A Haunted Theft (A Lin Coffin Mystery Book 4) (5 page)

L
in didn’t want
to have to find a place to park her truck so she walked into town and headed for the cultural museum to meet Nathan Long to discuss the museum’s garden needs. Viv was dying to accompany her cousin to the meeting, but they couldn’t figure out how to explain why she was there so she stayed at the bookstore and pouted.

Just as she approached the museum, a handsome, tall, fit older man stepped out from the front door and came down the steps. Dressed in tan chinos and a starched long-sleeved button-down shirt, he noticed Lin and walked over to her. “Carolin Coffin?”

Lin reached out to shake hands with the man. “Call me Lin. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Long.”

“Please call me Nathan.” He thanked her for coming to see the backyard of the museum and led her around to the rear of the building. Lin’s eyebrows shot up when she saw the mess. She wasn’t expecting such a neglected yard and garden.

Nathan eyed her. “I hope the condition won’t deter you from considering the job.”

Lin’s heart sank at the prospect of restoring the yard. The old flower beds were overgrown with weeds and shrubs and bushes grew out of control and seemed to smother some of the spaces. Many of the bricks of the walkway and patio had been pushed up by years of winter frost and Lin had to be careful where she walked so she wouldn’t trip. Long vines grew helter skelter over the weedy grass … what there was of it, and they choked some of the perennials that were making a valiant effort to bloom.

“Well.” Lin looked all around.

“It’s not hopeless.” Nathan made an attempt at encouragement. “Is it?”

Lin chuckled. “No, it’s not hopeless. I’ve dealt with much worse. I’m just surprised by how far-gone it is back here.”

“The yard has been an afterthought for years. Money was an issue initially, but the museum has had some generous donations recently and the board thinks it’s time to take this space in hand.” Nathan walked with Lin around the space. The man bent to pick up some empty beer bottles. “Kids come back here some nights and smoke and drink. We’d like to put a fence around the garden and put up some security lights to discourage teens from hanging out.”

Lin could see a spot in the corner where the weeds had been trampled and squashed. Cigarette butts lay in the dirt and there were some charred logs indicating that a fire had been lit there recently. She pointed it out to Nathan.

“That’s all we need … a teens’ campfire getting out of control and burning the museum down.” He shook his head as they moved to another corner of the yard.

“We thought it would be great to add to and expand the classes and exhibits that we hold.” Nathan waved his hand around. “The preliminary plans include setting up tables and chairs in this section here and serving light refreshments. We understand that there can be a good profit margin in such a thing. We could also hold outdoor gardening classes, wreath making classes, plant sales, and teach courses on heirloom plants and seeds. The space is big enough and perhaps one day we could add a greenhouse on this side.” Nathan pointed.

Lin thought the ideas were good ones. “It would add another dimension to the museum. I think it would draw in a good number of people.”

Nathan Long smiled and looked relieved by Lin’s comments. “I’m so glad you agree. Does that mean you’ll take the job?”

Lin didn’t want to drag Leonard into the work since he would be very uncomfortable running into Martha Hillman. She thought she could hire the couple who often helped out on some jobs if she needed them. “I’d be pretty much handling this myself as my partner is involved in dealing with some of our bigger contracts right now. If you wouldn’t mind it taking a bit longer, then I’d be glad to work up some numbers for the project for you to present to the board.”

“That would be wonderful.” Nathan gestured around the yard. “Shall we walk the space so you can hear what else we’d like done?”

Lin pulled out a large pad of paper to jot notes and to make preliminary sketches. She and Nathan walked from side to side of the garden as he pointed out more of the board’s ideas for the garden.

When they had finished, they sat down on wobbly chairs next to a rickety old metal table. Lin placed her pad on the table and showed Nathan what she’d sketched. “These are the notes I took as we strolled around.” She pointed to how the patio would be repaired and expanded and discussed some things she thought of adding. “You might think about a water feature here. It would help to create a peaceful atmosphere.” Lin looked at the building. “Where would the kitchen be located? It’s important to know how that would be accessed and how to lessen the impact of waitstaff bustling back and forth.”

Nathan stood and led Lin to a door positioned at the back of the building which led into the above-grade basement. He took out a key and pushed the door open.

A flutter of anxiety pulsed down Lin’s back causing her to hesitate before entering. Sensing her reluctance, Nathan said, “Don’t worry. The space is clean and open with windows all around. No rodents or insects allowed.”

