No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7

by Barton, Sara M.

  “I’ve never been in this position before,” I confessed. “I don’t know where to start, or even how.”

  “I know how that feels. When my Bernie died, I felt like the floor disappeared from under me. My son was there for me, and so were my friends, but that didn’t mean I felt confident about what would happen next. It took effort, Lucie, to get myself moving forward again. Some days, I just didn’t feel like it, but I did it anyway.”

  “Bob said I’ll have help setting up a business I can run, but I have to figure out what that will be.”

  “What would you be doing if you never met Henri, if you never had these experiences?” Mary’s eyes were kind as I looked into them. I thought back to that summer just before I met my husband.

  “I wanted to be an art restorer, but I don’t have the training,” I admitted. “When I thought Henri was dead, I wanted to paint again. I can see myself as an artist.”

  “What about opening a gallery? You can display your own work and that of local artists and craftspeople. I can set up your bookkeeping, and I’m certainly able to manage the shop. What do you like to paint?”

  “Landscapes. Portraits.”

  “Why don’t you wait until we get there? Walk around in your new shoes for a bit. Get a feel for the place. Don’t rush yourself. See if the place inspires you. Remember, this is your new life, and you have to feel like it fits you.”

  “Have you ever been there?” I wondered. She shook her head.

  “No, never. But I am looking forward to this adventure. Do you know why?”

  “No.”

  “Because I am going to enjoy watching you blossom, Lucie. I see good things on the horizon and I am glad that I get to be there for you. I’m delighted that, at my age, I have something to give, to contribute. You will take this opportunity and blossom. You will become Lucie Fairweather, artist and business owner. You will find a place in this new community and new love.”

  I smiled, happy that Mary was full of hope for this new start, not only for me, but also for herself. In some ways, it seemed that she, too, would find healing by pointing herself in a new direction. But a part of me was also sad to say goodbye to Bob. I had felt a connection to him stirring, and I was sorry to see it end. Before we said our final farewells, I asked if I would ever see him again.

  “You never know. Life is funny. It could happen,” he replied, before giving me a peck on the cheek. There was no commitment in his answer, and I felt cast adrift, cut loose from his protection. Mary had watched our goodbye, and once we were rolling down the gangplank, she broached the subject.

  “You know why Bob made you no promises, Lucie?” I had a lump in my throat and it was hard to respond.

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “He doesn’t want to hold you back from embracing your new life. He wants you to make it your own. If you feel tied to him, you may miss your calling. Don’t forget, you are still healing from your relationships with Henri and Declan. It takes time to find your inner strength, my dear, and you can’t find it if your heart is entangled with wishful dreams. When the heart is ready, you’ll find real love — not a moment sooner. But first you have to find your new life, and it can’t be just a dream. It has to be real for you in a way your marriage to Henri wasn’t.”

  “Oh.” I knew it all made sense. I just wished I could have gotten to know Bob better as a man. There was something about the look in his eyes that drew me to him. Would I ever see that look in another man?

  Two days later, Mary and I flew to South Carolina, picked up a rental car, and drove to Beaufort. We checked into the Holiday Inn, unloaded our suitcases, and headed back out for a tour of Habersham. Driving up and down the tree-lined streets, I could feel an excitement rising in me. Even before we met Doralee Fraken, the real estate agent, in front of the loft condo, I felt like I belonged here. The town was full of down home charm. Everywhere we went, there were neighbors chatting and children playing. Most of all, it felt safe, far removed from the reach of Henri, Declan, Grenois Financial, and especially the cartel. As I stood on Market Street, eyeing the architectural details of the buildings, I could imagine people coming to the gallery in search of treasures.

  Doralee, cheerful and efficient, opened the door to the first floor retail space. She led us into the front room.

  “Oh, Lucie,” Mary cooed. “This would make a perfect gallery area. And there’s plenty of space for a work table back here. We wouldn’t even need much in the way of furniture.”

  Doralee led us to the back door, where we saw a covered patio in the back, with room for a table and chairs, as well as a half bath, before we headed up the stairs to see the living space.

  “As you can see, you have the convenience of the retail space downstairs, and you also have a lot of living space upstairs.

  “Oh, this is nice,” I said, as we found ourselves in the great room. I opened the door to the covered porch overlooking the main street. I could imagine myself sitting here with a glass of iced tea, reading, or even enjoying the ever-passing parade of people on Market Street.

  “I love the kitchen,” Mary announced. I agreed. I could see myself cooking here, spreading my ingredients out on the kitchen island. “And I love the balcony overlooking the backyard. You could get a dog, Lucie.”

  “A dog?” When I was growing up, there was a constant parade of animals in my life. In all the years I had been married to Henri, we had never had a pet. We spent too much time traveling, and I could never be sure when he would announce that we were off again on another trip. But now, here in Habersham, I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “That’s an idea. And maybe a cat, too.”

  “Let’s head upstairs and see the bedrooms,” Doralee suggested. At the top of the stairs, we found two identical bedrooms, each with their own baths.

  “This will do nicely,” I decided, already picturing what I would do with my room.

