Chapter One
Present Day
One mile south of Pelican Pointe
Into the eighth hour of a twelve-hour shift, paramedic Linus Canfield pulled the county ambulance to the side of the road just before reaching the bridge overlooking a small harbor full of spring wildflowers with orange and fire-red poppies dotting the landscape.
Fifteen minutes earlier, he’d received a call from dispatch about a car accident near the lagoon after a sedan left the roadway and flew over the guard rail before landing in the shallow, marshy dunes below. The driver had walked away without a scratch on him. The Toyota SUV he’d been driving hadn’t fared as well. On impact, the car’s front windshield had popped out, not to mention the four flat tires now buried in the marsh. The vehicle would need to be yanked out of the bog.
Luckily for the driver, Linus knew every tow truck operator within fifty miles. With almost a dozen years of seniority over his current partner, Jimmy Diaz, an EMT looking to become a fully certified paramedic one day, Linus knew every square inch of Santa Cruz County’s coastline by heart. He often wrote his shift notes in excruciating detail, something he’d learned in the military under the roughest of combat conditions. Trained by the Army, Linus could start an IV on a dehydrated hiker who’d gotten stranded in the mountains, revive a housebound senior with a heart condition, analyze an EKG as well as any heart surgeon, deliver a baby on the darkest of roads during a thunderstorm, provide emergency treatment to a burn victim pulled from a raging wildfire, or perform a tracheotomy in a ritzy restaurant if the situation called for it.
His skills were legendary countywide. If you ever suffered a medical emergency and needed a paramedic, you wanted to look up and see Linus Canfield’s face. His no-nonsense approach made him an excellent first responder. He had a habit of writing down facts and figures at the scene, even taking measurements. When time permitted, he often lingered around an accident site for no reason other than to make sure he understood why the mishap had happened in the first place.
Today, he took out a notepad and glared past the California Highway Patrol officer who had responded via motorcycle and aimed his disapproval at the hapless driver, who hadn’t even broken a fingernail. After treating the man’s non-life-threatening scrapes and bruises to his face, after ruling out a concussion, Linus had taken the time to walk the surrounding area of the wreck, looking for anything else that might have caused the man to send his car careening over a bridge. “How do you send your car flying over a guard rail and not end up in the hospital with a broken neck?”
“Some idiots are just plain lucky,” Jimmy answered, shadowing Linus’s footsteps. “Do you think he might’ve done this on purpose?”
“Nah. He’s probably just a lead-foot hipster with a snotty attitude. He mentioned how he’d been in a hurry to meet up with someone at the boardwalk in Santa Cruz this afternoon. If you ask me, it’s just a typical Thursday.”
“At least his B.A.C. showed he wasn’t drunk,” Jimmy noted, turning his attention back to the trail Linus had taken. “The cop’s ready to take off.”
From Watsonville to the south and Redwoods State Park to the north, Linus had covered every scenario in his dozen years on the job. Now, looking down at the sandbank, he shifted his weight and shivered in the March breeze.
“Yeah, well, he might want to stick around,” Linus muttered in return. “I thought I’d seen it all.” He pointed to a specific patch of sand before squatting on his haunches to study the macabre scene laid out before him. “Check this out.”
Fascinated with the horrific sight, Jimmy stepped closer to the human skull lodged between the beachgrass and the sandbank. There were additional, smaller bones scattered under the brush. “Is that thing real?”
Linus frowned at his partner. “Are you telling me you’ve never seen a human skull before?”
Jimmy lifted his shoulder. “I guess it’s way too late for Halloween. Sue me because I wasn’t in a war zone like you, okay?” His eyes tracked to something else that had caught Linus’s attention. “Are those rib bones?”
“Yep, part of a ribcage,” Linus mumbled, his greenish-gray eyes scanning the length of the sandbar.
“What do you make of them being here?”
“The recent drought likely caused the bones to surface after an initial shallow burial in an attempt to hide the body.”
Jimmy leaned down to take a closer look. “You think those bones were buried? Like in a grave? How long would you say that person has been out here?”
“Several months by my estimate. The wind off the ocean, coupled with the wet weather we had in January and February, probably made it possible for these bones to resurface. See how the marshland where we’re standing eroded in the heavy rains. And it was much drier conditions last November.”
“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
“It’s obvious someone tried to bury a body somewhere in the general vicinity probably before November. I’ll radio the sheriff’s department.”
“We could have the cop do it,” Jimmy suggested.
“Nope. I’ll make the call. I’m the one who found it. I’m the one responsible for calling it in.”
“And they’ll send out a forensic team?”
“Oh, yeah,” Linus determined, glancing up at the bridge. “This is still the county’s jurisdiction. I’d feel better if we were dealing with local law enforcement out of Pelican Pointe. But we can’t change the location of the remains.”
