The Beach at Painter's Cove

by Shelley Noble

  Issy stopped. Smiled. “It is indeed.” It was impossible not to emulate Mrs. Ogden’s cheery disposition.

  Mrs. Ogden’s face slackened. “Is anything wrong up at the Muses?”

  “Leo had a little episode. She’s fine but she’s in the hospital and they called me.”

  “You?”

  Did that sound like an accusation? Maybe the whole town thought she had been neglecting her family. And the truth was that she had been.

  “I mean, is it that serious?”

  “It doesn’t seem to be.”

  “Well, I hope you stay awhile. They need you.”

  Issy smiled, nodded. The last thing she’d expected were recriminations, but that’s what Mrs. Ogden’s tone insinuated. Or maybe it was her own guilt.

  Keeping Chloe’s list in one hand and steering her cart with the other, Issy chose oatmeal and cold cereal, granola bars, flour, sugar, paper towels, toilet paper, and dish detergent. On to hamburger, chicken, and a rump roast, to the dairy case for milk, flavored yogurt, string cheese, eggs. Then to the fresh vegetables. When she finally made the rounds and was back at the cash register, her cart was filled and Mrs. Ogden had been replaced by her husband.

  “Issy, how are you?”

  “Fine, thank you. And you?”

  He nodded. He seemed more serious than she remembered him. Though she could readily understand that; she was the only customer in the store. The highway had been taking a lot of shoppers out of the town.

  She began to take things out of the cart and put them on the counter.

  “Um, Issy. I don’t know how to say this.”

  Issy looked up. “What is it, Mr. Ogden? Is something wrong?”

  “Well. It’s just . . . I can’t keep putting groceries on your grandmother’s account.”

  “I totally understand.” Things must be bad. She couldn’t remember a day when the Whitakers had had to pay cash at the market.

  “You take credit cards?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “What about delivery? I have a few errands I have to run.”

  “Certainly, Issy.” He began to ring up her purchases, then stopped. “I hate to ask, but . . .”

  What now? she wondered.

  “Do you think they’re planning to send a payment anytime soon?”

  Issy blinked. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Your grandmother’s account hasn’t been paid in over three months. I understand if she’s having financial problems, but I can’t continue to carry her. Things are just too tight here. I’m barely staying open as it is. I’m very sorry.”

  “Wait. Are you saying no one has paid for groceries in months?”

  Mr. Ogden nodded. He looked like he might cry.

  “There must be a mistake. My grandfather—” She stopped. She assumed that Leo had been left well off. Surely Uncle George must know what her circumstances were. His sense of duty—and pride—wouldn’t allow his mother and aunt to live in poverty. And if there was a problem he didn’t know about, he wouldn’t want it spread all over the neighborhood that his mother was living in straitened circumstances.

  “How much do they owe?”

  He looked around to make sure no one was listening. There was no one in the store; still he leaned forward. “Almost two thousand dollars.”

  Issy had to force herself not to grab the counter for support. Vivienne and Dan were supposed to be managing the estate. Obviously someone was not taking care of business.

  “I’ll pay for the groceries today and I’ll find out why you aren’t getting paid and remedy the situation, if you can just wait until next week. I have to go to Washington tomorrow but”—Issy jumped off the deep end of the pier—“I’ll be back on Wednesday. If I can’t get this worked out this afternoon, I promise I’ll get it worked out by then.”

  Mr. Ogden nodded jerkily. “I hated to have to bring it up—”

  “Don’t worry about anything. Obviously the mess-up is on our end. I’ll look into it.”

  “Thank you.” He finished ringing her up. Ran her credit card, and they arranged to have the groceries delivered as usual. Issy said good-bye and walked into the midday sun, stunned. If Leo had meant her to pay the Ogden’s bill with her check for two hundred dollars, she was nowhere close.

  Maybe she just didn’t have a clear sense of what things cost. As far as Issy knew, her grandfather had always paid the bills. Leo had never had to worry about a thing. Surely he had made all bills a part of the trust.

