Telling Tails Read online

  “You as well,” I said. I gestured at the counter. “You’re interested in the candlesticks.”

  He nodded. “Mrs. Jackson tells me they aren’t for sale yet, but I’m hoping you’ll make an exception. I’ll give you four hundred dollars for the pair. I recognize that they’re Kirk & Son.”

  I hesitated. From my research I felt the pair was worth between four and four hundred and fifty dollars. And it seemed likely, I’d discovered, that they had at one time belonged to the late Purves Calhoun, though how they’d ended up in that cardboard box was anybody’s guess. Given what I’d paid for the contents of the box, Jeff Cameron’s offer was more than fair. But I hated to send the candlesticks out looking less than their best. I didn’t like to let anything leave the shop that wouldn’t reflect well on the quality of our stock.

  “If tomorrow would work for you, then yes,” I said. “That would give us time to clean them, and it would give you the chance to get a better look at what you’re buying.”

  He started to shake his head before I’d even finished speaking. “I know what I’m getting. That’s not a problem. But I have to have them today.” He pulled a hand back through his thick hair. “Ms. Grayson, my wife’s grandmother had a set of candleholders that, based on the photographs I’ve seen, were identical to these ones. They somehow disappeared after her death.” He raised his eyebrows when he said, “disappeared.”

  “My wife was very close to her grandmother, and if she were still alive, today would have been her eighty-third birthday. I know Leesa is missing her and I know what those candlesticks would mean to her. I’ll give you four hundred and fifty dollars.”

  I felt Rose’s elbow dig into the small of my back. “Sarah dear, I can polish them for Mr. Cameron as soon as Charlotte gets here,” she said.

  I turned to look at her. She gave me a sweet smile. “It’s no trouble,” she added.

  “Thank you, Rose,” I said. I turned back to Cameron. “All right. We have a deal.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “Could you deliver them late this afternoon?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. We don’t deliver.”

  Cameron made a face and glanced at the expensive Polar sports watch on his arm. “I have a meeting in Portland this afternoon and I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Can you make an exception?”

  I reached behind me and caught Rose’s arm before her elbow jabbed me again. “Sarah, Alfred and I could deliver Mr. Cameron’s gift to his wife,” Rose offered, undeterred.

  I didn’t bother turning around to look at her because I knew she’d be the picture of innocence. “Where are you living?” I asked Cameron.

  “We’re still house shopping, so for now we’re renting a cottage at Windspeare Point.”

  I did turn to Rose then. “It’s too far to walk,” I said quietly, hoping my expression told her that I wasn’t going to argue the point with her.

  She eyed me for a long moment, then let out a soft sigh and nodded.

  I faced Jeff Cameron again. “Northridge Taxi also runs a delivery service, and their drivers are bonded.”

  “I can take care of all that, Sarah,” Rose said. She moved past me, around the back of the counter, holding her upper body straight and a bit rigid, which told me that even though she’d given in with grace, she was still annoyed with me.

  * * *

  The parking lot for the medical center was just ahead. I took a ticket from the machine, and the barrier arm went up. I spotted a parking space at the end of the fourth row of cars, close to the emergency room entrance. I was glad that Rose was all right. I should have remembered that she never gave in, and certainly not gracefully.

  I stopped at the security desk just inside the ER doors. The lobby area had recently been renovated. The walls were now painted a warm, pale yellow, the color of late summer corn, instead of the bilious green they’d been before.

  “I’m here to see Rose Jackson,” I told the young man on the other side of the Plexiglas panel. He was wearing dark blue hospital scrubs and his muscular arms were tattooed from his wrists as far up as I could see.

  “You’re Sarah Grayson?” he asked.

  I nodded, wondering how he knew my name.

  “Your mother is in Observation 5.” He pointed over my right shoulder. “Go through those double doors and turn right at the nurses’ station.”