“That means we need to wait around for the responding deputy to get here.”
Linus raised a brow. “I didn’t realize you had somewhere else to be?”
“It’s not that. I just like taking care of the call, transporting the injured party to the hospital, handling the situation, getting back on the road, and making ourselves available for the next call. You know, like a normal run.”
“Not every call is normal. And you can’t hurry a routine call, Jimmy. Each one is different and should get your full attention,” Linus remarked, running his fingers through a swath of dark sandy hair that had fallen across his forehead. “No matter what the situation is, you’ll find that taking your time at the scene helps with all the paperwork we do back at the hospital.”
Jimmy shrugged. “Details matter for billing purposes, I get that. The stupid jerk who ran off the road doesn’t even need transport. These bones aren’t our responsibility.”
“Tell that to the unfortunate person who ended up here tossed in a shallow grave.”
Jimmy winced. “That’s what I thought you’d say. When they told me my partner did things strictly by the book, I have to say I was skeptical. But I like the way you treat the job like it’s an extension of the hospital. Although hanging around a bunch of bones like this makes me antsy.”
“It’s impossible for me to ignore the significance during such a routine call,” Linus explained, chewing his lower lip as he scratched the stubble on his chin and glanced around the dunes. “It’s as if we were supposed to find them. Look, I know you’re not from Pelican Pointe, but a lot of crazy things happen on this bridge, things people can’t explain. Local legend claims this place is haunted.”
“I know about the weird things that have happened here. My cousin—on my dad’s side from Santa Cruz— even had a strange encounter with a cop on this very bridge. It was so scary she lost it, cracked up, and spent eighteen months in a mental health facility afterward. It derailed her entire life.”
“No kidding? What happened? Is she all right now?”
“It shook her up. It seems this cop pulled her over and then tried to attack her with chloroform, then took out a needle. It was enough to give her nightmares after that.”
“How’d she get away from him?”
“She’s not sure who helped her, but for years insisted that a stranger showed up out of the blue and shoved the guy away from her car before tossing him to the side of the road. She used that to her advantage and took off out of there. Makes no sense to me, but that was Sofia’s story. She probably made it up. Sofia was always prone to exaggeration. I didn’t give it much thought at the time. All I know is she cracked up after it happened. She once wanted more than anything to be an actress. After the incident, she suffered a breakdown, lives in Denver now, married to a fireman with a kid on the way.”
Linus sighed, staring down at the bones. “There was talk about a sequence of incidents similar to what happened to your cousin. My mother swears there were stories about a rogue state trooper who would stop women along the bridge for minor traffic offenses. He’d pull them over for a broken taillight or for speeding a few miles over the limit, then pressure them to go somewhere private.”
“You think that could explain what happened to Sofia? And this guy might have done this to others? Namely, that skull we’re looking at. Did anyone ever do anything to stop him?”
“My mother says the guy racked up lots of complaints, but the highway patrol chose to ignore most of them. The situation took care of itself when this state trooper got killed in a shootout on patrol near Santa Cruz.”
“Wow. Did that put a stop to the incidents?”
“I’m not sure. But yeah. Probably.” Linus made the call to the county sheriff’s department, providing dispatch with details that included finding human remains, the location, and his ID for follow-up.
“Maybe I’ll mention the state trooper to my aunt when I talk to her again and she could pass that information along to Sofia. You know, let her know the guy is dead. It might make her feel better about driving at night. Sofia still refuses to get out past dark,” Jimmy noted. “Maybe these bones are left over from that timeframe.”
“I don’t think so,” Linus murmured. “And to my knowledge, there was no indication the police officer in question ever used chloroform on anyone. Sounds like he used his badge more for sexual assault. But who knows?”
“Sounds like a real sick guy. But the situation fits the guy who went after Sofia. Is there any way we could find out for certain?”
Linus pointed to the motorcycle cop. “Maybe you should’ve become a detective instead of an EMT.”
Jimmy shook his head. “No thanks. I’m not the gun-toting type. How’s your mom doing after her surgery?”
The question made Linus wince. But only for a moment. He took the intrusion into his privacy in stride. Living in a small town meant it was common knowledge that he looked after his mom. “Her follow-up visit went well. Her doctors say she’s doing better than they expected. The stent should keep the artery from narrowing again.”
“Not surprising.” When that earned him a scowl, Jimmy went on, “Let’s face it. Your mom scares me a little. She’s nice enough but she can be—”
“Overwhelming on her best day,” Linus provided even as thoughts spun through his head about Annette Canfield’s latest string of heart problems. Her declining health kept him on a first-name basis with doctors Quentin Blackwood and Gideon Nighthawk.
