Threads of Evidence (5 page)

Chapter 7

 

—Sampler stitched by Elizabeth Greenleaf, age ten, Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1768

 

 

 

“Fifteen thousand dollars? For one week's work?” Gram looked thunderstruck. “Are you sure you heard her right?”

It was after ten at night. I was exhausted and covered with dust, dirt, cobwebs, and quite possibly other things I didn't want to think about. I could still smell the mildew, even though I was now home, a couple of miles away from Aurora. All I wanted was a long drink and then a hot shower and bed. Gram, on the other hand, had spent the day peacefully enjoying a successful shopping trip to Camden and had finished supper without me.

I was starved. (Sarah and I had laughed when Skye asked whether there was some local place that would deliver pizza or Chinese. The only thing delivered in Haven Harbor was mail.)

Thankfully, Gram had ignored my instruction to forget about dinner. She'd made my favorite macaroni and cheese with Swiss and Gruyère and sharp Vermont cheddar. I poured us each a glass of wine. I gulped my wine, poured another glass, and stuck my plate of mac and cheese in the new microwave I'd bought for her as an early wedding present. I suspected I'd need to buy another one for her to take to the parish home she'd share with Reverend Tom. This microwave was going to stay where it was—in the kitchen that would soon be mine alone.

I couldn't imagine the kitchen without Gram.

She looked pointedly at me, and then at my wineglass, with a silent
“another glass already?”
expression. Tonight I was too tired to care.

Soon she'd be married. No one would be here to care how many glasses of wine I'd poured. I'd enjoy that freedom, but I'd miss having someone care about when, or whether, I got home and what I ate. Or drank. I'd lived on my own for ten years. I was twenty-seven. But it still felt good to be taken care of.

“She really said fifteen thousand dollars. We're going to work for it, though,” I said, taking a bite of my pasta, and then adding a bit more cayenne. “We were there almost twelve hours today. Sarah's still working tonight. She's checking current prices for the items she identified as being worth something.”

Gram smiled. “And what will you do with all that money?”

“I haven't decided. I could pay off my car and have a few hundred left to buy some new clothes,” I said. “Most of what I wore in Arizona won't work here in Maine. But I'll put some aside in an emergency fund, too.”

“I'm assuming the house is in awful condition now.”

“Lots of water damage from the roof leaking. Mildew. Wallpaper peeling. One ceiling has fallen in, and several are threatening to collapse. Squirrels and a raccoon got in at some point, and at least one crow. Everything is in bad shape.”

“So Sarah won't have too long a list to work on.”

“Longer than we thought. Fabrics are in horrible condition, brass and silver needs to be polished. Some may be beyond reclamation. But much of the glass and crystal and china is just dirty.”

“Sad. It used to be such a beautiful place. So full of light and color,” said Gram.

“You told me you'd gone to those end-of-the-season parties the Gardeners used to give?” I'd definitely need more mac and cheese. And wine. While she talked, I got up to make a deeper hole in Gram's casserole.

“Most folks in town went. Every year in the fifties and sixties, the Gardeners gave a party the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend. They headed back for New York after that, and the place would be closed up until spring,” Gram remembered aloud. “They'd have a big barbecue and lobster bake, catered and all. An open bar. And music. Usually, a local group, although I seem to remember their having a disc jockey one year. Children brought balls and Hula-hoops and kites and played on the hill in back of the house. Men sometimes started up a softball game. The party would start at four in the afternoon and end with fireworks.”

“If everyone in Haven Harbor went, it must have been crowded.”

“Well, not
everyone
went. But a couple of hundred guests showed up each year. Little kids were everywhere, and romancing couples found dark corners. It wasn't only the yacht club set, who knew the Gardeners best. Everyone in town was invited, so you never knew exactly who would turn up there. It was a wonderful, friendly way to end the summer. Until the last party, of course.”

I put down my fork. “The night Jasmine died.”

