Telling Tails

Chapter 1

The last thing Rose Jackson saw before she was coldcocked with a plastic sailboat fender was the body of Jeff Cameron being dragged across his kitchen floor. At least that was what she was telling everyone from her bed at Northeastern Medical Center.

Earlier that Wednesday evening, Elvis and I had been settled in the big chair in front of the bedroom TV. We’d watched part one of the Gotta Dance reunion special, and when the credits had begun to scroll across the screen, I’d intended to get up, but before I knew it I was caught up in the campy drama of Restless Days, the popular new nighttime soap that was turning out to be the hit of the summer television season. Elvis was sprawled across my lap and I didn’t want to move him. At least that’s what I told myself.

I tucked my feet up underneath me and reached for the big bowl of popcorn covered in Parmesan cheese that I’d made just before Gotta Dance began. It was empty.

I glanced down at the floor to see if any had spilled. No. “I guess we ate it all,” I said to Elvis.

The cat lifted his head, looked at me through narrowed green eyes and made a soft murp.

I made a face at him. “Okay, I ate it all.”

Satisfied that had been cleared up, he dropped his head on my lap again.

Elvis was the only one with whom I could share my secret addiction to Gotta Dance. Since he was a small black cat with a scar across his nose and not the King of Rock and Roll, he wasn’t likely to say anything about how caught up I was in the must-see-TV celebrity dance show. Because I had two left feet myself, I knew if my brother Liam found out he’d laugh himself silly, not to mention wheedle that video of me doing the bird dance in middle school from Mom.

“Part two will be on in an hour and a half,” I said, setting the empty popcorn bowl on the footstool. I reached over the side of the chair and picked up the small dish of cat crackers I’d brought in for Elvis. There were three left. The cat, it seemed, had paced himself a little better than I had.

I arranged the star-shaped treats in a row on my leg. He glanced at them, then looked at the TV, where the spinning mirror ball now filled the screen again in a promo for part two of the Gotta Dance reunion special. Finally, he focused his green eyes on me with a seemingly—to me—quizzical expression on his furry black face.

“Matt Lauer, Kevin Sorbo, Lee Child, Christian Kane and the cute guy with the beard from that cooking show Rose made us watch,” I said, ticking off the names of the show’s second-half participants on the fingers of my left hand.

Elvis cocked his head to one side as though he was trying to decide which celebrity he was going to root for. After a moment he made a soft “mrrr” sound as though he’d made up his mind. I picked up a cracker and held it out to him. He took it from me, wrinkling his whiskers in a thank-you.

My phone rang then. I glanced at the screen. It was Liz. Elizabeth Emmerson Kiley French was one of my grandmother’s closest friends, and since Gram had been gone on what seemed like a never-ending honeymoon, Liz had been keeping an eye on me. Among other things, that meant she asked pointed questions about my mostly nonexistent love life and showed up with takeout when she thought I wasn’t eating properly.

“Hi, Liz,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Rose is in the hospital,” she said flatly. Liz wasn’t the type of person to beat around the bush.

“What happened?” I asked, sitting upright in the chair. Elvis rolled over and turned to watch my face, as if somehow he sensed something was wrong. My stomach lurched as though I’d just swung way out over deep water on a rope swing and let go. Rose—who was also close friends with my grandmother—was like family to me. The thought of anything happening to her was something I didn’t want to even consider.

“She’s all right,” Liz said, and I pictured her gesturing with one perfectly manicured hand. “Someone hit her over the head and knocked her out. I think that hard noggin of hers is what saved her.”

I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “You’re sure she’s okay?”

I heard her exhale. “I promise,” she said softly.

Elvis put his paws on my leg, his eyes locked on my face. He adored Rose, too. Without thinking about it, I began to stroke his fur. “What happened? Where was she? I thought she was here,” I said.

“Here” was my house, a two-story restored Victorian from the 1860s within walking distance of downtown North Harbor. It was divided into three apartments. Elvis and I lived in the front, main-floor unit, Rose had recently taken over the small back apartment, and Gram—when she was home—lived upstairs. On paper it didn’t sound like it should work, but so far it had.

