The House Lost at Sea Read online

  Ricardo rested with her, and I’d hate the bitch for all of eternity for that.

  On bad days, like today, I remembered her name was Maritza, and she had hailed from Italy. At the bitter end, Captain Maritza had jumped ship to join the British, leading the Royal Navy straight to the Calico.

  My memories, renewed heartbreak over a past I couldn’t change, and Benny’s silence annoyed me into snapping, “Why are you asking me this?”

  “There’s a museum exhibit opening tomorrow evening. Could you come dressed up like that tavern wench?”

  My cheek twitched. “Pirate, Benny. I was dressed like a pirate.”

  “But you didn’t have a hat or a bandana.”

  Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath through clenched teeth. “I wasn’t a pirate captain. Just part of the crew. I didn’t have to wear a hat or a bandana.” Last year, the wind would’ve whipped a hat or bandana right off my frizzy head anyway. “Why am I going to dress like a pirate?”

  “Because I’m asking you nicely? Please? I’ll take you out for a beer afterward.”

  I missed grog. I missed good ale. I missed a jigger of rum on the rolling seas. Beer, however, could talk me into a lot of things, and Benny knew me far too well. “Make it three and a nip of something to eat, and I’m in.” I paused, drumming my fingers on my phone. “However, ye best be dressin’ up like ye be on the high seas too, me hearty.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain!”

  “I didn’t say I was coming as a captain.”

  “Please come as a captain. You can, can’t you? I’ll make it four beers, and I’ll bring cookies.”

  Ah, cookies. The bane of my existence, the delight of my tongue, and expander of my waistline. I’d have to spend a lot of time swimming if I wanted to undo the damage Benny’s cookies would surely inflict on my self-restraint, not that I had much self-restraint to begin with. “They better be chocolate.”

  “With hazelnuts,” he promised. “Meet me at the pier-side science museum in Norwalk.”

  I came to a full stop, stunned into momentary silence. I’d just come from Norwalk’s aquarium. Had my curse of bad luck and misfortune worked its way on shore to haunt me yet again? “Norwalk? You mean in Connecticut?”

  “Yeah, they built that new science museum not far from the aquarium. You need directions?”

  I sighed. “I can figure it out.” As I’d just come back from successfully robbing Norwalk’s aquarium, I was at no risk of getting lost. Maybe I’d find something worthy of stealing from the museum. I could go all in and become Norwalk’s most notorious criminal. Considering the town’s population—or lack thereof—I wouldn’t have to work very hard at it. “What time?”

  “Eight.”

  I did the math; it’d take me an hour to get home from work and another to get dressed and geared up. That’d leave me with half an hour to spare if I wanted to get to the museum on time. “They better be damned good cookies.” I hung up on him, cursed my inability to tell the dumb, sweet man no, and headed for my living room.

  If lounging in an artificial coral reef paradise couldn’t cool my jets, nothing short of a swim in the sea and allowing the ocean’s curse to take hold would.

  Two

  I would spend the rest of my cursed days grumpy, miserable, and refusing to settle for less.

  Why had I decided working as a banker was a good idea?

  Worse, not only was I a banker, I was an ethical one. Since when did someone like me adhere to the contrived ethics of society? Instead of gaming the system to build my wealth like a good little pirate, I played the game fair and square, hunting fortune for the sake of those who scraped their pennies together in hopes of finding a dollar.

  Anyone could be a sleaze and win the money game. Overcoming the system and its corruption without cheating was the real challenge, and I needed a challenge, or I’d go insane.

  I bulldozed my way through the Monday slog, turning a lot of lost pennies into what might become a dollar if I played the market just right. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, but I liked winning far more than I did losing, so I worked to make certain I came out on top more often than not.

  Maybe my evening outing with Benny to a museum would help restore my sense of normality. Then again, not much about me was normal. If I worked on that, would I have an easier time forming a long-term relationship with someone?

  No, it wouldn’t. I abandoned the idea, as I couldn’t view another man without thinking about Ricardo and finding my new interest lacking in some way or another. Ricardo hadn’t been perfect.

