By Familiar Means

by Delia James

  “Frank, we haven’t had a chance to talk about the lease,” I said as he pulled out of the parking lot and signaled a right turn.

  “You’re not going to let that go, are you?” Frank stopped to let a cluster of young men blunder across the street. They might have been the frat boys from the diner. “Look, Anna, I’m glad to let you live in the cottage. I don’t want to sell it, and I’ve got another ten months on my apartment lease. It’s better to have somebody taking care of the place than just letting it sit empty. Okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay.”

  “Why not?”

  I did not have a good answer. I looked out at the passing buildings, all closed down for the night. “Karma,” I said finally. “And neither one of us knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. Maybe you get hit by the crosstown bus and the cottage gets inherited by your greedy second cousin Arthur who turns around and sells it to a developer and me and Alistair are thrown out onto the sidewalk in the middle of the New England winter.”

  Frank laughed. “I’d say don’t be ridiculous, except for two things.”

  “Which are?”

  “One is everything I’ve seen happen to you since you got to Portsmouth.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “I really do have a second cousin named Arthur.”

  I’d think about that later. “So, you’ll give me a lease? A real grown-up legal lease with rent and tenant obligations and landlord obligations and everything?”

  “With all the bells and whistles. I’m sure your lawyer can even tie it up in red ribbon if you want.”

  I did want, as a matter of fact. “Frank, it’s not that I don’t think you’re being generous . . .” Really generous. Even if you factored in what amounted to caretaker duties, it was much too generous for me to accept under any circumstances, especially when those circumstances involved Frank lending me his jacket and helping me with the police and everything.

  “It’s okay, Anna. I get it. You don’t want to feel like you owe anybody.”

  “Karma,” I said again.

  “Karma,” he agreed.

  We’d left the downtown, and instead of historic houses and brick storefronts and converted warehouses, we passed individual homes sheltered by the grand old trees that were part of what I loved about this town. In the daylight, the summer green would be fading to reveal the red and gold fall splendor. Now, though, they were just all the different shades of gray and ashy white.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” said Frank.

  “Not worth it.” I looked out at the street and the pools of light and the surrounding darkness. The truth is, right then I was thinking about that Hopper painting Nighthawks, the one of the people at the lunch counter after dark. Except in my mind, that lunch counter was populated with Hildes: Christine and Gretchen and both sons, with Kelly Pierce bringing in cups of coffee. I thought about all those different arguments I had drawn up in my attic. But I also thought about Chuck and Jake and how they cleaned out their attic before we could go in and make sure the place was ghost-free, maybe even before it stopped being a crime scene. I thought about Kenisha and Pete and how they were both very smart and very sure there was more going on with Jake and Miranda than met the eye.

  The Galaxie was parked in the cottage driveway. The lights were on inside the house. Grandma B.B. was home in there, and probably waiting up for me, most likely with Alistair curled up on her lap.

  Frank pulled us up to the curb and shut off the engine. He also dug into his pocket. I thought he was going for his notebook again, but instead he held out a penny in two fingers. He dropped it, and I caught it automatically.

  “Spill,” Frank said.

  I shot him an irritated glance, but it didn’t last. “I don’t know.” I turned the penny over in my own fingers a few times before I tucked it into my purse. “I don’t want to . . .”

  “I like Jake and Miranda, too,” he said softly. Neither one of us was making any move to get out of the car. “But that doesn’t mean they haven’t maybe made some . . . mistakes.”

  “Like selling marijuana out the back door forty years ago?”

  “I was thinking there might be something more recent. Something you’ve decided you can’t tell Pete and Kenisha, at least not yet.”

  I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t. Thank goodness we were sitting in the dark and he couldn’t see how my cheeks were burning.

  “Anna, you know, whatever it is, you can trust me.”

  I wanted to. Frank was a friend, and I liked him. But he was also a journalist, and whichever way it went, this was a huge story. I did not want to hurt Jake and Miranda. I wanted to keep seeing them as nice people who just wanted to help the community and the people who worked for them. There was one problem.

  “Is there any way to find out how Jake and Miranda bought that building?” I asked. “I mean, that’s a pretty amazing piece of real estate. I know one of their baristas got a social media campaign going . . .”

  “Oh, yeah. That’d be Chuck. I saw some of that. Very smart.”

  Chuck. I stared out at my lovely, peaceful cottage. Chuck had developed an online coffee connector. Except, what if . . . what if it wasn’t just coffee that he was connecting people to? And what if Jimmy had found out? I closed my eyes. What if Blanchard had been right all along? What if this wasn’t about real estate or riverfront development or family business? What if it was exactly what it looked like?

  “Anna, you’ve got something. What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I mean, I know that thanks to Chuck, Jake and Miranda have been doing really well lately, but buying and renovating a historic building takes a major outlay.”

  Yes, I said it, but I didn’t like hearing it.

  Frank let out a long breath. “Okay. Okay. But, remember, you’re the one who said Jake had no problem going down in that tunnel. If he and Miranda were involved with Jimmy’s death, why would they take you down there?”

  I nodded, but I didn’t feel any better. “Frank, I’m going to tell you something, but you have to swear you’ll keep it out of the paper until we’ve had a chance to check it out.”

