Twisted Threads (6 page)

At that point Gram declared she needed a nap. I probably should have slowed down, too. Between Mama’s funeral and feeling like an outsider in my own hometown and then hearing Gram’s business woes, my mind was moving too fast. But I couldn’t relax. I needed to do something.

I decided to risk running into any members of the press still remaining in Haven Harbor, and go for a walk. I left a note for Gram, went out the back door, and took a shortcut through a neighbor’s yard on a path that used to be well-worn but was now nonexistent. I headed for the harbor.

I might not have missed all the people in Haven Harbor, but, especially on Arizona’s simmering-hot August days, I’d longed for harbor views and breezes.

Outside of the houses and church and police station and municipal buildings, the working waterfront and commercial district of Haven Harbor was basically two streets, both of which paralleled the small harbor. Most of the shops were on Main Street. Some catered to tourists and were full of seagull and moose and lobster Tshirts and postcards and souvenir Christmas ornaments and cheap balsam pillows with MAINE painted on them. Not at all the sort Gram made. Those shops were open only when the customers from away (“visitors,” Mainers call them, to be polite, but we know what they really are) were here, from about Memorial Day to Columbus Day. Other businesses, like The Book Nook, which specialized in books set in Maine or by Maine writers, were open year-round. Both the art gallery and the shop that sold high-end crafts closed in January and February.

Stewart’s still displayed gold and silver jewelry, much of it made by Maine craftsmen. During the summers they featured rings and necklaces set with tourmaline (Maine’s state gem) or sea glass, or “beach pebbles,” for tourists with full wallets or checkbooks to take home as souvenirs. In winter they cut their staff and focused on plainer pieces of gold and silver, with a few diamond rings available for engagements or anniversaries. I’d been very proud that my gold angel necklace had come in a Stewart’s box.

Hubbel Clothing was where you bought clothes when you couldn’t get to the Freeport or Kittery outlets, or to branches of discount stores like Marden’s or Renys. Hubbel could fill your needs for sweatshirts and flannels and wool jackets, as well as bright yellow bib pants and slickers for fishing and blaze orange hats and vests for hunting. They carried flannel nightgowns and pajamas, too. I glanced in the window. Global warming hadn’t affected Hubbel’s inventory.

I kept walking. I paused at the new “patisserie,” where Greene’s Bakery used to be. Cookies, cakes . . . and what Mr. Greene had called “treats.” There was still an alley next to it, with space to drive into the lot in back of the store, or cut through on foot to Wharf Street. Had Mr. Greene killed Mama at his bakery? Had he put her body in his bakery truck when he drove her to Union?

And if it wasn’t Joe Greene, how had her body gotten into a freezer in his storage unit?

I kept walking as my head exploded with memories and possibilities. An antique shop (From Here And There), which must be Sarah Byrne’s, was where the old candy shop had been. I missed the smell of toffee drifting out the door when I walked by. Sarah’s windows featured an old pine children’s table set with small china cups and plates for a tea party. A pot of lilies of the valley decorated the table, and an old teddy bear sat patiently in a small rocking chair. Cute. But not enough to draw me in. How had someone from Australia ended up in Haven Harbor? Was she running to something? Or running from . . . ?

I walked faster. I wasn’t shopping. I wanted to see what had happened to Haven Harbor in my absence. A new women’s boutique looked interesting. The consignment store around the corner from it was new, too. That had been the small grocery store where I’d been sent to pick up a quart of milk or a box of cereal. I cut through another alleyway I’d always avoided, with reason, as a child, and went down to Wharf Street, which paralleled the working waterfront of the harbor.

Two lobster boats were out in the harbor, and three were docked at the Town Pier. In summer the pier would be bustling. Today, only the lobster boats and a couple of skiffs were tied there.

I walked by the marine supply house and Harbor Haunts Café, where Gram had said Lauren worked, and where Mama had waitressed. Nice enough, and open year-round. I didn’t stop. Past the café was the lobstermen’s co-op, where I’d spent my summers steaming lobsters for tourists to eat at benches set along the pier. My skin, my hair, my clothes, had all smelled like lobster in those days, no matter how many showers I’d taken. I’d hated it. I hadn’t tasted lobster since. The co-op hadn’t opened for the summer yet.