  He’d just been perfect for me, and I hadn’t found anyone who could compare.

  As such, I would spend the rest of my cursed days grumpy, miserable, and refusing to settle for less, because that’s what I did. I refused to settle and stayed miserable.

  Maybe one day, I would grow tired of being alone and miserable and start settling for something a little less than perfect for me. Considering my stubborn streak, it would take another few hundred years. By that time, humans might be inhabiting space, I might live somewhere without an ocean to bother me, and my life would be an alien existence.

  Hell, who was I kidding? Several hundred years had dumped me into an alien existence, and I often found myself less than impressed with the modern world and its trappings.

  Five minutes after five, I abandoned the office and almost made it to my motorcycle when my cell rang. I dug the device out of my pocket and considered slamming it onto the asphalt to rid the Earth of it. My boss didn’t like the rate I broke phones, and if she learned I destroyed the damned things on purpose, she’d make me walk the plank.

  Since it was my business phone, I was stuck answering with a politer greeting than I used at home. “Corona speaking.”

  “Cathy,” my boss purred in my ear, her voice seductive and smoky, able to entrap men foolish enough to listen to her for too long. “Did you expand the Bensen account like I asked you to earlier?”

  I pulled my phone from my ear and checked the time on my watch. At six after five, I should have been on my motorcycle, roaring my way towards home to get dressed to go to a museum rather than discussing an idiot billionaire who needed me to scrape his pennies together because he had less common sense than the average bilge rat.

  Damn it, I liked the old man almost as much as I liked Benny. I’d lost my edge, lowering myself to the shallow comradeship of men who sometimes even appreciated the work I did with their money.

  I sighed softly enough my boss wouldn’t hear me. “Yes, ma’am. I submitted the proposal to Mr. Bensen this afternoon.”

  “Has he replied yet?”

  “Not as of five minutes ago, ma’am.”

  “You’re not in your office. Why not?”

  Benny had no idea his sudden need for a pirate had saved my ass from a long night of waiting for my office phone to ring, and while my boss had her flaws, she liked Benny, too. Benny earned her a lot of money. “I am going to the opening of a museum exhibit this evening, ma’am.”

  “A museum exhibit. The Bensen account could expand by five hundred million tonight, and you’re going to a museum exhibit?”

  “Mr. Allen invited me to attend with him, ma’am.”

  “Benjamin Allen? Our client?”

  “The same.”

  “Why would he invite you anywhere?”

  I marched my way through the bank’s underground parking to my motorcycle, snatching my helmet from the seat. Several deep breaths and a few reminders I couldn’t afford to break my phone again kept my temper in check. “He asked a favor, ma’am.”

  “What could you possibly have that he could possibly want? Surely not your bike. You really should get around to replacing that antique, Cathy. I can put in a good word for you at a dealership. I know a guy.”

  All right, so maybe my motorcycle had been old before my boss had been born, but I liked my 1936 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead. It wasn’t my fault she couldn’t understand the bike’s worth—or that it really didn’
t matter my house was worth less than a hundred thousand if I ever got around to fixing the place up. Maybe my home was poised to fall down around my ears, but I treasured my antique bike. I even kept her the same teak red and black she’d been painted the day I had liberated her from an idiot who couldn’t hold his liquor or his cash—or play cards worth a damn.

  “You would have to ask Mr. Allen that, ma’am. I—”

  My boss hung up on me. I lowered my cell and stared at the display, which informed me the call had ended. Weighing the pros and cons of throwing the device across the garage, I bounced the phone in my palm. “Why me?”

  I tucked my helmet under my arm and straddled my bike, settling on the seat to give my boss the five minutes it would take her to verify I wasn’t lying through my teeth. Would the idle-brained bilge sucking landlubber ever figure out I wouldn’t lie about something so easy to confirm?

  Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds after hanging up on me, my boss called back.

  “Corona speaking.” I deserved an extra cookie for keeping my voice pleasant when I wanted to snap curses at my boss for wasting my time.

