Ocean Beach (42 page)

“Anyway,” Madsen said, “I understand you were looking for the name of a particular glass artist.”

“Yes,” Deirdre said clearly, relieved to discuss something less personal. “We’re redoing a fabulous house down here in Miami; it’s an Art Deco Streamline that your grandmother worked on back in the late fifties, early sixties. Does that ring a bell?”

“Not really,” he said. “I mean, we all knew Grandmother lived in Miami before she came to Chicago, but she rarely talked about it.”

“Oh.” Deirdre’s disappointment showed on her face. “We’re actually looking for the artist that she commissioned to create a chandelier for the foyer. It’s umbrella-shaped, made of Sabino glass, hangs from a starfish escutcheon and has eight panels—”

“—of sculpted sea creatures?” Madsen finished.

“Yes.” Nicole could see Deirdre’s excitement that Jacob
Madsen seemed familiar with The Millicent’s chandelier, but was trying not to get her hopes up. “We’ve got our fingers crossed that the artist is still alive and might be able to re-create two panels that were damaged. Or that he might have something similar that we could hang in its place.”

“It’s a Jonathan Civelli,” Jacob Madsen said without hesitation. “My grandmother was a great admirer and patron of his. His pieces have become very valuable.”

“Oh, then—” Deirdre began.

“But I’m afraid he retired a long time ago. Last I heard he was in a nursing home somewhere in north Florida.”

Deirdre’s face wasn’t the only one that fell. The chandelier had begun to feel like a symbol of The Millicent’s glory days to all of them. “I know the subject matter and style are a little tropical for the Midwest, but do you know if your grandmother might have placed anything similar in another client’s home?”

There was a pause and then the designer said, “Oddly enough, she placed one almost exactly like the one you described in hers.”

Nicole noticed that Max had moved closer to Deirdre and was listening intently.

“It hung in the foyer of her home until the day she died. I never understood why she had this fanciful nautical piece in the entry of a suburban Chicago Prairie-style home. Especially given how
not
a fan of Miami she was.

“But no matter how many times she redecorated, she would never take it down. It was beautiful, but not of a piece with the whole, you know?”

“Yes,” Deirdre said. “I do. But it obviously meant
something to her.” She aimed a small smile at Max. “So where is it now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t thought about it in years. But I can check with my sister to see if she knows what happened to it. She’s the one who dismantled our grandmother’s house after she died. I have no idea whether she sold it or put it in one of our warehouses.”

Deirdre thanked the designer and hung up, her expression far more optimistic than Nicole would have expected. Given the way their luck seemed to be running at the moment, she estimated the chances that this particular chandelier was simply sitting in a convenient place waiting to be shipped off to them at zero-point-zero-zero-zero.

“I can’t feel my fingers anymore.” Nicole held up her hands, which were bent like claws, as they staggered out of The Millicent to collapse around the pool. “I have to keep looking to make sure they’re still there.”

Their breathing masks hung down around their necks. Their knee pads were dark from the days spent kneeling and crawling from spot to spot as they hand-sanded the hard-to-reach areas of the The Millicent’s wood floors.

“I’d go for a swim, but I don’t think I could get my clothes off or put on a bathing suit without the use of my fingers.” Like the rest of them, Nicole’s face was streaked with fine wood dust and dirt. “Actually, it’s not just my fingers. I don’t think I can move at all. Could someone please roll me into the pool?”

Maddie would have smiled except she didn’t have the strength. Her shoulders and back ached from days spent hunched over as they’d hand-sanded around the upstairs baseboards, down the edges of the stairs, under cabinets
and toe kicks, wherever the belt sander had been unable to reach. The physical exhaustion was made even worse by their inability to come up with a counter to Tonja Kay’s threat. “We could probably get you in, but I’m not sure any of us have enough muscle left to get you back out.”

Avery just grunted. When Chase had been unable to come down to Miami with the belt sander as planned, she’d rented one; then she and one of the younger Dantes had used it on the large expanses, while the rest of them—and their hand-numbing, sandpaper-wrapped blocks of wood—had tackled the rest.

“I must have blanked out how horrible hand sanding actually is,” Kyra said. “It was just last summer that we were doing the same thing at Bella Flora. But it all came back to me about fifteen minutes after we started.”

“Yes,” Madeline said. “It’s like giving birth. If the brain didn’t blot out the worst of it, we’d all be only children.”

“Tomorrow we apply the stain and let it sit overnight,” Avery said. “Then we’ll do the first coat of polyurethane—I’m thinking Maddie and I can handle the upstairs and Nicole can do Max’s room.”

One, or possibly all, of them groaned. Funny how their mouths were moving while their bodies were so “not.”

“That muriatic acid before sanding really got rid of the stains on the parquet,” Deirdre said.

“You looked like an astronaut in the rubber gloves and boots and mask,” Kyra said to Avery. “But the footage is really cool. I posted it on YouTube with the sound track from
2001: A Space Odyssey.
” She laughed, something that had become rare of late. “It got a ton of hits.”

Madeline stole a glance at Kyra. The furtive afternoon walks had ceased and Daniel Deranian hadn’t shown up in
or out of disguise since Tonja’s threatening phone call, but all of them had been uneasy, waiting for the actress to make her next move.

Maddie had begun hoping that they’d be finished with the house and out of Miami before the woman began to throw her considerable weight around at the network. Maddie was not a religious person, but she’d taken to praying for some sort of miracle, one that would convince the Deranian-Kays that they didn’t need another child in their menagerie.

