It had taken her awhile to decide where to begin, until finally she told herself, Oh, hell, just pick a spot. She opted for the office, thinking she might as well start at the back of the shop since the glass man would be coming later that day to take the measurements to replace the cracked window and the glass counter. After she finished with the office, she picked up all the merchandise that had been tossed on the floor. She refolded everything, looking over each garment to assess its condition. Except for having been tossed onto the floor—which had been relatively clean, because it had been vacuumed on Saturday—nothing seemed to be damaged. Still, they had been tossed around and spent the past two days on the floor, so maybe she couldn’t sell any of them as perfect and new. Maybe I should have an after-the-break-in sale. “All merchandise tossed around by the burglar—thirty percent off!”
She made a mental note to ask Stef if she thought thirty percent was enough of a discount.
The mannequins were still in the front window dressed up for the wedding. Vanessa stood, hands on her hips, looking them over.
“Oh, hell, the wedding is over anyway,” she said aloud. “Time to move it all out. I wonder if it’s too early to move all those cute golf and tennis things to center stage.”
She needed music and wanted something upbeat, so she brought her CD player from the office and plugged it in on the counter. Odd he didn’t take this, she thought, since it was right there on the desk in plain sight. She put in a few CDs and turned it on loud enough to drown out her own singing. The music lightened her mood, and before too long, she had the windows stripped and ready for the glass people to do their thing.
She turned her attention to the jewelry case, and was surprised to see that very little, if anything, appeared to be disturbed, other than the glass counter and shelves. She checked the sales slips for Wednesday through Saturday, and when she finished, she could account for every piece of jewelry she’d had in that case. As far as she could tell, the only things missing were pieces that had been sold. She was wondering why someone would take the time to break the glass but not steal anything from the case, when she heard a tap on the door.
Vanessa unlocked the door. “Hi, Miss Grace. Come to view the carnage?”
“No, I came to bring you some coffee. I figured you would be needing a break right around now.” Grace handed her a cardboard cup with the Cuppachino logo on it.
“That’s so thoughtful of you. Thank you.”
“Thank Carlo. When I told him who it was for, he wouldn’t take a dime for it.” Grace looked around the interior of the shop. “Well, this doesn’t look too bad …”
“I’ve been picking up in here for the past two hours, but for the most part, it really isn’t too bad. The glass will be replaced and the contents are insured. I called my insurance agent, and surprise, surprise, she’d already heard about the break-in.”
“You use the Radell Agency?”
Vanessa nodded.
“So do we at the paper and the Inn. That Alice Radell is the best insurance agent I ever worked with.”
“She’s been very helpful. But speaking of Alices … I’ve been meaning to ask you about Alice Ridgeway.”
“What about her, dear?”
“I heard that you knew her fairly well.”
“Oh, yes. I grew up in that neighborhood, you know.”
Vanessa nodded. “I heard that, too. I was wondering if we could get together sometime to talk about her.”
Grace frowned. “She isn’t … bothering you, is she?”
“Ah … no.”
“Because she’s really harmless, you know.”
Vanessa stared at her. “You mean, when she was alive?”
“Oh …” Grace laughed. “Of course. I meant, she was harmless.”
“I see,” Vanessa said, although she wasn’t sure she did.
“What did you want to talk about, then?”
“I’d just like to know a little about her, that’s all. All I know is that she kept to herself a lot, and that she grew a lot of herbs.”
“Well, she wasn’t completely antisocial. She did have friends,” Grace made a point of telling her, “but she didn’t care to go out. Everyone visited her at her home.”
“Did you visit with her?”
“Oh, of course. We were friends, even though I was a lot younger. I’ve often wondered if anything still grew in her garden.”
“A lot of herbs, but I’m not sure what they all are. There’s a bunch of what appears to be herbs hanging over the back door.”
“Really? What do they smell like?”
“I don’t think they smell like anything, Miss Grace. They’re very dry.”
“Oh, of course they would be.” Grace smiled. “I’m sure it’s just something she put there for good luck.”
“Good luck,” Vanessa repeated flatly. Yes, her luck had certainly been swell lately.
Grace glanced at her watch. “I’m going to have to dash. I need to get these articles to the printer or we’ll have no paper this week.”
“Thanks for the coffee.” Vanessa walked her visitor to the door. “And maybe sometime we could chat about Miss Ridgeway …”
“Yes, I’d like that.” Grace was halfway out the door when she turned and asked, “You haven’t happened to find any of her books. Her journals or … anything like that?”
Vanessa shook her head. “No. I’ve looked through the books on the shelves in the living room, and there are several books about herbs, but I haven’t found any journals or … anything like that.”
Grace started to close the door behind her. “Have you been in the attic yet?”
“Yes, several times. Although I haven’t had time to look through the boxes that are up there. I’ve been so busy with the shop and then in the off-season, painting the downstairs and the bedrooms and trying to get the kitchen in order. You’ll have to stop over sometime and see what I’ve done in the house.”
“I’d like that very much.” Grace turned and smiled again. “Yes, I would like that.”
