Maggie walked up the ramp to the back door, knocked, and went in.
“There you are!” Gussie called from the front room. “How are Diana and Cordelia?”
“Physically, fine. But scared and confused. They have no idea who would try to set their house on fire.”
“I can’t imagine too many things more frightening than fire,” said Gussie. “Jim and I’ve put ramps at three entrances to our house, and fire alarms everywhere we could think of.”
Getting out of a burning house would be so much more complicated for Gussie than for someone who wasn’t disabled, Maggie realized. She hadn’t ever thought of that. And now that she had, the pictures in her mind were horrific.
“If Cordelia hadn’t happened to be downstairs in the kitchen so early in the morning, who knows what might have happened,” Maggie said. “She wouldn’t have heard anything. But thank goodness she saw a light. Whoever it was had a flashlight.”
“She probably has visual fire alarms connected to her heat and smoke detectors, but depending on how well she sleeps, she might not have noticed them.” Gussie shuddered. “I’m just glad they’re both safe.”
“Jim’s at the house with them now,” Maggie added.
“Good,” said Gussie. “And, before I forget or die of curiosity—as that movie said, ‘You’ve Got Mail!’”
“What?” said Maggie.
“When I got here there was an envelope on the floor near the front door. It must have been pushed through the mail slot. At first I thought the carpenter had dropped off a bill, but it’s for you. Over on the counter.”
Maggie picked up the envelope. It was addressed in penciled block letters to MAGGIE FROM NEW JERSEY.
“Who’d be sending you mash notes here?” Gussie asked, only half in jest.
Maggie started opening the envelope. “Yesterday, while you were resting, I stopped and had a beer at the tavern where Jim’d said Dan Jeffrey drank. The Lazy Lobster. I thought someone there would have an idea of what happened to him.”
“Maggie! That’s not exactly a social high spot in Winslow. If you felt you had to go, why didn’t you ask Jim to take you?”
“Because he wouldn’t have. And, besides, no one would have said anything if he’d been with me. I wanted to go on my own.” She ripped open the envelope. “I told the men there that if anyone had something to tell me about Dan they could leave a note here. I figured the shop would be a neutral place.” She read what was on the sheet of paper inside.
“So? What does it say?”
“‘Stay away from bars and balls. Let sand cover sin.’” Maggie shivered. “That’s hideously poetic.”
“Not poetic to me. Scary, and downright weird!” said Gussie. “Sounds like you made a real fan in that bar. Which someone is definitely telling you to stay away from.” She reached inside a carton and pulled out the ringmaster for a Schoenhut Humpty Dumpty Circus, a popular set of toys made in the early twentieth century.
“‘Bars and balls. And sand,’” mused Maggie as she paced the front of the shop. “Did you know Dan Jeffrey was involved with a baseball team here in town?”
“Where did you hear that?” Gussie arranged a wooden clown and a glass-eyed lion next to the mustached ringmaster on the shelf.
“From Diana. He’d told her. Cordelia confirmed it. He didn’t coach. He kept track of equipment. But his working with the team might connect him to the boy who died last spring.”
“Tony Silva. Bob Silva’s son. Bob’s a widower. He thought the world of that boy. Went to pieces after he died,” said Gussie. “Horrible situation. Jim said everyone knew there were drugs in the school. Ike’d been looking for the dealer for months. Thought someone was picking drugs up in Boston and selling them locally. But none of the kids would talk. You know kids. And after Tony died, they closed down even more. Bob accused anyone who had contact with the kids.”
“I heard he’d blamed Dan Jeffrey.”
“Could be. I didn’t hear that, but then, I don’t have a child in the school, so I don’t have a pipeline into those circles. But it makes sense. Dan was a ‘wash-ashore,’ someone relatively new in town, and as far as anyone knew he was a bachelor. Parents these days are nervous about single men being around their children.” Gussie paused. “Winslow’s an old town, Maggie. Most of us year ’round people have known each other since we were kids. My family’s been here a couple of hundred years. There are still divisions. Families that were Portuguese fishermen a couple of generations back may still be fishing, but now they’re just as likely to own restaurants, or run tour boats for summer people, or be professionals. A few who summered here as children have found a way, with telecommuting and all, to live here full time today. Times change. But a lot of the same families are still here. Jim’s one of the few newcomers. He went to Harvard Law and decided to move to the Cape and practice here instead of going into a big firm, or returning South.”
“What about Cordelia West?”
“I’m pretty sure she’s from Martha’s Vineyard, which is considered ‘in the neighborhood.’ There used to be a deaf community on the Vineyard, back, oh, a couple of hundred years ago.”
Maggie smiled. “I read a study about it once. People there didn’t think of deafness as a disability; it was just a characteristic some people were born with, like red hair. Everyone, deaf or not, learned sign language, so not being able to hear wasn’t a handicap. Fascinating.”
“That’s right. But as the world changed, people traveled more, and intermarried, and by the middle of the twentieth century that sign language was gone. If there are any deaf people on the Vineyard today they’re not part of that genetic cluster, as they now call it.”
“And she’s Dan Jeffrey’s—or Roger Hopkins’s—cousin.”
“So everyone says. Hopkins is a good old Cape Cod name, of course. There was a Hopkins on the Mayflower. Although I don’t know if there’s any connection to these Hopkins! Around here, everyone wants to claim a Mayflower connection.”
“Diana says her parents lived in that house when she was a baby.”
A lady Schoenhut acrobat with a bisque head fell over, and Gussie stopped to lean her against the larger of the two elephants in the circus parade she was setting up. “That would have been twenty years or so ago. I don’t remember. Maybe Ellen would. Ben would have been a baby then, too. New mothers remember other new mothers.”
“This morning Cordelia told me the house wasn’t hers until three years ago. It belonged to Roger Hopkins.”
“Three years ago? That would have been before he ‘died’ in Colorado,” Gussie said. “Did he give it to her or did she buy it?”
“From the way she put it, I assumed he’d given it to her,” Maggie said.
“I never had the feeling Cordelia had much money,” said Gussie. “Ellen would know more, but that little house of hers must be worth a small fortune. It has beach front. I’d guess its value is over half a million. Maybe closer to a million. Her property taxes must be incredible. A lot of local families have had to sell their homes because they can’t afford the taxes in the current market. I wonder how Cordelia has been paying hers? Those dolls she makes don’t sell that well.”
“She told me that until she owned the house three years ago her cousin sent her money for taxes and maintenance,” said Maggie.
“Interesting,” said Gussie. “He must have had a very good job at that bank in Colorado. Or she must have another source of income.” She looked at her watch. “We have to get going. We’re meeting Jim at the bakery. A wedding cake tasting awaits us.”
Josie’s Bakery, home of the delectable morning pastries, employed a pastry chef who specialized in creating spectacular wedding cakes. Luigi Ferrante greeted Gussie at the door and whisked them away to a private room.
“Ah, it is the bride! I have made samples of three cakes, just as you and your handsome groom requested! Come in, come in!” He moved a small table and several chairs so the table was in front of Gussie, and the chairs were arranged around it. “And where is the groom? We do not want to start without him!”