A Vineyard Summer

by Jean Stone

  Claire’s eyes widened and she let go of the strap. “Oh! Let me see!” Her speech was still a little slurred; her right arm still looked unsteady, but she managed to reach out and grab the treasure from Annie’s hand. Yes, Annie thought. Her progress is apparent.

  “Oh, Annie,” Claire said while thumbing through the pages. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I’m so glad you like it. I talked the printer into giving us a few extra pages at no added cost. The photos are all online, too.”

  “Thank Francine, please. Will these be at Sally Jones’s house?” She stammered a little when she said, “Sally Jones’s house,” but Annie understood. Sally’s was the designated “starting” point, where visitors would receive their official stickers to show that they had paid.

  “Yes. Her table will be by her front gate, and she’ll start greeting visitors at eight o’clock.”

  “I wish I could get out of here.”

  “You will be missed. But everyone sends their good wishes for a fast recovery, and they say they fully expect you to be back in charge next year. Even Monsieur LeChance said you will not be able to shirk your duties so easily again.” She didn’t add that Claire might not be able to count on her help because Annie might not still live there.

  Claire giggled. “I’m sorry I won’t hear Monsieur play his violin. Earl says I have a crush on him.”

  “Do you?”

  With a small wink, Claire said, “Oui, oui. A petite one.”

  Annie recognized the sweet reminder that romance, or even the dream of it, could bring a smile at any age. She promised not to tell Earl, then she reviewed the details for the preparations, and was pleased to answer yes to each of Claire’s slow, but deliberate, questions.

  When they were finished, Annie asked Claire how well she knew Roger Flanagan.

  The woman sat back in her chair. “We’re not friends. They’ve always schmoozed with people who are like them. Not people like us. Dana is just like them.” She paused a moment, as if searching for the right words. Then she said, “For a few summers she was with that Littlefield boy. And she had that older brother. I always forget about him.”

  Older brother? Annie scowled. “I thought Dana was an only child.”

  “No, there was an older boy; I don’t remember his name. He was nicer than the rest of them. He and Taylor were great pals for a while.”

  Annie winced. “Taylor? You mean . . . our Taylor?” One of these days she supposed she really ought to ask the woman’s last name. Maybe Kevin knew.

  A look of disbelief passed over Claire’s face. “You don’t know?”

  “I didn’t even know that the Flanagans had a son.”

  “Well, the boy is dead now. It was ruled an accidental drowning. But there wasn’t a body. So no one could be sure.”

  “He died on the island?”

  “In the water. He and Taylor had gone fishing. She came back. He didn’t.”

  That was news to Annie. But did it have anything to do with Fiona being poisoned? “Were they caught in a storm or something?”

  Claire shook her head. “The police said he accidentally fell overboard. Taylor was on the bow, and he’d been on the stern. She didn’t realize he was gone until it was too late.”

  Her words had grown more slurred; Annie didn’t want to wear her out. She stood and prepared to leave, just as Claire tipped her head back, drew in a long breath, then said, “Taylor couldn’t very well dive in and hunt for him. Not in her condition.”

  Annie’s hand froze on the strap of her bag. “Her condition?” As far as Annie knew, that word usually meant one thing.

  “Well . . . it was only a rumor, but . . . people said it was the Flanagan boy’s baby. Oh, what was his name . . . ?”

  With her heart starting to race, Annie asked, “Wait. What happened to the baby? I thought Taylor went to Berklee, played in a symphony, then came back to Chappy years later when her father got sick.”

  “That’s the ‘unofficial version,’ as we islanders call it. John didn’t tell you?”

  “Um . . . no.”

  Claire let out a tired sigh. “Men. They never share the gory details. Well, now that you live here, too, you might as well know the rest.”

  Annie wasn’t sure that she wanted to.

