by Sofie Ryan
“I know,” Rose said, folding her hands in her lap. “I meant the division it’s caused in town isn’t good for any of us. Whatever happens, those kind of wounds tend to linger.”
We drove in silence for about a minute or so.
“Sarah, do you think that man—Jon West—could have killed Lily because she wouldn’t sell the bakery to him?” she asked.
I exhaled softly. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “People have committed murder for a lot weaker reasons.”
“Maybe what happened was an accident,” she said, “and the person got scared and ran.”
“Then whoever it was, they need to come forward. The longer they wait, the worse it gets.”
“It’s not always easy to do the right thing,” Rose said softly. “It takes you down the road less traveled, and that’s a bumpy trip.”
I nodded without speaking. I wasn’t sure what road we were on as far as the investigation into Lily’s death, but I was certain we were in for a rough ride.
Chapter 11
Tuesday passed quietly. I spent most of the morning working on the old dining room hutch.
“What do you think?” I said to Mac, pushing the dust mask I had been wearing onto the top of my head and wiping my hands on my old jeans.
He walked around the piece. “It seems sturdy enough.”
“The middle shelf is cracked.” I pointed to the split that ran the length of the wood. “Could you cut me a new one?”
He nodded. “Sure. Do you want me to try to match the wood?”
I shook my head. “No. That doesn’t matter.”
Mac grabbed a tape measure from the worktable. “So you’re painting the shelves?”
“I’m painting the whole thing.” I ran my hand over the side of the unit. “The wood isn’t exactly pretty.”
Mac looked past me toward the shelves on the back wall. “Do you remember that desk we cannibalized when we were working on the armoire?” he asked.
I squinted in the direction of the shelves. “If you’re thinking about using the wood from the bottom of the leftover drawer for a shelf, I don’t think it’s long enough.”
“No,” he said. “I was thinking that maybe you could use the drawer pulls on this piece.”
I pulled my dust mask off completely. “I don’t remember what they look like,” I said.
“They’re Victorian ring pulls,” he said. “Let me see if I can find them.”
The chandelier Mac and Avery had been cleaning up was still on the tarp, taking up a lot of the room’s space. “Are you finished working on this?” I asked.
“Almost,” Mac said, looking up from a box he’d just lifted down. “I need to replace a couple of screws that were stripped when I took the glass shade out.”
“I had a call from a developer in Bangor,” I said. “He’s renovating an old building, turning it into a restaurant. I think he’d take the chandelier if Jon West doesn’t want it for his new hotel.”
“Give me another day,” Mac said. “Then you can call West and see what he wants to do.”
“Fine with me,” I said. A day wasn’t going to change anything with respect to the future of the waterfront development, as far as I could see.
“Carl Levenger is coming in sometime today to get that table,” Mac said, pointing at a rectangular wooden table over by the door to the shop. We’d sanded the table smooth and stained it light oak with the legs painted a medium gray color called iron ore.
Carl Levenger owned the Owl & the Pussycat bookstore. He’d bought the table for the back of the store, where his various reading groups had their meetings. Carl showed up about quarter to twelve. He walked approvingly around the table.
“I still really like it,” he said. Carl was a former university professor in his late fifties who had taken early retirement a couple of years ago and come home to run the bookstore when his father died. The Owl & the Pussycat had been started by Carl’s grandfather.
Mac began to wrap the top of the table in a couple of old blankets we kept for just that purpose, and Rose stepped in to help him.
Carl smoothed a hand over his bald pate. “I heard you were the one who found Lily,” he said. “I’m sorry. She was good person.”
I nodded. “Yes, she was.”
“We’d talked about going in on a better security system.” He shook his head. “I wish now we had. Maybe then the police could have caught whoever it was who was hassling her and Lily would still be alive.”
Mac helped Carl load the table in the back of his van. Rose touched my arm. “It’s almost lunchtime,” she said. “How about a fresh pot of coffee?”
I smiled at her. “That sounds good.” She started for the stairs, and I watched Carl pull out of our parking lot and start down the street. Was he right? Was the solution to Lily’s murder as simple as finding out who had been harassing her?
Jess showed up about four o’clock with new three new quilts. She poked her head around my office door. “Do you have a minute? I need your opinion on something.”
“Sure,” I said, coming around my desk. “What is it?”
She grinned. “I’d rather show you than tell you.”
I followed her downstairs. Asia Kennedy was standing in the middle of the shop with Charlotte and Avery. Vince’s daughter was wearing a sock monkey hat with a black quilted jacket, a denim skirt and a wild pair of burgundy-pink-and-orange-argyle knitted leggings.
“Hi, Asia,” I said. “How’s the guitar?”
I’d just sold the fifteen-year-old a used Fender acoustic with a black finish. She’d clearly inherited some of her father’s musical ability.
Asia smiled shyly at me. “It’s awesome,” she said.
“I’m glad,” I said, smiling back at her. I turned to Jess. “So what did you want me to see?”
“Me,” Asia said, sticking out one leg.
