The Fast Аnd Тhe Furriest

Chapter 5

The next morning I dropped Rose, Elvis and Mr. P. off at the shop and went to pick up Charlotte. We were going out to Clayton McNamara’s house to begin an inventory in the house itself on the things we were going to sell for him. His daughter, Beth, had come for a visit earlier in the summer and convinced her father that it was time to declutter his small story-and-a-half house and the other buildings on the property. It hadn’t taken much persuading after Elvis had cornered and dispatched a very large and furry squatter in a second-floor closet.

“I’m not gettin’ any younger,” Clayton had said to me on my last visit. “I might just sell up, move into that seniors’ place in town and let all the widows fight over who’s gonna make me dinner every night.” He’d given me a mischievous grin. “I’m a catch, you know. I’ve got my own car, my own teeth and all of my parts are still in good working order.” With that he’d headed back to his woodpile.

Beside me, Glenn, his nephew, had started to laugh. “I could have gone pretty much the rest of my life without having that information,” he’d said as we turned toward the house.

“We’ve cleared out several places that belonged to older people,” I’d said with a sly grin. “I could tell you stories about some of the things we’ve found.”

Glenn had made a face.

I’d bumped him with my hip. “C’mon, when you’re Clayton’s age don’t you want to have your own teeth and all your parts in working order?”

“I absolutely do,” he’d said, holding the back door of the little house open for me. “Including my mouth, which I hope I’ll have the good sense to keep shut.”

“What are you smiling at?” Charlotte asked now from the passenger seat of the SUV.

“I was thinking about the last time I was out at Clayton’s with Glenn. Clayton told me that maybe he’d sell the house and move into Legacy Place and let the ladies chase him.” I shot her a sideways look. She was smiling now.

“They would, you know,” she said. “Clayton McNamara is a charmer and as your grandmother would say, he cleans up well.”

“Is that your way of reminding me that he could have been my grandfather?”

“Roads not taken, Sarah,” Charlotte teased. “Roads not taken.”

She and Liz had been teasing me about my grandmother and Clayton’s very short-lived romance since Clayton had told me about it.

“You were quiet last night,” I said, as much to change the subject as because I was curious about her reaction to Mac’s revelations.

“So were you.”

“I knew most of the story already.”

“You didn’t know Mac had a wife, though, did you?”

I shook my head, slowing down as the car in front of me turned. “Not before he told me, no.” I had suspected that Mac had been married at one time, but it had never entered my mind that he still was. I looked in her direction again. She was watching me, her brown eyes thoughtful. “But you knew,” I said.

I heard her exhale softly. “Not for sure,” she admitted. “I suspected there was someone in his past—Mac has always kept pretty much to himself—but I had no idea the truth was this complicated.”

Neither had I. Mac was a very private person and I hadn’t asked any questions. Truth be told, maybe I hadn’t wanted to hear the answers.

“I’m hoping to kill two birds with one stone this morning,” Charlotte said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I think it might help if we knew a little more about the company Mac’s wife owns, the one her sister is running now.”

“And for some reason you think that Clayton gets his body wash and moisturizer from them?”

Charlotte laughed. “Well, as I said, according to Isabel, he cleans up well.”

I tried to get a mental image of big, burly Clayton dabbing moisturizer on his face but my mind seemed to reject the idea.

“Several years ago—quite a few years ago, actually—Clayton worked for a seaweed harvester in Steuben,” Charlotte continued. “Mac said his wife’s company bought both sea salt and seaweed here in Maine. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to understand a little more about the process before we went out asking questions.”

“Good idea,” I said, putting on my blinker and turning into Clayton McNamara’s driveway. We both got out of the SUV. I could smell the ocean on the breeze and the sun was warm on the back of my neck. Somehow I couldn’t see him leaving this place for a seniors’ apartment in town anytime soon.

“Charlotte, why is it that Gram is the only one who had a romance with Clayton back in the day?” I asked with a teasing smile. “What about you?”

Charlotte shook her head. “It was pretty much a love-at-first-sight thing with them. The first time he laid eyes on her he was hit over the head.” She clapped her hands together. “Like that.”

I frowned at her. “Are you trying to say that it was love at first sight for a couple of first graders?”

