Engaged in Death (A Wedding Planner Mystery) (13 page)

Zach nodded, as if familiar with the old story.

“You sure know a lot about the McGavitts.” I reached for the book. I couldn’t help it.

Zach handed it back with a smile. “We all do. This whole town wouldn’t be here if the McGavitts hadn’t started the glass factory. My father worked there before it shut down. And my grandma worked here at Thistle Park and practically raised my father right next to Keith’s father. And I used to date the town historian.”

Rachel pouted and crossed her arms, letting out a huffy sigh.

“I’ve got to get back to the office.” Zach dropped a kiss on the top of Rachel’s head.

Her frown began to disappear in marginal degrees.

“Think about that offer, Mallory.”

* * *

The offer was all I could think about on the drive to the Port Quincy Historical Society the next day, after leaving work early again. Dollar signs danced in my head like little green sugar plum fairies with Benjamin Franklin’s face. It wasn’t a crazy amount, but it would allow me to pay off a sizable chunk of my student loans. And decide to do something else if I didn’t make partner after all, especially in light of Alan’s talk the other day.

Just like Keith suggested.
I recalled the last day of our engagement, when I’d stood with Keith in front of that empty lot, surrounded by hulking McMansions. Keith’s words mocked me but rang with a peal of truth.
Do you even like practicing law? You could do something else, something you really want to do, when you figure that out.

“Whatever,” I muttered. “I’ll figure out what I want to do, and it’ll be my choice, not Keith’s or Helene’s or my mother’s.” But could I really go against Sylvia’s wishes and sell to a gas company?

“Park and c’mon in.” Tabitha rushed down the steps of the Port Quincy Historical Society, her step and her smile buoyant. “But be quiet, the Daughters of the American Revolution biddies are here, and I don’t want them to see us. They’ll drag it out of you that you’re researching those paintings.” She looked up through her bright red fringe and blew several strands off her forehead. “And Helene’s here. She’s DAR president.”

I groaned. “Is there any way to get through the back? I’m having problems at work because of her. I can’t promise I’ll behave.”

Tabitha directed me to park in the alley behind the building, then led me to a side porch of the restored old house that served as the historical society. She peeked in and, when the coast seemed clear, pulled me along.

Helene’s fake aristocratic voice floated down the hall. “Settle down, ladies. We need all hands on deck for Founder’s Day.”

We tiptoed the last few feet to Tabitha’s office, and she locked the door behind us.

“I’m sick of sneaking around this town. It isn’t big enough for Helene Pierce and me.”

“Tell me about it.” Tabitha typed away. “The DAR takes over the historical society for their weekly tea every Thursday afternoon. When I started working here five years ago, they asked me to join. I explained that my parents are Polish and Welsh and that my family came over here after nineteen hundred, so I wouldn’t qualify.” Her pretty face hardened. “So Helene pointed out that since I couldn’t join, it wouldn’t be a bother for me to brew their tea and serve it while they met. No thank you! We only let them have the best room for their meetings because the last historian let them do it.”

I laughed bitterly. “That sounds like Helene.”

“Forget her.” Tabitha tapped away at her keyboard at a startling speed. “She’s just a bitter woman who trades on the fact she married into the McGavitt and Pierce families.” A printer in the corner whirred to life. “I pulled some strings and got the records from the gallery the McGavitt family used. The Kirsch Gallery records show McGavitt bought a lot of good art. If any of this stuff is hidden in that house, even one single painting, you need to be the one who finds it.” She swiveled her printout around so I could read the names of the artists and the works on the sheet. Monet. Degas. Cezanne.

“Oh my God,” I blurted out. I wasn’t an art expert, but even I knew they’d fetch a lot. Screw leasing Thistle Park’s land for shale gas. I could pay off all of my six-figure law school debt, renovate Sylvia’s house in Gilded Age style, open the grandest B and B this side of the Alleghenies, and host gorgeous weddings.

“There’s a catch. Sylvia’s parents sold almost all of them, and we have proof.” Tabitha leaned into her computer screen and rattled off works and their dates of sale or appearance in auction catalogs as I checked them off the list.

“So, if anything is hidden in that house, it would be these three.” I tapped the listings for the Sargent, the Renoir, and the Pissarro.

