By Familiar Means

by Delia James

  Jake squeezed her hand. “You were trying to make peace. It’s a good thing.”

  Miranda cleared her throat. “We’re not really set up for that kind of volume, but I thought, maybe, we could talk about some specialty batches to sell in the hotel store, but, well, I was worried Jake might not—”

  “She was afraid I’d accuse her of selling out to the capitalist establishment,” Jake finished. “And maybe I would have, because I am not always as cool as I should be.”

  “So I decided not to tell him before I had more details, and some kind of plan, and could run some numbers to see . . .” She shook her head. “Well, if it would be worth it.”

  “Would it be?” asked Sean. The sound of his voice startled me more than it should have. I’m embarrassed to admit it but, he’d been so quiet, I’d kind of forgotten he was there.

  Miranda shook her head. “I don’t think so, no.”

  “Because you’re not set up for it?” I said.

  “Because things are too crazy over there,” she said. “Rich talks a good game, but I don’t think his mom would actually go for it.”

  “Thanks, Miranda” I said. “I appreciate the honesty.”

  “I know, but don’t go poking Chuck,” said Miranda. “He’s upset enough as it is. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll let you get back to your party.”

  I turned and edged past Sean, heading back out into the crowd and the music and trying not to feel like I was slinking away.

  Sean followed me out into the open air, until we got to the railing that separated Ceres Street from the river.

  “And there it is,” I said to Sean, folding my arm on the railing and staring out at the river. “That’s me in a nutshell.”

  Sean glanced over his shoulder. “Am I supposed to be scared?”

  I smiled weakly. “Scared? No. Mildly appalled, maybe.”

  “Sorry. Can’t oblige. Unfortunately, I also can’t stay. Virginia called in sick, and I’ve got to go cover her shift at the Pale Ale. You going to be all right?”

  “Fine. I’ve got to get going, too.” Specifically, I needed to find Grandma B.B. and hear what had happened between her and Gretchen Hilde.

  Sean said something and touched my shoulder. I reminded myself that it would totally break up this beautiful, peaceful happening if I pitched the bongo player into the river.

  “What?” I shouted.

  Sean laughed. “I was saying, if you need help, or anything, all you have to do is whistle.” He adjusted his fedora. “You do know how to whistle, don’t you?”

  I did. I also knew how to blush, and I was doing it now. But it only lasted a minute, because as I grinned up at Sean, another memory was surging up from the back of my brain.

  “What?” He touched my shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh, ah, um, yeah. I just remembered I forgot to buy cat food. Alistair’s going to shred all the sofa cushions.”

  Sean laughed. “Circle K is open twenty-four-seven. You’ll be fine.”

  “Sure I will. You’d better get going, or Martine will shred more than the sofa cushions.”

  Sean winced. “You got that right. Talk to you soon.”

  I agreed he would. I also stared after him as he walked away, adjusting the brim of his hat so the wind wouldn’t blow it off his head. I was thinking about how he sometimes worked at the hotel, filling in behind their bar. I was also thinking about the drawing I’d made the other day, the one of the fedora lying lost and lonely in the tunnel between the hotel and the old drugstore, the place where we’d already found one corpse.

  Suddenly there wasn’t enough coffee in the whole world to make things okay.

  32

  When I got home, I just about melted with relief. The Galaxie was in the driveway and Grandma B.B. was in the dining room with Alistair supervising as she pulled carryout containers out of three separate bags from Raja Rani, my favorite Indian restaurant.

  Under the circumstances, I think I can be forgiven if I eyed the fragrant array of containers a tiny bit skeptically.

  “So, Grandma B.B.,” I said. “How’d it go with Gretchen?”

  Grandma sighed and reached for another container. This one released the scent of warm spices and chicken tikka masala. “Well, let’s say it was not quite all I hoped for.”

  “How bad is ‘not quite’?” I asked.

