As they cleaned up after breakfast, Meg and Allie discussed strategies with wild abandon, because for a change they had the house to themselves. Comfort was in the principal's office (again), Lloyd was out tracking down used parts for the pickup (again), and their father was out fishing with his poker pals. No self-respecting visitor to Acadia would stay inside on a day so glorious: The half-dozen guests staying at the Inn Between were long gone.
Wyler apparently had taken his cue from the weather as well; his car wasn't in its usual space. Allie was disappointed, Meg relieved. In the meantime, Allie was being wonderfully cooperative about joining forces to nail Gordon Camplin. After all, a deal was a deal.
"If only it weren't so long ago," Allie said, folding the checked towel over the stove handle the way Comfort liked it. "What possible evidence can there be? Everything burned to the ground in '47. All that survived of the houses were the chimneys. Look at the photo."
Meg, sitting on a high stool at the Formica-topped work island that Lloyd had proudly built, was doing just that. She had an old, photo album open in front of her, an album that her father had put together at the age of fifteen to deal with his grief at losing his mother to the fire. Meg had taken it out after her second visit to Orel Tremblay and paged through it, looking for obvious clues. She hadn't found them then, and she wasn't finding them now.
The small black-and-white photograph of the ruins of Eagle's Nest, for example, offered little to see: a rambling granite foundation and seven naked, standing chimneys of granite and brick with gaping fireplaces in them. Everything else was flattened into burned-out rubble. It was hard to believe that so much grandeur could be reduced to so few ashes.
It was hard to believe that somewhere in the black-and white rubble were Margaret Atwells's bones.
Meg took up a magnifying lens and pored over the photograph again. All it magnified was the fact that there was nothing left to see.
Allie said, "We at least have to go through the local papers that covered the fire — Bar Harbor, Bangor, Portland. I can do that."
"Mmm, no, I think I should do that," Meg said absently, leafing backward through the album's pages.
"Oh, here we go: I'd-rather-do-it-myself. I should've known," Allie said, annoyed. "Are you going to let me help, or not?"
Meg had focused the magnifying glass over a family photo of her father, uncle, and grandparents. "Sure," she said without looking up. "You can find out what charitable committees and events Camplin's signed on to this year."
"What're we going to do? Go to some society affair disguised as waitresses?"
"No, we're going to be waitresses," said Meg calmly, looking up from the photo. "Everyone knows how hard up we are; and God knows we're experienced at serving cheese and crackers. We'll hire on as temps."
Allie gave her sister a skeptical look. "And then what? We trap him in the kitchen and hold a toothpick to his throat until he confesses?"
Meg shrugged. "Who knows? But I'd like to catch him in his element. His guard will be down then."
Allie warmed to the idea. "If that's true, maybe I should just get a job with the staff at his summer house. Maybe he'd suffer some kind of flashback episode when he saw me."
"I doubt it. You're not the one who looks like Grandmother. Here, take a look," Meg said, handing her sister the magnifying glass. "Do I really look like her?"
Allie zoomed the lens in and out on the small photograph. "Not really. Yeah, maybe ... especially the eyes, except your eyebrows are thinner. Your hair is lighter, but then, you're outside every chance you get. I don't suppose a nursemaid had that luxury. Look how small her waist is; smaller than mine, even."
"Corsets," said Meg instantly, feeling self-conscious that her waist was bigger than either. "I like this photo. Obviously the family's dressed to go out. They look so normal. Look at that little peplum jacket with the fir collar she's wearing, and that gored skirt of giant plaid — and look, the hat she's holding is made of the same plaid." Meg plucked at the shoulder of her own vee-necked T-shirt. "Margaret Mary Atwells was more of a clotheshorse than I'll ever be."
"We live in a more casual era," said Allie generously, even though she herself liked to dress to the nines when the mood hit. She laughed and added, "Look at the grip she has on Dad's shoulder. And we wonder why he's so meek around women."
"Don't sell Dad short. Maybe she's holding on to him so he doesn't yank out the photographer's tripod. Terry would."
The sisters exchanged one of their ironic looks.