Gram nodded. “I was dating Henry, your grandfather, then. I remember that night especially because he was leaving for college in a few days. He was a senior at the University of New Hampshire, and he'd just given me my ring.” Gram looked down at her naked left hand. “At my age I don't need an engagement ring. I told Tom that. But I was only twenty then, and thrilled to have a diamond, no matter how small. I was on top of the world that night. The only sad part was that Henry would be leaving for school soon. But we were young, we were engaged, and we had our whole life together ahead of us. The world was ours.” She smiled, remembering. “It was a beautiful evening. Not cool, the way it sometimes gets in early September. A bit of wind came up about eight o'clock, though. I remember Henry went to his car to get me a sweater before the fireworks started.”

“Did you know Jasmine?”

“Know her? Not really. Oh, of course, I knew who she was. Everyone knew the Gardeners. But she had her own friends. She loved to sail, and she spent a lot of time at the yacht club.”

“Where the rich kids were,” I added.

“To be fair to Jasmine, she didn't seem to care much about where someone came from. In those days some of the locals worked at the yacht club or taught classes there. Or even were members. Haven Harbor was never like one of those ritzy places down the coast, where you practically had to own a yacht to belong to the club. Plenty of people in town were members.”

“But you weren't one of them.”

“No. I waitressed in the dining room there. That's where I saw Jasmine and her friends.”

“I didn't know you'd worked at the yacht club!”

Gram smiled. “You don't know everything about me. I never thought those couple of summers were very important. Everyone in town worked somewhere, the way they do now. After a couple of years at the yacht club, I moved on to other jobs. Henry and I got married after he graduated. You've seen the pictures of our wedding.”

Gram and her Henry had been married in the Congregational Church—the same church where she'd be married again, in three weeks. My grandfather had died before I was born. Would I ever be as happy with someone as Gram had looked on her wedding day? Not that I was looking to get married soon. But sometimes I wondered.

“What was that night like—the night Jasmine died?”

“It was lovely. Wonderful and fun, as always. I'll admit Henry and I weren't paying much attention to other people. We danced and we ate clams. We both loved fried clams. People kept coming up to us and congratulating us on our engagement. I only remember seeing Jasmine a couple of times. Before the end, of course.”

“So you were there when her body was found.”
Why have you never told me this?
I thought.

“We were sitting on the hill in back of Aurora, overlooking the harbor, watching the fireworks. I was feeling wild, sipping a beer, even though the legal age to drink in Maine had been lowered from twenty-one to twenty the year before. Some people were smoking pot. This was 1970, after all. It was all very relaxed. Then the fireworks ended, and everyone picked up their blankets and headed back to their cars. Mothers and fathers were calling to their children, gathering everyone to leave. A few people had had a little too much to drink, and the local cop—I can't remember his name—rounded them up. The police sometimes drove home people who needed help after the Gardeners' party.

“Henry and I had just started toward our car when we heard screams. At first, we thought it was teenagers being rowdy. But then the screams got louder, and people started to run toward the front of the house.”

“Did you see her?”

“No. We were in the back of the crowd. We'd wanted the night to last as long as it could. By the time we got close, everyone was saying it was Jasmine, and that she'd been in the fountain. Someone had pulled her out. The police held everyone back and an ambulance came. Then we all went home. The next morning we heard she'd died.”

“What do you think happened?”

“At first, everyone said she'd fallen and hit her head on the fountain. Then some people said she'd drowned.” Gram shook her head. “It was so sad. She wasn't perfect—no seventeen-year-old is—but she was so full of life.” Gram looked at me. “It doesn't matter how she died. What's important is that her life was ended so early. And her mother's life ended that night, too.”

“Her mother?” Mrs. Gardener had lived years after her daughter died.

“Oh, Mrs. Gardener didn't die, but she stopped living. She hardly left her house after that. I heard she'd convinced herself Jasmine had been murdered. She spent the rest of her life trying to prove it.” Gram paused. “She didn't go back to her husband, or to whatever life she'd had in New York. And she was never really a part of Haven Harbor, either—even though everyone knew she was there, at Aurora, by herself, all those years. However Jasmine died, her death was the end of her mother's life, too.”

