Halt at X: A North of Boston Novel Read online

  ~A North of Boston Novel~

  Sally Ann Sims

  © 2015 Sally Ann Sims All rights reserved.

  Cover Art © 2015 Deranged Doctor Design

  Interior Book Design by CyberWitch Press, LLC

  Horseshoe glyph © 2015 SignTorch Vector Graphics

  ISBN: 978-0-9909571-0-2 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-0-9909571-1-9 (paperback)

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents in this novel are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or existing locales is purely coincidental.

  Publisher: Sally Ann Sims

  www.sallyannsims.com

  To James W. Supplee

  for your courage and compassion in our life together

  and

  To the memory of Isabelle Roughan

  who also loved words, stories, and the magic of novels

  How long will you stand up for what you believe when your world unravels?

  Lucinda Tyne Beck, VP and uber college fundraiser, uncovers illegal use of donations by her boss, Frank Wickes, the flashy new President of her alma mater on the rocky North Shore of Massachusetts. As her 17-year marriage to artsy photographer Bart Beck unravels at a betrayal Lucinda can’t deny — much as she’d like to — Lucinda scrambles to save the college’s reputation and her marriage. The day her husband moves out, Lucinda’s best friend arrives at her farmhouse, horse trailer in tow, with an ex-racehorse on the verge of starvation. As Bart self-destructs and Lucinda’s life is threatened as she scrambles to bring Frank to justice, she turns to a surprising ally and an intrepid dwarf miniature horse for help. Before her pursuer strikes, can Lucinda save her college, her thoroughbred mare, and find a new way to love?

  “A rich engaging novel…with its focus on characters’ search for meaning, purpose, and redemption, while hindered inevitably by their own faults.”

  -MARK SPENCER, winner of the Omaha Prize for the Novel and author of TRESPASSERS

  Hail to the Chiefs

  A rogue wave, unimpeded, speeding right toward me. Or, perhaps just the incoming tide booming against the boulders below?

  The college president transition bash was in full swing in the centuries-old mansion decaying on a steep cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. But what Lucinda Tyne Beck sensed when she shut her eyes briefly was at odds with the party surrounding her, a wall of water racing across the Gulf of Maine to smash into this rocky coast and upend her life. Opening her eyes, she shook away the scene in her mind and tried to ignore her churning stomach. Faculty and donors mingled in continually shifting cliques by the floor-to-ceiling windows through which green-gold light poured into the foyer. She’d had a great run as chief fundraiser under the outgoing president. And the new one? Lucinda wondered. Had he boondoggled the Search Committee to get on board?

  “We were lucky to keep him this long,” Chester Mulholland said, approaching Lucinda from the entryway. She welcomed his hug. Chester expressed exactly what was in Lucinda’s heart. They would all deeply miss the loveable Ben Marshallton, rumpled, affable, visionary, hard working as a draft horse. Irreplaceable.

  In the aftermath of Chester’s hug, Lucinda swam, not unpleasantly, in Newport cologne, his signature scent. Brisk yet spicy. Redolent of twilight cocktails on a yacht deck, a ritual for which Chester, Cape Tilton’s wealthiest entrepreneur, was much too busy to indulge. Lucinda smiled at her old friend, a mega-donor to Peabody-Hawthorne College. They’d met two decades ago, when, as an eager annual giving coordinator, she’d engaged Chester in a spirited debate about business owners’ obligations to philanthropy. He’d liked her spirit and told her so.

  Chester, loyal as them come, was the largest donor Lucinda had cultivated, several promotions later, for the elite liberal arts college north of Boston in her present role as Vice President for Institutional Advancement. They didn’t call them fundraisers anymore. Not to their faces. Not in any sort of complimentary way. Lucinda wanted to change that, almost as much as she wanted to raise larger scholarships for undergrads. But how would she do that without Ben at her side?

  Lucinda considered Chester a real friend, not just a professional duty. He was an old style businessman, but with a rare gift for renewing himself and his outlook. She could use more of that kind of donor. And Chester was coming due for another huge gift to the college.

