by Sofie Ryan
“Not-going-to-be-changing last words,” I said firmly.
She laughed and we ate in silence for a couple of minutes. “He seemed like a nice man, you know,” she said as I reached over to swipe another french fry from her plate before they were all gone.
I gave her a blank look. “Who seemed like a nice man?”
“Ronan Quinn.”
“Wait a minute. You knew him?” I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that there were almost no empty chairs now in the pub.
“I didn’t know him, but I did talk to him. I was buying a bottle of wine for Josh. He helped me get that problem with the streetlight outside the shop fixed.”
Josh was Josh Evans, a lawyer I’d known since we were kids. He’d helped the Angels more than once.
“And?” I prompted.
Jess shrugged. “And I know nothing about wine. I was standing there holding a bottle wondering how to tell if it was any good. Quinn was behind me. He said, ‘Don’t buy that.’ I asked him why. He said wine was his area of expertise. It didn’t seem as though he was trying to hit on me, so I got the bottle he suggested.”
“When was this?”
“Last Monday afternoon, sometime just after four o’clock.” Before I could say anything she held up a finger. “Yes, I know that’s the day before he was killed and yes, when I saw his photo in the Globe this morning I called Michelle and told her.”
“She’s probably trying to put a timeline together,” I said. Jess talking to Ronan Quinn confirmed what Ethan had said, that he and Quinn had left the house together the day before the murder.
Jess picked up her cell phone, which had been sitting on the table next to her now-empty plate. “I have a voice mail from Rose. She asked me to call her.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “How does she do that?” I said. Actually I was pretty sure that Rose had gotten her information via a certain geriatric computer whiz.
“You think Rose knows I saw Mr. Quinn just before he died.”
“I can promise you she does.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And it doesn’t matter because I’m staying out of it.”
The crowd began to clap and cheer as Sam and the rest of the band came from the back of the pub and made their way to the same stage. Jess smirked and said something that got lost in the noise. I was pretty sure she’d said “famous last words” again.
Elvis and I left the house early the next morning. I’d found him asleep at the top of his cat tower when I got home. Rose wasn’t due in until lunchtime. I had no idea what time Mr. P. had left or if he even had. It was none of my business and since they were consenting adults and then some, I didn’t want to know.
Elvis sat on the passenger seat watching the road. The cat was a backseat driver no matter where he was sitting, turning to look over his shoulder when I backed up and intently watching the lights when we were stopped. He’d even protested loudly when I ran a yellow light, much to the amusement of Jess, who’d been in the passenger seat that day.
We stopped at McNamara’s Sandwich Shop to pick up the rolls for the elementary school’s hot lunch program. Glenn McNamara was in the kitchen stirring a huge pot of soup. “Banana muffins just came out of the oven,” he said, dipping his head in the direction of two wire racks on the long stainless steel counter. “Try one and tell me what you think.”
I picked up a muffin, broke off a bite and popped it in my mouth. “Oh, that’s good,” I said after a moment. “Do I taste walnuts? And nutmeg, maybe?” As part of my cooking lessons, Rose was teaching me about spices and herbs.
Glenn grinned and nodded. “Very good. I was getting tired of the same old thing, so I wanted to change it up just a little.”
“I’d buy them,” I said, breaking off another piece. “And what do I owe you for this one?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, moving to the large sink to wash his hands. “I needed a taste tester.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I heard you found a little more than you bargained for when you went to clear out Edison Hall’s house,” he said, reaching for a paper towel to dry his hands. “He was a nice guy, Quinn, I mean.”
“You met him?”
“He was in here maybe half a dozen times altogether. Twice for lunch and the rest for coffee. He always took a table right in the center of the room and he’d sit there and work on his tablet.” He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his white apron. “He knew a lot about wine, obviously, but the guy wasn’t a snob. He got talking to Carmen about Feast in the Field and he made some suggestions for this year. She said they weren’t all that expensive.”
Feast in the Field was a festival of fine wine, food and spirits held in the fall, a fund-raiser for charity. We’d had tourists from as far away as Oregon. Hotels and bed-and-breakfasts were booked up months in advance. The festival got its name from the open field where it was staged, a place where local lore held that a farmer and his two sons had held off a British garrison with nothing but pitchforks and an ornery bull.
According to Charlotte, who had taught history among other subjects before she became a principal, the real story was that the farmer had found two British soldiers, no more than fifteen years old, who had somehow gotten separated from their comrades hiding in his barn, hungry and half-frozen from the early winter, one of them with an ugly wound on his leg.
The farmer’s wife, mother to two boys close to the same age, had insisted on feeding the two young men and bandaging the wound before sending them on their way.
“Did you ever see Mr. Quinn with anyone?” I asked Glenn.
He shook his head. “Aside from Ethan Hall, no. He made small talk with a couple of people while he was having coffee, but nothing more.” He made a face. “It’s hard to believe his old man got conned. Edison Hall wasn’t a stupid man, you know. He only went as far as sixth grade in school, but he got a job with the railroad and worked his way up to supervisor.” He shrugged. “He’d come in sometimes. He liked my coffee. Said it was strong enough to float an iron wedge.”