“She wasn’t mugged,” Liz said. “Not exactly. Remember the man who came into the shop this afternoon and wanted to have those candlesticks delivered to his wife?”

I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead. “Tell me she didn’t do what I think she did.” I owned a repurpose shop, Second Chance, with an eclectic selection of merchandise, much of it given new life—a second chance—in our work space. Rose worked part-time for me.

“Oh yes, she did. She went over to that cottage to deliver those candlesticks. And I have the damn things, by the way.” I could hear the click of Liz’s high heels. She was probably walking in a hospital corridor, I realized. “She gave in too easy, you know,” she continued. “We should have known. Rose has a stubborn streak a mile wide, and before you start on about people in glass houses throwing stones, I’m going to remind you that I am not stubborn. I’m persistent, which is a completely different thing.”

“Noted,” I said. I wasn’t going to argue over word choice. Liz was just as stubborn as Rose was, which meant their longtime friendship got contentious at times, but this wasn’t the time to point that out. “I’m on my way,” I said. “You’re at Northeastern?”

“The ER. Just ask at the desk,” she said. “I better get back. Alfred could probably use some moral support.”

“Okay, I’ll be there soon,” I said.

Elvis had already jumped down from the chair and started for the living room. I turned off the TV and stood up. Liz had said Rose was all right. That was what mattered.

It took me only a couple of minutes to pull on a pair of jeans and grab my purse and keys. Elvis watched me from the top of his cat tower.

“I’m just going to make sure Rose is okay and I’ll be back,” I told him. He bobbed his head as though he were saying that was fine with him, and for all I knew maybe he had understood every word I’d said and that was exactly what he meant.

Northeastern Medical Center is a ninety-nine-bed full-service hospital with a trauma center just off the highway exit for North Harbor. It’s one of the top-rated hospitals in the state of Maine. As I drove I realized I hadn’t asked Liz how Rose had gotten from the cottage on the shoreline, where I was fairly certain she’d been assaulted, to the health center. Liz had mentioned Alfred, who was Rose’s “gentleman friend,” but she hadn’t said anything about whether Rose’s children—who didn’t live in North Harbor—had been called. Knowing Rose, I was pretty certain the answer to that was no; in fact, I was surprised Rose had called anyone at all.

Liz was right about Rose’s stubbornness. I’d seen that dogged streak in action enough times. I should have known that just because she seemed to acquiesce when I asked her not to deliver those candlesticks, that didn’t mean I’d won the battle.

Why had someone attacked Rose if it wasn’t for the two silver candlesticks she had with her? They were antiques, made by S. Kirk & Son more than a century ago. Kirk had learned the silversmith trade in Philadelphia and then opened a shop in Baltimore. His work was exquisite and in demand by collectors all over the United States and beyond. Finding them for the store had been nothing short of serendipity.

I’d gone to an auction up in Bangor and at the end of the day bid on the contents of a sealed cardboard box. It wasn’t the kind of thing I ever did, but I’d been with my best friend, Jess, who had encouraged me after two other boxes had gone for twenty-five and thirty-two dollars, respectively.

“Go for it. What do you have to lose?” she’d whispered in my ear.

“I could lose thirty-two dollars,” I’d hissed back at her.

“So bid less,” Jess had retorted, and before I’d really thought about it, I’d raised my hand and nodded in the direction of the auctioneer. I’d ended up getting the box for twenty-seven dollars. Inside I’d found a selection of ladies’ vintage gloves, which Jess had happily taken, a Brambly Hedge full-size teapot, several hand-crocheted dish towels and the badly tarnished candleholders. It was an auction jackpot. Rose had washed and blocked the dish towels and they’d sold in the shop for enough to cover the twenty-seven dollars I’d paid for the box.

“Are you going to say ‘I told you so’?” I’d asked Jess as she sorted through the gloves, which had been in a white pillowcase with a crocheted lace edging.

