Bellewether

  “She has not been dead long?”

  “Only a year. There was a storm. A tree fell. For a time it seemed she might recover, but . . .” The big man’s voice trailed off in sadness, then he simply said, “God takes those souls he loves the best.”

  Jean-Philippe was less convinced of that. He’d seen men die who would not have been greatly loved by God, but he did not share his opinions, knowing Boudreau had just lost a child.

  On the half-moon curve of beach, the mood had shifted. There was tension now—he saw it clearly in the way they all were standing.

  Joseph Wilde had raised his hand to touch and test the boards of the ship’s hull.

  As if on cue the birdsong stilled above them in the trees, and all the leaves hung quietly a moment, as though waiting.

  Boudreau, having taken little notice of the latest movements on the beach, had looked away instead to where the waters of the wider bay showed blue between the gaps amid the tangle of the woods. Now he said, “The wind is changing.”

  “Yes,” said Jean-Philippe, still taking in the family scene below them. “I believe you may be right.”

  Charley

  “There’s a storm coming.”

  Strange thing to hear on a perfectly cloudless October day. Stranger by far when the warning was given to you by a vampire.

  Adjusting his teeth, Don Petrella stepped out of the booth where, for most of this morning, as part of our Fall Harvest Festival, he had been posing for photos with fans for five dollars. He glanced skyward, adding, “A big storm. My scar’s acting up.”

  I liked Don. I’d been too young to watch his show back in the day, with its crime-fighting vampire detective, but he had been famous enough that I’d seen him in interviews, and I remembered. Back then he’d been lean, dark, and dangerous-looking, and viewers had voted him “Sexiest Man on TV” two years running. His waist might have thickened a little, his eyes showing hints of the puffiness men sometimes got when they drank to excess, and his hair might have silvered to gunmetal grey, but when he shot me that lopsided smile, I could still see the sex appeal.

  Rachel, on learning that Don was a Wilde House trustee, had said, “Lucky you. He’s really hot.”

  “He’s a grandfather.”

  “So? He’s still hot.”

  I’d conceded the point. “But he seems like he’s pretty high maintenance.”

  She’d glanced at me then without comment, and gone back to helping fold laundry, but I’d caught the edge of her smirk.

  “What?”

  She’d shaken her head. “Nothing.”

  “Rachel.”

  “It’s just that I’m trying to picture how bad he must be if you think he’s high maintenance.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  She had rolled her eyes. “Look who you’re dating.”

  “Who, Tyler? He isn’t high maintenance.”

  “Oh, really?” She’d caught Tyler’s cadence in a pretty good imitation: “Hey, babe, can you make me a sandwich? Can you take my car for an oil change? Can you move your whole life half an inch to the left, babe? You’re blocking my light.”

  I had tossed her a T-shirt. “Come on, he’s not like that.”

  She’d said, “He’s exactly like that, and you know it.”

  At that point, she’d only met Tyler a handful of times, and I’d still held out hope that I’d get them to like one another someday.

  But I wasn’t so sure anymore after how she’d reacted on Labour Day weekend, when I’d taken her back to college.

  She’d been quiet for most of our drive to the city that morning, but after I’d helped her to carry her boxes and suitcases up to her dorm room she’d sighed and said, “Look, I’ve been thinking. I know when you asked me a couple of weeks ago if I’d have dinner with you guys tonight, I said no, but I understand Tyler’s important to you, so I’m changing my answer. I’ll do it.”

  I’d looked down, pretending that there was a wrinkle I needed to smooth on her bedspread while I tried to figure out how to respond. Rachel knew me too well. She’d said, knowing the answer, “He bailed on you, didn’t he?”

  “Well . . .”

  “He’s not coming.”

  “He had something come up with one of his friends,” I had said, and I’d tried to make it sound as though the thing that had “come up” was more important than a boys’ night in Atlantic City.

  Rachel hadn’t bought it. “He is such an ass.”

  I’d known there wasn’t any point in arguing. I’d taken her for lunch instead, the two of us alone, and then we’d snagged last-minute tickets to a Broadway show, and after that I’d dropped her at her dorm again and spent the night all by myself in the fancy, expensive hotel room that wasn’t refundable.

  Tyler had offered again to repay me when he’d called the following night, but I’d shrugged it off. “No, it’s okay.”

  “Well, we’ll go somewhere nice for the long weekend. My treat.”

  “It can’t be that weekend.”

  “Why not? Rachel’s going up to spend time with your parents, right? To celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving? So you’ll be on your own.”

  “I’ll be working. That’s our Fall Harvest Festival weekend, remember?”

  He hadn’t remembered, or so I’d assumed from the change in his tone. “So then when will I see you? I have to work weekends the rest of September, you know that.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I had promised, and he’d let it drop. Which was good, because I’d had enough on my plate these past weeks.

  I’d had meetings to deal with our Fall Harvest Festival plans and more meetings to deal with our annual budget, and in between I’d been working with Frank to track down all the furniture and smaller items his family had given to other museums. At least three of those donations had been made over a century ago, but we were making progress, and most of the curators I’d spoken to were happy to arrange to let us have the items back here to display, on what amounted to permanent loan.

