Threads of Evidence

by Lea Wait

  “Sounds as though you had a crush on him,” I said, teasing.

  “Not me. My type was not as gorgeous . . . and more serious. Interested in the arts and books. Jed dated Jasmine that summer.”

  “Did he remember you when he sold you Aurora?”

  “No,” she said wryly. “Of course, I’ve changed, too.”

  “But he didn’t remember your name? ‘Skye West’ is a memorable name,” I said.

  “That’s what my agent thought,” said Skye. “Which is why I chose it. When I was here with Jasmine that summer, my name was Mary North. That’s the name Jed might have recognized.”

  Chapter 19

  On the breast of her gown, in red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold threads, appeared the letter A.

  —Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), Chapter 2 of The Scarlet Letter, 1850

  “‘Mary North?’” I asked.

  She laughed. “Now you know all my secrets. Or at least one of them.”

  “Of course, I knew actors and actresses sometimes changed their names. I just never thought . . .”

  “Most people don’t,” she answered. “And some people keep their ‘real’ name for various purposes, and only use their stage name when they’re in the public eye. But I legally changed mine, and I never used any of my husbands’ names.”

  “Which is why I’m Patrick West,” added Patrick.

  “So even those in Haven Harbor who remember Jasmine Gardener and her friend in 1970 might not recognize you.”

  “If they remember she had a friend visiting that summer, they’d think of a quiet brown-haired girl named Mary,” said Skye. “Which actually works toward my purpose. I knew a lot about Jasmine’s life that summer. Certainly, more than either of her parents did. And some of what I knew might be relevant to her death.”

  “Her murder,” Patrick corrected softly. Clearly, he was a believer.

  “Her murder,” Skye repeated.

  “For example?” I asked.

  “When she died, Jasmine was a little over two months pregnant,” said Skye. “She knew, and I knew. But I don’t know whether she’d told the father of the baby, or anyone else. Certainly, her mother didn’t know.” She looked into the distance for a moment. “Millie found out when the autopsy results came in, but that part of the report was never released. The police and the family felt it wasn’t necessary for anyone to know. Privacy was still important back then, especially if it was the privacy of a family that made large annual donations to the Haven Harbor Police Department.”

  “But she’d been drinking heavily that night,” I said. “If she was pregnant—”

  “Back in 1970, the connection between drinking alcohol during pregnancy and birth defects or fetal alcohol syndrome hadn’t been established. Certainly, it wasn’t a connection a seventeen-year-old girl would have made. So, yes, she was drinking that night. She’d actually been drinking all summer and getting high. Usually with her friends, and sometimes in her room at Aurora. Not out in public as she did September fifth.”

  “Who was the father of her baby?” I asked.

  Skye shook her head. “Truthfully, I don’t know. It had to have been Jed Fitch or Sam Gould.”

  “‘Sam Gould’?” That was a new name.

  “She’d been dating Sam in the spring, in New York. He went to college there. But he came from Maine, and he was around that summer, too.”

  “She was dating both of them?”

  “She was seventeen. I’m not sure she was serious about either of them.”

  I remembered being seventeen. I certainly hadn’t been serious about anyone then. “So she might not have known who the father of her child was.”

  “I think she knew. But what she was going to do about it? That I didn’t know. You’ll remember, this was before Roe v. Wade. But she wouldn’t have been in danger from an illegal abortion. She wouldn’t have had to use a coat hanger or sneak into an illegal clinic. Jasmine’s parents could have afforded to send her out of the country, to where abortions were legal and relatively safe. But she hadn’t told her parents. I tried to get her to talk with her mother. She refused. She told me she was planning to tell the baby’s father and hope he stepped up. I’m not sure what she meant by that. I don’t think she wanted to be married. But for a year or so, to give the baby a father and a name . . . she might have done that. Whoever the father was, her news was certainly going to mess up both their lives.”

