Finders Keepers: Mill Brook Trilogy, Book 1

by Neggers, Carla

  Tuesday he’d headed to the sawmill, and they had met for lunch in town and gone over to the Danvers House together. He showed her where he’d found the goblets in the old dirt cellar. She admitted—reluctantly—that although there might have been a couple of stray golden retriever puppies out at the academy, in fact she hadn’t seen any. She’d used them to get herself out of a tight spot with him. He had agreed he had been trying to look intimidating, despite her apparent obliviousness to his efforts.

  She did not explain why she’d stolen the goblets, but he didn’t tell her he continued to doubt her tale about wanting to “borrow” them for props.

  He was waiting for her to try to swipe them again, in fact. The woman was relentless about anything and everything, including making love. And that was no complaint. She was a thoughtful, inventive lover, and he wouldn’t trade their week together for anything in the world.

  He hated to think that would be all they’d have together. A week. A glorious memory. He wanted more—a lifetime.

  But he’d begun to sense a certain restlessness in her spirit. After nearly two weeks in Mill Brook, she was ready to move on. Stir-crazy. She made phone calls, wrote, snooped around town and mailed piles of stuff virtually every day. She clearly was working. As she explained to him, she had taken a couple of months from her usually busy performance schedule to pull back and relax, dig into long-postponed projects. Aside from the hastily arranged Mill Brook fund-raiser, her next appearance wasn’t until April, in Atlanta.

  Still, she was ready to roll. Julian didn’t take it as a personal offense. Her restlessness was simply a part of who she was—and he’d vowed he would never demand she change or curb it. It would be like asking the wind to stop blowing.

  While he waited for his chicken potpie, he headed to the pay phone and dialed Felix Reichman’s number.

  “Felix—I’m not trying to rush you, but I’ve got some unexpected outside pressures on me about this goblet thing. You wouldn’t by any chance have anything new to report?”

  “Actually I’ve been in touch with a friend of mine at Harvard,” Felix said in his precise, unhurried manner. “She’s given me a rather interesting lead. I haven’t followed up on it yet, so it may be nothing. Apparently she knows of a letter Paul Revere wrote that reportedly mentions the goblets. As I said, it may prove unimportant, but I thought I’d travel to Boston and see for myself.”

  “Sounds good. Anything else?”

  “Nothing you don’t already know. Oh—have you heard Zachariah Wingate’s great-granddaughter is in Mill Brook?”

  Julian didn’t say a word. Great-granddaughter?

  “She’s a storyteller.”

  Indeed she was that. He said, noncommittally, “Is that right?”

  “She’s quite marvelous, I understand.”

  “You’re sure she’s Zachariah’s great-granddaughter, not just a distant relative?”

  “Oh, yes. I thought it might be advisable to try to discover what happened to Zachariah after he left Mill Brook. I realize that’s not directly related to the question of where the goblets came from and how they ended up buried in the Danvers House, but I thought perhaps I might discover a few pertinent details that could lead me backward in time, to the goblets. As it turns out, Zachariah ended up in Texas quite broke. He married and had one son, also named Zachariah, and settled in the Houston area. The younger Zachariah had a daughter, who died twenty-three years ago, but not before she’d married and had a daughter herself—”

  “Holly Wingate Paynter.”

  “Correct. She’s our Zachariah’s only living direct descendant.”

  Hence, her interest in the goblets. Julian felt his jaw clench. So much for honesty and trust.

  “Julian? Are you there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “As it happens, she’s performing tonight—”

  “I know, I’m going.”

  “Are you?” Felix sounded amazed.

  “Yeah, I get out once in a while. I just didn’t realize her connection to Zachariah. Look, Felix, go ahead to Boston and find out what you can about this letter. Keep track of your expenses and I’ll reimburse you for everything. And thanks.”

  “My pleasure,” Felix said.