  “Does this mean you want to make an offer?” Doralee was hopeful.

  Chapter Nine —

  “I think I do. What do you think, Mom?” It was easy to call Mary that, because she was so invested in helping me find myself. She offered wise counsel and gentle concern, and I felt comfortable discussing things with her. She made a great foster mom for a woman on the run, a good substitute for the mother I was forced to leave behind when I married Henri all those years ago. I wondered how long it would be before I could see my real family again.

  “I think you have to do what makes you happy. Is this it?” she wanted to know. Mary gave me a tug on the back of my shirt and a wink. “Remember, this is your new life. Don’t just say yes, Lucie, unless you really love the place.”

  “It is the place for me,” I decided. “And I really do love it. It feels like home.”

  “That’s the important thing, dear. It can’t just be window dressing.”

  When it came to paying for my new life, I was lucky. The Treasury Department had covertly reclaimed my money, with the same techniques Grenois Financial used in their money-laundering operation. At first, Henri tried to trace the disappeared funds from his hideaway in Senegal, but when Declan got a phone call warning him that the cartel suspected Henri was still alive, he passed the information on and they all backed off. They were led to believe that the cartel had set an elaborate trap to catch Henri, using another cartel money-launderer, so they let go of a little more than a million dollars. The Treasury agent handling my finances assured me that the money came from legitimate investments. The insurance company received the bulk of their two million dollars when Declan arranged wire transfers to Henri and Treasury agents rerouted it as part of the game plan to convince the men that the cartel was after them.

  We were able to close on the loft place five days later because the unit was empty and I didn’t need a mortgage. I had a cashier’s check, which I deposited in the local bank, telling the solicitous manager that I had sold my home after my husband passed away. He offered me a loan at competitive market rates if I decided to expand
my business in the future.

  Mary and I spent several weeks shopping for furniture and seeking out potential gallery clients, working from our hotel room. We took a trip up to the North Carolina furniture mecca, High Point, and picked out enough pieces to form the bare bones of my new home.

  “There’s no need to rush, Lucie. We can always come back for more. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Buy only what you love. It will motivate you to find the pieces that belong,” Mary told me as I hesitated over an end table one afternoon.

  It seemed odd to leave my other life behind and begin with a fresh canvas. Since I could bring nothing with me to South Carolina from my past, I decide to forgo the formal style of the home I had shared with Henri and, to a lesser extent, the New Rochelle condo. No more elaborate finishes or embellishments. I wanted my new place to feel like the new me. I chose a comfy sofa in a soft upholstery-grade peach velvet, and paired it with a pair of side chairs in cheerful prints.

  “Lovely,” Mary decided after the furniture delivery men had left. “This feels homey.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” I found a little dining table and chairs for the back balcony at a yard sale, and a pair of wooden rockers for the covered front porch at a second-hand shop, which I painted in a light green.

  “You know, I do a little sewing, dear. I could whip up some window treatments,” Mary announced one morning. We headed out after lunch to peruse the fabric outlets. I felt like a kid in the candy store as we went through bolt after bolt of fabric. The vast array of colors, patterns, and prints awakened my senses.

  “What about this for your bedroom,” Mary suggested, holding up a casual foliage print in Low Country style. We found a few more fabrics that would work with it. “I can make a duvet cover and bed skirt.”

  We left with more than enough fabric to cover every window in the condo and make some decorative pillows for the sofa. There was even enough fabric for shades in the retail shop. Mary prompted me every step of the way through the decorating process.

  “Do you want to leave the walls white?” she wanted to know once the living room drapes were hung. “Those shelves would really stand out if the walls had a little color on them.

  Little by little, my new home came together. I picked up paint chips and taped them to the walls, watching the light change throughout the day as the sun moved through. When I felt comfortable, I walked down to the hardware store and picked up a quart or two of paint.

  As Mary and I searched for accessories for our living space, we also began to find unique pieces that we could also offer in our retail shop. Our furniture hunt took us up and down the southern coast of the Atlantic throughout the summer months, and we often found ourselves at art shows, community yard sales, and open-air flea markets. Mary began to concentrate on building an inventory of unique, one-of-a-kind pieces of Low Country furniture for the still-unfinished retail store. I always brought my camera with me, in case I stumbled on a nice local scene to paint. We stopped for picnics while on the road, giving me ample opportunity to photograph the Spanish moss hanging from the gracious old oak trees. Sometimes we took the long way home, exploring our new world as we wandered from town to town. At night, we would watch television together in the living room, where I set up my easel and canvas. Mary often worked on her crossword puzzles as I painted. In less than two months, I had three large canvases painted of local scenes and two smaller ones.

  “You know, dear, it might be nice to sell copies of your paintings as prints in different sizes. We could even develop an online store,” Mary suggested. “What are you going to call your gallery?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I have to think about that. But I like the idea of doing prints.”

  That inspired me to continue working on local scenes. On nice days, I headed out with my paint box, easel, and a folding chair. The locals often stopped to chat when they saw me at work. Sometimes people would suggest places I should visit, or they would share local information on the best time of the day and vantage point to watch the fishing boats come in.

