“Think it might a been two of ‘em.”
“Two of them?”
“The scandal.”
“Oh. Thanks, Ned. Thanks a lot. If you remember anything else—”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
Maybe my intuition had told me to take the ferry ride after all.
Chapter 23
I had no idea what I was looking for. That was a sensation I was getting used to. I should have been a pro at it. How many times had Charlie told me, “You’ll know it when you see it?” Sometimes he was right. Sometimes he wasn’t.
I was sitting in the history room of the Gael Island library, combing through telephone ads and poring over maps of long ago Anamcara Island. I observed the differences between the old Anamcara and Anamcara now. The streets of long ago had been designed around a town. The small downtown and the ferry dock were the main focus. Now there were small developments cropping up on our island. Curved roads that led to cul de sacs seemed to be the trend. No focus except for the self-contained development itself. Those weren’t on this map, but I could point to four. I knew the island at least that well. There were more, I was sure, that I didn’t know.
And of course, the lighthouse stood out in all its glory. My lighthouse. Lighthouse Road. My road. What else would it be called? And to think my mother had wanted to sell this property if she had inherited it. That was the reason Winnie had left her home to me. And of course, Joe, my ex husband, also had wanted to dispose of the property as quickly as possible. Another reason Winnie had left it to only me. Matthew and Holly appreciated it. Matthew would visit, more than Holly perhaps. After all, she craved the big city lights. Still, she would find her way home when she needed home.
And Bryn and Cam. My siblings and their families were due for a visit. Maybe I would host a Thanksgiving dinner this year. Something to think about. At another moment. Right now my wandering attention needed to be on this map. Or perhaps it was the phone book.
I flipped the pages of plumbers, photographers, restaurants, sewing machines. We’d had a sewing machine store back in 1950. Gone now. I flipped back to the beginning of the yellow pages. Antiques. Bookstores. One used, one new. Not Max’s. Different location. He must have opened it himself rather than inheriting it from his parents. Hardware. Ewell Hardware. George’s store. Now Randy’s. Newspapers. One. Seth’s.
What was I looking for? I stood up and stretched. Then I walked over to the window and looked out at the water. Just about time for that walk on the beach I’d promised myself.
I folded the map and put it back in its file folder. I closed the 1949 directory. Then the 1950. Then the 1951. Back on their shelves. But another directory caught my eye before I could leave. 1946. Wasn’t that the year Winnie had moved to the island? I opened the directory to the W’s. No Wainwright on the island. She must have moved after it was published.
I was about to put it away, but something stopped me. Instead, I flipped a few pages back, still not knowing what I was looking for. But there it was. T. Tomkins. Two eighteen Lighthouse Road. Chills zippered down my spine. My aunt’s property, my property, had once belonged to Max Tomkins’ parents. Why that was important, I wasn’t sure. Maybe it wasn’t. But for some reason, my intuition had wanted me to know.
I knew where my first stop would be when I returned to Anamcara Island, but I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I had promised myself that walk on the beach.
I parked Winston in his place of comfort on the bluff. Inhaling the fresh air, I headed down the steps to the sand. I walked the length of the beach until it ran into a barricade of rocks. I considered climbing them and exploring the other side, but the fog was coming in and I had left my jacket in the car.
I turned around and headed back down the beach, the fog hovering around my shoulders. Rubbing my arms to warm them, I also quickened my pace. There were not many people on the beach today. It was not like the days of mid summer with spectators sitting on the rocks or the sand, watching the waves, listening to the rush of water or their own inner breath.
I smiled when I saw him. He was wearing his usual gray sweats and trench coat and his tweed hat. He wasn’t running up and down trying to catch the waves today. He was staring at the water instead. I wondered if he was more in his adult mind today or simply too tired to run. Same thing.
He must have sensed me standing there because he turned as he looked up and smiled. “Jenny.”
“Hello, General, how are you today?” I asked him.
“Hello, Jenny.”
I thought it was the General who had spoken, but when Seth walked out of the shadow of the rocks, I realized it was his voice.
“Seth! Hello! I didn’t see you.”
“Pleasantly surprised, I hope.”
“Of course,” I said automatically as I moved toward the two men. I looked from Seth to the General and back again. It was the burly beard that covered half the General’s face that had fooled me and had kept me fooled. But a beard could not disguise a voice.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, staring directly into Seth’s blue eyes. Would I ever be able to trust blue eyes again?
“Tell you what, Jenny?”
“Who he is.”
“What do you mean? I did tell you. He’s—”
“Your father.”
Seth exhaled and his head fell forward as though he had been defeated.
“Why did you make up a story about him working for the newspaper and—?”
“He did work for the newspaper. He owned it.”
“And you call him General.”
“I always have. Everyone does.”
“How convenient. Why didn’t you want me to know?” I shook my head and started backing away from the man with whom I thought I might have a future.
“I don’t know, Jenny. I’m sorry. I guess I—”
“Were you embarrassed?” I was whispering now so the General couldn’t hear. “Because of his Alzheimer’s?”