  After he hung up, Julian stared at the phone, seeing only Holly’s milk-white skin and lying, glittering blue eyes as she blithely lied to him and his sister about being a “distant” relative of Zachariah Wingate. The lady never quit! Yet that determination was part of what attracted him to her... made him want to keep peeling back the layers of lies, deceptions, half-truths and defenses, until he came to the real Holly Paynter. He’d had a few peeks at her in the past week. But peeks, he was discovering, just weren’t enough.

  The waitress hollered at him when his dinner came up, and he slid onto a stool at the counter... where the food was hot, the coffeepot always full and the talk of ski conditions, town politics and one pretty strawberry-haired, storytelling Texan.

  The facts of that notorious night at the Danvers House in the spring of 1889 were simple enough. In her stories, Holly never contested known facts—only assumptions.

  Earlier in the afternoon on that chilly late March day, Zachariah Wingate, a sixteen-year-old scholarship student at the Mill Brook Preparatory Academy for Boys in Mill Brook, Vermont, was expelled for being a thief, although no legal charges were brought against him. That night he arrived alone at the Danvers House, amid an elegant dinner party, and requested a private audience with Edward Danvers, the headmaster of the school and a descendant of its founders, and Jonathan Stiles, chairman of the school’s board of directors and one of its chief benefactors. Unusual for such a prestigious school, both men were from the local community. So, of course, was Zachariah. Hat in hand, young Zachariah withdrew with the two older gentlemen to the front parlor. An hour later, the boy left and Edward and Jonathan rejoined their dinner guests, never mentioning what they’d discussed with the unfortunate young man.

  The next morning, the signed sterling-silver Paul Revere goblets Zachariah had tried to present to the academy in thanks for its support of his education— and was accused of stealing—were missing from the safe at the Danvers House. And Zachariah Wingate had disappeared.

  They were the facts of the case, corroborated by witnesses.

  Simple enough.

  Before her rapt audience of over a hundred Mill Brook townspeople, Holly recreated that night at the Danvers House, never deviating from known—accepted, proven—facts. She helped them envision the elegance of the dining room and the guests gathered there, in contrast to the rail-thin, hapless boy, cold from having walked down from his family’s struggling sawmill, a sixteen-year-old who, in trying to find a place among the elite student body of the Mill Brook Preparatory Academy, always seemed “damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.” He was likable enough. Generous. Wanted to do the right thing.

  He had believed the goblets had come to his family from Paul Revere. It was what his father had told him, what his father had said his father had told him. And on like that, back more than a hundred years to the American Revolution. Zachariah had no reason to doubt his father’s story, no reason to suspect he might be accused of having stolen the goblets himself, out of a misguided sense of pride.

  It could have happened that way. Or maybe he did steal the goblets in order to give them to the academy. Who knew?

  Holly never mentioned that Zachariah hadn’t left Mill Brook that night with the goblets. She didn’t have to. Everyone in the audience realized he couldn’t have. Otherwise, how’d they end up buried in the dirt cellar of the Danvers House for Julian Stiles to find a hundred years later? That question Holly didn’t touch.

  Privately she wondered which of the thieving two—Edward or Jonathan?—that night had realized Zachariah indeed was innocent and there’d be no owner clamoring for the return of the goblets. Which one had swiped them from the safe and buried them toward the day when the other—or Zachariah himself—wasn’t around to counter his v
ersion of that night? Events must have conspired against the guilty party, because the goblets remained buried until just a few weeks ago. But Holly didn’t speculate.

  What she did was tell a story, a human story of human fears and weakness—and pride and duty. Zachariah’s pride in and sense of duty to his family and himself. Edward’s and Jonathan’s pride in and sense of duty to the academy and their community. She told the story with anger, with humor, with confusion, with warmth. With believability.

  And she never once deviated from the cold, hard facts of the case.

  Wisely she slipped the Tale of the Silver Goblets between a funny, fantastic story about balloons and a short, spooky ghost story. Neither did anything to remove the skeptical look from the face of Julian Danvers Stiles, standing in the back of the Old Mill Brook Town Hall. Afterward she didn’t go out into the crowd as was her usual practice, but let people come to her.

