Booked for Trouble (15 page)

I refrained from saying that those vegetables might have been local, but if they were, they'd been shipped halfway across the country to a factory, then processed and returned as a frozen lump.

George beamed. Yup, the tooth fairy was smiling on George, manager, tonight.

A heck of a lot more was going on at this table than I could follow.

At last the endless meal was finished. I refused dessert, hoping to get the heck out of there. But Theodore indulged himself with a towering slice of four-layer chocolate cake, meaning the rest of us had to wait until he'd finished. Then mom ordered cappuccinos for everyone. She was getting around to asking if we wanted liqueurs, when I pushed my chair back. “That was great. Thanks, Mom. Shall we go, Connor?”

“Why don't you let Theodore drive you home, dear? No need to take Connor out of his way.”

Theodore broke away from his examination of the port and whiskey menu. “What?” He also lived in Nags Head. The lighthouse was as much out of his way as Connor's.

“Be a dear and drive Lucy home, won't you? You don't mind, do you, Connor?”

What could Connor say? He threw me a confused look. “No. I don't mind.”

Between them, George and Mom had finished off two bottles of wine. I'd had one glass. Connor had ordered a single beer to accompany his appetizer of calamari. Teddy had kept to his original pint of Guinness, sipping slowly. I suspected he didn't like the thick, dark beer much, but as he considered it part of his persona, he endured it.

Reluctantly Theodore put down the drinks menu. Poor guy, he'd been looking forward to a glass of postprandial port throughout the entire meal. I wondered if he liked port any more than he liked Guinness. “Shall we?” he said to me, graciously.

Connor stood up also. “Good night, Mrs. Richardson. Thank you very much for the evening. Most enjoyable.”

Mom smirked. “Lovely meeting you.”

I left the restaurant between my two escorts, feeling like Lizzy Bennet, with a mother as manipulative as Mrs. Bennet. Unfortunately I had no idea what she was trying to manipulate me to do.

As we walked through the lobby, a figure rose from one of the slightly worn wingback chairs. It was the woman who kept hanging around the library by herself. The one I had come to think of as the Gray Woman. She looked from Connor to Theodore to me. Back to Connor.

“Hi,” I said.

She walked away.

“I keep seeing that woman,” I said. “Here and at the library. I'm starting to get the feeling she's watching me. Do you know who she is?”

“A tourist,” Theodore said, without much interest.

“No,” Connor said. “I'll see what I can find out.”

We hesitated on the hotel steps.

“I'm sorry,” I said to Connor.

He laughed. “Don't apologize. I liked your mother very much. She's a woman who knows her own mind and ensures everyone else knows it, too.”

I shuddered. “Oh, gosh. What did she say?”

“She told me your fiancé is pining away back in Boston.”

“In her dreams. Not in his.” I'd told Connor about Ricky, and why I'd left Boston and my job at Harvard so suddenly.

“That,” he said, “I'm glad to hear. Night, Teddy.”

“Night, Mr. Mayor.”

O
n the way back to the lighthouse, Theodore didn't bring up the subject of the Ian Flemings. He was smart enough to know I might not approve if I thought he'd approached my mom for money. Instead he told me that
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
wasn't his favorite Thomas Hardy and he'd been disappointed when it was chosen at book club, but he didn't like to overrule the less literary among us. How about a rip-roaring adventure yarn next? He suggested
Kidnapped
by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Outside Nags Head, Highway 12 runs along the shore and through the Hatteras National Seashore. It's a long way to the next town, tiny, picturesque Rodanthe. At night the road's dark and quiet. A single vehicle passed us, throwing light into the interior of our car. I glanced at Theodore. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead, his hands firm in the acceptable ten-and-two position on the steering wheel. If my mom, for some completely unknown reason, was intent on setting me up with Theodore, the poor guy didn't know any more about it than I did.

He didn't get out of the car to see me to my door, but watched until I was safely inside. Charles greeted me with
an indignant hiss. He seemed to be objecting to having been locked out of the apartment without any dinner.