“No,” she said. “I’m saying the first time Clayton saw Isabel he tried to look up her dress on the swings and she hit him over the head with her book bag.” She cocked her own head to one side. “Now that I think about it didn’t she meet John when she hit him over the head with something?”

“Gram knocked a library book off a shelf and it hit him in the head, so technically, yes.”

“I’m starting to see a pattern,” Charlotte said with a grin.

I laughed as we started up the driveway. “Me, too. I’m so glad Gram is finally coming home. I have a lot of questions to ask her.”

We found Clayton in the backyard, working on his never-ending woodpile. He was a big man like his nephew Glenn, with a barrel chest and beefy arms in his blue plaid shirt. Now that Clayton had shaved his beard the two men looked even more alike.

“Charlotte Elliot, it’s damn good to see you,” he said, taking both of her hands in his. “You’re as pretty as ever.”

“And you’re as full of it as ever,” she replied, but she was smiling.

Clayton must have been a charmer when he was a younger man. Heck, he was a charmer now. He turned his smile on me. “Sarah, how are you? It’s good to see you, too.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Charlotte and I are planning to start an inventory of the upstairs this morning. No second thoughts?”

“Not a one. I won’t live long enough to use half the stuff that’s in that house and I’ll be damned if I’ll leave it all to be dealt with by Beth and Glenn.”

“That’s what we’re here for.” I smiled at him. I couldn’t imagine Clayton getting steamrollered into giving up his stuff by anyone but I’d wanted to ask, just to be sure.

“Clayton, could I pick your brain for a minute before we get started?” Charlotte asked.

“I figure the pickin’s are pretty slim,” he said, “but go ahead.”

“Years ago you worked down in Steuben, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. Raking seaweed for the Lawrence brothers.” He shook his head. “Good money but hard work.” Two frown lines formed between his bushy eyebrows. “Now, Charlotte, don’t tell me that you’ve been taken in by that damn fool commercial that runs during Elmyra’s House of Horrors Midnight Movie?”

“What commercial?” I said. Somehow we’d gone from seaweed harvesting to late-night TV and I wasn’t sure how we’d gotten there.

“Dr. Ho’s Miracle Moisturizer with Botwilla,” Charlotte said, as though that should clear up my confusion.

“They claim their secret wrinkle-reducing ingredient is seaweed,” Clayton said in a voice heavily laden with skepticism. He looked at Charlotte. “You’re a damn fine-looking woman and you don’t need any so-called wrinkle-reducing cream for twenty-eight ninety-five plus shipping and handling.”

Charlotte smiled at him. “Thank you and don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on ordering any of Dr. Ho’s products but I will admit to a little curiosity about them. Do you think there’s actually any seaweed in that skin cream?”

“I think there’s a pretty good chance that there’s a little. Back in the day the Lawrence brothers were selling most of what we harvested to some spa in New York that used the seaweed for some sorta body wrap. They claimed it restored mineral levels in the body.”

“Okay, that has to be some sort of scam,” I said.

“Not so fast,” Clayton said. He held up one finger. “How much do you know about seaweed?”

“I’ve had dulse,” I said, pushing my bangs back off my face. I’d been eating the dried red seaweed since I was a kid.

“So pretty much nothing,” he said with a laugh.

I nodded. “Pretty much.”

“Seaweed’s story really starts on land. Minerals leach into surface water and get washed down to the sea. They end up as part of the seaweed and people believe that eating it has all kinds of health benefits. Look at the Japanese. They live a lot longer than most of the rest of us do, and their diet has a lot more seaweed in it. Course they eat a lot less fast-food crap, too.”

“Okay,” I said. “I can see how eating seaweed could be a good thing, but a wrinkle cream? Really?” I made a face.

“Hold your horses,” Clayton said. He smoothed a hand over his bald head, brown as a nut from all the time he spent working outside without his hat. “The idea’s not as far off the bubble as you might think. I told you there are minerals in seaweed—iodine, iron and copper among others. Well, it’s the copper that gets people excited.”

Beside me Charlotte nodded. “Copper peptides help with tissue regeneration. Wounds heal faster and cleaner.”

“So why couldn’t it do the same for wrinkles?” Clayton said.

