Page 6 of Holiday Hideaway
“That’s more like it,” he muttered as he settled back down to work. He sprayed the solvent on the wallpaper, then stepped back and set the timer on his smartwatch for five minutes.
When a Perry Como version of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” came on, he started singing along, purely out of instinct.
“O little town ... how still we see thee lie ...”
His deep voice echoed in the high-ceilinged first-floor rooms. Tilly crept out to the stair landing and sat down. It was George, the owner of the Crowe’s Nest and also of an impressive baritone singing voice. He was singing along with a radio, and she was suddenly filled with an ineffable mixture of nostalgia and yearning.
She whispered along with the words ...
And now she realized where she had heard that voice and who it belonged to.
He’d been a junior at Piney Point High, and she’d been a senior. He had brownish hair and a wispy attempt at a mustache and was so skinny he’d earned the hated nickname of Sticks.
Definitely, her unwitting landlord was Sticks Holloway, genius math prodigy who also possessed the loveliest baritone voice Tilly had ever heard. They’d been in high school glee club together—she a so-so soprano, he apparently the only nongay glee guy, whose very existence made him the target of an unending stream of torment from the alpha male jocks of Piney Point, including her future ex-husband, Denny.
Of course, Sticks wasn’t his real name. It was ... George. She nodded. George Holloway.
A certifiable math genius, he’d graduated a year early and entered MIT as a sophomore, at the tender age of sixteen.
Her phone lit up with an incoming call, and she pressed connect as she hurried back into the confines of her garret.
“Tilly, I’m so sorry,” Ruth said, sounding genuinely remorseful. “I just got your message. Don’t tell me you’re still hiding out in that attic.”
“My car’s dead.”
“You should have called Triple A,” Ruth said. “Or Uber. You can’t stay there indefinitely.”
“I don’t belong to Triple A. So where do you suggest I stay for the next two weeks?”
“I’d let you stay here, but ...”
“But you and Gina live in a two-bedroom cottage, and Dooley and Theo are coming home from boarding school. I get it.”
“They got home last night,” Ruth said. “They’re eating machines. I’d forgotten humans could consume that much food in twenty-four hours. What are we going to do about finding you a place to live?”
“Nothing, until I get paid after Christmas,” Tilly said, trying to tamp down the mounting despair she was feeling. “I just have to get through the next two weeks, until my new place is ready.”
“Denny owes you,” Ruth said fiercely. “He’s such a worm. This is all on him.”
“I told you I don’t want a dime from him.”
“Ugggh. When I think of all you went through with him, it makes me want to scream. Bad enough he was a liar and a cheat—he actually stole from you, Tilly. That house was half yours. More than half. You made the down payment, put all that work into it yourself, and then he sold it out from under you, and you walked away with nothing, just because the judge is one of his fishing buddies ...”
“If I have to live in a van down by the river for the rest of my life, I’m still better off than I was six months ago. So let’s change the subject. My phone battery is getting low, and there’s no outlet in the attic. Do me a favor: see what you can find out about Augustus Crowe.”
“Easy peasy.”
Tilly heard Ruth’s fingertips racing across a keyboard. Ruth was a ninja at ferreting out obscure or arcane data from the internet. She’d managed to track down Denny’s lastgirlfriend just on the basis of a blurry photo of the two of them on the girl’s best friend’s Facebook page. Within an hour, Ruth had the girl’s address, phone number, and place of employment—which, no big surprise, turned out to be a gentleman’s club called Bonerz.
“Got the obit,” Ruth said. “George Augustus Crowe. Died at his residence in Simpkinsville.” Ruth listed where he’d been born and raised and then the names of his surviving family, including a nephew named Peter George Holloway.
“I knew it,” Tilly exclaimed. “George is actually Sticks Holloway. Remember him? A year behind us in high school. Total rocket scientist type.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Ruth said.
“Our senior year, Denny and his idiot pals mounted a write-in campaign to get George elected to the homecoming court.”
“Ohhhhh,” Ruth said. “Now I remember. That poor guy.”
