Better Than Gold

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU’RE LATE.”

At 6:42 p.m. Mia shed her old wool coat and shook the rain off on the porch to keep the hardwood floor of Monique Beaudin’s foyer dry. The expression on her friend’s delicate, oval face said worried friend, no trace of anger. That would be Monique, the M to her M. Mia wasn’t sure she had ever truly seen her angry.

“Hey.” Mia stepped inside and toed off her shoes. “I thought if I hung around, Chief Montcalm would eventually let me back in.”

Monique raised her naturally perfect dark blond brows.

“Well, he didn’t,” Mia continued as she tucked her damp hair behind her ears. “He had a couple of his people put that yellow police tape across the doors and they all gave me the stink eye as if they thought I was going to break into my own place as soon as they drove away.”

“So, did you?”

“I would have, but Chief Montcalm scares the bejeebers out of me.”

“Well, relax.” Monique took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, accompanying the breath with flowing hand movements.

“I wish I could relax, turn it off like you do. I wish I could.”

“Practice. Practice and maybe a nice glass of sauvignon blanc will lighten the mood.”

“What makes you think my mood needs lightening?” Mia stiffened her shoulders as if miffed, and then slouched.

Monique bubbled out a laugh and led the way to her neat, frilly living room. “Sit. You need it. I’ll drop dinner into the pot and I’ve got everything else ready.”

By the time they were finished drinking their second glass of wine, lobster shells and remnants of Monique’s handmade bread lay strewn on the serving tray between them.

To pay the lobster its due and because they were both starving, most of the meal passed in silence broken by such things as “Oh, this is so wonderful” and the cracking of shells.

“So are they going to let you back in soon?” Monique asked as she placed her neatly folded napkin on the table.

“I hope so. Every hour the police lock me out, the more pitifully behind I get. I need my crew back in there tomorrow to have the place ready by next Monday because the finishing crew is due to start.” Mia sat forward with her elbows on her knees. “What if all this is for nothing?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if we’re too late to build the town up, to make a difference. Building Pirate’s Cove will bring in a few tourists, but it’s only a start. We need more motels and shops, even more restaurants. And it wouldn’t hurt to have some boating business, sightseeing or something like that. If Pirate’s Roost fails, especially before I get a good start, will the rest give up?”

“Funny you should mention boating.” When Monique sank back against the cushions of the navy couch, Mia realized the usual spark in her friend’s bubbly personality seemed to be dim tonight. It hadn’t been her imagination earlier on the phone. “What’s going on?”

Monique let out a sigh that sounded like defeat. “I hate to bring it up because it’s like an old broken record in my life.”

“I’ll get my Victrola,” Mia said. “Come on out with it.”

“Well, when Granddad stopped by to leave our dinner—” Monique gestured toward the remains on the table. “He told me he was moving south, before the snow flies next fall. Says too much of the town has gone so he might as well go, too.”

Mia leaned forward, put her stockinged feet on the floor and clutched a frilly chartreuse throw pillow to her chest.

“What happened this time?” The threat Edwin Beaudin, a longtime widower, had been making since Monique’s mother had died two years ago weighed heavily on his granddaughter.

“There’s a for-sale sign on the Calvins’ lobster boat. You can guess how it went after he saw that. Says he might as well give up bee-un ah Main-ah.” Monique used her grandfather’s heavy Maine accent. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he goes. I wish I still had Mom. He’d stay for her.”

Mia’s heart ached, but...” Maybe you and I will have to make him stay.”

“You know my granddad. He’s more stubborn than you are.”

“That’s what I’m depending on.”

“You have an idea?” Monique’s expression brightened and so did Mia’s heart.

“I have a skeleton, and a crew that needs a nanny. What if he still felt like he was a necessary part of the Bailey’s Cove community?” When Edwin Beaudin lost first his wife and then his daughter, he lost the will to battle the elements, pollution, poachers and the competition for the ever-dwindling supply of fish and lobster. “And I need the shoulder of a big strong man to lean on.”

“You?” Monique laughed out loud. “Need a shoulder to lean on?”

“I’m glad I’m so amusing.”

“Well, you’re so ‘I can do it myself’ that I never thought I’d ever...ever...ever hear you say those words. Lean on someone, especially a man and especially after Rory.”

“I’d like to think I’ve forgiven myself for agreeing to marry a guy who would give me a ring he paid for with my money and have the guts to ask for it back when he changed his mind.”