Seth’s eyes did not meet mine. He nodded, his focus now on his father. I did not want to know what he was thinking. I already recognized the symptoms of guilt. He had, after all, denied that this man was his father. How good could he be feeling about himself right now?
I forced out a quiet good-bye to the General and turned and ran up the stairs to the bluff. Winston was a welcome sight.
* * *
He was wearing his fisherman’s knit sweater. His beard seemed more pepper than salt today. I took that as a good sign. He was busy helping a customer find a book and didn’t notice me come in. I watched him for a few minutes. His paintings of lighthouses should have tipped me off, especially the painting of my lighthouse. But sometimes you don’t see the signs, especially when you don’t know enough to be suspicious. But my intuition must have been. It had led me here.
When his last customer left the store, and he was turning over the open sign, I stepped out from behind the dog training books. “Hello, Max,” I said softly.
“Jenny! I didn’t see you come in. How are you?”
“I’m fine. And you?”
“Fine.” He eyed me suspiciously. His radar was on. “Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it Roxie?”
“No, actually, Roxie is doing quite well.” Despite her father’s inability to see her as the gift she was in his life. I walked over to the painting of my lighthouse.
“When did you paint this one?” I asked.
“That one?” His brow wrinkled as though he were genuinely baffled by my question. “I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“Hunh? Oh, maybe—a while ago.”
“Twenty years ago? Thirty? Or maybe fifty?”
His cheeks were tinged with pink. But still he covered himself well. “A long time ago, is all I remember.”
“Why didn’t you tell me your family once owned my aunt’s property?”
He shrugged. “Never thought to, I guess. What is this about, Jenny?�
��
“Why don’t you tell me, Max? Why don’t you tell me how you used to frequent the lighthouse when you were a boy, how you still sneak up into the lighthouse now. Why don’t you tell me why you hated my aunt?”
“I didn’t hate your aunt!”
According to Alistair, he had. Who did I trust? I stared into his eyes, willing him to be honest with me. “Was it because your parents sold the property to my aunt? Because she owned the lighthouse instead of you?”
“It was mine,” came out in a hushed whisper. “It should have always been mine. No one else loved that lighthouse the way I did.” He leaned back against the stool behind him and suddenly I realized how tired my legs were and how much I would have appreciated a chair at that moment.
“Why did they sell it?”
Without looking at me, he mumbled, “My father . . . lost our savings . . . gambling. He ruined everything. That bastard destroyed—” He looked up at me with softened eyes. “If he hadn’t lost that property, I’d still be painting in the lighthouse today. I’d be happy. And she wouldn’t have left.”
So he blamed the loss of the lighthouse for his wife’s having left and for everything else that had turned out badly in his life. And as far as he was concerned, once he lost the lighthouse, his life was downhill from there. Nothing good ever happened to him. And for that he blamed my aunt. And although he had professed to be her friend, he had resented her, even hated her.
I knew there was more to say to him, but I didn’t trust myself to say it wisely. That was okay. I had decided long ago that if you don’t know what you really want to say or how to say it, wait until you do. It must have been something I had learned from Winnie.
Besides, something else was urging me to get out of his store. When I stepped outside and spotted Winston parked on the street in front of me, I realized exactly what it was. It was only a matter of time before Seth spotted my car from his newspaper office window—assuming he had returned to work after leaving Gael Island. I was not in the mood for a confrontation. I was not even in the mood for an explanation.
Despite the fact that my cupboards were nearly bare, I headed straight for the sanctuary of home. I pulled down the blind on the front door. I had never done that before.
I brewed a cup of tea and built a fire. If Joe could see me now, crossed my mind. What would he think? It had always been a sore subject, my competency. The last hold out was building a fire. I had been lousy at it all my life. I suppose some part of me knew that for our marriage to survive, I needed to need him for something. But in the end, it didn’t matter. All the years I had spent trying to fail at building fires, had been for naught.
And so the first thing I had done upon moving to the island, was to learn to build a fire. Air was the key. But I must have always known that, seeing as how I’m an air sign.
It looked as though dinner was going to be a tuna sandwich and a can of soup. That could wait. Right now, tea and a scone were all the nurturing I needed. I curled up on the couch facing the flames. Winnie’s photo albums were stacked on the table beside her hat boxes filled with diaries. When would I be putting them away, I wondered. Hadn’t this living in the past gone on long enough?
Still, I reached for her final diary. No mention of Maggie. No mention of the loss of her dear friend. Did she even know what had happened to Maggie? For that matter, did I?
I thought I did. I figured she was the one driving the car that went over the cliff. It certainly wasn’t George. Who would be able to tell me that for sure? Lilly. But Lilly was convinced that George had been faithful to her. If that was true, why did her daughters have such animosity towards my aunt, and now me? Knowing myself, I was not going to rest completely until that question was answered.
And there were other questions to answer. Why weren’t Jeffrey Ormsby’s vitals in the computer? Why was his name not in the phone book for two years before his death? Who had stolen the microfiche from Seth’s office? If George Ewell wasn’t Maggie’s love, who was? And, of course, the original question—who had killed George Ewell?
