SIX

“Put down the war club, Glad,” Jack said. “I promise we’re not hostile.”

“Jack Conway, is that you finally?” The woman presented her powdery cheek to Jack and he dutifully kissed it. “And this must be Georgie. From the restaurant, right? Lovely to meet you, dear. I’ve been meaning to pop in and try some of the food I keep hearing about, but Dom used to get all bent out of shape if he found out I ate someplace other than the Sailor’s Rest.” Her face fell. “Not that I won’t miss the old bastard.”

So she’d known Big Dom. Not surprising really. Dom had been murdered in August, a victim of my former almost-boyfriend and his greedy schemes. I’d like to think I had something to do with solving the case, but I’d really just fumbled my way through the entire situation. “Were you a relative?” I asked.

“No, no. But he was a distant relative of my late husband, a cousin on his mother’s side. Which, I suppose, is why he felt free to ask me for money when he got himself into a crack. And why I felt free to turn him down. Of course, I didn’t know he’d end up dead. But whether I’d given him money or not, the outcome would have been the same. He just couldn’t keep himself out of trouble.” She swung the club about absentmindedly, then seemed to come back to the moment. “But where are my manners? Please come in.”

She stepped aside and Jack and I entered a moderately sized foyer. A dark oak staircase lined with intricately carved spindles lay to our left, a wooden cherub perched atop the newel post. The walls were rimmed with lovely wainscoting along the bottom, and a heavily patterned wallpaper—which I suspected might be original to the house, or at least a very good reproduction—along the top.

“Let’s go on out to the kitchen and get something to nibble on.” Gladys led the way down the hallway, past several rooms on either side, into a bright, spacious kitchen. A round oak table with claw feet sat in the middle of the space, ringed by matching chairs. “Would you like coffee or tea?”

Both Jack and I asked for coffee. “May I help you?” I said. “I’m not used to being waited on, I’m afraid.”

Gladys laughed. “I can certainly give you something to do. Why don’t you slice up that banana bread? There’s cream cheese to go with it.”

Ah, now I was in my element. I crossed to the sink and washed my hands, then set to work slicing the moist, fragrant bread with a serrated knife I found in a knife block on the counter. I scooped some cream cheese, which had been sitting out to soften, into a little crystal dish, then arranged all the components on a gorgeous antique platter. Gladys provided the coffeepot, and Jack helped her bring over the cups, teaspoons, cream, and sugar.

“We could go into the front parlor,” Gladys suggested. “That’s where I usually entertain.”

I looked around me at this cheerful room with its white beadboard cupboards and dark green quartz countertops. “I’m fine here,” I said. I was never as comfortable as when I was in a kitchen, no matter whose kitchen it was.

“Me too, Glad. As long as you’re feeding me, I’m happy,” Jack said.

“Then sit down, handsome.” She grinned, turned to me, and gave a little wink. I grinned back.

“After we have this snack, maybe we could take a tour of the house?” Jack said as he chewed. “I’d love to see the rest of the house again, and I know Georgie would. She lives in a historic place too.” His eyes were fixed on the war club, which Gladys had placed on the counter.

Gladys gave him a playful swat on the arm. “Of course I’ll give you two a tour. And we’ll spend a nice long time in the collection room.” She smiled at me. “I suppose he didn’t tell you why he really wanted to come and visit an old lady?”

Other than the fact that she was charming and apparently a fine baker? The bread was delicious, perfumed with the deepest banana flavor I’d ever tasted. I almost didn’t want to spoil it with a swig of coffee, but I did. “I don’t really care why we’re here, as long as you give me a copy of this recipe,” I said, swallowing. There was a secret ingredient in there, I was almost sure of it. And it would nag at me until I found out what it was.

“I’ll write it down for you before you leave,” Gladys promised.

Jack was cheerfully slathering cream cheese on his third helping. He seemed to be able to eat whatever he wanted with no consequences. “So how do you two know each other?” I asked.

“My parents were friends with Gladys and Herman—we called him Monty,” Jack said. “My siblings and I spent a lot of time here when we were kids.” That’s right, I thought. Jack was in the process of getting a permanent transfer to the Bonaparte Bay Coast Guard Station from the Oswego Station, and it made sense that he was reacquainting himself with the people he’d known as a kid. “Gladys’s late husband was a great collector of First Peoples artifacts. He took me with him on a few of his expeditions out into the countryside. I dug up some arrowheads when I was a kid and was bitten by the bug.”