  The summer and fall months were active in Habersham. There were concerts in the center of town, so we had our own special viewing stand from the front porch. We began to entertain, inviting new friends in for dinners, and they reciprocated in kind. Mary seemed to be in her element. She loved puttering in the kitchen. She even found there were a number of retirees who enjoyed bird-watching and swimming at the community pool. Soon she was taking off for trips with fellow seniors, having a ball. Every day, she took a long walk through the center of town, keeping herself in good shape.

  I danced around the dating situation for the first few months, meeting a nice divorced lawyer for morning coffee and the occasional lunch, not yet ready for a full-fledged date. Randolph Gentry had a power boat, so we graduated to picnics and water excursions. Despite the fact that he was an interesting companion and a kind, gentle man, there wasn’t much chemistry between us. Maybe it was that my heart wasn’t quite ready to decide. He was patient and never rushed me into a commitment. Instead, he allowed me to slip into my new skin, believing as he did that I was still a grieving widow.

  We officially opened “La Vie en Rose” in September, with a celebration that spilled out onto the sidewalk. With a focus on southern artists and scenes, the shop offered original artwork and reprints. By then we had found an Atlanta printer who took master digital photos of the original artwork. This allowed us to offer it in several formats and sizes, including some museum-quality Giclée prints and some limited edition, signed lithographs. Over the first months, business was slow, but our Internet business began to grow rapidly, as we filled online orders for the waterscapes, still lifes, and Low Country scenes.

  “If this keeps going in the same direction, we’re going to have to hire help,” Mary decided one morning, as she worked on the books. “We’re definitely making progress.”

  I began to enjoy being a shop proprietor who gave artists a chance to display and sell their work. Every month, we featured two artists, giving them prominent space to display their original artwork in the front of the shop and on our website. Artists and craftspeople began to seek us out, hoping to be accepted into the shop’s roster. I loved the fact that tourists often stopped in to purchase a souvenir of their visit. The best part of our retail operation was that Mary was the public face in the store, and she reveled in it. There was nothing she enjoyed more than talking with the people who popped into the shop. I began to see her come out of her own shell over time, and I wondered if she realized that she was building her own roots in the community. I hoped it meant that she would want to stay once I was able to stand on my own two feet.

  “We’ll know better once we see where we are, financially, after twelve months. The shop has to be in the black, or we’ll have to rethink this whole thing,” she told me. “After all, you need to be able to support yourself, my dear.”

  About every three or four months, Mary took a week or so to go visit her son. She never gave me any details about his job, saying only that he worked for the government. She hinted that she wanted him to settle down and get married again, but admitted that she wasn’t crazy about his first or second wife.

  “He’s a good man, but a lousy judge of women’s characters,” she told me. “We have a deal now. He’s not to pop the question until I’ve thoroughly vetted the candidate. When it comes to romance, he’s not thinking with his head. I can’t tell you the number of sticky situations I’ve had to dig him out of when it comes to the fairer sex.”

  In January, a friend of mine needed to find a home for a stray cat she found cowering behind her office. Mr. Whiskers was not particularly happy with the vet exam and the neutering, but he soon adapted to long naps curled up on the velvet sofa in our living room and the occasional foray onto the porch and balcony. After a while, he began to go downstairs to the shop, to plop himself in a chair by the front door. Mary would often scratch him behind the ears while she sat at the counter, so he was quite cont
ent being with us.

  I found Joy by accident. The tiny little puppy was in a pen with her mother in a small gallery down in Savannah, when I stopped to check on Terline Renaud’s fishing scenes. The instant I saw her, I was in love with those brown eyes. She nuzzled my hand as I picked her up and then tucked her tiny head under my chin. There was no way I could leave her behind.

  “Tell you what,” said Garrett Dupuis, the gallery owner. “Buy Terline’s canvases for cash and I’ll throw in the puppy.”

  “All of them?” I wondered. “There are twelve.”

  “Right,” Garrett grinned.

  “But I also want to talk to him,” I insisted, “about a deal.”

  “He’s a starving artist. He needs the money. You want the puppy, buy the art.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t just want the original artwork. I want to do reprints. And I want Terline to get his fair share.”

  “Lady, if that’s your business, let me show you something,” he drawled. In the backroom of his shop, he had at least a hundred framed pieces of original artwork, some dating back decades. Some were mediocre, some were decent, and at least twenty were minor masterpieces.

  “How would you like to work with me on finding talent worthy of the reprint business? I want to find the best in Low Country art.” He was interested, so I gave Garrett my card and a check for Terline’s original artwork, and he gave me Joy in return.

  It was a partnership that grew over the next few months, as we bickered over what artists to promote. Garrett was very opinionated and strong-willed, but he had a good eye for what people enjoyed, and with few exceptions, he picked some popular art to feature.

  On my way home from that first visit, I stopped and bought the necessary doggie paraphernalia for little Joy. She slept comfortably in her little case on the seat beside me as I drove back to Habersham. Mary was in the kitchen when we arrived. As I reached the top step, I set the puppy down and she immediately scampered across the floor.