  “Taylor must have been around nineteen or twenty,” Claire went on before Annie could stop her. “She went to Boston that fall, supposedly to college. The next summer the Flanagans came back to Chappy with their daughter, Dana, and a baby, a boy. Their dead son was apparently the father: They claimed the baby’s mother was a teenager from the city who was grateful that Roger and Nicole wanted him. That part seemed sketchy, but they gave the boy a reasonably good home, at least money-wise. And the boy spent his summers here where his father had been happy.” She pressed two fingers against her lips. “That’s the boy who’s moving into your cottage. The artist. What’s his name?”

  Annie was stunned. “Jonas,” she said. Though no one had said that Dana was his mother, she’d assumed she was. She’d even thought that Colin might be his father. But now . . . ? “Are you saying that Taylor is Jonas’s mother?” A headache began to nestle at Annie’s temples. Even if it were true, she could not imagine what it might have to do with the fact that Fiona was poisoned.

  Claire shrugged. “No one asked; no one told. But Taylor’s father was a fisherman; they never had much money, so I always wondered who paid for her to wind up staying in Boston. Or how she and her mother managed to hold on to the property after her father died.” Then she closed her eyes. “My goodness, I believe all this talk has exhausted me.”

  It had exhausted Annie, too. And had added another confusing element to Fiona’s mystery. She wondered if Kevin knew that his new lady friend—potentially the secret mother of a not-so-secret child—had been the only witness to the accidental drowning of her boyfriend way back when. And that Taylor’s son was the one uprooting Annie from the cottage.

  She’d never fully trusted Taylor. And now . . .

  Shaking off her bewilderment, Annie said, “Get some rest. I’ll be back tomorrow night to tell you how the tour went. And don’t worry about the weather; the gods have promised a nice warm day.” She helped Claire from the chair and back into bed. Then, as she left the room, her eyes filled with unexpected tears. She knew that though Earl and Claire had been like a family to her, once John broke things off with Annie, everything would change.

  But first, she had to focus on Fiona.

  Chapter 26

  Myrna wasn’t home.

  Annie had sped up island to Sweet Everything Farm in Chilmark and was grateful that she hadn’t been stopped. Neither local law enforcement nor the state police had a sense of humor about speeders. Especially in season.

  “She’s not home?” Annie asked Rodney as if he might be mistaken about his wife’s whereabouts. She’d power walked from her car up the hill when she’d spotted him strolling out of one of the barns. “Do you know when she’ll be back? It’s kind of an emergency.” She wondered if she looked as ruffled as she felt.

  “She’s in Vineyard Haven at the dentist. Root canal.” He grimaced.

  “Oh, dear. That’s unpleasant.”

  “Not as unpleasant as it was when she woke up during the night. The way she screamed I thought the damn house was burning down.”

  Annie smiled. “I needed one once. It’s not high on my list of things I want to go through again.”

  His brows knitted together. “But you have a different emergency. Are you in critical need of poisoned honey? Sorry, but we destroyed that batch.”

  It took Annie a second to realize he was kidding. “Actually,” she said, “I wanted to talk to her about what happened when she was on the boat. When she got sick and realized the honey cake was bad. Do you remember anything she told you?”

  He shook his head. “Only that all she wanted was to get home.”

  “Did she tell you that she gave someone—a woman—the boxes to throw away?”

&nb
sp; Scratching at what looked like more than a day-old beard, Rodney said, “Yeah, sure. I remember. She tried to call me from the ladies’ room—that’s always weird, isn’t it?—but she remembered I wouldn’t have my phone with me. She wanted to tell me she was sick and she knew it was because of the honey. She wanted to tell me it was bitter, and that a woman said she’d ditch both the cakes before anyone else could have a taste. As soon as Myrna was done with her story, I went into my processing room and tasted the raw honey. Bitter was an understatement. God, I still can’t believe I missed that. I was sorry Myrna felt sick, but we’re lucky it didn’t go public. We’ve worked real hard to have a good reputation.”

  “It isn’t your fault that Myrna gave the boxes to a woman and didn’t toss them in the trash herself.”

  “I think she was otherwise occupied in a stall.”

  Annie tried to look sympathetic.

  “But I feel terrible about what happened to that other lady.”