"Dad? I don't think so," Allie said, stealing a sip of her sister's cold coffee. She held the lens over the photo again. "One thing that's the same, although it's hard to tell in a person that's only an inch high — look at her smile. That's just the way you smile when some guest with a baby comes through, or when you arrange flowers for the sitting room. When you like something a lot."
"Really?" Meg took the magnifying lens and stared at the woman in plaid. It was a friendly smile, very natural, very appealing — but was it a smile to make a man besotted enough to kill?
Suddenly she didn't relish being connected to the photo, even if by the shadow of a smile. She turned the fragile black paper in search of other photographs of her grandmother, but she knew, and Allie knew, that there were none. The plaid-skirt photo was dated September 1947, a month before the fire.
"Okay," Meg said, closing the album with a resolute sigh. "I'll start with the historical society. Then the library. You start with the social calendar"
"Right now, today?" her sister asked eagerly.
"You don't have to run out the door," Meg said, smiling. "Whenever you have time. There's no huge rush."
"But there is," Allie answered, surprised by her sister's whenever-attitude. "Gordon Camplin could die if we're not quick."
"I don't see why," Meg said laconically. "I've seen him speed walking. He looks pretty damn fit."
Allie, hands on her hips, stared at Meg as if she'd just climbed down from a potato truck. "Don't be dumb, Meg; fitness has nothing to do with it."
"Oh. Right. What was I thinking. Obviously there's no connection between fitness and long life." Meg stuck her Bennington mug in the microwave for sixty seconds of coffee warm-up.
"That's not what I mean," Allie said impatiently. "What I'm trying to say is, if Gordon Camplin is guilty, he could very well be connected on some psychic plane to Orel Tremblay. With Mr. Tremblay dead, well — you know how sometimes an elderly husband will die within hours of his wife, or vice versa? It happens. All the time."
"Because they're close," Meg argued. "Gordon Camplin probably didn't even know Orel Tremblay was alive."
"Well, he knows Mr. Tremblay's dead, or will know, as soon as he sees the obituaries."
"Meaning what? We have to rush him off to the electric chair before he dies of natural — excuse me, supernatural — causes? This isn't about vengeance, Allie-cat," Meg said quietly.
Allie snorted incredulously. "What else, then?"
Meg gathered her golden-streaked hair and held it off her neck the way she did when she was working something through. "It's about ... I don't know ... it's about doing the right thing." She smiled self-consciously. "Doesn't that sound corny? Don't I sound old?"
Allie, twelve full years younger than her sister, laughed and leaned across the work island with an affectionate look. "You are old. Nyah, nyah."
"Yeah, brat? Then what's this," Meg said, reaching to pluck a hair from her sister's scalp. She dangled the strand between them like a contest prize: Long. Wavy. Gray.
Allie's eyes widened in horror. "Oh, no." She grabbed the hair from her sister's grasp. "This can't be. I'm only twenty- five years old." She stretched it between her fingers as if it were a kind of ruler, a fine-spun measure of her mortality. "Oh, no," she whispered.
Meg felt sorry that she'd pointed it out. Her sister's identity was completely bound up in her youth and beauty. What good could come of snatching it away from her? "Probably it's a one-shot," she said apologe
tically.
"I'm old," said Allie, entirely serious. "This is proof. I'm old. Gray, and unmarried, and old. I can't believe it. A gray hair before a husband." She walked over to the kitchen trash basket and dropped the strand into it. She was like a ship's captain, burying her shrouded youth at sea.
"Allie, get a grip," Meg said, becoming impatient with her sister's penchant for melodrama. "Buy a box of L'Oreal. You're worth it."
"Yeah," said Allie, staring into the trash can. "I'm worth it."
"Well, it's not as if you couldn't have married half a dozen different men," Meg said, amazed at the depth of her sister's distress. "What about Bob? Has he re-proposed yet since you've been back?"
Although, come to think of it, Meg hadn't heard the roar of his Harley-Davidson rattling the cut-glass chandelier in the front hall.