“So does it?” I asked.

He laughed, a warm, booming sound that seemed to echo around the yard. “Damned if I know, but my guess is no.”

“Why no?” Charlotte said.

Clayton held out his gnarled, wrinkled hands. “These mitts of mine handled a heck of a lot of seaweed back in the day and they don’t exactly have that youthful glow, now, do they?”

“They look like they’ve done plenty of hard work and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Charlotte said.

That sly grin stretched across the old man’s face again. “Flattery,” he said, a teasing edge to his voice. “For the record, it works on me.” He winked and Charlotte’s cheeks flushed.

I made a gesture toward the house. “Well, these hands should probably go in and get started.”

“I’ll give you a yell in a while when I put the coffee on,” Clayton said. He turned back to his woodpile and Charlotte and I headed inside.

“Have you been taking lessons from Liz?” I asked as we started up the narrow staircase to the second floor of the house.

“Lessons? What kind of lessons?” A frown furrowed Charlotte’s forehead.

“Flirting lessons. Usually it’s Liz who’s using her feminine wiles to get information.”

Charlotte glared at me. “I did not take any lessons from Liz on how to use my feminine wiles,” she said, squaring her shoulders and jutting out her chin.

I held up both hands. “I’m sorry. I stand corrected,” I said.

Charlotte opened the bedroom door to our left. Then she looked back over her shoulder, slid her glasses down her nose and raised an eyebrow. “I already know how to use all the tools in my toolbox,” she said.

Charlotte and I headed back to the shop at noon. We had gone through everything on the second floor. Items for the yard sale we were planning had all been marked. The furniture that I was taking on consignment and the pieces I was buying outright were tagged as coming to the shop.

There were some items of clothing—several men’s fedoras, two woolen peacoats and some men’s suits—which I planned to send to Jess to sell on consignment for Clayton. The rest—with his agreement—was going to two different charity clothing stores.

“I’m going to bring this armoire back here,” I said to Mac, showing him the photo I’d taken of the large, mirrored piece of furniture. “And one of the bedroom sets. I think we’ll get more from them in the shop than we will at the estate sale. Glenn offered his cube truck and I think I’ll take him up on that.”

Mac looked around the shop. “Where are you going to put everything?”

“I think we can rearrange things and find room for the armoire.” I gestured at a tall, narrow dresser. “That’s going to be picked up tomorrow morning. And as for the bedroom set, I’m thinking about getting Avery to do some kind of window display based around it. Do you think the bed will fit?”

Mac pulled out his metal tape and took a couple of measurements. “If we turn it on an angle it’ll work.”

I smiled at him. “Perfect. I’ll get Avery to start thinking about what she wants to do when she gets here.”

“That should be interesting,” he teased.

“Remember how popular her kiss window was for Valentine’s?”

Avery’s idea for a Valentine’s window display had turned out to be vintage mannequins dressed as the members of the band Kiss, complete with wigs and full makeup. She’d stenciled A KISS IS STILL A KISS in red letters on the window.

Mac folded his arms over his chest, tipped his head to one side and regarded me thoughtfully. “What I remember was you coming in here early before it was completely daylight, forgetting what was in the window and almost taking out the entire display with the lance that came with that suit of armor you bought from Cleveland, all because you thought someone had broken in.”

I laughed. “Good thing you were here to save me and the band.”

“You nearly skewered me like a shish kebab.”

I tried to make a straight face but failed miserably. “The fact that you took one (almost) for the team is duly noted.”

His phone buzzed then. He took it out and checked the screen. “It’s Josh,” he said.

I moved a few steps away to give him some privacy. Rose was arranging three teddy bears in a doll carriage that I’d just painted a few days ago. “This turned out really well,” she said, pointing to the carriage that I’d painted a soft woodsy green on the underside and a creamy pale yellow on top.

“I like the bears,” I said. Each one of them wore a seersucker baby bonnet. One pink, one blue, one yellow.

“The hats were in the bottom of that bag of linens you got at the flea market,” Rose said. “When you were little you had a carriage like this. You used to take that stuffed monkey you had for a ride.”

“Cheeky Monkey,” I said, smiling at the memory.

