“Good heavens, Bezel! You’d have liked to have given me a heart attack, wouldn’t you? No, don’t come closer. You know that I can’t . . .”
The slim, petite woman looked up and saw me standing at the foot of the stairs. She reached up and patted her perfectly coiffed hair.
“Oh my,” she said. “Are you Ruth? I’m Caroline Adler. I didn’t realize you were here already. Pat did say he’d gotten a call from Kristen, but I hadn’t heard from you.”
“I didn’t know about any of this until yesterday morning.” I walked forward, wishing I’d had time to get dressed and brush my teeth. The light wasn’t great, but from what I could see, Caroline Adler was very put together. Black trousers and a black turtleneck with a houndstooth jacket on top. I leaned forward to see her shoes, which were actually black clogs.
“Did you get my messages?” she asked. Her voice was getting raspy, and I could hear her labored breathing.
“I haven’t really listened to my voice mail,” I admitted. I’d actually skipped her messages, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Well, you’re here now. That’s what matters. Don’t come any closer. No, not you, Ruth. Bezel. I’m terribly allergic to her, and didn’t take my medications.” She took an inhaler out of her purse and had a deep, long pull on it. “I’m so sorry. I just can’t. I’ll call you later—would that be all right? There’s a HEPA filter that we can turn on. Oh my, I really need to leave. We’ll talk soon.”
I moved toward her, but she was out the door in a flash. I peered behind the window shade, but she was already crossing the street and she didn’t look back. Then I saw Pat Reed round the corner with a tray of coffees. I looked down and raced back upstairs to get changed into something more presentable.
chapter 8
“Hello, Pat. I’ll be right down,” I called out as I heard him open the front door. I pulled on my leggings and added a pair of hand-knit socks, jamming my feet into my boots. I threw on a tunic, added a belt, and pulled my hair back with a large barrette. That was as good as it could get in five minutes. I stopped by the bathroom and quickly brushed my teeth.
I walked down the stairs, instinctively ducking so my head would clear the doorway.
“Ah well, there she is now,” he said softly. I walked down the stairs slowly, feeling shy all of a sudden. He brushed his tears aside and opened his arms wide. “There she is indeed. And a beauty she is too.”
I ran the final three steps, throwing myself into his arms. His red buffalo plaid shirt felt scratchy and wonderful against my cheek, and I inhaled his aftershave. I held on for a while, but let go first.
“Pat, it is so great to see you.”
And it was. I had known Pat my whole life. He and his wife, Nancy, were the parents I always wished I had. Loving, doting parents to Moira and Ryan. And present. Very present. I couldn’t even imagine what that was like, though Grandma Mae tried her best. Even when I was a little girl, I had developed a tough shell—a loner with no expectations of anyone else but myself.
“It is good to see you, Ruthie. It has been too long.”
“Too long. And too late,” I said. I looked over my shoulder toward the back of the shop.
“Don’t do that. He wouldn’t want you to do that. There’s no point. What’s done is done.”
“It’s what you do now that counts,” we said at the same time, reciting one of my grandmother’s favorite expressions. Easy to say, difficult to live. Funny, I’d thought a lot about that expression last week on the retreat. Even thought about making a sampler of it.
“What do you think of the place?” Pat asked.
“It feels smaller than I remember. And I don’t ever remember seeing so much inventory,” I said.
“It’s a lot and we still haven’t started organizing it. We were almost done with inventory when it happened. When Thom passed. We got slowed down when Caroline’s son had an emergency appendectomy and she had to go up and take care of him. She was up there when it happened; came right down as soon as she heard.”
“Does she have other children?”
“No, just the one son. Levi. Good kid.”
I had nothing to say, nothing to add. I barely knew her name. I knew only that she was a few years younger than my grandfather and had married him less than a year after my grandmother died. For the past five years, that had been enough.
“I think she was coming by this morning to drop off some files,” Pat said.
“We met. Sort of. She had to run out. She says she’s allergic to Bezel.”
“I should have turned on the air last night to help clear the space. Let me do it now. See this box? Just flip this switch right here. Usually that helps, plus we keep Bezel upstairs when she’s here.”
“Why do you have a shop cat if she is so allergic?”
“She hates mice.”
I shuddered. We had that in common.
“Well, at least she wasn’t allergic to me.”
“It’s really none of my business, so I am only going to say this once: she’s good people. After Mae passed, I never thought I’d see Thom get right. He was in a bad place when you went back to school. But meeting Caroline, it was like a light went on. Not the same light as he had with your grandma, but a light all the same. And she was good for the business. Got Thom to join the chamber. You know how hard your grandma tried to do that.”
“Okay,” I said. Pat tried staring me down, forcing me to say more, but he had no idea who he was dealing with. I could stare down the best of them. “So tell me more about the clocks.”
Pat shrugged and looked around the shop. “They bought out two estates last spring. The Stockbridge lot had three grandfathers and a few more pieces. The plan was to spend the fall working on those and get them sold. Very doable. But then the Winter estate came up. Do you remember the Winters? Their kids were a little older than you, but you knew the Chairman.”