  “You were wonderful!” said the first, a young woman with a preschooler on each hand. Holly thanked her warmly, and others followed.

  “Just a delightful performance, Ms. Paynter.”

  “Holly—that was fabulous.”

  “I laughed until my stomach hurt... and now I’ve got tears in my eyes. You managed to tug all my emotions.”

  “Oh, Holly, Mill Brook will never look on the Scandal of 1889 the same. Whatever really happened that night doesn’t even matter.”

  “Marvelous. I hope you’ll come to Mill Brook again soon.”

  What could be more rewarding than the acknowledgement of a job well done? She’d had her storyteller’s burn on tonight. She’d had to do some improvising, but all in all, she thought she came up with a fairly nonthreatening story that related to all of Mill Brook the Wingate version of what happened the night Zachariah Wingate and the Paul Revere sterling-silver goblets had disappeared. It might have happened that way; then again, it might not have. She’d made no apparent judgments. In fact, she’d gone out of her way to make Edward Danvers and Jonathan Stiles look less like the villains they were and more like the upright citizens trying to do the right thing that Mill Brook residents, then and now, wanted to believe they’d been. Grandpa Wingate would have scoffed at her generosity. Scoundrels, he’d have called them.

  “It’s good to know,” said one elderly gentleman, taking Holly’s hand, “the Wingates made out all right and haven’t held a grudge all these years.”

  There was soft, sarcastic laughter behind her, and she didn’t need to turn around to know it was Julian.

  “Thank you.” she said to the older man, “but my interest in Zachariah Wingate is purely professional. My middle name’s just a coincidence.”

  Satisfied, the elderly gentleman made his way back through the crowd.

  “You’re quite a storyteller,” Julian said, his eyes on hers, “but I knew that already.”

  She decided to take his compliment seriously. “Thank you. Julian—is something wrong?”

  “You’ve been lying to me all along, Holly.”

  “What?”

  “You lied to that old man. You’ve lied to all of us.”

  “Julian...”

  “I’d almost come to believe you and Zachariah were just distant relations.”

  She licked her lips and found that they were parched; her throat was tight. She couldn’t have said a word if she’d wanted to.

  “You’re Zachariah Wingate’s great-granddaughter.”

  Her natural bent toward self-preservation and her post-performance storyteller’s high spurred her to action. “Oh, so that’s what’s wrong. I was worried there for a minute. Julian, I was going to tell you tonight. I just wanted to wait until after my story. If I told you beforehand, I was afraid I’d lose some of the spark and energy that I need for a performance. It’s difficult to explain.”

  He didn’t look impressed. “You’re a pro, Holly.”

  She wasn’t entirely sure what he meant. A pro at lying? A pro at storytelling? A pro who should have been able to tell a lover the truth and still be able to do her work? She bit one corner of her mouth. “It wasn’t exactly a lie, Julian. I was... saving the truth.”

  “You’re going to start tripping.” he said, “over all those truths you’ve saved.”

  The arrival of his niece and nephew, boasting to a tagalong friend that they knew Holly, spared her from having to come up with a retort. She gave the kids her full attention, feeling Julian’s eyes boring into her back. One of the perks of being a storyteller was she could dress to her own satisfaction, which usually translated into comfortable, easy clothes that didn’t draw attention to her appearance, and away from her stories. Tonight, because after all, she was the first Wingate in Mill Brook, Vermont, in a hundred years, she’d opted for a slightly dressier outfit of flowing black skirt, emerald-green charmeuse blouse and great big fake gold earrings. It was too late to change by the time she realized the green of her blouse matched exactly the green of Julian Stiles’ eyes. But she felt sure she’d be the only one who’d notice.

  Abby and David told her they’d loved her balloon story, and the third kid said he didn’t get that stuff about the silver goblets—what were goblets, anyway? Holly laughed, and she encouraged them to think about their own stories, of growing up in southern Vermont, of ice skating in the sawmill parking lot and throwing stones in the mill pond.