“You put one of Isabel’s tea cozies on his head for a hat.”

I laughed. “That was so he didn’t get sunstroke.”

“You were a very imaginative child,” Rose said, reaching over to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

“You think I was imaginative? Liam used my doll carriage as a transport vehicle to get his G.I. Joes across the brook. He got the bottom all wet and muddy. I was so mad.”

“Why do I have the feeling that wasn’t the end of the story?”

I hung my head. “I might have done some bodywork to G.I. Joe’s jeep,” I said, looking at her from under my eyelashes. “So Barbie could use it.”

Rose’s lips were pressed together and she was trying not to laugh.

“Sarah Grayson, what did you do?” she asked.

“I swiped a bottle of Gram’s nail polish and tried to paint the jeep pink.”

Rose shook her head, her lips still twitching. “Oh dear, what did your mother say?”

I made a face. “Let’s just say she wasn’t happy,” I said. “In my defense if she hadn’t interrupted me I could have gotten the whole thing finished and it would have looked a whole lot better.”

Rose gave up then trying to keep a straight face and laughed as she reached down to adjust the blanket in the carriage. “What on earth did you give your mother for an explanation?”

“I told her Liam had asked me to paint the jeep.”

“And what happened when she asked him?”

I could tell by the knowing smile on Rose’s face that she already knew the answer. “He told her he had. Then later he held Barbie upside down in the toilet and gave her a swirly, because, you know, I’d tried to paint G.I. Joe’s jeep pink.” I smiled at the memory.

My mom and Liam’s dad had gotten married when Liam and I were in elementary school. By rights we should have been bickering stepsiblings. We were both slightly spoiled only children who had lost a parent and weren’t used to sharing the one we had left. But to everyone’s surprise, from the beginning we were, as Gram put it, “thick as thieves.” Liam could drive me crazy at times and I was sure he’d say the same thing about me, but I knew he always had my back and I always had his.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mac put his phone away. I turned around. “Is everything all right?” I asked.

“That was Josh,” Mac said. “The police have a few more questions.”

“Michelle,” I said.

Mac nodded. “Probably. Josh didn’t say. We’re meeting at his office at four thirty.” His expression was unreadable.

“I’ll drive you over.”

“Alfred and I can close up and Elvis can come with us,” Rose said as though everything was settled, and I knew that if Mac didn’t agree he’d have an argument on his hands.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said.

Rose gave him her I’m-humoring-you smile, not to be confused with her I’m-pretending-to-be-a-sweet-befuddled-little-old-lady smile, which also usually got her whatever she wanted. “At my age, Mac, I rarely do things I don’t have to do,” she said.

I opened my mouth to confirm the truth of that comment when Rose—who seemed to have read my mind—fixed her gray eyes on me.

“Did you have something you wanted to add to this conversation, Sarah?” she asked.

I cleared my throat. “No, ma’am,” I said. I patted my chest. “Just a little frog in my throat.”

“I hope you’re not coming down with something,” Rose said, brushing lint only she could see from the front of her apron. “Like I told you, we need to get you a neti pot, but for now, I have some Fisherman’s Friend in my purse. I’ll go get you one. They can knock a germ dead in its tracks.” She headed for the stairs.

I screwed up my face. “Those cough drops of Rose’s can take down a buffalo.”

“The fact that you’re going to take one for the team is duly noted,” Mac said with a smile, echoing my earlier words.

Midafternoon, Rose knocked on my office door and poked her head into the room. “Do you have a minute?” she asked.

“I do,” I said. I had just finished updating the store’s Web site with absolutely no help from Elvis, who had managed to add two zeros to the price of a vintage quilt when he put a paw on the keyboard as he leaned around the laptop to look at the screen. “What do you need?”

“Could you come down to the sunporch? Alfred may have found something.”

“Just let me shut down the computer,” I said. Elvis jumped down from my desk and went over to Rose. It seemed that he thought he’d been invited to come, too.

I followed the two of them downstairs. Charlotte was showing a wooden rocking chair to a man in his twenties with a thick mass of brown hair and a couple of days of stubble. I noticed him eyeing one of the guitars on the wall, his right hand tapping against his leg, and wondered if he’d look at it.

