Finders Keepers (Mill Brook Book 1)

by Carla Neggers

  With no graceful way to further interrogate his aunt about her new guest and her lost puppies, Julian took his mug and wandered through the downstairs rooms, hoping he might run into Holly and interrogate her himself. No such luck.

  “Strange,” he told his aunt, returning in frustration to the kitchen, “that someone from Texas would drive up to Vermont in winter.”

  “Flying’s expensive.”

  His aunt’s logic, as always, was unassailable. “She ski?”

  “I wouldn’t know. She was up early this morning— I think she’s just a tourist. She mentioned she was going to take a walk down to the old burying ground.”

  Somehow, Julian thought, it figured.

  Snow Had Gotten into her socks by the time Holly came to the far corner of the historic graveyard, where the thin, worn markers of perhaps a dozen Wingates rose from the drifts. Each stone seemed to lean in a different direction. She stared at the simple headstone of Abigail Wingate, who’d died at the age of three in 1838. It was for the memory of these Wingates, Holly thought, perhaps more than for herself or Grandpa Wingate or even future Wingates, that she wanted the Revere goblets back in the family.

  “They were a sorry bunch.” Julian Stiles said behind her.

  Holly hadn’t heard his approach in the snow and jumped, just managing to swallow a startled yell. “What do you think you’re doing, sneaking up on me like that?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking. I just happened by.”

  She didn’t believe that for a second. Julian Stiles “happened by” the way a lion “happened by” an innocent antelope. She said sourly, “You could have whistled or something.”

  “In a graveyard? How rude.”

  Yesterday she wouldn’t have believed he’d concern himself with rudeness, but he did look the proper Yankee this morning. But for his vivid eyes, she might not have recognized him. His hair was combed, that Yankee jaw shaved, that taut, lean body free of plaster dust. He had on neatly pressed charcoal wool trousers, a preppy white shirt with button-down collar, a red foulard tie, a navy wool blazer and an unbuttoned Burberry overcoat. Yesterday’s tattered outfit might have been just her imagination. The way things had been going so far, maybe it had been.

  The man could not be figured, Holly thought. Tracking her down in a graveyard. She’d have to remain on her guard. Never let up. Expect Julian Danvers Stiles at every turn. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of thinking she had control over her situation in Mill Brook. She needed to remember that Julian had friends and family here and she did not.

  “When we were kids.” Julian went on, “my brother and sister and I would sneak in here and play, but we’d catch hell if the pastor caught us.”

  “Did he?”

  He flashed her a grin, unexpectedly warm—sexy. “Almost always.”

  “What kinds of things did you do in a graveyard?”

  “Nothing malicious. Mostly we played cops and robbers, spies, orphans. You know, kid stuff.”

  Holly had seldom played any of those games, never orphan. It had cut too close to the bone. “Are your brother and sister younger or older?”

  “Adam’s three years older, Beth four years younger.”

  “You’re the middle child, then.”

  “Caught between a rock and a hard place, I always say. What about you?”

  “No brothers or sisters.”

  “Just you and your folks, huh?”

  She shook her head. “Just me and my grandfather mostly.”

  He looked awkward, the way people did when they realized they’d made a painful assumption.

  “Why were the Wingates such a sorry bunch?” Holly asked, as if searching for a bland change of subject.

  Julian latched on to it. “I’m not an expert on Mill Brook history, but I gather the Wingates weren’t one of the luckiest—or most honest—families in the valley. They came to this area in the late eighteenth century and tried to hack a living out of the land, which isn’t easy in these hills. They hung in there, though, until what’s known around here as the Scandal of 1889.”

  “A scandal?” Holly manufactured a hungry-for-gossip look and even grinned. “Anything juicy?”

  “You’ve been out here a while. Aren’t you getting cold?”

  She wondered how red her ears and nose were, but said, “Gossip always warms me up.”

  “This story’s not gossip,” Julian told her. “It’s something that really happened.”