“Since she retired, she’s like a runaway freight train,” Linus felt the need to add. “My mother is determined not to become a burden to anyone, least of all to me. A trait that would be admirable if she weren’t so stubborn about keeping her doctor’s appointments.”
Jimmy kicked at a rock with the toe of his boot, anxious to get back on the road. “Did the sheriff’s department give you an ETA? How long do we plan to hang around here and wait?”
Linus checked his text messages. “They’re still five minutes out. Chill. Okay? As it stands, I don’t like leaving this discovery to the county. They’re usually too busy or too distracted to give it the time it deserves.”
When a tow truck pulled up above them, Linus bobbed his head toward the driver of the car. “Make sure his story doesn’t change. Don’t let him spin another yarn about how he lost control of his SUV because he needed to be in Santa Cruz.”
“You got it. Be right back.”
Linus used the time alone to jot down more notes, estimating the distances from where the original burial might have taken place versus how far the animal activity had contributed to the present location.
He went through all this information again once the county deputies began to show up. One by one, Linus took them through his theory about how the heavy downpours in previous months had impacted the drought-ridden marshland into giving up its secrets. But the deputies seemed disinterested. They shooed him off the sandbank and away from the harbor like he’d suddenly developed the plague.
Linus went back to work. But finding the bones weighed heavy on his mind, even as they took care of an elderly man who’d tripped and fallen in his garage and hit his head on the concrete. After transporting the patient to Charlotte Dowling Memorial Hospital for observation, it was time for a shift change.
Linus and Jimmy traded their dark blue uniforms for their street clothes and signed out at six o’clock on the dot, walking through the double doors to head home.
“Want to get something to eat at the pub?” Jimmy asked. “Maybe grab a beer.”
“As much as I’d like to, I need to go straight home to check on Farley.” Farley was his newly acquired pooch that was going through a chewing stage, biting and gnawing everything in sight.
“How’s he doing?”
“Let’s just say that I took him into the Perky Pelican yesterday to get a latte. He wasn’t there five minutes before he wrapped his jaws around a chair leg and started biting on the wood. I’m lucky Paula didn’t ban me and the dog forever.”
“I might not know much about crime scenes, but I do know dogs. He’s probably teething, which is uncomfortable for him. Did you get him plenty of chew toys?”
“Are you kidding? He has a basket piled high with every type of rubber squeaky thing the store has, and yet he still goes after something he shouldn’t. I’ve gone through two pairs of shoes and already replaced a perfectly good recliner that I’d had for a decade. Add to that, he shows separation anxiety every time I try to leave him home alone or in the truck. I blame Cord. And that wife of his, Keegan.”
Jimmy chuckled. “I hear they’ve conned half the town into adopting everything from dogs to turtles. That’s one reason I don’t go near the animal clinic or the rescue center.”
Linus thought of all the poop he’d picked up since getting Farley. “It’s a little late to play the blame card. Thank God for Ellie Woodside and her new doggie daycare facility she opened last month. She’s been a godsend letting me drop him off at odd hours.”
“You know who else you should talk to for puppy pointers?” Jimmy retorted. “Lake Marigold.”
At the name, Linus took a stuttered step and almost tripped over the curb. Who didn’t know Lake Marigold, the town’s librarian? The quirky guardian of the town’s books, who wore her chestnut brown hair in an unusual, uneven, choppy cut that hung past her shoulders. When Lake pedaled around town on her bike, she favored ponytails and French braids. The woman had the most amazing blue eyes he’d ever seen. What book lovers in town didn’t interact with the knowledgeable bibliophile at least once a week when checking out their favorite genre?
Personally, he knew Lake seemed to hold a definitive love for classic literature. He’d caught her thumbing through the works of Steinbeck, Bronte, Golding, and Orwell. He even noticed she had a fondness for some of the world’s classic mystery novels. Now that he had time to think about it, he had never seen her without a book. Lake Marigold was a well-read bookworm, smart as a whip, who had a fondness for flowers, too. She kept a vase full of them sitting on her desk at work year-round.
As his mind shifted from the librarian to Jimmy’s voice, Linus pushed the fob on his keychain to unlock his decade-old GMC Sierra pickup.
“I hear Cord and Keegan persuaded Lake to take Farley’s sister,” Jimmy went on, oblivious to his partner’s reaction to the woman. “You know she named her new mutt Scout. Weird huh? Scout and Farley. Sounds like a couple. Did you two compare notes when you were coming up with names? Sounds like you two need to set up one of those doggie playdates.”
“The dogs are siblings,” Linus pointed out as he tossed his equipment bag into the front seat of his truck. “Thanks to Cord, they were already spayed and neutered. I’m pretty sure Cord lets Keegan pick out their names whenever they’re ready for adoption.”
