The House on Blackberry Hill: Jewell Cove #1 (Jewel Cove) (8 page)

A new washer and dryer had been delivered and installed and a trip to the local department store had yielded small appliances like a new toaster and coffeemaker. It made no sense for her to remain in the motel indefinitely, so she’d made her first priority getting the house in a semilivable state. The work was long and exhausting, but with each clean wall and polished piece of furniture the place was starting to feel less like a derelict.

If only she could shake the uneasy feeling that washed over her now and again. It was cold and unpleasant and settled heavily on her shoulders. She told herself it was just foolishness and an overactive imagination. That it was because she was alone in the huge place. A couple of times she’d actually thought she’d glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye, only to turn to the movement and see nothing.

She had to get this place cleaned and on the market, because if she stayed here too long she was afraid she’d go all the way crazy.

The afternoon was spent vacuuming every possible corner of the library and polishing the wood with oil soap. As each gleaming surface came into view, Abby realized she couldn’t put off making the call much longer. The house looked better as she cleaned, but it also highlighted flaws she’d missed during her first inspection. There was work to be done, work that she couldn’t do herself. And for that she needed Tom.

She stripped off her gloves, took Tom’s card out of her pocket, and grabbed her cell phone, dialing his number with her thumb. Might as well get it over with.

“Arseneault Contracting.”

The deep voice was clearly his. It shivered along her nerve endings like silk. She swallowed. “Tom,” she said. “It’s Abby Foster.”

“Well, well.”

He sounded so smug she wanted to hang up and say to hell with him. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She sniffed and rolled her shoulders, trying to relax. “I was wondering if you were still interested in putting together a quote.”

“Of course I am. Just a sec.”

Abby heard what sounded like his hand going over the phone, and then a muffled shout and a crash. “Sorry,” he said, coming back. “We’re just finishing a job and I came inside to hear you better over the noise.”

She put her fingers over the bridge of her nose. She hadn’t considered how convenient it was that his schedule was open when everyone else’s for miles around was booked solid. “How is it you have all this time to fit me in?” she asked. “Every other contractor I talked to is booked right through the summer. Why not you, Tom? Is there something I should know?”

“Every other contractor? So you shopped around and chose me. I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be. Didn’t you hear me? Everyone else was booked. Let’s call it a choice of necessity.”

He laughed, the sound warm in her ear. “I heard you just fine. Actually, I’m glad you asked. We had our latest project go bust due to financing, and before that we were set to do a big kitchen renovation down toward Camden, but the marriage hit the skids and now they’re fighting over the house. Everything was put on hold.”

“Oh.”

“Well, my loss is your gain. Or my gain too, if you’re serious. Did you check my references? I do good work, Abby. You can trust me.”

Ha. Trust. This was the second time he’d asked her to blindly believe him, and Abby didn’t trust anyone these days. She’d learned the hard way that people rarely kept their word. Trusting was just a sure way to get hurt. Even Gram, who’d been the most stable person in her life, had obviously been keeping secrets.

She pressed the phone to her ear. “I’d rather have some facts and figures to go by,” she replied dryly.

“I can drop by tomorrow morning. We’ll be wrapped up here by this afternoon and I can give you all the time you need.”

There was no reason why his words should cause a stupid fluttering in her chest. No reason why the air in the library should suddenly feel close and cloying. But the idea of having a man like Tom Arseneault at her beck and call was enticing and made her feel a little giddy.

“I’ll be here. Cleaning.”

His low laugh rippled along the line. “It’s quite a job, huh.”

“You have no idea. It’s a blessing I’m not an asthmatic.”

He laughed. “It’ll be worth it, Abby. We’ll bring the old girl back to life, you’ll see.”

She didn’t know what was more attractive—the idea of the restored mansion or the image of Tom Arseneault in his work boots and a plaid shirt. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” he echoed.

As she hung up, she pressed a hand to her forehead. She needed help. Rugged carpenters weren’t her type. For goodness’ sake, she hadn’t dated in so long she didn’t even
have
a type. And the idea of restoring the house should make her relieved, not excited.

