Buried Secrets

by Kate Anslinger

  “So, you’re Lottie?”

  “And you’re an expert reader, dahling.” Her words came out a little longer than the average Boston accent and Grace pegged her for a southerner. She looked up from dabbing Grace’s dress and greeted her with pretty, blue eyes accented with pale blue eyeshadow and dark blue liner. She oozed of hospitality, and Grace imagined she was one of those women with a brood of kids that, while grown, still came home for dinner at least twice a week, like in the many Italian homes that dotted the streets of Bridgeton.

  “You’re not from here, are you?”

  “Ha!” The woman threw her head back in one loud movement, nearly knocking into the angular body of a woman behind her slipping between Lottie and the crowd to reach the newly available stall. “Honey, I ain’t from anywhere around here, but this is where I call home now.” She tossed the napkin into the trash and tugged on the front of Grace’s dress, assessing the wine splatters that had miraculously disappeared.

  “South Carolina?” Grace took a guess, not knowing much about any of the states below Connecticut.

  “I’m a born-and-bred Georgia peach, little lady, and I ain’t ridding myself of this accent no matter how many Bostonians I encounter. Been here for years, but that’s our little secret. Don’t go tellin’ my mama I’m up in Yankeeville now.” She let out another loud laugh, dissipating the other conversations in the room. “I’m Charlotte Mae, but the boaters around here started calling me Lottie back in the day. And it stuck like glue…pardon me, I’m just gonna slip in the stall right fast and relieve myself.”

  Grace watched Lottie waddle into the newly open stall, causing a rippling effect of sighs and groans from the ladies in line. She felt frozen and drawn to Lottie and her energy, the way she flitted from one thing to the next with such ease. She assessed her dress in the mirror and was taken aback by Lottie’s quick work. Even though the dress was still slightly damp, the spots were invisible. By the time Grace was halfway through washing her hands, Lottie was already back out of the stall and beside her at the sink. She felt compelled to follow the southern belle out of the restroom and pick her brain, so she slowed her hand-washing and stayed in step with Lottie, following her outside the restroom area and into the powder room where Lottie started touching up her lipstick.

  “My mama always said if you wear any makeup, at least wear lipstick. It just brightens up your face, you know.” Lottie looked into the mirror as Grace pretended to fluff her hair.

  “I bet you give that same advice to your own daughter now.”

  “Oh, the Lord ain’t blessed me with a little girl, or a little boy for that matter. It’s just me and my husband. Thank God for my Frankie.” For the first time, Lottie paused to take in Grace’s face. “I reckon if I did have a daughter, she’d be about your age, though.” Her features softened as she took in Grace’s eyes, and Grace felt a wave of sadness. “What’s your name anyway?”

  “I’m Grace, Grace McKenna.”

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you Grace McKenna.” Lottie extended a hand and took Grace’s hand in a firm grip before giving it two good shakes.

  “Have you been on the events committee for a while?”

  “I been on this committee since the day I moved to this town, which was nearly, oh, 35 years ago. I just wanted to do something for a little while to stay busy while my Frankie was out on the fishing boat for days at a time. And I guess, well, this little community we have here, at this club… They turned into my family.”

  “I bet you know them all so well.”

  “I do. Some of them a little too well.” Lottie smoothed the front of her dress and adjusted the thin belt that just barely fit around her waist.

  “You must know Miriam Haskell then?”

  “I do.” Grace had expected a bigger response from her than the two tiny specks of syllables, a far cry from Lottie’s previous language.

  Lottie smacked her lips together one last time before turning on a heel. “You have a good night now and try not to spill any more wine on your pretty little dress.”

  “So how well do you know Miriam?” The words catapulted out of Grace’s mouth. She had to get more from this woman while she had the chance.

  Lottie paused on her way to the door. She turned slowly back around and looked Grace in the eyes. “That woman is disturbed. Now, I don’t speak ill of her, and I like her enough, but she is a tortured soul. I knew it from the moment she walked into that ballroom out there for the first time thirty years ago. Now we all know what happened to her baby girl and it’s a sin, just a sin. But there is sadness in someone’s eyes and there is emptiness. That woman, she has emptiness in her eyes. Do you ever feel that way about someone?” She asked Grace, as if she knew exactly what Grace saw when she looked in people’s eyes.

