15 Minutes of Flame

by Christin Brecher

  “Oh, no. I forgot. I’m sorry,” I said. “Did she talk your ear off?”

  “No,” he said. “She talked the ear off of Patience Cooper. I found her in The Shack, communing with the spirits.”

  “She broke through the gate?” I said. “It’s supposed to be closed.”

  “I guess so,” he said. “Tinker was actually the real trouble. After Brenda left, I realized he’d disappeared, but I didn’t want to bother you during the excavation. I looked for him for forever, and in the end, he was on the roof of my car. Then, when I went to get him, I saw that I had a flat tire. So I put him inside and got a tow truck. You know what he did? He took a nap, right away. Can’t imagine why he wanted to come with me in my car if that was all he wanted to do.”

  “Maybe because Brenda was able to have a chat with Patience,” I said. “Cats have a sixth sense, right?”

  As I was listening to Peter, I had watched Clemmie talk to the police officer, who seemed happy to have any rational conversation at this point. Up until Clemmie had begun to speak, Kyle had been singing, but he quieted down as the reality of the situation sank in.

  “I need your help,” I said.

  “Sure,” said Peter. “What’s up?”

  “Kyle Nelson wants to give you a statement. He’s being interrogated by the police right now about Robert Solder’s murder.”

  “Robert Solder was murdered?” said Peter.

  I caught him up while I watched Kyle, who was reconciling with the officer. I could tell that Clemmie was giving Kyle an alibi for the murder. And even though the officer’s back was to me, I gathered he asked the same question of Kyle that I had asked Clemmie: Had anyone asked him to cut the tree so that it could be toppled over? Kyle’s vein popped up from his neck again, but Clemmie put her arm through his. He kept his temper, shook his head, and a moment later, the policeman turned around and left.

  Kyle and Clemmie headed toward me. I put Peter on speaker.

  “I’ve got a comment,” said Kyle when I told him why I had called Peter. He spoke through my open window without waiting for me to get out.

  “OK,” said Peter.

  “My comment is this,” said Kyle. “Whoever killed Robert Solder, I’m sure you had your reasons. I’m not one to interfere with another man’s business. When your affairs show up at my front door, however, you need to know you’ve messed with the wrong guy. You’d better watch out, or there will be another murder on this island.”

  “Got it,” said Peter.

  “OK, man,” said Kyle, fairly calm for someone whose pulsing veins were just starting to recede.

  “I’m sure the police asked you already,” I said, “but where’s the axe you used?”

  “Left it with Old Holly,” said Kyle. “Stella, I hate to say this, but you might want to talk to your cousins. Docker was bragging about having some unexpected cash on him when I saw him last night. Maybe someone asked for their help cutting the tree.”

  “You think they’d do something like that?” I said, shaking my head.

  “Not in a million years,” said Kyle. “But murder has to be taken seriously.”

  “Meantime,” said Clemmie, “we’re twenty minutes late to have lunch with my auntie.”

  I took the hint and said good-bye. I realized that if I wanted to solve the mystery of how and why the tree had been left half-chopped, I would need to speak with my cousins again. I hated to admit it, but I feared what they might say. After all, they had taken on some debt recently to buy the new truck. What if they had unwittingly helped a murderer?

  “Meet me at the airport for a snack?” I said to Peter as I drove away.

  “See you in ten,” he said.

  I drove down the street to the airport restaurant, Crosswinds. They have the best dinner specials, but it was too early, and anyway I was so hungry I would eat anything. I opted for a grilled cheese and French fries, plus a chocolate shake.

  “So, Brenda Worthington,” I said when our food arrived. “She tried to speak to Patience?”

  “Oh, she was more than talking to Patience,” said Peter, popping a French fry into his mouth. “I was on my way to the car, ready to meet up with you, when I heard a thump in The Shack. I thought maybe one of the Girl Scouts was checking things out, so I headed back there before hitting the road. Sure enough, Brenda was inside. She freaked me out. When I walked in, I pushed the door back loudly, but she didn’t seem to notice me. She was sort of humming while talking. I can’t explain it. But then she told me she had been speaking with Patience, and I had scared her soul away.”

