By Familiar Means

by Delia James

  “Well, I thought he was crazy, but once Charlie got an idea stuck in his head, there was no getting it out. He went out the next morning and came back with two of the most battered bikes you have ever seen. But he borrowed some tools from somewhere and got them fixed up, and we loaded what we had into the baskets and off we went! My!” She shook her head, her eyes distant with memory and emotion. “There we were, a couple of sunburned strangers, bumping along over these narrow dirt roads; we must have been an incredible sight. Word went ahead, and we’d come to these little villages, just clusters of houses, and people started to come out and wave at the Cycling Americans! Little children ran beside us and laughed and cheered and people started just giving us food and water. It was the most wonderful thing. And then the rain! Oh, my word! You’ve never seen anything like it. The only way not to be damp for a week was to strip everything off and stash it in the rucksacks until the storm passed, and then—”

  “Grandma?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “You can stop now.” Because no one wants to picture their grandmother and grandfather sitting in the altogether in a tropical rainstorm.

  She beamed at me. “The point, dear, is I have been in far less comfortable circumstances than this and survived.”

  “I know, Gran, I know. I just . . .” I swirled my coffee and watched the waves rise and fall. “I thought it would all look better in the morning. But here it is morning, and it all still looks like too much.”

  “Eat some breakfast, Anna. You’ll sort the rest of it out. You always do.”

  It was pure Grandma-style reassurance, and I couldn’t help smiling at it. We sat in silence, nibbling toast and drinking coffee and following our own thoughts in comfortable silence. Unfortunately, my thoughts refused to stay in the strictly comfortable places.

  “Grandma?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Why’d you really know who Dale Hilde was? I can’t believe he looked that much like your old high school gal pal.”

  Grandma blushed. I waited. Alistair apparently decided the garden was free of outside menaces and birds, and that rabbit that would not take the hint and leave the parsley alone. He jumped back up on the table and sat bolt upright with his tail curled around his feet. This time I did not tell him to get down.

  “Oh, dear.” Grandma sighed. “Old habits do die hard, don’t they? Well. I think I told you, back when you first called to tell me you’d . . . discovered about the family and the true craft, that when we Blessingsounds practice magic, we tend to become seers.”

  Seers are, literally, witches who have a magical talent for seeing things beyond the everyday. There are a lot of variations on this. I could see via my Vibe, of course, but I also apparently had a facility for a form of clairvoyance called automatic writing. Grandma had her own specialties.

  “You told me you read palms,” I reminded her.

  “Yes. Well, as you know by now, the true craft is seldom anything like the popular imagination. ‘Reading’ palms”—she paused and made the air quotes—“has very little to do with interpreting the lines on the hand, although it can, of course, but that’s a very imprecise, and a rather showy—”

  “Grandma?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “What did you do yesterday to Dale Hilde?” And to Miranda, and, just maybe, to me.

  “I didn’t do anything to him, dear. I just did something . . . near him.”

  “Grandma . . .”

  She sighed. “Really, Anna. I’m trying to explain. My talent is very close to yours, only instead of gaining impressions from places, I get mine from people. It takes time and concentration to do anything properly, of course, and I only had an instant, but I did pick up some little scraps of intuition. Of course, I did know Gretchen Hilde back in the day. So, when I saw a man with a hotel jacket and heard that detective call him Mr. Hilde, and remembered hearing that Gretchen had children.” She paused. “She also had a lot of trouble with their father, I understand . . .”

  “Grandma,” I said firmly. She blinked. So did Alistair. It was kind of spooky.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I’m rambling. Anyway. Since I knew all that, I sort of had a running jump. I was able to pick up on a few very brief impressions. Dale was very worried about what his mother was going to say about this whole mess. Also, his brother. His sister was not going to be too pleased either.” Grandma paused. “Anna?”

  “Yeah, Grandma?”

  “Close your mouth, dear. You’ll catch flies.”

  I closed my mouth, but not for very long.

  “That’s what you did to Miranda, too, wasn’t it? You did a reading on her?”

  “I probably shouldn’t have, but she was so very upset that I wanted to find out if I might be able to help.” She gave me a meaningful look. “The need to help is a very powerful instinct, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess it is.” I swirled my coffee again. Before I could ask my next question, though, Alistair surged to his feet, all his attention pointed toward the side gate.

  “Merow!” he announced.

  A second later, the gate rattled.

  “Hello?” called a man’s voice. A heartbeat later, the top of his head and a pair of bright blue eyes peered over the gate. “Anna? You home?”

  It was Frank Hawthorne—editor, publisher and lead journalist for the Seacoast News.

  He also happened to be my landlord.

  11

  “To tell you the truth, I thought you’d be here earlier,” I told Frank as I opened the gate.

  “Needed to check in at the office first.” He held up a white paper bag. “I brought doughnuts.”

  Word of my inability and/or unwillingness to cook had quickly spread through my Portsmouth friends, and they had rallied to the cause. Alistair wasn’t the only one who was going to need a gym membership real soon.

  “Thank you.” I took the bag. “Come join the party.”

  “Party?” Frank said as he followed me around the corner of the cottage to the patio. He saw Grandma B.B. and pulled up short.

