Friday did just as she was told. Nothing short of a wrecking ball had a chance at waking her.
Heading up from the basement the thunk of a pipe startled me, a pipe that banged only when a water spigot was turned off. Grandy was up and had just finished a shower.
Though he had finally given in and reduced the number of nights he spent working at the Downtown Dine-In theater he owned, he had yet to retire completely. As a result, he often slept long into the morning after locking up the theater then driving home the night before.
I detoured to the kitchen to grab a pair of tea glasses, then doubled back through the circa 1960 living room and out onto the front porch. One look told me the iced tea was ready. After dropping my books and pencil on the little rickety wooden table, I made a quick run back into the house for a bowl of ice, then took the pitcher from the steps before settling into one of the two Adirondack chairs and pouring myself a glass of fresh-brewed sun tea.
On most days, the tall old trees thriving on the property kept the house cool. But sometimes the stillness of summer days meant the leaves served only to cocoon the house in damp and heat. I hadn’t realized how hot and stuffy the inside had become until I felt the difference in temperature from the basement to the porch.
Encyclopedia open to an image of a saucer magnolia blossom, I lost myself in attempting to re-create its subtle beauty in my sketchbook. I was no artist, but enjoyed the experience of moving my pencil across the page and I could approximate the shape of the flowers in the space where I thought they might look best in the overall window design.
I had briefly switched my sketching to the lettering of Magnolia Bed and Breakfast when the front door opened.
“Georgia, is it really so hard for you to remember to write a note when you take the Jeep?”
Grandy strode across the porch that stretched to the right of the front door and dropped into the other chair. Even in the open air the scent of his soap tickled my nose. His tanned and faintly wrinkled skin shined from the fresh scrubbing, and his deeply receding hairline terminated in damp, silver hair.
“I wrote the note. It said I went to pick up tea bags and eggs,” I said. “I left it on the dining room table. I didn’t think to put the note where you were guaranteed to see it, like, next to the strudel you think I don’t know about.” I looked over and up at him from below my brows. In other words, I gave him my “stern” look.
He snorted and settled back in his chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t.” I looked back to the sketchbook opened across my lap. “There’s iced tea there if you want.”
Grandy lifted the pitcher free of the ring of condensation marking its place on the table. “I don’t suppose you put any sugar in this tea?”
“You don’t suppose correctly.”
He grumbled but poured a glass all the same. “What are you working on there?”
Mostly I preferred to keep my novice attempts at sketching to myself. After all, they were only ideas, concepts, beginnings. Down the line I would refine the sketch as best I could, trace images from the encyclopedias, magazines, or photographs to piece together the vision in my head—a picture that I would transform into Trudy’s stained glass window. Grandy understood my sketches were baby basic, but he had that grandparent’s knack for seeing the intention on the page and not judging the skill.
I tipped the sketchbook in his direction.
“Are those pansies?” he asked.
Anyone else, I would have been mortified. But like I said, he didn’t judge skill. Plus, I didn’t know how much knowledge he had of flowers, if any. “Magnolias. I may be doing a window for a new bed and breakfast if I can come up with a decent design.”
The tone of Grandy’s voice equaled a verbal eye roll. “A new bed and breakfast. What will they think of next?”
Smiling, I picked up my pencil. “Gotta get with the program, Grandy. Once the marina’s complete this little hamlet could become quite the getaway destination.”
“Lord save us.”
Glass in hand, ice clattering, he sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Grandy wasn’t opposed to the marina project; he understood its importance to the future of Wenwood and supported any efforts to restore the town to its earlier vitality. But as someone who had been employed by the brickworks for years on end, supporting progress didn’t make it easy for him—or others like him—to see the old building torn apart and reshaped into something new.
In its heyday, the brickworks had set the pace of life in Wenwood. The residents were either employed directly by Wenwood Brick or worked in a supportive capacity for those who were—doctors, grocers, pharmacists, mechanics. After the low cost of imported brick slowly put the Wenwood works out of business, the town began a gradual decline that drove most of its youth to relocate and most of its older residents to sell and take early retirement in southern states.
But since Stone Mountain Construction had begun work on the new marina, the faintest air of hope had settled over Wenwood. Though residents were sad to the point of heartbroken to see the old brickworks building transformed into a tourist-targeted landmark, little by little, folks had accepted the inevitable and some even warmed to the project, and now . . .
“Who’s going to run this bed and breakfast?” Grandy asked.
“Trudy Villiers? Do you know her?”
He hmmed, head tilted back, eyes still closed. “Can’t say as I do. May have known her husband, back in the old days.”
“The old days,” I repeated on a chuckle. “I don’t even know if she is, was, or was ever married.” She had had too many rings on her fingers for me to guess if one represented marriage. “I’ll try and find out next time.”
Grandy stirred himself enough to gulp down the rest of his tea. He pulled a sour face and set the glass on the table. “Needs sugar.”
“Nothing needs sugar.” I paused in my sketching to give him a sidelong glare. “Least of all you.”
“Hmmph.”
“Which reminds me, the garbage goes out tonight and the strudel’s going with it. Don’t bother looking for it in the morning.”
