by Dana Cameron
“How could he have known I would be interested in borrowing his boat? And he would have been supremely stupid to give me the boat he’d tampered with. Jesus, Bucky, leave it alone. It was a dumb accident that I got the boat first, that’s all.” I got dressed hurriedly and began to brush out my hair; Bucky was looking through the change on the bureau, sorting it out by denomination.
“Of course I’m going to tell Brian,” I said, working out a huge tangle. “I will always tell Brian everything. I just think an accident like this doesn’t need to be blown out of proportion.”
“And he’d take it better when he hears it with a couple of beers in him and you looking dry and warm and safe and making light of it all.”
“Yeah, well, there’s no point in making things out to be worse than they are, my little drama queen, is there?”
She watched as I ran the towel over my hair again; there was a lot of it and it took some work to get it dry. I began on another tangle.
“You should cut that hair of yours. It’s nothing but trouble.”
“Thank you for your opinion. I happen to think long hair suits me.”
“It doesn’t, really.” Bucky swept all the quarters in the stack into her hand and pocketed them.
“Do you mind?” I shoved the dimes away from my sister before she could get them too. “God almighty.”
Bucky wasn’t a bit deterred, and not embarrassed either. “It makes you look too old-fashioned, even just plain old. I think it’s just vanity, or maybe it’s something to put people off. You know, when it’s all pulled back and all, it gives you a rather fierce look. Quite the disciplinarian, or maybe that’s what you’re going for.” Now she was rooting around in my dresser drawers. “How old is this lipstick?”
“I don’t know, last summer, I think. Could you please just—”
“I never see you wearing any.” She tried it on, cocked her head trying to decide whether she approved of the color. I took it away from her and shooed her out of the room.
“Enough. I don’t need your help with my marriage, I don’t need your help with beauty tips—” I called through the door.
“That’s what you think.”
“—And I especially don’t need your help making trouble. God, Bucks, you really are a pain in the ass.”
“You’re right there; you’re good at making trouble all on your own. And I’m not the one messing around in boats, Ratty.”
“Yes, yes, trust me when I say the Wind in the Willows reference already occurred to me. Now just stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” I thumped down the stairs. Meg was still in the kitchen and could hear Bucky’s voice as well as I could as my sister called downstairs:
“Isn’t that what everyone always says to you, Emma?”
I waited until Brian came home to tell him what had happened; there was no use in getting him worried at work when no real harm had been done.
“Isn’t that the house with the big dogs you’re always talking about? The ones that bark all the time?”
“Yeah. They were there, but the owner was too, so it wasn’t any problem.”
Bucky had come in just in time to hear Brian ask about the dogs. “You didn’t tell me about any dogs,” she protested. “What else did you leave out in the version you told me?”
“Nothing, Bucky. Take a hike.”
I stole a quick look at Brian, who was frowning deeply. “Hmmm.”
I told them about the change that had come over Claire when I mentioned Aden. Brian didn’t seem much more pleased, but at least he wasn’t thinking about the dogs anymore.
“I wonder what happened there.” He threw some diced carrots into the coleslaw that he was making.
“I don’t know. I don’t particularly care, either, now that I know she’s going to be off my back.”
After we ate, the seven of us sprawled around the porch, drinking beer until the bugs drove us inside, and I took the excuse to head up to my room early. I was unbelievably tired and flopped onto the bed, relieved at last to have a little space to myself. The day had been so chaotic that I felt as though I’d been through at least two days in the space of one. I was so tired I didn’t even pick up the book I was reading, but turned out the light to think while I waited for Brian to get done in the bathroom. Who would have wanted to sabotage the boat? Did it have anything to do with Justin’s death? I couldn’t think about that now: I tried to occupy myself by making plans about the site, when we could get back out there. Putting two or three more units to the north of the house might reveal whether there was an outbuilding over there, perhaps a storehouse or a stable or something. There was an outline of a structure I couldn’t make out on the insurance map, and it was worth investigating. Even if nothing appeared, the units would give us a couple of windows onto what was going on over there. Maybe there’d even be enough to talk the Chandler House people into letting me continue working on the site after this survey was done. Did I know for sure that Justin had been killed? Maybe there was so much blood because of….
I yawned and was surprised to find that I’d closed my eyes. I rolled over onto my side, curled up a little, and went back to my plans.
If the outbuilding was near the way down to the water, perhaps that’s where a counting house was. Or maybe boating equipment was stored there, oars and ropes and such…I must remember to look into the possibility of renting a boat for the students at the end of the dig. Haven’t been for a sail in, what, years…out on the water…in the sun….
Something warm and soft pressed against my side and I started awake, legs shooting straight out. I heard a yelp and a thump and I realized that it was Brian; he’d kissed the spot just above the waistband of my pajamas where my T-shirt had hiked up.
“Oh God, Bri! Please tell me I didn’t kick you,” I said, sitting up.
“No, you just scared me. I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were asleep.”
“I didn’t know I was either. I’m sorry, come to bed.”
“Okay.”
But instead of walking all the way around to his side, Brian climbed in over me, making more of a production of it than was actually required. There was some rolling around and a lot of kissing before he actually got over to his side, and then he sighed.