  “Yeah, I get it.”

  “But to take advantage of a heartbroken man in his time of loss, now that is something that will warrant a lack of respect from me, if you’re gonna…”

  “What do you mean?” Grace was clawing for some sense of Lottie’s words.

  “Well, between you and me, I know she always had the hots for Michael Kennedy. I mean, let’s be realistic, we all did, but we all loved his wife. Just weeks after that sweet Susie Kennedy passed, I’m here at the club, working an event and I see Miriam, of all people, walking Michael out to his boat, holding onto his hand like he was her toy.”

  “Wait, when was this?”

  “It was during a sailing gala…let me think…it was in 2016, ‘cause that was the first summer after Susie died. We even had a memorial for her here just a few weeks before and that woman, that heartless woman, dug her paws into him. And of course he was snockered drunk, he always was back then, so she just took advantage of him. There is a lot of gossip going on around this club and this town even, but I saw that with my own two eyes.”

  “Was it just the two of them?”

  “From what I saw, yes. Grace, darling, you’re not from here are you?”

  “No, I can’t say I am,” Grace fiddled nervously with her earrings, hoping Lottie wouldn’t ask her why she was there or what she did for work. That tended to put a halt to conversations.

  “This town has a lot of secrets. We look like we are a happy little community with our mom and pop shops and our yacht clubs and our little festivals and events, but I’ll tell you something,” Lottie leaned in so close that Grace’s eyes watered from her heavy perfume scent. “There are secrets buried so deep they go beyond even my time in this town. Take a little advice from me and be careful who you spend time with.”

  Lottie’s confession was like a dark marker outlining what Grace already knew, but it served as confirmation that she wasn’t losing her mind and that she could just be scratching the surface when it came to Bridgeton. Grace was quickly learning that criminals lurked within the town’s nooks and crannies and came in the most unexpected forms. First Mackenzie Waterford, an over-achieving teen gone mad in a fit of jealous rage, then Miriam, and now Judy. What else would Grace discover about the place that had been known as a peaceful beach town to the rare outsider who happened to pass through? Was there something that brought people here to kill?

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Well, obviously, Miriam didn’t have the hots for Michael. I mean, do you really think she would lure him out to the boat for a little wrestling around? Isn’t she a little, I don’t know, frail for that?” Mark asked as he loosened the top of his tie while kicking his shoes off. Brody lay on the floor, his head between his paws, raising his eyebrows every so often as if he was trying to keep up with the conversation.

  “No, I don’t think she would, but I do think she lured Michael on his boat for a reason, and that reason was Stephen Cassidy. But where was Cassidy that night and how did she get him out there? Surely someone in this town had to have been close to Cassidy. Don’t you think if your friend just disappeared one day, you would worry?”

  “Keep in mind what our pals over at The Spray said Cassidy was a wanderer.
No one was all that alarmed when he disappeared because he always disappeared. The thing we really need to find out is when Cassidy was last seen. And I think we can get that answer from someone who was at the yacht club the night of that event.”

  “You’re right.” Grace turned so her back was facing Mark, giving him the

  universal cue to start unzipping her dress. “What we need to do is find out who Stephen was close with at the club. Ask around and find out when he was last seen.”

  “Don’t forget about Judy too...she is likely the real criminal in all of this. Unless Cassidy was somehow connected to Annabelle’s killing. Is it safe to say that Annabelle is dead?”

  “It would be my best guess, but we both know I’ve been proven wrong before.”

  ***

  Just as Grace was settling into a deep sleep, a crash downstairs woke her. She popped upright in bed like a vampire and looked over at Mark, who still managed to be in a deep slumber. He could sleep through a hurricane, and Grace was pretty sure he had when he was younger.