Chapter 8

 

—Sampler, including ship
Potosi,
stitched by Susan Munson, 1824

 

 

 

“I almost forgot,” I said. “Ten needlepoint panels are in my car. They're scenes of Aurora and Haven Harbor that Mrs. Gardener stitched. Skye West wants them preserved, restored, and reframed.”

“Bring them in and let me look at them,” said Gram. “I'd love to see what she did.”

It took me three trips to bring all the framed stitchery into the house. Each panel was fourteen by twenty inches, matted, and then framed in heavy mahogany, probably to match the dining-room table.

Years of work.

I leaned them against pieces of living-room furniture so we could both see the series. Gram stopped at the picture of the fountain. “That's just the way it looked,” she said. “Water flying up and catching the sunlight. I'm sorry Mrs. Gardener had it destroyed, but I understand why she did.”

“But then she took the time to design a needlepoint picture of it, and work the picture,” I said. “I wonder what she was thinking when she was doing it.”

Gram shrugged. “One of those things we'll never know.” She moved on, looking at the other embroideries. “I love her moose. I think he's in the back meadow at Aurora, where we sat to watch the fireworks over the harbor. And she's pictured the yacht club. And the church.”

She turned to me. “Did you know Jasmine's funeral was there, right here in Haven Harbor?”

“I didn't.”

“Everyone thought her body would be taken back to New York, but it wasn't. That church was full for Jasmine. I remember someone saying it was her last party.”

We stood and looked at the framed embroideries around our living room.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” Gram asked.

“Sarah and I are meeting at seven at Aurora to show Skye how far we've gotten on the contents of the house. We'll need some help removing furniture and taking it either to the Dumpster or to the tents for the lawn sale.”

“It's too bad the high school is still in session. Dave Percy could have suggested some young men to help.” Dave was the Haven Harbor High biology teacher—and a Mainely Needlepointer. Gram thought a minute. “Ob Winslow's son, Josh, is back home. He might have some friends who could help, too.”

“That's a good idea. I'll call him. The Wests had a few local men there today, but we may need more than that.”

“If you'd like, I could take these out of their frames tomorrow,” Gram volunteered, looking closely at the lighthouse panel. “Then we could see how much work needs to be done on them.”

“That would be a help,” I said. “Thank you. Some are mildewed. And I can see a water stain on the one of the harbor. I'm not sure what we'll do about that.”

“Sunshine might kill the mildew,” Gram said. “I'll do some research on that tomorrow. Some of these will need overstitching if Ms. West wants them restored. We'll know better when they're out of the frames. If you need to divide these between the needlepointers, we might as well get started now. I have a feeling Skye West isn't used to waiting for what she wants.”

“You're right. But tonight I'm going to bed. It's been a long day.”

I took another glass of wine upstairs with me.

My bedroom window was open so the sea breezes could blow in. It was a beautiful night, with a hint of crisp air. Like the night of that last party at Aurora.

I pulled my comforter up around me. What had happened to Jasmine Gardener that night? The estate was full of people, from what Gram had said. Had anyone seen her fall into the fountain?

Exhaustion, wine, and sea breezes lulled me to sleep before I had time to think more about it.

Chapter 9

 

—Unsigned New England sampler, 1767

 

 

 

The next week was a blur.

Sarah and I were at Aurora early each morning and worked until dark. Every night Sarah refined her appraisal list, checking current values online, in valuation guides and in auction catalogs.

Although Patrick brought us lunch every day (only in Maine could you get tired of lobster rolls), we didn't see him as often as Sarah hoped. He spent his days at the carriage house, supervising the gutting of the building. The first two dumpsters were replaced by two others, and a third arrived to hold window frames, tiles, wallpaper, and decayed furnishings from the third floor of the house. Skye had been right; nothing on that floor was salvageable.