Allie looked up blankly at her sister. "Bobby? Beaufort? Can you possibly be serious?"
"All right, not Bob. But someone, somewhere. You will be married, obviously. For Pete's sake, if I have to, I'll go next door and drag your detective friend back to you, even if it's kicking and scre —"
"That's not necessary, Meg; here I am," said a voice from behind her, a voice that she hoped belonged to anyone in the world besides Lieutenant Thomas Wyler.
Chapter 9
Smiling, Wyler handed Allie a hardback book. "Here's your novel; you forgot it yesterday."
Allie's cheeks went crimson. She took the novel, lifted her chin, said, "Thank you very much; I think I'll go in the garden and read," and walked by him like a tennis star past a ball boy at Wimbledon.
Meg waited until her sister was outside, then nodded toward the hedge of mountain laurel that obscured Allie from their view. "I think that was your cue, Lieutenant."
Wyler laughed softly. "Are you kidding? She's still furious with me. If I went out there now, she'd cut out my heart and feed it to the seagulls. No, I think the best thing is to let her cool off."
Meg smiled and said, "Do you mind if I ask you something? How long were you married?"
"Ten years, on and off. Why?"
"Really!" Ten years, and he hadn't learned a thing. "Do you have any sisters?" she added impulsively.
Now it was his turn to look uncomfortable. "If you mean birth sisters, I wouldn't know. I was raised in a series of foster homes," he said, his mouth setting in a grim line. After a pause he added, "My second set of parents, and my fourth, had daughters of their own. Is there a direction this is taking us?" he asked her coolly.
"I'm sorry," Meg said at once. "I didn't mean to pry." Which of course she did. "Can I be candid? It's just that you don't seem that much in tune, somehow, with how a woman's mind works."
"I have three women detectives under my command," Wyler said testily. "We get along fine."
"Oh, sure, detectives. Persons of logic. I'm talking about my sister."
He laughed at that, despite himself, and Meg laughed with him.
Feeling vaguely conspiratorial, Meg glanced out at the garden again. She could just catch a glimpse of Allie's yellow shorts. Her sister was sitting on the stone bench under the oak tree at the far end of the property. The stone bench was a stupid place to be if you wanted to read in any kind of comfort; but it was a charming spot to be if you were hoping for a rendezvous. Meg knew that Allie was counting on her to make that happen.
Last night, moved by her sister's pain, Meg would've done just about anything to drag the man back to Allie's feet. Today, with him right there and in no big hurry, she was having second thoughts. She had no business being intrigued by him; but she was.
But a promise was a promise.
"Lieutenant ... Tom ... I was just about to put on more coffee for Allie and me. I don't suppose you have time for a cup?"
Wyler had been leaning against the kitchen counter opposite her. Now he walked over to the window through which Meg had a view of her sister. He peered out toward the stone bench. "Yes," he said. "I'd like that."
"Great."
It shouldn't have, but his answer depressed her. Staying for coffee meant his carrying Allie's cup down a stepstone path through sweet-smelling roses and heady viburnums and under a rose-covered arbor, ending up at a stone bench just big enough for two. If you sat close.
The kiss between Allie and him had been bad enough, but this was worse. Allie had goaded him into the kiss, but no one was goading him into staying. He cared for Allie. Dammit, dammit, dammit. He really cared.
Meg made a production of setting up Comfort's prized Bunn coffeemaker. "So. How was your séance?" she asked in a stupidly cheerful voice.
She knew damn well he'd thought it was a farce.
"Not 'séance,'" he corrected as he unhooked a happy-face mug from a coffee tree on the counter where she was working. "It's called a 'darkroom session'."
"Whatever." She flipped the brew switch and turned to get the half-and-half from the fridge at the same time that he about-faced, and they bumped into each other. Her breast brushed up against his chest, sending a jolt through her. "How w-was it?" she repeated, faltering.
"Nice," he said instantly. She was half a breath away from him; she could almost hear the gears clunk into place as he rethought her question. "Uh-h ... you mean the séance," he said, truly embarrassed. He tried to shrug it off. "Yeah ... well ... hmm ... I'm not a big believer in the otherworldly. I tend to put my faith in the here and now."