A memory glimmered somewhere in the back of my mind. The word “SCOOM”—“Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk.” Every junior high school kid in New York State did a unit on the federated Iroquois nations who lived here and provided the foundation for the fledgling American government in the eighteenth century. Of course—I could still hear the voice of my seventh grade social studies teacher—most of the tribes had sided with the British during the Revolution and were not treated very well by the victorious patriots. We learned how to build a longhouse—a skill I hoped I’d never have to actually put to the test—and I found I could still remember some of the steps involved. I didn’t know a lot about the archaeological history of the North Country, though.

“I’d love to see the collection too,” I said.

“Then let’s go have a look, shall we?” Gladys got up and, regretfully, covered the banana bread with a piece of plastic wrap. I brought the coffee cups to the sink and offered to wash up. “No, Georgie. I’ll do the dishes later. Sometimes it’s the highlight of my day.” At my look of horror, she laughed. “Kidding! If I’m bored, I troll for pictures of hot men on the Internet. I especially like the ones in uniform.” She batted her eyes at Jack.

“You’re a devil in disguise, Gladys,” Jack said. “If I weren’t so smitten with Georgie here, I might take a walk on the wild side with you.”

Smitten? He was smitten with me? A warm tingle spread throughout my body, immediately accompanied by a twinge of panic. I wasn’t very good at relationships—yet.

We followed Gladys out of the kitchen and back down the hallway. “Powder room,” she said with a sweep of her arm that made her gold bracelets jingle. “Here are the parlors.” We entered a beautiful room furnished in an eclectic mix of antique and more modern furniture. One wall of the room contained a wide opening into a second parlor. As we passed through the opening, I realized it must contain pocket doors. We had similar ones back at the Bonaparte House.

Exiting through the front room, we crossed the hallway to the library. I was immediately jealous. The room was lined with books floor to ceiling, with a couple of comfortable-looking chairs upholstered in faded pink velvet. I longed to park my behind in one of them and reach up for a book, any book.

“This is where Herman spent most of his time,” Gladys said. “I haven’t changed much in the twenty years he’s been gone. Would you believe these chairs used to be red until the sun got to them?”

“It’s a lovely room,” I said.

Jack nodded. He was staring at a painting on the wall, framed in gilt. My eyes followed his. The painting was moderately sized, done in thick oils, and it depicted dogs . . . dressed like people and playing cards and smoking cigars. The painting seemed oddly familiar, as though I’d seen something similar once.

Gladys rolled her eyes. “Oh, that thing. You like it, Jack? Personally, I think it’s ridiculous. But Herman loved it, so I kept it.”

It was kind of silly. But there was something compelling about it too.

Jack peered at the signature. “Kash Koolidge, a local artist. I remember this, of course. It’s hard to forget. I wonder if it’s an original or a reproduction?”

“I have no idea,” Gladys said. “And I have no clue where Herman picked it up. Now this”—she indicated a bronze sculpture on a pedestal in a corner of the room—“this I know is an original. At least the insurance company says it is, based on the premiums they charge me.”

There was no mistaking what that sculpture was—a Remington. It depicted a horse and rider in exquisite detail, the metal giving off a dull sheen. I was no horsey girl, and I wouldn’t necessarily want art like that in my house, but I could appreciate the artistry that had gone into it. I wondered what it was worth. I’d visited the Frederic Remington Museum in Ogdensburg when my daughter was little and her class had gone on a field trip, so I knew that there were more than one of each of the Remington bronzes—they simply cast them in the same molds, then broke the molds after a certain number.

“And back here are the arrowheads and spear points.” She indicated a glass case that spanned most of the length of the back wall.

Jack leaned over the case and gave a low whistle. “Wow! You weren’t kidding, Glad. I don’t remember the collection being this big.”

Rows of arrowheads, spear points, and a few shards of pottery were arranged in neat rows, and each object was labeled with a number. There were some other items I couldn’t identify but I assumed they were stone tools or weapons of some kind. There was a largish empty spot, and I had to wonder if that was where the war club Gladys had used to greet us at the door was located.

“What are the numbers for?” I asked.

“Herman was extremely meticulous about cataloging where and when he found these artifacts. Back in the sixties and seventies, when he was traipsing around the North Country doing most of his digging, of course, that wasn’t common for amateurs. And in those days there weren’t all these regulations about calling in the state archaeologist and trying to send whatever was found back to the tribe it belonged to. Repatriation, I think it’s called. At least for human remains.”

“Georgie, did you know that the North Country is full of earthen mounds made thousands of years ago? There are some particularly baffling ones over at Perch Lake. The archaeologists have not come to any solid conclusions about who made them—or what purpose they served. My sister Trish works for the state archaeologist now.”