  Grandma opened the last container, displaying a golden rice and lamb biryani. “Well, Gretchen said she had tried to be polite, because we had been friends once and because she was willing to let bygones be bygones. But as things went on, she rather firmly stated that she had absolutely no reason to help any of my family after the way I treated her in college. She further suggested that instead of nagging her about local gossip, I should be talking to you about the reputation you’re getting as a busybody and troublemaker.”

  “Oh.”

  “I may have made a few indiscrete remarks after that.”

  “Oh.”

  “I should have known better,” she murmured. “After all this time, I didn’t think she’d still . . . Well, Gretchen always could carry a grudge.”

  I couldn’t help noticing both the uncharacteristic puckering of Grandma B.B.’s normally cheerful face and her even more uncharacteristic long stretch of silence. Clearly, her argument with Gretchen had gotten to her. But there was something else as well.

  “I think I got too much food.”

  “Good,” I said. “We’ll have leftovers.”

  I helped Grandma set out the plates and silverware. We’d eat first; then we’d tackle the hard subjects. Like how I was going to get myself into the hotel archive.

  Later, Britton. I sat down and spooned biryani onto my plate. Alistair took this as his signal to jump back up on the table and hunker down, practically daring me to try to move him. We eyed each other for a minute. Then I spooned a couple of pieces of chicken tikka onto a plate and set it down on the floor. Alistair eyed me sourly. He also jumped down and started eating.

  “You get a stomachache and it’ll serve us both right,” I muttered. My familiar ignored me and kept right on lapping at the spicy, buttery sauce.

  I dug into my biryani. It was warm and rich and entirely satisfying. Grandma, who had been to India at least three times, ignored her fork altogether and just scooped up her tikka with the bread.

  “So, did you do it?” I asked.

  “Did I what, dear?”

  “Steal Grandpa Charlie from Gretchen Hilde?”

  “No,” she said firmly, but then she added, “Not really. We were still girls. Or near as. We were home from college, and, well, maybe I flirted a little more than I should have back then, and Charlie—your grandfather—he was such a dish. He could dance like a dream. He brought flowers. He . . . Well, he could sweep a girl off her feet with a wink and a smile.”

  It’s not easy to think of your grandfather as a Casanova. I mean, I’d seen the photos of them as a young couple, and I was mature enough to admit the man had been, to use Grandma’s words, a dish. But still, he was my grandfather. I’d ridden on his shoulders when I was little, and he’d come to my doll tea parties. It was hard to make the switch.

  “Is that what he did to you?” I asked. “Swept you off your feet?

  “Exactly the opposite, I’m afraid. I thought he was too smooth for his own good, and he didn’t have much time for anyone who wasn’t bowled over by all that charm.”

  “What changed?”

  Grandma blushed. It was a really amazing shade of pink, too. “Perhaps I’ll tell you one day, but for now, suffice it to say, we had a lot of arguments and then your grandfather did something rather unkind.”

  “To you?”

  “And Gretchen. He started dating Gretchen to . . . well, to show me that he could.”

  “Oh.”

 
“It was while he was dating her that the feud between the old families reached its height, and I was a bit of a wreck, I will admit. Charlie saw how badly I needed to get away, and he proposed.”

  “So, one second Gretchen’s dating this fantastic guy, and the next . . .”

  “He’s more or less eloped with somebody else. So, if she has hard feelings, they’re not entirely unjustified.”

  I pushed a few grains of rice around with my fork and studied the effect. I added a lamb cube and some peas.

  “You came back to a lot,” I said.

  “The consequences of an eventful life, I suppose.” Grandma tore off another piece of bread and swirled it through the tikka sauce.

  “Could have been worse. You could have been bored.”

  She smiled. “With you as a granddaughter? Impossible.”

  I smiled back, but only for a minute. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do this, Grandma. You just got to town, and after all this time and . . . well, things. I should have let you sort your own stuff out first.”