Still. Maybe tonight she’d paint her toenails. She had a new shade in turquoise she’d been dying to try …

*   *   *

Abby gave up on the pedicure. After a long day of scrubbing and scouring, she was too tired to cook so she ventured into Breezes again, greeted by the savory scent of pot roast, seafood chowder, and fresh bread. She recognized a few faces already and smiled as they nodded in greeting. Instead of taking a table and sitting alone, she sat up at the counter, perched on a wooden swivel stool with a rung back. The fastest thing to order was the chowder, and within seconds a steaming bowl was placed in front of her along with a plate holding the largest dinner roll she’d ever seen.

“This smells fantastic,” she complimented the woman behind the counter. “Thanks.”

“You need anything else, give a holler.” The woman looked over Abby’s head. “Evening, Art. Sweet tooth acting up again?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Be right back.”

A man sat up to the counter a few stools over and Abby stole a look. Older than Luke Pratt for sure, probably in his sixties or more, with a friendly face and a slight potbelly. She smiled as he looked over, then turned her attention to her bun—really the size of a small loaf. She broke off a piece and spread it with butter. The real stuff—no artificial low-fat anything here, she realized. The sign said home cooking and they meant it.

“You’re Miss Foster, aren’t you?”

Abby supposed this would go on until she’d met everyone in the town, so she reluctantly looked away from her steaming chowder and smiled. “I am.”

“You’ve got your great-aunt’s smile. Art Ellis. May I?” He nodded at the stool beside her, and when she agreed he slid over, taking off his Bruins ball cap. “I used to look after the grounds up at the house before Ms. Marian took sick.”

Her smile came easier. At least Ellis wasn’t just being nosy, he actually had a connection to the house. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You, too. Town’s been buzzing with the news that you’re here, but I didn’t want to intrude. Thought you might be sort of a private-type person, like Marian was.”

The waitress put a gigantic piece of apple pie in front of him, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream that was already starting to melt. “Linda, you’re an angel.”

“Our little secret,” Linda replied with a wink. “And if you blame this on me and Margie asks, I’ll deny it.”

He grinned at Abby, then took a bite of his pie and sighed contentedly. “My missus would have a fit if she knew I was eating pie. Worries about my girlish figure. But Linda here makes the best pastry in town.” He grinned, a sideways smile that made him look boyish, and patted his stomach. “Wouldn’t want Margie to know I said that, either.”

The smell of apples and nutmeg was heavenly. Abby sipped her water. “My lips are sealed.”

He ran his hand over the thinning hair at the top of his head. “There’s lots of speculation about you, Miss Foster.”

She met his gaze. “Call me Abby. And I’m just as curious about the town as it is about me.” She was surprised to realize it was true.

“It’s true, then? That you never knew Marian?”

She didn’t know why she was shocked that he should know that. “News travels fast around here. So you were the gardener?”

He nodded. “Of a sort. I cut the grass and kept the trees pruned, did odd jobs around the house. But the garden, that was all Ms. Marian. She loved her garden, especially the roses. She always had the nicest blooms. I’d hate to see the state of it now.” He shook his head.

“It’s a mess,” Abby confirmed. “I don’t think it has been touched since she stopped living at the house.”

“A shame,” he said, cutting through the flaky crust of his pie. “After all the work she put in. The house probably isn’t much better, is it?”

Abby smiled back. “I got the feeling that Captain Foster built it to withstand any storm, but it needs some attention,” she conceded. “I need to have it assessed, but my initial impression is that it’s sound.”

“You should have Tom Arseneault have a peek at it. That boy knows what he’s doing.”

That “boy” had to be thirty years old and was the size of a barn door. “So I’ve heard,” she replied dryly. Ellis didn’t need to know she’d already asked Tom for a quote. Besides, she was sure the gossip mill would have everyone well informed about it all in no time anyway. “You know the house well, Mr. Ellis. I’d love to learn more about it. It’s on Foster Lane, but more than once I’ve heard it called Blackberry Hill. Do you know why that is?”

Art sat back against the padded seat. “It’s been called that for years. Blackberries grow wild all over that side of the mountain. You take a walk up sometime and check it out. Between them and the blueberries, the odd black bear’s been known to show up now and again.”

“I haven’t gone up yet. Is there anything up there?”