  My mother? I suddenly had a pretty good idea of why the young man had known my name. Ahead I could see Liz, standing by the nurses’ desk. She had the handles of Rose’s blue-and-white L.L. Bean tote bag over her arm. As always, she was beautifully dressed in a pale pink cotton sweater and cream trousers, her blond hair curled around her face.

  I walked over and gave her a hug. “You told them I’m Rose’s daughter?” I said.

  Liz waved my comment away. “I said you were like a daughter to her. Is it my fault people don’t listen?”

  I looked at her, shaking my head.

  “You keep making that face, missy, and it’s going to freeze like that,” she said.

  “That didn’t work on me when I was seven, and it’s not going to work now,” I said. “You lied to them. What if someone asks me for ID?”

  Liz gave a snort of derision. “And what exactly are they going to ask for? Your birth certificate? I don’t think so.”

  Liz had grown up in North Harbor and for years ran the Emmerson Foundation, her family’s charitable trust. She knew everyone in town and was quick to use her influence if it could help someone she cared about. I could see the lines pulling at the corners of her mouth and eyes under her expertly applied makeup, and I knew that despite her feisty attitude she was worried about her friend.

  “You’re certain Rose is all right?” I asked.

  Liz nodded. “She’s just down there.” She gestured over her shoulder. “The doctor is in with her right now. They kicked Alfred and me out.”

  I took a step sideways and looked down the hallway. Alfred Peterson was standing in front of a closed door about three-quarters of the way down the corridor. He was a small man with just a few tufts of gray hair and warm brown eyes. While he may have looked like the stereotypical grandpa who showed up in life insurance ads, he was in reality a computer whiz whose skills rivaled those of hackers a fraction of his age. Mr. P. smiled when he caught sight of me, and I raised a hand in greeting. I saw his shoulders relax a little. I might not have been Rose’s daughter, but I felt responsible for her—for all of them.

  “So she delivered those candlesticks, after all,” I said to Liz. “I told her to get the taxi service to take care of it.”

  Liz nodded. “She tried to deliver them. You’d think at her age she wouldn’t get caught up in some romantic nonsense.” She patted the canvas bag hanging from her arm. “I’ve got the damn things right here, along with Rose’s purse, and for the record I told you they were cursed.”

  I swiped a hand over my neck. “What happened to Rose didn’t happen because of a pair of cursed candlesticks. And by the way, they aren’t cursed. There’s no such thing.”

  Liz jabbed her index finger at me. Her nails were painted a deeper pink than her sweater. “Don’t tell me you never heard of karma. Those candleholders have bad karma attached to them. Purves Calhoun was a mean, coldhearted son of a bitch who mistreated his wife and kids just like his father before him, until his mother-in-law put a curse on him and he fell off the roof of the barn.” She gave me a triumphant look.

  “Purves Calhoun fell off the roof of his barn because he had a still in that barn and he spent too much time sampling his own product,” I retorted.

  “Whatever works,” she said. “Purves’s grandfather bought those things for his wife when she gave him a son, Purves Senior—just as much of a quarrelsome old coot as his son, by the way—after six girls, as if that was her fault,” Liz scoffed. “Then Purves Senior continued that reprehensible tradition and g
ave them to his wife when Purves Junior was born after four beautiful daughters.”

  “I thought the candlesticks belonged to Purves’s grandmother,” I said, thinking it was kind of an odd conversation to be having while we were standing in the emergency room.

  Liz shrugged. “Like father, like son. Every single thing, every pot and plate, every stick of furniture, belonged to the old man as far as he was concerned.” She fished in Rose’s bag and pulled out a box wrapped in blue paper and tied with a silver bow. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. “They have bad juju.”

  “Bad juju?” I said.

  Liz narrowed her blue eyes at me. “Don’t make fun. There are things out there that we don’t understand.”

  She was going on about curses and bad juju because she was worried, I realized. “Rose is going to be all right,” I said, reaching over and laying my hand on her arm for a moment.

