Diane gazed around at the filthy walls caked with some kind of dark debris. “Do you mind if I have a quick look around the rest of the place? Then I need to get home and get supper started.”
“Sure thing.”
Kathy walked behind Diane, who kept shaking her head while taking in the shambles of what had once probably been a pretty little home.
They circled back to the kitchen. “It was nice meeting you, Kathy. When does your inn open?”
“The first week in May. I’ll be updating my website with pictures as soon as we get the rooms decorated. I’d appreciate it if you’d tell people about Swans Nest.”
“Living on the water, we get loads of visitors—too many of them. I’d love to be able to refer them to you. I’ve even heard The Lotus Lodge might reopen.”
“It’s a possibility. I’m a friend of the new owner.”
“Great. I want to turn my spare bedroom into an office. The sooner there’re more guest rooms in the area, the better.” Diane gave a wave. “See ya.”
Kathy closed the door behind her and went back to the living room. No sooner had Diane gone home than Anissa’s truck rattled to a halt in what served as the cabin’s driveway. She came inside the house.
“Where’s Tori?” Kathy asked.
“Home. I told her I could pack up the last of the stuff and bring you back. As a thank you, I want to take you two over to The Bay Bar for supper—that is if Noreen is up to cooking tonight.”
Kathy frowned.
“You two are friends,” Anissa pointed out. “You’re going to have to face her sooner rather than later.”
“You’re right. Okay, let’s get this stuff packed up and get out of here.”
Anissa picked up the box of cracked and broken dishes. “Why didn’t these go to the dump?”
Kathy shrugged. “I dunno. Tori wants them for some reason.”
Into the back of the truck they went with the other pitiful items.
Five minutes later, they were bumping down Lake Bluff Road. During the ride, Kathy told Anissa what Diane had said about Mark Charles’s job situation and about upgrading the cabin.
“I wouldn’t mind giving that little house some TLC. Then again, I’ve been thinking of investing my profits into rental properties. Maybe it’s something I could buy as is.”
“I don’t think Diane would be happy to hear it would remain a rental.”
“I’d do my due diligence and vet prospective renters. No landlord wants someone like Mark Charles messing up their property so that they have to continually fix or replace everything.”
Kathy had no doubt that Anissa would make a great landlord.
Upon arriving at the Cannon Compound, they dropped off the stuff they’d collected at the cabin, stowing everything in one of The Lotus Lodge’s empty rooms, and then Anissa headed for home to clean up before she collected Kathy and Tori to join her for dinner.
Kathy watched as the truck steered north up Resort Road. It was then she wondered what a refined woman like Lucinda Bloomfield had ever seen in someone like Charles Mark.
It was too early for The Bay Bar to be hopping when Tori, Kathy, and Anissa crossed the highway that separated it from the Cannon Compound and entered. It was cozy inside, with the lights dimmed, and a smattering of customers chowing down on burgers and fries, the aroma lingering in the air.
“Noreen,” Paul called, “the girls are here.”
“Be right there.”
But Paul didn’t immediately gravitate toward the women, who settled in their usual seats at the bar, turning his back on them instead of immediately fixing their usual drinks.
The women looked at each other.
“Is it just me, or are we getting the cold shoulder?” Anissa asked.
“I’m not feeling particularly warm,” Tori said.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” Kathy said.
“It’s not your fault someone they steered toward your inn trashed it,” Anissa said.
Kathy didn’t look quite convinced.
They sat in silence, waiting for Noreen to join them, just looking at one another. Finally, the swinging doors to the kitchen opened. Noreen seemed to hesitate before plastering on a fake-looking smile and plunging forward. “Hey there,” she said, her voice sounding just a little shaky.
“Happy Tuesday,” Anissa said.
“Tuesday?” Noreen asked, sounding a little dazed.
“Yeah, the second day of the week,” Anissa said. “We’d toast to it, but…we don’t seem to have drinks.”
Noreen looked nervously at her husband, but he had his attention focused on one of the TVs bolted to the walls. “I—I can make them.”