  “She’s fine now, Rodney. Though I’m still trying to figure out how she wound up getting the cake.” Then Annie had another idea. “How long have you been selling honey cakes, Rodney?”

  “Good question. Five or six years.”

  Five or six years. Which meant that more than twenty years ago, when Dana Flanagan and Colin Littlefield supposedly made honey cakes for Fiona because she “loved them,” Sweet Everything Farm would not have supplied them. Annie didn’t know why she’d thought there might be a link, or what it might mean. Suddenly she felt as if she was grasping at too many straws.

  “We’ve been selling raw honey a lot longer than that, though,” Rodney added. “Thirty—no, wait—almost forty years. Wow. Time goes by fast.”

  “Do you sell it to stores?”

  “In the beginning, we thought we’d sell only to wholesalers. Then Myrna had a bright idea. Honey was real popular in the late seventies, so she said, ‘Why not have a real honey wagon? I can travel around the island once every week or two.’ We were newly married, God, we were so young! But she turned our beekeeping into a real business. Smart woman, my Myrna.”

  “Did she go over to Chappy?”

  “Hard to remember, but probably. If you want, I can try to call her. Maybe she can help sort out your emergency. If she’s not yet tied down in the chair.”

  “Tied down?”

  He laughed. “I told her they’d better tie her down to stop her from running away when they came at her with the needle.”

  “Did she laugh?”

  “No. She rolled her eyes and told me to shut up. She’s used to me.” He pulled a phone from a pocket in his overalls. “Let’s see if she answers.” He touched the screen, then held the phone to an ear.

  After a couple of seconds, he puffed out his cheeks as if in exasperation.

  And Annie waited, trying to sort out the myriad of facts.

  Then Rodney shook his head. “Voice mail. Sorry.”

  “Okay. Thanks anyway. Maybe I can figure out something else.” She turned to walk back to her car, and then had another thought. “Rodney? Would you mind telling me where Myrna’s dentist is? I hate to impose, but it’s really important. I don’t think I’m overreacting when I say someone’s life might be at stake.”

  * * *

  The dental office was on State Road, right past the Black Dog Café. Annie made a mental note in case she ever needed another root canal, though the thought made her grimace the way Rodney had.

  Myrna was not in the waiting room. Neither was anyone else. Annie stepped to the reception desk, but no one was behind the sliding glass window. She stood, listening, not knowing what she expected to hear. Hopefully, it would not be Myrna screaming as if the building were on fire.

  She jangled her keys; she coughed. She looked down a hall that had several doors on each side about ten feet apart. Still, no one showed.

  The thought of Fiona sitting at the Kelley House, anxiously awaiting word from Annie, emboldened her.

  “Hello?” she called out well above a whisper. “Is anyone here?”

  The response came in the form of the high-pitched buzz of a drill. When the buzzing ceased, a young woman in scrub pants and a colorful smock stepped from one of the doorways into the hall. She removed a surgical mask. “Sorry,” she said. “The doctor is with a patient. I’m her assistant, Grace. The receptionist must be out for lunch.”

  Good grief, Annie thought. She hadn’t realized it was well past noon. “I’m here to see your patient,” she said, employing her best smile. “Myrna . . .” Suddenly, she could not remember Myrna’s last name.

  “She’ll be finished in a few minutes if you’d care to wait.”

  Annie didn’t care to wait, but she felt she had no choice. She sat in the waiting room and Grace disappeared back down the hall. Once again, Annie reviewed the facts.

  Somehow, it now seemed obvious that Roger Flanagan was involved.

  But why?

  To get the land?

  If he were hell-bent on that, it seemed he could have resorted to more appropriate means than poisoning Fiona. Besides, how could he have known that his wife would come back from the Cape toting not only custom chocolates for the wedding-guest gift bags but also poisoned honey cakes?

  And what about his wife? It appeared that Nicole had been handed the cakes, and had been told that they were poisonous. Had she concocted the plan? Did she, too, want the Littlefield property so badly? Hadn’t Earl once said he thought Nicole would rather be on Nantucket?

  “Annie?”