Tabitha nodded. “Sylvia’s father took the family with him to Europe in nineteen-fifteen, when Sylvia was a baby. He purchased the Renoir and Pissarro on that trip and commissioned the Sargent portrait. That one would be particularly valuable, since Sargent closed his studio years before and there aren’t too many portraits after that.”

“They’re tiny.” I read off the dimensions of the Renoir and Pissarro. They were diminutive landscapes.

“The Sargent wasn’t. It would have taken up a lot of wall real estate.”

“Oh, I almost forgot!” I dug a small pile of photographs out of my purse. “These are from the house. They might show the paintings. Some of them are labeled.”

Tabitha and I spread out the pictures. I’d brought over every picture I could find with a painting in the background. The paintings were not the focus of the pictures, so it would be hard to tell if any of them matched the descriptions. One by one, we squinted at the background of each photo, then flipped it over. They were labeled neatly in faded ink.

“Here’s one of Sylvia when she was a baby, with her mother.” The same beautiful woman from the oil painting in the back hall held a chubby baby on her lap, her round face peeking out from a lace bonnet.

There were later photos, showing Sylvia as a mother, her hand resting on the shoulder of a boy in a sailor suit, presumably Keith’s father. Another photo showed the same boy playing under a tree with another boy. They could have been twins, but for their different clothing. One boy’s outfit was clean and fresh and fit him like a glove. The other’s was a bit too big for him, like a hand-me-down.

“Robert and Gerald,” I read on the back of the photo.

Tabitha rolled her eyes. “Gerald Novak was Zach’s father. Zach’s grandmother worked at Thistle Park.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Look at this.” Tabitha slid a small photograph over.

“That’s the dining room!” I was pleased to recognize the room.

“Yup, and I think these are the three paintings.”

The Sargent hung above the fireplace. The faded photo wasn’t the greatest, but you could tell the painting was fairly large. On the canvas Evelyn once again held baby Sylvia on her lap, and her husband stood behind them.

“And here are the other two paintings.” Tabitha tapped the small landscapes flanking the fireplace, no bigger than sheets of notebook paper.

“The fire probably started from that fireplace. McGavitt had it recreated just the same, which is why you recognize it as the present version of the dining room. Well, except for the paintings. They were the most valuable ones left at the time, so that’s probably why Evelyn ran back to get them.”

“And why she thought her daughter was planning on taking them to finance her elopement.”

I leafed through the other photos in the folder. It was odd to see men and women in old-fashioned clothes posing in the house where I now lived. If I could restore it to its former glory, it would make one hell of a B and B and venue for weddings. I stopped at a photo of two young women and a man, outside in the garden.

“That’s Sylvia again, isn’t it?” I pointed to the woman at the left side of the photo. “And the gardener, Sylvia’s first husband, Albert Smoot, in the middle. Who is the other woman beside him?” Albert Smoot was handsome, with dark hair, a mustache and a very intense expression. Both women gazed at him, but he only had eyes for Sylvia.

“I think she was their maid. She might be Zach’s grandmother. Well done about Smoot,” Tabitha said. “How did you know?”

“Sylvia described him well in her diary.” I pulled the book out of my purse with a flourish.

“This is amazing.” Tabitha turned the diary over in her hands, her face still with reverence. “I can’t wait to read this!”

I glanced at her door. Every few minutes, Helene’s voice penetrated Tabitha’s office. I caught a snippet of her conversation. “She’ll ruin the integrity of the house, but perhaps we’ll oust her before then. . . .” I shuddered to think what she’d do if she knew I was here, with a tool that might help us find those paintings.

“I read the beginning and skipped ahead to the end because it stops the night before the fire. She doesn’t specifically mention hiding places in the house. Why would she? Maybe there’s some other clue in the diary. Zach reminded me Helene would want to get her mitts on this.”

Tabitha narrowed her eyes at the mention of her ex. “Just don’t let it out of your sight.”

I stood to go.

“I can help you and your sister out with the house if you like. It must be overwhelming.”

I smiled at her offer. “I’d like that.” I started to unlock her door when Helene’s cackle made me pull back as if the doorknob was a live coal. “Will they see me?”

