Berried to the Hilt (15 page)

“Let’s just hope Gwen’s parents take to Adam.” As John continued to rub my back, my mind strayed to thoughts of our wedding—and the potential disaster if my sister came to the island. “Maybe we should just elope and tell everyone after the fact.”

He laughed and kissed me. “Your sister is the least of your worries right now, my dear. You have enough on your plate; don’t go looking for trouble.”

“I don’t have to look for it. It seems to find me on its own.”

“I can’t argue with that,” he said, gently touching the bump on my head.

We had no guests
for lunch, so I had the inn to myself for the afternoon—and an oven that was finally in working order. What I really wanted to do was talk some more to Carl and Molly, but since they were out at the wreck site, that wasn’t an option. I called Charlene to see if she’d heard anything on Evan, but she was uncharacteristically unhelpful.

“Nobody knows anything,” she said. “Lots of rumors, of course. None of them particularly pleasant.”

“Have you seen Ingrid?”

“Neither hide nor hair,” she said. “You?”

“I stopped by to see her yesterday. She’s a wreck.”

“Poor thing. I’ll swing by today and check in on her. How’s Adam?”

“He’s going to be okay, thankfully. He’ll probably be out today.”

“Well, that’s good news, at least.” I heard voices in the background. “Half the island just turned up; can I call you back?”

“Keep me posted,” I said, and hung up, feeling at loose ends. I had three hours before dinner, and nobody to question. On the other hand, my freezer was empty of back-up baked goods, I had a kitchen full of fresh groceries, and a folder full of recipes I’d been meaning to try out. Thanks to the painkillers, my headache had faded, and my energy was high, so I decided to spend a few hours immersed in one of my favorite creative activities.

I grabbed the folder I kept tucked in at the end of my cookbook stack and leafed through it, wondering what to try first.

The recipe for caramel dumplings caught my eye first, but while they looked appealing, I needed something that would freeze well—and work for breakfast. Normally I would choose something with cranberries in it, but with all the “treats” I’d received recently, I was uncharacteristically cranberried-out.

I flipped through the pages, glad to be absorbed in the comforting—and pleasantly anticipatory—task of selecting which delicious concoction I was going to try next. I lingered briefly over a decadent-looking recipe for sticky pecan cinnamon rolls, but cinnamon rolls always tasted best fresh, so that recipe was best saved for a morning when I felt like getting up extra-early. Besides, I was low on pecans. I finally settled on a lemon-berry Bundt cake that would use the bag of organic lemons John had picked up for me—and an apple streusel muffin recipe that made my mouth water. If I doubled both, I could have one batch to serve and one to freeze. Perfect.

I started with the lemon Bundt cake, since it had the longer baking time. I zested a few more lemons than the recipe called for—you can never have too much lemon, in my opinion—and squeezed several of them. Within minutes, the scent of fresh lemons floated through the kitchen, lightening my spirits as I creamed the butter and sugar together and added eggs. The recipe was far from sugarless—Claudette would never approve—but already my mouth was watering. In no time at all, I was sliding the filled pan into the oven, and the smell of baking mixed with the citrus aroma to turn my kitchen into heaven.

There was a knock at my door just as I was selecting apples to chop into chunks for the apple muffins. I set down the Granny Smiths I had chosen and opened the door to let Matilda Jenkins in. She was dressed in a green boiled wool coat with a cherry red scarf, and looked like Christmas, even though it was only October. In her arms was a stack of books.

“Hi, Matilda. Come in!” I said. “You’re looking merry today.”

She laughed as she set the books on the table and unwound her scarf. “I guess I do look a little festive. But it feels like Christmas with all the discoveries they’re making out there, doesn’t it?”

I thought of Eli’s imprisonment, Adam’s trip to the hospital, and Evan’s disappearance—not to mention the murder victim found floating near the wreck a few days earlier—and found it hard to agree. Instead, I directed her attention to the stack of tomes she had deposited on the table. “What have you got there?”

“All the information I could find on the two ships,” she said. “I promised Carl I’d see what I could get from my friend down at the maritime museum in Portland.” She stopped and sniffed the air. “What is that heavenly smell?”

“Lemon Bundt cake in the oven,” I said, retrieving an apple and a cutting board. “Mind if I peel while you tell me about what you found?”

“Not at all,” she said.

“I can put the kettle on, too. Care for a cup of tea? It’s chilly out there.”

“That would be lovely, thanks.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m supposed to meet Molly. Do you mind if I go and see if she’s there?”

“Not at all,” I said. I glanced out the window to where the
Ira B
usually moored. “Doesn’t look like they’re here, though.”

“Hmm,” she said. “She said she was going to take me out to the wreck site this afternoon, too.”

“I’ll get the tea going while you go and check her room. She’s in the Seaglass Room, on the second floor.”

“I’ll be right back,” she said.

She returned a few minutes later, looking disappointed. “She told me she’d meet me here, but she’s not in her room. She was going to take me out to the wreck site, and I was going to show her Smuggler’s Cove. What do you think happened?”

“They’re racing to bring up the ship’s bell,” I said, pouring her a cup of tea. “And Iliad’s supposed to have a big research vessel coming in today. They may just be trying to pull it up as quickly as possible, to make sure they have a chance to claim the wreck.”

“I suppose,” she said, taking a sip of tea and reaching for the top book. “And of course it would be much better for the university to claim the wreck than a treasure hunter.”

That seemed to be the opinion of most people I’d talked to. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve found?” I said as I peeled the first Granny Smith apple.

“You really want to know?” she asked.

“Of course,” I said. “The ship could belong to one of the most illustrious pirates of the Maine coast—or to the man who built my house.”