“I’m sure you think you have, honey, but trust me, you still don’t lean on anyone for anything.”

“I lean on you.”

“That’s because I feed you.”

“There is that.” Mia put her elbows on her knees again. “But besides fishing or hauling in a big lobsta for his granddaughter and her friend, what does Edwin Beaudin like better than to rescue someone?”

“Nothing. He’s been rescuing me my whole life.” Monique’s big blue eyes opened wider in dawning comprehension.

“Do you think he’d be interested in supervising those three workers for me, keeping Charlie out of the bar? I can’t pay him much up front, but as a former boat captain, he can keep a crew in line.”

“He might.”

Mia felt some of the same tentative hope she heard in Monique’s voice.

Monique’s shoulders sagged again.

“What?”

“Granddad’s right about so many of the old-timers leaving. What if he’s right about getting out of town, building a life of some kind away from here? What if it is time to give up?”

“Giving up on Bailey’s Cove means, giving up our hometown having a place in Maine’s heritage. All we’d have left are the fading memories. No one would care or, after a while, even remember the folks who worked so hard to make this a viable town, your ancestors and mine. At least half the people in Bailey’s Cove have a relative who settled somewhere around here.”

“But do you think it’s worth it to beat yourself up to get the restaurant finished? Wouldn’t it be easier to leave it all behind?”

“I’ve been out there in the world and there is truly no place like home. No place like home.” She clicked her stockinged heels together. “And I plan on fighting for it.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“And I know for sure my workers need an overseer because I can’t be there every minute. Finding a skeleton in the wall is not going to make them work more diligently. If it’s okay with you, I’ll ask your granddad.”

“He’ll clamor to help you, at least for a while.”

“For a while is good enough for now. A Mainer stays in Maine unless there is a really compelling reason to leave. He’s a Main-ah right through to his salty old core.”

Monique pushed up from the chair and carried the tray to the kitchen. “I should be reassured by that, ’cause it’s hard to imagine him on a golf course or a beach somewhere under a palm tree with an umbrella drink in his hand.”

Monique returned with a bowl of grapes glistening with water and another bottle of wine. After pouring them each another glass, she plopped down on the couch and brushed her flowing blond locks back with the crook of her arm. “Why do I have to lose everybody in my life?”

“I came back.”

“You did, and I love you for that.” Monique held a grape in her mouth, making her cheek puff out. “Do you think Pirate’s Cove will make enough of a difference?”

“A small one.” One of the things Mia loved about Monique was her friend’s penchant for asking the hard questions. “But we have to start, to invest time and sweat equity somewhere, to regrow our town. I’d say money, but right now it’s the bank in Portland’s money, not mine.”

“Do you suppose the police’ll call you tonight with any news?”

“I don’t know what the procedure is. I don’t know if they’ll call me at all. If they don’t, the chief will get a new desk ornament. Me.”

“You’re such a toughie.” Monique plucked another grape from the bowl and ate it.

“And you’re such a girly-girl.” To make her point, Mia tossed a pillow with a beaded pink ruffle at her friend.

“What do you suppose will happen with the bones?”

“I don’t know. I guess they have to determine how old they are before anything is decided. I just hope they get them out of my wall quickly.”

Monique hugged the pillow and grinned. “I know what we need to take our minds off everything else.”

Mia waved both hands in the air. “No. No. Not your favorite subject.”

“Men!” Monique said and then gave an exaggerated sigh.

“Ha!” Mia leaned back and put her head against the crocheted doily draped over the back of the matching mauve chair. “Men. Had ’em, don’t need ’em.”

“You got robbed. That rat Rory should still be here.”

“Yes. I did and he should. But since I had it all and lost it—twice—”

“I wonder—” Monique put a finger to her chin “—if you’d still say that if another good man came along and rang your bell.”

“I’d ring his bell right back and send him from whence he came.”

“Whence?”

Mia expelled an unenthusiastic huff. “I’m fine just the way I am. Maybe if I want a man, I’ll go after Chief Montcalm.”

“He’s gotta be your dad’s age.”

“What about Rufus’s baby brother? He’s neither attached nor too old.”

“He just left for college, so that’d make you a cradle robber.”

Mia slapped the knee of the clean jeans she’d put on after her shower. “Well, that about exhausts the supply of men here in the Bailey’s Cove area. I think that’s why I moved back here. I wanted a peaceful life.”

