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Daniel had no doubt the man who had won and kept Margaret MacCarey’s heart had just come and taken her hand to lead her away to eternal happiness and peace.
He smiled and swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. She had always been a great lady. He’d miss her.
Daniel leaned back in the chair. In the quiet, he clenched and unclenched his fists. Several emotions fluttered in and out. Most seemed natural and even expected when a loved one passed, but the appearance of anger took him by surprise. He wasn’t angry with his great-aunt Margaret, or fate, or even himself. The dark feelings were just inexplicably there.
He looked up to see the nurse in the doorway. She took a few seconds to gather that Margaret MacCarey had passed and came quietly into the room.
Gently she placed fingers on his aunt’s wrist. “Are you all right?” she asked him.
“I am.” He would be soon, after this knot in his gut went away.
“We loved her here, you know.”
He nodded slowly. “Everybody loved Margaret MacCarey.” He spoke carefully. This nurse did not deserve to feel his anger.
“You can stay as long as you like.”
“Thank you. The arrangements are all made.” He gave her a smile. “She saw to that. Said all she and I had to do was show up.”
“Sounds like our Margaret. I’ll make the phone calls to get things started. You let me know if you need anything. Oh, wait. I have something for you.” She reached into her pocket. “Miss MacCarey said you wouldn’t know anything about this. Insisted when I came on shift that I keep it for you because she was going to be leaving. She said it would be up to you whether or not you kept the secret.” The nurse shrugged and handed him a small worn velvet pouch tied with tattered ribbons.
“Secret?”
“She didn’t explain and I figured you’d know.” She glanced at Margaret’s quiet form. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” He held the lavender velvet pouch for a moment. His aunt was always full of charm and warmth, but there was always a mysterious side to her, things she would almost say before stopping. He had assumed it had to be something about Hathaway. Now he wasn’t so sure.
“Put on the call light if you need anything,” the nurse said as she laid a hand on his forearm and then left him alone holding his aunt’s last secret.
After another moment, he untied the frayed ribbon holding the small pouch closed. Inside was a note.
My dear, Daniel, you will be getting a package from my attorney in the near future. Please, promise me you will live a long and fulfilling life as I did. Even in the darkest night, all is not lost.
Love,
Your Aunt Margaret
He upended the pouch into the palm of his hand and out fell a ring, a woman’s ring, gold with a large pale blue stone surrounded by diamonds.
Lustrous, expensive, the kind Great-Aunt Margaret would have happily worn, yet he had never seen the ring before this moment.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU’RE LATE.”
At 6:42 p.m. Mia shed her old wool coat and shook the rain off on the porch to keep the hardwood floor of Monique Beaudin’s foyer dry. The expression on her friend’s delicate, oval face said worried friend, no trace of anger. That would be Monique, the M to her M. Mia wasn’t sure she had ever truly seen her angry.
“Hey.” Mia stepped inside and toed off her shoes. “I thought if I hung around, Chief Montcalm would eventually let me back in.”
Monique raised her naturally perfect dark blond brows.
“Well, he didn’t,” Mia continued as she tucked her damp hair behind her ears. “He had a couple of his people put that yellow police tape across the doors and they all gave me the stink eye as if they thought I was going to break into my own place as soon as they drove away.”
“So, did you?”
“I would have, but Chief Montcalm scares the bejeebers out of me.”
“Well, relax.” Monique took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, accompanying the breath with flowing hand movements.
“I wish I could relax, turn it off like you do. I wish I could.”
“Practice. Practice and maybe a nice glass of sauvignon blanc will lighten the mood.”
“What makes you think my mood needs lightening?” Mia stiffened her shoulders as if miffed, and then slouched.
Monique bubbled out a laugh and led the way to her neat, frilly living room. “Sit. You need it. I’ll drop dinner into the pot and I’ve got everything else ready.”
By the time they were finished drinking their second glass of wine, lobster shells and remnants of Monique’s handmade bread lay strewn on the serving tray between them.
To pay the lobster its due and because they were both starving, most of the meal passed in silence broken by such things as “Oh, this is so wonderful” and the cracking of shells.
“So are they going to let you back in soon?” Monique asked as she placed her neatly folded napkin on the table.
“I hope so. Every hour the police lock me out, the more pitifully behind I get. I need my crew back in there tomorrow to have the place ready by next Monday because the finishing crew is due to start.” Mia sat forward with her elbows on her knees. “What if all this is for nothing?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if we’re too late to build the town up, to make a difference. Building Pirate’s Cove will bring in a few tourists, but it’s only a start. We need more motels and shops, even more restaurants. And it wouldn’t hurt to have some boating business, sightseeing or something like that. If Pirate’s Roost fails, especially before I get a good start, will the rest give up?”
“Funny you should mention boating.” When Monique sank back against the cushions of the navy couch, Mia realized the usual spark in her friend’s bubbly personality seemed to be dim tonight. It hadn’t been her imagination earlier on the phone. “What’s going on?”
Monique let out a sigh that sounded like defeat. “I hate to bring it up because it’s like an old broken record in my life.”
“I’ll get my Victrola,” Mia said. “Come on out with it.”
“Well, when Granddad stopped by to leave our dinner—” Monique gestured toward the remains on the table. “He told me he was moving south, before the snow flies next fall. Says too much of the town has gone so he might as well go, too.”
Mia leaned forward, put her stockinged feet on the floor and clutched a frilly chartreuse throw pillow to her chest.
“What happened this time?” The threat Edwin Beaudin, a longtime widower, had been making since Monique’s mother had died two years ago weighed heavily on his granddaughter.