They watched as Noreen pulled out glasses, filling one with ice, and making Kathy’s drink first. Were Noreen’s hands actually shaking?
“Did you hear they identified the dead guy Tori found,” Anissa said.
Noreen’s gaze didn’t lift from the top of the bar. “Did they?” She shoved Kathy’s glass before her—not bothering to place a cocktail napkin under it. It was also missing its lime garnish.
Tori frowned. The Bay Bar had to be teeming with gossip. It seemed impossible that neither Noreen nor Paul could have escaped the chatter. “Yeah, and we spent the day cleaning out his rental place,” she said.
Noreen finally looked up, her eyes widening. “You—what?”
“The owners hired me to clear it out so they can sell it,” Anissa explained.
“What a dump,” Tori muttered.
Noreen looked away, grabbing a pilsner glass and pouring a draft. She hurriedly placed it on the bar before Anissa, slopping some on the old oak top. “Sorry,” she said, sounding nervous.
At last, she scooped some ice into a chrome shaker, measured no-name tequila into it, then poured in some green liquid from an unlabeled bottle, shook it several times, then dumped it into a glass. She’d forgotten to run the lip of the glass with a piece of lime and dip it into salt. It wasn’t going to be at all satisfactory.
“I—I need to get back in the kitchen,” Noreen said rather briskly, which was unlike her. In a male-dominated establishment such as The Bay Bar, she was usually starved for a little girl talk.
They watched her pass through the swinging door, retreating to the kitchen.
“Did we somehow offend her?” Tori asked.
“Only by you finding the dead guy,” Anissa guessed.
“Do you think she knew him?” Tori asked.
Kathy shook her head. “Noreen told me she’s only been a part of the bar for the past five or six years.”
“She might not have known Charlie Marks, but she could have known Mark Charles,” Anissa pointed out.
Tori picked up her glass and took a sip and wrinkled her nose. The sweet without the salty was much too syrupy. Her gaze traveled down the bar to land on Paul who, for once, wasn’t interacting with his usual buddies. Now, his gaze was focused out the big picture window that overlooked the bay beyond. Through it, one could see Falcon Island. Paul’s expression was enigmatic.
Kathy and Anissa followed their friend’s gaze.
“What? Do you think Paul might know something about the dead guy?” Anissa asked.
Tori shrugged. They were about the same age. “What if Charlie Marks—or Mark Charles—had been his friend?”
“And what if he wasn’t?” Anissa asked.
“Paul’s practically attached to this bar from sun-up to way past sunset,” Kathy pointed out.
Tori lowered her voice. “Yeah, but when you think about it—we don’t know anything about him except he owns this place, Noreen is his second wife, and he seems to be a nice guy.”
“Well,” Kathy began, but then didn’t seem to have much to add to the conversation.
Anissa leaned in. “He used to ride a motorcycle.”
“We think,” Tori pointed out. “I mean, Noreen said she used to ride, but she never mentioned if Paul rode—only that she met him here while on a charity run.”
&
nbsp; “Didn’t he once say he was a local?”
“If he did, I don’t remember,” Anissa said.
“How could we find out?” Kathy asked.
“There are websites where you can look up where people went to high school. I could start there,” Tori volunteered. “What if Paul and the dead guy were in the same class?”
“That might be telling—then again, maybe not,” Anissa said.
“Isn’t that a pretty big leap in logic?” Kathy asked.
“Great discoveries are often made by people who have hunches.”
“If you say so,” Anissa said, rolled her eyes, and took a sip of her beer.
“There are ways to find out,” Tori said.
“Like what?” Anissa asked.
“Aren’t some high school yearbooks available online?” Kathy asked.
“Yeah,” Tori agreed, already planning her Internet search.
“Okay, but so what if they were in the same class? The dead guy apparently had a double identity,” Anissa pointed out. “And he was declared dead almost twenty years ago—and yet he turns up dead again just last week.”
