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Authors: Sarah Graves
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traditionalist.”
Charitably, she didn’t snicker. Usually, I’m more the type who would want a new tool belt. “Yeah, well. Make fun if you want to, but I notice you’re wearing one.”
She glanced at the plain gold circlet on her left hand. “But this is different. It was George's grandmother's, and his mother wore it, too, so it has…”
Then she looked at me, her gaze softening behind her thick glasses. “History,” she finished. “Oh, I see.”
After she died, my mother's wedding ring went to her family in Kentucky, where one of my uncles traded it for a winter's worth of firewood and kerosene. Well, they’d needed to keep warm; I’d put it out of my mind.
Mostly. “Anyway, I want them and I’ve been trying to figure where Wade and I can get the money for them. Because buying your own rings all by yourself isn’t a bit traditional, is it?”
Also, much of the money I’d had when I got to Eastport was spoken for now: Sam's college fund, an investment in Victor's trauma clinic, an emergency fund for the house, all untouchable. With what was left I could just about rub two nickels together. “Besides, Wade wouldn’t hear of it. So I wanted to think about rings, not about murder.”
“I do believe,” Ellie said thoughtfully, “that to make Wade feel less manly you’d have to hit him pretty strategically with one of those whole trees, over at the debarking machine.”
True. “You know he’d still want to be in on it, though. And I’d want that, too. But even if shipping stays strong so there's plenty of harbor piloting, and navigation repairs start bringing in more cash…”
In Eastport, the phrase spare money is an oxymoron for almost everyone, Wade included. Besides harbor piloting and equipment fixing, he also had a gun-repair shop in the ell of the house. But even the three jobs together just about kept him solvent.
“I thought I’d have time to come up with a plan,” I finished inadequately.
Ellie nodded and was probably about to say somethinguseful, as a knock came at the back door. Those carolers, I thought, looking around for something to offer them, because when people are out riding in the bed of a pickup truck, freezing their posteriors off to spread a little holiday cheer, I figure they deserve substantial refreshment.
But when I opened the door, I found no carolers standing there. In fact, it wasn’t anyone spreading any sort of cheer at all, Christmas or otherwise.
It was Peter Christie.
Chapter 4
I f you don’t get a warm spell you can’t keep the streets clear in Eastport, if by “clear” you mean a dry snow-free surface of the kind people in other cities are accustomed to enjoying. Because frozen condensed humidity (augmented by sleet, freezing rain, freezing fog, freezing drizzle, and the many other Maine meteorological delights whose common denominator is “freezing”) tends to accumulate.
Thus what you get here soon after the plows pass is a smooth, deceptively sand-streaked surface that offers about as much traction as a toboggan slide. But minutes after Peter Christie showed up on my porch I was careening along those icy surfaces in his old Ford Falcon, hanging on for dear life while remembering what George had once said about Peter and women: that the man had more spares than a bowling alley.
More balls, too, from the way he was driving. “What's your hurry?” I groused, slamming both feet onto the imaginary brakes as he sped to a stop sign and tromped his own brake pedal at the very last instant.
“Sorry,” he said, and took off more sedately, spinning his wheels no more than we all did when snow had been recent.
“Now that you’ve got us out here, maybe you’d like to tell us a little more about what we’re doing,” Ellie suggested.
Peter was slim, dark-haired, personable, and equipped with the loveliest confidential smile you ever saw in your life: in its glow, one felt both adored and adorable. The trouble was, the smile had more miles
Charitably, she didn’t snicker. Usually, I’m more the type who would want a new tool belt. “Yeah, well. Make fun if you want to, but I notice you’re wearing one.”
She glanced at the plain gold circlet on her left hand. “But this is different. It was George's grandmother's, and his mother wore it, too, so it has…”
Then she looked at me, her gaze softening behind her thick glasses. “History,” she finished. “Oh, I see.”
After she died, my mother's wedding ring went to her family in Kentucky, where one of my uncles traded it for a winter's worth of firewood and kerosene. Well, they’d needed to keep warm; I’d put it out of my mind.
Mostly. “Anyway, I want them and I’ve been trying to figure where Wade and I can get the money for them. Because buying your own rings all by yourself isn’t a bit traditional, is it?”
Also, much of the money I’d had when I got to Eastport was spoken for now: Sam's college fund, an investment in Victor's trauma clinic, an emergency fund for the house, all untouchable. With what was left I could just about rub two nickels together. “Besides, Wade wouldn’t hear of it. So I wanted to think about rings, not about murder.”
“I do believe,” Ellie said thoughtfully, “that to make Wade feel less manly you’d have to hit him pretty strategically with one of those whole trees, over at the debarking machine.”
True. “You know he’d still want to be in on it, though. And I’d want that, too. But even if shipping stays strong so there's plenty of harbor piloting, and navigation repairs start bringing in more cash…”
In Eastport, the phrase spare money is an oxymoron for almost everyone, Wade included. Besides harbor piloting and equipment fixing, he also had a gun-repair shop in the ell of the house. But even the three jobs together just about kept him solvent.
“I thought I’d have time to come up with a plan,” I finished inadequately.
Ellie nodded and was probably about to say somethinguseful, as a knock came at the back door. Those carolers, I thought, looking around for something to offer them, because when people are out riding in the bed of a pickup truck, freezing their posteriors off to spread a little holiday cheer, I figure they deserve substantial refreshment.
But when I opened the door, I found no carolers standing there. In fact, it wasn’t anyone spreading any sort of cheer at all, Christmas or otherwise.
It was Peter Christie.
Chapter 4
I f you don’t get a warm spell you can’t keep the streets clear in Eastport, if by “clear” you mean a dry snow-free surface of the kind people in other cities are accustomed to enjoying. Because frozen condensed humidity (augmented by sleet, freezing rain, freezing fog, freezing drizzle, and the many other Maine meteorological delights whose common denominator is “freezing”) tends to accumulate.
Thus what you get here soon after the plows pass is a smooth, deceptively sand-streaked surface that offers about as much traction as a toboggan slide. But minutes after Peter Christie showed up on my porch I was careening along those icy surfaces in his old Ford Falcon, hanging on for dear life while remembering what George had once said about Peter and women: that the man had more spares than a bowling alley.
More balls, too, from the way he was driving. “What's your hurry?” I groused, slamming both feet onto the imaginary brakes as he sped to a stop sign and tromped his own brake pedal at the very last instant.
“Sorry,” he said, and took off more sedately, spinning his wheels no more than we all did when snow had been recent.
“Now that you’ve got us out here, maybe you’d like to tell us a little more about what we’re doing,” Ellie suggested.
Peter was slim, dark-haired, personable, and equipped with the loveliest confidential smile you ever saw in your life: in its glow, one felt both adored and adorable. The trouble was, the smile had more miles
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