  I only had thirty minutes in my schedule to waste on idiocy.

  “When will you be finished with this exhibit?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am. Mr. Allen didn’t specify a time.” If my boss came between me and my cookies, I’d teach her a thing or two about how to make crew—or co-workers—miserable. “I assumed it would be a late evening affair.”

  “What about the Bensen account?” My boss’s tone grew shrill, and I held my phone away from my ear.

  Had she been asleep through the entire proposal process? I closed my eyes and thought about the rolling of a ship on storm-tossed seas, the creaking of the masts when wayward winds caught the sails, and the whipping hiss of rain-soaked ropes.

  I had braved the ocean’s fury, and I had emerged safe from its wrath time and time again. I could handle anything my boss threw at me without smashing my phone to teeny tiny bits. “Ma’am, Mr. Bensen has over a hundred pages of proposal to explore. I do not expect a response from him until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest.”

  “But what if he has questions?”

  While tempted to tell her Mr. Bensen was a reasonable human being, he really wasn’t. He was more of a shark than I was, and that was saying a lot. He was intelligent for a modern human, too, uglier than sin, older than respectable for any man, and when he was in a mood, he had a mouth so foul I sometimes thought he was a bit like me, someone who had lived before the world had gone completely mad.

  I considered my pirate outfit and decided I could find a spot for my cell somewhere. “I’ll have my phone with me.”

  “Fine.” My boss hung up.

  I stashed my phone in my leather jacket, stuffed my helmet over my hair, and kickstarted the engine. At least some quality time on my bike would soothe my temper before I had to endure an evening of reliving a life long lost.

  My boss called me five times in the span of an hour, and by the time I got dressed, buckled my belts in place, fluffed my frills just right, wiggled my way into my corset, polished my boots, and otherwise turned time back to 1690 or so, I considered loading my old flintlock with live ammunition and sparing a few minutes to take a whetting stone to my cutlass. I used my home phone to call Benny. While it rang, I twitched my hand over my pistol and thought about shooting my cell, so the wretched device would never bother me again.

  “What can I do you for, darlin’?” Benny drawled.

  “Can you either gag my boss, put her on a leash, or find some way to get her off my back?”

  “I told her you were coming with me tonight for an event. She called.”

  “You still pals with Bensen?”

  “Ask him yourself. He’ll be at the museum.”

  My day went from bad to worse, and I locked my glare on the ammunition box in my armoire. “Isn’t Norwalk a dinky little blink-and-miss-it town? Why in blazes would Bensen be going there?”

  “It’s a really unique exhibit.”

  I thought about cookies, chocolate chip ones with hazelnuts. “I’m going to need five cookies for this, Benny.”

  “It’s a good thing I made you an entire batch, then. You are getting twenty-four cookies all for your enjoyment. Will you make it on time?”

  “Maybe if my boss stops calling me!”

  “I’ll take care of it. There will be a valet at the museum. What will you be driving?”

  “I was planning on riding my motorcycle.”

  “Do you have a car? It’s supposed to rain. Wouldn’t want you to wreck your wench outfit.”

  I did have a car, but I only brought it out when absolutely necessary; I preferred to get wet over joining modern society. I loved my car, but it was more of a vehicle Ricardo would have appreciated, had he survived to the modern era. He hadn’t, so all my prized car did was remind me of the past and make me miserable while making me like it. I was truly my worst enemy, and I needed to stop being such a bitch to myself. “I do have a car…”

  “Bring it,” he ordered.

  Damn it all to the darkest, deepest trench of the seven seas. “It’s rain. All it’s going to do is get me wet.”

  “Just humor me this once.”

  I was proud of myself. Despite the urge, I didn’t scream my frustration or fling my phone at the wall. “Fine. I’ll bring my car.”

  “Just tell the valet you’re with me when you arrive. They’ll make sure your vehicle is parked somewhere safe. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to leave your motorcycle with kids who wouldn’t know how to start it. I’ll see you soon.” Benny hung up without giving me a chance to protest.