  She jumped at the sound and looked up to see Myrna. “Oh, hi! How’s the tooth?”

  “The pain is gone. I can’t believe it. Are you here for the same reason?” Her words were a little slurred, as if, like Claire, she too had had a stroke. Must be the novocaine, Annie thought.

  “No. I’m here to see you. I have a question about the woman you gave the honey cakes to on the boat. You said you thought she had light-colored hair. But do you remember if she was young or old?”

  Myrna held one hand up to her cheek, then shook her head. “She wasn’t young. But she didn’t look too old. I remember thinking she must have had work done.”

  Bingo. Nicole Flanagan. So Colin hadn’t lied about that.

  “And then you saw her talking to the guy, who you then saw drive off the boat in a Porsche?”

  “Right.”

  “And he was alone in the car.”

  “Yes. I’m pretty sure he was.”

  “When you saw them talking, did you notice if she was carrying the cake boxes? Please. This part is very important.”

  Myrna took her time. In the distance, the dentist drill whirred again. “No,” she said. “She wasn’t. She was carrying a large purse. It was red, as I recall.”

  “Would a man might have thought it was a tote bag?”

  Myrna laughed. “Who knows what a man would say? It looked expensive, though.”

  “Was it big enough to hold the cakes?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not even one. It was the wrong shape. Deep enough, but not wide enough for a box. Not even if she’d put it on its side, but why would anyone carry a cake on its side?”

  “I doubt that they would.”

  Then Myrna suddenly said, “Wait. She had a box, too. A large one. It was tied with lavender ribbon and had a handle.”

  The chocolates for the wedding, Annie thought. “But you never saw the cakes again?”

  “No. Wish I could help you more.” She rubbed her cheek a little, dropped her hand into her pocket, and pulled out a set of keys.

  “Oh, Myrna, you have no idea how much you’ve helped. And I’m glad your tooth is feeling better.”

  “Ha! Rodney will be, too!”

  Annie grinned and went out the door.

  * * *

  On the drive back to Edgartown, Annie mulled over and over why Nicole Flanagan would have wanted to poison Fiona. Even if she’d known the tainted honey probably wouldn’t have killed her, she would have known it would make the girl si
ck. Why would she have done that? To scare Fiona into agreeing with her siblings to sell the house so Nicole and Roger could buy it, tear down both houses, and no doubt the cottage, too, then build a mega-mansion like the ones in Chilmark that had caused so much controversy?

  Had Colin and Nicole been in on this together?

  Or had Sheila—the missing sibling who might or might not be at home in Seattle—been involved after all?

  Or . . . could it have been Dana, the bride? Was her former relationship with Colin somehow significant?

  “Where are you when I need you?” she admonished the sky, her words directed at Murphy. If her old friend hadn’t died, by now they would have solved the puzzle. And Annie would be able to get back to her life.

  But Murphy was unresponsive.

  * * *

  The desk clerk at the Kelley House rang Fiona, who said Annie was welcome to go to her room. She quickly found it again, but paused at the dark wood door, its brass numerals polished to a high shine. “A little help, please,” she whispered, in case Murphy resurfaced. Then she knocked.

  “It’s open,” Fiona’s timid voice called from inside.

  Turning the knob, Annie was about to caution Fiona about leaving the door unlocked, when she stopped short. Fiona sat on top of one of the beds; she was propped up by several pillows that looked as if they might swallow her tiny body any minute.

  But what was more disturbing was that she was not alone. In the navy chair, one leg crossed over the other, sat Colin.

  “Hello,” Fiona said. “I guess you’ve met my brother.” She wore a pink cotton robe and her hair was pulled back in a loose chignon that accentuated her jutting cheekbones and made her look like a teenager. Like John’s Lucy, Annie thought.

  Adjusting her purse on her shoulder, Annie replied, “Yes. I have.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Fiona said.

  Colin stood; Annie braced herself for what might come next. But all he did was walk to the window, look down onto the street, and shove his hands into the pockets of his khakis. “Did you ever hear of a guy named Edward Fenterly?” he asked.