“Mario said he’ll have the Morrocan tile ready for staining and sealing by the end of the day tomorrow,” Deirdre said. “I can work with him while you all finish the wood floors. That way we’ll be ready to start on exterior painting at least a day sooner.”

Maddie half expected Avery to take exception to Deirdre’s interfering with her “schedule” or for her to point out that Deirdre didn’t typically “do” manual labor, but Avery just said, “Thanks.”

Deirdre’s smile of surprise was quickly squelched, but Maddie knew she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed Avery becoming less combative.

“Well, I’m taking a sleeping pill or something tonight,” Nicole said, still eyeing the pool but not making a move. “Refinishing floors is bad enough. Dreaming about refinishing floors is cruel and unusual punishment. I swear I’ve been inhaling the dust and hearing that damned belt sander in my sleep. I say on the next house we hold out for a budget big enough to hire professionals to redo the floors.”

“
We’ll
be professionals by then,” Avery said.

“If there
is
another house once Tonja Kay’s finished with us,” Kyra said, her tone doleful. “I keep trying to think
what we could do that would stop her in her tracks, some secret or something that we could hold against her.”

“Maybe she’ll fold up her tent and go away if you make it clear she can’t push you around,” Maddie said.

“I don’t think she’s a folding-up-her-tent kind of person,” Nicole said.

“Me neither,” Deirdre said. “But there’s no point worrying about things that haven’t happened yet.”

It sounded like something that should be stitched on a pillow. Or hung on the wall. But like most hand-stitched sayings, it was easier said than done.

Moving was no easier the following morning when Maddie awoke. Dustin was still sound asleep, but Kyra’s bed was empty. Once she’d levered herself out of bed and through her morning toilette, she walked into the pool-house living area, where she found Kyra checking her camera and a pot of coffee already made.

They both looked up when Troy walked into the pool house with Max’s morning paper. An odd smile twisted his face.

“I guess some things never change,” he said, dropping the paper on the table in front of Kyra. “It looks like your boyfriend sees his movie sets as one big pickup opportunity.” He went into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee while he let the comment sink in.

Kyra took the paper and skimmed the headline. Her face went white.

“What is it?” Maddie asked.

“‘Daniel Deranian Caught on His Dressing Room Couch with a Young Production Assistant,’” Troy said. “A real shocker, huh?”

Kyra set the paper on the table and turned to him. Her
mouth was tight and her eyes welled with tears but her tone was combative. “What did I ever do to you that would make you feel so good about this?”

The question hung there for a long moment, filling the space between them, while Maddie skimmed the article.

“If you want to keep pretending like you don’t know, I’ll tell you,” the cameraman said. “You got your job on Deranian’s movie just like this assistant probably got hers.” He gestured to the photo of the dark-haired girl, which had been positioned next to a publicity head shot of Daniel Deranian. “A good friend of mine was supposed to be the production assistant on
Halfway Home.
” His eyes blazed with anger. “This was supposed to be her big break. She gave up other work. She was
on
that shoot. Until Deranian saw you come in to apply and decided he wanted
you
on the picture.” His lips twisted into a sneer. “I’m sure he insisted they hire you because of your
obvious
talent.”

Kyra’s chin jerked up at the blow. Her eyes squeezed shut. When she opened them, the first tears oozed out. “I guess I’m as stupid as you seem to think I am,” she said. “Because I actually thought they hired me because of my demo reel.”

Maddie watched the tears slither down Kyra’s cheek. She ached to wipe them away, but kept her hands occupied stirring sweetener into her coffee.

Troy’s sneer faltered.

“You want to know what else?” Kyra asked him. “You’ll really like this part. I thought Daniel wanted to sleep with me because he cared about me.” She looked down at the newspaper before forcing herself to look back up into the cameraman’s eyes. “And when he told me that he loved me?” Kyra continued. “I believed that too.”

The tears were in free fall now. Maddie felt her own eyes tearing up in sympathy.

“Stupid, huh?” Kyra sniffed but made no move to wipe away the tears that dampened her face. “I’m a frickin’ moron.”

Troy shifted his weight. The sneer had disappeared completely. It was clear this confrontation was not playing out the way he’d envisioned.

Kyra began to sob full-out.

Troy watched her helplessly for a few minutes and then he looked at Maddie as if for guidance. Maddie put her arms around her sobbing daughter and rocked her in her arms, trying her best to soothe her. But in the end, heartache, just like reality, was something you had to accept and somehow get through. Maddie had learned that one the hard way.

Nikki sat on the scaffolding, her legs dangling in front of her, her paint tray and brush at her side. It was ninety-eight degrees wrapped in a wet blanket of humidity. She was supposed to be painting around the porthole on the upstairs landing, but she was tired and sunburned to the point of crispy-critterdom. The only places she wanted to be were in front of an air-conditioning duct or in the pool, preferably both. If this hadn’t been the last day of painting, she would have already jumped ship and never looked back.

In an effort to cool down, she poured the last of her bottled water on the bandanna she’d used to tie her hair back and tied it around her neck instead, but it was practically useless by the time she finished and offered little in the way of relief. It didn’t smell all that great, either. For a
minute she contemplated standing, tiptoeing to the edge of the scaffold, and threatening to jump. But she suspected Avery would just tell her to be careful not to hit The Millicent on the way down so as not to dent her newly smoothed plaster or mar any of her fresh white paint.