A Touch of Gold mpm-2 Page 6

  In actuality, we had no relationship beyond a longtime friendship, but Tim never wanted to hear that. We’d gone to school together since first grade, and he had proposed to me in high school. He’d always thought we should be linked romantically and continued to try and convince me of that through the years. Of course, this was between other girls he dated and proposed to. But he always came back to me.

  “Come on in and eat some pancakes. Gramps made a ton of them. I’m sorry no one called you to tell you I was okay. It was very confusing when everything happened. And it all happened so fast.”

  He leaned his lanky, six-foot-six frame inside the doorway, a smile on his clean-shaven face below carefully cropped blond hair. “Thanks. I hope you’re feeling better. Did someone call Brickman?”

  “I don’t know, Tim. He was there when I stopped at the museum on the way home.” I knew that would make him sulky, but it was no good lying about it. He’d find out one way or another. This was Duck and everyone knew everyone else’s business eventually.

  Though Kevin and I had certainly never been linked romantically since he’d come to Duck, Tim thought of him as a rival for my affections. Maybe he was a tad psychic because he was right about my feelings for Kevin. I was glad he didn’t make his assessment common knowledge.

  “Of course he was.” Tim’s lips turned down at the corners like when he pulled someone over for speeding. “Why is he always around when things happen, Dae? Have you ever wondered about that? Two murders this year and Kevin has been there for both of them. That must be some kind of record.”

  “Are you saying Chief Michaels is calling Max’s death a murder?” I latched on to his words, not their intent.

  “Well.” He sniffed and hitched up his pants. “I think it’s likely, don’t you? I mean someone doesn’t get blown up accidentally, right?”

  “Did you ever find the cannon or any sign that a cannon had been around before the explosion?” Gramps joined us at the doorway. “Thought I’d see what all the whispering was about. The two of you come in and eat before everything is cold. That way, we can all hear what you’re saying.”

  “Not a cannon.” Tim did as he was told and we walked into the kitchen. “But we found some wheel marks that could fit a cannon frame and a set of truck tire prints from the vehicle that may have delivered it.”

  “Both of them overlooking the museum on the hill?” Kevin asked as he helped himself to maple syrup.

  “That’s right.” Tim took off his hat and sat down at the table. “These pancakes smell great, sir.”

  “Thanks.” Gramps smiled at me and put out another plate and cup. “Dig in.”

  “How are you feeling, Dae?” Kevin asked as we ate.

  “I feel fine,” I answered, actually meaning it. “I’m going to open Missing Pieces today and check in at town hall. Maybe the chief and whoever else can question me there.”

  “Are your hands cold?” He nodded significantly at the gloves I was wearing.

  “Yes. I guess it’s the injuries from the explosion.” That’s it! Nothing more. I don’t want to discuss it right now.

  “It’s been a mild winter,” Gramps reminded me. “You’re sure everything is okay, honey?”

  I glared at Kevin for bringing it up. He knew it would cause trouble. I assured Gramps that I was fine, then Tim started wondering if I should go back in for a checkup.

  I changed the subject by talking about the fishing trip Gramps had booked today on his charter boat. Tim changed it again by telling us (me) that he was thinking about buying his own place with his overtime pay.

  “You already live in your parents’ old house,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He grimaced at Kevin, who wasn’t looking at him. “But I’m thinking about moving. I’m starting to think about my future now, Dae. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  I agreed with that, but I knew he’d never sell his parents’ house. He’d marry someone from Duck, and they’d have a family right there. Not that there was anything wrong with that idea. I wished I felt that way about him and everything could be wrapped up nice and neat between us.

  I glanced across the table at Kevin, who was still talking about fishing with Gramps. I didn’t want to fall in love with someone who wasn’t from here and probably couldn’t appreciate the way we lived. I wasn’t even sure if Kevin would stay in Duck.