  “Did you ask what Patience was saying to her?” I said.

  “Of course, I did,” he said. “I’m a reporter. It’s not often I get to walk in on someone chatting with a ghost. I even got a picture.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Please don’t tell me that she had her arm around a ghost.”

  “No, but you’re not too far off,” said Peter, pulling out his phone.

  He flashed the phone to me to reveal a photo of Brenda Worthington. Topping off her usual fashion statement of slightly worn and dated leisurewear, she was wearing a Quaker bonnet.

  “She thought the hat would help her connect with Patience. When I walked in, she was telling Patience about overdevelopment on the Island, but not to worry because the Quaker cemetery had not been desecrated.”

  “Did Patience have anything to share with her?” I said.

  Peter opened his notebook.

  “And I quote,” he said, “ ‘Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.’ ”

  He laughed, then stopped when he noticed me staring at him.

  “She mentioned a baby?” I said.

  It was really odd that Brenda would mention a baby, but I found myself thinking about the diary of Mary Backus and her concern for the Coopers’ offspring. I seriously doubted that Brenda had spoken to Patience, but the connection was unsettling.

  “I need to visit Emily,” I said about my best friend.

  “Really?” said Peter, sipping the edges of a root-beer float. “I just told you that I found a woman talking to a ghost, and the next thing that comes to mind is a trip to see your best friend?”

  “I think there’s a connection between Robert Solder’s death and the discovery of Patience Cooper and Nancy Holland. It’s all connected to the story of these two friends. This feels like a murder of passion, not something that was premeditated.”

  “Why?” said Peter.

  I knew he wasn’t disagreeing with me so much as encouraging me to think through my idea.

  “Yesterday we found Patience Cooper, long thought to have stolen money from her friends, but who, as it turns out, was a murder victim. Then today we confirm that her friend, Nancy, died down in the well and Solder told us all that he found a map beside her, perhaps a treasure map. A few minutes later, the map was gone, and Solder was dead. By the way, Andy doesn’t want anyone to know it’s missing. That’s off the record.”

  “The map might still be down in the well,” said Peter.

  “I don’t think so, because in a rare moment of agreement, Solder and Bellows both seemed to think it was an important find,” I said. “If Solder bothered to bring up the bonnet, why not bring the item of real value with him too? Why leave the map behind?”

  “And how can Emily help?”

  “I’m thinking two good girlfriends can figure out what two other good girlfriends had been thinking.”

  “I see what you’re saying, but mind if I pass on the trip to Emily’s?” said Peter. “I’d like to go to the office. I have a couple of deadlines to meet.”

  “Are you going to print Kyle’s quote?” I said.

  “Not unless the police make real trouble for him,” he said. “Otherwise, we might end up goading a murderer into disliking Kyle.”

  “I like how you’re thinking, Bailey,” I said.

  A few minutes later, I was at my car. As I began to pull away, Peter waved his hands for me to stop. He jogged up to me.
r />   “Forget something?” I said.

  “Yup,” he said.

  He leaned into the car to give me a kiss. Then, in true gumshoe fashion, he headed to his car. I smiled all the way to Emily’s house.

  Chapter 13

  Emily Hussey has been my best friend since preschool, but I hadn’t seen her in three days. Her baby, the sweet Victoria, had caught a cold last week and had spread it to both of her doting parents like the plague. In fact, Emily’s last Instagram post was an update on how the red patch under her nose was healing nicely. I decided she was past the chicken-soup phase, but on the way over to her house, I picked up some clam chowder from the Brotherhood. We have more choices for a good cup of clam chowder than you can begin to imagine on Nantucket, and everyone has their favorite. Emily loves the creaminess of the Brotherhood’s recipe.