Monique snorted. “So, that seems to be going really well.”

“Skeleton aside, in a few short weeks, I’m going to have the best restaurant for a hundred miles. I’ll have tourists clamoring for a meal as they head north and then again when they head south and I’ll have a nice cozy mortgage and a nice fat business loan to keep me warm.”

“You’ll get the chance to work even more hours in a day than you do now. You’ll have even more employees to keep on their toes, and more—”

Monique’s front doorbell gave its usual unenthusiastic dong-dong.

“Am I being saved by the bell?” Mia asked.

“That’s gotta be for you,” Monique said without any indication that she intended to get up. “Granddad’s already safely perched on his barstool for the evening and you’re here. That’s the entire list of people who might want to talk to me this late on a Tuesday night.”

“Won’t be for me, either. They’d have called me if they’d wanted me.” Mia patted the pocket where she kept her phone. The pocket was empty. “Or not. My phone’s in my work jeans.”

“How’d they find you here?”

“Because my social life is so grand as to have a total of three options, the Pirate’s Roost, my house or yours, and maybe because my kiwi-green SUV is parked in your driveway.”

“And is likely to be there all night because you drink like a fish.” Monique gave her a twitchy-faced smile and the bell rang again.

“Your doorbell is ringing.” Mia smirked.

“You’re closer.” Monique tossed the pillow back.

“I guess since you provided the lobster dinner, I can answer your bell.”

Mia got up, successfully taking a sip of wine as she went, and opened the door to find Officer Lenny Gardner on the stoop. One more for the short list of bachelors in Bailey’s Cove. She looked him up and down. How could they have forgotten fastidious Lenny? Everybody in town knew he would take either of them as his wife, and having grown up with him, neither of them wanted a man that badly. But the boy had certainly grown up to be a well-built man.

“Hey, Lenny.”

“Chief wants to talk to you,” said the police officer who did everything he could to make himself attractive, including aftershave and a smartly pressed uniform and, holy cow, he must lift pickup trucks at the gym. The ploy might even work if he weren’t so bossy.

“What did he find out?”

The cop eyeballed the wineglass in her hand. “I’ll drive you.”

She looked at the glass and then at him.

He shifted his gaze over her shoulder at Monique, who had come up behind her, and the expression on his face said her small ash-blond friend was Lenny’s first choice.

“I’ll drive you there and back,” he promised when he turned his attention back to Mia, this time with the pursed lips of judgment. “We can’t have you endangering the townsfolk.”

She stifled a two-and-a-half-glass-of-wine grin, but she couldn’t deny that he might be right.

Monique poked her in the back. When Mia turned, her friend tilted her head toward Lenny as if to ask, what about him?

Mia handed over the glass, made a deranged face and mouthed, “For you.”

Monique made a “call me” sign with her pinky and thumb. Mia nodded, grabbed her coat from the hook behind the door and followed Lenny to the squad. The chill in the night air sobered her a bit.

Be good to me, Chief, she thought.

“Lenny, what did the chief find out?” she asked once they were in the squad and he couldn’t dodge the question as easily this time.

“If Chief Montcalm wanted me to tell you, I’d have told you.”

That couldn’t be good. “No hints?”

Lenny kept his gaze straight ahead, both hands on the wheel and didn’t comment. When they arrived at the police station, he escorted her inside with a hand in the middle of her back. If she hadn’t known him long enough to have seen him tinkle in the sandbox when they were four, she might have pointed out just how politically incorrect that old-fashioned gesture was. For all she did not like about Lenny, he wasn’t a chauvinist. He meant the gesture in the same polite and helpful way he would if she were his grandmother.

There was a lot to be said for homegrown Maine boys in today’s world. Maybe Monique should snap him up.

“Ev’ning, Ms. Parker.”

The chief greeted her plain-faced in the doorway of his office and gestured her to a visitor’s chair in front of his desk. That couldn’t be good, either. If he wanted her to sit down before he told her anything, he must be expecting an untoward reaction.

“Thanks for calling me in, Chief.” She wondered if she sounded sober. She hoped so.

As she settled into the chair, she heard the door click shut behind her. Whatever he had to say, Mia was sure she didn’t want to hear. But, let it rip, like a Band-Aid off tender flesh.

That was definitely the wine.

The chief sat down in his chair and placed his hands flat on the old-fashioned green blotter. “I thought you might like an update.”