  The only one who’d been a bit resistant was the curator/director of a large historic house museum in New Jersey. According to the records he’d acquired the “Spanish chair with leather seat” that had been listed in the inventory, but despite repeated emails and three phone calls I’d heard nothing back from him.

  On all of those calls his assistant had answered and seemed very helpful and nice, and the third time I’d called she had offered apologies. “I don’t know why he hasn’t called you back yet. I’m so sorry.”

  “Maybe I could just email you all of the details, and then you could pass those on. Would that be easier for him?”

  “It might.”

  As she’d started to give me her email address I’d said, “Hang on, I just need a pen.” There’d been everything else on my desk at that moment, but nothing to write with. Not even a pencil. I’d bent down to open a drawer, and repeated, “Hang on.”

  Modern phones weren’t designed to be cradled between ear and shoulder like old phones had been. Mine had kept slipping as I searched my desk drawers. No luck.

  Then I’d straightened.

  The voice on the phone had asked, “Are you still there?”

  I had stared at the top of my desk. At the pen that was now sitting perfectly placed on the neatly stacked papers that filled the same space where, a heartbeat before, there’d been total disorder.

  I’d answered her carefully, “Yes, I’m still here.” She had told me her email address. I had copied it down. I’d said, “Thank you.”

  And then, having ended the phone call, I’d said it again, only this time the words had been meant for whatever it was that was sharing my room: “Thank you.”

  There’d been no answer. No cold brush of air, no mysterious footsteps, no movement at all. But I’d known that I wasn’t alone.

  I’d begun to accept it. I still hadn’t wrapped my mind comfortably around the concept of ghosts, but I’d come to that level of compromise where I no longer deni
ed they existed, I just hadn’t let my thoughts dwell on that too long.

  And then had come the morning when I’d opened up my office door to find a pair of steel-toed work boots on my desk, beside a brand-new yellow hardhat.

  Those, I’d guessed, had not come from the ghost.

  The boots had been brand-new as well. I’d put them on and tied the laces tightly, put the hardhat on, and gone downstairs. Outside, I’d found Sam working on the scaffolding his men had set up all along the north side of the house.

  “Okay,” I’d said. “I take the hint.”

  He’d grinned. “I only told you twenty times.” He’d looked down at my feet. “They fit all right?”

  “Like they were made for me. How did you know my size?”

  “Well,” he’d said, “yesterday when I was eating my lunch and you tried to sneak past without letting me see you were wearing your running shoes . . .”

  “Oh.” I had shaded my eyes, looking up. “You saw that?”

  “Yes, I did. And you left some nice footprints right there in the mud. So I measured one.”

  I’d said, “I’m usually better at not being seen.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Anyway, thanks. Let me know what I owe you.”

  “I’ll invoice you.”

  I’d known he wouldn’t, but I’d let it pass. I’d glanced along the scaffolding instead, and said, “It’s looking good.”

  “It’s getting there.”

  His crew had started working on removing all the north end siding, sorting out the clapboards between those too damaged to be used again and those that didn’t need replacing. With the timber frame exposed, Sam could make structural repairs and reinforcements where they needed to be made.

  We had been lucky with the weather.

  For the whole month of September there’d been hardly any rain at all, just days of warmth and sunshine, and this first week of October had been following the same path.

  Lara, coming up the walkway from the parking lot that morning, had shown from her fashion choices that she’d started to embrace the fall. Her woven sweater held the warmer hues of autumn, and her knee-high boots had been fringed suede.

  She’d whistled at my boots and hardhat. “Hey, great outfit. Very Vogue.”

  “Thank Sam,” I’d said. “He picked these out.”

  “Good eye,” she’d praised him, careful to keep clear of all the scaffolding so that she could avoid both falling boards and safety lectures.

  I’d begun a silent mental countdown, waiting for our stonemason to magically appear, as he’d begun to do whenever Lara turned up on the work site. I had only counted to eleven when I’d first heard Willie’s heavy steps, and then his cheerful Scottish voice had greeted Lara, “Morning, gorgeous.”

  “Morning.”

  Willie, I knew, had been making good use of the warm weather. Having found all the places where water had made its way into the stonework and washed out the lime mortar over the years, he’d drilled into those voids and filled them with fresh mortar and was now back to the job of repointing the faces of all the foundation walls. He’d also trimmed his beard and had been wearing shirts that looked as though they had been newly ironed. With a smile for Lara, he asked, “Come to help me with the pointing up?”

  “As tantalizing as that sounds,” she’d told him, “no. But I do have a favour to ask you. And you, Sam.”

  Sam, who had begun to sidle off along the scaffolding, had turned halfway around again. “What kind of favour?”

  Lara hadn’t been put off by his suspicious tone. “For our Fall Harvest Festival we have a wheelwright coming out, and there was supposed to be a blacksmith, but the blacksmith had to cancel, so the wheelwright’s on his own, and I was thinking it would really be much better to have more than just one craftsman, you know, giving demonstrations. So—”

  Here Willie had cut in with, “So you thought a handsome Scotsman with a hammer and a chisel might be just the thing you’re wanting?”