  She drove to the bank wondering if she should have just paid the arrears and called it a day. But she couldn’t really afford to drop two thousand dollars without knowing if she would be reimbursed or not. And with Vivienne still gone and silent as to her whereabouts, Issy decided it was better to keep her own funds.

  By the time she reached downtown, she had worked herself into a righteous anger. They had waited to call her about Wes’s death until it was too late to get to the funeral. Maybe they thought that Paris to New York was too long or expensive to spend on a funeral, even for one’s grandfather.

  By the time she got back, the funeral was over, and George, who was fuming that Wes had chosen Dan to administer the estate over him, wasn’t speaking to any of them. Issy could understand why. George was the artistic black sheep of that generation, the only Whitaker who showed no interest in art or artists. Dan, on the other hand, was from another old Painter’s Cove family. He had a flare for entertaining if not a true artistic sense. But Issy supposed it was easier for Wes to relate to Dan than to his own stiff-lipped son.

  Issy snagged a parking place a half block away from the bank, outside the Cove Theater, established in 1870 and still presenting live plays from local theater groups and smaller bus and truck tours of Broadway shows. There was a large red banner stretched across the front: building fund.

  She walked down the block to the First Coastal Bank. It was fairly crowded and she had to stand in line for a teller. She endorsed the check and pushed it and her ID across the counter.

  The teller smiled and keyed in the bank account. Looked at the screen and turned back to Issy.

  “I’m sorry, there aren’t enough funds to cover this check.”

  “Sorry, my grandmother is in the hospital and probably just got confused. Aren’t all the accounts linked? I know there are several. Can you take it from another one?”

  “I’m sorry,” the teller said, looking around and finally catching the eye of someone whom she motioned over.

  A middle-aged woman stopped at the counter. “Can I help you?”

  Issy looked from the teller to the newcomer’s name tag: bank manager. mrs. talbot.

  “Could you check on this account for me?” the teller asked, blushing faintly.

  “Of course, if you would come this way.” She led Issy to the other side of the room, where a glass partition separated four desks. Mrs. Talbot stopped at the first desk, motioned Issy to sit, and then sat down at her computer screen.

  “This is the Whitaker account.”

  Issy nodded. “Several of them.”

  “And you are?”

  “Isabelle Whitaker.” She explained who she was and why she was here. “Is there something wrong?”

  Mrs. Talbot frowned at the screen. “Just a minute, please.” She picked up the phone. “Mr. Kilpatrick, do you have a minute? Ms. Whitaker is here inquiring about her family’s account.” She hung up. “Just one moment.”

  No money in the account, no one had paid the grocery bills. Dan and Vivienne missing. Issy was getting a nasty feeling about where this was leading.

  She recognized the bank president immediately. “Mr. Kilpatrick,” she said, relieved.

  It took a minute for him to place her. “Isabelle Whitaker. I can’t believe it. Is this little Issy?” He turned to Mrs. Talbot. “I helped Issy open her first Christmas club account, must be twenty years ago.”

  “More,” Issy said.

  “So now, what would you like to do today?”


  Issy’s hands had begun to shake. “My grandmother is in the hospital.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She’ll be okay, but she gave me a check to cash, and evidently there are no funds in the account.”

  “Oh, we’ll remedy that in a jiff.” He motioned Mrs. Talbot to the side and sat down in her chair. He frowned at the computer screen. Keyed in a string of numbers. Letters? Code? Waited, frowned. Typed more.

  “Could this be an obsolete account?” Issy asked. “Maybe Leo got confused when she wrote the check?”

  Mr. Kilpatrick continued to scroll down the page.

  “I think, Issy, we should go down to my office.”

  He took her elbow and politely ushered her past the desks and through a heavy wooden door. They stopped inside a square room, paneled in dark wood and large enough for filing cabinets and a big desk.

  “This is what happens when big banks take over smaller ones; new people come in to run something that has been run fine since its birth.”

