Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
—Benjamin Franklin
I AGREED WITH Seymour on one thing. My aunt and Bud had had way too much to drink. As for the ghost sighting, I was far from an impartial juror. Whether they saw Harriet’s spirit or not, I wanted them to get home safely and was glad Brainert offered to drive them.
I didn’t go with them. Instead, I stayed behind, hoping to hear what (if anything) Fiona had learned from the town’s Chianti-loving Realtor.
When I joined her and Barney at the bar of the deserted restaurant, they were discussing Aunt Sadie’s outburst.
“I hope she isn’t going to blab all over town about how she saw Harriet’s ghost,” Barney complained. “We don’t need another article in the Bulletin.”
Fiona saw me and quickly changed the subject. “Pen, sit down and join us! I’m so glad you told me about your sister-in-law.”
“I’m glad, too. Did you get any news from Sam Tibbet?”
“Yes!” Pouring me a ginger ale, she declared, “Something is definitely going on in this town. Sam told me he made three sales this month, all to out-of-town buyers. Nobody even came to look at the property. They just paid the asking price.”
“Anything else?”
“Charting is being done along Quindicott’s shoreline. Sam talked with a pair of surveyors at Linda’s bakery. They said they were hired by a law firm in New York, so he checked it out. It’s Bertram Sutherland’s firm.”
Barney cursed.
“Sam began to dig, and from what he gathered, Ashley and her husband are planning to turn Quindicott into a Newport-like resort town. Once they force us out of our own property, they’re going to expand the inn and develop the shoreline. They also plan to use their financial influence on the mayor and town council to pressure the existing shop owners to sell, so ‘high-end’ retailers can lift the town out of its ‘middle-brow’ doldrums.”
I felt sick. “It’s worse than I thought. We’ll have to fight them, starting with your inn.”
“I’m ready for that fight!” Fiona said.
I couldn’t contain my outrage. “What nerve they have. I can’t get over how Ashley spoke about your property as if she’d be moving in next month without any hitch. How could she be so confident?”
“She’s confident because she’s got something she can use against us,” Barney said.
“The tax?” Fiona assumed.
“I think it’s something more. Something I never told you. Never told anybody.” Suddenly Barney faced me. “Is Seymour in on this scheme? I know Tarnish and Fiona poke each other every chance they get, but I never thought the mailman would stoop so low—”
“What are you talking about, Barney?”
“That portrait of young Harriet McClure. It appeared out of nowhere. Who gave it to Seymour? Why is he showing it off now?”
“No one gave it to him. He bought it. I was there when Seymour first laid eyes on it. And are we talking about the same painting you claimed was a forgery?”
Barney’s cadet-straight shoulders sagged. “I’ve been doing a lot of lying lately, and it’s brought me nothing but grief.”
He took his wife’s hand, but Barney’s eyes never left mine.
“It’s not a forgery,” he confessed. “That portrait is the real thing. So real it can ruin us.”
“My God, Barney,” his wife cried. “How can that be? It’s only a painting!”
“It’s more than that . . .”
Barney confessed that when he was just twelve years old, he was puttering around in the attic of what is now the Finch Inn when he found a crawl space. Inside he discovered several paintings by Harriet McClure, including the one that hangs in their lobby today.
“My father demanded I show him. When he saw they were all portraits of Harriet in her last years, he relaxed. But then he saw one that had numbers and letters on it. It looked like the one Seymour bought. Had strange colors and images drawn in the rocks and on the clouds. I didn’t even think it was a picture of Harriet because the girl was so young and striking.”
Barney paused. “My father told me if I ever saw a picture of this young woman with strange writing and symbols, I should do what he was about to do. Then he took the painting to the incinerator and burned it.”
I was appalled. “Did he say why?”
“He told me there were secret things on that painting. He said that if anyone in the powerful McClure family ever found out that secret, they would bring a curse down on us.”
“Didn’t your father give you any hint as to what that secret was?”
“He only said that my grandfather Malachi had burned a bunch of paintings just like the one he burned. And when he did, Malachi gave my father the same warning he was passing on to me.” With a heavy sigh, Barney went on. “I can only think Ashley or that bastard of a husband got hold of one of those paintings. Figured out the secret and is about to blackmail me, or worse—”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “If that’s really their plan, then Ashley and Bertram don’t need another painting. Not if they have the digital images of the one Seymour owns.”
As I explained my theory to Barney and Fiona, I realized my in-laws were sounding more like outlaws. But were they capable of double murder—or paying someone to do it for them?
“One more thing,” I said. “Violet Brooks mentioned Harriet’s jewels. She said they were part of her brother’s lawsuit to reclaim the house after Harriet died. Violet thought the jewels might have been sold to keep the household going. But a few jewels would have brought a great deal of money. Isn’t it possible that not all of those jewels were sold? What if the remainder were hidden somewhere on the property?”
Barney shook his head. “Nice theory, Pen. I wish that were true. But we stripped most of this house down to its bare walls and rebuilt the foundation. If there was a box full of jewels hidden in this old building, we would have found it.”