“I don’t know which one to hope for,” Matilda said.

“How will they be able to tell the difference?” I asked.

“Well, the ship’s bell would be pretty definitive. And if there’s bullion, the dates on the coins will be a dead giveaway. The two ships went down in two different centuries.”

“Assuming they both went down.”

“That’s true,” she said. “It’s never been confirmed.”

“What else could identify it?”

“Oh, any number of things. Tools, shoes—but you’d have to have exhaustive knowledge of the items manufactured in a particular time period. One of the easiest ways is to count the cannons.”

“I’d heard something about that, but I thought it mainly had to do with identifying them.”

She nodded, eyes bright. “It’s wonderful to be able to identify them, but just the number they find can be a clue. Both ships had them. But the
Black Marguerite
had ten—he was a pirate, after all, so he needed them—and the
Myra Barton
only had six.”

“I’m confused. Even if they do find the cannons, couldn’t they belong to another ship?”

“They could,” she said. “But it’s unlikely. The only two ships unaccounted for in this area—the only two we could find records of, anyway—were the
Black Marguerite
and the
Myra Barton
.”

“How do you count cannons, anyway? I imagine it’s pretty dark down there.”

“It’s amazing what they can do these days. My friend in Portland told me they can do sonar scans of the bottom that look almost like photographs.”

“Hmm. That’s what Iliad’s planning to do,” I said. “They’ve got a big ship coming in with a sonar rig.”

A wrinkle appeared in Matilda’s brow. “Do they know about the number of cannons?”

“I’m guessing so,” I said. “But I wouldn’t volunteer it.”

Matilda closed the top book and pulled it to her chest. “Mum’s the word,” she said.

I finished grating the apples and added a bit of lemon juice to the bowl to keep them from browning. “Are you going to have a chance to show the archaeologists Smuggler’s Cove?” I asked.

“I’m hoping so,” she said. “It depends on the tides.” She glanced at her watch. “And what time they get here. What’s taking them so long?”

“I don’t know, but you’re welcome to keep me company till they get back.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I will.”

As I creamed butter and sugar together for the muffins, I glanced up at Matilda. “Did you find anything else out about Eleanor Kean?”

She shook her head. “Nothing, I’m afraid. We’re lucky to have the documentation we have. For letters to survive for so many years intact is really rare.”

“There are a lot of mysteries on this island, aren’t there?”

She nodded. “That’s what makes history so fascinating. You never know when the missing key will turn up.”

“Tell me more about Jonah Selfridge,” I said as I opened the pantry in search of a bag of walnuts.

“He was a very successful man,” she said. “He started out by shipping local fish to Boston and selling it. Before long, though, he’d expanded to international trade, and kept buying bigger and bigger ships.”

“He managed to marry well, didn’t he?” I asked. “I understand Mrs. Selfridge was quite a catch.”

“Yes,” she said. “Her name was Myra Barton, and she originally came from a wealthy, upper-class family.”

“That’s why he built the house here,” I said, “instead of right by the pier, like most of the others.”

“That’s right,” Matilda said. “Her delicate nose couldn’t tolerate the smell of fish.”

Having smelled the salted herring down by the pier, I couldn’t argue with her logic.

“He must have loved her, if he named a ship after her. Where was she from?” I asked.

“He met her in Boston, apparently. It was a most unusual pairing for the time. Despite the fact that he was a prosperous captain, I can’t imagine the match was one her family approved of.”

“Particularly once they got to know him,” I said. From what I knew of him, he wasn’t a very nice man. Not at all. “And I can imagine Cranberry Island was a bit of a change for her.”

“I imagine it was. There were only a few families living here then, and once the winter began, there was no going ashore unless it was an emergency.”

“Ashore—you mean to Mount Desert Island?”

She nodded. “And despite her husband’s income, life must have been very hard for Myra. Although by then, at least, there were coal-fired stoves—and a store. A few decades earlier, she would have spent her summer canning fruit and vegetables, and chopping wood.”

“Delightful,” I said. “Well, at least she had a good supply of lobster.”

Matilda laughed. “Actually, believe it or not, nobody fished for lobster back then. It wasn’t considered a delicacy; in fact, it was the opposite. Servants used to write into their contracts that they couldn’t be served lobster more than once a week.”

“Times sure do change, don’t they?”

“Yes they do,” she said. “But some things don’t.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“People seem to always do crazy things for love,” she said. “Eleanor Kean, running off with a pirate captain, only to go down with his ship. And then, two hundred years later, another young woman, leaving Boston to marry a sea captain, moving to a tiny island off the coast of Maine—and losing him at sea a few years later.”

From what I knew of Captain Jonah Selfridge—who had murdered a maid in his house—I thought his wife might have been better off without him. Still, Matilda was right; both relationships ended in tragedy. “It didn’t go well for either couple, did it?”

Matilda shook her head. “Not at all,” she said.

I looked down at the bowl in my hands—listening to the historian, I’d forgotten all about my recipe in progress. As I dug the wooden spoon into the creamy batter, I couldn’t help thinking of Gerald, who had died mere days ago—and the carefully reconstructed photo in Audrey’s room. Had love brought Gerald McIntire to an early death, too?

“Is that them?” Matilda said, pointing out the window. The
Ira B
was coming into the dock.

“Sure looks like it,” I said.

“I’m going to go and let them know I’m here,” said Matilda, slipping out the kitchen door and hurrying down to the dock. By the time I finished sprinkling streusel on top of the batter and sliding the muffin pan into the oven, Molly was trotting up the path toward the inn with Matilda. I quickly washed my hands and walked out to meet them.