Temptation Bay (A Windfall Island Novel) by Anna Sullivan Read Free Book Online Page B

when the clues could lead him anywhere, straight ahead or back the way he’d come or halfway around the world. Where everyone was a suspect and the most innocent tidbit of information could turn out to be the linchpin. And this case… this case carried special weight, just by being so damned historically significant, not to mention its importance to a family like the Stanhopes.
    He should have been having the time of his life. And what was on his mind? Maggie Solomon. She was hardheaded,sarcastic, argumentative, uncomplimentary, and a general pain in the ass. And he couldn’t wait to see her again. He’d known her less than twenty-four hours, but the world seemed so much brighter than it had yesterday, so much more filled with possibilities. Which was saying something when he stood on the brink of the biggest opportunity of his life. He solved this case and clients would be beating down his door, clients with substantial cases that didn’t involve who was doing whom in some tawdry out-of-the-way motel room.
    And he couldn’t keep his mind on the prize. Okay, not only his mind.
    Christ.
    He took a deep breath, put Maggie in a tiny little box he locked away in an obscure corner of his brain, and swung through the door of the Windfall Island Antique Store. And stopped dead.
    Hoarders: The Antique Chronicles
, he thought, taking in the haphazard stacks of merchandise crowding the place with absolutely no sense of order.
    A Chippendale dresser sat against the wall, its top crowded with vases, one of which could have dated to the early Roman Empire, others to the post–World War II trinket trade in Japan. A cheap dinette table was flanked by a six-pack of chairs; at least one of them looked to be a Windsor, if Dex remembered even a tenth of the research he’d done for an elderly client whose nurse had systematically stripped her house of antiques, replacing them with halfway decent fakes.
    Ottomans sat on chairs, which rested on tables propped up by statuary, all of it balanced precariously, sometimes to the rafters high overhead. Dex stepped in and found himself in a maze of winding aisles barely wide enough to navigate. Around every corner something new caught hiseye, items ranging in age and value from priceless museum quality to cheap flea market. Ten minutes later and with no idea where he’d left the door, he came to what appeared to be the front counter, if the gold and silver-plated antique cash register sitting on a glass display case was any indication.
    Beside the counter stood a tall, gaunt figure with a white, slightly shiny complexion, dressed in the clothing of a nineteenth-century magistrate. Wax, Dex decided, despite the eerily lifelike eyes.
    And then it spoke. “Can I help you?”
    Dex pasted an open and friendly expression on his face and stepped forward. “You must be the proprietor.” Josiah Meeker, or so the discreet gold lettering on the front window had informed him.
    “And you’d be Dexter Keegan, lawyer from Boston,” Meeker said, staring distastefully at the hand Dex held out.
    Dex might have been offended if he hadn’t seen the way Meeker’s own hands rubbed against his pants legs. OCD in some form, he would have bet. Dex glanced around. That would explain why it looked like the man had never parted with a single piece of merchandise in his entire life.
    “You after anything in particular?” Meeker said, still looking like he’d been sucking on a lemon.
    “No.” Dex wandered over to a trio of cabinets made of lacquered wood fronted with age-spotted glass.
    Smalls—little collectible items—crowded the warped wooden shelves. He pretended to study the worn and well-loved old toys, costume jewelry, miniature china figurines, and matchbox cars that took him back to his childhood. But his eyes shifted to a pair of doors in the corner. Both doors bore signs limiting access to staff members, but one of those doors was narrower, with an external lock and asmall thermostat on the wall