SALTSTONE MYSTERIES · CASE 1 · CHAPTER 1
Return to Work
The key marked FRONT had never opened the front door.
Maeve stood under the narrow awning of Vance Salvage, rain needling the shoulders of her coat, and tried it anyway. The lock accepted the key, considered her claim, and refused to turn.
Behind her, Bear Miller shifted the carton he carried from one arm to the other. "Side door."
"I remember."
"Door doesn't."
The shop windows held a dim reflection of Main Street: gray clapboards, the white blur of the harbor beyond them, and Maeve herself with Cappy's ring of keys clenched too tightly in one hand. Three weeks ago her grandfather had carried those keys in the right pocket of his canvas vest. The leather fob was dark where his thumb had worried it. Someone, probably Cappy, had stamped FRONT into a brass tag and hung it on the wrong key.
Bear waited without offering to take the ring. That was one of his better qualities. He would carry a crate through sleet with a split knuckle, but he knew when to leave a thing in someone else's hands.
Maeve walked around the building. The alley smelled of wet rope and old salt, smells she had spent years meeting elsewhere under more respectable labels. At the side door, the second key turned.
The bell above the frame gave half a ring. Cappy had silenced it with a twist of copper wire whenever he wanted to pretend the shop was closed. The wire was still there.
Inside, the cold air smelled of beeswax and cedar shavings, with the faint mineral damp that crept into every Saltstone building eventually. Drop cloths covered the front tables. Beyond them, the workshop looked as though its owner had gone to lunch and forgotten that death was a longer errand.
Bear set his carton on the bench. "Kettle works."
"You tested it?"
"Replaced the cord."
Maeve took off her gloves. "Of course you did."
He lifted one shoulder. A frayed cord was easy to fix. Most of what the shop needed now was harder.
The carton held mail, a ledger, two clean mugs, and an unopened packet of lemon biscuits. Cappy had disliked lemon biscuits. He bought them for other people and complained every time they ate one.
Maeve lifted the packet and put it down again. She could almost hear him grumbling, and for a moment that was all she wanted.
The mail had been sorted into three bundles. Julian's office had tied the bills with white string. Condolence envelopes lay beneath a brass paperweight shaped like a cod. The third bundle held requests: objects to be returned, finished, or valued, and a few notes from people who only wanted to know that whatever they had left with Cappy had not died when he did.
Maeve touched none of them.
"Mrs. Peake called twice," Bear said.
"About the sewing table?"
"First time. Second time she asked if you'd eaten."
"That sounds like her."
"Didn't ask me."
"She has seen you eat."
He considered this and allowed it.
Maeve picked up the top note. Reuben Snow wanted the brass catch repaired on a sea chest his daughter was taking to college. Cappy had written THURS across the bottom, with no indication which Thursday he meant. Even his handwriting leaned forward.
"Did he promise this?" she asked.
Bear read over her shoulder. "Probably."
"Can you do it?"
"Yes."
"Will you?"
Bear looked toward the unfinished drawer. "If the shop's open."
There was the difficulty. He wasn't pressing her. He had named the condition and left the deciding to her.
"The side door is open," she said.
"For now."
"You've been speaking to Sadie."
"Sadie speaks to everyone."
Maeve set Reuben's note beside the ledger. She could promise nothing permanent, but she could telephone him and say the chest had not vanished. That much was manageable. Whether a string of such small obligations would turn into a life she had never quite chosen was another question.
Bear pulled the dust sheet from the workbench. Nothing on it had been arranged for remembrance. A chisel lay beside a curl of mahogany, and a cabinet scraper rested on a folded rag. Three pencil marks crossed the edge of a board where some measurement had been put off.
"You left it like this?" she asked.
"He did."
Maeve looked at the chisel again. Bear kept his eyes on the board.
"Joint's cut. Drawer isn't fitted."
"Whose?"
"Mrs. Peake's sewing table."
"She'll want it back."
"She wants it finished."
He meant it as a direction more than a reproach. To Bear, unfinished work existed to be finished. Maeve could see how easily it might keep her here for good.
She crossed to the small office behind the sales floor. Cappy's desk had been cleared of medicine bottles and condolence cards. A single folder lay in the middle, held shut by a black clip. On top was a note in Julian Price's square handwriting.
Maeve--George Haddock is the appointed personal representative. Scope and authority are in the agreement. Call before signing anything you don't understand. That includes things you think you understand. George will meet you at the Windward Point boatshed tomorrow at two. --J.P.
"Julian has improved," Maeve said.
"How?"
"He used to fit the warning into one sentence."
One corner of Bear's mouth moved. It wasn't quite a smile, and she was glad of it anyway.
The agreement concerned the contents of Douglas Haddock's boatshed at Windward Point: identification, condition notes, photographs, and a preliminary in-place inventory for estate purposes. No authentication beyond Maeve's competence. No removal. Questions of title or distribution went back to George and Julian.