Everyone in Orchard knew Grover Winter. He’d been chairman of the Board of Selectmen for years, as close to a mayor as Orchard ever had. Like most towns in the Berkshires, Orchard citizens ran the town, with a Board of Selectmen voted in to administer it. Grover Winter had family money and was a successful lawyer. But his service to the town of Orchard always came first. He’d served in the State House for a few years, first as a representative, then as a senator. He’d come back to Orchard after he’d served two terms, even though he easily could have been elected for a third. Orchard was home, he always said.
“You know what good friends Thom and the Chairman were, don’t you? They’d gotten really close these past few years. Anyway, he’d come into the shop a few times to buy a clock or bring one in, so I knew him. And, of course, we’d all gone out to the estate for the Fourth of July picnic.”
“I remember those picnics. Out in their orchards, right?”
“Right. But I’d never been through the entire house before I went with Caroline and Thom last month. The Winters were clock collectors. I’ve never seen so many anniversary clocks in my life. A half-dozen grandfathers. Two dozen Viennas. I lost count of the mantel clocks. And some stunning shelf clocks. Collections of miniatures, intact. At least a dozen cuckoo clocks.”
“Wow. I do remember that they had clocks, but I had no idea they were serious collectors.”
“They were passionate collectors. Some clocks were very valuable, but some were collected for the joy of them. It took us a week to do the inventory and for Thom to come up with an offer.”
“It must have been a huge offer,” I said.
“It took all the cash Thom and Caroline had,” Pat said. He paused for a second and regrouped. “They’d talked about going for a second mortgage on the house or the store if they needed to. Jonah Winter, the son, just wanted to get it done. Maybe he could have gotten more, but he trusted your grandfather to give him a good deal.”
“Are all the cloc
ks here?” I asked.
“Yes. At least I think so.” Pat looked away from me and around the Cog & Sprocket. “We were planning on moving some out to the shop at the cottage for storage after we were done with inventory.”
“Shop at the cottage? You mean the one in the barn? Is that good for storage?”
“It is now. They redid it last winter. Airtight, climate controlled. Plan was that Thom could work from there more often.”
“Why? For more space?”
“More space. And he’d been making noises about retiring. We’re none of us getting any younger. But we both know he’d never stop working. Anyway, we’ve been doing an inventory to assess what exactly we have. I’m happy to say that the Chairman and his wife kept great records, and several of the clocks were sold or repaired here, so they were already in the system.”
“In the system?”
“Caroline’s son, Levi, spent one summer working with the clock cards. You remember them, don’t you?” Pat gestured toward the old library card catalogs along the wall.
Remember them? I had dreams about them, and not all of them pleasant. The clock cards were G.T.’s filing system on the clocks he’d worked on. He’d inherited the system from his father. Each clock was coded with a series of numbers and letters that made its identity unique. Usually the clockmaker, type of clock, and year we worked on it, with some more specificity added. The numbers were put on index cards, and everything about the clock was recorded on the card. They were then filed, by number. Heaven help the person who misfiled a clock card. She’d have to spend hours finding the mistake. Once it took an entire day.
“I remember them,” I said, grimacing.
“Thought you might.” Pat winked at me. “Anyway, Levi was always a bit of a brain. He created a database for the inventory, based on the Clagan system. See these labels? We put the number on them and then we’d affix it to the clock in a place where it wouldn’t get noticed.”
“Wouldn’t that take away from the value of the clock? Adding a sticker?”
“No, we were careful. If the clock was of huge value, we wouldn’t add the label. But then again, those really valuable clocks are few and far between.”
“I heard there was a robbery last month? Five clocks were taken, all around a thousand dollars? That’s pretty valuable.”
“Who have you been talking to?”
“I think it was Kristen Gauger who told me about the clocks. Or maybe it was Beckett what’s his name? From across the street?”
“Beckett Green. He’s a troublemaker, that one. I think those clocks were overvalued, to tell you the truth. But yes, five clocks were taken.”
“And do you think the robber came back and attacked G.T.?” I asked quietly.
“No, I don’t think it’s the same person,” Pat said, putting his arm around my shoulder and giving me a quick squeeze. “But the chief will be able to answer your questions better than I can.”
“I’ll make sure and give him a call today. Do you think he’s working on a Saturday?”
“Jeff Paisley works every day even at the best of times, and this isn’t the best of times. He’ll be more than happy to talk to you whenever, I’m sure.
“Now, what were we talking about?” Pat said, letting go of my shoulder and walking over to the counter. He picked up a coffee and held it out. I took it and removed the lid, savoring the smell. I took a sip and smiled. A nice dark roast, but not at all bitter. Wonderful.
“I think we were talking about all the clocks? Inventory systems?” I was just guessing here, since we’d gone on so many tangents. My hands itched for my notebook so I could start writing some of this down. Stolen clocks. A troublemaker for a neighbor. A workaholic police chief. I felt compelled to start making lists. It was how I dealt with stress.
