSD. At the time, my memories of that day were all screwed up. But after waiting several months, I finally came here to talk to Jordan. At that point in my life, I didn’t know for sure what was real and what wasn’t.”
Logan stared at Nick. That statement hit a little too close to home, a little too eerie. Those were almost Scott’s exact words last night. “What’s real and what isn’t. That’s what he said to me along with something personal I’d rather not share.”
Nick held up his hands. “No problem. We all have our issues, our secrets. Anyway, here I am, married to Jordan now with two kids.”
“Shouldn’t that piss him off, the fact that you’re with his wife?”
“You’d think. But Scott isn’t like that.”
“So Hutton is really—”
“Scott’s daughter? Yes, but I’ve adopted her. I think he’s fine with that. In fact I still talk to him,” Nick admitted quietly. “He’s here in spirit almost every single day. And if not here, somewhere in town. There are sightings.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I know it sounds crazy but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s kind of a joke now, although there was a time when it wasn’t, except when it happens to our guests of course.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Like I said last night, this is Scott’s home. He grew up here. He lived here long before I ever did or Jordan for that matter. He’s part of this place. We occasionally have to refund a guest’s money if they are—unhappy or temperamental.”
“Like Boston Lady. Look, I don’t mean to insult you or anything, but this is all a little much for me to take in. I’ve got a lot on my mind right now and this is just—well…nuts.”
“Trust me, if you’re troubled about anything at all, Scott will pull it out of you. It’s futile to resist. Okay, that was a joke.”
But Logan hadn’t yet reached that point where he appreciated the humor.
Later, he thought about Nick’s warning as he drove his truck passed two brick columns on either side of the gate and through the entrance to Eternal Gardens. It might’ve been a dozen years since he’d last been here, but he was fairly sure he could find the Donnelly family plot.
It wasn’t a large cemetery by city standards. A line of arroyo willow and valley oak boxed the place in, providing shade if you were in the mood for it. Spangled flannel bush vied with white leaf manzanita along with the bright gold of blazing star wildflowers giving the tree line a burst of color here and there. Spring rain had been good to the clover and the green lawn that spread out for acres. Hearty dandelions dotted the landscape and curved in the breeze as if proud of their stubborn taproots.
Logan walked among the gravestones, some standing no taller than a couple of feet in height while others were grander, more impressive.
Liam and Charlotte Donnelly’s headstones were neither impressive nor grand. They’d specifically requested their only grandson stick to something less ornate. At the time, he’d done his best to comply. But now as he walked up to the two granite markers, the first thing he realized was the graves had been woefully neglected.
Another layer of guilt flowed over him.
That melancholy mood he’d fought before getting to this spot, wanted to return. For something to do, he knelt down on the green, began to pull at the stubborn chickweed and foxtail that had taken over. With his one good hand, he tugged on a patch of tenacious hawkweed that refused to budge.
“Looks like you could use a hand with that.”
The voice was familiar, eerily so. Logan squinted into the sun from his crouched position on the grass. Once again, he stared into the very real eyes of the man from last night. “It isn’t warm enough for heatstroke this early in the morning. You are wide awake and Scott Phillips is not standing here,” he mumbled to himself.
“That’s a nice touch. Talking to yourself like that. But it rarely does any good and often leads to psychosis.”
“Fuck you.”
“That’s the spirit, pun intended. Now, we’re communicating.”
Logan ground his back teeth in frustration, took the handful of weeds he had clutched in his fist and tossed them in Scott’s direction. He watched as the plants sailed through thin air. “What is the point in harassing me? I didn’t even know you when you were alive. I’m sorry you died in Iraq, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“There are no rules here. You’re pissed off at the town. I understand that. But there’s no point in taking it out on everybody, especially people who didn’
t even live here at the same time you did.”
“I treat people just fine, thanks,” Logan spat out.
“Oh really? How is that possible with that huge chip on your shoulder?”
“What the hell do you know about it anyway?” Logan exploded. “You grew up here. For all I know, you’re one of the ones keeping a secret, the one I’m looking for. Or maybe you had the answers once and refused to do anything about it when you were alive.”
“Now that just pisses me off. You want to find answers with that attitude? Lots of luck because you’re going to need it. Beat your head against a brick wall for all I care. And you know what, Donnelly? When that happens, I’ll laugh my ass off.”
Logan watched as Scott disappeared right in front of him. A string of profanity spewed out of Logan’s mouth until he realized where he was standing. He dropped down on the grass, this time sitting cross-legged. He stared at the marble knowing full well there should have been one other grave in the family plot.
If he had to rip open the town’s secrets one layer at a time, he intended to find the answers one way or another. If it caused people to hate him, he didn’t give a rat’s ass. And that included Scott Phillips, whoever the hell he’d been.
There was one person in town a little more interested in Logan Donnelly’s return than everyone else. It hadn’t taken twenty-four hours for the news to reach his ears. So the boy had come back to town a man. He intended to keep an eye on the man, a sculptor of all things, an artsy-fartsy, hippie type that people made a big deal about the world over. The first time he’d heard the buzz, he’d driven over to San Sebastian to the library. He’d taken the time to read about Logan Donnelly in slick magazine articles and old newspaper archives. It seems the art world shit themselves every time Donnelly, the artist, created anything with a bunch of metal or a pile of clay, like some damned kindergarten kid might do.