Front Street
Chapter thirty-one
From the look on Margot’s face, Evan could tell she’d had the morning planned since before sunrise.
“That would be either the hardware store owner or the marina fuel account manager.” He opened the passenger door and slid in. “The fuel account manager owes me a favor.”
She pulled onto the coastal highway. The Sound shimmered blue beyond the sea oats lining the road, flat and calm against the marsh grass. A hawk circled over the dunes. Salt air drifted through the cracked windows, carrying the green smell of marsh growth.
He hadn’t really been into town proper since May. He still made trips to the hardware store, the fuel depot and sometimes the diner on Front Street, but Harbor’s Hope itself had become background over the last five years. Scenery he passed through without stopping.
Beside him, Margot rested one hand on the steering wheel and glanced toward the water. “It’s pretty.”
“It is.”
“You forget that when you’re here all the time.”
He followed a gull drifting above the marsh. “I don’t forget. I just stop seeing it.”
Several minutes later, they reached the gallery.
Blue Water Fine Art sat between a bookstore and a coffee shop on the shaded side of Front Street. A hand-lettered sign in the window read: Lila Sloane Collection: On Loan to Evergreen Tide Resort Through July.
The owner was a woman named Dorris Hadleigh, sixty-something, reading glasses on a beaded chain, who recognized him from the marina and extended the recognition to Margot. “You’re the event coordinator. Lila called. She said to help you.”
That was, he suspected, the warmest endorsement Lila Sloane gave to anyone.
Dorris sat them at the table in the back of the gallery, poured coffee from a standing carafe, and talked.
“Caleb Henson came in three months ago. Said he was scouting pieces for an event installation. Asked specifically about the collection’s insurance value, replacement cost, provenance documentation. ”
She folded her hands on the table. “I thought it was due diligence. Now I think it was a shopping list.”
“Did he ask about where the collection would be displayed?” Margot asked.
“He knew it was going to Evergreen Tide. Said he was part of the planning team.” Dorris looked at her coffee. “I told him about the keycard display case requirement. Lila’s standard for any venue.” A pause. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what he was planning.”
“You couldn’t have.” Margot sounded certain, not consoling.
The fuel account manager was at the marina docks two blocks from the gallery. His name was Dale. He’d been managing the commercial fuel accounts for Harbor’s Hope Marina for eleven years. “Second mortgage came through eighteen months ago.”
Dale kept coiling fuel line while he talked. “Heard it from the bank manager, who’s my brother-in-law, so don’t quote me. Wasn’t enough. He’s been running on thirty-day vendor credit for a year. Suppliers are calling the accounts. Three dropped him in the last two months.”
“He was drowning,” Evan said.
“Drowning and smiling. That’s the trick with Caleb. He could be six months from bankruptcy, and you’d think he was about to open a third location.” Dale set the fuel line on its hook. “Whatever he needed from that resort, he needed it bad.”
They walked back up Front Street. The morning had turned beautiful. The bookstore had a sidewalk display of used paperbacks. A woman with two small children was choosing carefully from the bin while the children argued over a dog-eared picture book.
Margot stopped.
“What?” Evan asked.
“Nothing. I just.” She looked at the display. “I used to have time to browse bookstores. Before the business. Before David.” She tilted a paperback spine outward, looked at the cover, put it back. “I used to go on Saturday mornings. Take two hours. No agenda.”
“When did you stop?”
“When I started having checklists. Checklists were useful. Then they became necessary. And a shield.”
He stood beside her at the book bin. A boat horn sounded in the harbor, two long and one short. “Lauren used to say I worked too hard. She’d hide my wrenches on Sunday mornings so I’d have to sit still for breakfast.”
He looked at the paperbacks without seeing them. “After she was gone, I worked harder. It helped.”
Margot picked up a paperback. Small, pale blue cover, bent spine. She turned it over, read the back, set it down, then picked it up again. Like she’d forgotten she was allowed to buy something for no reason.
They kept walking. At the corner by the coffee shop, she stopped and looked at the menu board in the window. “The coffee inside or the fries at the place next door?”
“It’s ten fifteen in the morning.”
“The place next door makes fries all day. I could smell them from the gallery.”
He looked at her. She was holding the paperback in one hand and glancing at the fry place next door. “Both.”
They got fries in a paper basket, coffee in paper cups and sat on the bench outside the bookstore in the shade. The fries were salty and good, the coffee was strong, and the street was quiet in the mid-morning lull between the early tourists and the lunch crowd.
She ate three fries, looked at the evidence folder on the bench between them, and said, “He was at the gallery three months ago. He’s been planning this longer than we thought.”
“Which means someone else has been helping him longer than we thought.”
She looked at him. The same thought, same moment. “We still don’t know who.”
“We will.” He ate a fry. “We find the boat and it’ll pull the thread.”
Her gaze moved down the street. The bookstore. A couple walking past with ice cream, sharing from the same cup, disagreeing about something small and laughing about it. “What happens when the expo ends?”
“I’ve been thinking about that.”
“And?”
He picked up his coffee cup. “Haven’t finished thinking yet.”
She looked at him then. “Neither have I.”
They sat on the bench in the shade until the fries were gone.
Then they drove back to the resort with the windows down and the evidence folder between them.
Neither of them mentioned what happened after the expo.
The question rode back with them anyway.