He peered back at me, all eighty years of experience adding a shrewd glint to his eye. “You throw away my strudel, Georgia, and I’ll have your car keys back.”
It was an idle threat and I knew it. Grandy knew it, too. But it raised the specter of guilt and failure I felt at being an adult reliant on her grandfather. “It’s not a car,” I said, attempting to ignore that pesky guilt. “It’s an SUV. And you’re supposed to avoid sugar because of doctor’s orders. Don’t punish me for trying to keep you healthy.”
“Healthy? You talk on your cell phone while you’re driving,” he countered. “That’s not only unhealthy for you but for the rest of the people on the road.”
“Grandy.” Surrendering, I dropped my pencil into the gutter of the sketchbook and smacked the cover closed. “I’d have my own car if I could afford one. But as it is . . .”
I’d been without steady work for nearly a year now. No matter how much I tried to ignore the obnoxious little voice inside me that reminded me I was driving my grandfather’s SUV, the voice persisted. And the voice embarrassed me. A well-paying, full-time job would put an end to my borrowing. But neither well-paying nor full-time were readily available in Wenwood. Especially for an accountant. The few pieces of stained glass that Carrie had sold on my behalf allowed me to purchase supplies for further pieces and help Grandy with utility costs. I’d begun working Friday nights at Grandy’s dine-in where the minimal pay and conservative tips allowed me to have what passed for a social life: girl’s night out with Carrie and Diana. If I wanted the kind of money and lifestyle I used to enjoy, I’d have to head back to New York City. I loved the city, I did. Moving back or taking a chance on another big city was definitely an appealing option but . . .
I filled my lungs with a breath of soft, clean air. The kind of breath you rarely experienced in a big city. In Wenwood, I smelled the ever present aroma of flowers on the air. Felt the sun peeking onto the porch and warming my toes . . .
Surely Wenwood had been a better place to spend the summer than Manhattan’s odorous steam bath. And surely there were a few more weeks before autumn arrived and the end of the antiques hunter traffic forced me to make a decision.
“Fine,” I relented as I stood. “Keep the strudel. Just try and eat more vegetables or something, okay?”
“Have you spoken to Drew?”
I paused in my reach for the pitcher of tea I had planned to carry into the house. “Drew Able? Your lawyer?”
I hadn’t seen or spoken to Drew since the charges against Grandy were dropped. That Grandy thought I should speak with him now instantly resulted in sweaty palms and strained breath.
“Of course my lawyer,” Grandy said. “I believe he could use someone to help out with his bookkeeping. You might want to stop into his office next time you go to town.”
Oh, mercy. Next thing I know Grandy will be trying to set me up on dates. “Thanks, Grandy, but—”
“I’m not doing you any favors,” he grumbled. “He can’t keep up with his own billing. I haven’t seen a single notice for the work he did for me, and you need to keep your skills sharp. Talk to him.”
Talk to him. Drew Able, Esquire. The lawyer.
Grabbing the pitcher with my free hand, I nodded. “Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”
Maybe not about a job. But definitely about why someone stood to gain by burning down a law office.
6
“And I ended up agreeing to talk to Drew tomorrow,” I concluded. I sat back in my chair and finally took a bite from the slice of sharp cheddar I’d been holding since I started the story.
Sunset had done little to ease the heat of the day, and Carrie, Diana, and I gathered gratefully in Carrie’s air-conditioned apartment, sprawled on mismatched but cleverly coordinated furniture from bygone days, and snacking on cheese and crackers until it was time to leave for the monthly town meeting.
Diana shook her head in mock amazement, her long dark hair scraping the back of her Pace County PD T-shirt. “Your granddad’s a hoot,” she said. “Was he always like that? I can’t remember.”
By some measurements, Diana and I had known one another our whole lives. By other, more accurate measurements, we had been childhood friends turned enemies during one of my years in Wenwood and had happily lost touch until adulthood and maturity and Grandy being accused of murder brought us back together. As neither Diana nor I had any immediate plans to try out for a cheerleading squad or become part of a chicky clique, this time around our friendship stood a better chance of lasting.
“I’m pretty sure Grandy has always been the same,” I said.
“Somewhere at the crossroads of stern and sweet and scary and teddy bear,” Carrie put in, pushing to her feet. “Can I get anyone a refill?”
Diana asked for a little more water and I declined. “You sure? No more tea?” Eyes on me, she circled around the back of her chair.
My “I’m sure” was cut short by Carrie’s “Yeouch!”
“What happened?” Diana asked.
“You okay?” I asked.
I pushed to the edge of my chair, ready to leap up and assist. Diana, police officer’s reflexes clearly sharper honed than mine, was already on her feet and moving toward Carrie.
“This stupid box.” With the side of her foot, Carrie kicked a large carton out from behind her chair and turned it so the carton tucked beside the chair, a toe-sized dent showing beneath the diamond-shaped U-Move-It logo. She looked over her shoulder at Diana. “I can’t wait until you guys find my ex-husband and I can get rid of this stuff. I spent enough years tripping over that man’s junk.”
She continued on through the living room and into the galley kitchen.
“What’s in the box?” Diana asked.
