by Lea Wait
I thought back to the lobster bake. “You helped set up the bake. We all did. Luke served the food. I remember: he fixed Ted’s plate first.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with serving the food,” Jeremy sputtered. “You just said so yourself. Luke did that!”
“You were sitting on the beach, like the rest of us.” I thought back. “You sat on Ted’s left side; Abbie was on Ted’s right.” Then I remembered. “Wait!”
Everyone looked at me. “Ted was having trouble cracking his lobster’s claws. He handed you his plate and you did that for him.”
Ethan focused on me. “Did he add anything to Ted’s plate?”
“I don’t know. We were all focusing on our lobster and mussels and clams. Not on each other.”
“Somehow he must have added one or two bad clams to Ted’s plate,” said Pete.
“He must have cooked them earlier, then,” I pointed out. “If they’d been in with the rest of the clams at the bake, Luke could have served them to anyone.”
“You have no proof of anything like that,” said Jeremy. “Why would I have killed Ted? He was my mentor, my father. I was closer to him than anyone else in this room.”
“You were very upset Friday night,” I said. “You were so agitated after Ted announced that Sarah was his niece and he was dying and changing his will that you stomped off and didn’t come back until Saturday morning.”
“So I was upset. Ted and I were close. That doesn’t make me a killer!”
“But Ted was your father,” I said.
“I didn’t . . .” Jeremy began.
“I know. This afternoon you told me that when they’d been planning the weekend, Ted had implied Sarah was a distant relative of some sort. And you knew Ted hadn’t been feeling well recently and had been visiting doctors. You were even able to give Haven Harbor Hospital the name of Ted’s oncologist. You knew he’d invited his children to The Point for a special reason. I think you suspected, or maybe even knew, that you were Ted’s son. You expected Ted to announce that when he introduced Sarah. Instead, Ted didn’t even say what he planned to do with the gallery he’d promised would someday be yours.”
“I didn’t know I was his son!”
“Sunday, after Ted’s original will was discovered, you were most excited about inheriting the gallery. You brushed off the major news: that you were Ted’s son. Another illegitimate child recognized. You didn’t focus on that part of the will because you already knew you were his son.”
“All right! I knew I was Ted’s son,” Jeremy said. “Patrick made a big deal of finding that will down at the gallery. Well, I’d seen it there, too. I knew what it said. And yes, I expected Ted to acknowledge both Sarah and me Friday night. Instead, Ted ignored me. He made a fuss over Sarah, and he didn’t even promise me his gallery.”
“Your patron, and father, betrayed you.”
Jeremy looked around the room. “All you selfish brats, only wanting what your father would leave you after he died. After I’d worked with him almost every day for nearly fifteen years. He’d trusted me. He’d called me his ‘only real son.’ And then Sarah shows up and he decides to leave the only things he cared about . . . his father’s paintings . . . to her. She’d never heard of Robert Lawrence until a couple of years ago. I’d spent my life admiring his work, and caring for it. Just as Ted did. He owed me.”
“And you made sure he ate one or more bad clams.”
“I didn’t really plan to kill him,” said Jeremy, tears beginning to slide down his face. “I was just so angry. Here I was, driving his other sons around. Picking them up at the airport Friday, and them acting like I was their personal driver. Taking them out the next morning to clam. It was Michael’s idea to go to Mackerel Point. I just did what he asked me to do. I knew Mackerel Point was posted. He saw it was too, as soon as we got there. But he told me to leave him there anyway, that he didn’t need me. Abbie would pick him up. That’s when I got the idea to go clamming by myself. I waited until Michael left. Then I went back and dug a half dozen clams. I took them home with me, and steamed them.” He looked at me. “You were right, Angie. I had the clams in the pocket of my fishing jacket. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them. But then Ted had trouble cracking his lobster’s claws—his hands weren’t strong anymore—and I added the clams to his plate when he was talking with Abbie.”
Chapter Fifty-one
“Education
Youth like softened wax with ease will take
Those images that first impressions make
If those are fair their actions will be bright
If foul they’ll clouded be with shades of night.”
—Quotation from English sampler stitched in 1797 by Margaret Hilditch.
It was a week later. Sarah’s living room was quiet.
She’d invited Patrick and I to join her for dinner, and we’d finished every scrap of her shrimp and mushroom casserole and made a sizable dent in her maple cheesecake.
We hadn’t talked a lot. The weight of everything that had happened was still heavy. Despite her vow to watch her drinking, Sarah had brought three Victorian brandy snifters up from her shop for us to use while sipping the aged cognac Patrick had contributed to our evening, and her coffee table was covered with a needlepoint tablecloth she’d made that incorporated Maine symbols—lobsters, lighthouses, sailboats, skiers, Mount Katahdin, and Mount Washington (which balanced Katahdin, even though it was technically in New Hampshire), Adirondack chairs, lobster pots and traps, and herring gulls, chickadees, and great cormorants.
We were all thinking about what had happened.
Luke and Jeremy were in jail; they’d both confessed and were working with lawyers.
“What’s going to happen now?” I finally asked.