Would lobster taste better now? I wasn’t ready to check it out today.

Beyond the co-op was another pier, and a rocky beach, before the mainland circled back toward the ocean. The Haven Point Lighthouse stood above the rocks on the point of land that jutted out into the Atlantic. It had been automated for years, but still blared out fog warnings. Its beams were the constant stars in Haven Harbor’s night.

I walked down to Pocket Cove Beach, one of my favorite past escapes. It was low tide. Rockweed and driftwood and mussel shells, dropped by herring gulls, mixed with used condoms and broken glass and cigarette stubs and beer cans on the wrack lines high on the shore.

When I’d lived here, the elementary school had a cleanup day at the shore in May when we’d all bring large trash bags to the beach and collect the detritus from winter’s high tides. If they still did that, they hadn’t yet this year. I kicked a Moxie bottle filled with seawater. It didn’t break. Moxie bottles were tough.

I stared out at the ocean. The Three Sisters, three small islands just off the coast, were still there, where they’d been for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. My great-grandparents had rowed there for lobster bakes. My grandparents had explored them in small boats equipped with outboard motors. Each summer the yacht club over on the eastern point, opposite the lighthouse, held sailing races. And each summer at least one small sailboat ended up on the rocks of First Sister, the largest island. It had the highest cliffs and the longest stretch of rocks at low tide. Even at high tide you had to navigate the reach between it and Second Sister carefully.

Children were told every seventh wave would be the big one. How many times had I stood here, counting waves, trying to make that true. But the waves obeyed their own rules, and wouldn’t conform, no matter what everyone said.

I inhaled the smells of the mud flats and the ocean, then smiled.

I loved this town on the sea. Even when it hadn’t loved me.

I walked the short length of the beach, looking down. Mama’d shown me where to find starfish here, and limpet shells, and sea urchins, some alive and some dead, bleached white by the waters and the sun.

I looked for a sign, something to tell me what to do now. A few feet from the ledges at the end of the beach, I saw it: a pure white stone, smoothed by the sea. And, close by, another. Smooth and black.

I picked them up, one in each hand, as I had hundreds of times before. I closed my eyes, wished, and then threw them both back to the sea.

They landed at exactly the same time, sending out circles of ripples.

I would get my wish.

But had I wished for the right thing?

I took one more look at the sea and headed home. Toward Gram. First I had to help her. Find that Jacques Lattimore, and do what I could to get the money back, which I already suspected he didn’t have.

Then I’d decide what to do next. One thing was sure. I’d have to navigate carefully. The hidden rocks in this town weren’t only in the harbor.

A state police car was parked in front of the Harbor Haunts Café when I passed it on my way home. Ethan Trask? What other cop would be in Haven Harbor this afternoon? Probably filling his stomach. Or maybe Lauren was waitressing there this afternoon and he was asking more questions.

Right now I didn’t want to think about possibilities. I needed time to digest everything I’d heard—to shuffle all the pieces of the puzzle in my head and try to get some of them to link.

Or maybe, for a few hours, I didn’t want to think about anything. Had I seen a bottle of cognac in Gram’s dining room? Cognac sounded like a sane remedy for an increasingly raw afternoon. And memories.

The media people had apparently given up their watch, but I was still wary as I headed up the hill. I circled the block and went in the back door, which opened into the kitchen.

Where Reverend McCully was kissing Gram.

They broke apart as the door opened. “I’m . . . sorry,” I said. “I went for a walk and was just coming back. . . .”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” said Gram, although she stepped away from the reverend and smoothed her hair. “I should have told you before. But with your coming home, and your mama and all . . . and we haven’t exactly gone public. Tom being a minister, he has to be very careful. People talk.”

People had talked about Mama. They’d talked about me. But . . . Gram? And how old was this reverend?

Reverend McCully nodded. “Your grandmother’s a very special person, Angie. She was helping out at the church and we became friends. . . .”