She chose to keep a few things besides the panels: the Meissen china stored in the dining room, a carved oak Victorian chair from Mrs. Gardener's room, and, to our surprise, the twin beds from Jasmine's room and some of Jasmine's phonograph records. She loved Victorian art glass, so we set aside Mrs. Gardener's collection of end-of-the-day baskets. (Sarah explained they were handblown ruffled glass baskets originally made as pink or green or yellow gifts for brides. However, at the end of each day, the glassblower would combine the colors he'd been using, and the result would be one or two multicolored baskets. These were considered less valuable at the time, but more valuable today.)

We saved all of the photographs we found, no matter their condition.

We didn't have time to guess the rationale for each item Skye asked us to save. We just knew anything she decided to keep was to be put in the storage trailer she'd rented and moved onto the property. We put the needlework seabird pillows, which she'd said she might want reproduced, in there.

Patrick arranged for two large tents to be delivered. One contained lines of tables for “smalls” (five dollars per item, seven dollars per item, and so forth). The other tent was for furniture.

Aurora was more alive than it had been in years, but this time not with vacationers and guests. This time it was filled with people determined to pull down the old and replace it with new.

Restoration? Perhaps. But in some areas, like the carriage house, reconstruction was more like it.

Gram carefully removed the needlepoint panels from their frames; on every sunny day she left them in direct sun. She also dabbed the most persistent areas with a mild solution of vinegar and water. She was gambling the mildew would disappear before the threads faded any more than they already had.

Ruth Hopkins, true to her word, sat behind the counter at Sarah's shop for the duration. Sarah stopped worrying about her business after Ruth sold an entire shelf of early Belleek china to someone who merely admired it.

And although Ob Winslow couldn't lift anything heavy because of his back problems, he and his son, Josh, were there almost every day. Ob worked with the construction crews, advising them about what might need to be checked on the property. I wondered how much Ob was being paid. The
Anna Mae
sat in port as he worked at Aurora.

Josh and a friend of his lugged furniture, drapes, and boxes of books and pottery and even decorative rocks. (“Someone might find it amusing to buy one that had been in Aurora,” Skye said. Sarah and I didn't argue.)

Who'd pay money for rocks and shells you could find down on Pocket Cove Beach? But Skye was the boss. What she said was what happened.

Even Patrick stayed out of her way, especially in the mornings, when she gave out instructions for the day. She and Patrick were still living in the motel, but they'd be living on the estate sooner than I'd assumed. The first floor of the carriage house had been gutted, and Patrick had scouted the area for both old and new wicker furniture and Adirondack chairs to be used as informal living-room furniture as soon as the walls were replaced and painted. The Wests planned to move in the day before the sale.

To ensure his future studio would be warm enough, Patrick had its walls insulated. He hired a mason to build a chimney for the woodstove he'd chosen. Electric heat was being installed on the second floor.

It was amazing how fast work could be done when you were willing to pay overtime.

After our first day at the house, I forgot about looking elegant. Jeans or shorts and old T-shirts worked fine. My arms were scratched from all the trash and treasures I carried from the house to the Dumpster or the trailer or the tent. Sarah, on the other hand, appeared every day with makeup in place, wearing a coordinated outfit. Corporate casual, I suspected it would have been called in Phoenix.

“Patrick talks to us,” she confided, concerned. “But we have so much to do, there's no time for real conversation. I'd hoped to really get to know him. Maybe once the lawn sale is over?”

Once the lawn sale was over, I saw no reason we should be at Aurora, unless we were discussing the needlepoint panels. But I didn't point that out to Sarah. She was besotted. And having checked the man out myself, I could hardly blame her. Although when tall, dark, handsome, and charming also came with money . . . I didn't trust it.

Truthfully, I wasn't so sure about trusting men on general principle. Or on specific principle, either. I had a history. It might not be as checkered as some people in Haven Harbor imagined, but I hadn't exactly behaved like a nun in a convent.