Lin forced a chuckle and stepped in. Nathan followed behind. A wave of unease washed over Lin and made her head spin. Feeling dizzy and unsteady, she rested a clammy palm against the wall.

Nathan started to speak, but noticed Lin’s distress and he turned to her. “Are you okay?”

Lin sucked in a breath and forced a smile. “I’m just a bit dizzy. I have swimmer’s ear from being in the ocean.” Lin made up a tale to cover her odd behavior. “Some water is trapped behind my eardrum and causes me some dizziness, but it passes quickly.”

Nathan nodded accepting the explanation and then he turned around and gestured about the basement space. The walls were whitewashed and the floor was tiled. The room was spacious and clean. “The plan is to turn this into a kitchen. Surprisingly, there’s an old dumbwaiter built into the wall between the floors.” He pointed to the back of the space. “It’s been blocked off for ages. There’s a storage closet above it now, but it could be repaired and we could use it to bring food up to the first floor should a function be hosted upstairs in the future.”

“How convenient,” Lin murmured trying to figure out why she felt so anxious being in the basement.

“So this is where the kitchen will be to serve the outdoor café.” Nathan headed for the door to return to the garden and Lin followed. As she was stepping through the doorway, panic flooded her body and an image flashed in her mind of Viv in terrible distress. Lin’s vision sparkled and began to dim. She blinked hard several times and sucked in quick, fast breaths trying to keep her composure.

“That’s the tour.” Nathan smiled. He turned around and looked at Lin.

“Do you mind if I sit here and make a few more quick sketches?” Feeling weak, Lin hurried to the rusty old table and plopped down in the chair.

“Be my guest. How soon can you have the proposal ready?”

“I can finish it by the end of the week.” Lin felt like all the blood was draining out of her head.

“Excellent. I’ll show the proposal to the board members and they’ll vote. Not to worry, it will be approved. The board knows your work and is aware that your prices are reasonable for the high quality you offer.”

Sitting in the fresh air, Lin started to feel better. “I met Martha Hillman the other day. She didn’t seem amenable to spending money on the garden project.”

Nathan waved his hand in the air. “Don’t be concerned about Martha. We only need a majority to approve.” The tall man stepped over to the table and shook Lin’s hand. “Stay in the yard as long as you need to. It was nice to meet you, Lin. I’ll leave you to your work.” He nodded and smiled and left the back yard.

Lin sank back against the hard metal of the seat trying to calm herself and she tried to force the anxiety and adrenaline to dissipate. Glancing back to the basement door, she tried to understand what had caused the sensation of danger. She reached in her bag and pulled out her phone to text Viv to ask if she was okay. A reply came in almost immediately.
I’m fine. Why are you asking?

Lin sent a second text telling her cousin that she was just checking up on her, and then in order to distract her thoughts from the worry she’d felt, she removed her sketch pad and added some details to the preliminary garden plan.

After fifteen minutes of working, Lin realized that the tension had drained away and her muscles were less rigid and tense. Glancing around the space, she made a few more notes and then closed the cover of the sketchbook. The large trees ringing the yard caused long shadows of shade to cover a good portion of the area making it feel like a cool oasis. Lin slipped the sketchbook into her carrying bag and stood up. A whoosh of cold air enveloped her and she froze in position.

Turning slightly, Lin saw the Wampanoag ghost standing under the Beech tree on the far side of the space. He held Lin’s eyes with his own and an immense sadness filled Lin’s heart before the ghost shimmered and sparkled and disappeared.

T
he sun was setting
as Lin sat at Viv’s deck table with her hands wrapped around a hot cup of tea. Her face was pale and she still felt shaky from her visit to the cultural museum. When Lin arrived at her cousin’s house, she was visibly trembling from the chill that had settled over her and Viv ushered her to the deck to sit in the last rays of the day’s sun and had wrapped a soft woven blanket around Lin’s shoulders. Although Nicky was resting on the deck with Queenie by his side, he kept looking up at his owner checking to be sure that she was okay.

“Then what happened?” Viv had a cup of tea in front of her.

“Then Nathan showed me the basement where they intend to have a kitchen built.” Lin raised her blue eyes to her cousin. “I felt weird in there, dizzy, kind of disoriented. I honestly thought I might faint.”

Despite her concern about what had happened to Lin, Viv couldn’t help but smile. “I wonder if you’d fainted right there in front of him, if Nathan Long still would have been keen to hire you.”