He was standing very close, close enough for her to see how fair skinned he was, close enough for her to see the faint flush that had begun to darken the surface beneath his skin. It was an immensely endearing trait, this tendency of his to betray his emotions. And yet she knew instinctively that he would never do it on the job. He would never allow himself to be perceived as vulnerable.
"So," she said again, inanely. "How was the séance?"
He looked at her with a puzzled smile and said, "Do I have to keep answering that until I get it right or something?"
"No, no," she said quickly, realizing that she hadn't heard his first answer. "I'm sorry. I was thinking of something else."
She launched into a long and rambling monologue, trying to cover her own embarrassment. "The fact is," she said, "I don't put much stock in that kind of thing myself. I mean, just because there's a millennium coming up, everyone is running around looking for ghosts. You read about it all the time. Groups like Zenobia's are all over Maine. Sometimes they even charge a fee," she said indignantly. "That's not right. Do you think this mania could've happened in 1950? No. Absolutely not. It's because of the millennium. I'm convinced of it."
"So you think séances are hooey?"
"I didn't say that," Meg said quickly. "I wasn't at yours, of course. On the other hand, I do think this Sylvie person had a genuine experience in Thunder Hole. Not that there's anything supernatural about Thunder Hole. You could go anywhere in Acadia and feel what she felt. Clearly she tapped into the ... the pulse of nature, the flow of energy there. I understand that part completely. There's something about the sea; something about the awesome, beautiful, uncaring vastness of it ... it's just like a starry sky on a moonless night, like —"
He was watching her with a quiet curiosity that brought her up short. "God, listen to me," she said with a nervous laugh. "Can I be any more vague than that? If that was one of Terry's compositions, I'd give it a 'C.' I suppose you deal only with hard facts," she added, continuing her babble. "You know, like Jack Webb? 'Just the facts, ma'am'? Dragnet?"
The hissing of the coffeemaker, like an audience unimpressed, brought her to a full stop. "So," she said once more, tacking violently off in the other direction. "Read any good books lately?"
From the cosmic to the cliché in one fell swoop. Naturally, she told herself, he will assume I'm insane.
"Cream? Sugar?" she asked, limping at last to a halt.
That broke the spell; Wyler blinked and tried to sort out the threads of her tangled ramble. "I'm halfway through a pretty good biography of JFK," he said carefully, watching her with a side
ways look. "And, ah, no sugar."
"All rightee," she said, seizing the refrigerator door and throwing it nearly off its hinges. She stared unseeing at the contents inside, aware only that her heart was thumping like a pile driver down at the docks. What is wrong with me? she asked herself in amazement.
All she could see was a bottle of ketchup. It seemed odd; there used to be more in there than ketchup. She continued to stare blankly at the shelves until Wyler reached in alongside her for the carton of half-and-half.
"You're letting all the cold air out," he scolded gently.
He was so close. She'd never before noticed the slight bump in the bridge of his nose. "This is Maine," she said with a shaky laugh. "No one worries about cold air escaping. Where would it go?"
The phone rang. She felt as if some referee had mercifully ended the round between them. "Excuse me, I have to get that," she said, sprinting out of the kitchen.
The call was from a picky shopper who wanted a description of every room, right down to the number of windows and the directions they faced. After the telephone tour, it turned out that the price was too high and Meg lost the booking anyway. By the time she got back to the kitchen, Wyler was gone and so was Allie's "Allie" mug.
Just as well, Meg decided morosely. One more conversation like that, and he'd be spearheading a drive to have her committed. What could've possessed her to open up about her deepest feelings that way? What did an urbanite like him know about nature, anyway? Zip.
She craned her neck toward the stone bench at the far end of the garden and saw a patch of khaki pantleg. So Allie hadn't kicked him out. Of course not. Had Eve kicked out Adam?
None of it mattered, anyway, Meg decided with weary resignation. Wyler was a grownup and so was Allie. The only one who didn't seem to want to admit it was Meg, and even she was being forced to come around.
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