by Lea Wait
—John Ruskin (1819–1900),
English art critic, in “Letter XXI,
Of the Dignity of the Four Fine Arts,”
April 15, 1867, published in Fors
Clavigera (1871–1884)
Glenda told me she’d be at Lenore’s office all day.
“Sure, you can stop in, Angie. Is it about your appointment to make out your will? I’m in the middle of making out a list of other lawyers nearby who’ve agreed to pick up Lenore’s clients.”
“I wanted to talk to you for a few minutes about Lenore. Making out my will isn’t an emergency.” At least I certainly hoped it wasn’t.
“I’ll be here all day,” Glenda answered. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to help you, but I’d be glad to try.”
I started to walk in the direction of the law offices when I turned around. Glenda was cleaning and organizing Lenore’s office. I was asking a favor that would take time away from that. I decided to bring her a box of pastries. If she didn’t want them now, she could take them home with her.
I was becoming Nicole’s best customer. I felt as though I’d been in her patisserie every day of the past week.
For good reasons, of course.
I must have missed the morning rush for pastries and bread. Only one man was ahead of me, and he ordered one cheese Danish. Not a complicated order.
But the Danish pastries did look good. I ordered five assorted. I’d eat one myself and give the other four to Glenda.
“So, have you found that needlepoint yet?” Nicole asked as she added up my order.
“No. But we think we may have figured out its provenance,” I said.
“Does that mean it’s worth a lot of money?”
“It might,” I said. “The next step should be to show the embroidery to an expert at a museum who knows antique needlework. We’re just learning.”
“But this valuable needlepoint is gone,” she said.
I shrugged. “I hope not. I hope we can find it.”
“And find out who killed that lawyer, Mrs. Pendleton.”
“Exactly.” I took the box she handed me. “How is Henri’s mother?”
“A little better, thank you. We have no answers yet.”
“I wish you well,” I said. I could read the frustration on Nicole’s face.
“Merci. Thank you for asking,” she said. “We do have help. Old friends from home have been visiting. We’ve told them our problems. They’ve promised to look in on Henri’s mother back in Quebec. It will help to have someone else visiting her when we cannot.”
I nodded.
As we were talking a family of five came into the patisserie and began debating which pastries each would choose.
I headed for Lenore Pendleton’s office, nibbling my treat along the way.
The wind was gusty, and gray clouds were low, threatening rain. I walked quickly. If it rained, and I got wet, I’d dry. Soggy pastries would not. I should have paid closer attention to the weather forecast.
The door to Lenore’s house and office was open, as usual during business hours. Was it only a week ago I’d brought the needlepoint to her so it would be safe? So much had happened since then.
The office that had seemed so clean and organized and friendly was now full of cartons full of client files or law books. Glenda had cleaned off Lenore’s desk and was sorting papers there. A marble bookend was leaning against a pile of books now on the floor. The matching bookend must have been the murder weapon. The police would have taken it so the crime lab could check for fingerprints.
“Hi, Glenda,” I said. “Thanks for agreeing to see me.” I held up the box. “I brought you some pastries.”
“Thank you!” she said. “Would you mind putting them in the kitchen? It’s through that door, to the right,” she said, pointing. “They’ll be a treat for lunch.”
Lenore’s kitchen felt empty, perhaps because it was so neat.
Glenda followed me in. “Put the box on the counter by the sink,” she said.
I did, and she peeked in. “Oooh. I love Danish pastries.” Then she looked at me and her eyes welled up. “So did Lenore. She bought us pastries as a treat after we’d had a rough week, or after one of her cases was settled. She had some right here in her kitchen, sitting on the table, the night she died.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring back memories,” I said. I should have chosen something other than Danish.
“No, no. You wouldn’t have known. I saw a box like this here last week, when I was making out that inventory for the police. I was glad. She’d had her favorite treats that last night.”
“I guess they were left from the afternoon,” I said.
“I don’t think so. When I stopped in that afternoon she told me she hadn’t left her office all day,” Glenda said. “She must have bought them after work.”
I looked at the pastry box. “You were here that day?”
“Only briefly,” Glenda said. “I had errands to do in town, so I stopped in about four in the afternoon with Tyler to pick up a couple of books Lenore’d loaned me. We both enjoyed mysteries, especially those set in Maine. She kept a stack of them for us to read at home, or during quiet days at the office. I decided to take a couple home to read during my vacation week. I picked out books by Kaitlyn Dunnett, Barbara Ross, and Jim Hayman.”
“And Lenore was here then? At four o’clock?”
“She was on the telephone. I waved at her and held up the books so she’d know why I’d stopped in. I got Tyler a drink of water in the kitchen, and then I left.”
“Are you sure there weren’t any pastries here then?”
Glenda looked at me strangely. “I don’t remember any. But I wasn’t looking for them.”
When did the patisserie close in the afternoon? That wouldn’t be hard to find out. The hours were probably even listed on their Web site.
So Lenore had been alive at four in the afternoon. That wasn’t a surprise. Ethan had said she was killed at eleven or twelve o’clock that night.
