Aunt Dimity's Death (10 page)

“My friends?”

“Don’t you want to say good-bye to them, too? Or at least tell them what’s going on?”

“Well, I …” I fiddled with my eggcup, not knowing what to say. I had lost track of most of my friends over the past year.

“Yes, Miss Shepherd,” Willis, Sr., joined in, “you must not allow your natural diffidence to prevent you from visiting your friends before you leave. It is quite in keeping with Miss Westwood’s wishes.” Father and son stared at me, their heads tilted at identical angles, until I felt like an antisocial geek.

“There is one person I’d like to see,” I admitted finally, “but she doesn’t live in Boston.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Bill.

I looked to Willis, Sr., and he nodded.

“Okay, then,” I agreed, “I’ll give her a call.”

*
**

Meg Thomson was a short, unrepentantly heavyset woman, with an abrupt manner and a mile-wide mothering streak. If Meg thought you needed to hear something for your own good, you would hear it, whether you wanted to or not. And she was fiercely loyal. She lived in Maine, in a small coastal town about a hundred miles north of Boston, where she and her partner, Doug Fleming, owned a strange and wonderful art gallery. Doug lived in an apartment above the shop, but Meg had a ramshackle old house overlooking the beach.

The gallery specialized in science fiction and fantasy art, and touring the maze of paintings and sculptures was like traveling through a world of dreams made real. The business was usually on the verge of bankruptcy, but that never seemed to bother Meg. She had found where she wanted to be in life and she regarded the occasional scramble for rent money as just another dash of the spice that kept her life from getting too bland.

“Meg?” I said when I heard her voice. “It’s me, Lori. Think you could put up a couple of houseguests?”

“I’ll drive down tomorrow and pick you up,” she replied without missing a beat.

“No need. I have a car.” I smiled to myself and added, “A Rolls-Royce.”

That did slow her down, but only for a minute.

“Okay, Shepherd. But if this Rolls-Royce of yours crashes and I don’t get to hear the rest of the story, I’ll never speak to you again.”

I told her I’d be up the next day, sent my best wishes to Doug, and packed my bag.

Between traffic jams, detours, and a scenic route designed by a civil engineer with homicidal tendencies, Bill and I didn’t reach the gallery until late afternoon the next day. There was no answer when I rang Doug’s bell and the gallery was locked up tight, so we headed out to Meg’s beach house. Bill parked the Rolls in her driveway and unloaded our bags while I ran up the stairs and banged on the screen door. Meg opened it, and I pointed over my shoulder.

“Want to take a picture?” I asked.

“I never doubted you,” she said. “But who’s that carrying the luggage, your manservant? Does he do windows?”

“It’s a long story, Meg,” I murmured.

“I’ll bet,” she replied, elbowing me in the ribs. She turned and hollered over her shoulder. “Doug! They’re here!”

Doug Fleming was slender, balding, bespectacled, and gay. He and Meg had been lovers in college, and when that hadn’t worked out, they had become best friends and, eventually, business partners. Their partnership was a finely tuned balancing act: where Meg was blunt and bossy, Doug was tactful and diffident. When it came to compassion, however, they were evenly matched; I wasn’t the only friend they had helped through tough times.

I gave Doug a hello hug when he appeared, introduced Bill, then followed Meg inside, pausing in the living room to say hello to Van Gogh, Meg’s one-eared cat, who was perched in his usual place atop the bookcase. Bill put our bags beside the couch, reached up to give Van Gogh a scratch behind the ear, and we all ended up in Meg’s kitchen.

Since Meg only did housework when she was in a grumpy mood, I was relieved to see dishes in the sink and art catalogs stacked helter-skelter on every horizontal surface. Bill cleared off a chair for me, then stood behind it while Doug and Meg filled me in on the latest gallery news.

“We closed up shop early today to celebrate your visit,” Doug concluded.

“But not early enough to get any food in the house,” said Meg. “You want to hit King’s Cafe?”

“I’ve got a better idea,” said Bill. All eyes turned to him. “Why don’t you three talk while I make dinner?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Doug, “but I’ll lend a hand in the kitchen, if you don’t mind. I think these two want to get down to some serious gossiping.”