I sighed. “Who knows? Some stuff Russ’s admin had. She said she didn’t have room in her apartment for it.” I waved a hand to encompass Carrie’s supply-closet-sized space. “Because this is palatial.”
Eyebrows lowered, Diana edged toward the carton. “This is Russ’s? Russ Stanford’s? The guy whose business got torched? And you didn’t look?”
I searched for words, suddenly tongue-tied by my own foolishness. We hadn’t looked inside the box, nor the shopping bag. We’d taken Melanie on faith that the contents consisted of useless scraps from a deceased individual’s estate.
“Carrie,” I called, standing. “Did you look inside this box?”
From the kitchen came the clatter of ice hitting the bottom of an empty glass. “What do I care what’s in the box?”
Now Diana raised her brows. A shift in her stance and a squaring of her shoulders was all it took for her to complete the transformation into cop mode. She held up a hand, palm out, in my direction. “Stay back,” she said.
“Seriously?”
Diana glowered, and I folded my arms and waited.
As Carrie appeared in the doorway leading from kitchen to living room, Diana popped open the box with the toe of her canvas sneaker. The speed of the motion and the pop of the box top startled me into flinching.
Recovering myself, I leaned forward and peered into the box.
Diana sat on the edge of Carrie’s chair, and Carrie stood watching over her shoulder. With deft fingers, Diana flipped past framed photographs and knitting magazines until she reached a series of photo albums standing on their ends. “This does look like junk,” she said.
“There’s a bag, too, but that’s all old dry cleaning receipts and old bridge scores or something,” Carrie said. She grimaced and handed Diana a glass of ice water. “I accidentally dropped the bag and it spilled all over the kitchen.”
“You don’t think this has anything to do with the fire, do you?” I directed the question to Diana.
“Don’t know.” Reaching into the box, she withdrew a pair of photo albums and handed them up to me. “Take a look through these.”
“I’ll get the bag,” Carrie said.
With Diana perched on the chair Carrie had vacated and Carrie curled in the chair I had moved away from, I settled on the horsehair couch with the photo albums across my lap. Covers of worn leather felt like they might crumble beneath my fingers, the paper pages like they might disintegrate at my touch. Carefully, I turned to the first page. Black paper photo corners held the pictures in place and gave stark contrast to the faded shades of gray in the images. I peered closely at the first picture, squinting to make out the figures in their rigid poses. A stiff-looking couple, he standing, she sitting. In the woman’s lap, acres and acres of lace presumably wrapped a baby.
The same couple appeared in nearly all the photos, the number of children pictured with them increasing, the black-and-white images giving way to bleached color. Outdoors, indoors, picnics and Christmases, a family chronology captured in images. Now and again there were clusters of women gathered around card tables, grinning beneath identical hairstyles. And here and there, groups of men stood smiling next to pallets of red brick. These were the good old days of Wenwood.
“You know, if I knew how to knit, this would be a really great hat for winter.” Diana held out an open magazine for Carrie and me to see.
“You don’t know how to knit?” Carrie’s voice cracked with disbelief.
Diana leveled a look at Carrie that would reduce a less cheerful soul to dust. “Do you know how to field strip a nine-millimeter Sig?”
“Are we done looking through this stuff?” I asked loudly. “Isn’t it time to head over to town hall? Don’t we want to get good seats . . . or something?”
Diana left off glaring at Carrie and turned to me. “You find anything interesting?�
�� she asked.
I held up the photo album. “I think this woman only owned two dresses.”
She huffed and looked to Carrie. “How about you? Did you find anything?”
“Nothing.”
Diana sighed. “Nothing here either.” She stood, brushing dust off her palms. “That’s too bad.”
“That’s too bad?” I echoed.
She shrugged. “So I was thinking of becoming a detective. Getting a lead on the arsonist who blazed that office might look good in my file. Maybe. And plus I’d get to help you out,” she told Carrie.
“Win-win,” I commented, fighting to keep a straight face.
Carrie fought valiantly, pressing her lips tight and avoiding eye contact. But she couldn’t hide the humor lighting her eyes.
It was only moments before Diana huffed and shook her head. “Fine, fine. Let’s just go to this town mudfest then. Maybe there’ll be something worth investigating there.”
7
Wenwood Town Hall was a stately building comprised of Wenwood brick and hometown pride. It sat like a sentry atop a gentle hill, keeping the town safe since the time of its founding, strong enough to do so for many years to come.
By the time we arrived, the sun had set in my rearview mirror and was sinking below the horizon ahead. Lamps blinked to life at strategic points across the front lawn, their spotlights on the half-dozen marble steps and double set of tall white columns.
I cruised past the flagpole where both the U.S. and the New York State flag, brightly lit from below, hung limp in the still air and turned into the parking lot that ran alongside town hall. The lot was crowded with cars, leaving me to take a spot toward the back, where the streetlamps were buzzing their way to illumination. Diana and Carrie piled out of the SUV before I’d even pulled the keys from the ignition.
“Why are we in such a rush?” I asked, hurrying to catch up with them. “I was only kidding about the whole getting-a-good-seat thing.”
Death Under Glass Page 6