  “Frank, this is my grandmother Annabelle. Grandma B.B., this is Frank Hawthorne.”

  “Oh, of course, Dorothy’s nephew!” cried Grandma. “How wonderful to meet you at last!” She shook his hand with both of hers and I had to look away. I didn’t feel any telltale prickling, though.

  Alistair head butted my shins as if to remind me of my manners.

  “Would you like to sit down?” I said to Frank. “There’s coffee.”

  “Looks like I’m late with breakfast.”

  “Val was by yesterday.” In fact, I was a little surprised she hadn’t checked in over the fence this morning. It was still early for the leaf-peeping crowds, so the B and B wasn’t very full. Val and I usually shared a cup of something in the morning. I found myself wondering if she’d gone into labor overnight and thinking maybe I should check in.

  “Merow!” Alistair butted my shins again, reminding me that I had company and that Val would not appreciate it if it turned out I’d contracted Roger’s hovering. Probably he was out delivering pastries to a business breakfast and she had to keep an eye on the B and B for the morning.

  “I’ll go get the coffee,” said Grandma, and she headed into the kitchen.

  “I take it you heard what happened at the new space for Northeast Java yesterday?” I said to Frank as we started setting the cake doughnuts out on the plate next to the muffins. They were still warm.

  “’Fraid so. I really wanted to make sure you were all right, but, well . . .”

  I didn’t make him finish. “You’re a journalist. I figured you’d want the story.”

  “Sorry. But, I didn’t expect something for nothing. I thought you might want to know, they have positively identified the body you found.”

  “Jimmy Upton?” I said.

  Frank f
roze with a doughnut halfway to the plate. “I thought you told Pete you didn’t recognize the deceased.”

  “I didn’t. Sean McNally’s dad told him that Upton went missing from the hotel about a week ago.”

  “Oh, that’s right. I’d forgotten Old Sean was working at Harbor’s Rest.” Frank set the last doughnut down on the little stack and pulled out his notebook. Frank took notes the way I doodled, constantly and on any available surface.

  Grandma B.B. came back out with the coffeepot and an extra mug, and I started to give Frank the details while he drank coffee and made notes. I could tell by the shift in his gaze that he knew I was leaving some stuff out. But Frank was a witch’s nephew, and he’d seen my Vibe in action. I could trust him not to pry too far into those particular corners, at least not in his professional capacity.

  “Do they know how the poor man died yet?” asked Grandma as she refilled Frank’s cup. Frank is one of the world’s more impressive coffee drinkers. He takes his black and hot and can polish off a whole mug in less time than it takes your average person to stir in the cream.

  Frank shook his head. “If they do, they’re not telling me. No comments on an ongoing investigation.” He looked at me. “I don’t suppose you saw anything obvious?”

  “Don’t be a ghoul.”

  He shrugged. “Occupational hazard.” He also waited. I sighed.

  “I didn’t see much of anything. I mean, he was buried under a bunch of dirt and loose rock. I thought he must have gotten stuck in the tunnel when the roof caved in. Maybe he even loosened the beams when he was pounding on the door trying to call for help . . .” I shuddered. “Jake and Miranda said they’d been hearing banging noises.”

  “So awful,” murmured Grandma.

  “Yeah, it is,” agreed Frank. “Jake and Miranda are good people. This is going to be hard on them.”

  “Do you know anything about Jimmy Upton, Frank?” I split a fresh doughnut in half and pretended to myself that I really would eat only the half I kept.

  “Well, we did a write-up about him in the Seacoast News last year when we did our piece on the hotel’s hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary. He was barely out of culinary school yet and he was already generating a ton of buzz.”

  Alistair rubbed his face against the back of my hand. I started scratching his ears distractedly. “Did he have any family?”

  Frank shook his head. “There is a sister, somewhere, but I couldn’t find her. Jimmy kind of blew into town out of nowhere. When I did the interview, he gave us a story about how he’d been backpacking around Europe and working in any kitchen where they’d be willing to teach him. Which was great, and we printed it, but there wasn’t anything in it we could really verify. The few restaurants he actually named mostly seemed to be closed.”

  “Did he say why he decided to come to Portsmouth?” asked Grandma B.B. “For an ambitious young man, I would have thought Boston or New York would be a more obvious destination.”

  “I’d have to look it up to remember what he said exactly, but it was something about wanting to be in a place that wasn’t overcrowded, where he’d have room to perfect his craft.”

  “Sean’s dad said the guy had attitude.”

  “Yes, he did.” Frank reached for the pot and refilled his mug. “And a boatload of charm to go with it.”

  “Dangerous combination,” I said.

  “Especially if someone’s not afraid to use it,” murmured Grandma B.B.

  We all thought about that. Judging from their expressions, Grandma and Frank didn’t like their thoughts any more than I liked mine. I looked at the plate. The half doughnut I’d left there looked back at me. Okay, not really, but it felt like it.

  “Mm-mrp,” snickered my cat. I ignored him and the doughnut.

  “What I want to know is what’s on the other side of that other door,” I said. “If Jake and Miranda were hearing banging noises, somebody had to have heard them on the other end, too.”