“Well, I’m wide awake now. I’m coming back over there. It’s much nicer over there, where you are.” He scooted over and rested his head on my stomach, looking up at me, and walked two fingers up my arm. “Much nicer.”
“Hey!” I whispered, pretending to slap his hand away. “We can’t do that, not with a houseful of people….” But I wasn’t all that sleepy anymore, either, and something about all I’d been through earlier in the day suddenly made Brian’s suggestion that much more attractive.
“They’re practically outside and Bucky sleeps like the dead. You can’t tell me you never learned how to sneak around with boys without getting caught back in high school.”
“I was a good girl in high school,” I whispered, primly and a little untruthfully. “But I’m always ready to learn.”
The next morning, I called Detective Bader and got the word that it was all right for me to return to the site. When I asked him if he’d learned anything, he only said, “We’re pursuing every lead at the moment and treating the case as a homicide.” An unreasonable part of me pouted, believing that having handled myself so well on the discovery of Justin’s body, I should get more than that, but I thanked him and hung up.
Leaving Bucky again asleep in the car when we got to the site, I was surprised to see Perry Taylor was back at work. Her arm was in a sling, which she’d covered up with a pretty colored silk scarf, the sort that is sold in expensive museum shops. I’d given my mother one just like it years ago, as a birthday present. Perry looked surprisingly well for her ordeal, maybe a little pale, but she brushed off my concern.
“I’m fine, just a little shook up, you know? When I stop to think about what happened….” She swallowed. “I decided I just had to get back to work.
Put as much of that out of my mind as possible.” Then she smiled. “The great thing is that they gave me some absolutely outstanding painkillers. I highly recommend codeine and acetaminophen for putting your cares behind you.”
I laughed. “Good thing you don’t have to drive, with those. If the bus route had changed, you’d be out of luck.”
Bucky showed up then, looking a little groggy.
“There’s always a cab, and Fee would be happy to give me a lift if I asked.” Perry shrugged. “But I do enjoy the walk down to the corner. And I’m not the only one glad that the bus route hasn’t changed. So’s Daniel, that was a real victory for him and his father. A lot of folks at their factory would have been out of luck.” Perry wrinkled her brow. “But I understand that you had a little mishap yesterday too. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, I am.” I looked down at my hands, which were a sorry collection of scratches; I was down to just one bandage on the deepest cut. I lowered my voice. “It just seems as though the Historical Society is going through a really bad time at the moment. First with you, then Justin, and—”
Perry’s eyes welled up and she caught her breath. “I just can’t believe that,” she said. “I mean—Justin? Who in God’s name would want to hurt him? There’s no reason, no reason at all.” She wiped her nose on a little old-fashioned lace handkerchief.
“I’m sorry, Perry,” I said.
She was finding it difficult to stop crying, and it was obvious she’d been doing a lot of that lately. “No, Emma, it’s not your fault. We live in an ugly world, and it looks like it found its way to Stone Harbor at last.” She put her hanky away. “It’s going to be a private service, just family, a few close friends. His mother is in a state of shock.”
“I can imagine.”
She checked her watch. “Damn. Almost time for the first group; there’s no chance they’ll stay away today, that’s for sure. I thought we would still be closed, but after two days already, Fee is ready to go berserk. How’s my mascara? No raccoon eyes?”
“No, you’re good,” I said. “Time for me to get down to it too.”
Perry turned to go, and I heard an odd little clicking noise. Bucky heard it too, but judging from the puzzled expression, she couldn’t place it either, so we went and found the others ready to start the day’s work.
It took us all a while to settle into it. The students couldn’t help looking over to the area where Justin had been when they went to sift their soil. There was nothing left to show that there had been an investigation there, save footprints that weren’t ours and trampled grass, muddy in the areas where Justin had been: Someone had hosed down the area to remove the last traces of blood. It was more than enough to be suggestive.
The rhythm of work eventually took over, and when the visitors began to peep over the fence, or line up along the barricade, that provided the rest of the necessary distraction. It occurred to me as I answered the questions that all of the visitors could be divided into distinct categories, based on how each group perceived the past. Some embraced it, because they thought that it was a better time—more elegant, more polite, more religious, simpler, less cynical, less vicious—than the present, though I could have given them examples otherwise in every case. Some scoffed at it, rejecting it for being unenlightened, brutish, ignorant, too false, too coy, too harsh, and I could have made arguments either way there, as well. Some people wandered through the house tour, eyes glazed over, only there because it was on the checklist, or because they were supposed to, or because they couldn’t find where they really meant to be; these treated the past as some people treat an older relative, visiting only out of duty or obligation, but taking no joy in it. Other people were eagerly lapping up every morsel, possibly because it fed their own images of the past, their own theories of local history, their own notions of what life should be like. Sometimes these were indiscriminate, never questioning anything they were told, never moving past the spiel of the tour; some of them, on the other hand, were combative, actively arguing with the guide over interpretations, dates, facts. There were still others who were there out of a sense of curiosity, some who were there because they got on the wrong bus, and some who just had a whim and decided to try something new. What you take from the study of the past, I decided as the crowds thinned toward lunchtime, was pretty much what you brought to it. As far as I was concerned, any difference between humans in the past and today and the future would only be a matter of degree.