  “Maybe, but in my work, I’ve found there are often as many versions of an event as people interested in it— never mind people who actually were there or have a stake in what happened. And even eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable.”

  He frowned. “Facts are facts.”

  “But how do you define a fact?”

  “So what do you do, believe what you want?”

  “Don’t we all? Life isn’t black-and-white. It’s thousands of shades of gray.”

  “I suppose.” Pausing, Julian used his boot as a mini-snowplow and began pushing out a circle of snow around him. He wasn’t looking at Holly when, finally, he spoke. “By 1889, the Wingates were operating a sawmill up on the river outside of town. They were hardworking people, but there were tons of sawmills around here in those days, so competition was fairly tough. They just managed to get by.”

  ‘That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I agree. After the Civil War, the board of directors of the Mill Brook Preparatory Academy decided to offer a scholarship to one Vermont boy a year to attend what even then was considered one of the best schools in the country.”

  “For boys,” Holly amended.

  His foot stopped, and he nodded at her, his eyes so very green against the gloomy sky. “Right. You’re sure you’re not cold?”

  “Not at all. This is fun.”

  “Standing in a graveyard talking about dead people?”

  She laughed. “I guess it does sound ghoulish, but go on.”

  “To keep this short, Zachariah Wingate was granted a scholarship—the first boy from Mill Brook who wasn’t a Danvers or a Stiles to attend the academy. He lived at home and continued to help out at the sawmill, and although he wasn’t immediately accepted by other students at the academy, he got decent grades and slowly won over his classmates. Then he made his mistake.”

  “What happened?”

  “In his senior year, he decided he had the moral obligation to repay the academy for its generosity if he could. He presented the board of directors with a pair of sterling-silver goblets that had been made and signed by Paul Revere himself. He claimed Revere gave them to his great-grandfather after the Revolution, but that was disproven. In fact, he probably stole them from a collector. The long and short of it is, he was thrown out of school and his family was humiliated by the incident.”

  Holly felt the anger boiling inside her. More than a hundred years later and a Danvers-Stiles was still smearing the Wingate name. Believing their own version of what happened. Not giving poor Zachariah the slightest benefit of the doubt. Annoying. But she said in a neutral voice, “How sad.”

  ‘Tor his family, yes. But Zachariah was a thief—”

  “He was giving the goblets to the school. It’s not as if he tried to keep them for himself.”

  “You know the saying: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

  Holly smiled tightly. “Was there any proof he’d stolen the goblets?”

  “I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there.”

  “What did Zachariah do after he was expelled from the academy?”

  “Left town. His parents tried to hang on to the sawmill, but the scandal and Zachariah’s absence hurt them. They ended up closing down. Within about five years there wasn’t a Wingate left in Mill Brook.”

  “You can hardly blame them.”

  There was more heat in her words than she’d intended, and Julian gave her a narrow-eyed look. She couldn’t guess what he was thinking but imagined it wasn’t anything positive.

&nb
sp; “No, you can’t,” he said. “Scandal and gossip can be deadly in a small town.”

  Holly nodded and started pushing at the snow with her boots, the way he did, just to look a little less absorbed in his story of the hapless Wingates. “What happened to the goblets?”

  “They disappeared with Zachariah.”

  “You think he took them?”

  “I’m not sure what happened.”

  “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. Now I’m cold. Think I’ll head back and have breakfast.”

  “Yes, my aunt mentioned you were staying at the Windham House.”

  “You don’t look too happy about that,” Holly pointed out.

  “I’m not.”

  “Did you tell her you don’t believe my lost puppies story?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  Holly found herself noticing how thick his lashes were, noticing the small scar near his left brow. Up close, his features weren’t as regular nor as classically handsome as she’d have expected of a well-to-do Danvers-Stiles. Interesting, compelling, masculine—they were the words that came to her mind. She wished they hadn’t. They indicated a physical awareness of him that she was madly trying to pretend she didn’t feel. Matters were complicated enough as it was.