  She nearly stepped on Brody when she swung her feet over to the side of her bed and planted them on the hardwood floor. Like Mark, Brody didn’t stir, but kept his two front paws tightly pressed against his snout, framing his face in a way that made him resemble a big, floppy teddy bear. The long, black hair on the top of his head had settled onto one side of his head in a trendy, side-swept bang. Some guard dog he was.

  Grace looked over at Mark, who slept peacefully with muscular arms stretched overhead, his face angled to the side, accentuating his perfectly chiseled jawline. She slid the baseball bat out from behind the headboard, stepped over Brody, and tip-toed down the stairs. With each step, she was reassured that it was her mom who had broken into her house once again. She could hear a bowl landing on the countertop and the pantry opening and closing, then a chair being pulled out from the island countertop in the kitchen.

  Her assumption was confirmed when she turned the corner and saw Ellen scooping a heaping spoonful of Cheerios and bringing it to her lips. Grace walked in the room and stood by the door for a solid ten seconds before Ellen even flinched and realized she had company.

  “Mom?”

  “Oh…hello dear.” Ellen continued to look straight ahead at the blank wall, her words as casual as if they had crossed paths in the hallway, like they did when Grace was a teen jumping from one activity to the next, barely having time to chat with her mother. She suddenly regretted all those times she had passed Ellen in the hallway; she wished she had stopped to give her a hug more often. She wished she had spent more time doing the simple things with her, back when she really had what felt like all the time in the world.

  “Mom. What are you doing here? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “I told you, I can’t sleep in my bed sometimes. All those old biddies in my wing are always up at all hours watching their loud TVs.”

  “Did you drive over here by yourself?”

  “How else do you think I got here?” Instead of laughing like she usually did at such questions, Ellen had a hint of anger in her eyes. “I’m the mother here, young lady, don’t you forget that. Just because you were born outta wedlock and you have a father who is a rapist doesn’t mean I’m still not the boss of you.”

  Grace nearly fell backwards from the shock of the words her mother threw at her. She knew she was the product of a rape, but her mother never once mentioned her father besides the one time she confessed how Grace was conceived. And now she was talking about it like it was the weather forecast.

  “Mom!”

  “What? It’s true. You know that. Water off my back, I got a beautiful daughter out of it.”

  “Mom, what did you do earlier tonight? What did you have for dinner?” Grace remembered what Dr. Wexford told her. Ellen may start talking about events that happened years ago, but she may not remember what happened moments ago.

  “Dinner? You want to talk to me about dinner while I’m in the middle of talking about your bastard of a father. How DARE you!” Ellen pushed herself up from the chair and swiped the bowl of cereal off the counter. Grace and Ellen watched in surprise when it bounced off the dishwasher and landed on the ground in one loud crack, leaving a mosaic of white ceramic shards scattered on the floor.

  Dr. Wexford had told Grace that Ellen may experience anger and throw insults, but he was pretty confident it wouldn’t happen for a while. In a matter of seconds, Ellen had gone from displaying early signs of Alzheimer’s to showing the disease moving through her mind at a progressive rate. Grace felt the distance grow between the two of them, and she stood frozen, watching her mother suddenly look smaller than ever before. Ellen McKenna had always been Grace’s guiding light, the strong foundation that kept one season of their lives bleeding into the next. And now, Ellen’s strength and confidence seemed to vanish before Grace’s eyes as the woman crumpled to the floor and began picking up the pieces of the bowl.

  “Mom, I’ve got it.”

  “What’s going on? Is everything okay?” Mark appeared in the doorway, finally awoken by something other than his natural alarm clock. When silence greeted him, the look on Grace’s face told him everything he needed to know. Her green eyes were coated in a layer of tears. Mark knew from the way her eyebrows crinkled together, the way her normal aggravation from her mother’s antics was lifted, the way Grace walked across the room and fell into his arms, that this was far more serious than they had anticipated. Ellen looked up at the two of them, her face revealing a confused apology before she returned to her old self.

  “Okay, show is over. So…what are you lovebirds up to?”

  “Remember what Dr. Wexford said…” Mark turned Grace around to face her mother.

  “Hey mom, want to go watch TV? I can’t really sleep anyway,” Grace said, making direct eye contact with her mother.