Tabitha glanced at her watch. “They usually go until six, so you’ll be fine. I’ll walk you out.” We shuffled soundlessly down the hall as someone at the DAR meeting gave a report.

We were almost free when I smacked into Yvette Tannenbaum, the singer from Sylvia’s funeral and the first lady of Port Quincy.

“I’m so sorry!”

“Hi, Yvette.” Tabitha kept her voice low. “I was just walking Mallory out.”

Yvette sighed and wilted against the doorframe as she hugged her spindly arms to her stomach. “I wish I could leave with you. My husband makes me come to these. Too bad I have one measly ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War.” Yvette turned to me. “Helene Pierce makes these meetings even more unbearable than they normally would be.”

“Is she still here?”

“She’s on the front porch.” Yvette pantomimed smoking. Perfect. Helene was indulging in one of her Virginia Slims and wouldn’t see me exit the side of the building.

“I hear you might have some paintings in that house of yours.” Yvette cocked her head.

“Who told you that?” Nothing was a secret here.

“Helene, of course.” Yvette laughed. “Good luck finding them.” She glanced at her watch then across the street where her father’s auto body shop was visible. “The meeting’s technically over. I need to get to work.”

Yvette slipped back into her mousy persona and headed down the hall.

“That was unexpected,” Tabitha said when we were safely outside. “Yvette barely says two words to anyone. She must like you.”

“I met her and Bev Mitchell the day after Shane Hartley was murdered. She congratulated me on cancelling my wedding. Why would she attend those meetings for her husband?” I dug around in my cavernous purse for my keys.

“He’s the mayor.”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean she should have to go to events or join clubs she doesn’t want to.”

Tabitha shrugged. “He wants her to be involved.”

“But she’s so . . . introverted. Except when she’s singing.” I recalled her shy smiles and muted hellos when we ran into each other in town. “How does she handle attending events and political things?”

“Not well. She doesn’t sound too happy in her marriage if she’s complimenting you on not going through with yours with Keith.” She glanced over her shoulder, a slow smile warming her face.

“It seems you have an admirer.” I turned around to see Garrett Davies, who stared unabashedly from across the street. He raised his hand and waved; then his face cracked into a wide grin, identical to Summer’s, except for the braces, of course.

He pointed to his watch apologetically and continued on his way.

“Seems like you feel the same way.” Tabitha smirked as she went back into the historical society.

* * *

A small smile played at the edges of my mouth as I buckled myself into the Mini Cooper. What was it about Garrett that could distract me from all of the awfulness raining down? I turned the engine over and made a left out of the alley, which placed me at the very top of the big hill that dipped down and then up, creating the grand valley between Port Quincy’s downtown before it ascended toward Thistle Park.

Port Quincy’s main streets had bricks instead of pavement. The yellow brick road made a soothing thrum under my wheels as I drove. I felt like Dorothy on the way to Oz. I’d come to love driving through town, approaching Thistle Park and the turrets of the grand Victorians on Sycamore Street peeking out over the trees.

But today the ride wasn’t smooth or picturesque. I gathered speed like a slalom skier, and I had no brakes.
Wait, I have no brakes?

I pressed the pedal all the way to the floor of the car but met no resistance.

I looked around frantically for a place to pull over, but both sides of the street held tidy rows of houses. I yanked the parking brake and gritted my teeth for the impending stop. Nothing happened.

A little boy, perhaps counting on me to stop, began to cross the street in a crosswalk. He was about eight, with a striped T-shirt, grubby shorts, and red shoes. He concentrated on his ice cream cone instead of the road or the beagle at the end of the leash in his hand. He hadn’t seen me. He didn’t know his life was about to irrevocably change.

“Oh God, get out of the way!” I pulled hard to the right to avoid the little boy and his dog and shut my eyes, sending up a more fervent prayer. The car jumped the sidewalk and made impact in a screech of compressed metal and shattering glass. Time slowed down, and I stupidly thought how pretty the windshield looked as it crumbled, before I closed my eyes against the bursting air bag. Next came my screams, which didn’t stop until the ambulance and the police rolled up, their sirens wailing, drowning me out.