“Which means working here tomorrow,” the other man muttered angrily, stopping the rest of his complaint after a glance from the boss.
“Thursday will be fine. Now, please, remember I want to get started as much as you do.”
Pix certainly hoped so, said as much and good-bye, then walked out into the sunshine and over to the house. “Aunt Addie” indeed, although she could really be his aunt, or more likely, great-aunt. The whole island was connected by ties of varying degrees of kinship.
Rebecca answered the doorâthe back door, of course. A bed of ferns had grown up over the front steps and Pix thought it unlikely that the door with its shiny brass knocker in the shape of an anchor had been opened since James Bainbridge had been carried out in his coffin. It would never have done to take him the back way through the kitchen.
“Who is it?” a querulous voice called out. “Don't just leave whoever it is standing with their chin hanging out! Invite them in!”
Rebecca ignored Addie's remarks and reached for the Tupperware bowl.
“Oh, Pix, am I glad to see this. I couldn't remember where I had mislaid it, but I knew I had it at the clambake, because I'd filled it with butterscotch shortbread
4
that morning.”
She had missed something good, Pix thought, stepping into the room. The Bainbridge's shortbread was another of those secret family recipes.
“I'm glad I found it. It was in my chowder pot and I might have put it away without opening it until next year, but the top fell off the pot when I was putting it on the shelf.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Rebecca said confi-dently,
then led Pix to the front parlor, where Addie was somehow managing to keep herself poised on the slippery horsehair Bainbridge fainting couch. Pix knew that it was a fainting couch because Adelaide had told her once, adding, perhaps unnecessarily, “not that it has ever been used as one.” Oddly enough, today she did seem a bit under the weather. She wore a housecoat that made her look like a large pink-and-orange-flowered tea cozy. Her legs were stretched out and she apologized for wearing her bedroom slippers.
“The heat is some terrible for my circulation; I can't even get my shoes on this morning. I told Rebecca to order the next-biggest size, but she forgot and got the same as always.”
“We could send them back. It wouldn't be any trouble.”
“Well, it would be for me. What will I do for footwear while they're gone, I'd like to know?” She kept right on going: “And there must have been something I et at the clambake that didn't sit rightânot that I think for a moment it was your chowder, deah,” she added, looking Pix straight in the eye. The intent was clear. Now was the moment for Pix to confess to buying suspect fish and last year's potatoes. Pix stared right back. Nobody else had suffered from the chowder in the slightest and Addie's indisposition was more than likely a case of overindulgence. Addie was starting to catalog her major symptoms, such as severe diarrhea and stomach cramps, rather graphically when Rebecca tactfully broke in.
“Pix brought our Tupperware bowl back, the one we thought was lost at the clambake. It was in her chowder pot.”
Adelaide beamed as if she'd recovered the family jewels instead of an airtight storage container. “It's hard to get good Tupperware nowadays and I won that at one of Dot Prescott's parties when she was selling Tupperware. I don't know who's doing it now.”
Pix tried to steer the conversation away from plastics to antiques and Norman.
“It must be interesting having an antiques dealer like Norman
Osgood as a guest.” The Bainbridges always called their bed-and-breakfast customers “guests.”
“Oh my, yes, he's been a treat. The stories that man can tell. We sit and laugh for hours.”
Rebecca didn't look quite so merry, and Pix wondered whether she was included in these funfests.
“Is he around now? I had a question I wanted to ask him.”
“No, he's off on one of his jaunts today. Be back in time for the parade tomorrow, he said. What's your question? I'll ask him for you.”
Pix had been afraid Addie would say this and was now thankful she'd prepared a mythical inquiry about the best way to take care of an old Sheraton dresser her mother was giving her.
“Just keep it clean with a dust cloth,” Rebecca advised, “if the wood is not too dry and the finish still good.”
“And what do you know about the care of valuable antiques, Rebecca Bainbridge? I don't recall too many down in that shack you grew up in. No, Pix. I swear by Olde English and plenty of it. You can't go wrong there.”
Faith could smell it had been put to good use in the parlor. She looked anxiously at Rebecca. It might have been that Addie had gone too far.
“Your own husband was raised in that âshack,' Addie, and you're lying on Grandmother's couch this very moment. I guess we had just as many nice things as you did out at the lighthouse.”
Pix was glad to hear Rebecca answering back. It didn't happen very often.
“You couldn't have had many, then,” Addie one-upped her. “I slept on a cot in the kitchen and there wasn't a decent piece of furniture in the place. The only thing worth any money at all was the light, and that belonged to the government. Now where are my regular glasses? You've gone and
fetched the wrong ones, as usual! Can't see a thing with these.”
“Those are the right ones. Remember, you put a piece a tape on the frame so we wouldn't get mixed up. There it is, plain as the nose on your face.”
Addie pulled her glasses off. “Can't see a danged thing. You must have put tape on both.”
Before the fur could fly any faster, Pix made her farewells with promises to sit together at the parade the next day. The Bainbridge's lawn sloped agreeably down to Main Street and was a perfect viewing stand.
“And don't forget your mother!” Addie called after her.
As if I wouldâor could, Pix thought.
Â
After leaving the Bainbridges, she felt a little betwixt and between. Sam was on a long cruise to Swans Island with a sailing buddy and Samantha was still at work. She thought she might pop in to Jill's store and pick up a baby sweater made by one of the women on the island that The Blueberry Patch stocked. One of Pix's cousin's children was having a baby, which would make Ursula a great-great-aunt and make Pix a what, a cousin some number of times removed?