  “No, I wanted to do it. I . . .” She set her bread down on the edge of the plate. “What I did not expect was how coming home would wake up all the old instincts. How very much I’d want to help, especially when I saw you . . . involved with the true craft.”

  “And in trouble with the police?”

  “Yes, that as well. And now, here I had a chance to do something for you, and Jake and Miranda, and I can’t, because of those silly mistakes I made so long ago.”

  “You are helping, Grandma. But . . . maybe you should just take it easy for a couple of days? This is supposed to be a vacation. Have you called Bob and Ginger yet?”

  “Annabelle Amelia.” Grandma eyed me over the rims of her glasses. “Are you telling me to stick to my knitting?”

  “Would I ever do that?”

  “Meow,” said Alistair as he started to wash his whiskers. “Mer-om.”

  “Yes, and she always does,” agreed Grandma.

  I was outnumbered. “Look, Grandma, I just think if you’re having trouble because of things that happened back in the day, maybe you should take the time to mend a few fences. You could start with you and Julia.”

  Grandma’s mouth puckered up stubbornly at this idea, but before either one of us could say anything more, the muffled ringing of my cell phone rose from the depths of my purse. Grandma waved her slice of naan at me.

  “Go ahead, dear.”

  “Thanks. Sorry.” I grabbed the phone. I didn’t recognize the number, but it was local. I hit the Accept button. “Hello?”

  “Hello? Miss Britton?” said a man’s voice. “I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner. Rich Hilde.”

  “No, that’s okay, Mr. Hilde,” I said. Grandma’s head shot up. So did Alistair’s. “What can I do for you?”

  “Well, this is a little awkward, but I was sort of calling by way of apology.”

  “Apology?” I said. “What for?”

  “For my mother, actually,” he said. “She’s very upset about the argument with your grandmother today.”

  “Dale?” mouthed Grandma.

  “Richard,” I mouthed back. “Thank you, but it’s really okay,” I told him. “No harm done.” Except I couldn’t help wondering if his mother was so upset, why was Rich calling me? Shouldn’t Gretchen be calling Grandma B.B. instead?

  “Well, maybe. I just wanted to make sure you both know that Mother really is sorry about the argument. Strictly between us, she’s just too proud to say it. So I was thinking you and I might be able to do a little something to smooth things over.”

  Every time his family does something or wants something, he’s always the one coming around smiling and charming and making it all okay . . . Val’s words echoed back to me.

  The fixer, I thought. There’s one in every family. Except during the conversation I’d heard through the window. There, it sure sounded like Dale was the one making everything okay.

  I wondered if Dale knew Rich was making this phone call.

  “What kind of thing were you thinking?” I asked him. I glanced at Grandma, too. She had her gaze pointed at her plate and was tracing patterns in the curry sauce with the last of the bread, but she was listening so hard, I could practically see her ears quiver. Alistair wasn’t bothering to hide his interest. He was all but sitting on the toes of my Keds while he blinked up at me.

  “We-e-elll,” drawled Rich. “Harbor’s Rest is in the middle of an expansion and renovation, and as part of that we’re looking at tightening the hotel’s connection to the community. Some new art by a local artist would be just the thing for us.”

  I drummed my fingers softly on the table. Alistair seemed to take this as his signal to jump up onto the table and shove his nose under my hand so I’d switch from drumming to head scratching.

  “I . . . well, obviously I’d love to talk with you about it. But are you sure? I wouldn’t want there to be a problem because of . . .” I let that trail off, mostly to see how he’d finish the sentence.

  “No, no, no. There won’t be any problem. I’ve already okayed it with the whole team here.”

  “Does the whole team include Mrs. Hilde? And Dale?”

  Rich chuckled, a smooth, warm sound.

  “I can understand the hesitation,” said Rich. “Especially after what Dale said to you. But that’s all taken care of. Shall we say nine o’clock? I hope that’s not too early. You’ll be talking with my sister Christine. She’s our marketing director, and it’s the only time she has free during the next few days.”

