Richie jumps to his feet, and Lizbet’s desk chair shoots back into the wall. Richie stuffs the paperwork into his pants pocket. He inhales a breath and exhales with a smile. He once again looks like the charming, affable dad everyone thinks he is. “Kimber!” he says, opening the door. “What’s up?”
“Can’t sleep,” Kimber says. She seems to realize she’s crossed some kind of invisible line because she scurries out from behind the desk. She waves what looks like a piece of notebook paper. “Also, I wanted to show you something.”
What Kimber wants to show Richie at one fifteen in the morning is an article Wanda wrote entitled “The Mystery of the Haunted Hotel.”
Richie reads aloud: “‘The Hotel Nantucket has been plaqued’—is this supposed to be plagued?—‘with difficulties for nearly a century. Girl sleuth Wanda Marsh has uncovered the reason. There’s a ghost who inhabits the hotel’s fourth-floor storage closet.’” Richie stops. “Did Wanda write this herself?”
“Edie helped her a little.”
“‘The ghost is the spirit of Grace Hadley, a chambermaid who died in a fire in the summer of 1922 in that fourth-floor closet.’” Richie looks up. “Is this true?”
“Wanda insisted we go to the Atheneum to look it up. They had old issues of the Nantucket Standard on microfilm.”
“Your kids are incredible,” Richie says. “Louie is a chess prodigy and Wanda is a burgeoning detective and investigative reporter. My three spend all their time playing Fortnite and watching YouTube.”
“Wanda told me that she asked the ghost to knock, and the ghost did.”
“Well, that’s exciting,” Richie says. He subtly plucks his shirt away from his body. His extracurricular activity in the back office has made him perspire.
“The thing is, she really believes it,” Kimber says. “Shall we go up and check out the fourth-floor storage closet?”
Richie frowns. “I shouldn’t leave the desk.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
“I can’t afford to lose my job,” Richie says.
“I’m beginning to think you don’t like me,” Kimber says. “You practically ran away from me the other night.”
“I do like you,” Richie says. He reaches across the desk for Kimber’s hand. Is he being patronizing? Grace wonders. “I have a lot going on in my personal life right now.”
“You can tell me if you’re not attracted to me,” Kimber says. “I’ll survive.”
Richie lets go of Kimber’s hand—he’s not attracted to her, apparently—but then he comes out from behind the desk. “I’m not the person you think I am,” he says. “I know I put on a good act of being nice-guy Richie—”
Kimber puts a finger to his lips. “I’m probably not the person you think I am either,” she says. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s summertime and we’re on an island thirty miles out to sea.”
Richie gazes at Kimber. He seems to be deliberating, and Grace, quite frankly, is on the edge of her seat. Finally, Richie puts his arms around Kimber and pulls her close. Kimber raises her face, Richie takes his glasses off and sets them on the desk—a nice touch, Grace thinks; things are about to get steamy—and kisses her.
Grace cheers silently, even though she fears the relationship won’t last. But who doesn’t love a little summer romance? She just hopes they don’t forget about that article. If they solve her murder case, she’ll finally be able to get some much needed rest. It has been an exhausting century.
It’s Friday, a day that used to mean only one thing for Chad: slightly more raucous partying than his usual weeknight partying. Chad hasn’t heard from Bryce or Eric in weeks, though he did get a text from Jasper thanking him for being cool about me and Winston. Chad responded, Hey, man, I’m happy for you. If you ever want to grab a bite, hit me up. Jasper hasn’t reached out yet, but he might somewhere down the road. Chad feels only relief at the disbanding of his group of friends; the solitude has turned out to be kind of nice.
However, Chad is still desperately hoping for an e-mail from Paddy.
When Chad logs into his Yahoo! account first thing in the morning, he sees an alert that someone has hacked into the operating software of both the Steamship Authority and Hy-Line Cruises. All ferry service to and from Nantucket is halted. When he goes downstairs, his mother has the local news on television.