  Suddenly I was in another place. Mama had been seventeen when she was pregnant with me. She’d never told anyone who my father was. I’d never heard Mama or Gram mention the possibility that she might have ended her pregnancy. Ended me. And Gram hadn’t thrown her out. Mama hadn’t been the best mother, but she and Gram had taken care of me. I wasn’t a perfect citizen. But Mama had given me a chance.

  Jasmine and her baby hadn’t had that chance.

  Skye was still talking. “Jed Fitch’s real estate office is right here in town. I thought that was ironic. I’d left word with a local real estate agency to let me know if Aurora ever came on the market, and Jed was the one who called. Sam Gould is still around, too. His company builds yachts in Camden.”

  “You’re suggesting one of them might have had a motive to make Jasmine and her baby disappear,” I said.

  “It’s possible,” said Skye. “It’s even logical, although they’re not the only ones who might have had motives. I was only here that one summer. I didn’t know everyone in town. It could have been someone with a grudge against the Gardeners, or against wealthy people in general.” She shrugged her shoulders.

  “So?”

  “So I want to figure out who had the best motive. And then prove they were responsible for Jasmine’s death.”

  I kept thinking of that flighty, pregnant seventeen-year-old. How scared she must have been! Scared to be pregnant. Scared to tell her parents. Scared of how having a child would change her life. Scared of telling the man— the boy—who was the child’s father.

  I kept thinking of Mama.

  “I’ll help you,” I blurted. “I know a lot of people in town. They’d be more comfortable talking to me than to you. Pardon, Skye, but you’re a famous actress from California. People might ask you for your autograph. They might smile a lot. But I don’t think they’d tell you their secrets.” Had I just volunteered to jump off a twenty-foot diving board into an empty pool? But I kept talking. “If you’d like me to help find out what happened that night, whatever it was, I’m willing.”

  Patrick, who’d been listening silently, came around from in back of his mother’s chair. “That’s a wonderful idea, Mom. You wanted to have someone from local law enforcement helping you. That doesn’t sound as though it’ll work out. Someone with private-investigator experience is the next best thing.” He looked at me. “Angie’s already proven she’s a hard worker. Plus, I don’t think you could find a prettier investigator in the whole state of Maine.”

  What? I turned crimson. “It was just an idea. I’ve always been fascinated by Aurora and its stories. . . .”

  “How much would you charge?” Skye asked.

  “I don’t have an investigator’s license. It would be illegal to charge you. And, besides, you’ve already paid Sarah and me so generously. I would help because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “I’d want to pay you. I don’t care what we call the payments. We could figure that out later. So, yes, I’d love to have your help,” said Skye, glancing at her son. “We’d both like that. We should sit down and go over the notes I have. Lists of people who were here that Saturday night, and who might have been responsible.”

  “That would be a good start,” I agreed. “But today I need to get caught up with some needlepoint business. Tomorrow morning?”

  “That would be fine,” said Skye. “I’ll have everything here in the carriage house.”

  I did have a lot of work to do—not counting getting ready for Gram’s wedding.

  W
hat had I volunteered to get myself into?

  Investigating a forty-five-year-old death that the police didn’t think was a crime?

  It wasn’t the craziest thing I’d ever done. But it certainly wasn’t the sanest, either.

  And what would Gram think?

  Chapter 20

  May I with innocence and peace

  My tranquil moments spend

  And when the toils of life shall cease

  With calmness meet my end.

  —Sampler stitched by Mary Ann Moore, Wilmington, Ohio, 1835

  “You agreed to do what?” asked Gram. She’d come home to change from her “go to meeting” clothes into her gardening attire.

  She’d decided to put in several tomato plants, lettuce, and zucchini—enough so I wouldn’t starve—and after she moved out, she could come and pick what she needed. Already the early black-seeded Simpson lettuce was sprouting. I wished she’d put in peas for the traditional salmon-and-peas Fourth of July dinner. I’d have to buy peas at the farmers’ market. By then, Gram and Reverend Tom would be (somewhere) on their honeymoon.