  Liz nodded. “I’ve been telling her for years that she’s hardheaded.”

  Mr. P. joined us then. “Sarah, I’m glad you’re here,” he said. The smile he gave me was a small one, and the lines on his face, like those on Liz’s, seemed to be etched just a little deeper. “Rosie told me not to call you.” He glanced at Liz. “So I called Elizabeth instead.”

  “Rose went to Windspeare Point,” I said.

  “I didn’t know, my dear,” Mr. P. said. “I assure you that if I had known, I would have stopped her.” He adjusted his glasses and smoothed down the few wisps of hair he had left; then he looked back over his shoulder. The closed door he’d been standing next to was open now. “I think the doctor is finished.”

  “Let’s go,” Liz said.

  “Isn’t there a two-visitor limit?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t apply to us,” she said over her shoulder without turning around.

  Mr. P. patted my arm. “It’s not the first rule that doesn’t seem to apply to us,” he said to me as we followed Liz toward Rose’s room.

  Rose was sitting on a hospital bed wearing a wrinkled blue-and-gray robe over an equally wrinkled green gown, her white hair standing on end all over her head. Both items of clothing dwarfed her small frame. A nurse was putting a bandage on her left wrist.

  I paused in the doorway, my chest tight, the lump in my throat too big to swallow away, it seemed. Rose looked small and fragile, and it suddenly hit me like a sucker punch to the gut that this could have ended very badly.

  Rose looked up and caught sight of me. She shifted her gaze to Alfred. “You promised you wouldn’t worry Sarah,” she chided.

  “He didn’t call her. I did,” Liz said.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Rose retorted. “You brought Sarah all the way over here for nothing.”

  I could see that this was about to deteriorate into one of their back-and-forth sessions. I crossed the space between Rose and me and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. “I didn’t come over here for nothing,” I said. “I came here for you.”

  Rose reached up with her free hand and gave my arm a squeeze. “It’s all right, sweet girl. I’m just fine.”

  I could see a swelling about the size of a Grade A large egg on the other side of her head. “That doesn’t look fine,” I said. “It looks nasty.”

  Rose looked at the nurse, who was just taping the gauze bandage in place on her arm. “Will you please tell Sarah I’m all right?”

  The nurse gave me a warm smile. “We did a CAT scan. Your mother is fine. We’re just waiting for the results from some blood work, and if that’s okay she can go home.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She picked up the tray with her supplies. “I’ll be back,” she said to Rose. “Push the buzzer if you need anything.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” Rose said.

  As soon as the nurse was gone, I sat down next to Rose on the edge of the bed. “You took those candlesticks to Jeff Cameron’s house,” I said, holding up the gift-wrapped package and trying to keep the frustration I was feeling out of my voice. “Why didn’t you just call Northridge and have them delivered? You know Tim’s people are reliable.”

  Rose made a dismissive gesture with one hand, wincing a little at the motion. “That doesn’t matter right now,” she said. “What I need from you is to call Michelle—and Nicolas as well.”

  Michelle was Michelle Andrews, my friend and a North Harbor police detective. Nicolas—Nick Elliot—was an investigator for the medical examiner’s office. I’d known him all my life. His mother, Charlotte, also worked for me and, like Liz, was one of Rose’s closest friends.

  “Didn’t whoever found you call the police?” I asked.

  “Of course they did,” Rose said. “I gave the patrol officer my statement, for all the good it did. He all but patted me on the head and told me to go home and bake cookies.” She shifted her gaze to Liz for a moment. “Mo Theriault’s grandson,” she added, as though that explained everything. Liz nodded knowingly, so maybe for her it did.

  Rose turned her attention back to me. “I can’t get anyone here to take me seriously.”

  I glanced at Mr. P., who was spreading a blue cotton blanket over Rose’s feet. He shook his head at my unspoken question. He didn’t know what she was talking about, either.

