Coming Home

by Mariah Stewart

  “Miranda is fine,” Will said. “I keep asking her to make an honest man out of me but she keeps postponing the date.”

  “Hey, if you were engaged to marry you, how much of a hurry would you be in?”

  “You have a point.” Will paused. “What are the chances we’ll be seeing you back in the office sometime soon?”

  “Unlikely.” Grady hated having these discussions, and he hoped Will wouldn’t press. To his relief, he didn’t.

  “Well, anytime you’re in the neighborhood and just want to hang out, give us a call, hear?”

  “I will, thanks.”

  “So, back to Eugene Medford.”

  Grady heard some papers rustling on Will’s end of the line.

  “I ran a check, traced him to a prison in Wisconsin, where he was sent to serve a seven-year term for assault.”

  “I know that part,” Grady told him. “I need to know if he’s still in there now.”

  “Well, he was, up until three weeks ago.”

  “He was paroled?” Grady asked.

  “No,” Will told him. “He was in a fight with another inmate and his neck was broken.”

  Grady hesitated before asking, “Are you telling me…”

  “Yeah,” Will told him. “The guy is dead.”

  Diary—

  When I said the wedding would be one people would be talking about for a long time, I never dreamed… Well, where to begin? I’m fanning myself with the program from the ceremony and hoping that my poor old heart holds out! The day ran the gamut from the sublime to the scandalous to the… well, I hardly have words for what happened here!

  First-the wedding. It was, in a word, perfect. The bride was as beautiful as a fairy tale princess, the groom her story-book prince. The Inn looked fabulous-if I do say so myself-the flowers glorious, the food divine. The weather was warm and balmy. What more could one have asked for on their wedding day?

  Next-the scandal. The mother of the groom showed up uninvited! Yes, that woman who to the best of my knowledge hasn’t laid eyes on that boy of hers since she dumped him-yes, I said dumped-on the front doorstep of his unsuspecting father. She had the gall to show up at the wedding, and unless my hearing is going, she was put out because Beck wouldn’t speak to her! Can you imagine? What in the name of decency was that woman thinking? There will be more on this, I feel certain!

  Finally-the unthinkable. Vanessa’s sweet little boutique, Bling, was broken into and robbed! Right there on Charles Street, while her brother’s wedding reception was taking place, someone broke into the shop and-from what I heard at the day-after-the-wedding brunch-the burglars trashed the shop before they left! Yes, that’s what I said-as if it wasn’t enough to rob the poor girl, they tossed her lovely merchandise on the floor and broke the glass in some of her cases!

  Now, I ask you: What kind of person would do something like that? Obviously, it’s someone from out of town. No one in St. Dennis would stoop so low! And then… just moments later, the car that nice young Grady Shields rented and which he left parked in the lower town lot while he took Vanessa to inspect the damages at Bling… didn’t someone come along and smash out every window? I hear through the grape vine that Hal believes both acts were committed by the same criminally-minded individual.

  Breaking into shops! Smashing car windows! What kind of riff-raff are we allowing into our fair town? What has this world come to?!

  I must work on an editorial for this week’s paper…

  – Grace

  Chapter 12

  HAL did his best to talk Vanessa out of taking a walk through town that afternoon.

  “Honey, I agree with Grady that something’s afoot, that someone here has got it in for you. I don’t think you ought to be putting yourself out there.”

  “There are tons of walkers out today,” she pointed out. “We’ll be on the main street, and you can have an armed guard follow me if it makes you feel better, but I need to focus on something besides the fact that I’m afraid and confused right now. All this conjecture is making me nuts.” She softened. “Grady will be with me. He won’t let anything happen to me.”

  “Then just do the short tour.” Hal knew when to compromise. “Just up to the square and back. Leave the side streets for another day.”

  There isn’t going to be another day, she wanted to remind him. Grady would be gone in a few hours, and chances were good he wouldn’t be back anytime soon.

  Playing tour guide actually did relax her, in spite of the fact that patrol cars seemed to be constantly driving by, circling the block like black-and-white sharks.

  “The town was under siege during the War of 1812, but no buildings were destroyed. The townspeople had a plan, you see,” she told Grady as they walked along. “The British approached the harbor at night, but as soon as they started firing, all the candles in town were snuffed out so that the entire town was dark. Some houses closest to the water took direct shots-a couple even still have cannonballs lodged in their walls-but none came down.”

  “If I remember my American history, that was the war when the British attacked the city of Baltimore and Francis Scott Key saw the flag flying above Fort McHenry the next morning and was inspired to write ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

  “Well, here’s a little did-you-know. The commanding officer wanted a really huge flag to fly over the fort, so he commissioned a woman from Baltimore to make one. And it was huge, like thirty feet high and forty-two feet long. That was the flag that Key saw the next morning.”

  “I did pay attention in my American history class. Major George Armistead was the commander. He wanted to make sure that the British could see the flag from their ships.” Grady added, “I suppose it was the 1814 equivalent of getting in someone’s face.”

  “Do you know the name of the flag maker?” she countered.