  “Yes.” She’d answered his flirtation with a warm smile of her own. “And Sam, Malaika says you have these antique tools, and she said if you’d be our woodwright for the festival, she’ll let you have that leaded window she’s got in her shed. The one you wanted.”

  Sam had briefly smiled and pulled his work gloves from his belt so he could put them on. “I’ll think about it.”

  He must have decided the window was worth it, because when I’d arrived on site this morning for the start of our Fall Harvest Festival, he had been here already, dressed in an old-fashioned work shirt and trousers that, although not purely Colonial, still looked a lot more in tune with our period than Don Petrella’s TV costume.

  Don had me looking towards the blue sky now, too, searching for storm clouds.

  I didn’t see any.

  But Don assured me his scar never lied when it came to predicting the weather. “You don’t always see a storm coming,” was his sage advice as he made sure again that his vampire teeth were in place before heading back into his booth.

  He was one of our best-loved attractions today, second only to Dennis the donkey, who, over in the shade beside the barn, was giving rides to children in a patient, constant circle. Dennis’s owner, Isaac Fisher, was one of the Fishers Malaika had told me about when we’d sat on her sailboat—the family that once had owned most of Cross Harbor. The family resemblance between him and Frank was even easier to see when they were standing close together, interacting with the ease of men whose ancestors had intermarried over generations. They were working as a team today, since Frank had set his cider press up over by the barn as well, where he could demonstrate the way it worked and hand out paper cups of cider to the people lining up for donkey rides.

  The length of that line was apparently bothering Sharon and Eve. The barn was their domain—its airy, dim interior decked out with tables lined with crafts for sale by local artisans, while all down one wall Millbank’s Spinners and Weavers Club hosted a display that showed the steps of turning wool to cloth, complete with an actual sheep at one end and a loom at the other. Which Sharon felt—as she had said at least three times already—should draw bigger crowds of people than a donkey.

  Frank had pointed out that bringing in the donkey had been Sharon’s own idea, but that hadn’t helped.

  I’d stayed out of the argument. In fact, I’d stayed out of the barn as much as possible and focused on the great swirl of activity outdoors. There was a storyteller over by the picnic tables, keeping people entertained. A pumpkin-carving booth beside another one where kids could try their hand at making scarecrows. And Harvey, always keen to be the centre of attention, had rented a full re-enactment uniform and was dressed as an officer of the Revolution, right down to the wig and the sword and the high polished boots, strutting around with a false air of leisure to let everybody admire him. He’d strutted across my path too many times today for me to think it was purely coincidence. With Eve and Sharon confined to the barn, I suspected they’d deputized Harvey to keep a close eye on me so they could pounce if I made a mistake. The plan, I gathered, was to gather evidence to back their claim I wasn’t the right person for this job. I hadn’t acknowledged their constant surveillance but I was aware of it, so when I saw Harvey now standing a few feet away with his back to me, talking to Willie and Sam and the wheelwright, my first instinct was to go straight past, and quickly, while he was distracted.

  Then I heard what he was saying.

  “But with these zoning changes, now, the mayor’s just gone right off the reservation.” Looking straight at Sam he added, “No offence, Chief.”

  I stopped walking. “Harvey,” I cut in, my voice professionally level, “could I see you for a minute?”

  All four men had turned their heads to look at me, but Harvey seemed the most surprised. “Sure.”

  Leading him a little distance off till we were out of earshot of the others, I said, “Look, I can’t control what you do on your own time, but when you?
??re here representing our museum, could you please try not to be a total racist?”

  Harvey’s eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”

  “What you said just now to Sam—that was completely disrespectful.”

  Harvey looked at me like I was crazy. Then he told me so. “You’re nuts. Sam didn’t mind. Besides, I told him, ‘No offence.’ ”

  The condescension in his tone was making it a challenge for me not to lose my temper, but I managed somehow. “First,” I shot back smoothly, “Sam is way too nice to tell you if he minds. And second, anytime you need to make a point of saying ‘no offence,’ it means that what you’re saying is offensive.” I was done, so I dismissed him with, “Just don’t do it again, okay?”

  And then I walked away.

  I’d pay a price for that, I knew, but there were some points that, for me, were non-negotiable.

  Willie, having spotted Lara over by the donkey rides, had set his tools down for a break and gone across to see her, and the wheelwright was explaining to an interested family how to fit a metal tire on a buggy wheel. But Sam had time to spare me. He’d been working on one of our old upstairs windows, I noticed—efficiently killing two birds with one stone as he demonstrated old techniques and tools while getting necessary work done.

  They weren’t the first windows the Wilde House had known. In our weeks of sifting through the excavated soil, although we hadn’t turned up any more French buttons, we’d found twisted fragments of window lead and a few broken bits of blue-green glass from the diamond-shaped quarrels of the casement windows that would have been on the house originally when it was first built, but at some point in the eighteenth century—possibly when Zebulon Wilde had returned to the old house from Newtown to raise his own family here—those casement windows had been taken out and replaced with twelve-over-twelve double-hung windows, and one of these now lay supported across two old sawhorses while Sam refitted its muntins.