Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain.
—Muhammad Ali
OVER THE NEXT few hours, I finished printing out the cards, unjammed the printer twice, and had begun fulfilling online orders when Sadie knocked on the stockroom door.
“Pen, I thought you should know. Barney and Fiona Finch are in the event space. They came to see Harriet’s painting.”
“So the Prodigal Innkeeper finally returned from bowling night?”
“Apparently, Barney showed up after Fiona called you. He claimed he drank too much and slept it off in his car—which shocked the heck out of me. That doesn’t sound like the Barney I know.”
“It’s not the Barney I know, either.”
“Well, they’re both here now.”
“Don’t you find that odd, too?” I said. “You’d think Barney would be more interested in nursing his hangover than rushing over here to see a work of art.”
“I think the message Seymour left Fiona got them all riled up.”
“Message? What message?”
Sadie sighed. “Fiona called Seymour this morning looking for Barney. When he called back with no news, he took the opportunity to gloat about discovering the new Harriet McClure.”
I threw up my hands. “That portrait really is cursed. It’s going to sour relations between Seymour and Fiona worse than they already are.”
“Those two have been goading each other for as long as I can remember. A silly old picture isn’t going to change a thing.”
Your auntie’s on the money, honey.
Jack! You’re back! The return of the spirit lifted my own. With all the turmoil going on, the ghost’s cool presence felt reassuring. And his next observation was so blunt I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.
That cluck Seymour and Fiona Finch are birds of a feather. Two know-it-all eggheads in one small-town nest is one too many.
Nobody’s perfect, I told the ghost. And you should be glad Barney is here. I finally have a chance to ask him about his connection to Clifford Conway.
Jack agreed and breezed along with me as I followed Sadie to the event space. On the way, Sadie told me about another visitor.
Leo Rollins, our local electrician, had stopped by earlier to view the Harriet painting. Like Seymour, Leo was also taken with the young woman’s arresting image.
“She deserves better lighting,” he announced.
Since Leo was willing to pay for the changes himself, Sadie agreed, and he worked his electrician’s magic, adding a whole new bank of LEDs to the event space. The results were awe inspiring. The new lighting of Harriet’s portrait created an even more powerful impact, which appeared to mesmerize Fiona and Barney.
The unforgiving glare also emphasized a stain on the lapel of Fiona’s autumn gold pantsuit, though she gamely attempted to mask it with a pretty pin in the shape of a nightingale. I assumed she was coming straight from lunch service at Chez Finch, the French restaurant she and Barney had built adjacent to their inn. It was Fiona’s pride and joy. For the last few years, she’d focused her exacting efforts on designing, building, and running it. But the usual fussy energy she exhibited in all her ambitious endeavors was subdued as she gazed at Harriet’s portrait.
“Seymour has good reason to gloat,” Fiona conceded. “I’ve never seen a portrait of Harriet when she was young. She seems so . . .”
“Unhappy?” Aunt Sadie prompted.
“Lovely.” Fiona’s features curled in bafflement. “I see our inn is beautifully rendered in the background, but I don’t understand all the numbers and letters, or the musical notes. And those brash colors. They’re so . . . strange.”
I nodded. “Like an illustration in a children’s book.”
Barney Finch’s weathered face twisted into an angry scowl. “This is not Harriet’s work. It’s a forgery, some art student’s idea of a joke!”
Tall as a beanpole and nearly as thin, with squared shoulders that would do a cadet proud, Barney had more energy than most men pushing seventy. Right now, it was being expended in an ugly direction.
“This so-called Harriet McClure is an insult!” he declared, his complexion growing redder than his flannel shirt. “You’d have to be a fool to think it’s the real thing!”
A taciturn New Englander by nature, Barney was exhibiting more emotion than I’d ever seen from the man.
Jack noticed, too.
The old-timer’s blowing more smoke than a ’22 Stanley Steamer chugging up a steep incline.
“But, Barney,” his wife countered, “you can see the top of Harriet’s signature peeking up from the frame.”
“If you can forge a picture you can forge a signature.” Barney faced me. “You tell Seymour he got hornswoggled. He should have the crook who sold that piece of junk to him arrested for fraud.”
That would be a challenge, the ghost observed.
Fiona laid a calming hand on her husband’s shoulder. He shook it off. “I don’t have time for this nonsense, Fiona. There are chores to be done, and I’ve already lost the morning. Remember that busted light fixture in the hallway?”
His wife nodded timidly.
“I’m heading over to Napp Hardware to get a replacement.”
Stop him! Jack cried in my head. You can’t let that cranky old coot get away. Not before you ask him why he met with Conway.
“Barney, wait!” I shouted.
But the man kept going, stomping right past Bonnie Franzetti at the register and out our front door.
Go after him! Jack urged.
No, I told him, putting my foot down. Given the man’s mood, I wasn’t willing to risk another public argument in front of our store. And I doubted very much I’d get straight answers out of him, anyway. It would just be another Roland Prince stone wall, with me bashing my already-throbbing head against it.
Begrudgingly Jack agreed.
I’ll let Eddie deal with him, I told the ghost. Maybe Barney will show a little more patience when he’s talking to the deputy chief of police.