Jess had held up one long black evening glove with a rhinestone clip at the opening edge and smiled. She owned a small shop down along the waterfront with two other women where she sold her up-cycled clothing. I could tell by the gleam in her blue eyes that she already had some ideas about what to do with her find.

“Nope,” she’d said, rooting around in the pillowcase for the mate to the glove she was holding. She found it, admired the pair and then gave me a sideways glance, the smile still pulling at the corners of her mouth. “It’s enough to be right. I don’t need to rub it in.” Then she’d put her free hand over her heart and tried to look humble. She didn’t exactly get there, and I couldn’t help laughing.

I’d known as soon as I saw the teapot that I could probably get more than a hundred dollars for it. I’d had no idea how valuable the candlesticks were. After I’d gotten back to Second Chance and figured out what I had, I’d taken them downstairs and asked Rose if she’d polish them.

“I’d be happy to, dear,” she’d said. “They’d look lovely on that cherry table Mac has been refinishing.”

“You’re right,” I’d said, putting one arm around her shoulders to give her a hug. “In fact, I’m going out back right now to see how it’s coming.”

Behind the shop, along the back edge of the parking lot, was a garage that we’d converted into work space and storage, although we all still called the space the garage. Mac, my second-in-command, jack-of-all-trades and good friend, had been working out there, stripping a coat of brown paint from a dining room table we’d found at the curb during North Harbor’s annual cleanup week in the spring.

When I’d returned to the shop, Rose had caught me just as I stepped into the store proper from the back workroom. Her gray eyes were sparkling behind her glasses. She was barely five feet tall, with short white hair, and she was a cross between a mischievous elf and Cinderella’s fairy godmother, with a little doting grandmother thrown in.

“Sarah, would you take four hundred dollars for those candlesticks?” she asked.

I glanced across at the cash desk, where a man in jeans, a black T-shirt and a pair of bright red running shoes was standing, one hand resting possessively on the top of the silver candleholders.

“They haven’t been polished,” I said. “I haven’t even logged them into our inventory yet.”

“I can do the cleaning,” Rose said. “And you can take a picture of them. Then Avery can do all the rest of the computer work later.”

Avery was Liz’s granddaughter and another of my employees. She’d been taking on some of the work of logging in new stock and doing it much faster than I could.

I hesitated.

Rose leaned her head close to mine. “Four hundred dollars,” she said. “But he has to have them today.”

“Why?” I asked, eyeing the man, whose head was now bent over his cell phone.

“They’re a gift for his wife.” Rose glanced in the man’s direction, too. “So it has to be today.” She patted my arm. “You know how some men are. They never do these things until the last minute.” She gave me a little smile. “Not every man is as organized as Alfred.”

“I think I should talk to Mr. . . .” I looked expectantly at Rose.

“Cameron. Jeff Cameron.” She handed me the man’s business card. Jeff Cameron worked in client services for Helmark Associates. He looked up then, as though he’d heard his name, and smiled in our direction. “He and his wife are new in town,” Rose added, as though that explained everything.

North Harbor sits on the midcoast of Maine: “Where the hills touch the sea.” The town stretches from the Swift Hills in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the south. It’s full of beautiful old buildings and eclectic little businesses, as well as several award-winning restaurants. Our year-round population is about thirteen thousand people, but that number more than triples in the summer with summer residents and tourists.

Occasionally one of those seasonal visitors fell in love with the town and relocated permanently. I wondered if that was the case with Jeff Cameron and his wife. It was kind of what had happened with me. Growing up I’d spent my summers in North Harbor with my grandmother. When my radio job disappeared, it was the place that most felt like home.

We walked over to join Jeff Cameron at the counter. I offered my hand.

“Mr. Cameron, this is Sarah Grayson,” Rose said before I could introduce myself. “She owns Second Chance.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said. His handshake was firm but not obnoxiously strong. He was several inches taller than me—maybe five-ten or so—with blond hair and the lean, angular build of a distance runner, which explained the flame red running shoes.

“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 gave 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.”