“That’s why I like it,” I said.
Somehow I’d managed to eat the entire muffin. I brushed the crumbs off my fingers. “What was he like?” I asked.
Glenn gave a snort of laughter. “Edison Hall was a stubborn cuss, no doubt about it, but he was different when his wife was alive. After she died he didn’t go out as much and he got kind of sour about people, about life, it seemed to me.”
He pushed off from the counter. “I saw Edison just a couple of days before he died. He was moving a little slower, but hell, aren’t we all?” He grinned at me and I thought how creaky my own back and shoulder had been when I got up.
“There was nothing wrong with his mind,” Glenn said. “He was sharp as a tack to the end, so if someone managed to con him into buying all those bottles of wine that turned out to be worthless, whoever it was ran a pretty good con. Ronan Quinn said pretty much the same thing.”
A timer buzzed then. “That’s my cupcakes,” Glenn said.
“And I better get going.” I grabbed the bags of rolls. “Thanks,” I said, heading for the back door.
I dropped the rolls off at the school office and then drove over to the shop. There was a light on in the old garage and I found Mac there sanding the arm of an old church pew.
“Good morning,” he said, pushing his dust mask up onto the top of his head.
“Hi,” I said. “How long have you been out here working?”
Mac shrugged. “A while. An hour, maybe” He gestured to the empty coffee mug sitting on top of an old wooden trunk. “That’s my first cup.”
“You want another one?” I asked.
He rubbed the side of his neck. “Please. Sanding these arms is turning out to be trickier than I expected.”
The wooden pew was almost twelve feet long. It ha
d come from an old country church that was being torn down. We were restoring it as a gift for a retiring Episcopal bishop who had begun his ministry in that little church. We didn’t usually take on commissions like this, but the bishop’s friends who were planning to surprise him with the pew had been persistent. They’d kept offering more and more money until it seemed silly to keep saying no.
Mac and I had wanted to leave the bench the way it was and just strengthen and rebrace the bottom, but our clients had insisted the pew be stripped and refinished. They wanted it to look the way it did when it had first been installed in the church more than eighty years ago.
The wood was beautiful under several coats of paint and varnish, but I still wished we’d left the old finish intact. I walked the length of the piece, trying to imagine it being built all those years ago.
“What’s the bishop going to do with this?” I said to Mac.
He got to his feet, brushing the dust off his jeans. Elvis made a face and took a couple of steps backward. “I don’t know,” Mac said. “Maybe he’ll stick it in his living room and use it as a sofa.”
“It doesn’t look that comfortable.”
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be.”
I looked at the long expanse of wooden seat and the unyielding rolled armrests. “It needs Jess,” I said to Mac.
He wrinkled his nose at me. “I don’t know how we’d wrap her.”
I made a face back at him. “I mean we need Jess to make some pillows and maybe some kind of long cushion to sit on.”
“That’s a good idea,” he said.
“I’ll call her later on and see if she can stop by later today or tomorrow.” I yawned. “I’ll go start the coffee and then I’ll come back and give you a hand.”
“Sounds good,” Mac said. “Did Rose come with you?”
“She’s not working until this afternoon. I think she and Mr. P. are working on their case.”
“Did you talk to Nick last night?” Mac asked. He was wearing a long-sleeved, paint-splattered T-shirt and he pushed the sleeves up his arms, showing off the dark skin of his forearms.
I shook my head. “I called, but all I got was his voice mail and I didn’t know what to leave for a message. ‘Sorry you got bested by a bunch of senior citizens’ seemed a little mean.”
Mac laughed. “Has he always been such a . . .” He hesitated.
“Tight-ass?” I finished. I laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ve called him that a couple of times to his face when he was driving me crazy.”
“I was going to say responsible person, but I guess in some ways it’s the same thing.”
I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my red hooded sweater. “Yeah, he has. He was a kid when his dad died. It wasn’t as though Charlotte had any expectation for Nick to be the man of the house. You know Charlotte. She’s very capable.”
Mac nodded.
“But Nick seemed to think he had to take on that role. He cares about people very, very deeply. And sometimes that comes across as though he’s trying to tell us all how to live our lives.” I felt a twinge of guilt. I’d been a bit hard on Nick lately.
“He wasn’t going to college, you know,” I said to Mac.
“I bet that didn’t go over well with Charlotte.”
I could still see Charlotte standing next to the dining room table in my gram’s old house, back and shoulders rigid, hands clenched as Nick explained, at dinner to celebrate my brother Liam’s college acceptance, that he hadn’t been accepted anywhere because he hadn’t mailed any of the applications.
I gave Mac a wry smile. “No, it didn’t. Gram had a little sunroom on the back of the house. She marched the two of them back there, told them to work it out and then stuck the back of a chair underneath the doorknob so they had to stay in there and talk.”
“I take it they worked it out,” Mac said.
“They did. But that doesn’t mean Nick is good at compromise.”