Plenty of time to close up her office, buy pastries, and come back. She’d probably eaten dinner and then gotten ready for bed before her late night caller arrived.
“Have you thought of anyone she might have opened her door to?” I asked Glenda.
“No one,” she said. “Or—anyone in town. She knew everyone. But only a few people knew about her safe, or that she kept jewelry in it.” She paused. “Whoever it was must just have wanted what was in there. Lenore’s pocketbook was in the kitchen, and none of her money or credit cards were missing. And our petty cash was left in my top desk drawer. I’ve wondered why they didn’t take our computers.” She pointed at the ceiling. “Lenore had more electronics and her good silver in her private rooms, upstairs, but none of those things were touched so far as the police could tell. They asked me to check, but I didn’t notice anything missing either.” Glenda stood and looked around. “Why would anyone kill Lenore? I don’t know. It was only jewelry. It wasn’t worth her life.”
That was the question all of us had been struggling with.
Chapter 38
Perhaps there is no single influence which has had more salutary effects in promising the comforts of home and the respectability of family life throughout the lengths and breadth of our land, than the attention given in our own Magazine to illustrations and directions which make needlework and fancy works in all their varieties known and accessible. Home is the place for such pursuits; by encouraging these, we make women happier and men better.
—From Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine,
January 1864
Next stop: talk to Mary, and maybe Cos and Jude.
Cos and Mary were having lunch together when I got to the Currans’ house. They seemed to do that every day. “Where’s Jude?” I asked, looking around. Usually all three girls were there.
“She’s at Maine Waves,” said Cos. “Last winter she worked only three days a week, because she was the newest hairdresser there, but now it’s summer
and a lot more people are in town, so she’s working five days a week. And two nights.” Cos shook her head. “I want to go to college next year. Become a nurse or a midwife. I want to make a difference. Jude says hairdressers make a difference. They help people look their best. But I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life shampooing and cutting hair.”
“Sounds like you have big plans for your future,” I said. “Best of luck!”
“I haven’t worked it all out yet. I have to decide what schools to apply to this fall. And I have another year in high school.” She grinned. “Seniors rule the school!”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I wish Mary would postpone her wedding so she’d be in school with me this year.” She looked pointedly at Mary, who was mixing tuna fish salad. “School won’t be the same without her. And she’s going to miss the senior pep rally, and the senior prom. Mom and Dad told her she’s welcome to stay here. They’re not throwing her out when she’s eighteen.” She paused. “Her grades are higher than mine. We’d always planned to room together at college. Now she’ll be here in Haven Harbor, probably having a baby or something, and I’ll have to go to college alone.”
“Stop hassling me, Cos. You don’t have to go to college,” said Mary. “You can stay here and get a job, like I’m going to do.”
Cos shook her head. “I’m not staying here just because you and Jude are here. I don’t want to be like Jude. And what job can you get without even a high school diploma? Being a supermarket clerk or a chambermaid?”
“Jude’s doing all right. She went to cosmetology school and got her fifteen hundred hours in and her license. She’s only twenty, and she’s got a solid job. That sounds good to me,” said Mary. “I’ll find a job. I’m not the career type. I want to settle down and have a family.”
“Just because Jude has a job here now doesn’t mean she’s going to stay,” said Cos. “She says she could get a job doing hair anywhere in the country. All she has to do is get licensed in a new state, and she says that won’t be hard. She keeps saying she’s going to leave, soon. Go where there’s more excitement than in Haven Harbor.”
I’d headed west as soon as I’d graduated. Who was I to say Jude was wrong? Proving you could make it by yourself, without the security of friends and family near at hand, was part of growing up. “Where’s Jude talking about going?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe Florida. She says Maine only has two seasons—July and winter. And she’s tired of winter.”
“Well, I’m happy right here in Haven Harbor, and I’m getting married and staying,” said Mary decisively. “Jude can go to Florida, and you can go off to college. I bet you’ll both be back. You have family here.”
“Everyone has to make their own choices,” I said. I’d graduated from high school before I’d left Maine, like Jude had and Cos was planning to do. I wished Mary would get her diploma before her marriage license. But when you’re young you want to do everything now. I’d been pretty darn good at ignoring advice when I’d been her age. “What about Jude and Josh? The other night he told me he wanted to leave town. Do you think they’ll go together?” I asked.
Mary and Cos exchanged glances.
“Josh is a total pain,” Mary said. “He has lots of big ideas, but he doesn’t follow through. Half the time he and Jude plan to get together he stands her up.”
“And he tries to make it with every girl in town,” said Cos, rubbing her rear end. “I swear, I get bruises just looking at that idiot.”
I tried not to laugh. “So you’re saying Josh isn’t as devoted to Jude as she hopes.”
“No way,” said Mary. “She’s dreaming if she thinks he’s going to take her away from Haven Harbor so they can live happily ever after.”
“I think she’s beginning to see that,” Cos added, putting lunch plates on the table for all three of us. Mary’d made me a tuna sandwich, too. “I heard them arguing the other night.”
“When was that?” I asked.
She thought a minute. “The night after the fireworks. Wednesday night.” The night Sarah and I’d seen Josh and Jude at the co-op with Arvin and Rob.