“Ted’s estate will have to be settled, of course,” said Patrick. “The Portland Museum of Art will get the Robert Lawrence paintings. The Point will be sold to someone, and the resulting money should pay for Luke’s lawyers, with some put in trust for him until he’s served his sentence. The rest will be divided between Michael and Abbie.” He paused. “I’ve told the lawyer handling the estate I’d be interested in buying the Lawrence gallery in town when the estate is free. It looks as though Jeremy will agree with that, and my lawyer is working to arrange for me to rent the gallery until I can buy it, so it won’t have to be closed for months. Jeremy can’t run it from prison, of course, and I think being a gallerist as well as an artist would suit me.”
I raised my glass to Patrick. “To new lives.”
“I’m glad the museum is getting the paintings,” said Sarah. “They’ll know how to care for them and display them, and other museums can borrow them for special exhibits. They’ll be available to the public, not hidden away in private homes or galleries.”
“I’m glad you have your two, though,” I said, glancing up at the Robert Lawrence painting of Haven Harbor Lighthouse that dominated the room. “And that you found your family.”
Sarah nodded. “Biologically, I know who I am. I’m glad I got to know my grandmother in England, even for a short period of time, and to have been part of Uncle Ted’s life for a few months.”
“Has knowing those people made a difference in the way you look at yourself?” asked Patrick.
“A little,” Sarah said. “For years I’ve been focusing on where I came from. ‘Not knowing when the Dawn will come, I open every Door.’ Now I can concentrate on who I am, and where I’m going. And on the friends who’ll go with me.”
I raised my glass to her, and Patrick followed my lead.
“To Sarah.”
Sarah’s Maple Cheesecake
1¼ cups finely ground graham cracker crumbs (about 1 package)
5 Tablespoons granulated sugar
5 Tablespoons of softened butter
1¼ cups pure maple syrup
¼ cup cold heavy cream
3 8-ounce packages of softened cream cheese
3 large
eggs at room temperature
1½ cups sour cream at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Thoroughly mix cracker crumbs and 1 Tablespoon sugar with soft butter. Press into bottom of nine-inch spring form pan and place in freezer.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Boil maple syrup for three minutes, remove from heat, and stir in cream. Refrigerate.
With mixer, cream the cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add four Tablespoons sugar and the eggs, one at a time. When maple syrup is room temperature, beat it in. Then add sour cream and vanilla.
Pour filling into chilled pan of cracker crumbs and bake for one hour. Cool on wire rack. Cover. Chill at least six hours before serving.
Acknowledgments
With thanks to . . .
My wonderful agent, John Talbot, and editor, John Scognamiglio, without whom Angie and Haven Harbor wouldn’t exist.
To all those who found space and time to help me complete this book despite difficult days: JD and Barbara Neeson, for their support and their quiet home by the sea, where half this book was written. My sister, Nancy, who listened. My friends with whom I share the www.MaineCrimeWriters.com blog—especially Kate Flora, Kathy Emerson and Barbara Ross—my “kitchen cabinet” in good times and bad.
To Henry Lyons, who gently nudged me when my website needed updating.
To all my wonderful readers who write reviews, tell their friends about my books, and friend me on Goodreads or Facebook. Their enthusiasm and encouragement makes me smile every day—and keeps me writing.
And, most of all, as always, to my husband, Bob Thomas, the love of my life, for whom the past months have been difficult, but who tells me he loves me every night and every morning, despite his pain. Love you, too, Bob. As always, for always.
Books by Lea Wait
Mainely Needlepoint Mysteries
1 – Twisted Threads
2 – Threads of Evidence
3 – Thread and Gone
4 – Dangling By a Thread
5 – Tightening the Threads
6 – Thread the Walls (coming in November 2017)
Shadows Antique Print Mysteries
1 – Shadows at the Fair
2 – Shadows on the Coast of Maine
3 – Shadows on the Ivy
4 – Shadows at the Spring Show
5 – Shadows of a Down East Summer
6 – Shadows on a Cape Cod Wedding
7 – Shadows on a Maine Christmas
8 – Shadows on a Morning in Maine
Historical Novels for ages eight and up
Stopping to Home
Seaward Born
Wintering Well
Finest Kind
Uncertain Glory
Nonfiction
Living and Writing on the Coast of Maine
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of Lea Wait’s newest Mainely Needlepoint mystery
THREAD THE HALLS
coming soon wherever print and e-books are sold!
Chapter One
“As some fair violet, loveliest of the glade
Sheds its mild fragrance on the lovely shade
Withdraws its modest head from public sight
Covets not the sun nor seeks the glare of light,
So woman born to dignify, retreat, and be unseen,
Fearful of fame, unwilling to be known,
Should seek but Heaven’s applause, and her own.”
—Stitched by Eliza Ely in 1881, somewhere in New England.
“Gram, where’s my star?” I called to her. “It has to go on the tree first.”
“It’s in a gold box. Probably in the same carton as the lights,” Gram answered from the dining room, where she and Reverend Tom (I still had trouble thinking of him as just “Tom,” no matter how often he told me to drop the Reverend) were adding to the bowl of eggnog.