Mac laughed. “Neither is Rose. And she’s been at it a lot longer.”
Elvis stayed out in the workshop while I went inside and got coffee. Mac and I spent about an hour working on the church pew. Finally I sat back on my heels and pulled off my dust mask. “I think that’s it,” I said.
“I’ll get the dust cleaned off and I think I’ll be able to do a coat of stain this afternoon.”
“I’m going to go change my clothes. It’s almost time to open.”
“Yell if you need me,” Mac said.
I stepped outside and rolled my neck from one side to the other to work out the kinks. Then I brushed the dust off my sweatshirt and old jeans. I’d covered my hair with a thin knit beanie and I pulled it off and gave it a shake.
I started for the back door of the shop and caught sight of Charlotte coming up the sidewalk. I detoured and met her at the bottom of the parking lot.
“Good morning,” she said. She was carrying a large, crazy quilted tote bag. I took it from her and we started up the slight slope to the back door.
Charlotte had always had beautiful skin. This morning her cheeks were touched with a slight flush of pink from her walk and her brown eyes sparkled.
“Isn’t this a beautiful day, Sarah?” she said, looking up at the cloudless sky.
Before I could answer she took in my dusty sweatshirt and jeans. “Have you been working already?”
“Yes and yes,” I said in answer to her two questions.
“You work too much,” she said with just a touch of reproach in her voice. “You know what you should do?”
“Meet a nice young man and make babies,” I answered, holding the back door for her with my free hand. “I wonder where I’ve heard that before?”
Charlotte smiled back over her shoulder at me. “I was going to say you should take a morning off and sleep in, but if you’d rather not do it by yourself, that would be fine.”
“Charlotte Elliot!” I exclaimed in mock outrage, putting one hand on my hip and frowning at her.
She gave a snort and rolled her eyes. “Isabel is never going to be a great-grandmother at this rate,” she said. “And don’t waste your time giving me that speech about staying out of your love life. You don’t exactly have one, dear.”
I put my arm around her shoulders. “I have all of you. Why do I need a man?”
She struggled to keep a straight face, but I could see a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “If you’re asking that question, then you clearly weren’t paying attention in your personal development classes.”
I laughed and gave her a hug. She smiled back at me, and then her expression grew serious. “Sarah, have you talked to Nicolas?” she asked.
“Not since he was here yesterday. Why?”
She sighed. “To quote Rose, Nicolas has his knickers in a bit of a knot.”
“Did you know what she and Alfred were up to?” I reached over and flipped on the light switches as we stepped into the shop.
“Not for a long time, no,” she said. “I just can’t seem to get it through to Nicolas that we don’t want to spend whatever time we have left just organizing bake sales and growing roses. He’s hardheaded sometimes.”
I smiled and set her bag down by our feet. “When he makes up his mind about something it is pretty difficult to get him to change course.” I tipped my head to one side and studied her face. “I wonder where he got that?”
“It comes from the Elliots,” she said, straight-faced. “They’ve always been a stubborn bunch.”
Charlotte was wearing caramel-colored pumps with her dark brown skirt, which made her several inches taller than I was. I stood on tiptoe and kissed her cheek. “I love you and your britches are starting to smoke,” I whispered.
She smiled and I started for the stairs.
“I’ll open up,” she called after me.
“Thank you,” I said wi
thout turning around.
I changed out of my dusty clothes, touched up my makeup and went into the tiny staff room for another cup of coffee. When I went back downstairs, Charlotte had put on her apron and unlocked the front door.
“What do you want to do with the rest of these books?” she asked me.
I’d purchased a box of old hardcover books for two dollars at a yard sale to “stage” an old bookcase I’d bought from one of my regular trash pickers. We’d ended up selling half of the books, but we still had the bookcase.
“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you think?”
Charlotte cocked her head to one side. “What if I rearrange the remaining books and add a few other things?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“I’m going to take a look at the lamp shades that Avery got started on,” I said to Charlotte. “If you get customers, call me.”
I had Avery covering a collection of mismatched lamp shades with some old classroom maps that Charlotte had found in her basement. Avery had a good eye for detail and a surprising amount of patience for this kind of project. She’d covered one small and one large shade and done a meticulous job.
The bag filled with felted wool sweaters was still on the end of the workbench. It reminded me that I needed to call Jess. I pulled my cell out of my pocket and leaned against the side of the bench.
“Hey, Sarah, what’s up?” she said when she answered. Her voice was slightly muffled.
“Those sweaters are ready for you and I need a favor.”
She muttered something I didn’t catch.
“What are you eating?” I asked. “You sound like you have a mouthful of marshmallows?”
“I’m not eating,” she said. “I’m pinning.”
“Tell me you don’t have a mouthful of pins?”
She gave a small grunt and I pictured her leaning across her worktable. “Not anymore,” she crowed.
When Jess was sewing she had a habit of sticking pins in her mouth for a moment instead of back in her pincushion—a purple octopus with sparkly false eyelashes and a black boa. I thought it made her look like Jaws from the James Bond movies.