“It was late. After midnight.”
And the night Lenore was killed—close to midnight.
“What were they arguing about?” I asked as Mary put sandwiches on our plates and poured us each glasses of milk. I hadn’t had a glass of milk in a long time. But I didn’t mention that.
“I couldn’t understand them,” said Cos. “They were outside. But they were definitely having a fight. I don’t know if they’ve even seen each other since then.”
Mary shook her head. “You’re right. Those three guys—Arvin and Rob and Josh—used to be like the Three Musketeers. Out together almost every night. Jude usually went with them.”
“You didn’t join them?” I asked.
“All they do is drink beer. I’m not old enough to drink in a bar. And I don’t like the taste or smell of beer anyway,” said Mary. “In the winter I had homework, and now I have my house to clear out. I don’t mind staying home. Jude likes going out.”
“Especially since Josh got back to town,” Cos put in.
“But something must have happened last week. Because Rob hasn’t even been talking much to me,” added Mary. “He’s been hanging around with his brother, which isn’t usual, even when Ethan’s in town.”
I’d seen Josh alone at the Harbor Haunts a few nights before.
The girls were right. Something was different.
What had that argument been about last Wednesday night after midnight?
Chapter 39
Mourn, Hapless Brethren Deeply Mourn
The Source of Every Joy is Fled
Our Father Dear The Friend of Man
The Godlike Washington is Dead.
—Stitched by Eliza Thomas, Media,
Pennsylvania, 1804. George Washington was sixty-seven when he died in 1799 at his home in Mount Vernon, Virginia.
I was convinced neither Mary nor Cos knew anything that would either help find the missing needlepoint or solve the two murders.
It was beginning to rain when I left the Currans’ house.
Where to next? The Wild Rose Inn was farther away than the harbor. I decided to dodge raindrops and head downtown.
The light rain had driven most waterfront visitors indoors. Even the ice-cream store was full of people slurping cones and looking out the window, waiting for the rain to stop.
I glanced at my phone. It was a little past two.
If Arvin had gone lobstering this morning at five, the usual time to get out on the water, he should be returning about now.
I checked the town pier. His Little Lady was there, but his morning’s catch wasn’t on board, and the deck had been swabbed. Lobstering wasn’t a romantic occupation, despite all the cute plush stuffed lobsters for sale in local gift shops. Lobstering was smelly and messy.
Arvin had sold his catch and cleaned up for the day.
I wiped the rain off my face and walked down to the co-op. Lobstermen (and women) often gathered in the office and lobster pound. It was a good guess Arvin was there now.
And he was, talking to Josh. They’d both been on my list. This was a twofer.
“Finished for the day?” I asked, interrupting whatever they’d been talking about.
“Yup. You looking to buy lobsters?” Arvin asked. The large open tanks were in back of him; pound and pound and a quarters in one, pound and a halves in another, and the largest lobsters in the third. Lobsters under one pound or over four pounds had to be thrown back. Lobsters sold by the pound. A price list, changed daily, was on a blackboard near the tanks.
“Not today,” I said.
“Then what’re you doing here?” asked Josh. “Mom said you were over to our house the other day, asking about me. Checking up on me?”
“Why would I be checking up on you? I’m just trying to figure out what happened to Mary Clough’s needlepoint,” I said.
“Y
ou think it’s here?” he said skeptically. “In the co-op pound?”
“I wondered if you or Arvin knew anything about it. Or about Uma Patel’s death.”
“Listen, I’ve already talked to the police,” said Arvin. “She said she’d never been lobstering, so I invited her out. I hauled a couple of traps. Then I brought her back to the dock. I don’t know what happened to her after that.”
“I know what Alice said about that,” said Josh, grinning. “She wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear you’d taken that girl out for a boat ride. The way I heard it, she was ready to take your kid and go home to her mother after the police called looking for you.”
“Alice doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” said Arvin. “I offered the girl a free boat ride. I was being nice to a tourist.”
“A wicked pretty one,” added Josh.
“I heard the medical examiner said she’d hit her head pretty hard on something,” I said. “Do you know anything about that?”
Arvin ran his fingers, wet with sea water, through his hair. “She was alive when she left my boat. No one asked me about a bump on her head.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The deck of my boat’s pretty slippery,” he said defensively. “I’d cleaned it after the morning’s haul, but she was dumb enough to come on board wearing leather sandals.”
True enough. Lobster boat decks would be wet with ocean water, pieces of bait, bits of seaweed, and various flotsam and jetsam brought up with the traps. Decks were cleaned after every trip. Lobstermen were proud of their boats. A boat was an investment, an office, and a future. But no one who knew anything about boats would go on board without wearing rubber-soled shoes.
“So she slipped?”
Arvin shuffled his feet and glanced around, as though he didn’t want anyone to overhear him. “I was handing her a life jacket, and she slipped on the deck. Hit her head on the railing. But I helped her up, and she seemed fine. No blood, and she laughed about it. I don’t know what happened to her after she left the Little Lady. But she was fine when she walked up the ramp.”