“Your fault,” I said, following him upstairs.

Once I'd taken care of Charles's culinary needs and prepared myself for bed, I powered up my iPad to check for messages. I was surprised to see the screen fill with e-mails from the members of my book club. The subject line on them all was “Karen.” Louise Jane seemed to have started the thread. I opened the message. In Louise Jane's abrupt style it said:

I want to meet to discuss the death of Karen after last week's book club. Clearly the police aren't up to the job. Monday noon at the library. Third floor.

Aside from the fact that Louise Jane had no business taking over the meeting room without checking with us to see if it was available, I wasn't pleased. What was she up to now?

The rest of the e-mails were some variation of “I'll be there.”

Which reminded me that nothing more had been said about the memorial service at the hotel tomorrow. I didn't intend to go. I wanted to go to Karen's funeral, which hadn't been announced yet, but I was hardly a member of her “hotel family.” I remembered that George had been about to fire Karen on the steps of the hotel after her altercation with Mom. Some family.

I closed the iPad and climbed into bed. I was in the middle of the Simone St. James book. I glanced around my apartment, looking into the dark corners. Not that it had any corners, since it was a round room. Charles kneaded at the quilt, preparing to settle down.

I opened the book and began to read.

I put it down.

Books. Theodore. He'd seemed quite sure he'd be able to recover the set of first editions he'd had to sell recently. That had to mean he'd come into some money. It made no sense to me that Mom would offer to help him out. Unless . . . unless it was part of a business deal.

You bring my daughter back to Boston and I'll buy your books for you.

If so, she must have explained his part of the deal pretty obliquely. Teddy had scarcely been attempting to charm me. Tonight, he'd shown as much interest in my life as he usually did. Meaning absolutely none. He wasn't a stupid man; in fact he was very intelligent. Just socially awkward and obsessed with books. And inclined to have sticky fingers around other people's collections on occasion.

Not that anything's wrong with being obsessed with books. I've been accused of that myself.

Not the sticky fingers part, though.

Then again, when carried to extremes, obsession does have a way of overcoming scruples and values. How much did Theodore want those James Bonds back? It must have hurt him enormously to have to sell them. To see them passing into other hands. And then to hear they were back on the market only a short time later?

How far would he go to recover them?

Would he steal?

Would he kill?

I thought back to book club night. Theodore had been sitting beside Aunt Ellen. Ellen sat next to Mom. He was close enough to Mom's beach bag, particularly before the meeting, when everyone was getting drinks and
pastries, or when they were preparing to leave. Had Theodore stolen the necklace and slipped it into Mom's bag, intending to get it out of the hotel that way and later recover it at book club?

No, that wouldn't work. Theodore wouldn't have been searched leaving the hotel. If he'd had the necklace on him, he could've simply walked out with it.

Had it happened the other way around? Had Theodore taken the necklace and brought it, concealed on his person, to book club? Did Karen Kivas see him take it? Did she confront him and tell him what she knew? Did she convince him to slip it into Mom's bag so it would be discovered and returned to its owner?

My heart almost stopped beating.

Did Theodore tell Karen he was going to return the necklace? And then kill her because of what she knew?

If that was what had happened, then he'd killed Karen for nothing. He didn't have the necklace. But other than the aforementioned sticky fingers, he was no experienced criminal. He would have acted in panic, and then seen the prize slip between his fingers.

I clutched the quilt to my chest. Theodore had driven me home. He'd sat in his car in the parking lot when I let myself into the building. I hadn't checked to see if he'd driven away.

Was he out there now, in the dark, watching my window? Waiting until the light went out?

Something moved behind my head. I screeched. Charles's tan face and dark brown ears appeared.

Okay, maybe tonight wasn't the best night to read a ghost story.

I switched out my light. Charles's warm bulk curled up against my side and he purred.