  Gramps asked how the Blue Whale, Kevin’s hotel, was doing. “It’s been slowing down after tourist season, like everything else around here. It’s nice after being so busy at the end of the summer. I can appreciate the downtime. That’s what I was looking for when I came here.”

  Kevin had purchased the old Blue Whale Inn, sight unseen, after leaving the FBI. He’d been an agent for twelve years. He’d said from the beginning that he didn’t want that life anymore. Sometimes at night it drove me crazy thinking he might go back to it anyway.

  “After being closed for thirty years, there must be plenty to do anyway,” Gramps remarked. “It looked like it caught right on again once you got it open. People always loved that old place.”

  Tim’s radio went off, calling him to an accident on Duck Road going toward Sanderling. He wiped his mouth, gulped his coffee and thanked Gramps for breakfast. “Can I drop you at Missing Pieces?” He was asking me but glaring at Kevin over my head.

  “That’s the wrong way,” I reminded him. “But thanks, Tim. I appreciate the offer. I’m actually looking forward to walking down like I usually do.”

  “All right. I’ll see you later, Dae. Take it easy. Don’t try to do too much like you always do. But make sure you give Chief Michaels a call.” He nodded at Kevin. “Brickman.”

  Kevin nodded back. “Officer.”

  When Tim left, the conversation around the table went with him. Gramps needed to get to his boat, and I was anxious to get on with the day. I helped clear the table, hoping Kevin wouldn’t ask anymore leading questions. Maybe he thought I’d told Gramps about my new abilities.

  “I’ll see you at supper.” I kissed Gramps’s head with its thinning white hair before he put on his straw hat. “Have a good trip today.”

  “Don’t forget tonight’s bingo night. I won’t be here for supper.” He nodded toward Kevin. “Make some plans of your own. I won’t be home until late.”

  He winked at me as he began gathering up his lunch and other items for the trip. I knew what he was thinking. He used to be the same way with Tim. Maybe I was more transparent than I thought. Was it obvious to everyone that I had feelings for Kevin?

  I grabbed my purse and headed for the door.

  Kevin was right behind me. “Gloves?”

  “I have to get through this,” I explained when I was sure the door was closed behind us so Gramps wouldn’t hear. “I don’t know exactly how to do that yet. I thought I could wear them for a while. They seem to help.”

  “You can’t figure it out that way.” He followed me down the steps and into the sandy street. In Duck, everyone walks everywhere, but we still don’t have any sidewalks. Sidewalks were on my agenda as mayor. “You have to keep working with it. What did Shayla say?”

  “She said my chakra was messed up. She’s going to try and realign it again today.”

  “I thought she might be more help. That’s why I left yesterday.”

  I smiled at the threads of sunlight that touched the edges of his dark hair. The sun peeked through the heavy shrubs that grew all in one direction along the edges of Duck Road. His eyes were like the Atlantic side of Duck, more gray than blue. I felt like I could walk with him forever.

  “Dae?”

  “Uh-yeah? Sorry. Shayla’s trying to help. I guess she’s not sure what to do with someone who falls over when she touches the wrong things.”

  “You have to keep trying, keep working with it,” he urged as we walked and avoided the few cars that passed us. “You can’t shield yourself from it with gloves.”

  “I touched most of the stuff in Missing Pieces before I left yesterday,” I added, sounding
like a child trying to impress a favorite teacher.

  “And?”

  A stubborn, demanding favorite teacher. “Most of it seems to come in fragments that aren’t very strong. Not like the coin and the coffee card. Only the miniature had that kind of energy.”

  “Miniature what?”

  I explained about the portrait, trying to keep the excitement down but failing. Though I was still sad about losing Max, I couldn’t help but be thrilled to find out he’d been right about Theo Burr. “Max thought he had DNA evidence that Theodosia lived here and had a child. He was right, although he was wrong about her not knowing who she was. She didn’t want to go home again. She created a new life here and never told anyone who she was.”

  “You saw all that from touching a tiny picture?”