“And then . . . more than friends,” said Gram. I swear she was blushing. “We’ve been . . . seeing each other . . . for almost a year now.”

“We were blessed to find each other,” said the reverend, looking at Gram with an expression less than totally holy. “We were going to announce our news to the congregation this spring, but first there was this trouble with Jacques Lattimore, and then your mother’s body was found. We didn’t want people to think we were ignoring problems and only focusing on our own happiness.”

“Announce?” I looked from one of them to the other. “You mean—”

“Charlotte said ‘yes.’ She’s agreed to marry me,” he continued, reaching for Gram’s hand. He actually raised it to his lips and kissed it.

“Gram? Is that so?”

She nodded.

“But you never said anything. You never hinted.” I looked from one of them to the other. “Well! Congratulations.” I hoped I was making sense.

She’d been married to my grandfather, but he’d died long before I was even born. I’d never pictured Gram married. She was just . . . Gram. I’d figured she would be forever.

“I knew you’d be happy for me, Angel. And I was going to tell you, as soon as we’d finished up with the memorial service. I was. There just hasn’t been time.”

But they’d been . . . dating? Did you call it dating when you were over sixty?

“I’m happy for you. Both of you. Really. I’m just surprised.”

“We’d wanted to have a tiny, quiet ceremony, but with Tom’s job, he’s expected to invite everyone in the congregation. So we’re going to do it all. Church wedding, reception. The whole traditional event.” They were both grinning. They were serious about this.

“I never thought you’d be married before I was, Gram,” I blurted, and immediately knew that was the wrong thing to have said. Besides, marriage was definitely not on my immediate horizon. If ever! I’d dated a guy named Jeff for a while in Mesa. It had felt pretty serious, but it hadn’t worked out, and I’d almost been relieved. Marriage was a long-term decision. I was more the day-to-day type. Maybe like Mama, although I hated to admit it.

“Most grandmothers get married before their granddaughters, you know,” she said, laughing. “Tom and my timing is just a little different.” She looked at Tom, and I could see excitement and happiness on her face, which I’d never seen before. How had I not even considered that she might want someone in her life? She turned back to me. “We don’t want to make it public for a few more weeks. But I’d love for you to be my maid of honor, Angel. Maybe a late June wedding?”

Late June! I hadn’t planned to stay that long. Maybe I could leave and then come back. But I couldn’t turn her down, weird as it felt. “I’d . . . be honored. You know, I’ve never been anyone’s maid of honor.”

“I’m glad you’re here.” Gram looked from Reverend Tom to me and then back again. “How could my life be better? Angel is home again, and we’re planning our wedding. Remember though, Angel, for now it’s our secret. Only the three of us know.”

“Got it. Do you have any champagne? I feel as though we should celebrate!” I said. It wasn’t the cognac I’d been thinking of, but champagne would do. Now I really did need a drink.

“I’ve been keeping one handy,” Gram answered. She pulled a bottle of Moët from the back of the refrigerator. “This is just the time to open it. Tom, would you do the honors?”

A few minutes later we were raising glasses. “To a new beginning,” I said.

“To forgetting the past, and getting on with the future,” added Gram.

“And to the woman I love, and her understanding granddaughter, whom I’m grateful to finally meet,” said Reverend Tom.

We clinked our glasses together and drank.

“Now everything would be perfect if I could get Mainely Needlepoint back on track,” said Gram. “And you’re helping me do that, Angel.”

I nodded. I hoped she hadn’t put too much faith in me. “And I want to know who killed Mama,” I added.

Reverend Tom shook his head slightly. “Joe Greene killed your mother, Angie. I don’t think there’s much question about that.”

“Maybe. Maybe he did. But I want to be certain,” I answered.

“Why don’t you let those questions go,” said Gram. “Now you know your mama didn’t leave you intentionally. She was taken from you. It’s time to move on.”

Maybe it was time for Gram to move on. But I wanted that last
t
crossed. “First job: finding Jacques Lattimore,” I said, raising my glass again. Then I’d see what I could uncover about Mama’s killer. If it was Joe Greene, and I found out why, I’d accept that. I just wanted to know.