  “Take you seriously about what?” I asked, wondering if that CAT scan was wrong. Was Rose’s head injury more serious than it seemed?

  “The body, of course.” She looked at all three of us. “Why else do you think I was hit over the head? I saw it.”

  “What on God’s green earth are you talking about?” Liz asked, moving around the bottom of the bed to Rose’s other side. “Whose body did you see?”

  Rose looked at Liz, irritation evident in the set of her mouth. “Well, Jeff Cameron’s, of course. He’s dead.”

  Chapter 2

  “Jeff Cameron is dead?” I said, feeling dumbfounded by the direction the conversation had taken.

  Rose nodded. “Yes.”

  “And you know this how?” Liz asked, sitting down on the green vinyl chair by the bed. “The police didn’t find any body. All they found was you and some plastic tube thing by the side of the road.”

  “It wasn’t a plastic tube thing. It was a boat fender. And you haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying, have you?” Rose cocked her head to one side as she studied her friend, and then flinched at the motion.

  “I’m listening,” Liz said, leaning forward in the chair. “You’re just not making a hell of a lot of sense at the moment.”

  I covered Rose’s hand with my own, which caught her attention, exactly as I’d intended. “You saw Jeff Cameron’s body.”

  She nodded again.

  “At his house.”

  Rose pressed her lips together for a moment. “Yes,” she said. “That has to be why I was hit over the head.” She held up her bandaged hand. “And before you all start in on me, I don’t have a concussion, I’m not a feeble old woman and I know what I saw.”

  I knew that tone of voice and set of her jaw. Rose wasn’t going to be swayed from what she believed she’d seen.

  Liz and Mr. P. both spoke at the same time.

  I held up one hand. “Hang on,” I said. “Just hang on a minute.”

  They both stopped talking.

  I put my arm around Rose’s shoulders again, shifting on the noisy vinyl mattress. “Start at the beginning,” I said. “Start from when I left you with Jeff Cameron.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  “Yes, we do,” I said. “A dead man isn’t going to get any deader.”

  Rose nodded. “I guess you’re right.” She tugged at the sheet over her legs and Mr. P. immediately pulled the cotton blanket up over her. She smiled a thank-you at him. Then she sighed softly and began. “I told Mr. Cameron that I would make sure his wife got his gift. He said th
at he didn’t want me to get in any trouble. I said that you would come around.”

  I raised one eyebrow but didn’t say anything. Rose’s cheeks grew pink, and she looked down at the nubby blanket for a moment before looking up at me again. “It wasn’t a lie, Sarah,” she said. “I thought I could make you change your mind if I really had to.”

  Liz made a small snort of skepticism, but I ignored it.

  “Rosie, why didn’t you tell me what you were planning?” Mr. P. asked. There was no recrimination in his voice.

  Rose stretched out her hand to him. He caught it, giving it a gentle squeeze before letting go again. “I’m sorry, Alf,” she said. “I probably should have; it’s just that you would have tried to talk me out of it.”

  “Yes, I would have,” he agreed.

  “That’s the problem,” she said, looking from Mr. P. to me. “Sometimes I get tired of being treated like I’m made of glass and might break.”

  “After that whack on the head you took, it’s pretty clear your head, at least, is made of something other than glass,” Liz commented dryly. She reached forward once more and laid her hand on Rose’s leg for a moment. “And I’m glad it is,” she added. They exchanged smiles.

  “Keep going,” I nudged.

  “We were working out the details of the delivery when you came in.” Rose looked at Liz.

  “I remember.” Liz leaned back in her seat, crossing one leg over the other.

  “Avery was in Augusta, remember?” Rose said to me. “With some kids who had been in her history class. Their teacher organized the trip.”

  After some problems at home, Avery had come to live with her grandmother and attend a progressive alternative school that had only morning classes. She worked afternoons for me. Now that it was July, she was spending more time at the shop.

  I nodded. Liz raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.