  “How’s business?” Lucinda asked.

  “Complicated,” he said, grinning conspiratorially. “But many possibilities present themselves. The key is figuring out which to take.”

  Lucinda smiled. “Which you will, no doubt.”

  “No doubt at all.”

  Squeals from outside the window marked a sudden gust of wind toying with the ladies’ dresses and overturning drinks on the granite balustrade. The sun, descending into an orange-raspberry stain on the topline of firs in front of Thornbough Hall, cast guests on the balcony into rapidly cooling shadow.

  As Lucinda peered outside, someone switched on the outside lights. Ben Marshallton glanced up through the French doors, saw Lucinda, and tossed her a mock salute. Together they’d raised more than $750 million during the last fifteen years and transformed the elite women’s college into a bustling co-educational institution bursting with freshman applicants and distinguished graduates. When a British colleague caught wind of Ben’s impending retirement, he recruited Ben to guest lecture on Melville, his first love, at Oxford University. The short notice delayed the formal presidential transition party by two months.

  “Anyway,” Chester said, after sipping bourbon from a rocks glass, “it doesn’t matter who’s president here, as long as they’ve got you. You’ve done a great job throwing this bash tonight and pushing the endowment campaign despite multiple distractions. My hat’s off to you.” Chester snatched two smoked salmon balls from a waiter’s silver tray, offering one to Lucinda. She shook her head, smiling uneasily. She didn’t want the attention focused on her. And had Chester already honed in on the corporate flashiness of their new leader? Lucinda opened her mouth to deflect anymore flattery, but he continued.

  “Speaking of, here’s your new boss now.”

  Despite Chester’s self-made wealth and influence over most of Cape Tilton, his low-key, mischievous spirit shown bright tonight in his wind-sculpted white mane and playful expression. He nodded toward Frank Wickes, approaching from the balcony, and popped a salmon ball down the hatch.

  The replacement for the irreplaceable Ben.

  If Ben was stature, Frank was coiled energy. Armed with advanced degrees in business administration and economics, Frank Wickes launched and sold a successful cable TV station, headed a large metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and turned around a major urban school district before the Peabody-Hawthorne College Board of Directors tapped him for the president’s job.

  “Dr. Wickes. Frank,” Lucinda said as Frank stopped in front of them. “I’d love for you to meet Chester Mulholland. He’s done so much for the college in the last two decades. Really moved us forward. Like light-years. His daughter was Class of ’90.”

  Frank extended his hand to Chester, avoiding eye contact with Lucinda. She examined Frank’s expression. His face gave her nothing. Frank’s ink-black hair and falcon-like gaze so different from Ben’s blondish-gray mop and chiseled features weathered by life’s inevitabilities. The face that reminded Lucinda fondly of New Hampshire’s former Old Man of the Mountain before that great pile fell. Get over it, she willed herself.

  “Great to meet you, Frank,” Chester said, offering a firm handshake and a palm to Frank’s shoulder. Frank stiffened slightly under Chester’s touch, his smile engaging his lower face but not his eyes.


  “And you also, Mr. Mulholland. Ah, Chester. We appreciate your long support. I think you’ll be very intrigued by what’s ahead for Peabody-Hawthorne, especially the upgrade to university status.”

  That little bit’s not for public consumption quite yet, thought Lucinda.

  “Well, it’s about time! Lucinda will be your best asset as you raise your profile,” Chester told Frank, lifting a glass as if to toast her. The escalating flattery made Lucinda blush despite her attempts to appear at ease.

  Beacons of Knowledge, the zydeco-inspired college song written by a music undergrad twenty-five years ago, rang out of Frank’s suit jacket pocket. After checking the phone, Frank excused himself to take a call from the Board chair. With a wave of his hand, Chester indicated his wife passing through the foyer and moved on to join her at the buffet. Lucinda could see Bart, her photographer husband, refilling his wineglass at the bar behind the buffet table while talking to Warren Rindge, one of Lucinda’s eight direct reports, a man of slickly gelled hair whom she did not trust. Warren, Director of Philanthropy for the School of Management and Information Technology, whose undergraduate ranks were swelling, worked the party with self-confident single-mindedness in meeting new donors. So why was he bothering to talk to Bart?

