Page 18 of Saltwater Secrets
Aria wasn’t sure how to explain the complications that yesterday had brought, so she told a mild lie. “I’m an interior designer. My client back in Nantucket hired me to come here and update the place. I don’t think anyone’s really been using it for a while. Maybe she wants to sell it?”
Logan chuckled. “So you are going to steal a shirt? From your client.”
“I don’t think she’ll miss it.” Aria opened the closet to show an array of what had to be more than one hundred shirts, all of them in a size that suited the broad shoulders of Logan and made of a material that seemed worthy of the wealth Dorothy had always enjoyed.
There was a sharp stabbing pain in Aria’s stomach when she realized that these shirts were probably Philip Wagner’s shirts. She wondered if she owed Logan an explanation, and if he, like Gina, would be awestruck with the Wagners’ wealth and “royalty status” within Manhattan. But before she had a chance to say anything, Logan began running his fingers across the fine fabrics, clearly impressed.
“Every single one of these is a better quality than anything I’ve ever owned,” Logan confessed with an ironic laugh. “Are you sure I can borrow one?” He took a beat. “I can dry-clean it afterward and bring it back to you. I don’t want you getting into any scrapes with your employer.”
She’s dead, Aria wanted to say.
But instead she offered him, “Like I said, she never comes to the city. I think it’ll be all right.” She pressed her lips together, watching as he selected a button-down the color of papyrus and held it up in front of his frame. It should be illegal to look this good and smell this incredible. His musk commingled with the smell of coffee, and it was intoxicating. Aria either needed to get this guy out of here or run out of the brownstone herself.
She opted to say, “I’m going downstairs. Try on as many as you want.”
Logan’s smile was mysterious and charming. “I can’t believe I ran into you of all people today. I mean, I could have run into a woman without a massive supply of designer men’s clothing. Are you a good luck charm?”
“I think I might be really bad luck if you’re not careful,” Aria joked. “Stay vigilant.”
Aria scampered back downstairs and drank a full glass of water standing at the kitchen counter. Her mind scrambled for understanding. Every creak that came from upstairs reminded her that Logan was still here. A part of her brain played make-believe, imagining that she and Logan lived at this brownstone, that they had gorgeous and full Manhattan lives with plenty of friends, plus a summer house on Nantucket. She couldn’t stay away forever.
Pull it together, Aria.
When she realized she’d spent too much time doing nothing, imagining a future she couldn’t possibly have, she hurried over to her laptop, sat down, and continued to work on the list she’d begun yesterday, before Dorothy had passed away. The list outlined her strategy for the brownstone: who needed to be contacted and what needed to be discarded in pursuit of a modernized feel. It was a foolish task, maybe. But she’d told Logan she was here to work, and she wanted him to see her doing exactly that.
Logan had been upstairs for twenty minutes when Aria heard the sharp metal-on-metal sound of a key in the door.
Aria’s heart seized. She threw her laptop to the other side of the sofa and scrambled to the foyer, just as the door burst wide open to reveal a woman she’d never seen before. The woman was in her late fifties, with beautiful dark red hair, a perfect dark red lip, and a figure that had obviously been sculpted through years of Pilates and a meticulous diet. Behind her massive sunglasses, Aria couldn’t see the woman’s eyes, but there was an aura to her that spoke of tremendous anger and pain. Aria couldn’t breathe.
For ten seconds, maybe, Aria and the woman stared at one another in surprise. It was like a face-off, each waiting for the other to speak first.
That was when Logan came down the stairs, wearing the very first button-down he’d picked up, the papyrus-colored one that made his tan pop. Because he hadn’t yet noticed the woman at the door, he talked jovially, saying, “Aria, I really think this is the one, but you have to give your opinion. I’m an illustrator, but I have absolutely no artistic eye when it comes to my own body. I can take honesty, I swear.”
When he walked into the foyer to find Aria, he stopped short and flashed his gorgeous smile. “Hello?” he said because he was ever-charming, ever able to take over a room.
But the woman was not keen to let herself be manipulated. Her face twisted up with rage. And then she cried out, “What on earth are you doing in my mother’s house? I’m calling the police!”
Chapter Nine
It was the day after Dorothy’s death, and Hilary and Sam were on the back porch of the Coleman House, listening to Estelle’s stories of Dorothy and Philip Wagner—what she remembered of them from their long-ago days of socializing on the island of Nantucket. Theirs had been the upper echelon of wealth. Nobody on the island had compared to Philip and Dorothy, not even with their multiple cars and numerous houses and innumerable wealth.
“They were known as one of the most famous couples on the East Coast. Certainly, they were one of the wealthiest,” Estelle was saying, her face conspiratorial, her hands clasped. “Philip was an investment banker, but he initially made his money through the stock market and probably other less legal means. But so many people were doing things with money that had never been done before. Your father always talked about the people who kept things ‘legal’ and those who found ‘gray areas,’ and he told me that there were fewer and fewer people who remained in the legal sphere. He always said, ‘People who want to get ahead know how to get ahead.’ I always told Roland that I wanted our money to stay clean, that I didn’t want anything to taint future Coleman generations. He understood that.”
Hilary and her sister leaned forward in their chairs, feeling cozy with their mother, eager to hear her tale and how their family aligned or misaligned with the Wagners.
“Of course, I don’t know anything about Dorothy and Philip prior to their purchase of that estate here on Nantucket,” Estelle said. “How they met is a mystery to me, and I never asked. But I had the belief that Dorothy wanted to come to Nantucket to get Philip out of the city and its many distractions.”
“Other women?” Sam suggested.
Estelle grimaced. “Yes. And his habits. He was a heavy partier. When you were that wealthy back then, especially in Manhattan, the world was your oyster. People have to be careful now, I think. Social media means that people can catch you acting a certain way and cancel you. But cancellation wasn’t really a thing back then.”
“People were free to be terrible,” Hilary said quietly.
Estelle laughed. “That’s one way to put it, yes.”
“Like Grandpa Chuck,” Sam remembered, wrinkling her nose.
Estelle tilted her head in surprise. “Yes. Although as you know, your father and uncle caught him in the act.”