  Somehow, I resisted the urge to sharpen my sword and load my flintlock.

  I made it to the museum with five minutes to spare. Thanks to my less-than-legal exploits in the town, I knew my way around, although I had made a point of parking near the coast and approaching the aquarium from the ocean during my thefts. Museum patrons clogged the narrow, picturesque streets, and when I finally did reach the valet, I wanted to grab a pair of landlubbers and bash their heads together.

  Why had Benny made me drive my car? I had a love-hate relationship with the damned thing; the Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud turned heads and, like my motorcycle, was painted red. Self-conscious me, a pirate, drove a luxury vehicle some collector would love to have in his garage. Worse, I’d picked it with a long-dead lover in mind. I got out of my car and tossed the keys to the young man waiting at the curb. “I’m with Benny Allen.” I gave my car a long look to communicate there would be death and mayhem if I got it back with a single scratch.

  The valet gulped, and I left him gaping at my vehicle.

  “You even wore a hat,” Benny cooed, striding through the museum’s front doors to join me.

  When I had sailed the seas, few fleets had worn actual uniforms; captains picked their own attire until 1770 or so. British captains often chose blue overcoats with gold trim to represent their nation.

  Benny wore a British captain’s coat well, and he’d almost gotten the costume perfect, right down to his white leggings and black shoes with gold buckles. I narrowed my eyes, squared my shoulders, and examined him from head to toe. “British bilge scum.”

  “Lady pirate,” he countered, dipping into a bow, tipping off his tricorne hat and swishing it with excessive gusto. Under his hat, he wore one of the ridiculous white wigs the British had enjoyed inflicting on everyone, another thing he’d gotten right about his attire. “We meet again.”

  “My lucky day.”

  At least I wasn’t alone in wearing a costume. Several other pirates made their way into the museum, although all of them looked like they’d gone to some cheap costume store. The men wore flimsy shirts, bright-colored sashes suitable for a flamboyant showoff, weapons from the wrong century, and boots no self-respecting pirate would ever have worn. One or two women dressed as sailors left very little to the imagination, and I cringed at the thought of the rope burns the
y’d suffer if they actually wore such skimpy clothes while on a real ship.

  Most of the women, much to my relief, dressed as ladies, although they’d picked gowns in fashion over a hundred years after the Golden Age of Piracy had come to an end.

  “Please allow me to introduce myself, lady pirate,” Benny declared, returning his tricorne hat to his head without dislodging his wig. “I am Captain Benjamin Allen of the British Navy.”

  “You mean you’re not in character? Pity, that. For a moment, I thought you were going to regale me with tales of your cunning at sea.”

  “There is no finer British captain than I, lady pirate.” Grinning, he offered his arm. “Shall we, Captain Corona?”

  He had no way of knowing how his words hurt or the past he exhumed from its watery grave, but he cut me to the quick and left my heart bleeding out on the sidewalk. A pirate captain didn’t take the arm of a British captain, and I refused his offer with a huff and lifted chin, angling my head so I could stare down my nose at him. “Watch your step, Captain Allen.”

  Benny’s bright smile warned me some game was afoot, one he’d enjoy playing, likely at my expense. He’d already gotten in his hits without knowing it, and I’d likely count the night as his victory just from how much of my past he’d managed to dredge up within a single day. Sometimes he surprised me, showing sparks of brilliance when he so often missed what was right in front of him.

  Benny gestured to the museum. “Never fear, m’lady. I shall. This way, then.”

  Striding towards the museum’s glass doors, I took a moment to admire the blend of the old and the new. At ten stories, it towered over everything else in town. I’d seen it beside the aquarium on prior visits to Norwalk, but I’d never thought it housed a museum.

  Within the lobby, paintings of famous galleons, frigates, and other ships from the Golden Age of Piracy decorated the walls. An anchor, pitted and worn from long exposure to the sea, rose from the marble floor, cordoned off with a red rope. A plaque proudly declared it had been found in the wreckage of Queen Anne’s Revenge. My eyes widened, and I sucked in a breath, stepping forward to get a closer look.