“Yeah. We definitely need to do more research,” Tori said.
“Or none at all,” Kathy pointed out. “That’s what the members of the Sheriff’s Department get paid for.”
“Can I help it if I’m curious?” Tori asked.
“Anybody with a molecule of curiosity would be,” Anissa said.
Kathy pouted. Of course, she had other real—monetary—concerns. She couldn’t be distracted from what she needed to do to get her fledgling business up and running. But Tori and Anissa had no such constraints. Except … jobs.
Anissa took a deep drag on her beer. “What are the odds we’ll get some food out of the kitchen tonight?”
Tori looked in that direction. “I’m thinking they’re poor.”
“I have to agree,” Kathy said.
“Should we just leave some money on the bar and head back to McDonald’s?” Tori asked.
“I wanted to treat you girls to something a little better than that,” Anissa said.
Tori shook her head. At lunchtime, Anissa had been worried about treating them to lunch might cut into her profits. “I’m good with Mickey D’s—how about you, Kathy?”
“As long as I don’t have to cook it—I’m good, too. We’ll eat something healthy tomorrow night.”
Anissa stood, reached into the pocket of her bib overalls, and extracted a couple of tens, placing them on the bar. “Let’s go. There’s a burger with my name on it and I’m ready to meet it.”
14
Tori’s Internet search for Charlie Marks was a bust. She couldn’t even find a story about his disappearance, which wasn’t really surprising. He’d been just a nobody and the story was probably not important enough for someone to upload a newspaper clipping to the World Wide Web. She didn’t find anything on Paul, either, save for a few Yelp reviews on the bar.
With that search behind her, Tori did some digging and found a couple of Etsy shops that featured broken china jewelry. Clearly, there were various degrees of difficulty in the process. YouTube videos were a great way to learn a new craft—and Tori was determined to master this one. Of course, first, she needed the tools. Amazon was only too glad to sell them to her. While on the site, she thought about the upcoming dry run at Swans Nest.
Tori’s mother had always been a stickler for the rules of propriety and would never have arrived at a dinner party or other social occasion without bringing a hostess gift. Kathy certainly wouldn’t expect one—but she would definitely be pleased if Tori brought one. Wine was too pedestrian—they bought bottles for the house all the time. She typed ‘hostess gifts for women’ in the search box and was almost immediately given a list with accompanying photos of suggestions.
Should she bring six pairs of pastel cat socks? A spa gift set? A set of silicone spatulas (in three fun colors!) with funny sayings on them? Then her gaze settled on a realistic faux orchid. She clicked on the picture to enlarge it and had to admit that if the photo gave a true representation of the product, it looked pretty darn real. She winced at the price but hit the buy button anyway.
With that taken care of, Tori shut down her computer and hit the sack.
The phone rang before her alarm went off the next morning, and Tori was happy for another day of gainful employment. Once June rolled around, there’d be no substitute teaching until the fall. Oh, how she hoped she wouldn’t have to take another full-time teaching job.
She was showered, dressed, and out the door before Kathy even got up. She left a note on the kitchen table and headed for Warton-Erie High School. Today she’d be monitoring students in a math class. Math wasn’t really her thing, but she did what she could, and assigned homework for the four classes she taught that day. But there was somewhere she needed to go before the end of classes and was happy she was free that last period of the day.
The school library was filled with hushed voices and giggling students at tables, ostensibly doing homework. Tori stopped at the main desk. Librarian Leona Root looked up. “Oh, hi, Tori. Need some help?”
“Yes. Uh, I was wondering if the school has back issues of its yearbook?”
“Yeah.” Leona jerked a thumb behind her. “They’re in my workroom in the Media Center.”
“Any chance I could have a look?”
Leona frowned, but then shrugged. “I can bring them out to you. What year do you need?”
“That’s just it, I’m not sure.” Tori gave her a range of years.
“Be right back.” Leona disappeared for a minute or more, and then came back with three large tomes. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” Tori took possession of the copies of For The Record and carried them back to an empty worktable and sat down.