“If I’d fainted, he wouldn’t have been able to hire me because I would have died from embarrassment.” Lin raised her teacup to her lips and sipped the warm comforting liquid.

“So was it the basement that made you feel tense? Or was it something
in
the basement that upset you? Did Nathan Long say something that produced the anxiety?” Viv studied her cousin’s face.

Lin thought it over. “I really don’t know. The sensation came on right when I stepped inside. There wasn’t anything in the basement. It was just a clean, empty space.” Lin shrugged and the blanket slipped off one of her shoulders. “It was a terrible feeling. I wanted to get out of there, but my limbs felt so sluggish like when you’re in a dream and you can’t make yourself move or run. Something seemed to be pressing down on me.” Lin shuddered recalling the sensation.

“When you got back outside, did you feel better right away?”

Lin’s heart thudded. “I…. I…”

“What?” Viv tilted her head to one side.

Lin swallowed hard. Even though she didn’t want to alarm Viv by telling her of the horrible feeling she’d had that her cousin was in danger, Lin couldn’t hide the fact from her cousin so she blurted it out. “I had the awful sensation that you were hurt or in peril.”

Viv looked like she’d been slapped. “Me? In danger? That was your feeling?” Viv’s cheeks lost their rosy glow. “That’s why you texted me asking if I was okay.”

Lin nodded, her eyes wide with worry. “It probably doesn’t mean anything. I was probably feeling anxious and for some reason I fixated on you.”

Viv leveled her gaze across the table at Lin. “You probably felt it because it was a premonition.” Pushing her hair behind her ear, she glanced over her shoulders at her darkening backyard. “Should we go inside?”

“I think we’re safe.” Lin looked out over the yard just to be sure.

“For now.” Viv’s voice trembled. “What does it mean? What’s going to happen to me?”

“Nothing.” Lin set her jaw. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. It was just a silly feeling. For some reason, I felt panicky and projected it onto you.”

“Don’t do that anymore, okay?” Viv took a swallow of her tea. “Project it onto someone else.”

“In the meantime….”

“I know.” Viv rubbed her forehead. “I’ll be careful.”

“There’s something else.” Lin folded her arms onto the table.

Viv let out a groan.

“I saw the Wampanoag ghost again, in the garden behind the cultural museum.”

“He came back?” Viv leaned forward.

“He looked at me.” Lin turned her eyes to the tall trees that ringed Viv’s yard. “And his look filled me with sadness.”

The girls sat quietly for a few minutes and then Viv said, “Let’s talk about the case. Let’s be proactive and not just sit here worrying and fretting.”

The corners of Lin’s mouth turned up. She loved how Viv could focus on figuring things out even when worry was about to consume her. Lin ran her index finger over her horseshoe necklace. “That’s a good idea. Let’s talk about suspects. The ghost has only shown himself twice and both times were outside the cultural museum. Do you think that the ghost appears there because the thief is connected in some way to the museum?”

“It could be.” Viv checked the time on her phone to see if the shepherd’s pie needed to come out of the oven. “Then there’s Martha Hillman. There are a lot of reasons to suspect her.”

“What about Nathan Long?”

“Nathan? No.” Viv gave a hard shake of her head. “Impossible. He’s a nice man. He wouldn’t steal the basket.”

“He could be hiding behind the nice-man façade. He’s so wonderful no one would ever think he could have done it. It’s the perfect front.” Lin went on when she saw the skeptical look wash over Viv. “Nathan has access to the rooms at the museum. He can wander wherever he wants to go and no one would think anything of it. I bet he could think of a way to get that basket out there without being noticed.”

Viv narrowed her eyes. “If he could think of a way to get the basket out of the cultural museum, then he might be helping the police figure out how the robber escaped with it. And anyway, why would he do it?”

“The money?” Lin cocked her head.

“What would the money get him that he doesn’t already have? He must be wealthy. He is a respected craftsman, he’s in huge demand to teach and to speak. He must make plenty of money. He has what money can’t buy, the respect and esteem of others. Why would he risk that?”

“Maybe he just wants that antique basket. It’s really one of a kind.” Lin pulled the blanket up around her shoulders and lifted an edge up over her head like a hood. “Like you said, he has everything. He loves the baskets. So maybe he wants the one thing he doesn’t have … the antique basket.”

Viv scrunched up her forehead. She realized that Lin’s idea was plausible. “It makes me sad to think he would do such a thing.” A long sigh slipped from her throat. “Who else is a possible suspect?”