  Maybe I’d invite Sarah to join me for dinner before the fireworks over the harbor that night. Did she even know salmon and peas were the New England version of Fourth of July barbecue in the South? What would be the equivalent in Australia? I should ask her.

  It would be strange living in this house without Gram.

  Juno sprang into my lap and meowed her welcome. I scratched behind her ears. Between my work at Aurora and Gram’s wedding planning (everything was now set, she’d assured me . . . except for whatever I planned to wear), Juno was feeling neglected. She accepted her rightful scratch and then leapt up to the kitchen windowsill to oversee the bird feeder. A pair of goldfinches and three chickadees were enjoying their Sunday dinner beyond Juno’s reach.

  Juno wasn’t thrilled about Gram’s ruling, but she was an inside cat. Birds took priority outside.

  Juno, at least, wouldn’t be moving until the honeymooners were back. So, technically, I wouldn’t be alone until then.

  I’d told Gram I’d agreed to help Skye investigate Jasmine’s death.

  “What exactly do you plan to do? Sounds to me as though that Skye West has a few screws loose. She seemed nice enough yesterday at the lawn sale. But I don’t remember her being around in the summer of 1970.” Gram tied on her apron. “Tuna salad for lunch? I picked up some young spinach leaves and scallions at the farmers’ market yesterday to mix into it. And I saved us a couple of the strawberry muffins I made up for the ladies’ reception at the church this morning.”

  “Sounds good. Thank you. And I don’t know exactly what information Skye has. I’m going to talk with her tomorrow morning. She implied she has a couple of possible suspects in mind.”

  “Suspects? And she hasn’t thought to mention this for forty-five years? If the woman was even here in 1970! My memory isn’t perfect, but I would have remembered someone with a name like that, even if I didn’t know the Gardeners well. And what has she been doing all this time that she didn’t think to contact anyone if she had proof?”

  I wasn’t sure I should say anything about Skye’s change of name, but this was my Gram. I could certainly trust her. “In 1970, her name wasn’t Skye West. It was Mary North.”

  “‘Mary North’?” Gram thought a minute before saying, “I don’t remember anyone named Mary North. No Wests and no Norths.” Gram tore spinach leaves in half as though they were Skye’s ideas. “Phooey. That’s what all this fuss is. And nonsense. Who comes back forty-five years later and has a brainstorm about a possible crime?”

  I opened a large can of tuna (Juno reappeared and rubbed around my ankles, to make sure I hadn’t forgotten her) and got out some salad dressing. “I have no clue. But first I want us to figure out who we’re going to ask to work on the needlework pictures. I looked at them last night. You managed to get rid of most of the mildew.”

  “I did, yes,” Gram said as she chopped a little red onion to add to our salad. “Sunlight’s the best cure for that, I’ve found. If you leave the work in the sun too long, of course, it fades. But sun does kill mildew. Before we hand the pictures over to anyone else, I’ll double-check. A couple of pieces might need a bit more treatment with a mild vinegar solution to make sure they’re clean. All in all, the panels are in pretty good shape. A couple could be backed and reframed now. I called one of those archival houses and ordered nonacidic backing. It came in Friday. You’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to tell you.”

  “Thank you. We’ve both been racing about. I was thinking of giving a couple of the pictures to Dave Percy to work on, since school will be out in a couple of days, and perhaps one or two to Sarah that she can work on at the store. I’ll give the rest to Katie Titicomb.”

  “Good thinking. Sarah’s been in this since the beginning. Dave’s finished the work we gave him in May and said he’d like some other assignments, and Katie’s bored stiff with her daughter and grandchildren down east for the summer. If she visits them, she can take her work with her.”

  “Skye doesn’t seem in a hurry to get the panels back, but I’d like to get them finished as soon as we can, before gift shops start asking for more of the pillows and sachets and wall hangings we stitched last winter.”