  Frank did not return to Lucinda’s side after the phone call, but instead moved quickly to the balcony. Lucinda had quietly yet firmly opposed Frank’s appointment behind the scenes to the Executive Committee late last spring, for what it was worth. In one of his final interviews before Frank was hired, in which Lucinda participated, she was struck by his dismissiveness of nuanced alumni cultivation and almost exclusive faith in the power of new corporate alliances. Her gut proved prophetic. In his first two months on the job, he’d moved decisively away from the steady arc of donor cultivation and growth she and Ben had trademarked toward a kind of donor acquisition she’d coined “wildcatting.” Fast, loose, rough, and risky. As she considered Frank’s work style, Lucinda’s right-hand man approached from the balcony.

  “Doesn’t Frank remind you of Nicholas Sarkozy? You know, the former French president?” Aden Vitali said softly, sidling up to her. “Polished, virile.” He took a generous sip of pale yellow wine and arched his eyebrows over the glass. Aden, in charge of all fundraising for the School of Arts and Humanities, had the kind of face that evokes summers on a California beach, but he wore a navy suit well. His lank blond hair, its color just a couple of shades deeper than the wine, grazed his ears and collar but was trimmed neatly. He was always a little too something — quirky, outspoken, innovative, dogged — which gave him the kind of semi-masochistic stamina necessary for his job. Lucinda relied on him completely. “Sneaky,” he added.

  Lucinda half choked on her own sip of wine. Her coughing sputtered to regular breathing as Aden tapped her upper back with his left palm. Noting his proximity to her in an oversized gilt-frame wall mirror, he withdrew his hand suddenly, taking a step away from her.

  “God, Aden! You’re always popping out with these things. I hadn’t thought of Sarkozy, but yes.” She stepped closer to him. “I feel like we’re destined to clash — Wickes and me.”

  “You? You get along with everyone. Know how to handle everyone. Even Chester.”

  Lucinda took a large sip of wine before someone cupped her right elbow. Her husband’s touch.

  “Aden, excuse us,” Bart said. “Cinda, we’ve gotta talk. Like now.”

  “Sure, I can leave now. I’ve talked to everyone I need to, and I think PR got good shots.” She looked into Bart’s eyes and her smile vanished. Bart Beck hastily swallowed the last third of his glass of wine, his eyes sliding away from Lucinda’s. His blond hair was darker and wavier than Aden’s and not neatly trimmed.

  “Let me give a last hail to the chiefs, and I’ll meet you out front.”

  She moved out to the balcony for her good-byes. What’s up with Bart? He was fine a half hour ago when they compared notes on Ben and Frank at the buffet table next to the remains of the dark chocolate sheet cakes and beach plum pies.

  They left the mansion together, and Bart drew Lucinda along the cliff walk that bisected a garden of hardy roses and black-eyed Susans interspersed with half-buried glacier-dropped boulders. At the end of the pathway, they stepped into an aged gazebo overlooking the ocean.

  “Something wrong?” Lucinda said.

  “Wrong is right,” Bart said.

  “What is it, honey?” By only the light seeping from a waning moon she could see he was vibrating with some news.

  “Someone just told me you’re sleeping with Jay Parnell.”

  Lucinda met his gaze for a few seconds. Then she looked down at her feet. Another wave crashed on the beach below with a hollow boom.

  She looked up. “Bart,” she said, more softly. “We can’t talk here. The place is all ears. I — ”

  “So we have something to talk about? I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Told him he had it all wrong.” He leaned against the rotting railing and folded his arms over his open-collar dress shirt, his face in the deep shadow of a tree branch. The lowest link in his silver marine-link necklace — the one she’d given him for his last birthday — glinted in the pale moonlight like an eye.

  “We need to talk,” Lucinda said, glancing over her shoulder to the brightly lit mansion entrance where guests were departing, their shouts, laughs, and hearty “good nights” carrying through the still, warm air. “But not here.”