“Mary Frye?” Lin asked.

“Oh! That reminds me.” Viv straightened. “We need to eat. We need to get going. We have the class in less than an hour.”

Lin looked puzzled.

“Mary Frye’s class. We’re going to it. It’s tonight.”

An expression of horror formed on Lin’s face. “Tonight? Can we skip it?”

Viv shook her head. “We’re going.” She stood up to head to the kitchen to get the meal out of the oven. “If you think Mary might be a suspect, then this will give you a chance to question her.”

“Like you said before, I think she wanted to tell us something when we saw her at the exhibition.”

“So while you’re weaving the reeds, you can try and coax her to spill what she knows. If anything.”

“I’m not crafty,” Lin moaned. “I’m going to look like a fool.”

“You might want to modify that statement.” With a grin, Viv stared at her cousin wrapped up tightly in the blanket with only her pale face sticking out from under the fabric. “I think you’ve already achieved the look.”

* * *

L
in sat
at the end of the long wooden table struggling with trying to weave the cane reeds the way Mary Frye had told her to interlace them. Viv sat across from her chatting amiably with two other women who were working the strips of cane into intricately woven baskets. After one glance at what the others were doing, Lin made sure not to look at their creations again because it would have caused her to run from the old barn in shame.

“That’s going well.” Mary Frye leaned down to watch Lin moving the cane between her fingers. “You’ve improved already.” The lovely young woman smiled at Lin and sat down next to her to give more pointers and suggestions.

“I’m not very good at this sort of thing.” Lin slid the reed under the first one.

“Nonsense. Anyone can master the weaving.”

“Are you attending college?” Lin wanted to ask questions to divert Mary’s attention from her fumbling fingers and to get a sense of her and what she might know about the robbery of the antique basket.

“I’m working on a master’s degree. I’m studying art history. In the summer, I come back to the island to teach classes and make baskets with my mother. She sells them in her shop in town. And of course, I work in the town museum, too.” Her long dark hair fell forward over her shoulder when she leaned down to help Lin adjust her technique.

“What shop does your mother own?”

“It’s a couple of blocks from the boat docks. Just a small place. It’s called Oak, Ash, and Hickory.”

For a few minutes, Lin chatted with Mary about different things and then asked, “Were you only in the front room of the cultural museum when the basket went missing?”

“I was working in the first room like always. Right where we met the day you came with your cousin to the exhibit.”

“Was the basket on the pedestal when the evening hours began?” Lin knew she’d asked Mary these same questions before, but wanted to see if she would answer them in the same way.

“I don’t know. When I came to work, I entered through the lobby and took my position in the first room.”

“Do all the employees come in the same way?”

“You mean through the front door?”

Lin nodded. “Are any other doors open besides the front? Can employees enter from any other doors?”

“There’s a code on the back door. We can go in through that door as well as through the front, but visitors can only enter through the main entrance.”

“All the employees get the code? That seems like a breach. Can’t you all just enter any time of the day or night? You punch in the code and you can go in?”

“Only during business hours.” Mary pointed to the spot on the small basket where Lin should lace the reed. “At the end of the evening, the curator, or whoever is in charge, disables the door code for the night. It won’t allow access until its reactivated the next morning when someone comes to open up.”

“Is it possible that the curator forgot to disable the code and that’s how the basket was stolen?” Lin looked at Mary.

“But the basket was on the pedestal during the daytime exhibition hours. It was only noticed to be missing when the evening hours started.”

“Couldn’t someone have used the code to come in the back door during the dinner hour when the museum was closed?” Lin wiped her hand on her jeans.

“The code only works during the times when the museum is open. It would have been disabled during the dinner hour when the building is closed to the public.”

“Were the police told about the back door?”

“I’m just a part-time worker. I don’t know what anyone told the police.”

Lin spent a few minutes paying attention to her weaving while her mind raced. Someone could have forgotten to disarm the code. The door was unlocked. Anyone could have gone inside and left with the basket. She paused and shifted slightly on the bench to make eye contact with Mary. “Did you know the person who got let go from the cultural museum?”

Mary sat straighter and her eyes widened. A flicker of something passed over her face and was gone. She seemed surprised that Lin asked the question. “Who?”

“I heard someone got fired. I wondered if you knew the person.”

“I don’t think so.” Mary stood up abruptly. “I’m going to check on the others.”

Watching the young woman out of the corner of her eye, Lin had the distinct impression that Mary was hiding something.