Passing Through Paradise Read Free

scrambling to regroup after being nailed in a vicious divorce.
    Which, given what had happened to Victor, didn’t seem quite so bad.
    He figured it was no coincidence that, only a day after the ruling, Sandra Winslow was ready to spend money. Knowing Victor, he’d probably carried a hefty life insurance policy.
    “So what do I do now, Vic?” Mike said aloud, his breath fogging the windshield of the truck. But he already knew. He needed the work.
    Mike Malloy used to be at the top of his game. In Newport, he’d owned a construction firm that specialized in historical restoration. But the divorce had broken that apart along with everything else. Now he was trying to recover, starting small again with light construction, remodeling, pretty much anything that needed doing. He never expected to find himself starting over at this point in his life.
    This time of year, a decent project was hard to come by. A few summer people might contract for repair work on their empty vacation houses; the weather did its part by ripping off shingles, blowing in windows, flooding basements. A long-term job would be perfect right now.
    He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, put the old Dodge in gear and turned into Sandra Winslow’s driveway.
    The place looked as bereft as a toy left out in the rain. It was a Carpenter Gothic built in typical 1880s style, tall and narrow with a steeply pitched gable roof edged by lacy bargeboards. Pointed arches framed the windows, and a one-storey porch wrapped around three sides of the first floor.
    Even in a state of neglect, the structure exuded an airy delicacy. This was clearly a summer place, designed and situated to make the most of sea breezes blowing in from the water. The only provision for winter seemed to be the fieldstone chimney at one end.
    The gray siding hadn’t seen a coat of paint in decades, he guessed, and the roof had sprouted moss, lichens and poison ivy. The sagging front entrance sullenly greeted visitors, and a rooftop widow’s walk was bordered by a row of broken railings.
    Even so, Mike detected a subtle, uncontrived charm in the board and batten trim, the bay and oriel windows, the steep cross gables hand-hewn a century ago. But like the house, the original appeal had been warped and weathered. Shutters that had probably been functional half a century ago hung crooked from rusty hinges. At least one had plummeted into an overgrown lilac bush.
    The place was a disaster. People who wanted to slap the Winslow woman behind bars ought to see it. Maybe there was a sort of purgatory for people who got away with murder. Maybe it looked something like this.
    Except his trained eye kept going to the soaring lines of the house, the unself-conscious grace of the scrollwork trim, and the drama of the setting—a private half acre at the edge of the dunes, facing the broadest view the state had to offer.
    The landscaping had run wild, and the lawn consisted of a dead trampled area circling the house like a tattered skirt. Ancient wild roses bordered the verges, some reaching as high as the first storey of the house. Wind and cold had long since stripped the leaves from the snarl of bushes, leaving bald rosehips behind.
    Mike killed the engine. When he got out of the truck, he heard a rhythmic thunk from the vicinity of the garage, long ago converted from a carriage house.
    Someone was chopping wood. He walked around behind the garage to see who it was.
    From the rhythm of the chopping, he expected someone large. Experienced. He’d split his share of wood and knew it wasn’t exactly high tea.
    At first he didn’t recognize Sandra Winslow. He’d seen her only in pictures, and he was fairly certain she didn’t dress this way for the press. Faded jeans and an oversized plaid hunting jacket. Some of her brown hair was caught into a messy ponytail; her feet were stuffed into cracked rubber boots. Her face was chapped from wind and cold.
    Split logs lay scattered around her, littering