The last of the crowd consisted of a young girl and her parents, who made as if to move on to more interesting sights in town. The girl balked, wanting to stay. She’d asked a couple of pertinent questions about how we date artifacts, and I let her handle the sherd of the day, a nice piece of eighteenth-century Rhenish stoneware with dark blue and purple glaze. I realized she was at the age, ten or maybe a bit older, when most archaeologists get the bug.
“Do you think you’d like to do this?” I asked at last.
She seemed to think about it for a minute. “It looks like hard work.”
“It is, but it’s a lot of fun too. You can learn a lot.”
She cast another eye over the students, then nodded. “Yeah, maybe. I like history and that.”
“Come on, Ashley, we’re going to be late for lunch,” her mother urged her. Over Ashley’s head, she mouthed the words, “Thank you,” to me, which made me glad I’d spent the time with her daughter.
As Ashley and her parents went past us, heading back toward the parking lot, I heard Ashley confide to her mother, “I think I want to be an archaeologist, Mom.”
Her mother replied in no uncertain terms. “Not if I have anything to do with it. You’re going to get a college education, missy!”
My face froze and I clamped my hand over my mouth. I was torn between horror, annoyance, and amusement. Meg and Rob were exchanging delighted looks and quickly shared the line with the others. Considering that between them they had four bachelor’s degrees and three master’s, and were working toward adding a few more letters after their names, I realized that, like the differences between past and present, the way people viewed archaeology was only a matter of degrees.
I told Bucky, who had just looked up and was unaware of the joke. “That’s why I went into archaeology,” I explained, grinning. “It was to avoid all the studying.”
“That’s stupid,” she said, frowning. “People should know better.”
“It’s just ignorance, Megabucks. It’s just silliness, it’s no big thing.”
“Still.” My sister hunkered back down over her work. I sighed; she could be so impatient with anyone who wasn’t similar to her, dismissing whole chunks of life as it went on around her because it didn’t immediately appeal to her.
I sighed. “Hey, Meg, how close are you to wrapping up in that pit feature?”
“I’m almost done. Why?”
“I’m thinking that when you get to a good stopping place, I want you and Bucky to open up a couple of units over on the other side of the house. We’ve got permission to do one or two tests over there, beyond where the tourists are allowed, and I’d like to drop a couple of quick ones, just to see what that mark on the insurance map could be. Okay?”
“You got it.”
Perry had finished up with another group of visitors around the back of the house. I heard Daniel Voeller’s voice as he called to her. “Perry! You left these in the bathroom.”
I glanced over and saw him hand her the brown bottle with her painkillers. She shook her head as she took them from him, and looked around, catching my eye. She shrugged, self-deprecatingly. “Thanks. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Same thing that’s wrong with the rest of us, I’ll bet,” Daniel said. “Take it easy on yourself, Perry. You’ve had a bad time lately.”
“Thanks. You know, I really have. You just don’t have any idea. Daniel, when you get done talking to Fee, could I have a word with you? It’s about the….”
She trailed
off delicately and whatever it was, Daniel took the hint. “Sure. I still don’t know what I can do for you, but when I’m done with Fee and before I see Aden, we can take a moment.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
They both entered through the back of the house, and I got back to work.
It was interesting to watch how history was told at the Chandler House. There was a standard spiel to go along with every room, of course, and when the windows were open, the smell of grass and salt air and roses from the garden wafting over us, we could almost recite the history as the visitors got it by rote: Justice Matthew Chandler had built the house in 1723–24; his family was large, with as many as eight children living at home at one time with his wife and servants; that he was an important member of the community; that part of the house was burned in 1738, etcetera. But I noticed that each guide put a slightly different spin on his or her version of the house’s history and what we were doing to add to it.
Fee emphasized the beauty of the house and the objects that would have filled it, now only partially represented by reproductions and similar objects. She tended to play up what I thought was a very romantic idea of the past and the house, although she didn’t actually make any factual mistakes when it came to the family’s history.
Perry also focused on the things in the house, but then added information about what the objects represented at the time, and filled in more of the town’s history, so that the Chandlers were a part of the community. I did notice that her family’s name showed up on more than one occasion: “Other families, including the Taylors, Bradleys, and Tapleys, would have had similarly fine wares.” It was almost as if she was showing off her family’s house, the number of times she made such comparisons.
And every time Perry came by that day, we heard that clicking noise again.
Ted, on the other hand, seemed to go the social history route, filling in the blanks that the others left behind, suggesting how the Chandlers would have made their money, what the harbor would have looked like filled with fishing boats, and how differently the wharf would have looked as an industrial area rather than a tourist area. He surprised me by adding Margaret Chandler to the narrative, pointing out that she would have been a busy person with her large family and the duties of the wife of an important man; he included the idea of how many servants would have been needed to run a house of this size or work in the family warehouses, even if he did suggest that Matthew was a capitalist ogre.