Gram's intended was more interesting than I'd imagined a minister would be. Better-looking, too. Although I hadn't had any personal experience with ministers, I'd imagined they saw life a little differently than the rest of us. They were more rarefied—more head in the heavens, less feet on the ground.

Reverend Tom broke all my imagined rules. He'd even introduced me to Ouija boards. (He collected them, and he and Ruth occasionally spent an evening with spirits. And, I suspected, with a glass or two.)

Bottom line: I liked (and trusted) him. So maybe Patrick would break all the rules for tall, dark, handsome, and the world at his fingertips. I hoped so, for Sarah's sake.

It would be nice to know a couple of good guys under the age of sixty. (Even if they were other women's guys.)

Skye had set the date of the sale for a Saturday.

“More people should be able to come on a Saturday,” she declared.

I didn't point out that most people in Haven Harbor worked several jobs, especially between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Weekends were work days here.

Word spread quickly: A famous actress had bought Aurora and was going to restore it. People wondered if it was to be a summer home or a full-time residence. How bad was the house's condition? How long would it take to fix up? How much money would it cost? How much of that money would be spent in Haven Harbor?

Sarah and I arrived at six the morning of the sale. Dozens of people were already in line outside the closed gate. Wisely, Skye had decided to discourage early birds and dealers arriving predawn to scout the merchandise.

Sarah called Patrick. He appeared quickly and let us in.

The sale was to start at seven. We'd set up two tables, one in each tent, where Sarah and I would play cashier. We each had stacks of “sold” stickers to hand out, and Ob's son, Josh, and a friend of his were at another table to arrange to pick up any heavy furniture and deliver it. For a fee, of course.

Tables and chairs were set up between the large tents. Free iced tea or water or lemonade or coffee and piles of cookies awaited early-morning customers there. I walked through “my” tent (the one with the furniture). There'd be more questions about the “smalls,” as Sarah called them, and she was better equipped with answers.

Then I got a cup of coffee and a cookie or two before the hordes descended. After the past week's work, I could use all the caffeine and sugar I could get.

Skye was checking coolers of water and cartons of cookies still to be unpacked. She'd bought some from the patisserie in Haven Harbor, but I also noted boxes marked:
STANDARD BAKING COMPANY, PORTLAND.
The local patisserie might have been overwhelmed by the size of her order.

I poured my coffee as Skye looked at her watch. “It's almost six-thirty. I called the high school to find several girls there who'd come to help with the refreshment table. They should be here at any time.”

She'd thought of everything.

“I have to ask,” I said, between munching a molasses cookie and taking sips of coffee. “We've been racing so fast to get all this set up. But . . . why? Why not take anything of value to a local auction house and throw the rest out?”

She smiled as she added sliced lemons to an enormous punch bowl of lemonade. “Because I want people from Haven Harbor to come to Aurora the way they did when the Gardeners entertained. I want them to see I'm an ordinary person, not a pompous celebrity from California.” She paused and looked out toward the gate. “And because I'm hoping people who were at that last party in 1970 come today.”

“Why?” I blurted. “That was years ago! I'm sure the majority of people who were here that day don't even live in town anymore.”
If they are even still alive,
I thought.

“Some do,” Skye said knowingly. “And those who don't may hear about the sale and decide to come.”

“My Gram was here that night. She'll probably stop in today. But who knows exactly who was here that night?”

“I've heard many people in town talking as though they were here,” Skye said. “Maybe it's like everyone who was young in 1969 claiming they were at Woodstock. But I think those who need to come, those who knew Jasmine best, will be here today.”

“And?” I couldn't help feeling that wasn't a complete answer.

“It will be the first time most of them have been back since that night.” She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “I don't believe Jasmine drowned accidentally. I believe someone killed her.”

I stared at her. I hadn't expected anything like that. This lawn sale was about Jasmine Gardener?

“If no one comes forward today to share information, then I'll talk with them later. But I'm going to find out what happened that night. I'm going to find out who killed Jasmine.”