  “Some of it was like connect-the-dots and intuition. It was like I could feel what she was thinking when that portrait was painted.”

  We walked along the road toward the Duck Shoppes and Missing Pieces. Town hall was on the boardwalk too. Traffic still wasn’t very heavy. As Kevin had said, most of the tourists had gone home, leaving the 567 full-time residents here for the coming winter. We had some Canadian visitors in the fall and winter, but mostly, they went to Myrtle Beach. It was good to have the revenue that the crowded streets and restaurants brought in the summer, but I was always glad for the quiet of winter.

  “Did you start writing anything down yet?” he asked.

  “Sort of. I’m trying to understand what’s happening and why. Do you think there’s a connection between the coffee card, the gold coin and the miniature? Is that what I’m feeling when I touch those things?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “You’re going to have to learn to sort through these feelings you have and see where they take you. Have you tried to see if you can find things yet?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t want to talk to him about seeing Shayla’s missing bracelet. I didn’t like talking to him about Shayla at all. There was always that awkward moment where I wasn’t sure how he felt about her and I was afraid I’d say something wrong.

  “Want to come over tonight and have dinner? We can try to find that cask of wine again.” He smiled at me like it mattered to him. Or was I reading those emotions into it? Maybe he just wanted to find the missing cask.

  “I appreciated all your help yesterday. I’m sorry about what happened when Shayla got there,” I blurted out. “It’s not that I didn’t want you to stay. But you and Shayla in the same room—”

  “Yeah. I know.” He put his hands in his jacket pockets. “I take it she wasn’t looking for anything?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  He stopped walking as we reached the Duck Shoppes parking lot. “Just there for girl talk?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I scuffed the toe of my sneaker on the sandy pavement. “She wanted to examine my chakra.” Was he pumping me for information about her?

  He nodded. “I understand. Shayla is Shayla. No one is quite like her. She’s a force of nature.”

  “Yeah.” Now I felt lame for saying anything. “Well, I should go. Where are you headed?”

  “I actually have some business at town hall. Something about a new permit that restaurants need.” He looked away as a school bus passed us. “So, how about tonight? No chakras. We’ll see if we can find the wine and drink some of it. What do you think?”

  With thousands of tiny zings of pleasure racing through me, I answered, “Sure. What time?”

  I danced up the stairs to the town hall with him, hoping I wasn’t talking too much and wondering why what I felt for him made me feel like such a kid. A thirty-six-year-old kid, I reminded myself, sobering as we reached the town clerk’s office.

  Nancy Boidyn, Duck’s town clerk, looked up from her typing and gave a little screech before she leapt to her feet and hugged me. “Dae! It’s so good to see you! Oh my God, I’ve been so worried since I heard what happened. I couldn’t believe it. You were so lucky that you weren’t hurt any worse.”

  I hugged her back. Kevin kind of wandered away to look out the window at the Currituck Sound that flanked the boardwalk.

  “Do you need anything? Should you be working?” Nancy fluttered around me with compassion. “Sit down. You probably shouldn’t be on your feet.”

  “I’m fine, really. I’m going to check some email while you help Kevin with his permit. Is there coffee?”

  Nancy fussed and put coffee in my seashell-shaped cup. She made coffee for Kevin too. I closed the door to my office and leaned against it as they started talking about filling out his permit.

  Was I reading too much into Kevin asking me to dinner by myself? He’d invited me to dinner and asked for my help looking for the wine again, but did that make it a romantic overture? I’d had dinner at the Blue Whale a dozen times since it opened.

  But not alone with him.

  That was true, although I felt silly even thinking it. Usually there was a crowd of us when we had dinner at the inn because Kevin wanted to try out some new dessert or sauce. He loved to cook.

  I need something new to wear.

  Okay. Maybe I didn’t need something new to wear, but I wanted something new. Was there anything wrong with hoping he might see me as a force of nature someday as he did Shayla?

  It might take a new dress and shoes, and maybe something different with my hair. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to have him look at me in a new light.