“And besides,” Pat said, as I realized he was still talking. “Thom got a work plan in place, so we will have some of them ready for sale by Christmas.”
“Some of what, the clocks? By Christmas? That’s less than three months from now.”
“Maybe he didn’t mean this Christmas.” Pat laughed and then stopped. He stared into the shop, with a far-off look in his eyes. I reached over and rubbed his arm. He looked at me and smiled.
“This must be hard for you. Are you all right here by yourself, Ruthie? Is there someone I can call for you?” Pat asked.
“No one,” I said.
“Your husband?”
I shook my head and rubbed the place where my wedding band had been up until last month.
“No husband. Not anymore.”
Pat paused, but good New Englander that he was, he didn’t press.
“Moira would love to see you,” he said, changing the subject.
“I’d love to see her.” And I would. I had, so far, resisted using the social media networks that would have helped us reconnect. I lurked on Facebook, but hid my profile. And my Twitter handle had nothing to do with my personal life. @ClaganClocks barely tweeted. My entire life had been hovering on the edges, but now I longed for a connection, any connection.
“She’s two doors down.”
“At the diner? Were you meeting her there?”
“No, she owns it. The Sleeping Latte. A terrible name, but don’t tell her I said that.”
“Wow, that’s terrific.” Terrific, but surprising. Moira had always talked about leaving Orchard in her rearview mirror. I wondered what brought her back.
“I can call Moira and have her bring some food over.”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll walk down and say hello in person.”
“Good for you. I’ll keep on working on the inventory. And, Ruthie?”
“Yes?”
“When you see Moira don’t ask her about Ryan. It’s a long story; I’ll tell you later. In the meantime, you settle in and call me on this number anytime, day or night.” He pulled a card out of his wallet and handed it to me. “Day or night.”
chapter 9
I pulled the door of the shop closed, turned, and stood on the porch, surveying the town. I looked over at the new bookstore and had to smile. What a great old building—one of the few in the valley that had survived the floods that ravaged the area until a few strategic dams were put in place. The building was also one of the originals in Orchard. Brick construction, which was not the norm in the day. Legend was the original owner had taken a load of bricks as payment for a debt and he used them here. High ceilings, sturdy post and beam construction. The building took a long time to build and had very special additions. Trapdoors, removable walls, hidden passages, custom-built cabinetry. It started life as a merchant’s home, but was turned into a bank in the late 1800s and had stayed one ever since. Until now.
The Cog & Sprocket wasn’t quite as grand, but it still had a rich history. My great-grandfather either bought the building or took over the payments. Or won it in a poker game. That part of the family history was always a little hazy. It was a general store for years until the Clagan family moved in and made it a clock shop, the first in the Berkshires.
My grandfather may have inherited the building and the family business that went with it, but my grandmother made it an Orchard institution. She worked closely with her long-widowed father-in-law to make it more hospitable. She wrestled my grandfather away from the shop long enough to get him to add the two-story porch that ran all along the front. Then she added the rocking chairs and the flowers. I’d spent hours sitting in those chairs, reading, drawing, dreaming. I’d forgotten how wonderful that porch was. I was tempted to just sit, but I was in search of more coffee. And nothing got me moving like a caffeine quest.
Fall in New England was generally glorious, and today was no exception. The cloudless sky was sapphire blue, with the lazy autumn sun just making an appearance, giving just enough light to twinkle on the dew beading on multicolored leaves. A low-lying fog would bu
rn off soon, but for now it gave Orchard an appearance of a ghost town rising from the past, with twinkling dew waking it up.
The fog suited the old Town Hall down the street. The gray siding, white trim, and black front door all melded together. The building was a story higher than any other building in town, but still, it didn’t impose. Instead it just held back, serving and keeping watch over the citizens of Orchard. The building was a community center, after-school care venue, and occasional community theater. When I was growing up, the Saturday after Thanksgiving there was always a town pancake breakfast, a benefit for the Winter Citizen Fund. Christmas trees were sold in the parking lot, and the Christmas craft fair was held inside.
“She is the town center, but not well respected,” my grandfather would always say. “She needs her works put back.”
By that he meant the clock tower, the gift that my great-great-grandfather made to the town almost a hundred years ago. During World War II the clock’s workings were stripped and melted down for the war effort. After the war they were reinstalling some of the ironworks and there was a fire in the old clock tower. The tower burned but the rest of the building was saved.
The structure of the tower was rebuilt but the clock was not reinstalled since it had never been a priority for the Board of Selectmen. But rebuilding the clock tower in its entirety was a Clagan family obsession, passed down from my great-grandfather Harry to my grandfather. And from my grandfather to me, skipping a generation past my academic father.
The old clock tower hadn’t been just a timepiece. It had been an art piece. Once a month, on the first Saturday at four o’clock, the clock would begin to chime and the show began both outside and in the main chamber of the Town Hall. Doors opened, figures spun, and music played. It lasted for five minutes.
Just Killing Time Page 4