  “Where is the best place to talk about cheating? I don’t know — ”

  “Stop it!” she said. “Please.” Although she whispered, her voice was sharp and insistent, as if by stopping his probing she could erase the undeniable fact of her liaison with Jay. Her former riding instructor — and lover — as of eight weeks ago. Jay was at the party tonight, mostly flirting with potential female clients, on the balcony, so she’d avoided him the whole evening.

  “We’ll talk at home. Let’s go home.”

  “I don’t want gory details,” he said, his voice softer now too, yet insistent. “Just yes or no.”

  Lucinda recoiled from the strong wine odor and stepped off the gazebo. Bart grabbed the railing with both hands, like hawk talons, pulling away chips of grayish white paint and bits of rotting wood. He spun around and followed Lucinda, saying something she couldn’t make out. The sun had fully set, draining all color from the sky. Without another word, they walked back to Bart’s blue van.

  A few stars winked bright, then very faint. Bart got in the driver’s side and started the van. She laid a hand lightly on his thigh, but he flinched as if he were being branded. Curling her fingers, Lucinda withdrew her hand.

  They drove the eight miles back to the farmhouse in silence, with Bart staring straight through the windshield. Lucinda lowered the passenger-side window, her heart throbbing painfully, her breathing shallow. She shut her eyes, inhaling the briny sea scent pouring through the window from the east. Bart knows. She couldn’t imagine what would happen next. After Bart parked in the gravel driveway, he glanced in her direction. It took everything she had not to turn away in shame. He turned away quickly and opened the van door.

  Lucinda had left the porch light on as usual, and Gabriel, a pedigreed Silver Classic Tabby, was backing and forthing on the wide window sill. Lucinda couldn’t hear him but saw the cat’s mouth open and close like a snake’s, splaying out his whiskers, with urgent silent messages. Gabriel maneuvered adroitly between her legs when she opened the door. Scooping him up, she buried her face in his side. When she pulled away, a patch of his black marbled silver fur was damp. She released Gabriel, who licked the wet patch smooth and then dashed over to his food plate, hoping for a little bribe to compensate for his evening alone.

  After popping a few morsels in Gabriel’s dish, Lucinda sat at the round pine table and noticed a photography equipment catalog with the corners of several pages folded in for further perusal. Bart had camera acquisition syndrome. Lucinda let herself smile at Bart’s quirk, for a moment pus
hing away the pain of what was coming. Bart poured himself a whiskey and started up the stairs. Dread rushed back to her.

  “Wait, Bart. You need to know.”

  Bart stopped halfway up and turned to look at her. He stepped down and leaned against the banister at the base of the stairs, his glass nestled on top of his crossed forearms.

  “It’s over now,” Lucinda said. “But, yes. I — ”

  Bart stared at her, a searing gaze fueled by a night of wine and… something else. He’d never looked at her this way before.

  “It’s over now? Is that all you can say? Like it doesn’t count?”

  “Of course it counts. I’m not proud of what happened. What I did. I didn’t want to hurt you, but — ”

  “I can’t believe… .” Bart stopped suddenly, as if words were more painful than silence.

  Melding the scorch of Bart’s pain with her own acidic guilt, Lucinda felt as if she were being flayed. She cupped her right hand at the base of her throat and shut her eyes. Gabriel jumped to the tabletop, where he was not allowed. Something was emerging tonight, long underwater, after seventeen years of marriage, the last five shaky. Like a monster in a lake they’d avoided running into until now.

  Lucinda opened her eyes and peered out the bay window into the dark to summon some explanation. She owed him something more. What had happened to their love? She wasn’t sure herself. As she turned to Bart to speak, he wrenched open the front door, then disappeared into the night clutching the empty rocks glass.

  A minute later, Lucinda watched the blue van shoot down the gravel driveway. She’d been able to push away the guilt she felt about Jay, at least enough to function these last two months. The whole affair was so unlike her, usually loyal to a fault. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Bart when she’d ended it, couldn’t face what it would mean. But that wasn’t fair to Bart or her. She had no idea how everything had spun so out of control.