  “No. Do you?”

  “You betcha. Mary Pickersgill. There’s a book in the Historical Society library that talks about how she was asked to make that flag and she only had a very limited time to do it. The flag is in the Smithsonian now.”

  Grady had made a move to take her hand but she walked with both hands linked behind her back so they were out of reach. When her arms grew tired, she switched her shoulder bag to her left side and looped her hand through the strap to occupy it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want that casual contact with him-she did. In fact, she’d been aching to touch him all day. But he’d be leaving town in a matter of hours, and a public display would only invite questions. She was under constant scrutiny by the police department, and all day long, people she knew had been driving past and waving. She couldn’t bear the looks of pity she knew she’d get when she walked into Cuppachino in the morning. Or the questions that would inevitably come, the speculation that would be made. St. Dennis was still, after all, a small town, and there was little that could stop the gossip once it got rolling. There’d be enough attention on her in the coming days, with her shop having been the victim of the first burglary since the town started trying to attract tourists. To have that same light shining on her love life right now would be overkill.

  “This area up here, we call the square,” she continued. “The houses on each corner were among the first built when the town was officially laid out in 1685. Before that, there were land grants, maybe around 1650 or so, that pretty much defined the village area. The brick was all locally made, and the wooden sections that you see were all from trees cut down to clear the area.” She smiled. “Sometimes I like to walk along here and try to picture the way it was back then, with only those few houses, and dirt paths between them. No roads, no cars… just horses and a wagon here and there.” She pointed beyond the square. “You see those woods off to the right? There are trees there that have been standing for more than three hundred years. It’s believed that’s the last of the forest that the early settlers found when they first came here.”

  “You’re really into this, aren’t you? Hard to believe you’re not a native.” He seem
ed so casual, so nonchalant, yet Vanessa could not fail to notice that his eyes were constantly moving, from the passing cars to other pedestrians.

  “I’ve learned a lot from Hal. His family has been here since the early 1700s. Imagine that? Being able to trace your family back that far?”

  “I guess it’s easy if no one ever left town. There’d be records in the churches of births, marriages, deaths,” he pointed out. “And depending on how well the town kept records of the deeds changing hands, you could trace that, too.”

  “I suppose. But for someone…” She stopped herself from saying someone like me. “… someone whose family records are scattered or missing or inaccurate, or just plain unknown, it’s a revelation to find out that some people even know who their first ancestors were who came to this country, and even what ship they came on.” She shook her head and added, “I’ve never even met my real father. I took Keaton from a stepfather, but my real dad… I know his name but I don’t know anything about him.”

  “Maggie never told you?”

  “There’s a lot Maggie hasn’t told me,” Vanessa said drily.

  “Have you asked her?” He stopped at the corner when she did. “About the things you don’t know?”

  She shook her head from side to side. “I always figured if she felt like talking about him, she would.” She made a face. “Maybe that’s not really true. Maybe I was afraid to ask because-oh, I don’t know. Because she’d blow me off, or maybe not tell the truth, you know, maybe just tell me what she thinks I want to hear.”

  “What do you want to hear?”

  “Just the truth.” She was taller in the four-inch heels she wore, but still not eye to eye with him. “I would like to know about my father. I always told her it didn’t matter, that I didn’t want to know, but it does matter. I do want to know.”

  “If you weren’t honest with her, why would she be honest with you?”

  Vanessa frowned. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Yours.” He took her arm when she wouldn’t give him her hand. “If you want the truth, ask for it. Don’t assume people can read your mind. That’s game playing. I didn’t figure that for your style.”

  She crossed the street and started walking back toward town, and he kept in step with her.

  “Ness?”

  “I heard you.”

  “I can see that I upset you,” Grady said. “I’m very sorry. But you brought up-”

  “I know I did.” She exhaled a long breath. “I’m not upset with you. I’m upset with myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” She snorted. “Why should I feel annoyed with myself for telling a man I slept with last night all my deepest secrets?”

  “If you can’t share something of yourself with the man you sleep with, maybe you shouldn’t be sleeping with him.”

  “We don’t ‘sleep with’ each other. We slept. Past tense,” she corrected him. “We just slept together last night.”

  “So you’re telling me I was just a one-night stand?” He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “I feel so… cheap. So… used.”

  “You’re not funny.” She kept walking.

  “What do you expect me to say?” He caught up with her in one stride. “Ness, I don’t do one-night stands.”

  “Of course you do.” She brushed him off. “All guys do.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “You stayed with me last night. You’re leaving today,” she pointed out. “One night.”

  “So if I leave town today, that means I can’t come back?”

  “You mean, like once a year? Or whenever you felt like it?”

  Grady whistled, long and low. “You really have a low opinion of men, don’t you?”

  When she didn’t answer, he said, “Every guy isn’t out to love you and leave you, Ness, or to hurt you if he stays.”

  They walked along in silence for a while.

  “You are the oddest man I have ever known.” She shook her head, then fell silent again for the rest of the walk back to the center of town.

  “Want to stop for coffee?” he asked as they approached Cuppachino.