“Anytime. And thanks again for the coffee …”
Grace waved before she hustled down the sidewalk in the direction of her newspaper’s office. Vanessa was shaking her head as she closed the door behind the tiny woman. Well, she took my mind off feeling bad about this place. And it was nice of her to bring me coffee …
Vanessa’s cell began to ring, and she searched her pockets until she found it.
“Hello?”
“I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d take him when you didn’t want him anymore.”
Vanessa laughed.
“You think I’m jesting but I am so serious. I just passed him on Kelly’s Point Drive. He’s seriously fine, so whenever you’re finished with him, just toss him my way.” Steffie paused. “I hope this doesn’t interfere with our friendship.”
“It won’t, because he’ll be leaving for Montana any day now,” Vanessa said.
Steffie sighed. “So I suppose I will need to schedule some consolation time. We’ll be busy at Scoop but I can work it in.”
“What are you talking about? I won’t need consolation.”
“Please. It’s Steffie you’re talking to here. You know you’re going to miss him, Ness.”
“Well, sure. The sex has been great.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“It has been.” Vanessa bit a cuticle and frowned.
“Get off it. You’re not that shallow.”
“What shallow? It’s the truth. And sex matters.”
“What about the rest of it?”
“Yeah, well, the rest of it matters, too,” Vanessa admitted. “But it’s all moot. So it doesn’t matter—it can’t matter—beyond the next few days or however long he’s going to be here.”
“A girl can still dream, Ness,” Stef protested.
“I don’t dare dream, Stef. Any dream involving Grady is bound to have an unhappy ending. I’ve had enough of those.” She caught herself before she could say mor
e. “And speak of the devil; he’s just crossing the street and walking in my direction.”
“Well, I’ll let you go, then, so you can chat with that guy who doesn’t really matter all that much …”
“I didn’t say that, damn it,” she whispered as Grady pushed open the door and came in. She slipped the phone into her pocket, knowing as well as Stef did that she’d been lying through her teeth.
“I thought you were keeping this door locked.” He frowned.
“It was locked. I just opened it to let Miss Grace in. She just left.”
“I had a little talk with her over at Cuppachino when I left here this morning.”
“Well, I hope your conversation with her made more sense than mine did. I asked her about Alice Ridgeway, the woman who used to live in my house. She asked me if Alice was bothering me. As if she expected the woman to still be there. And then she asked me if I’d found any of Alice’s journals. Like she was interested in those.” Vanessa’s hands were on her hips. “I suspect that Miss Grace might have known Alice Ridgeway a lot better than I’d previously thought.”
She paused. “What’s that in your hand?”
“Photocopies of the people we suspect broke into Bling and your house.” He pulled the sheets of paper out of the envelope Hal had given him and laid the photo of Jackie Weston on the counter. “Look familiar?”
“That’s Candice,” she said as she leaned forward. “Her hair wasn’t blond like this—it was brown—but that’s definitely her.”
“And this?” He placed the picture of Edmund Dent next to Weston’s.
“Oh my God, that’s Gene’s cousin.” Her eyes grew wide. “Edmund Dent. That slimy, sleazy little son of a bitch burned my house down. Not that there was anything in there worth saving—I didn’t have very much—but the fact that he thought I was inside—”
“What?”
“Oh, yeah. He thought I was inside the house. That’s why he and Gene’s brother torched the place.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because the doors and windows were all nailed shut. The arson expert testified that there was no reason to do that unless they were trying to trap someone inside.”
“And yet they were still acquitted?”
“The jury couldn’t decide which of the cousins and which of the brothers were involved, even though the circumstantial evidence pointed to Edmund and Gene’s brother, Calvin. I never doubted that it was them. They were both really angry with me for calling the cops on Gene.”
“Well, apparently, Edmund is still pretty pissed at you.”
“I imagine they all blame me for Gene dying in prison.” She leaned on the counter, one hand holding her stomach. “I guess he’s not going to stop until I’m dead, too.”
Grady put his arms around her from behind.
“That is not going to happen,” he told her. “I will see him dead before he lays a hand on you.”
“You can’t watch over me twenty-four hours a day, Grady.” She turned and put her hands on his chest, her fingers toying absently with the collar of his shirt. “Besides, sooner or later, you have a life to go back to. Don’t you have some hikes or something lined up?”
He nodded.
She started to say something else, when she froze momentarily, then looked down.
“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” She grinned and pulled up his shirttail. “I always wanted to be able to say that but never thought I’d get the chance.”
“Hal put me on the force as a temporary part-time officer.”
“He can do that?”
“He’s acting chief in Beck’s absence.”
“He hired you just to watch over me?” She frowned. “That’s not a very good use of taxpayers’ money.”
“We didn’t discuss remuneration, and I don’t expect any. He just wanted to be able to give me a handgun. Just in case.”
“I do not like guns, but if Edmund Dent is in St. Dennis, I’m not going to argue.” She picked up Jackie Weston’s picture. “I feel real bad for her. I could be very wrong, but I didn’t get the sense that she was a bad person. I’m sorry she got involved with that family. They’re not nice people. That bad-news gene—and yes, the pun is intended—seems to run in the family. And I believe he’s been abusing her. All the signs were there.”