“Oh.” She bunched her shoulders and then let them sag. “I’m ready, Chief Montcalm. Lay it on me.”

“We’ve removed the body and brought it here to our small crime lab. There was no ID with the body, but we did determine from the clothing remnants the body has been there for a long time.”

She almost stood. “If the body’s gone, can I have my building back now?”

“I’m afraid not. The crypt and the surrounding area will need to be studied.”

He tried to make his words sound kind and conciliatory, but she slumped in her chair.

The chief officially calling it a crypt somehow made things seem more creepy or maybe the wine was... She stopped the thought and brought her mind back and tried hard to listen, the way he did when she spoke.

“Since the circumstances are suspicious by nature of the body being in the wall, this has to remain a police matter. I called in the state’s criminal investigation division.”

More people, more time. She dropped her chin to her chest. Of course he called the CID and processing an old skeleton most likely moved slowly through the state system. So they would probably not be there tomorrow. Her brain buzzed with calculations of lost time and the impact delaying the work would have on getting the restaurant open, especially if the state investigators couldn’t get here until, say, Monday.

She might have to cancel the finishing work set up for next week, go bankrupt, move to the poorhouse and let the town of Bailey’s Cove be completely taken over by a population of non-Maine city dwellers seeking to escape on the weekends and for a week or two during the summer.

It wouldn’t be so bad if these people were all lovely friendly people who wanted to visit a great small town and then go quietly away, but there was that ten percent who couldn’t help leaving their mark by damaging what wasn’t theirs. The town council had decided to take things slow and Mia agreed with them. If too many visitors arrived before the town’s infrastructure was upgraded, Bailey’s Cove wouldn’t be able to protect itself and could turn into a place the natives would not recognize.

Then when the tide of visitors ebbed, the town’s two-hundred-year-old structures like Braven’s tavern, Pardee’s Donut shop, the town founder’s home overlooking the town from up on Sea Crest Hill, the boathouse, even the docks would all bear the marks of these visitors. No amount of tourist dollars would make up for that kind of damage. Meanwhile Edwin Beaudin would have packed up and left Pied Piper–like because townsfolk listened to Monique’s granddad.

“Ms. Parker?”

She snapped her gaze up. Two glasses of wine next time and that would be it. She swiped the back of her hand over her forehead.

“I get it. More people, more time. Okay.” But she didn’t get it. She didn’t get how she was going to do this. Her life wouldn’t end but getting back on her feet could take half a lifetime and she’d have to do it away from Bailey’s Cove, out there where life had definitely not been good to her. In Boston, where she had completed her college degree, she had been downsized from her job and lost the first love of her life. In Portland, her home state, she’d lost another job and gained a fiancé who eventually left her.

The chief gave her a look that spoke of an apology.

“What now?” she asked. She’d let the chief finish first, then she’d don her rags and go find a bridge to live under.

“Because of the age of the case, the CID expects to be here in two weeks, three at most.”

Mia took a big gulp of panic. The partially demolished wall was the center of everything. Even if she were allowed to demo and build around the wall, the work would come to a disastrous halt by the end of two weeks for sure. “That long?”

“And I can’t let you in the building until they give the okay.”

The big darkness hovering in the background inside her head began to descend over her thoughts. “I can’t go in at all? Not at all?”

“And they’ll need the scene for at least a day or two after they get started.”

She couldn’t help fidgeting in the chair. She’d already spent her savings, dug deep into the bank loan, and the teeny tiny trust fund set up for the historic building’s renovation would evaporate if the project failed.

Her fingernails suddenly looked too long and she had the urge to bite them all off. Something she hadn’t done in over a decade.

“So do you have any idea who that is in the wall?” The chief’s tone was quietly demanding.

She looked up. “Who it is? No. Should I?”

“You’ve done research on the building.”

“I know some of the building’s history, but I have no idea who might be in the wall. Do you?”

Chief Montcalm frowned. “It needs to be considered that this might be the remains of someone from very early in the town’s history.”

She snapped her gaze up to meet his. “How early?”

“I don’t really know anything for sure, but I can ask the CID if they will allow me to call the university. The university might send someone here to check out the site sooner than two or three weeks.”

“Call them!” She huffed out a breath and shrugged. “Sorry, if you call them, I might get those three workers off the street and back on the job sooner. Will the state let the university take over the site?”