Maybe tuna and soup were not destined to be my dinner. I closed the damper on the woodstove and cleared my cup and plate. Then I slipped into my navy pea coat, grabbed my car keys and purse and headed into town.
Bingo. Eleanor was with Daisy at the market. Two for the price of one.
“The store closes in five minutes,” Daisy sputtered when I walked past her.
Little did she know how perfect that was. I marched up and down the aisles, collecting enough items for dinner, breakfast, and lunch the following day. Then I shoved my cart up to the cash register in under four minutes.
She rang up my items, tossed them into a bag, took my cash, handed me the change and gave me her, now-get-out look. I smiled but didn’t budge. She made a point of walking over to the window and turning over the open sign. Perfect.
“Excellent,” I said.
“What’s excellent?” Eleanor asked, walking over to stand beside her sister.
“My timing. Now that the store is closed, we have time to talk.”
“I don’t think so,” Eleanor said.
“About what?” slipped out of Daisy’s mouth despite Eleanor’s glare.
“About your father.”
They paled before my eyes.
I continued. “Your mother is convinced that your father was faithful to her, so why is it you despised my aunt?”
“How do you know—?” Eleanor’s voice was weak.
“Lilly told me.”
“Our mother discussed this with you?”
“Yes. Quite willingly, I might add.”
The sisters leaned back against the counter behind them. Their defenses were jeopardized the moment I mentioned the union between their mother and me.
“Do you agree with your mother?”
They looked at each other and I knew the answer was no.
“So you believe your father was having an affair with another woman.”
They looked back at me and nodded simultaneously.
“Do you think it was my aunt?” Before they could respond, I said, “Or her friend. Maggie?”
Eleanor swallowed hard against her anger. “Why are you insisting on dredging up the past? Why must you subject our mother to more pain?”
“Your mother is stronger than you think. A lot stronger. And she’s part of the reason I’m trying to reveal the truth.”
“What are you talking about?” Daisy asked.
“I’m talking about your father’s death. I’m trying to find out who killed him.”
“Nobody killed him!” Daisy yelled. “At least not intentionally. If he hadn’t been running off with that wanton woman—”
“You believe he and Maggie were running away together and drove off the cliff.”
They looked at me as though I had stated the obvious. I didn’t speak for a moment, and it was Eleanor who first realized why. “That’s not what happened? Is that what you’re telling us?”
“Yes.”
“So, what did happen?” Daisy asked. “Or what do you think happened?”
“I don’t know what happened. All I know is that your father was killed and buried beneath my aunt’s rose garden.”
Their hands shot up to cover their mouths. If I was at all competent at analyzing the gamut of emotions they felt in the next two minutes, they ranged from shock to horror to fear to relief.
“You mean our father was faithful to our mother?” Daisy asked.
“I don’t know. But I think I might find the answer to that when I figure out who killed him.”
“If you find out that he wasn’t faithful—” Eleanor started.
“I won’t breathe a word.”
She nodded. I had given her the correct answer. “Thank you.”
“You can tell us though,” Daisy said.
I smiled. “Are you sure?”
Their response did not come quickly. They looked at each other before saying yes.
“We�
�re sorry,” Eleanor said softly.
“For the way we’ve treated you,” Daisy added.
“I know.”
“If you need any help—”
“I know where to come.” There was one more question I had for the Ewell sisters, but on the fringe of repairing our relationship, did I dare ask it?
“What?” Daisy asked, eyeing me cautiously. Had I lost my knack for keeping my thoughts hidden?
“Did either of you happen to break into the newspaper office recently?”
“What?”
“Some microfiche was stolen from the critical time period. Nineteen forty nine and fifty-one.”
They shook their heads in all innocence. Maybe I was naive or perhaps I was coming down from the euphoria of having relieved the animosity between us, but I believed them. At least, I did until they exchanged concerned looks.
“How about someone you know?” I asked.
“Not that we know of,” Daisy said.
Eleanor shrugged in agreement.
They might not know who had broken into the newspaper microfiche file, but they certainly had their suspicions. They did, after all, have two devoted husbands.
Chapter 24
“I know this is a painful subject, Myrtle, but I really need some answers.” I had found her at the cafe next door to the newspaper office. She was halfway through her cup of coffee and cranberry marmalade muffin.
“I understand,” she mumbled, “and I’d like to help, but it’s difficult. You understand, don’t you, Jenny?”
I wondered if the subject of her husband would ever be a comfortable one. “Just one question, Myrtle. I need to know why Jeffrey’s name wasn’t in the 1949, 1950, or 1951 telephone books.”
She sighed and her shoulders sagged. I hated doing this to her, but I also knew that until she faced it head on, she wouldn’t be able to get past it. “He didn’t live with me anymore so I put the telephone in my own name.”
“Where did he live?” That was more than one question. Hopefully she wasn’t counting.
“He lived on Gael Island.”
“Because?”
Her wrinkles seemed to multiply before my eyes. “Because he was in the mental health institution there,” she sputtered.
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