“But what can have been his motive?—what can have induced him to behave so cruelly?”
“A thorough, determined dislike of me—a dislike which I cannot but attribute in some measure to jealousy.”
—Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Wickham, Pride and Prejudice
Marguerite insisted on coming to the funeral. “I must wear my new oh-so-cunning black suit. And the hat with the little veil. And then I must see all these people you tell me about. Oh no, chérie, I would not miss this for all the sand on Stony Beach.”
Emily resigned herself with little difficulty. After all, she really preferred not to be the center of attention at this event. She preferred to observe.
The small church was about a third full—far from the crowd that had packed it for Beatrice’s funeral. Emily suspected that had Agnes’s death not occurred so close to Beatrice’s—which must give rise to speculation even in minds that had not suspected foul play before—the attendance would be limited to herself, Billy, and perhaps a handful of others. Agnes had hardly been one to spread goodwill around the town, and Billy was her only family.
Emily kept an eye on Billy throughout the service. His grief seemed neither feigned nor exaggerated. In fact, he was the only one present other than herself who seemed genuinely sorry Agnes was dead.
The eulogy was brief, Father Stephen lauding Agnes as an “upright” woman and faithful supporter of the church; with all his goodwill, he could hardly muster any warmer praise. The whole thing seemed to be over very quickly. Before Emily could summon a tear, they were standing by the grave.
Billy had purchased the plot next to Beatrice and Horace for Agnes. The dirt over Beatrice’s grave was piled haphazardly, as fresh as if it had just been filled in—which in fact it had. The exhumation must have taken place the night before. Emily swallowed and focused on Agnes’s coffin, now being lowered into the ground. At least Agnes would be able to rest in peace.
The blank space on Beatrice and Horace’s joint headstone reminded Emily she’d not yet decided on an epitaph. She pictured Beatrice bustling about the town and was reminded of the woman described in Proverbs 31, who seemingly never slept as she both brought home the mutton and fried it up in a pan. Emily had always wondered what that woman’s husband was doing while she kept so busy. She made a mental note to look up the passage when she got home and choose the perfect verse from it to sum up Beatrice’s life.
Marguerite, standing beside Emily, played the scene to the hilt, dabbing a lace-edged black handkerchief at her eye as the coffin was lowered. Emily was reminded of an Edward Gorey illustration to a witty poem by Felicia Lamport about a “peachable widow with consolate eyes.”
Brock came up to them when it was over. He addressed Marguerite with a leer thinly veiled by a mask of concern. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” he said unctuously. “Agnes was a great old girl. Are you a relative?”
Marguerite gazed at him soulfully. Before she could manufacture some story, Emily put in, “This is my friend Marguerite Grenier from Portland. She never met Agnes. She just likes funerals.”
Marguerite shot her a knife-edged glare, but Emily parried it. “Marguerite, this is Brock Runcible. I’ve told you about him.” A pointed look at Brock added, So don’t try to get away with anything.
Brock gave Marguerite his best show-business smile. “Then we have something in common. I find funerals fascinating. All that raw emotion. Great material for an actor to work with.”
“Ah, you are an actor! Have you done any of the great French plays? Molière, Rostand, Genet?”
Brock cleared his throat. “I’ve concentrated on film, actually. And a little television here and there.”
Emily smirked inwardly. Luke had looked up Brock’s bio online. He had one film credit, a bit part; the rest was all television.
“You must tell me about it sometime.” Marguerite gazed up at him from behind her veil.
“I’d love to take you to lunch and do just that.” He tore his eyes from Marguerite and turned to Emily. “I’d invite you, too, Emily, but experience tells me you don’t have much interest in eating with me.”
A look from Marguerite warned her off, and anyway Emily had an idea Marguerite would get more out of him on her own. “As a matter of fact, I do have other plans. You two go on.”
They moved off, Brock’s hand on Marguerite’s elbow. Definite elbow fetish, that man.
Emily turned to find Luke close behind her. “Hey, beautiful,” he said. “Didn’t want to be too obvious in front of Brock. But I would’ve stepped in if he got obnoxious. You think it’s okay for your friend to go off with him like that?”
“Marguerite has yet to meet the man she couldn’t handle. I highly doubt Brock will be that man.”
“Good point. Do you really have other plans? Or can I get you to have lunch with me?”
“You are my other plans. Crab Pot? That seems like a place Brock would avoid with a woman he’s trying to impress.”
Luke drove her in his patrol car, leaving her car at the church. When they got to the Crab Pot, Mayor Trimble and Vicki Landau were already installed at the same table where she’d seen them before. Emily decided to try an experiment.
