The Language of Sand (24 page)

The last house on Merle’s map was a white bungalow with flowers blooming out front. Yawning, Abigail circled the building. She glanced at the windows and halfheartedly shook the doors until a set of headlights brightened the road.

“Don’t let it be the sheriff again. I can only take so much humiliation per night.”

The approaching vehicle was a truck rather than a car. Abigail stopped where she stood. She’d left the hammer in her station wagon. The lights grew closer. Whoever was driving would be able to see her shortly.

It could be anybody.
Including the thieves.

Abigail hid. Kneeling behind the bushes, she peeked between the leaves. The twang of country music was coming from the truck, along with a woman’s giddy laughter. Two silhouettes hovered in the truck’s cab. The driver pulled to the side of the road, preparing to park a few yards behind her Volvo.

“No, not there. Keep going. Keep going,” she whispered.

The truck’s engine shuddered to a halt, the lights dimmed, and the giggling ceased as the two shadows melded into one.

“Oh, jeez. I could be here all night.”

She considered her options, most of which were mortifying. A woman wandering from the bushes of a deserted house was going to seem odd, and even if she could get to her station wagon without the two lovers in the truck noticing, they would hear her start the car.

“Why do you care? Remember, you’re a badass. You’re
infamous
. You scoff in the face of adversity. You also talk to yourself too much.”

Abigail emerged from the brush, intent on strolling to her station wagon in a composed fashion. Except her legs moved faster and faster until she broke into a trot.

“Stop. I hear something,” the woman in the truck said.

Two bewildered faces stared at Abigail from behind the steamed windshield. Mid-stride, she locked glances with the female passenger, a woman with wavy hair and wide, plaintive eyes. Abigail recognized her as one of the “hens” sitting with Janine Wertz at the bingo game. Behind the wheel of the truck was Clint Wertz, his arm slung over the woman’s shoulder, her blouse unbuttoned. Abigail jumped into her car and peeled out. She couldn’t tell who was more embarrassed. Her or them.

Even in the dark, the caretaker’s cottage looked better with the grass cut. Abigail sat in the station wagon with the headlights illuminating the front yard to soak in her accomplishment while trying to forget about her awkward run-in with Clint Wertz. Ruth had been right about him. He was bad news, news Abigail would have preferred not to have firsthand.

She got out of the station wagon and heard a crunch. Abigail scanned the ground and the car seat. There was nothing there. When she shifted her weight, the crunching came again. She dug in her pocket. It was the newspaper article from under the bed.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said, feeling guilty for having crumpled that fragile slip of paper.

She went inside, smoothed the clipping on the dining-room table, and reread its heading:
BISHOP’S MISTRESS SINKS.

The article was dated 1909. It was about a trade ship from Boston bound for Charleston that was caught in a hurricane that blasted the southern coastline. The storm wreaked havoc from Florida to Delaware. The ship met its end by smashing into a shoal in the Ship’s Graveyard, east of Chapel Isle. Fifty-nine men were lost. No bodies were recovered. The last portion of the article insinuated that the
Bishop’s Mistress
had gotten trapped in the graveyard because the lighthouse beacon hadn’t been visible to guide it safely into harbor. The final sentence read:
A tragedy has befallen the
Bishop’s Mistress,
perhaps one that was avoidable.

The question the last line raised lodged in Abigail’s mind. A sunken ship, drowned sailors, a spectral lighthouse keeper—the pieces were falling together in an eerie way. She fought the impulse to return to the basement and sort through the ledgers for an answer. Wesley Jasper had kept such precise notes, she was certain there would be some annotation of that night, some clue to the events that occurred.

“Are you really in the mood to go snooping around down there
in the middle of the night?” Abigail asked herself. She had grass stains on her clothes from mowing the lawn, scratches on her arms from doing Merle’s security route, and a battered ego from becoming “infamous” in town.

“I didn’t think so.”

 
no
va
tion
(nó vā′ shən),
n.
1.
Law
, the substitution of a new obligation for an old one, usually by the substitution of a new debtor or of a new creditor.
2.
the introduction of something new; innovation. [1525–35; < L
novātiōn–
(s. of
novātiō
) a renewing, equiv. to
novāi(us)
(ptp. of
novāre
to renew, deriv. of
novus
NEW
) +
–ion–
–
ION
]

Like it or not, Abigail had to go into town that day for food and
supplies.

“Make a list this time,” she reminded herself as she sat at the dining-room table eating a bowl of mushy cereal. The dilemma was, she still didn’t have any paper, except for the crinkled article, which she’d covered with a cast-iron skillet to flatten the creases.

“I’d put
paper
on the list if I had something to write it on.”

She remembered she had the receipt from her first foray to Weller’s Market. On the underside of it, she wrote the items she needed from Merle’s shop as well as those she wanted to ask him to order, including a new medicine cabinet. She hoped he’d have drawer pulls in stock. The house remained in disarray because she hadn’t reattached the originals or put the dishes and dry goods in the cupboards.

“This is definitely a work in progress.”

Part of that progress would be to swap the current living-room furniture for the antiques in the basement, a transition she couldn’t make on her own. She doubted Merle could help her, which left Denny or Bert, neither of whom she wanted to spend hours on end
with. No matter who gave her a hand, having the carved desk from the basement in the study upstairs was worth looking forward to. She hadn’t looked forward to much in recent months, so that made the desk, as well as the other furniture, a big deal to Abigail.

The back door to Merle’s store was wide open, and he was standing at the sink washing out a bait bucket, his umbrella-cum-cane hooked on the lip of the counter.

Abigail rapped on the door in an effort not to scare him again. “Up and about, I see.”

“I’m definitely up. It’s the ‘about’ part I gotta practice.” He was favoring his good foot and leaning into the sink for support. “Glad you’re okay,” he said. “I was worried when I heard.”

“Heard what?”

“Another house got broken into.”

“When? Where?”

“Last night. Wasn’t Lottie’s. Privately owned. Six doors away from her cottage on Timber Lane.”

“I was on Timber Lane. I didn’t see anything…. Wait. I did see something. I saw a couple—a man and woman—in a truck.” Abigail decided not to say specifically whom she’d encountered.

“A couple? What were they doing there?”

“What couples do alone together in parked cars.”

“Oh, my. Well, you should tell Caleb Larner that. Might be…noteworthy.”

Informing the sheriff was the right thing to do. However, Abigail had absolutely no desire to get involved in the Wertzes’ private life. She’d started one fistfight already.

“Maybe I should have somebody else take the rounds tonight,” Merle suggested.

“Why? Because I’m a woman? You think I can’t handle it?”

Merle chewed his bottom lip, proving that was exactly what he was thinking.

Infuriated, Abigail said, “I’ll do the rounds. End of discussion. Here.” She handed him her list.

“This is a receipt for groceries. You do realize this is a hardware store.”

“The
other
side.”

“Oh, right. I got most of this stuff. I’ll have to order you the mirror, though. Take three or four weeks.”

“No problem. It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”