  “Sure, I’ll fix us some tea,” Ellen went to work doing what she always did in crisis mode. She moved her hands, she tended to others, she fixed tea.

  “Okay, I’ll meet you in the living room.” Grace looked to Mark for reassurance. He gave her with an approving nod and guided her into the living room with a firm hand.

  Before Ellen joined them, Grace wiped away the tears that had managed to creep past her eyes and cascade down her face. She didn’t want her mother to see her so weak; it was her turn to be the strong one, her turn to be the foundation for their lives.

  Like a family of three, Mark, Grace and Ellen sat side by side on the couch, three pairs of feet resting on the coffee table in front of them as they watched reruns of the Golden Girls, a show Grace had grown up watching with her mother. Grace pulled Ellen’s hand in hers and gripped it firmly, hoping to hold on to her for as long as she could.

  ***

  With last night’s episode weighing heavily on her heart, Grace’s entire body seemed to move slower than normal. Even as she drove into Bridgeton from Cabotville, her hands clenched the steering wheel, and it felt like her tires were spinning through quicksand. Like with most things in life, Grace dove headfirst into work, trying to dodge her emotions. This time, she was on a mission to find out when Stephen Cassidy was last seen by anyone. She also wanted to find everyone he knew in town, and she would start at the police station with two of her best sources of town information: Barb and Lt. Sullivan. She had planned to swing into the station to chat with Sullivan while he was on his shift, before meeting Barb for their scheduled coffee date.

  As soon as Grace walked into the station, she was pummeled with the sound of loud radios beeping and chattering, but right away she knew she didn’t recognize the voices coming through between bouts of fuzz. She had her answer when she approached the control room and was face-to-face with the backs of Lt. Sullivan’s and Officer Lucerto’s heads as they were deep in an old episode of Bad Boys.

  “I thought the sounds of action were too good to be true,” Grace said.

  “Hey, listen, in my day, I faced some big-time incidents while on patrol. Even took do
wn a criminal for stealing cash from R & R Convenience. Of course, back then, it was a little more than a convenience store, if ya know what I mean.”

  “I bet.”

  “So, what brings you here on a Sunday afternoon? I mean, I gotta say I’m not surprised, but Gracie, it’s summer. You’ve got a boyfriend, go out, have some ‘summa lovin’ or whatever it is you kids do these days… Turn that down, Lucie!” Lt. Sullivan spun around, doing a full 360 in his chair. Surely, he was the one who had it turned up to begin with but was often in denial of his poor hearing. It was a running joke at the station. “I remember, from June until September, my wife and I had a standing date at Village Cone every single Sunday. From the time she was pregnant with our first until…well… not long before…eh, enough about me… What’s up, girl?”

  “I’m trying to lay off the ice cream these days, Mark has me on one of those non-dairy diets.”

  “Well, that’s what you get for hooking up with a gym nut.”

  “Well, that’s kind of why I’m here. Mark and I wanted to try our hand at sailing lessons, and I heard that some guy named Stephen Cassidy was a legendary teacher back in the day. Do you happen to know him?” Grace had gotten a mish-mash of different things involving Stephen Cassidy when she searched the web, but they were all dated at least three years ago and involved him as some sort of sea life guru or sailing expert. The guy was living in the right town if he really did love all things ocean as much as his paper trail showed.

  “Cassidy…Cassidy. It sounds familiar, but I can’t think of why.”

  “Did you just say Stephen Cassidy, as in Surfer Steve?” Officer Lucerto perked up and turned away from the TV. “That guy gave me sailing lessons when I was a kid. He was super bizarre but like in a good way. He always had like so much energy, he made us little kids look like sloths.”

  “Wait, so you actually took lessons from him?”

  “Oh yeah, everyone did back in the day. All my friends, it was kind of the cool thing to do. And Surfer Steve was the guy all the kids liked. He ran a summer program at the yacht club years ago. I’m surprised he’s not still there, teaching knots and shit. Maybe he still is, shit, I don’t know. Maybe he expanded to private lessons.”