Art nodded. “There’s still one of the old barns from when it was the Prescott farm. That’d be your great-grandmother Edith’s family.” He leaned closer, as if sharing a secret, and damned if she wasn’t drawn in. “When I was younger there was a rumor that the barns and buildings were hiding spots for spies during the war. But that’s just a bunch of romantic talk. The Prescotts moved away after Edith and Elijah married and years later the old house burned in a lightning strike. The barn’s still there, and the gate was put across the road because teenagers used to go up there and get up to no good in the barn.”

“And you know this because?”

He grinned and his eyes twinkled. “Well, I suppose that would be because I was one of those teenagers.”

She smiled as she looked down into her chowder bowl. Art Ellis could be a charmer too, couldn’t he?

“But you need to talk to someone who knew Edith and Elijah,” he said. He looked around the diner until he found who he was looking for. “Hey, Isabel. Come on over here a minute.”

Abby’s fingers tightened on her spoon. Good heavens, anyone who had known her great-grandparents would have to be at least ninety, wouldn’t they? She spooned up more chowder, determined to eat before it got stone-cold.

“What are you going on about, Arthur? And it’s Mrs. Frost to you,” the sharp voice replied from a corner of the restaurant.

Mindless of the other patrons, Art let out a sigh. “Well, if you don’t want to meet Marian’s niece, fine by me.”

It took a while for the elderly woman to shuffle her way over to them, but when she got there she didn’t mince words. Her white curls bobbed as she nodded at Abby. “I’ll sit over here, if you don’t mind. I won’t be sitting next to the likes of you, Arthur Ellis. Biggest troublemaker I ever had in my class. Always teasing the girls.” The white-haired woman used the counter to help lever herself up, and sat down with an
oomph
on the other side of Abby. She leaned ahead and wagged her finger at Arthur. “You were always more trouble than you were worth.”

“You loved me and you know it,” he replied. He gave Abby a wink. “They all loved me. I was a good-looking kid.”

Abby took the bait. “I think you are probably right, Mrs. Frost. Charming, for sure, but a smart woman can see right through that, don’t you agree?”

Isabel Frost laughed, a wheezy sound that made Abby grin. “Your aunt Marian would have said just that,” she confirmed. “And she probably did, many a time.”

Once again Abby had been compared to her aunt, and in a positive way. She wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

“Mrs. Frost taught most of the Cove until she retired in the eighties,” Art explained. “She knew Marian. Knew Edith, too.”

“Edith Prescott was beautiful,” Isabel proclaimed. “She was a few years older than me, but I remember. Sweet and polite, bit of a stubborn streak, and with the most gorgeous hair. It was a hazelnut brown and so thick. And a beautiful bride, too. The day she married Elijah Foster she was radiant. Not a year later she had Marian. She was so happy then. Elijah doted on her and she had everything a girl could have wanted. We all lived for an invitation to the Fosters’ for a party. And oh, my, they threw some grand ones.”

Gorgeous, dark hair—could the woman in the photo on the mantel be Edith? The baby was probably Marian then. The records showed that Edith had died in 1945. Maybe, Abby considered, it was the only picture Marian had of herself with her mother. How sad.

Isabel’s soft tone of remembrance continued. “The last party they threw was not a week after Pearl Harbor. It was a last hurrah, really. Elijah was gone after Christmas of ’41, when he signed up with the Navy. Came back in ’43 a changed man, with a limp and a cane for his troubles. Still, things seemed to come around for a while. Iris was born in ’44. But then there was that tragic accident. The whole town was in shock. The war was just ending, you know. We were celebrating V-E Day and everyone knew Japan was next. Rumor had it that there’d been a little too much celebrating up at the house and Edith fell down the stairs.”

Silence surrounded them. It was so much more than Abby had ever expected to learn today, but it raised even more questions. And the stairs … She suppressed a shiver, remembering the odd, oppressive sensation she always felt crossing by the bottom. It creeped her out a bit to realize that her great-grandmother had died there.
Ghosts …

“A rumor?”

Isabel clasped her fingers. “No one ever said differently.”

There was something about the way she said it, though, that made Abby perk up. Perhaps it was what
wasn’t
said that was most telling.