  “Well, I wouldn’t doubt me, if I were you,” she told him. “I can be very convincing. I wouldn’t want to put your aunt in the unhappy position of choosing between your word and mine.”

  He scowled. “Did you mention your crowbar to her?”

  “No—”

  “No one chases puppies with a crowbar.”

  “Lucky I had one along or I’d never have been able to follow the little rascals into a boarded-up house.”

  “They were never in the house.”

  She met his gaze dead-on. “I thought they were.”

  “Ms. Paynter, there were no puppies.”

  She waved a green-gloved hand. “Who’s to say? Look, you needn’t worry.”

  “I needn’t worry?”

  ‘‘Not at all. You see, I have no intention of suing you.”

  “You don’t.”

  “No, no.” Her tone was eminently reassuring. “How could I cause one of Mill Brook’s own the trouble and humiliation over such a lawsuit? I could sue, of course. A floor like that one up at the Danvers House is dangerous. As you yourself said, I could have been killed.”

  “It would have been your own fault—”

  “Imagine the talk. A Mill Brook Stiles’ negligence causes the demise of an innocent woman from Houston who bravely risked her life to save a couple of stray puppies. My, my. The gossips would have fun with that for years.”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “Funny? Mr. Stiles, I’m not trying to amuse you. I’m perfectly serious.”

  “Sue me if you like. I’m not worried. You broke into the house, ignored the No Trespassing and Danger signs posted—and don’t try to tell me you didn’t see them. You went into that house at your own risk.”

  She sniffed. “Tell it to the judge. I still think I have a good case.”

  “I’m not going to get caught up in another one of your schemes. You’re no more going to sue me than there were puppies out at the academy yesterday. You’re just spinning me off into whatever direction you want me to go to save your own skin. And arguing only encourages you.”

  “Do you have a good lawyer?”

  He ignored her. “I’ll keep quiet about yesterday only for the time being and only because I have a feeling that a thief might crowbar her way into an abandoned house and run when she was caught, but she wouldn’t show up at one of the nicest bed-and-breakfasts in town the same afternoon and wander around a graveyard the next morning. You present certain contradictions, Ms. Paynter, that I intend to sort out.”

  “Do you? Well, have fun. When you find a couple of golden retriever puppies at that wreck of a house—”

  “There were no golden retriever puppies,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “There might have been.”

  “And fun,” he said, “is the last thing this is going to be.”

  With that, he stalked off through the snow. Holly watched him, wondering if a stoic Yankee like that would even know when he was having fun. But her job wasn’t to analyze Julian Danvers Stiles, merely to set him straight about a certain pair of silver goblets.

  She was cold and hungry and had had enough of old tombstones, but she headed back to the Windham House only after Julian Stiles’ handsome figure was out of sight.

  Felix Reichman, a balding, portly expert in New England history, made himself comfortable on the couch in Julian’s living room and examined the silver goblets through the thick lenses of his wire-framed glasses. He sighed, deeply impressed. “Paul Revere was an accomplished craftsman. Have you had these authenticated?”

  “Yes.” Julian said. It was early evening after a tiring day, complicated by one strawberry-haired Texan. The snowy graveyard had made her eyes seem even bluer. Less dishonest, perhaps, although he warned himself not to be fooled. He’d noticed the shape of her mouth, its softness, and had found himself wanting to make her smile. It was madness, he knew. Still, he wasn’t one to deny his attraction to a woman—even a tale-telling trespasser.

  “And insured?” Felix asked.

  Julian forced himself to turn his attention to the matter at hand. Perhaps Reichman was only being thorough, but that was the second of two unnecessary questions that didn’t deserve an answer. Julian objected to being underestimated—something he hoped he’d made clear to one Holly Paynter. Not that it made a bit of difference to her.

  Sensing his mistake, the historian reddened. “Forgive me, I don’t mean to question your judgment. It’s just that... if you’ll excuse me for saying so...” He paused, obviously debating whether to proceed, then blundered on, “Your security measures for protecting the goblets are... seem to be... ummm... nonexistent.”