  “I can’t say for sure yet, but from what I’ve picked up so far, Jake was probably right. That other door pretty much has to lead into the basement in the Harbor’s Rest,” said Frank.

  “That makes sense,” I said. “Jake said something about the tunnel probably being used by smugglers. I did some reading last night.” It hadn’t been all curling up in bed with the cat and trying to sleep. Some of it was curling up in bed with the cat and the laptop. “The building Jake and Miranda bought used to be a drugstore. During Prohibition, a lot of drugstores were fronts for selling alcohol.”

  “And since we’re a harbor town, there was a whole lot of bootlegged liquor washing up in Portsmouth during that time,” said Frank.

  “Well, if the hotel and the drugstore were both open, it would make sense that the tunnel was used to move booze between them. Maybe it came off the boats in the marina and went to the hotel, and from there to the drugstore?”

  “Or it could have flowed the other way,” said Grandma B.B. thoughtfully. “There used to be a much bigger series of docks on the river, right along where Ceres Street is.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” I said. “What matters is that Jimmy could have found the tunnel and gotten curious—and gotten stuck.” Which would make it all an accident. A horrible, tragic accident, but that would still be much, much better than the alternative. I picked up the half doughnut, broke it in two and put half back.

  “Anna, what is it? You’ve thought of something. It’s written all over your face.”

  I wiped at my face. I couldn’t help it. “Just remembering I didn’t pick up more cat food,” I mumbled as I popped the piece of doughnut in my mouth. Alistair raised his head immediately. “Sorry, big guy. Do you want a muffin, Frank? Roger made them.” I pushed the plate toward him.

  Frank probably had something to say, and not about the muffins. Fortunately for me, his phone buzzed in his jacket pocket. He looked apologetically at Grandma and pulled it out to answer.

  “What’cha got?” he asked whoever was on the other end. There was a pause. “Yeah, yeah, okay.”

  He hung up and got to his feet. “Sorry. I’ve got to go. Mrs. Britton . . .”

  “Grandma B.B,” she told him.

  “Okay, Grandma B.B. Nice to finally meet you. Anna, we can talk later?”

  I agreed we could. Grandma shook Frank’s hands, and he showed himself out the gate. After all, it was his house.

  “Now,” said Grandma firmly. “What is it you thought of that you so very clearly did not want that nice young man to know?”

  “That nice young man is my landlord and a journalist and already knows too much about . . . things.”

  “You’re not answering my question.”

  Alistair circled my ankles a few times. “Merow,” he informed me.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “It’s my Vibe, Grandma,” I said slowly.

  “What about it, dear?”

  Yes, I really was having this conversation. With my grandmother. How long was it going to take to get used to this? “Julia . . .” Grandma’s mouth tightened up immediately. I sighed. I also gave in and picked up the remaining piece of doughnut. “Anyway. It looks like when I get a Vibe from a building, what I’m doing is picking up the psychic echo of the strongest emotion trapped inside a place.”

  “That’s close enough to begin with,” Grandma admitted with frigid grace.

  Darn it. Julia and Grandma B.B.’s relationship was clearly going to be a much bigger problem than I’d hoped. “Well, the last time I . . . got near someplace where somebody died, what I picked up on was their last emotions.” That it had been in the cottage’s basement was not something I felt like reminding either of us about. I was swearing off basements for the foreseeable future. “Anger and sadness, and all the rest of it.”

  “Yes, that would make sense. A person’s last emotions would be very powerful.”

>   “But I didn’t feel anything like that in the tunnel,” I said. “I didn’t even know Jimmy Upton was there until I literally fell over him. All I had was this powerful impression of a secret, something that needed to be kept. There was nothing . . . nothing like a death.”

  “Which means Mr. Upton might have already been dead when someone put his body in that tunnel.”

  “When someone tried to bury his body in that tunnel,” I corrected her. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, Anna. That’s a dreadful idea.”

  I had to agree.

  12

  Grandma and I were still contemplating the possibility of Jimmy Upton’s being dead before someone stashed his body in the tunnel when the phone rang, but at a distance. This wasn’t my cell, for a change, but the landline back in the kitchen. I started to my feet, surprised for a second. Then I hurried in to answer it, with Grandma B.B. right behind me.

  This was not a surprise.

  Alistair snaked nervously around my ankles as I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Anna?” whispered the woman’s voice on the end.

  “Kenisha,” I whispered back. “What’s going on?”

  “Frank Hawthorne was hanging around the station asking questions last night—”

  “That’s his job.”

  “Yeah, thank you, I know that, and I haven’t got much time, so listen up, Anna. I’m assuming he told you it was Jimmy Upton you found in the tunnel?”

  “Yeah, he did. What—?”

  “Did he tell you Pete Simmons has started asking questions about you and Jake and Miranda?”

  “No. He didn’t get that far.” Something I was going to have to take up with Frank later. Grandma was hovering next to me. I smiled at her with as much reassurance as I could muster. I don’t think she believed me. I know Alistair didn’t.

  “Merow?” he told Grandma as he sat on my sneaker toes. “Merp.”

  “Yes, dear,” murmured Grandma. “She always does.”