  She shook her head.

  “How ’bout we stop in the art gallery across the street and just take a look around?”

  “It won’t open for another few weeks. Rocky, the guy who owns it, usually doesn’t come back to St. Dennis until June first. He has a home in Arizona, and he stays there except for the summer. Anyway, don’t you have to get going?”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me? Tired of me already?”

  “You said you had to leave St. Dennis by three. It’s almost that now, and you still have to go back to the Inn to get your stuff and check out.”

  “I’ll get to it.”

  They crossed the street, and Vanessa stopped in front of Bling. She hadn’t noticed last night, but one of the side windows must have been cracked, because it was boarded up on the outside. Through the front window she could see the mess. There was yellow crime-scene tape wrapped around the entire building, and she noticed several passersby stop to speculate. She wrapped her arms around herself and willed herself not to cry.

  “Maybe they’ll let you go in soon and clean up,” Grady said. “Maybe Hal can speed that up for you.”

  “He said tomorrow I could go in. I asked him this morning. After the shock of seeing him walk in with Maggie wore off.”

  “That bothers you, doesn’t it? That Hal and Maggie seem to have so much to talk about?”

  “How is it that you just always seem to know exactly which scab to pick at?” He’d just played on her last nerve.

  She walked ahead of him and turned up Cherry Street without looking at him. He walked alongside her, his hands in the pockets of his Dockers, his dark glasses hiding his eyes.

  When they got to her house, he said, “I just seem to set you off, no matter what I say. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry or get into your business, but when you throw stuff out there, you shouldn’t be surprised if I pick up on it. That’s part of the whole conversation thing. You say something, I listen and say something back to you that pertains to whatever it is that you said. Then you say something else, and voilà. A conversation.”

  “I’m not used to talking about… certain things… with anyone. I don’t know why my mouth has been so free this morning. I don’t talk about my father, and I rarely talk about my mother, and as for this…” She placed a hand on her scar and shook her head. “So I don’t know what’s gotten into me. You seem to bring out the blabbermouth in me.”

  “Sometimes it’s healthier to talk about things, than to not.” He smiled. “You can blabber on to me anytime you want.”

  And I probably would, if you were sticking around, she thought.

  “Now, here, all this time, I’d been led to believe that you were the strong, silent one. The loner. The recluse.” She snorted. “I swear I never met a man who asked as many questions or who talked about as much stuff as you do.”

  “How else do you get to know someone?” Grady shrugged. “Besides, I like to talk to you. You’re not like most of the women I’ve known.”

  “Yeah, well, back atcha there, pal.”

  He laughed, and she found herself laughing, too.

  She tugged on his hand.

  “Come on in and get some cookies to take with you for your hike. I must have miscounted my batches, because I had some left over.”

  “There were cookies here last night and you didn’t bother to mention it?”

  “You were busy checking for intruders,” she reminded him as she unlocked the door.

  His hand was on the small of her back while they walked toward the kitchen.

  “Coffee or milk?” she asked.

  “With cookies? Not even close.”

  She opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk.

  “Glasses are in the-” She stopped short, her attention drawn to a box wrapped in white paper and tied with red ribbon that sat in the middle of th
e kitchen table. “Did you put that there?”

  His eyes followed her gaze to the table. “No. Maybe Hal dropped it off. Does he have a key?”

  She nodded. “He does. Maybe it’s from Beck and Mia. You know, like a thank-you for being their unofficial wedding planner.”

  She put her purse on the counter and unwrapped the present. When she opened the box and looked inside, she stood for a moment, staring at the contents.

  “What is it?” Grady asked.

  She reached into the box and held up crudely torn strips of white eyelet.

  “It used to be a dress,” she told him. She dropped it back into the box. She looked up at Grady. “I think I know who broke into my shop. There was a woman in Bling the other day who came in and tried on this dress. She wasn’t sure if she wanted it or not, so I put it in the back to hold it in case she came back.”

  “Get Hal on the phone,” Grady told her. “Tell him what you just told me.”

  She did, and Hal arrived within minutes of her call.

  She wasn’t as happy to see Maggie as she was to see Hal.

  “Are you riding shotgun in the cruiser these days?” she asked her mother, who trailed into the house with Hal.

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” Maggie replied. “I have the right to worry about my daughter.”

  “Don’t start with me.” Vanessa had led them into the kitchen.

  Hal went straight to the box. “Ness, I’m assuming you opened this. Grady, did you touch it?”

  “No. I doubt you’ll find any prints on there except Vanessa’s,” Grady told him.

  “This was here when you came back from your walk?” Hal asked.

  Vanessa nodded. “We came in through the front door-”

  “Which I’m assuming was locked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any idea how someone could have gotten in?” Hal asked her.

  “Back door,” Grady said. “The lock was picked. Expertly done, I might add.”

  Grady walked through the small back entry and pointed to the door. “An amateur would have taken out the lower glass pane and turned the latch. The door was unlocked as you see it when we came in, but it wasn’t obvious until we started looking after Ness found the box.”