  Julian laughed, and Reichman visibly relaxed. “I guess it must look that way. Felix, Mill Brook is a small town. I’ve lived here most of my life. No one would steal the goblets. If anyone does, I’ll know who.”

  “And you’ll deal with the thief yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.” Felix cleared his throat, looking nervous again. “What about strangers?” he asked.

  “I don’t stay up nights worrying about strangers.”

  “Perhaps,” Felix replied, “but Mill Brook’s become an attractive town for tourists and city people looking for a second home. I daresay you don’t know everyone here the way you might have ten or fifteen years ago.”

  “Maybe not.” Julian settled back in his leather reading chair next to the fire—his favorite spot. ‘Tourists would have to go out of their way to get to this part of Mill Brook. They just don’t come up here. I’d notice.”

  He wasn’t bragging, simply stating what he considered obvious. His compact, rustic house was built into a hill overlooking a brook; its garage was at the end of a two-mile, single-lane dirt driveway. Even his own brother and sister griped about having to make the trip in to see him. He’d had to pay a fortune to get electricity out there and almost hadn’t bothered. If he was going to be the town recluse, why not go whole hog and use candles and kerosene? He heated entirely with wood, and there wasn’t a streetlight in miles. United Parcel Service and Federal Express left his packages at the sawmill where Mill Brook Post and Beam had its offices and equipment; he had a box at the post office for his mail. The occasional stranger that did stray his way got out of there, fast.

  “What if you’re not home to notice?” the persistent Reichman asked.

  Smiling only slightly, Julian let his eyes drift to the two big mutts asleep on the warm stone hearth. They were mostly German shepherd. He had made the mistake of letting Abby and David, his niece and nephew, name them, which meant they went by the not-exactly-ferocious names of Penny and Inkspot. Pen and Ink for short. But they were just as suspicious of strangers as their mas
ter, and that was what counted.

  Reichman still didn’t give up. “A determined thief could shoot the dogs.”

  “Better than shooting Susannah Tibbet.”

  “The head teller at the bank?”

  “None other. You want me to put the goblets in a safe-deposit box, right?”

  “It would be wise.”

  “What’s to stop a ‘determined thief from shooting his way into a bank?”

  “Banks are equipped—”

  “I know. But I’ll keep the goblets here. I don’t own anything that means more to me than living the kind of life I want to live. I’m not inviting a thief, but I’m not going to be paranoid about one, either. Until the restaurant opens and I put them on display there, the goblets will be fine right here on my mantel. If not, to hell with them.”

  Reichman paled a bit at his new client’s cavalier attitude, but he nodded. “As you wish.”

  Julian nodded back, but was silent. Security wasn’t Felix Reichman’s concern and they both knew it. Explaining had been a courtesy on Julian’s part. He understood that a pair of sterling-silver goblets as beautiful as these, and shrouded in such mystery, meant more to a man like Felix than they did to most people. If stolen, he would mourn their loss more than their new owner would.

  “The publicity might invite thieves, but I don’t think so,” Julian said. “Mill Brook’s a bit off the beaten track, you might say. Now. About your job. Do you understand what I’m after?”

  “I think so. You want a history of the goblets. I’ll substantiate the facts as best I can.”

  “Don’t be afraid to report rumors and suppositions, only mark them as such.”

  Felix smiled indulgently. “Now you’re venturing into my territory.”

  Julian agreed. During the summer, Reichman, a retired professor, operated a rare and used bookstore, but he closed up for the winter and did research for people, mostly writers and academics. Never for someone like Julian Stiles. He’d told Julian as much. But Felix was taking the job; the goblets and the mystery surrounding them had piqued his interest—and he and Dorothy Windham were friends. For those reasons, he’d tolerate her nephew.

  They discussed the specifics of the research assignment. Julian couldn’t help wondering what the officious, portly gentleman would say when he discovered most of what he reported would end up on a restaurant menu.