  Dorothy Windham—Aunt Doe or just plain Doe to most of the town—extricated herself from a group of well-wishers. “Julian, take these children over to the house, will you? And Holly, you can ride with them.

  Beth’s already there. Tell her I’ll be along in a minute. I forgot to invite Dr. Ben, and he can be such a stinker—”

  “Invite him to what?” Holly asked.

  “The party!” David shrieked. Then he winced, looking mortified. “Oops—sorry.”

  Aunt Doe laughed. “No matter. Holly, we’re just so excited to have you. We planned a small reception for after your performance back at the house.”

  Holly laughed, truly surprised and more pleased than she wanted to admit. “How lovely.”

  Julian leaned close and said quietly, “Just consider it a truth we were saving.”

  Holly took the curve on Julian’s narrow, impossible and totally outrageous driveway very slowly. It was darker than the pits of hell out there and as cold as she wanted January in Vermont to get. She didn’t relish the prospect of going out of control and pulling a one-eighty. After the reception at the Windham House, she was tired and nervous enough without any extra stimulation.

  Push had come to shove with her and one Julian Danvers Stiles.

  He had been very decent at his aunt’s house. Amusing. Kind. Easygoing with his friends and relatives. Complimentary to her. The picture of the well-bred Yankee gentleman. Handsome and courteous. But restrained. Remote. Distant. It wasn’t anything overt, just the cumulation of an evening of small signs. Not once did he goad or tease her, or even doubt anything she said. He had been unfailingly polite.

  She could tell he was upset about her being Zachariah Wingates great-granddaughter and not having told him.

  Only once, in a conversation with the executive director of the regional public radio station, had she caught Julian without that tight rein he had on his real emotions. The director was tempting her with notions of putting together her own thirty-minute program, which they could air locally and then syndicate to other public radio stations nationally, when she’d spotted Julian watching her. There was heat in his gaze, and unexpected tenderness. Catching his eyes, she’d smiled; he’d smiled back. But the heat and the tenderness had vanished, and she’d turned away in confusion. She didn’t even know how she felt anymore. How could she expect to know how he felt?

  Adam Stiles had arrived late, apologized to Holly for having missed her performance, but listened indulgently as Abby and David gave him an elaborate rendition of all the highlights. Then he whisked them off to make their good-nights, and while their great-aunt Doe loaded up goody bags for them, Adam had a few
words with his younger brother. Holly wished she’d been in a position to listen in. She was a remorseless eavesdropper—a snatch of conversation here, a tidbit there and she could come away with fresh insights into people and even the launch of a story idea. But Adam and Julian spoke very briefly, and at a guess, sharply, after which they both left. It was Julian’s first rude move of the evening: he said only a curt goodbye to his aunt.

  “Those two,” their sister muttered when they’d gone.

  Holly feigned passing curiosity; it bothered her how deep and tenacious her interest in the Stiles family was. “I’ve never really seen them fight—they get along, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, they get along great. I think maybe they understand each other too well—or think they do. Each thinks he knows what’s best for the other, and neither minds saying what that might be at any given moment. Sometimes,” Beth went on, popping a spinach-cheese triangle into her mouth, “They ought to learn when just to butt out.”

  “Well, it’s none of my business...”

  “Are you kidding? It’s every bit your business.” She grinned, playing the role of the big-mouthed, unrepentant little sister. “They’d both dump me in the river if they thought I told you. Adam thinks you’re under Julian’s skin, but Julian’s too stubborn, or maybe too afraid, to make any kind of real commitment to you because you’re a nomad and he’s practically a hermit—and Melissa, Adam’s wife, hated Mill Brook but tried to stick it out and was miserable, which is why, both my idiotic brothers believe, she got killed. Not true. The reason she got killed is that she was going too fast on an icy road and hit a tree. But try and tell them that. Adam’s avoiding all women and Julian’s avoiding any woman that might want to step foot outside Mill Brook once in a while, not that he doesn’t. He’s just being weird. Anyway, far be it from me to breathe a word of any of this.”