Bill scanned the kitchen, then fixed his gaze on Meg’s portly form. “Linguini,” he said. “Garlic bread. Caesar salad, heavy on the anchovies. Cheap red wine. A nice, light, chocolate soufflé for dessert. And … maybe some Amaretto with the coffee.”

“Shepherd,” said Meg, “you’d better marry this guy.”

“Oh, she will,” said Bill.

“What?”
I squeaked. Meg grabbed my arm and Doug all but shoved Bill out the kitchen door.

“We’d better get to the grocery before it closes,” Doug urged.

“The grocery?” Bill’s voice came through the open window. “Is that where they have the tomato soup?”

If Meg had let go of my arm, I would have gone straight out the window after him.

“Deep breaths, Shepherd,” she murmured. “Deep breaths. Come on out on the porch. I think you need some fresh air.”

*
**

“So let me see if I’ve got this straight,” said Meg.

It had taken her a while to get a complete sentence out of me, but when she did, the whole story had come tumbling out, everything that had happened since the letter from Willis & Willis had arrived. A sense of
calm had settled over me once I’d off-loaded the story, and I sat in a chair on the covered porch, Van Gogh purring drowsily in my lap, listening to the surf crash against the rocks below, and watching the sky. Dark clouds were moving in, lit now and then by flashes of lightning. A storm was brewing out at sea.

“You’re ready to throw away ten grand looking for a needle in a haystack,” Meg summarized, “but it’s a needle your mother wants found, so I can understand that. You two always were pretty tight. I like the stuff about the letters, too.”

“They’re in a cottage,” I said, “near a place called Finch.” A dreamy smile crept across my face. “A cottage in England. Isn’t that a kick? I can’t wait to see what it looks like.”

“Maybe you already know what it looks like,” said Meg.

“How could I? It’s not in the photograph, if that’s what you mean. I went over the thing with a magnifying glass and there are no houses in sight.” Van Gogh yawned and began licking my hand, and Meg directed her next comment to him.

“She sure can be thick at times, eh, Van? In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say she had the brains of a lungfish.” She leaned toward me, her elbows on her knees. “Now, think, Shepherd. In all those Aunt Dimity stories, didn’t maybe just one include a pretty little cottage? C’mon, now, think.”

I didn’t have to think. Meg was right.
Aunt Dimity’s Cottage.
If I closed my eyes I could almost see the lilacs and the slate roof (which my child self had pictured as a blackboard tent) and the foul-tempered cat who had driven Aunt Dimity to distraction. Suddenly I knew exactly what the cottage looked like, right down to the cushions in the window seat.

“Lilacs,” I murmured. “There were white lilacs at the funeral, just like the ones at the cottage.”

“I thought so,” said Meg, with a satisfied nod. “No surprise, really. Dimity Westwood wrote her life into the stories. It’s been known to happen.” Meg leaned back against her cushions and looked out over the ocean. The jagged bolts of lightning were almost constant now, and thunder competed with the booming surf. A freshening breeze ruffled the spiky hair on the top of Meg’s head as she reached down beside her chair.

“It’s cooling off—better cover up.” She tossed one of her blankets to me.

Meg’s “blankets” were her own personal works of art, hand-knitted afghans so soft and beautiful that I flinched whenever I saw them piled in haphazard heaps around the house. “I make them to be used,” Meg
growled at anyone who dared to comment. I just shook mine out and draped it over my legs and the drowsy lapcat.

Meg snugged her own blanket in place, then frowned. “What I
don’t
get is why you’re so ticked off at Bill. He’ll do whatever you want him to do. He’s well educated, polite, filthy rich, and not at all bad-looking.” Meg curled her legs under her and rested her chin on her hand. “Gee, that’s enough to ruin anyone’s day. My heart goes out to you. I think you need your head examined, Shepherd.”

“Thanks, Meg. I knew I could count on you.”