Removed. She realized Mitchell Pierce's death had removed her from her normal embedded island feelings. She had the constant sense that she was on the outside looking in, not because she was from away but because there were things going on she couldn't quite make out. She had the illusion that if she could only squint hard enough, she'd be able to make out the shapes.
Jill was at the register. The store was empty.
“Hi, Pix,” she said. She had been working on her accounts evidently and now shoved a large ledger under the counter. The cash register was an antiqueâand not for sale. It had been a fixture in the previous store to occupy the space, a cobbler's shop owned by Jill's grandfather.
“My cousin's daughter is having a baby soon and I want to send a sweater.”
“Do they know what they are having? I always think that sounds so odd, but you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I do, and they don't, so the sweater had better be white or yellow.”
After taking a pleasurable amount of time, Pix took her purchase to the front of the shop. It was always fun to buy baby gifts. A few years earlier, she used to toy with the idea of another bundle of joy herself, then remembered all the homework supervision that would entail and opted to wait for grandchildrenâa wait she fervently prayed would be a long one.
Earl had come in while she'd been in the back and was buying a paper.
“How are you, Pix?” he asked, “Quite a business yesterday at the camp. Samantha was great with the kids. Really kept them calmed down.”
“Fine, thank you, and thank you for saying that about Samantha. I'll tell her. She's always wanted to go into science, marine biology, but she's so good with people.”
“Maybe she'll figure out a way to combine the two. Now I've got to go pick up something to eat at the IGA or I'll start to get malnutriated.”
Earl looked anything but. Pix smiled. Jill didn't. Hadn't they patched things up yet?
The next exchange made it clear they hadn't.
“So, I'll see you about eight?” Earl asked.
“I'm afraid I can't make it tonight. Maybe another time,” Jill answered. The time, from her expression and tone, could possibly be well into the new century.
“Okay.” Earl flushed and left quickly.
Pix was tempted to ask what was going on, but Jill did not look as if she'd welcome inquiries into her personal life at the moment. She rang up the purchase and Pix was soon out on
the walk planning a dinner party with a few friends, mainly Earl and Jillâsoon.
She got into her car and noticed Earl was parked next to her. It was the perfect time to tell him about the mark on the quilt, if he was not too distracted by his own affairs of the heart. But Pix doubted it. Work was work. The notebook would be out in no time, just the way it had the day before at the camp. When they'd arrived, it was the first thing she had noticed. There was Earl standing before the bloody red sails, calmly writing down each and every word.
He was at his car soon, carrying what she knew to be one of the IGA's Italian sandwichesâbologna, salami, and cheese on some sort of large hot dog roll. It also had green peppers and onions if those were to hand and a drizzle of Italian dressing, hence the appellation.
“Earl, have you got a minute? There's something I've been meaning to tell you. It's probably nothing, yet I thought you should know.”
The notebook came out. He clicked his pen.
Mercifully, they were parked behind the post office. They might be news, but not big news, particularly if she spoke fast. She explained about finding the mark on the quilt she'd boughtâa mark identical to the one on the red-and-white quilt.
“I know you told me. It's a blue cross, right? Like this?” He drew one on the pad.
“Yes, maybe a bit smaller. I wouldn't have noticed it on the one around the body if the quilt had had more colors. Then in the one I bought, it just seemed to jump out at me.”
“Do you have any idea what it could stand for?”
“It could be some kind of family laundry mark. Both quilts may have come from Sullivan. I mean, that's where the antiques dealer said the quilt was from, and Mitch was living in Sullivan when he died. The red-and-white one may have been taken from his room.”
Earl agreed. “That makes sense. Although I'm not sure
what kind of link there could be. He hadn't been in his room for some days before he was killed, according to his landlady, but she admitted he could have been there one of the times she was out doing errands.”
“There's another possibility. Much as it pains me to realize I may have been duped, I think the quilt I bought could be a fake. The price was suspiciously low. I have a book about dating quilts and I'm going to go through it to try to establish when mine was made. If it's a modern one, as I suspect, the mark could be a way whoever was faking the quilts kept track of which were real and which weren't.”
Earl looked at Pix admiringly. “Good thinking. Obviously, we don't want it spread around, but we're pretty sure Mitch was involved with one or more of the antique scams. Unfortunately, he was also involved in some other tricky businesses, so the field is pretty broad.” His face fell a bit.
He continued: “So that's why you were asking all those questions on Sunday.”
“Yes,” Pix admitted.
“Look, I'd like to photograph the mark and see how it matches with the one that was wrapped around Pierce's body. I've got my camera in the trunk. All right if I come over and take a picture now? I'll be able to send it to Augusta right away. They may also have something in their files about it.”
“Sure,” Pix agreed. She was excited. They were beginning to get somewhere. Maybe.
As Earl got into his car, he called over to her, “By the way, since you're turning out to be so interested in detective work, how about finding out why my girl is giving me the cold shoulder?”
Pix was sorry to disappoint him. “I'll try, but I'm sure it's nothing much. You two have been together a long time.”
“âNothing much,'” Earl was uncharacteristically sarcastic. “Do you think the fact that she had dinner with Seth Marshall last night might mean something? The entire island and half the mainland saw them down at the inn.”
Pix did not have an answer.
Nor did she have an answer shortly thereafter when she spread out the new quilt on her living room floor.