She walked up to the table. “Mayor Trimble, how nice to see you! I understand I have you to thank for my new housekeeper.”
He blinked at her, for once apparently speechless.
“Katie Parker? She is your niece, isn’t she? I assumed you sent her. And so promptly, too.”
The mayor opened and shut his mouth like a codfish. Emily longed to quote Mary Poppins at him but refrained.
“Well, anyway, she’s a great cook. It’s a little challenging with the baby and all, but I think she’s going to work out just fine.”
He mopped his brow, still without a word to say. Emily turned and followed Luke to their usual table.
“That ought to disarm him,” she said. “I couldn’t quite tell whether he was caught out or just bewildered, but if he was planning to spy through Katie, at least he knows we’re onto him.”
Luke shook his head, grinning. “You are really something, you know that? I couldn’t’ve pulled off that maneuver in a million years.”
Emily laughed. “Stony Beach is bringing out the femme fatale in me.” She gave him a sultry look. “Or maybe it’s you.”
He swallowed. “I know you’re bringing out all kinds of things in me. Things I thought were dead and gone years ago. Emily—well, this isn’t the time nor place.”
Sunny the wizened gnome shuffled up to their table and plunked down two glasses of water.
“Congratulations, Sunny, you did that just like a real waiter. Didn’t even have to ask.” Luke clapped the gnome on his grubby shoulder. “And I already know what I want to eat. You ready, Em?”
“Crab melt, please.” Emboldened by her attack on the mayor, she added, “And could I have a salad instead of the fries?”
Sunny made an indeterminate grumbling noise that Emily decided to interpret in the affirmative.
“Fish and chips for me today. And don’t forget the malt vinegar.” Luke winked at Emily. “Gotta mix it up every now and then.”
Emily swept a glance around the small dining room as Sunny shuffled off. “Do you ever mix it up on a higher level? Like going someplace else for lunch? Or even sitting at a different table?”
“Hey, this was your suggestion, remember? I’ve tried all the other places in town. This is the best. And I sit at the same table ’cause all the regulars sit at the same tables every day. If I moved, I’d be taking somebody else’s spot.”
“Sounds a bit boring.” Emily had a sudden vision of her life back at Reed. “But I should talk. I’ve been eating lunch in the same cafeteria for years. Dinner, too, since Philip died. And I usually sit in the same corner by the window, eating one of half a dozen meals.” She caught Luke’s gaze and held it. “What happened to us, Luke? Remember how adventurous we used to be? How we wanted to travel the world, try everything there was to try? Where did that go?”
He shrugged. “I did end up seeing a bit of the world in the army—stationed in Germany, roamed around Europe on my leaves. But I didn’t find anything to keep me there. I was happy to come home to Stony Beach.” He played with the tines of his fork. “Or would’ve been, if you’d been here.”
“But even if—you know…” She didn’t want to talk about that terrible time when they were first apart. “Stony Beach was never home to me. I don’t think I could have lived here all those years, even with you. Too much of a cultural backwater. At least it has a decent bookstore now, but no theater, no symphony, no ballet—I need those things, Luke. Like air.” She stopped, again confronted by a vision of her recent life. She’d seen student performances and visiting artists on campus, but she hadn’t ventured away from Reed for any kind of cultural event since Philip died. “At least I did then.”
“You could always go to Portland for that stuff. Take a weekend now and then.” He gave a little grin. “I haven’t instituted a town-wide lockdown yet.”
“That’s true. You know, I still haven’t gotten used to having money. My first thought when you said that was how expensive it would be—tickets, hotel, restaurants. But that’s pocket change to me now.” Her interior horizons expanded. “I could have the best of both worlds—culture in Portland, peace and quiet in Stony Beach.”
“Any plan that keeps you here most of the time sounds like a good plan to me.”
* * *
After lunch, Luke had to go to his office. Emily decided to walk back to her car, strolling through town along the way to visit some of her tenants she hadn’t yet met. It was a gorgeous day, sunny with only a refreshing breeze instead of the near-constant bluster, and the summer crowds had begun to gather; Emily dodged strollers, dogs, and oblivious running children as she navigated the sidewalk.
She checked out a couple of gift-cum-antique shops, neither as appealing as Lacey Luxuries nor as appalling as Cash and Carry. Then she came to Sweets by the Sea, which advertised “the best ice cream and saltwater taffy in Stony Beach.” That was too tempting to pass up.