I
love Sundays! The library's closed and I have nothing to do all day except relax, read, and indulge myself. I slept late and then enjoyed a long, luxurious morning in bed with coffee, a toasted bagel laden with cream cheese, smoked salmon, and capers and my book. I pushed aside the internal voice telling me to be a good daughter and call my mom. Mom, I reminded myself, was more than capable of entertaining herself. The storm Connor had predicted had not arrived; instead sunlight poured through my window. The book I'd been afraid of in the quiet and the dark was nothing but a good, satisfying read in the warmth of a sunny day.

Josie didn't often take a day off, so I'd been pleased when she contacted me yesterday to suggest we go to the beach. I struggled out of bed at eleven and threw my beach things together. I was ready and waiting when Josie arrived to pick me up. I was happy to see that our friend Grace was with her.

It being a Sunday in July, the beach was busy, but it never gets too crowded and we found a quiet spot to lay out our towels. Grace pounded an umbrella into the sand.
Then the three of us stripped off shorts and T-shirts, kicked our flip-flops into the air, and ran, screeching with delight, into the waves. When we came out of the water, Josie and I arranged our towels in the sun. Grace, her Irish ancestry plainly written in her red hair, freckles, and pale skin, crawled into the shade of the umbrella. Grace opened the cooler and pulled out bottles of tea, bags of chips, and sandwiches from Josie's Cozy Bakery.

“It's nice,” I said, selecting a ham and cheese on a croissant, “that you could take the day off.” I dug my toes into the sand and my teeth into the sandwich. It had been made yesterday but was still delicious.

“I'm trying to tell myself that I can't be at the shop all the time,” Josie said. “Not if I want some kind of a life. Not if I'm ever going to have kids. But it's tough to let someone else take over. I guess I'm a control freak.”

“The Wyatt women are.”

My cousin smiled at me. “Some of us are. Not you, though.”

“These days, I'm incapable of having control over my own life. Speaking of kids, any news on the wedding front?”

“Ha!” Grace shouted.

“If there is, you two will be the first to know,” Josie said. “Between Jake's new restaurant and the bakery, I don't know that we can even find a day when we're both free so we can have a wedding.”

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“It's all good. You know me—I like to grumble.”

“You can say that again,” Grace said. She wiped her hands on a napkin, arranged her towel under her head, lay back, and closed her eyes.

“No comments from the peanut gallery,” Josie said.
“Despite the occasional grumble, we're happy, Jake and me. We're making our life our way. We're chasing our dreams, and we know some sacrifices have to be made. The bakery's booming, the restaurant's getting great reviews, and business has been good. We're concentrating on making money now, and in the winter we'll have time to sit back and make long-term plans.”

North Carolina is too far north to be a year-round beach destination, and the tourist trade dries up over the winter months. A welcome break for some, but it can be hard to make a year-round living.

“Have you put Grandma's Dream Cake on the menu yet?” I asked, as I popped the last piece of my sandwich into my mouth.

“Yes, and it's been a huge success. We sold out yesterday, or I would have brought some leftovers. I have triple-chocolate brownies, though. Want one?” She started to get up.

“Sit down,” I ordered. “I'm perfectly capable of getting myself a brownie. You do need to stop working sometimes.”

She laughed. “So my mother keeps telling me.” She dug in her bag for her book. I wasn't at all surprised to see that it was a cookbook:
Baking with Chocolate
. Yum. I forced myself to remain where I was. No triple-chocolate brownies for me.

Maybe one wouldn't hurt.

I crawled across the hot sand to the shelter of the umbrella and dug in the cooler. Grace rolled over. She was sound asleep. “Want one?” I asked my cousin.

“No, thanks.”

Too lazy to stand up, I sort of crab-crawled back to my towel on one arm, holding the rich dessert aloft.

When it was finished, I lay back. I'd slathered myself with sunscreen, and now I pulled a Red Sox ball cap down over my eyes. I started to drift off.

I sat up. “Josie?”

“Yes?”

“Does your mother ever talk about when she was young? In high school, say?”

“Once in a while. She's still friends with some of the girls she knew back then. The high school had a big reunion last year for its fiftieth anniversary. Mom was disappointed that your mom didn't come.”