  I was doing this. I was hiding crucial evidence. I was lying to the police and my coven sister. But I was also trying to keep a kid who said he just wanted to marry his girlfriend and provide for his new baby from getting his name smeared.

  “Okay, I swear,” said Frank.

  I told him about the ghost-hunting expedition and about Chuck and what Chuck had told us. “But now that we’ve seen Kelly Pierce and Christine Hilde, it changes things,” I said. “Because if there’s something bigger going on, it might not be Jake and Miranda who are in it with Chuck. It might be Christine and Kelly.” Because funding a new hotel, even with Dreame Royale backing, was going to take cash, and lots of it.

  Frank let out a long breath. “That’s a lot to conclude from one meeting in a diner.”

  “But it’s not just one meeting.” It’s a vision of a payoff, with Jimmy in the middle between two women.

  “Anna,” said Frank. “This thing with Chuck. You really should tell the police.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Please. You promised. We just need a little more time.”

  “You know I respect you and what you can do, Anna, but this is too much.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.” I moved to get out of the car.

  Frank groaned. “Anna, stop. Wait. Think this through. This changes the whole picture.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But maybe not. The Hildes are still in trouble and their family home and business are still on the line. We can be pretty sure Shelly Kinsdale is making plans with Kelly and Christine, and whatever they are, it’s going to spell bad news for the hotel.” I was talking too loud and too fast. “All we need are a couple of days to find out if Jimmy was involved with that bad new
s and if what he knew was worth killing for.”

  “And if we find out what he was involved in really was a drug deal?” he snapped. “Here’s another combination for you. Maybe Chuck and Jimmy were working together. Maybe they were taking Jake and Miranda for a ride.”

  I opened my mouth. I closed it again. I hadn’t even thought of that. Was it possible Chuck had been trying to sell us a sob story? No. It couldn’t have been. Grandma B.B. would have been able to tell when she did her reading on him. I mean, sure, she hadn’t practiced in a while, but she’d jumped back in with both feet. She’d know if he was telling that much of a lie. Even if he was only working with Jimmy to get the money to support his girlfriend and the baby, she’d get a feeling about that.

  Wouldn’t she?

  “Just a couple of days,” I said again. “If we don’t turn up another story, I promise, we go to the police.”

  “You better get out of the car, then,” said Frank. “Because you’ve got a lot of work to do.

  27

  “Merow?”

  Alistair’s soft call came out of the living room; so did the sound of somebody snoring.

  I snapped off the porch light, dropped my purse on the table by the door and tiptoed in.

  Grandma B.B. was stretched out under the rainbow-striped afghan I’d picked up at a rummage sale. She had her glasses perched on her forehead and she was snoring, gently but persistently. Alistair had curled up on her stomach like a furry gray pillow.

  “Thanks, big guy,” I whispered and rubbed his ears. I knew Grandma B.B. was perfectly capable of looking after herself, but somehow I felt better knowing that my familiar was on duty.

  “Merowp,” he mumbled as he rearranged himself and tucked his face under his tail.

  I wandered into the dining room and stared at the piles of books and paper that was the sum total of my research into the Harbor’s Rest hotel and historic Portsmouth.

  I was tired. I was more than a little bewildered. What had I been thinking? I should call Kenisha right now. Tell her everything I knew. Maybe Chuck and Jimmy had been in business together after all. Maybe they were using Jake and Miranda as cover, and maybe scapegoats.

  But then I pictured the toothy smile spreading across Lieutenant Blanchard’s face. If I helped stitch up his case against Jake and Miranda because I revealed that there really was a drug connection, I’d never forgive myself.

  Then there were the sketches that had come from my automatic drawing session. They had all been of the Hildes and Jimmy. Chuck was nowhere to be seen. I stopped. Unless. The drawing pad was lying on the table with the other research papers. I flipped it open to the last page and stared at the sketch of the two men in the middle of a murder. Neither figure was very distinct, but that could be Chuck getting shot, or maybe holding the gun.

  “Merow?” said Alistair from down beside my ankles. He jumped up onto the chair and the table and promptly sat down on the nearest book.

  “We need to think, Alistair,” I whispered to him. Grandma B.B.’s snoring hitched, but she settled down. “What do we actually know?”

  “Merow.” His tail lashed back and forth.

  “We know Jimmy Upton was drowned in a sink and put in the tunnel. We know he had a wad of cash on him.” I stopped. “Why would the murderer leave the money?”

  “Maow.” Alistair jumped off the book into the middle of the table, scattering papers everywhere.

  “Shhh! Come on, cat,” I hissed as I started gathering the papers up. “I’ve got a system going here.”

  “Merow,” said Alistair doubtfully.

  I automatically shuffled the papers into a neater pile. “You know, if the murderer knows Lieutenant Blanchard doesn’t like the Luces, maybe they deliberately left the money on Jimmy when they dumped the body, so he would think about their past record and get all kinds of very wrong ideas.” I stopped. “Which means whoever did this knew about that relationship and knew enough about Blanchard to know how he’d react. And it means they wanted to make trouble for Jake and Miranda. If Jimmy and Chuck were using Jake and Miranda for cover, why would they deliberately want to draw attention to them?”