  “What?” Issy asked.

  “In an earlier time I would have been made aware of this immediately. But the computer didn’t pick up anything unusual. I would have. Any banker worth his salt would, but this was done in a way to slip in under the radar.”

  “What was?”

  “The withdrawals.” He turned the screen to face her. “Money has been systematically withdrawn since the beginning of last year. Someone has cleaned out all the accounts.”

  “There must be something left.” Issy’s heart flipped up to her throat and lodged there. She cleared her throat, forcing it back down. “What about other accounts?”

  “They were all consolidated several years ago when Wes changed his will. To make things easier for your grandmother and Fae.”

  “You’re telling me there’s no money left?”

  “Not a red cent.”

  Chapter 6

  Stephanie sat cross-legged on her beach towel and turned up the volume on her iPhone. She could still hear the waves. Boring. Well, it wouldn’t be if she were with her friends. But no. She’d gotten dumped here with Mandy and Griff.

  Her mother didn’t even give her time to call around and invite herself to someone else’s beach house. She’d only stayed long enough to unload the kids and left, just saying she’d be back as soon as she could. Did this mean she was sticking them here for the whole summer?

  Or leaving them for good? Everyone knew the story of how Jillian had left Steph’s mom and Aunt Issy with Grammy and Grandpa Wes, but her mom would never do that to them. Never.

  Her mother could sometimes be a whack job, especially when it came to “the finer things in life.” It wasn’t like she didn’t have a new foreign car, clothes and jewelry, and trips to the city. They lived in a huge house in Guilford. It wasn’t like they were starving or anything.

  She heard a car engine, stretched to see over the rocks that lined the back of Grammy’s beach. Ben’s truck was parked outside. She probably should go back.

  She hadn’t told Chloe where she was going. Not that it took a great stretch to figure it out. You didn’t wear your bikini into town.

  Chloe just said, “Don’t forget your sunscreen.” Chloe was okay. She was going to be a chef. That was so cool. You could go anywhere in the world and be a chef.

  Steph groaned and scooted against the rocks. Crazy Aunt Fae was coming down the beach path. Her hair, long skirt, and oversized shirt were all blowing in the wind, almost pulling off a Free People look, but not quite.

  She was bound to see Steph and then what? She’d probably stop to chat, ask if they’d heard from her mother, though Steph was going to call her Vivienne from now on like they did their grandmother, Jillian—who they never saw anyway.

  That thought made her a little sick to her stomach and now she couldn’t see Great-Aunt Fae from where she was sitting. How was she going to know when she was gone? What if she looked up and the crazy old bat was looking down at her?

  She crouched along the rocks then peered over the top. Caught a brief glimpse of floating skirt as her aunt moved across the lawn to the trees. Steph pulled herself up and then stood on tiptoe to see better. Fae was skipping—skipping—through the woods.

  Too weird. But where was she going? Aunt Fae lived in a cottage somewhere on the property, but Steph had never seen it. Fae didn’t invite people to visit.

  Well, Steph would invite herself. She scrambled up the rocks and started down the path, leaving her towel and shoes on the beach. She’d just have to remember to collect them before high tide.

  Steph made sure to stay far enough back so that Fae wouldn’t hear or see her, slipping in and out of the shadows like a shadow herself. That’s the reason she was fully surrounded by trees before she became aware of how damp and dark it had become.

  She could still hear the ocean, but she couldn’t see anything but the woods. Even Fae was becoming dimmer as she flitted past trees and bushes. Steph wanted to take a quick look around, but she was afraid to take her eyes off Fae, who seemed to be moving faster now. So fast it was like she floated along the ground.

  Steph blinked hard several times. Fae was getting farther ahead. What if she suddenly disappeared? Would Steph be able to find her way back?

  She thought she saw a door peeking out through some vines to her left. Her heart thudded like crazy until she realized it was one of the old cabins where people used to store their paints. When she turned back, Fae was gone. Gone.

  And of course the path forked in two directions. Which one did Fae take?