  I pictured Kelly Pierce and Christine Hilde in the dim diner with their papers. Rich could have said this meeting was going to be at 2 a.m. and I would have given him the same answer. “I’ll be there.”

  We said our good-byes and hung up.

  “What was that all about?” demanded Grandma B.B.

  “That was Rich Hilde.” I stared at my phone. “And I think he just offered me a bribe.”

  “A bribe?” exclaimed Grandma. “What on earth would Richard Hilde be trying to bribe you for?”

  “That’s a really good question. Did I tell you Dale threw me out of there today?”

  “What? Why?”

  I told her about my conversation with Kelly, and with Dale, and then I told her what I’d overheard outside the window. If I glossed over my interlude with Sean on the beach, well, I could always tell her about that later.

  “And now, here’s Rich, talking about the hotel maybe commissioning some original artwork and . . . What?”

  Grandma’s face was all scrunched up, like she was trying to hold something back, and it wasn’t a pleasant something. At all. “Well,” she said. “That’s wonderful, dear. I admit, I was a little worried about how we were going to get you in after I . . . well, fell short.”

  “You didn’t fall short, Grandma.”

  She smiled. She also changed the subject. “I never can remember, dear, do you like rice pudding? I hope so, because I got enough for two.” Alistair looked up at her as pitifully as if he’d been an orphan kitten in the pouring rain. “Well, yes, of course, Alistair, I meant enough for three.”

  I sighed and wondered out loud if Portsmouth even had a kitty-cat gym, or if we were going to have to start commuting to Boston for that.

  33

  I really did not mean to let rice pudding and Grandma’s sweet little old lady act distract me. But the truth was, after an eventful day and a heavy dinner, it wasn’t long before I was nodding off where I sat. I told myself that Grandma and I could continue our conversation in the morning. By then, I’d have my brain back in working order and we could make plans. We could call Bob and Ginger, maybe, and she could spend a few nights in Boston spoiling her great-grandson. Maybe this meeting with Christine would allow me to put together the final puzzle pieces about what had really happened to Jimmy Up
ton. Maybe by then we would have things sorted out here. Maybe I’d be able to sit down with her and Julia and finally sort out what was happening between them.

  I told myself nothing was going to happen overnight. I kept telling myself this while I tried to stay awake long enough to brush my teeth and climb into my pajamas and into my bed. Despite all my worries for Sean, Jake and Miranda, and Grandma—and, I admit it, for me, too—I proceeded to sleep like the dead.

  At least I did until something very cold and wet pressed up against my face.

  “Gah!” My eyes snapped open and I shoved myself backward.

  “Merow!” Alistair jumped in the opposite direction, landed on my feet, stumbled sideways and caught himself just before he toppled off the edge of the bed.

  “Wh . . . a-a-at?” I said, remembering to drop my voice just in time. I didn’t want Grandma B.B. running in here. She could sleep through anything, except one of her grandkids sounding distressed. It was still dark, and my beside clock blinked over from 2:30 to 2:31.

  “Mow-erp.” Alistair jumped off the bed and started pacing in front of the door. “Meow!”

  I stared at him, trying to figure out if this was a real emergency or just that I’d forgotten to fill up his dry food bowl. Then I felt that slow, steady prickling running up my arms. My eyes widened.

  “Merow,” agreed Alistair, and he vanished.

  I kicked back the covers, grabbed my robe and tiptoed into the hall. Alistair was at the top of the stairs, his tail lashing back and forth. I followed him downstairs and into the kitchen.

  Golden light flickered through the windows. I leaned over the sink and pushed back the curtains.

  Somebody was using the fire pit at the center of the garden’s spiraling path. I could see the flames flickering up along with a swirl of smoke and sparks. Somebody stood with her back to the window and her arms stretched up to the sky.

  Grandma B.B.