“I reviewed his criminal history. Their neighbors called the police several times to report screams and loud banging coming from their apartment, but she always insisted it was the television.”
“I knew it. She just has that defeated look about her.” Vanessa sighed. “If her fingerprints were in the database, she must have been arrested before, right?”
He nodded. “About six months ago, for passing bad checks.”
She looked back at the woman’s photo. “I can’t decide whether or not to be mad at myself for having been so nice to her.”
“If it makes you feel better, I don’t think she had anything to do with the break-in.”
“I hope not. There ought to be a law against men like that.”
“Well, there is, but unfortunately, too many women ignore it.”
“Some habits are very hard to break, Grady. Once you start believing that you deserve what you’re getting, it’s real hard to convince yourself otherwise. It took me a long time to realize that I could make it stop.”
“I’m surprised you ever took that kind of treatment from anyone. You are so strong, so self-assured.”
“It was hard-won, believe me.” She smiled. “Just something else I have to thank Hal for.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you’d seen me when I first arrived in St. Dennis …” She laughed ruefully. “Not just the way I looked, which was way inappropriate for anyone other than a teenager—I was just a mess all the way around. Looking back, it’s a miracle Hal even opened his door when he saw me standing on his front porch.”
She stopped and took a drink from the coffee Grace had brought her.
“I was scared to death that someone in Gene’s family would come looking for me—prophetic, huh? I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Here I was, bunking in with strangers who had no real reason to take me in except the goodness of their hearts, and I sure wasn’t used to people like that. I had no money, I couldn’t pay Hal room and board. I told him I’d get a job, but it was winter and there wasn’t much tourist action. Besides, there wasn’t much I was qualified to do. Long story short, Hal asked me what I would do if I could do anything, anything at all. I told him the only thing I ever dreamed of was owning a little dress shop, since the only job I ever had was in retail. He told me that if I did two things for him, he’d help me to have that little shop. One, I had to take classes at the community college—business classes, math, that sort of thing—and two, I had to go talk to a therapist. He promised me he’d never ask me what we talked about—and he never has, though I often volunteered. Anyway, I went to school and I did really well—surprised the hell out of me, how well I did—and I went to therapy every week for almost two years, which Hal paid for. It helped me to put a lot of things in perspective. Dr. Campbell—she was my therapist—helped me to understand that sometimes, you just have to let certain things go.”
She smiled up at him. “So yes, I am strong now. It took me a while, but I don’t let my past dictate what my future is going to be. That’s one of Dr. Campbell’s mantras, by the way.”
“Smart woman, your Dr. Campbell.”
She nodded. “Very.”
“You really have a lot to be proud of, you know that, right?”
“I got lucky, I had Hal and Beck and Dr. Campbell on my side.”
“I think you’re overlooking the fact that you must have had a lot inside you that you didn’t realize was there. Friends and family and even professional therapists can’t give you what you don’t already have. They can only help you to find what you’ve got and tap into it.”
“That’s what Dr. Campbell always said. Were you in
therapy, too?”
He shook his head. “Psych major.”
“I should have known.”
He laughed and looked around the shop. “Speaking of moving on, let’s finish this up so that you can reopen as soon as the glass is replaced.”
“The glass guy should be here soon.”
“Do you have a large trash container? I can get this broken glass up for you while you try to figure out what’s missing.”
“I already made a list for the insurance agent,” she told him. “He took the money and the dress that Candice—excuse me, Jackie—tried on. She must have been with him, for him to have known which one to take.”
“She could have just described it,” he replied. “I doubt he would have taken her with him on the break-in. There’d be less chance that he’d be seen coming and going if he was by himself.”
“Maybe. I hope you’re right, for her sake. If he’s arrested, he’ll go to prison, so maybe she can get away from him.” She paused on her way to get the trash container for the glass. “I’d like to think that could happen for her. I’d like to believe she’d get another chance to make things right for herself. She didn’t seem like someone who should be involved with someone like that.” She thought over what she’d just said, then laughed ruefully. “Then again, neither was I …”
Diary—
Well, didn’t I say that Grady Shields was a nice young man? Apparently Vanessa thinks so, too. I noticed he hangs around Bling quite a bit, in a most protective manner, I might add. Which is only right, since our chief of police is away on a honeymoon with Grady’s sister—not that that obligates him, of course, but it is lovely that Grady is keeping an eye on Vanessa. But one cannot help but notice there’s nothing brotherly in the way that young man looks at her!
As for Vanessa, she’s come across some of Alice’s old herb books! Oh, yes, I’m dying to get my hands on them, since so much information has been lost to me since dear Alice passed, and let’s face it, my memory isn’t what it used to be. Blessings on Vanessa, she invited me to come to the house and look at those books—I will take her up on that as soon as I can without appearing overly anxious. I did inquire if she’d found any of Alice’s journals, but so far, she says she hasn’t seen them. I cannot even begin to imagine what she might think should she open any one of those and read about the activities that once took place in the very house she now calls home … and more shocking still, the names of those who participated!
The Chesapeake Diaries: Coming Home Page 25