Another Man's Treasure (a romantic thriller) (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

that can’t be cancelled. Tomorrow morning is soon enough, don’t you think?  I’ll take care of it—you’ve already done so much.”  He pulls out his Blackberry and sends a text message, his thumbs flying over the tiny keys. A second later the thing beeps and he reads the incoming message.  Whatever it says relaxes him because the smile returns.  Then he springs up and holds his right hand out to me.  “I’ve been so rude, intruding on your evening like this.  Let me take you out for a drink and a bite to eat.”
    Caught unaware, I immediately start floundering like the fat kid in swim class.  “Oh!  Oh, I don’t know…I’m not dressed.  I already had some Chinese—“
    “You look fine.”  He grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet.   “We’ll just go to Hennessy’s. I’m meeting some people there.”
    “Just Hennessy’s” is an oxymoron.  Ostensibly an Irish pub, Hennessy’s is actually a Manhattan interior designer’s fantasy of a place Dubliners might go to drink Guinness and sing weepy songs about the potato famine.  A million dollars worth of brass, glass and mahogany transformed an old beer garden into the hot gathering spot for Palmyrton’s movers and shakers.  I would need to spend a week at the mall, the salon and the manicurist before I would ever dare meet Cal Tremaine and his friends at Hennessy’s.
    I pull my hand from his firm grasp.  “No, seriously—I have a lot to do tonight.  Quarterly tax filing due.  The IRS waits for no woman.”
    “If you insist.”  He flashes that smile again.  “I’m not accepting this as a no.  I’m simply giving you a rain check.”

Chapter 4
    Everything about the Manor View Senior Living Center is a lie.  There is no manor. There is no view.  And believe me, there’s precious little living.
    The irony that my father now resides in a place that slaps a thin veneer of gilt over reality is not lost on me.  Or him. 
    Armed with the ring, I’ve come to pry a little truth out of Dad. Armed is the operative word.  Conversations with my father have never been easy.  Since his stroke, they’re exercises in frustration. Always taciturn, he’s now angry, uncooperative and willfully obtuse.  The stroke felled him in the middle of a lecture on Gauss’s Harmonic Function Theorem, leaving him paralyzed on his right side and without the power of speech.  His doctors insist his prognosis is quite good, but he stubbornly resists the efforts of the physical and speech therapists, so the hospital banished him to Manor View.  At times he lets down his guard and I see that his keen intelligence is intact, but mostly he pretends to blend in with the vacant-eyed Alzheimer’s patients who fill half the rooms at the nursing home.  Excuse me: Senior Living Center.
    I pull into the parking lot and for the first time since my father landed here I am excited to be visiting.  Maybe the shock of seeing this ring will jar something loose deep inside him, give him a reason to care, inspire him to try to recover.  Maybe it will bridge the gap between us that’s grown wider and deeper with every passing year.
    A lot to expect from a little gold band.
    Getting out of the car, I reach for the leash. “What do you think, Ethel, will he tell me something?”
    Ethel fixes her limpid brown eyes on mine and sighs.  She’s the sighing-est dog I’ve ever met.  My father is crazy about her though, so I always bring her along.  When we walk up the Manor View stairs, Ethel’s ears perk up and her nose twitches.  I’d like to think she’s excited because she enjoys bringing joy into the lives of old people, but the truth is, Manor View is nirvana for a chow hound like Ethel.  She patrols the floor, snapping up dropped cookies and renegade grapes. Then she jumps up to lick dribbles of gravy off cardigans and afghans.  The old folks think she’s dispensing kisses, and I don’t set them straight.
    Ethel waits impatiently at the door while I punch in