“She wouldn't. She's not exactly proud of her Outer Banks childhood.”

“Her loss,” Josie said. I agreed with her. The Outer Banks back in the sixties and seventies must have been a wonderful place to grow up, and my grandparents hadn't exactly been poor. Just solid, respectable, hardworking people. “Why are you asking, sweetie?”

“I don't even know if I know. Mom didn't kill Karen. She hadn't seen Karen for more than thirty years until this week, and then the next day jewels are stolen, Karen's killed, and Mom's accused of both those things? I'm thinking that whatever did happen might have roots in their past. Did your mother ever say anything about any trouble my mom was in when they were young?”

Josie lowered her sunglasses. She focused her intense cornflower blue eyes on me. “You're thinking about that necklace, right? The one that was stolen and found in your mother's possession.”

“Not in her possession, in her bag. Where anyone could have put it.”

“Everyone who was at the library that night was questioned by the police. Sam Watson came to the bakery the
day you found Karen, not long after you left. I told him what I knew, which wasn't much. Another detective came around later to ask me about your mom's bag. Questions like, if I'd seen anyone paying attention to it, moving it, that sort of thing. I said no. At the time, I didn't know why they were interested in that bag, but word got around pretty fast. Stolen diamonds make delicious gossip.”

“Do people think Mom took it?”

“Local gossip says that Karen stole it and was killed by one of her criminal contacts. No one seems to know who that might be or why. A double cross maybe. Gossip doesn't have to make sense.”

“And that's all this meeting of the book club that Louise Jane has called for tomorrow is going to be,” Grace said in a voice thick with sleep. “A rehash of the worst of the gossip. She's read too many mystery novels.”

“More like too many old Westerns,” Josie said. “Louise Jane wants to seem important. She'll probably suggest we deputize her to help the police. I won't be surprised if she has a tin star to fasten to her scrawny chest.”

“Well, I for one am positive your mom didn't kill anyone or steal any necklace, Lucy,” Grace said. “I thought she was very nice. I told Detective Watson that.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I don't know how you two can sit in that sun. I'd be broiled to a crisp. I'm going for a swim. Anyone coming?”

Josie stood up, and I followed. “Sweetie,” my cousin said. “If you want to know about your mom's past, why not ask my mom?”

We ran into the water, sending a flock of sandpipers scurrying to get out of our way.

We packed up and headed home around four. After
Grace and Josie dropped me off at my front door, I took a long shower, washing away the salt and sand. Then I put on a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt and headed back out.

Josie had suggested I speak to Aunt Ellen. It was time to do precisely that.

I drove past the colorful beach houses set into patches of drifting sand and tough vegetation that lined either side of Virginia Dare Trail until I reached a small yellow home. The house backed onto the dunes protecting the beach, and was built in typical Outer Banks style: tall and thin, with outdoor staircases and balconies on every level, including the roof, to give sea views.

Aunt Ellen's car was in the driveway.

She answered the door, wiping her hands on her apron. “Lucy, this is a surprise, although a very nice one. Come in. Your mother's coming to supper. You're more than welcome to stay. I apologize for not inviting you. I thought you'd enjoy a break. Was I wrong?”

“Not at all. It's because of my mom that I'm here. Do you have a moment? I can come back another time.”

“I'm just putting the chicken in the oven, and then we can sit down and have a chat. I have a fresh pitcher of sun tea. Why don't you pour us each a glass, and take a seat outside?”

I followed her into the big, welcoming open-plan kitchen on the second level. A fat white chicken, coated in a thick layer of herbs and spices, lay on the table, beside a pile of yet-unpeeled potatoes. A baked pie, probably from Josie's Cozy Bakery, rested on the counter. I breathed in traces of apple and cinnamon. I pulled down two tall glasses and poured the tea. Leaving Aunt Ellen to pop the bird into the oven, I carried the drinks
outside. Soft blue-and-yellow cushions had been laid out on the chairs, and the table set for three. I stood at the balcony railing for a moment, watching the end-of-the-day activity on the beach.