  Alistair started nosing around the table, probably looking for crumbs.

  “The problem with all this,” I said, “is there’s still no way to prove Jimmy was killed in the hotel or dumped from there, unless we know where the tunnel is.”

  There was a rustling from the living room as Grandma B.B. shifted on the couch. I should go up to bed. I didn’t want to wake her. She had to be at least as tired as I was. “But we’ve got to find that tunnel entrance,” I told my cat. “Blanchard is building his story around that one fact—there is a way into the tunnel from the old drugstore and there isn’t one from the hotel.”

  “Merow!” Alistair jumped up on the table and plunked himself down, right on top of his favorite sitting book, Portsmouth: Evolution of a Riverside Town, which happened to be lying open.

  “Jeez, Alistair,” I whispered sharply. I also picked him up and put him on a chair. “You’ll wrinkle the pages.”

  “Merow!” he shot back.

  “And wake Grandma.” Alistair huffed at me and flowed down to the floor.

  The book was open to one of the best pictures I’d found so far. It was from the Roaring Twenties and showed a ballroom packed to the walls with women in gowns covered in sequins and fringe alongside men in white ties and tails. The photographer must have stood on a ladder to get that panorama. Every last person in that crowded room was raising a china teacup and smiling for the camera. My plan was to reproduce the scene as a long border running along the top of the walls of the coffee shop, with all those teacups transformed into coffee mugs.

  The irony here was that the ballroom was the one in the Harbor’s Rest. The caption dated it from 1921. I paused. There had been something about that photo. I remembered thinking I ought to go back and check it, but then everything had hit the fan.

  “Merow!” Alistair jumped back up on the table and onto the book.

  “Come on, cat,” I muttered and shooed him off again. I smoothed the page down and reached for a piece of paper I could use as a bookmark. And stopped.

  I squinted at the caption underneath the photo again, right where it read: Prohibition “tea” at the Harbor’s Rest. Because after that it read: Courtesy of Harbor’s Rest private archive.

  “Archive!” I shouted.

  Grandma B.B.’s snore turned into a cough and she started awake.

  “Oh, goodness, Anna!” Grandma pushed herself upright. The motion dropped her glasses onto her nose. “You’re home!”

  “The hotel has a private archive!” I answered. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”

  “I imagine because we’ve all been a little busy.” She climbed out from under the afghan. “And perhaps because none of us could possibly know something like that.”

  I winced. “Right. Yes. Sorry. How’s Miranda? Is she okay?”

  Grandma started folding the afghan up. “I’m afraid not. She was in tears when we got there. She said she’d called their lawyer, and he was apparently very reassuring, but . . .” Grandma shook her head. “The poor dear. She’s afraid Jake’s arrest is because of something she did. She’s positively terrified she betrayed him. As if she could when she loves him so deeply . . .”

  “Grandma B.B.! Did you . . . you know . . .” I made a vaguely witchy gesture.

  “With Julia sitting right there the whole time?” Grandma looked at me over the rims of her glasses. “Honestly, Annabelle Amelia, what do you take me for?”

  “A witch, a grandmother and Miranda’s former babysitter.”

  Grandma lifted her chin. “Well, I suppose you do have a point, dear. But, no. I just held her while she cried a little.”

  “Did she tell you what happened when the police arrested Jake?”

  “No. She coul
dn’t. She wasn’t there. She only found out when Jake called her from the station.”

  “She wasn’t there? Where was she?” I asked, but Grandma shook her head.

  “I told you, a meeting of some sort.”

  “A meeting?” I repeated, and the goose bumps were back, running straight up my arms. Because Shelly Kinsdale had been on her way to a dinner meeting when she’d kicked me and Frank out. Which was surely just a coincidence. Right? Right.

  But I couldn’t help wondering exactly when Jake had been arrested. I mean, it might have taken Frank a few hours to get the news.

  “It was one of her committees,” Grandma was saying. “Riverfront preservation, I think. I didn’t want to push her on the subject. Even Julia felt it would be better if we just got her to bed.”

  “I just wish she didn’t have to be alone.”

  “She’s not. Julia stayed with her when I drove Valerie back home.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. Every time we turned around, it seemed like things were just getting worse for Jake and Miranda. This needed to stop. Now. I’d promised to help them. I’d also promised that in a couple of days I’d tell Kenisha about Chuck. That didn’t leave a whole lot of time.

  I petted Alistair again and turned over the bits and pieces in my mind. I thought about Frank and his two rumors about the state of the Harbor’s Rest. I thought about Shelly Upton Kinsdale and Dreame Royal. Then I thought about Christina Hilde and Kelly Pierce hunched over their omelets and their papers at the diner. I thought about new hotels and old hotels and the need for concrete proof.

  We needed to find that tunnel. It was the simplest, quickest way to get the police looking toward the Hildes. The drawings I’d done pointed to them. Now I knew that Harbor’s Rest had it’s own private archive. The history of the hotel was stored in the building itself. It would have clippings and pictures like this one and maybe guest registers. Correspondence. Account books. Blueprints.