“Did you make those?” I asked Jess.
She nodded. “Remember that box of sweaters you sold me?”
I leaned forward for a closer look at the diamond-pattern tights Asia was wearing. She turned her leg from one side to the other. “Those were a sweater?” I said.
“Yep,” Jess said.
“I want a pair,” Avery clamored. “Please, please, please.”
“Which you have to pay for,” Charlotte said.
“I will. I promise,” Avery said, putting a hand over her heart.
Jess smiled. “Come down to the store and I’ll let you look through the sweaters and pick which one you like.”
Avery started jumping up and down and grinning.
Jess held up a hand. “And I’ll give you the same deal I gave Asia. You can have the leggings for free as long as you wear them to school and tell everyone where they can buy a pair.”
“You’re kinda like a walking billboard,” Asia said with a shrug.
“Deal,” Avery immediately agreed.
Jess looked at me. “So will you and Mac keep an eye out for more sweaters the next time you get hired to clear out someone’s house?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“You want a pair to go running in?” she asked, lowering her voice, her blue eyes gleaming.
“Absolutely not,” I said.
Mac and I put a second coat of paint on the living room walls of Rose’s apartment after supper. I told Mac the story of thinking I was going to do battle with a rowdy squirrel in the apartment and discovering Rose instead.
He laughed. “I have a feeling living next to Rose is going to be interesting.”
I shook my paintbrush at him. “Don’t use that word,” I warned. “The last time you did that, I ended up with a detectives’ office in my sunporch and a senior-citizen computer hacker using my Wi-Fi.”
There was a teasing gleam in his dark eyes. “But think how boring life would be without them.�
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“You’re probably right,” I said, pulling my paint can a little closer. I was doing the edging and Mac the roller work.
I realized that I hadn’t told Mac about the cat tower. “Hey, I didn’t tell you what Mr. P. did last night.”
“Do I want to know?” Mac said. One eyebrow went up and he grinned.
“You probably do,” I said. “He made a cat tower for Elvis to thank me for letting Rose have this apartment. I’ll show it to you when we’re done. It’s more like a piece of sculpture.”
“I didn’t know Mr. P. knew anything about woodworking,” Mac said, putting his roller back in the tray for more paint.
I moved along the floor a little farther. “Maybe you should try picking his brain,” I said. “He knows how to use a steam box. Didn’t you say that’s how you bend wood when you’re making a boat?”
Mac nodded. “I will. Thanks for the suggestion.” He worked his way down the wall. “He really is crazy about Rose.”
“Did you know he was married? He told me he and his wife were together for fifty-two years.” I used the edge of my T-shirt to wipe a dab of paint off the trim because I couldn’t find the rag I’d been using.
“I knew Alfred had been married,” Mac said, putting more paint on his roller, “but not for that long.” He tipped his head to one side and studied the stretch of wall he’d just painted. “It’s funny. When we get married, we’re making a commitment that’s forever. If it’s a good marriage, forever isn’t long enough.”
“And if it’s not a good marriage?”
“Then it just feels like forever.”
“That sounds like experience talking,” I said. I kept my eyes on the edge of the wall above the baseboard.
After a moment Mac said, “It is.”
“Which kind of forever did you have?” I asked. I continued to work my way along the tape line above the trim, wondering if he’d answer the question or evade it.
“Both, I guess,” Mac said after another silence. “At different times it was both.”
Mac had been married. It was the first bit of personal information he’d shared in the time I’d known him. Somehow I knew not to ask anything else right now.
* * *
I did a little more work on the hutch first thing in the morning at the shop. Cleveland showed up with two boxes of trash-picked old Dick and Jane readers. Charlotte poked through both cartons and her eyes lit up. She looked up at me and nodded.
Cleveland and I dickered over price for a few minutes. In the end he got a little more than I wanted to pay but not as much as he’d asked for. As my grandmother would have put it, we were both a little happy and both a little had.
“These are wonderful,” Charlotte said. “They’re in excellent shape. They didn’t spend a lot of time in a classroom.” She beamed at me and pushed her glasses up her nose.
“Would you go through the boxes and catalog them for me,” I asked. Charlotte loved books. I knew she was the right person for the job. She’d handle the books with care and make meticulous notes on each volume.
“I’d love to,” she said.
“I’ll carry the boxes inside for you,” Mac offered.
“Could you watch things here for about an hour?” I asked when he came back to the workroom. I’d told Michelle I’d talk to Liz, and I hadn’t done that yet. I didn’t want to put it off any longer.
“Sure,” he said. “Charlotte and I can handle things here. Take your time.”
I drove down to McNamara’s and bought a couple of lemon tarts. Then I pulled out my cell phone and called Liz. “I have two of Glenn’s lemon tarts,” I said when she answered. “I’m willing to share if you’re willing to make coffee.”
“The lemon-cream-cheese filling or lemon meringue?” she immediately asked.
“Do you care?”
Her warm laugh came through the phone. “I’ll go turn the coffeepot on.”