“There,” Aunt Ellen said. “Dinner's in the oven and I can sit for a while. You don't mind if I peel potatoes while we talk?” She put two plastic bowls on the table and sat down.

“Of course not.” I turned away from the view but did not take a seat.

“What's bothering you, honey?” Aunt Ellen asked.

“Why do you think something's bothering me?”

“Because I saw you take your first breath, and I can read that pretty face like a book. Now spill.” Her hands moved deftly to strip the peel off the potatoes.

I smiled at my beloved aunt. Sometimes she seemed as much a mother to me as my own mom. The happiest times in my life had been long summer vacations on the Outer Banks, in Ellen and Amos's chaotic house, surrounded by my cousins and love and life and laughter. Ellen had been the one at my mother's side when I was born. My dad couldn't make it—some incredibly important business trip that couldn't be postponed.

“I think something's bothering Mom, but she won't say anything.”

“Sounds like your mother to me. She's an intensely private person. You must be used to that.”

“Yes, but this time, with all that's going on, I'm worried. This awful business with the death of Karen, and then being accused of stealing, has to be upsetting her. But there's something else, something underneath. Something deeper worrying her. Do you have any idea, Aunt Ellen, what it might be?”

My aunt peeled potatoes. “Comes a time in a woman's life she feels the years catching up to her. Catching up, and then passing her by. Happens to men, too. They go out and buy themselves fast cars and sometimes take up with young girlfriends. Heavens, look at Norm Kivas the other night, acting like cock-of-the-walk with that young woman. Looking like an old fool, more likely. For women? I love my sister, Lucy. She's a wonderful person. But she did get through life on her looks and it can't be easy to start losing that.”

“She's not losing her looks. She's still fabulous.”

“But she's not twenty, honey. Or even thirty, and soon her fifties'll be in the rearview mirror, too. It's gonna be hard.”

I studied my aunt as her strong, competent hands stripped skin from the potatoes. Ellen's fingernails were unadorned, the nails neat but not painted. Her gray hair was loosely pulled into a knot at the back of her head, tiny lines spread out from the corners of her eyes and mouth, and the delicate skin under her eyes fell in soft folds the color of a distant storm. She wore no makeup and her only jewelry was small gold earrings.

“Do you think she's had plastic surgery?” I asked.

Aunt Ellen popped a naked potato into a bowl of water. “That I can't say, honey. If she did, they did a very good job. You won't remember our uncle Gus.”

“I've heard of him.”

“Our mother's older brother. He died in a boating accident when you were a baby. He was a wild one, for sure. Anyway, Gus always said Sue was the pretty one and I was the brainy one.”

I laughed, but Ellen gave me a look. “Honey, you cannot imagine how much that hurt. Imagine telling a young
girl she wasn't pretty. Being smart didn't exactly make up for it.” She smiled at me. “Now, you, Lucy, have the brains
and
the looks.”

I felt my mouth twist. “Yeah, right.”

“Gus thought he was being witty. I doubt he intended to be mean, but he didn't do Susan any favors, either. She could have done fine at school, gone on to college if she wanted, but as soon as she reached puberty, she decided she wanted to get out of the Outer Banks and the way to do that was to play on her looks. She took singing and acting lessons. Our dad encouraged her, although Mom thought it a waste of money. Poor Sue had no talent whatsoever. Did you know she was planning to go to New York after high school, try out for a model?”

I shook my head.

“Unlikely that would have worked out. She's lovely to be sure, but not tall enough. You know the story. She met your dad and that was that.”

I took a deep breath. Ellen and I had never talked about Mom before. Not like this. “Do you think she married him only because he was rich?”

She put down her potato peeler. “Honey, your mom loved that man like crazy. In all my life, I don't think I've ever seen a girl so in love. My mama was dead set against the marriage at first, thought they were too young. Course, she came around mighty fast, and we all knew why when your brother was born. Your dad absolutely adored Sue and she loved him completely. Would she have loved him as much if his daddy wasn't rich? That I can't say.”