  My dear friend was propped up in her bed when I arrived. She looked like she’d run a marathon, but Victoria slept soundly beside her, breathing easily, with the look of a cherub about her. I oohed and aahed silently over how cute she was.

  “We don’t have to whisper,” she said. “Vicky can sleep through a tornado. Getting her to sleep is a nightmare, but once she’s in dreamland, we’re the luckiest parents on earth. The other day, Neal hung the new medicine cabinet—”

  “The one from Pottery Barn went on sale?” I said, rising to take a look at their newest upgrade.

  Emily and Neal bought a small, gray-shingled house close to the elementary school after they were married. Emily is always thinking ahead. The place was modest and somewhat cookie-cutter when they moved in, but slowly Emily has added her magic touch to make their house unique and welcoming. The medicine cabinet had been on her list for a while. The minute it went on sale, she was ready.

  “It looks so good!” I said.

  “Thanks. Neal was so proud to hang it up, and then in the middle of the night, after Vicky fell asleep next to us, the whole thing fell from the wall. Just fell right off. I told him to read the directions, but two years of Boy Scouts, and he thinks he could build a house if he had to. Anyway, Vicky slept through the whole thing.”

  “Speaking of the scouts,” I said, settling into a gorgeous chintz club chair in red florals that had been a great discovery at the Hospital Thrift Shop, “I have news.”

  “Tell me,” she said, removing the lid on her cup of chowder with a satisfied smile. “We’ve been so cooped up. I don’t know anything that’s going on.”

  “Put your hands over Vicky’s ears,” I said. “I don’t want any of this to enter her dreams.”

  I told Emily the story of how I’d moved into the Morton house and of finding Patience Cooper’s skeleton.

  “Setting a good example to the girls while keeping an eye on your skeleton,” said Emily with an approving nod.

  “Exactly,” I said. “Can you imagine us not wanting to be in a house with a skeleton at their age? Very disappointing.”

  Emily nodded in agreement.

  When I finished telling her everything, from my discovery of Patience to the murder of Solder, Emily put her cup on the table and rubbed Victoria’s back while she thought. Emily is great at seeing the big picture. It’s how she works on events for her premier party-planning business. She sees the whole event in her mind as if it was finished and then makes a list of everything she needs to do to get there.

  “First,” she said, “I’d like to say that I wish you had picked last week to have made this discovery. The fact that you waited until I was bedridden is a betrayal of our friendship.”

  I smiled at her with some sympathy. It was hard for this woman of action to sit still.

  “Second,” she said, “I know you like the connection to this cryptic map, but I think the police have a good point that this has something personal to do with Solder. As you said, you heard Leigh fighting with him on the way down the well. You know that Bellows would love to jump in and take the lead on the excavation. And Fontbutter needs a win too. I hate to think of Agnes or Old Holly being a murderer, but you make a compelling argument for everyone. And none of those motives has anything to do with a map.”

  “And yet there was an important discovery this morning, a map—a treasure map—that has gone missing. As my oldest and dearest friend, only you can brainstorm about this with me. After all, this is, at heart, a story about friends.”

  “Alright. We’ll take the map route. Has anyone even seen it?”

  “Only Leigh Paik,” I said. “If we believe that no one took the map from Solder, that means he didn’t bring it with him when he ascended the well. Why not bring the map up with him?”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” she said, her curiosity about the matter appropriately sparked.

  “Thank you.”

  “So you think someone took it when they killed Solder?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. That’s why I want to take a step back and review the story of the girls,” I said. “Imagine if you and I were Patience and Nancy, and Jedediah washed up on Nantucket, and we both fell in love with him.”

  “Not an issue. Sisters before misters,” said Emily.

  “Exactly. The Petticoat Row ladies were like sisters to each other,” I said. “Nancy and Patience grew up together, shared the same hopes and dreams. Then Patience marries Jedediah and takes her friend’s money. What’s that all about?”

  “The heart wants what the heart wants?” said Emily.