Here, at least, was work with edges. She could record a room without becoming responsible for everything in it.
She was reading the scope a second time when a small sneaker squeaked on the shop floor.
Sadie Corbin emerged from behind a stack of blanket chests with the solemnity of a witness about to take an oath. Her yellow raincoat hung open, and a frayed red mitten string trailed from one sleeve.
"Your father knows you're here?" Maeve asked.
"He knows I'm not at the library."
"That is not the same fact."
"It was when I told him." Sadie looked at the folder. "Are you opening the shop?"
"I'm opening a folder."
"The door is open too."
Bear turned toward the kettle and left Maeve to answer.
"Temporarily," she said.
Sadie took in the covered furniture, the tools on the bench, and the key ring in Maeve's hand. Her expression suggested that adults were forever inventing special definitions to protect themselves from ordinary words.
"If you aren't staying," she asked, "who are the keys for?"
Rain ticked against the office window. Maeve had answers ready for Julian, for Bear, and for anyone who said family business as though it were duty and cure at once. None of them fit a child who had asked exactly what she meant.
"Today," Maeve said, "they're for me."
Sadie waited.
"Tomorrow too," Maeve added. "After that, I don't know."
Sadie nodded, accepting the uncertainty more easily than most adults accepted reassurance. "Dad says not knowing is all right if you don't pretend it's knowing."
"Your father says that?"
"Not in those words."
Sadie wandered to the workbench and stopped short of touching the unfinished drawer. Cappy had drawn a small X beside the penciled joint.
"Is that where it broke?" she asked.
"Nothing broke," Bear said.
"Then why is it marked?"
He leaned over the board. "That's where the cut stops."
"Why?"
Bear took his time. "He stopped."
Sadie glanced at Maeve. The adults had said very little in front of her about Cappy's last week. Maeve watched another question form on the girl's face, then watched Sadie decide not to ask it with Bear standing there.
Instead she said, "Could someone else finish it?"
"Yes," Bear said.
"Would it still be his?"
Bear set his palm on the bench, not on the wood. "Partly."
Sadie seemed satisfied. Maeve looked at his hand and wished the answer sat as easily with her.
From the workshop came the click of the kettle switching off.
"Tea," Bear said.
Maeve carried the folder to the bench. Cappy's ring held eleven keys, but only three mattered to the work in front of her: the side entrance, the office, and the steel cabinet where client records were kept. She worked those onto a plain split ring and put the remaining eight, still on Cappy's leather fob, in the desk drawer.
Bear poured hot water into two mugs and glanced at the smaller ring.
"Operational keys," Maeve said. "Not a declaration of permanent residency."
"Key won't care."
Sadie opened the lemon biscuits and took one. "The door might."
Maeve looked from one of them to the other. "Have you formed a committee?"
"No," Sadie said. "Committees have minutes."
This time Bear smiled.
Maeve's phone rang before she could decide whether she resented them. Julian's name was on the screen.
She answered. "I'm reading before signing."
"Then my influence has survived bereavement." His voice was brisk but not careless. "George will meet you at the boatshed tomorrow at two. He understands the work stays within what's written."
"Does everyone else understand?"
The pause told her the question had earned its keep.
"Arthur Phelan-Crane has opinions. He has no authority to enlarge your assignment. If anyone asks you to settle ownership, value a hidden fortune, or mediate the Haddock family, call me and walk outside."
"In that order?"
"Use your professional judgment."
When the call ended, Maeve signed the agreement. Her pen hesitated only once, over the date: Sunday, the fifth. The work itself would begin on Monday.
Bear slid one mug toward her. "Windward Point?"
"Tomorrow. At two."
"I'll drive."
"I have a car."
"You have mainland tires."
"They have crossed water before."
"On a ferry."
Sadie bit carefully around the edge of her biscuit. "That was a joke."
"I recognized the structure," Maeve said.
She drank the tea. It was too strong, the way Cappy had made it and Bear still did. Through the open workshop door she could see the sewing-table drawer on the bench, its dovetails crisp on one side and only penciled on the other. From here she could see exactly how far he had got.
Maeve put the signed agreement into her case and closed the clasps.
Before leaving, she called Reuben Snow. She told him the chest was safe, that Bear could assess the catch, and that no promise had yet been made about reopening. Reuben heard her out without interrupting.
"Your grandfather always said no promise before you see the hardware," he said.
"That sounds like him."
"No. Sounds like me. Cappy promised everything."
When she hung up, Bear had already set the note on the bench beside his calipers.
"Assessment," Maeve reminded him.
"Hardware first."
Temporary, again. She let it stand. Tomorrow there would be a room to inventory, a list with a beginning and an end. She could start there.
Outside, the harbor bell sounded through the rain. In her palm, the three operational keys had gone warm from her hand.
✦End of Chapter One
A room to inventory. A case about to begin.
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