I’m twenty-seven. Old enough to admit it was silly. But I wanted this Christmas to be the way I remembered it as a child. The way it had always been. After all. Christmas meant tradition.
Tradition at home in Haven Harbor, Maine, meant Santas on the mantel and a tree that touched the ceiling and filled the bay window overlooking our porch and the town Green beyond. I secretly believed one of my Victorian ancestors had added that window just to frame their Christmas tree. Patrick, the new man in my life, and I had cut this year’s tree and he’d helped me balance it in the Christmas tree stand Mama and Gram had used before me.
Now Gram was married to Reverend Tom, and had new ways of celebrating the holiday, many of them involving his ministerial duties and the rest of his church family. She was taking their first Christmas as a married couple in stride. They’d also started establishing their own traditions, like hanging only silver and blue balls on their tree.
My tree would be mostly gold and red, plus ornaments I’d made with Mama and in elementary school and Girl Scouts, and a few new ones (some needlepointed) that I’d added this year. It wouldn’t be as color-coordinated as Gram’s tree, but it would be beautiful. It would be mine. My first as a grownup, on my own. I hadn’t thought to have a tree in my Arizona apartment. Life there had been temporary.
As usual, Gram was right. The gold box was under a string of colored lights Patrick and Dave hadn’t used when they’d covered the tree with tiny white lights. I opened the box carefully, hoping the ornament would be as I remembered it.
It was a large, lopsided star I’d made out of wire from a coat hanger covered with aluminum foil. I’d proudly brought it home from kindergarten and given it to Mama to top our tree. After that, it was always the first ornament on the tree. I remembered Mama’s perfume mixing with the pine smell of the tree each year as she lifted me high enough so I could put my star on the very top branch.
When I was a teenager I’d talked about replacing my star with something more elegant. But secretly I loved it and the years it represented: Christmases with Mama.
Now back in Haven Harbor after ten years working for a private investigator in Phoenix, that star meant “home,” despite how much I’d changed since I’d last seen it. In the six—almost seven—months I’d been back in Maine not only had Gram married Reverend Tom, but she’d given me our family home and decided I should be the one to run Mainely Needlepoint, her custom needlepoint business. And, of course, I’d met Patrick.
I climbed the paint-spattered stepladder I’d brought in from the barn and carefully wound a wire around the base of the star, attaching it to the top of the tree.
Now I was ready for Christmas.
Through the wide windows in back of the tree I could see the brightly lit Green. Members of the Chamber of Commerce had set small potted pine trees around the edges of the square, their branches wound with hundreds of tiny white lights. The town Christmas tree towered above them. Across the Green electric candles shone inside the wreaths hung on every window and door of the homes there.
Christmas in Haven Harbor was as it had always been.
This one would be the best ever.
Tonight my home was full of friends I’d invited to my tree-trimming party. Patrick West, the guy who wasn’t perfect, but who made me smile. Sarah Byrne, who’d had a rocky few months but had become my closest friend. Dave Percy, who taught high school biology and whose poison garden intrigued me. Captain Ob and his wife, Anna, who’d had a difficult summer, but were now ready to ring in a new year. Ruth Hopkins, who did needlepoint when her arthritis allowed, and wrote books when it didn’t. Katie Titicomb and Dr. Gus, parents of one of my high school friends. Clem Walker, a high school friend who lived in Portland and worked for Channel 7, but was now home for the holidays with her family. And, of course, Gram and Reverend Tom.
And Trixi. As the tree began to shake in its stand, I realized I hadn’t seen her in a few minutes.
I reached through the wide branches and caught her: one small black kitten, on her way to the top. She jumped from my arms and skittered to her favorite hiding
spot in back of the couch.
Last Christmas had meant white lights twinkling on Saguaro cactuses and dinner with my boss in a Mexican food diner. I hadn’t even hung a wreath on my apartment door. In Arizona pine wreaths cost a small fortune.
Here in Maine making wreaths was a cottage industry. People sold them on the side of the road, out of their trucks, the way they sold blueberries in late July. For the cost of one wreath in Phoenix you could buy eight here. Mainers hung them on every door and window, and sometimes left them up until spring.
As I climbed down from the ladder, Patrick’s arm went around me. “Penny for your thoughts? You look as though you left us for a while.”
“I’m here.” I smiled, turning around into his arms. “Very happy to be right here.” I stood on my toes and kissed his cheek. Who needed a kissing ball or mistletoe when Patrick was around?
He looked around the room, took a deep breath, and announced, “This is probably a good time for me to invite all of you to Aurora for a Christmas Eve party.”
For a moment no one said anything.
“Skye will be back for Christmas?” I asked. Patrick’s mother had spent the fall on a movie set in Scotland.
“Mom’s been saying the cast and crew would work through Christmas, but then there were rain delays in Glasgow and script problems. She called last night to say they’d decided to close the set for the holidays, and she was coming here. And she’s bringing with her some of the others working on the film.”
“Really?” Clem asked. “Anyone famous?”