The first was the oldest. Tori flipped pages, looking at the young faces—none of them familiar—taking in their earnest, and often bored, expressions. Would she even recognize a younger Lucinda Bloomfield? She was still an attractive woman, but what if she’d worn her hair in a crazy do all those years ago? And who said she even attended public school? Her parents had been the richest in the county. There were plenty of private schools in Rochester—or would she have gone to boarding school in some other city or even state?
Skipping to the senior pictures, Tori looked through the pages. No Bloomfield. She closed the book and chose the next year’s edition. Ten minutes later, she abandoned that tome, too. This could be a colossal waste of time. Was it even worth it to look through the remaining volume?
As she flipped through the pages she came to the senior section, with pictures of those predicted to be the “most likely to succeed” as well as the “class clown.” She paused to look at one listed as “The Three Musketeers” and was surprised to recognize the first of the names: Paul Darcy. What a baby he’d been with a full head of hair and the impish grin he had never abandoned. With him were Charlie Marks and Ronnie Collins. She’d found Charlie Marks dead in the water. And Ronnie Collins…. Tori squinted. Could that fresh-faced teen actually be Lucinda Bloomfield’s dour butler?
Tori flipped through the pages until she reached the senior pictures. Sure enough, there was Lucina Bloomfield. She’d obviously employed a different photographer than the rest of her classmates. Her portrait was much more sophisticated than the other girls pictured on the same and facing pages. Turning a leaf, she found Ronald Collins’s picture. The twinkle in his youthful eye hadn’t been evident on the day Tori had met him at the Bloomfield estate. Did he feel beaten down by his former classmate, or had life just dealt him an unhappy hand? Or had he just adopted a rather stoic countenance which would be appropriate for the title of “gentleman’s gentleman” even if he worked exclusively for a woman?
Tori turned the page to find Paul Darcy’s senior portrait. He looked happy. Like he didn’t have a care in the world. He hadn’t looked that way the evening before, which wasn’t like him. He’d always been nice to her—f
riendly and jovial. But not last night. She flipped through the pages until she came to Charles Marks’s picture and frowned. There was something about the man—teen, she reminded herself—that she didn’t like. Was it the set to his eyes, or the odd quirk to his mouth?
She closed the book, then reopened it and searched again for the picture of the Three Musketeers, studying the trio’s faces. The smiles they’d shared with the camera had been genuine. Hands held up for a high five, their expressions were carefree. After all, at that point in time, they had their whole lives ahead of them.
Frowning, Tori remembered the yellowed Valentine Kathy had found in Mark Charles’s shabby, littered cabin. “Luv you always” Lucinda had written. She’d known the dead man—had been infatuated with him—and she now employed another of the Three Musketeers as a trusted employee. And what about Paul Darcy? In the almost-year that Tori had known him, Paul hadn’t let on that he and Lucinda had ever been acquainted. Of course, people move on. Tori was no longer in contact with the people who’d attended her high school, either. Not one of them. She’d spent those years in Columbus, Ohio, pining for Lotus Bay.
She closed the yearbook, unsure what to make of the pictures she’d seen. Her reactions were purely subjective. Judgments made on people solely by black-and-white photos from the past.
Tori stacked the books and stood, returning to the main desk. “Hey, Leona, can I take this old copy of For The Record home for a few days?”
Leona shook her head. “No can do.”
Tori frowned. “Can I make copies of the pages?”
Again, Leona shook her head. “The copier’s down—we ran out of toner. But if you only need a couple of pages, I can let you scan them.”
“The perfect solution,” Tori agreed and followed the librarian to her office. Within minutes she’d scanned the pertinent pages and sent the files to her e-mail address. She’d print them out when she got home and share what she’d learned with Kathy.
But what did it all mean? Okay, Paul, Lucinda, Collins, and Charlie Marks had all known each other. Charlie had disappeared a year or so after graduation only to reappear some twenty-five years later.
A Reel Catch Page 10