Liz and I sat at the round wooden table in her huge kitchen. I could see why Avery liked to cook there. The space was a cook’s dream with stainless-steel appliances and granite countertops.
“So what did you want to talk to me about?” Liz asked after she’d had a bite of her lemon tart.
“Why do you think I want to talk to you?” I said, adding cream to my coffee.
“You brought a bribe, and it’s the middle of the morning.” She gave me a fake smile across the table.
“All right. I did come to talk to you.”
“About?”
“You called Lily the night she died, the night she confronted us on the sidewalk in front of the bakery,” I said.
“What if I did?” Liz asked. She leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other.
“You didn’t tell the police.”
She drew in a breath, held it for a moment and then let it out slowly. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you who told you that?” she said.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“It was either Nicolas or Michelle Andrews.”
“It doesn’t matter who told me,” I said, watching her across the polished wooden table. “What matters is that it was a dumb thing to do. You withheld information from the police, Liz.”
She shrugged. “Which they could find if they did their job—which they did. No harm done.”
I glared at her. “Yes harm done. It’s a bad idea to keep things from the police, especially when they’re investigating a murder in which you’re a suspect!”
Liz tapped a pale pink nail on the edge of her cup. “I didn’t tell the police because I knew it would make them suspicious, which they were when they found out, which just proves my point.” She picked up her cup and took a drink, watching me over the rim.
“How did you convince Josh it was a good idea to keep that information from the police?” I asked. I was fairly certain I knew the answer.
Liz glanced over toward the windows above the sink. She looked a little sheepish.
“Liz,” I said, an edge of warning in my voice.
Her gaze came back to me. “All right. I didn’t exactly tell him. I didn’t want him to have to lie.”
I pulled a hand back through my hair and sighed.
“Don’t give me that look,” she said. “I protect the people I care about. You know that, Sarah.”
There was a knock on the back door then. It opened and Elspeth Emmerson, Liz’s niece, stepped into the kitchen.
“Hi, Sarah,” she said when she caught sight of me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Am I interrupting something?”
I shook my head. The conversation with Liz was going nowhere.
“No,” Liz said. “We’re just having coffee. Come sit down and I’ll get you a cup.”
Elspeth joined us at the table. She was in her late twenties, and she reminded me a lot of her aunt. She had the same big heart and probably didn’t own a pair of sensible shoes. She was wearing skinny black pants tucked into black stiletto ankle boots, and her long blond curls fell below her shoulders.
Liz made a move to get up.
I laid a hand on her arm. “I’ve got it,” I said.
I got a cup and saucer from the cupboard and poured Elspeth a cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” she said as I set it in front of her. She set a manila envelope on the table. “Dad asked me to give these to you,” she said to Liz.
Liz slid the envelope across the table, glanced at it, and left it next to her plate. “Thank you, sweetie.”
“How’s business?” Elspeth asked me as she added sugar to her coffee.
“Down from summer and fall,” I said, “but the skiers have helped.”
“Us too,” she said, taking a sip from her cup. Elspeth ran a successful spa and salon, Phantasy, which drew tourists to town for the relaxation and pamperi
ng they offered. “Last week a tour guide called. There was some problem with the grooming equipment where they were skiing, so they brought twenty-four people over for spa manicures. And Glenn McNamara supplied lunch.” She brushed her hair back from her face. “That was something Lily used to do for us.” She stared into her cup for a moment. “Her death was a horrible thing.”
“You went to school with Caleb Swift, didn’t you?” I asked. “Lily went out with him for a while.”
Elspeth hesitated for a moment; then she nodded. “I did.”
A look passed between her and Liz.
“What’s going on?” I said.
Elspeth pressed her lips together for a moment. Then she looked at me. “I knew Caleb,” she said.
Liz looked concerned, but she didn’t speak.
Either way it was Elspeth who shook her head. “It’s not a big deal, Sarah. Caleb and I went out for a while. He was a jerk, the proverbial entitled rich kid. Which I should have seen.” She rolled her eyes and gave me a self-deprecating smile. “I didn’t have the best taste in men back then.”
I smiled in sympathy. “I’ll tell you about some of the guys I dated in college sometime.”
We talked about some ideas Elspeth had for luring more tourists to town during the off-season. I finished the last of my coffee and stood up. “I’d better get back to the shop,” I said. “It was good to see you, Elspeth.”
She smiled. “You too.”
Liz walked me to the back door. I wrapped my arms around her in a hug. “I love you,” I said.
She smiled. “Everybody does.”
Mr. P. showed up at Second Chance just after lunch, when Avery arrived for her shift. It turned out that the two of them had walked to the shop together.
“Am I a distrustful and suspicious person for thinking that it can’t be a good thing having those two in cahoots?” I said to Mac when they came in, heads together.
“They could be working toward world peace,” he said with a slight smile.
I turned and raised an eyebrow at him.
The smile got a little wider. “Or world domination,” he added. He looked at his watch. “Do you have time to go over the list of things you want to put an offer in on from the Thomas estate?”