  Stephanie squinted down the left path and saw the roof of another cabin, but it was old and falling apart. Nobody would live there. She must have taken the right fork.

  Steph hesitated. This sucked. Why did she have to come here? She wanted to be in her own room, getting dressed for the dance. This was so not fair. She whimpered, then chastised herself for being a baby. Follow the right. At least it might lead back to the beach and she bet Fae would want a view of the ocean.

  Listening to that voice of reason and trying hard not to wonder if it was just taking her farther away from civilization, she forced herself to walk on. She really wished she had stopped and put on her Crocs. The pine straw was soft enough but there were plenty of other things that stabbed her feet.

  And then she stepped into sunlight. It was so sudden she had to close her eyes and take a couple of steps back into the protection of the trees. When her eyes recovered, she looked out from the canopy of leaves. There was a big meadow off to the left and a bunch of rosebushes that lined the other side of the path and spilled over the shore to the water.

  Fae was walking up the steps of a cottage that was painted yellow and white and had a front deck, partially shaded by a big white umbrella. It was perched right on the edge of a rock, facing the water like the prow of a ship. The back was surrounded by trees, so that from the woods you might never know that it was there.

  Steph formed a silent wow. It was like every fairy-tale cottage she’d ever seen in a book.

  Before Fae got to the door, it opened and a man stepped out.

  Steph bit back a screech and pressed behind the nearest tree. What if he was a burglar? Before she could decide what she should do, the man pulled Fae into his arms and kissed her. Right on the mouth. A deep one, like the kind they showed close up at the movies.

  WTF? Aunt Fae had a boyfriend? Maybe she lived with him. Eww. Totally gross. She didn’t want to imagine Aunt Fae getting it on with this old geezer. Except, for an old dude, he looked really good. White hair, long and all swept back from his suntanned face, then he looked up . . . right at her. Stephanie stepped behind the tree. When she looked out again, he’d turned away and stepped into the shadows of the eaves, so that Steph couldn’t see him well anymore.

  Then he and Fae went into the house.

  Man, Steph was so tempted to go peek in the window to see what they were doing, but that would be just too weird. Aunt Fae had a lover? No. Impossible. Guys
couldn’t get it up when they got old. Look at all those commercials during football games.

  When Aunt Fae came back outside, she was alone and carried a tray holding two glasses, a pitcher of what looked like lemonade, and a plate of some kind of cake.

  Steph’s stomach growled. She pushed her fist into it to shut it up.

  Fae poured lemonade into the glasses and sat down, but the old dude didn’t come back.

  Steph’s mouth was so dry she could cry.

  “Well, are you going to crouch there in the bushes all day or are you going to come out and have some lemonade and orange loaf cake?”

  Steph froze, afraid to move.

  Her eyes felt so big she was afraid they might pop out of her head. She knows I’m here. But how? It was just plain spooky.

  Aunt Fae turned toward where Steph was. Steph shrank back. Like she wouldn’t be surprised if her crazy great-aunt morphed into some fairy-tale witch and zapped her into a bug.

  But she just waved for Steph to come down, and Steph went.

  “Have a seat and some lemonade,” Fae said when Steph reached the little porch.

  There were still only two glasses.

  “But what about the old g—the man who was here?”

  Fae raised her eyebrows. “What old geezer?”

  “The man. He was on your porch, then you both went inside. And then you came out alone.”

  “Ah,” she said.

  Stephanie waited, she didn’t like having to be patient, and she figured Aunt Fae was thinking of an excuse for him being there.

  “Is he your boyfriend?”

  Fae laughed. It sounded like those little bells people—losers—wore on their hats at Christmas. “What would I do with a boyfriend?”

  Good question, Steph thought. “So who was he? The handyman?”

  Fae leaned closer to her. “Well, if you must know.” Her voice had taken on a sound that pulled Steph closer, she couldn’t stop herself. “You are one of the few lucky people to witness a changeling in the flesh.”