She went in and browsed the side aisles, which were full of such factory-made goodies as gourmet jelly beans, fine chocolates, and Turkish delight. Then she strolled past the bins of taffy, picking up handfuls of cinnamon, caramel, and blueberry cheesecake, a few trial singles of pomegranate, maple bacon, and orange Creamsicle, and a full pound of licorice. Taffy bags in hand, she stood in line for a two-scoop waffle cone—peanut butter and chocolate, and coffee bean—justifying to herself that she would walk it off on the way to the church. And anyway, she deserved it—she’d been a good girl, having salad instead of fries with her crab melt.
The cash register was manned by a bent little woman crouched on a padded stool. She scrabbled for Emily’s coins with arthritic fingers bent into birdlike claws. Heavy makeup, no doubt intended to make her look younger than her eighty-something years, only served to accentuate her wrinkled skin and rheumy eyes.
Emily pasted on a smile. “Are you the owner here?”
“That’s right. Sixty-two years ago this month I married Jim Sweet. We ran this place together for forty-seven years, till he dropped dead and left me holding the bag. Just like a man.” She seemed to regard her husband’s death as the last in a long line of selfish and irresponsible actions.
“If you’re tired of it, why don’t you retire and let your son take over?” Emily nodded toward the middle-aged man serving ice cream alongside a teenaged boy who shared his curly brown hair and receding chin.
“Him?” The old woman gave something between a cackle and a snort. “He’s as bad as his father. Be bankrupt in a week if he took over.”
“But he’s bound to take over eventually. Wouldn’t it be better to let him learn while you’re still around to help him over the rough spots?” Emily was voicing thoughts she’d been longing to express to Queen Elizabeth II for years.
The old woman peered at her, her claws gripping the countertop. “What’s it to you, anyway? He put you up to say that? You his lawyer or something?”
Emily realized she hadn’t introduced herself. “I beg your pardon. I must have seemed terribly intrusive. I’m Emily Cavanaugh, your new landlady. I’m naturally concerned with the health of all the businesses that rent from me.”
She stared in fascination as the old woman’s face transfigured before her into a mask of loathing and spite. “So you’re Beatrice’s niece, are you? One of them Worthings.” She made the name sound the opposite of worthy. “Just as high-handed, just as grubbing, just as set on having everything anyone else wants as all the rest of them, I’ll wager. I don’t care if you are my landlady; I don’t want you in my shop. You can buy your taffy somewhere else from now on.” She slammed the register drawer shut and spun her stool till she was looking at the wall.
Emily stood, gaping, unable to credit this display of venom. What could Beatrice possibly have done to deserve this woman’s ferocity?
She blinked, shut her mouth, picked up her parcel, and turned to leave the shop. Just as she reached the sidewalk, she felt a presence close behind her.
“Ma’am?” said a young and cracking voice in her ear. She turned to see the boy who’d piled her cone so deliciously high.
He led her out of sight of the shop’s windows. “I heard what Granny said to you. Don’t mind her, please. She’s a little…” He made a spinning motion with his finger next to his ear.
“I gathered that. But what could make her hate my family so much? What did Beatrice ever do to her?”
The boy shrugged. “No idea. All I know is it happened way before I was born. Before Dad was born, even. But see, what Granny doesn’t know is, Mrs. Runcible was our best customer.”
Emily gaped. “But—”
The boy grinned, crinkling cheeks on which freckles vied with pimples for dominance. “She didn’t come into the shop. We delivered the stuff to her, me and Dad. The same order every month. Told Granny it was for Agnes Beech.”
“An assortment? Or did she have a particular favorite flavor?”
“Some boxed stuff, but the taffy was all licorice.” He pointed to her bag. “Seems to run in the family.”
Emily extracted a piece of licorice from her bag, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. It was delicious. “This is excellent taffy,” she said when her teeth came unstuck again. “Do you make it right here in the shop?”
“Sure do. Granny does it all herself. Well, she lets me help a little now she’s got so weak, but she won’t let Dad touch it.” A flicker of pain washed over his transparent features.
“Well, thank you.” She held out her right hand. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Matthew.” He wiped his hand on his apron and shook.
“Matthew. Perhaps you could continue Beatrice’s standing order for me. I’d hate to miss out on this wonderful taffy because your grandmother can’t let go of a grudge.”
“Sure thing.” He gave her a wide grin and vanished back into the shop.
Emily moved down the sidewalk and addressed herself to her cone, which had come perilously close to spilling its contents during all the maneuvers of the past few minutes and was now trickling chocolate down her left hand. She had just gotten all the melted bits under control when she heard Luke’s voice from the curb.
“Emily? You better come with me. One of your rentals is on fire.”