  “I’ll look over the pictures to be sure they’re ready to be farmed out, then,” Gram said. “I noticed you dropped off some silk threads and yarns last week. Are they for the panels?”

  “If you think they’d work,” I agreed. “They came from Millicent Gardener’s needlepoint stash, and looked as though they might have been matches for those she used in the panels. Of course, the ones in the pictures have faded, so the colors won’t be exact.”

  “Close enough, though. The fading we can leave, but in some sections threads have rotted or are broken. They’ll need to be stitched over, and bright colors wouldn’t go with the rest of the picture. We’ll divide any of the threads you brought, and any we have in stock, and send them along with the panels when you deliver them to our needlepointers.”

  “Thank you for helping with this, Gram. I know you used to do this all by yourself. I’m still on a steep learning curve.” And, of course, I’d been cleaning out an old house for the past week. Not exactly stitchery work. When Gram and the other Mainely Needlepointers had asked me to become their director last month, I’d assumed I’d be focused on sales and accounting. When it came to reclamation and knowing how long a specific project would take I had to lean heavily on Gram and the others.

  “Skye wants me to talk about the people who were at the party in 1970. You said you were there.”

  “I didn’t kill Jasmine Gardener. And I didn’t see anyone else do it, either,” Gram declared, putting our plates of salad on the table. “If I had, do you think I’d have swallowed hard and not told anyone for forty-five years?” She took two glasses out of the cabinet. “Iced tea or lemonade?”

  “Lemonade,” I said. I’d already had too much caffeine today. (And, to tell the truth, lemonade now reminded me of arsenic poisoning.) “You said maybe two hundred people were at Aurora that night.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. But none of them would be spring chickens now—that’s for sure,” said Gram, settling into her salad.

  “Ob Winslow said he was there.”

  “He must have been a babe in arms, then.”

  “He said he was about ten.”

  “That would make sense. There were a lot of children there. Fireworks and hamburgers and music. People of all ages were there. And, of course, Ob’s family knew the Gardeners well.”

  “He said he lived in the carriage house there when he was a teenager.”

  “After his family was killed—an awful accident, when a storm came up and their boat went under—Ob was the only survivor. Lost his parents and his sister, both. He was in high school then, as I recall, and state family services weren’t exactly on the ball about such things back then. The Gardeners had known his parents,
and they told Ob he could live in their carriage house. Stay the winter and do odd jobs that needed to be done around the estate, open it up in the spring and close it in the fall. He was on his own there, but he must have managed fine. After he graduated, he stayed on and officially became their caretaker. Did that, in addition to his woodworking, for a few years before he and Anna married. By then, he’d inherited a bit from his parents. A trust of some sort. Enough to buy himself the fishing boat he still takes folks out on. And he and Anna bought the old Thompson farm across the road from Aurora. They’re still there.”

  “So you and Ob were at the party. I wonder how many other people still in town were there.”

  “No idea. Some people who were summer folks then moved here permanently when they retired. Old folks died off. Young folks moved away. Hard to say who was around that long ago.” She paused. “A fair number, though.”

  “Maybe Ob remembers some,” I said. “And Skye seemed to have some ideas.”

  “Pshaw. Sounds like she’s got too many ideas. No one remembers her, but she not only remembers people she hasn’t seen in decades, but she thinks she can nail one of them for murder?” Gram looked at me. “I know she was real generous to you for helping with her house. But don’t get too involved with that woman, Angel. You got your check. Now you’ve got a business to run and things to do for the wedding.”

  “You and Tom seem to have the wedding under control,” I said. “Everyone in the congregation’s invited to the church. Reception will be hosted by the women’s group in the church hall. The way I figure it, all I have to do is find a decent dress to wear and show up.”

  “You definitely have to do that,” Gram said. “But . . . you are my maid of honor.”