  “I mean, this was an upright member of Quaker society. Would you have ever done that to me?”

  “Billy Meyers and fourth grade all over again,” she said.

  We both laughed.

  “OK,” I said, “Billy Meyers and his striped T-shirt aside.”

  “I still remember that shirt,” she said. “Let’s face it. We were in love with the shirt.”

  “But within two weeks we were over him,” I said. “It was no fun eating lunch by ourselves, right? But Jedediah shows up in some hot shirt, on a whaling ship he joined somewhere in the South Pacific. He was new blood.”

  “Maybe they were tired of the schoolboys they’d grown up with,” she said. “Imagine if we only had the boys we grew up with to choose from.”

  “And maybe a bunch of Patience and Nancy’s potential suitors were on whaling voyages.”

  “And they’re not getting any younger. And they want to get a move on.”

  “And then this good-looking guy shows up.”

  “OK,” said Emily. “So here we are. You and I. Desperate.”

  “Lonely.”

  “Lonely and desperate. There’s only so many nights we can hang out, embroidering, without longing for someone’s warm hands down our sides.”

  “And Jedediah probably sensed it right away. He flirts with us. Maybe he meets you and you do that thing you do with your hair, and you guys make a date.”

  “And then you catch his eye because you do that black ponytail, sexy-mama-body thing where you ignore your assets because you’re all caught up in your craft and your business.”

  “I don’t do that,” I said.

  “Wow,” said Emily. “Almost two hundred years later, and Jedediah is still getting best friends to fight.”

  “So, what would we do?” I said.

  “Listen,” said Emily. “If we were that short on men and Jedediah really liked you, I’d get over it.”

  “Patience’s father had recently died. By marrying Patience, Jed got a woman, a house, and a small candle-making business out back. You—Nancy—had family.”

  “Yeah, out by Old Holly. I might have been prettier,” she said with a wink, “but you had the goods.”

  “Then we get to the money. How did they get caught up in the robbery of the Petticoat Ladies’ funds?” I said. “I can’t really believe that either of them took it, but they certainly both seemed to have died because of it. But why? They each had a comfortable life and a strong community with wonderful friends.”

  Emily sighed.

  “You’d never rob me,” she
said. “I’d never rob you. That’s not what best friends do. Jedediah was behind the robbery.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  We sat in contemplation for a while.

  “Maybe he couldn’t get through a February,” I said.

  Emily looked at me sympathetically. A couple of years ago, I thought I might have found my soul mate. Like Jedediah, he was a wash-ashore, someone from the mainland. Once February had hit, however, he’d left. The fact that Peter hadn’t lived through a February on Nantucket yet was always on my mind. As much as I loved him, something always held me back a bit. I knew it was because we needed to get through a winter together.

  “So, winter comes, and he misses his days in the South Pacific,” I said. “That could be it. Patience doesn’t want to leave; he does. When he finds out that Nancy has entrusted her with lots of money, he kills Patience and runs away with the goods.”

  “Wouldn’t signing up for another whaling voyage have been a lot easier?” said Emily. “Patience could have continued to work. Quaker women were encouraged to go to school, run businesses. Aside from wearing whale-boned corsets, they were pretty progressive women.”

  “Greed,” I said. “He had the Petticoat Row money in hand. He wanted to get off the island. He saw an opportunity and took it.”

  Victoria stirred. For a moment, we both froze for fear we’d ruined her nap.

  “Did Solder say what was on the map?” said Emily when we were sure Victoria would not wake.

  I tried to remember.

  “He said there was an X near what looked like a grassy area of the island. But he didn’t know where the X was, because he wasn’t familiar with the geography.”

  “Unusual thing to embroider,” said Emily.

  “That’s what Bellows said.”

  “And there was no indication of what the X signified?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I guess we assumed it was connected to the money. Solder said there was a phrase across the top: ‘My Love, My Treasure.’ Love and treasure in one phrase. What if the treasure represented something else? Not money?”