“Sorry, Shepherd, but he just doesn’t strike me as the Svengali type. I watched him back there in the kitchen. He never took his eyes off of you. Okay, so maybe he made a bad joke about the forbidden subject of marriage, but I’m sure that’s all it was—a joke.”

“I’m tired of being the butt of his jokes, Meg,” I said heatedly. “I’m tired of having my leg pulled, and I am
sick
and tired of him playacting and goofing around and smirking behind my back and … What are you looking at?”

“You. I haven’t seen you this riled up in a long time.”

“So?”

Meg continued to stare at me intently. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again and shook her head. “Nope. Not this time, Shepherd. This time you figure it out for yourself.”

Before I could respond, the porch door opened and Doug came out, accompanied by the delicious aroma of garlicky tomato sauce. “Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but I can’t find the cheese grater.”

“Have you checked the garage?” asked Meg. “Never mind—let me see if I can find it. I’ll be right back, Shepherd.”

Van Gogh decided the storm was too close for comfort and scooted in after them, leaving me alone on the porch. As soon as the door had closed, a few fat drops hit the roof overhead; then the rain came rushing down, enclosing the porch in flickering, translucent walls. I got up from my chair and stood with my hands on the railing, spellbound. I didn’t hear the porch door open once more.

“I’m sorry,” said Bill, and I came out of my reverie, startled to find him standing beside me.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “What I said before—it was out of line. I embarrassed you in front of your friends and I should never have done that. I apologize.”

For a moment—one short moment—it was as though I could see Bill, really see him, for the first time. He wasn’t such a Handsome Prince, after all. He wasn’t young and dashing. He had no jutting jaw, no aristocratic
nose, no piercing blue eyes, and not even a hint of flaxen hair. His nose was far from aquiline, in fact, and although his beard disguised it, his chin seemed to be a bit on the receding side. His neatly trimmed hair was more gray than anything else and behind his glasses, his eyes were a warm brown. He wasn’t handsome in a classic way; but then, I’d never trusted classic faces. In that brief moment, it struck me that his was a face I could trust. A Handsome Prince is in the eye of the beholder, I mused silently, and I’m having no difficulty picturing Bill in full armor. I gulped and chased the image from my mind at sword-point.

“That’s okay,” I said stiffly, tightening my grip on the railing.

His shoulders slumped. He gave a soft sigh and looked out over the rain-swept sea.

“Really, Bill. It’s no big deal.” I glanced up at him and gently bumped his arm with my elbow. “I know how hard it can be to pass up a good opening.”

“Do you?” said Bill. He reached over and brushed his fingertips across the back of my left hand. “I promise you, it won’t happen again.”

Between the rush of the rain and the pounding of my heart, I scarcely heard Doug’s voice from the doorway. “I’ve tossed the salad,” he announced. “And Meg says that if we don’t eat pronto, she’s going to chew a leg off the kitchen table.”

*
**

For the rest of the evening, Bill behaved like a normal human being. He bantered with Meg, discussed the art market with Doug, played cat games with Van Gogh, and stopped treating me like visiting royalty. He even went to bed early so that my friends and I could have some time to ourselves. When we left the next day, he went so far as to let me forget my bag. Meg came puffing out to the car with it at the last minute.

“Look, Shepherd,” she said, “I know you don’t want to sully your gorgeous vehicle with this crummy piece of canvas, but I don’t want it cluttering up my immaculate domain, either.” She dumped it in the backseat behind Bill as Doug ran down the stairs.

“You be sure to write to us from England,” he said.

“Waste of time,” said Meg.

Doug and I looked at her in surprise.

“With your expense account,” she explained, “you can afford to call.”

I hugged the two of them, climbed into the car, and began the drive home.

*
**

It wasn’t until we were stuck in a long line of cars waiting for a truckload of fertilizer to be cleared from the interstate —which Bill had taken to avoid the tortuous scenic route— that I began to consider what Meg had hinted at. Was I riled up over nothing? I could see that I had been a bit defensive with Bill, but defense mechanisms hadn’t evolved because it had been a slow Thursday afternoon. Fear was essential to self-preservation. It had worked for our caveman ancestors, and who was I to argue with history?