Mr. P. was at his desk in the Angels’ sunporch office. Mac was with him, leaning back against the wooden table.

“What did you find?” I asked. I could see the tension in Mac’s arms and shoulders. Rose patted his arm as she moved past him.

“There’s a five-million-dollar life insurance policy on Leila with her sister Natalie as the beneficiary.” Mr. P. nudged his glasses up his nose.

“I told Alfred that’s because of the business partnership,” Mac said.

Rose shook her head.

“No,” Mr. P. said. “I’m sorry, but I think you may be wrong. The policy pays out to Natalie personally, not the business, and I can’t find any record of a similar life insurance policy on Natalie that would have paid out to Leila in the same way.”

Mac looked away for a moment then looked at Alfred again. “I see your point but you didn’t know Leila. That’s exactly the kind of thing she would do. Her father kept Natalie a secret until she was almost seventeen years old. Leila thought Natalie had been cheated out of all the things she’d gotten herself—vacations, clothes, social connections.” His mouth twisted into a semblance of a smile. “It wasn’t her job to fix any of that, but it didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try. So if that’s it—” He stood up.

“It’s not,” Mr. P. said. He glanced at me and then his eyes shifted to Rose.

“Go ahead and tell us whatever you’ve found,” Mac said. “Like I told you, I don’t have any secrets from Sarah—or any of you. Not anymore.”

“Du Mer is being sued over the quality of some of their products.”

Mac frowned in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense. Leila always used quality products. I told you that she purchased sea salt and seaweed here in Maine. Natalie was running things the same way. Nothing changed.”

Mr. P. cleared his throat. “At the time of Leila’s accident the Federal Trade Commission had just opened an investigation into the company for deceptive advertising practices. You didn’t know?”

I didn’t need to hear him say no. It was clear from the expression on his face.

“Could Leila have known?” Rose asked.

Mac shook his head. “There’s no way Leila knew because she would have told me. We talked about the business pretty much every day. She wouldn’t have kept that kind of thing to herself.”

“I’ll see if I can find out a little more information,” Mr. P. said. He and Rose exchanged a look and I made a mental note to ask them later what they hadn’t said.

I put a hand on Mac’s shoulder. “Do you have a minute to look at that table I’m working on?” I asked. “I could use a second opinion on the casters I’d like to use.”

“Umm, yeah, sure,” he said.

“Let me know if you find anything else,” I said to Mr. P. He nodded.

Mac and I went out the back door and started across the parking lot to the garage workshop. He squinted at me in the sunshine. “Do you really want a second opinion or were you just trying to get me out of the Angels’ office before Rose told me I didn’t know my wife as well as I thought I did.”

I stopped walking. “Rose would never say that, Mac.”

Silence hung between us like a curtain, then Mac exhaled softly. “You’re right. I guess I’m the one who’s wondering if Leila was keeping secrets from me.”

“She didn’t say anything to you about the insurance policy?”

He shook his head.

“Maybe she forgot to tell you.” I tipped my head to keep the sun out of my eyes. “Maybe she’d just gotten the policy and didn’t get a chance to tell you. Don’t jump to conclusions. Let them find you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s something Rose said to me once. I think it means just wait and see how things work out. It was the only thing that I could think of that was vaguely appropriate.”

He gave me a genuine smile then. “I appreciate the thought.” His expression grew serious once more. “I’m sorry you got tied up in all of this.”

I bumped him with my shoulder and we started walking again. “How many times have you gotten tied up in one of the Angels’ cases because I got tied up in it? Think of this as me returning the favor.”

Mac smiled again. “I’ll try.” He pointed at the garage. “So do you really want my opinion on the casters?”

“I really do,” I said, stopping to unlock the door to the former garage. “Because I don’t have a clue which ones to use or how I’m going to attach them.”

“In other words you were hoping that I’d say I’ll do it for you.”

I gave him a sheepish grin. “I was and I guess I wasn’t nearly as subtle as I thought.”

“It’s just because I know you,” Mac said. “Let me see the bottom of those table legs.”

He laid the small metal table on its side and crouched down to study the legs.

Mac did know me well, but I couldn’t help wondering if he’d known his wife nearly as well as he thought.