I hadn’t known that. I knew something about the Bonapartes, of course, since they were connected with my own house. But this history apparently went back much, much further, long before this area was explored by the Europeans.

“So, Jack, I was hoping you could carry down the boxes from Herman’s office upstairs. They’re full of his notes and measurements on each of these items, plus photographs. You remember where the office is?”

Jack smiled. “Of course. I loved this house when I was a kid. I’ll be right back.” He left the room and went up the stairs just outside the library door, two at a time.

“Well, dear. Why don’t you and I go out to the kitchen and I’ll get you that recipe?”

She didn’t have to ask me twice. A couple of minutes later I was parked back at the oak table with a shoe box crammed full of paper in front of me. Gladys handed me a pen and an index card decorated with sunflowers. She pulled a pair of bright red cheaters on a chain from underneath her light sweatshirt and placed them on her nose, then began to thumb through a second box. “Ah, I found it. Here, I’ll let you copy it down.”

I read quickly through the recipe and smiled. There it was, the secret ingredient I’d been wondering about. Yet it was so simple, I wanted to smack my forehead for not thinking of using it myself. Instead of milk, which most recipes called for, this one substituted banana-flavored Greek yogurt. That’s what made the rich, moist texture and deep flavor. I made a quick copy and stuck the card in my back pocket. “Thanks, Gladys. I don’t suppose you have any other recipes you’d like to send my way?”

Gladys looked pleased. “I love to cook. I throw potlucks and dinner parties for my neighbors at the condo complex in Florida all winter long. Keeps me in practice.”

“I’ll bet you’ve got lots of friends and admirers,” I said. The woman was charming, attractive, and could cook, which probably made her a hot commodity in the senior community. Rather like my mother-in-law, Sophie, although I might sometimes debate the extent of her charm. She was more like a bulldog than a French poodle.

“Oh, well, I do all right,” Gladys said modestly. “I have an idea. I’ll be going back to Florida next week. These old bones don’t like the cold and snow anymore, and you know how quickly the snow comes here. Why don’t you take these recipes with you and you can copy what you want over the winter? There are some old ones from my mother and grandmother in there too. You can just return the boxes next spring when you’re done.”

“Really?” I was salivating. And an idea was starting to form. Now that Cal was gone, and I wouldn’t be spending my winters in Greece with Sophie and Spiro anymore, I was going to need something to keep me busy when the snow came. Maybe I’d write a cookbook—a Thousand Islands cookbook. A thrill of excitement ran through me.

“Well, if you’re sure you trust me with them, I’d love to take you up on the offer.”

She patted my hand. “I can tell they’ll be in good hands. Jack is an excellent judge of character, and if he likes you, that’s good enough for me.”

I could feel my cheeks heat up. Were we that obvious?

Gladys smiled at me, her eyes shining. “Take care of that boy. Herman and I never had children of our own, and so we took a special interest in Jack and his sisters. Which is why I wouldn’t trust Herman’s artifact collection to anyone else.”

“Are you giving it to Jack?” I said in surprise. He was renting an apartment over the Laundromat right now. Since it wasn’t right on the water, he was getting a nice deal on it. I guessed he’d find room for the stuff somewhere.

“Not exactly. Jack’s sister Trish works for the New York State Archaeology Department. Since I have no living relatives, and since I don’t need the money, I decided it was time to make arrangements for the collection to go to where it can stay together and do the most educational good. Trish couldn’t make it here from Albany before I leave for Florida next week, so Jack agreed to package up and deliver the items to her.”

Jack returned. “I’ve loaded all the paperwork into the boat—good thing it’s all in covered plastic boxes. I suppose it would have been simpler to just bring a car, though it would be a tight fit in my Jeep.”

Gladys nodded. “Boat, Jeep, it’s all the same to me. So when can you come back and pack up the actual collection for Trish?”

“I’ve bought containers, but it looks like I’ll need to run to Watertown and pick up a few more based on the size of the collection. How about tomorrow afternoon?” Jack said.

“That’ll be fine. Why don’t you come for lunch, and bring Georgie too? We’ve had a nice chat and I’d like to get to know her better.” Gladys smiled.

“I’d like that too, Gladys. I’ve got some . . . friends in town, so I’ll have to see what their plans are.” My thoughts drifted back to Melanie and Caitlyn.

“Feel free to bring them along. I’ll be leaving next week and I’ve got a refrigerator full of food to use up. Just call ahead of time and let me know how many plates to set.”

She was adorable. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to expose her to Melanie just yet.