"I've wanted a place in Beacon-by-the-Sea for as long as I can remember," Tess said quietly, watching two kids about twelve years old reading Sam Adams's tombstone. John Hancock was buried in Old Granary, too, as well as Benjamin Franklin's parents, the victims of the Boston Massacre, Mother Goose. "My mother and father and I used to have picnics there on the beach before she died. We'd walk past all the old houses, and Mum would tell me stories. She loved American history."

Susanna came and stood beside her. "Fundamentally, all financial decisions are emotional." She gave Tess a quick, irreverent grin. "Look at it this way- a run-down nineteenth-century carriage house haunted by a convicted murderer ought to make an interesting weekend project."

Tess decided to drive up to Beacon-by-the-Sea and take a look at her property that afternoon. She quit work early to get ahead of rush-hour traffic and made her way up Route One, then along the water to a quiet stretch of rockbound coast on the tip of Cape Ann. The May sun sparkled on the Atlantic, bringing back memories of driving this way when she was six, up front with her father, her mother tucked under blankets in back, telling stories of whales and lost ships until she either fell asleep or became unintelligible, making sense only to herself.

After Ike Grantham had stood her up, Tess had come to Beacon-by-the-Sea three or four times hunting for him, but to no avail. His own sister didn't seem to be worried about him. Why should Tess be? Ike had taken off without notice before, often. He was self-centered and inconsiderate, not because he meant to be but simply because he was.

Now she was on her way to the Beacon Historic Project's offices to pick up the key to the carriage house. The offices were located in one of its restored late-eighteenth-century buildings in the village, just a short walk to the harbor.