“There’s a for-sale sign on the Calvins’ lobster boat. You can guess how it went after he saw that. Says he might as well give up bee-un ah Main-ah.” Monique used her grandfather’s heavy Maine accent. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he goes. I wish I still had Mom. He’d stay for her.”
Mia’s heart ached, but...” Maybe you and I will have to make him stay.”
“You know my granddad. He’s more stubborn than you are.”
“That’s what I’m depending on.”
“You have an idea?” Monique’s expression brightened and so did Mia’s heart.
“I have a skeleton, and a crew that needs a nanny. What if he still felt like he was a necessary part of the Bailey’s Cove community?” When Edwin Beaudin lost first his wife and then his daughter, he lost the will to battle the elements, pollution, poachers and the competition for the ever-dwindling supply of fish and lobster. “And I need the shoulder of a big strong man to lean on.”
“You?” Monique laughed out loud. “Need a shoulder to lean on?”
“I’m glad I’m so amusing.”
“Well, you’re so ‘I can do it myself’ that I never thought I’d ever...ever...ever hear you say those words. Lean on someone, especially a man and especially after Rory.”
“I’d like to think I’ve forgiven myself for agreeing to marry a guy who would give me a ring he paid for with my money and have the guts to ask for it back when he changed his mind.”
“I’m sure you think you have, honey, but trust me, you still don’t lean on anyone for anything.”
“I lean on you.”
“That’s because I feed you.”
“There is that.” Mia put her elbows on her knees again. “But besides fishing or hauling in a big lobsta for his granddaughter and her friend, what does Edwin Beaudin like better than to rescue someone?”
“Nothing. He’s been rescuing me my whole life.” Monique’s big blue eyes opened wider in dawning comprehension.
“Do you think he’d be interested in supervising those three workers for me, keeping Charlie out of the bar? I can’t pay him much up front, but as a former boat captain, he can keep a crew in line.”
“He might.”
Mia felt some of the same tentative hope she heard in Monique’s voice.
Monique’s shoulders sagged again.
“What?”
“Granddad’s right about so many of the old-timers leaving. What if he’s right about getting out of town, building a life of some kind away from here? What if it is time to give up?”
“Giving up on Bailey’s Cove means, giving up our hometown having a place in Maine’s heritage. All we’d have left are the fading memories. No one would care or, after a while, even remember the folks who worked so hard to make this a viable town, your ancestors and mine. At least half the people in Bailey’s Cove have a relative who settled somewhere around here.”
“But do you think it’s worth it to beat yourself up to get the restaurant finished? Wouldn’t it be easier to leave it all behind?”
“I’ve been out there in the world and there is truly no place like home. No place like home.” She clicked her stockinged heels together. “And I plan on fighting for it.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“And I know for sure my workers need an overseer because I can’t be there every minute. Finding a skeleton in the wall is not going to make them work more diligently. If it’s okay with you, I’ll ask your granddad.”
“He’ll clamor to help you, at least for a while.”
“For a while is good enough for now. A Mainer stays in Maine unless there is a really compelling reason to leave. He’s a Main-ah right through to his salty old core.”
Monique pushed up from the chair and carried the tray to the kitchen. “I should be reassured by that, ’cause it’s hard to imagine him on a golf course or a beach somewhere under a palm tree with an umbrella drink in his hand.”
Monique returned with a bowl of grapes glistening with water and another bottle of wine. After pouring them each another glass, she plopped down on the couch and brushed her flowing blond locks back with the crook of her arm. “Why do I have to lose everybody in my life?”
“I came back.”
“You did, and I love you for that.” Monique held a grape in her mouth, making her cheek puff out. “Do you think Pirate’s Cove will make enough of a difference?”
“A small one.” One of the things Mia loved about Monique was her friend’s penchant for asking the hard questions. “But we have to start, to invest time and sweat equity somewhere, to regrow our town. I’d say money, but right now it’s the bank in Portland’s money, not mine.”
“Do you suppose the police’ll call you tonight with any news?”
“I don’t know what the procedure is. I don’t know if they’ll call me at all. If they don’t, the chief will get a new desk ornament. Me.”
“You’re such a toughie.” Monique plucked another grape from the bowl and ate it.
“And you’re such a girly-girl.” To make her point, Mia tossed a pillow with a beaded pink ruffle at her friend.
“What do you suppose will happen with the bones?”
“I don’t know. I guess they have to determine how old they are before anything is decided. I just hope they get them out of my wall quickly.”
Monique hugged the pillow and grinned. “I know what we need to take our minds off everything else.”
Mia waved both hands in the air. “No. No. Not your favorite subject.”
“Men!” Monique said and then gave an exaggerated sigh.
“Ha!” Mia leaned back and put her head against the crocheted doily draped over the back of the matching mauve chair. “Men. Had ’em, don’t need ’em.”
“You got robbed. That rat Rory should still be here.”
“Yes. I did and he should. But since I had it all and lost it—twice—”
“I wonder—” Monique put a finger to her chin “—if you’d still say that if another good man came along and rang your bell.”
“I’d ring his bell right back and send him from whence he came.”
“Whence?”
Mia expelled an unenthusiastic huff. “I’m fine just the way I am. Maybe if I want a man, I’ll go after Chief Montcalm.”
“He’s gotta be your dad’s age.”
“What about Rufus’s baby brother? He’s neither attached nor too old.”
“He just left for college, so that’d make you a cradle robber.”
Mia slapped the knee of the clean jeans she’d put on after her shower. “Well, that about exhausts the supply of men here in the Bailey’s Cove area. I think that’s why I moved back here. I wanted a peaceful life.”
Monique snorted. “So, that seems to be going really well.”
