The Treasure Man. Pamela Browning
She started along the winding sandy path to the house as huge raindrops began to fall. The wind kicked up, and the air took on a sudden chill as rain sluiced down in great torrents, drenching them both.
They ran past thrashing clumps of sea oats and salt grass. When she reached the haven of the porch, Chloe set Butch down. The cat, spooked by the change in weather, shook himself and immediately bounded into the bushes below.
“Butch! Get back here!” She could barely make herself heard over the wind and rain.
Of course the cat didn’t. Chloe wasn’t concerned that Butch would try a disappearing act, since he knew who his food came from, but she wished he hadn’t left her alone with Ben.
Who conveniently produced a flashlight from his pocket and beamed it on the rusty old lock. Chloe, clumsy in her haste, fumbled with the key, inserted it and swung the door open on a cavernous front hall.
A flock of dust bunnies scattered in the fresh gusts admitted through the open door as something dark scurried toward the nether regions of the house. Chloe groped for the light switch and flipped it. The lone bulb remaining in the overhead fixture flared and died.
“I’ll turn on a lamp,” Chloe said, wiping her face with her forearm before dropping her backpack on the hall settee. As she spoke, Ben trained the flashlight on the parlor to her right.
The house had been in her father’s family since the early part of the century, and she and her older sister, Naomi, had spent many glorious summer vacations in the big Victorian mansion when she was growing up. A year ago when she’d last visited, the Frangipani Inn hadn’t been in this state of disrepair. The furniture, layered with white covers, loomed eerily as she felt her way into the parlor’s depths, where she knocked into a table, caught herself before keeling over and managed to turn on the light over the piano. It cast the shrouded shapes into gloomy shadows.
Dust was everywhere, and cobwebs trailed spookily from the high ceiling. The windows were coated with a thick coat of salt spray, and the air smelled musty. As she stood taking in all the decrepitude of a place that she remembered as bright, light and uplifting, Ben said, “Things deteriorate rapidly near the ocean. The place has been unoccupied for how long?”
“Almost a year,” Chloe told him, her voice echoing because of the high ceiling. In order to see what was what, she shoved aside white muslin to reveal a wicker chair that belonged on the porch. One of its wooden rockers was split, and she tugged the cover back over it. As she did so, something scrambled frantically across her toes, something warm and furry with quick little feet.
At the same time, a flash of lightning and an earsplitting clap of thunder rent the silence. Chloe screamed and would have bolted if Ben hadn’t caught her and held her steady.
“Easy,” he said. “That was only a field mouse.” His arms were hard-muscled and strong, she noticed through her panic. His heart beat steadily beneath his damp shirt, and his wet skin was slick beneath her fingers.
“I h-hate mice,” she stammered.
He released her, and she saw that his eyes were a deep, velvety brown. He smelled of sun and salt, of the sea and sand, bringing back memories of that summer so long ago.
“There are bound to be one or two mice in here,” he said, the voice of reason.
She recovered enough to scoff at that. “One or two? Ha! They breed,” she said. She stalked toward the door. “I can’t live with mice. I’m leaving.”
Ben cocked a head toward one of the windows, which was rattling in its frame due to the energetic pummeling of the elements. “It’s raining hard now, and there’s lightning. Besides, there’s nowhere else to go.”
“Where is that cat when I need him?” she muttered. She threw the door open. “Butch? Butch!” Rain blew in her face; it tasted of salt. There was no sign of a big orange cat, no glimmer of his white bib under the shelter of the rubbery round leaves of the sea grapes.
Ben walked up behind her. “I saw him run under the house. He’ll have a grand old time there chasing the mice and palmetto bugs.”
“Palmetto bugs?”
“The state insect of Florida. See, there’s one on the curtain.” He pointed at a huge cockroachlike bug in the library on the other side of the foyer. It was an ugly dark brown, almost two inches long and waving curious feelers in their direction.
Chloe shuddered. She’d rather eat roadkill than bunk near that creature. “I’ll sleep in the car. I’ll—”
“No need to do any such thing. I’ll run over to the other part of the house and get the bug spray.” He started toward the kitchen.
Since she had no intention of being left alone with the palmetto bug, Chloe wasn’t far behind. “Okay, but what about the mice?” She was seriously questioning her recent and possibly foolhardy choice to start a new life in this place.
“I’ll take care of them, don’t worry.”
“Humanely, I hope.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Oh, of course. I’ll invite them to leave in a pleasant voice, and I’ll reassure them it’s not them, it’s me. I’ll say that I hope we can still be friends, and even throw them a farewell party if you’d like.”
“Please,” she warned, “don’t make light of this.” She wasn’t in the mood for humor.
“I thought maybe kindness to rodents ran in your family. Tayloe used to trap live mice and release them in the thickets, which I warned her was silly, since they—and their loved ones—would only come back for a return engagement, but that was the way she wanted it.”
“You know where to find the mousetraps?”
“They’re in the hall leading to the caretakers’ annex.”
They went along turning on lights until they came to the kitchen, Chloe doing her best to unstick her wet blouse from her skin along the way. Someone had broken a window in the back door and had evidently camped out there, abandoning dirty dishes and silverware in the sink, which was dripping a steady stream of rusty water.
“Here we are,” Ben said, throwing back the bolt to the door of the annex, where a small apartment was built down close to the dunes. “Bug spray. And traps.”
“Could you deal with the palmetto bug first? He creeps me out big-time.”
While Ben was rummaging in the hallway, Chloe gave up on her wet blouse and resigned herself to its present see-through state until she could find a dry towel. She ventured a cautious peek into the pantry, which turned up nothing more than an unopened jar of pickles and several warm cans of cola. “I have food in the car, a bag of canned goods and a cooler,” she called to Ben. “I could offer you something to eat in exchange for your trouble.”
“It’s okay,” he said on his way back through the kitchen. “I’ll be satisfied with a glass of water.” He avoided looking at her—which, considering the transparency of her wet clothes, she appreciated.
She followed him. “The water softener isn’t hooked up, so we won’t want to drink the water yet. I brought a bottle of wine in my backpack. It’s a really good Estancia pinot grigio.”
“No, thanks. And if you don’t want to witness instant death, I suggest you leave the palmetto bug to me.”
Since bug killing held no interest as a spectator sport, Chloe decided to locate a dry towel. The staircase was dusty, the white paint on the banister chipped, and upstairs the bedrooms, like the parlor below, were swathed in white muslin.
The linen closet was located on the landing, and although the towels smelled musty, they suited her purpose. As she towel-dried her hair, she wandered around, reacquainting herself with the second floor.
Her aunt had assigned each bedroom a name. The master suite was Sea Oats and decorated in golden tones. The