  I had hundreds of emails, of course. Most of them were well-wishers hoping I was recovering. Some were trash that I deleted. Some, like the one for the mayor’s conference we would be hosting in Duck right after the first of the year, had to be answered.

  I could hear Kevin talking to Nancy at first. Then it grew quiet in the outer office. He probably had finished up and left. The knock on the door startled me, and my finger slipped over a key, causing T’s to go running across the page.

  “See you later,” Kevin said with a smile. “I hope we can get those gloves off of you tonight.”

  I swallowed hard and nodded. “See you later.”

  Nancy’s face replaced his at the door, but all I could hear was his voice saying he wanted to get my gloves off. There was something sexy in the way he said it.

  “. . . and the chief will be here later to talk to you,” Nancy said. “He’ll call first. Dae?”

  “Hmm? Oh, right. He wants to talk about what I saw at the museum before it exploded.”

  Nancy shut the door and sat down in one of the chairs that faced my desk. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing, as far as I know. But he and Cailey and that new arson investigator from Manteo think there might be something important that I don’t realize I saw.”

  “Did you”—she gulped—“did you see Max explode?”

  Chapter 6

  “No! He was in the museum. I didn’t really even see the museum explode. It happened so fast. One minute I was at the door, the next there was a flash of light and I was in the street.”

  “Oh, Dae. How awful!”

  My throat felt tight and I knew if I said anything else about it, I’d start blubbering again. Instead, I looked around my little office that had once been a storage closet. It had a window overlooking the sound, and I had put all the sea paraphernalia I could find in it. I had a ship’s bell from a freighter that went down in the early 1800s and seashells I’d collected. I’d left my white oak desk the way I’d found it so that it looked a little banged up and unfinished.

  Nancy came around the desk and hugged me. “It’s all gonna work out, sweetie. You’ll see.” There were tears in her brown eyes, but her smile and resolve didn’t waver.

  “Thanks,” I whispered.

  “I’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed for a few minutes.” She walked out and closed the door.

  My mother’s face stared back at me from a barnacleencrusted picture frame. She’d been dead thirteen long years. Like Max, she was gone too soon. I’d lived with her death on my conscience eve
ry day since she’d gone off the bridge coming back from the mainland. Her body was never recovered.

  It was my fault because I was a stupid, young, knowit-all in college. We’d argued when she came to see me. My last words to her were said in anger, carelessly flung like sharp stones, meant to wound.

  I came home from college after she died and had prayed every night since then to see her ghost, to have a chance to say good-bye and tell her that I was sorry. But though I could find things with my special abilities, I couldn’t see spirits like Shayla could. She’d tried to help me contact my mother, but it hadn’t happened.

  I looked out of the window at the sun-kissed, sparkling water. Sniffling, barely in control of my emotions, I knew I had to get out of there. I couldn’t dredge up all the old, bad memories again to heap on the new, bad memories. I had to do something constructive.

  I waved to Nancy as I left town hall, not trusting myself to speak. I headed down the gray boardwalk to Missing Pieces. I wanted to recapture the excitement I’d felt about going to Kevin’s for dinner. It wasn’t easy.

  Then I remembered a dress I’d taken in early September. I’d picked it up and admired it twice since buying it with a group of other clothes from a woman in Grandy. I’d even thought about keeping it for myself, but I couldn’t imagine where I’d wear it.

  With the shop door open and the blinds pulled up on the sunny day, I walked to the back of the shop where I kept the clothes. There were only a few racks since clothes weren’t my principle sales. Customers came in and bought them randomly, so I purchased with care.

  The dress was still there. It was a simple, elegant creation of blue silk with a knee-length skirt and a low neckline that would be perfect for my grandmother’s pearls. I tried it on and decided it looked nice with my blue eyes and sun-bleached brown hair. I still had my summer tan, and thankfully, my bathing suit top had extended low enough that my chest had no white areas—at least none that the dress would reveal.