Linus had no intentions of letting Jimmy know that he’d already broached the playdate thing with Lake. They’d been trying for two weeks to work out the timing of getting the dogs together that fit their schedules. Either Linus had a last-minute shift change, or Lake had to work on Saturdays. So far, they had yet to hook up. But that didn’t mean he intended to give up.
Even now as he headed home, he took a left on Pacific Street—a detour, he told himself—to check the progress on the new firehouse under construction at the corner of Pacific and Landings Bay.
So what if the indirect route took him right by Marigold House on his way home?
Linus glanced at his watch. Lake wasn’t even home yet. The library was open from nine to six Monday through Friday and ten to five Saturday. She wouldn’t even know he’d driven by.
But there it was on the corner—Lake’s house at 1802 Bishops Bay—with the front garden bursting with spring buds that had yet to fully blossom from winter sleep. The old shingle-style house looked like it had been plucked out of the English countryside and plopped down in the middle of town, out of place but longing for acceptance.
It had a pair of arched double doors made of cherry wood, very artsy, that stood out because of its spoon-carved vines and flower petals. On the long, wide porch was a metal pedestal mailbox, rust and all, the kind you didn’t see anymore.
He took a left using the shortcut back to Tradewinds Drive and soon pulled into the parking lot that Ellie’s Dog Tails shared with another new business—Hollis Crow’s Paw Salon—the dog grooming facility that also offered boarding.
As soon as Linus got out of the pickup, he heard barking, immediately recognizing the voice of his six-month-old dog over all the others. Farley sported the unmistakable curly-haired caramel mop that, according to the town’s vet, accounted for his DNA mix. Seventy-seven percent of Farley came back poodle, twelve percent Labrador, and eleven percent cocker spaniel.
Linus could only testify that whatever his ancestry was, Farley had taken on almost all the traits of a fuzzy, big-footed, goofy dog that did not like being left alone. Hence, the daycare option became essential.
After Ellie brought him out of his crate, Linus hooked the leash to the collar, grabbed Farley’s bag full of toys, and waved goodbye to Ellie. The whole thing took little more than five minutes before Linus had Farley walking out to his truck.
He got comfortable behind the wheel, but his overzealous dog began licking his ears. Linus nudged the fifty-pound mutt away. “Yeah, yeah, I love you too. Now scoot over so I can get us home.”
Like a miracle, Farley obeyed. But not for long. The ball of fur started to open his mouth to take a bite out of the bag.
“No, you’re not allowed to chew on that,” Linus warned the canine as the oversized pup slobbered all over his hand. “Can we just go one second without you trying to devour something?”
As he headed for home, Linus pointed out, “You’re lucky that Ellie looks after you when I’m at work. Otherwise, this whole situation would put you right back where you started—in the doggie doghouse, also known as the orphanage, where you’re deemed the unruly sort and unadoptable.”
Farley responded by staring at him with those saucer-sized, innocent, sad brown eyes.
Linus reached out to lay a hand on the dog’s head. “Okay. Maybe you’re not that bad. But you gotta stifle the urge to chew on whatever suits your fancy.”
The pup seemed to get the message and curled up next to him, where he stayed as Linus turned his attention back to the five-minute commute home. But before he went two blocks, he realized he needed cereal and milk for breakfast in the morning and Farley needed more dog food.
He braked, made a quick loop at the entrance to his cul-de-sac, called Windemere, and turned around in front of a stone-and-wood Craftsman in the middle of the block.
“One more stop at Murphy’s, and we’ll enjoy the rest of our evening,” Linus promised as he turned and headed toward Main Street for a fast grocery haul.
The Ocean Street Public Library had three employees, two part-time library assistants—Glynnis Ainsworth, who had been employed the longest but was in her fifties and had no desire to take on more hours, and Greta Wilding, who was still a graduate student, working toward a master’s degree, and very much wanted to become full-time as soon as she completed the required courses. Supervising the two employees was the director and head librarian, Lake Marigold, who worked full-time and was responsible for implementing all library services community-wide. That meant strategic initiatives like policies and projects fell on her shoulders.
Luckily for the town, Lake was as frugal with public funds as she was with her own finances. Her bent toward economics made her the ideal chief executive officer to oversee all development and budgets.
But today, she sat at the service desk scanning the books for Alice Barrett, a fourteen-year-old first-year high school student who hung out in the library after school. Lake believed the library could bring a community together, so she often encouraged the younger generation to detox from their phones, set them aside for longer than five minutes, and read instead of posting on TikTok or other social platforms.
Her strategy worked about fifty percent of the time. Three years earlier, she’d taken over as town librarian and immediately saw an uptick in younger students browsing the shelves—a small victory in her mind for any booklover.
Ten minutes earlier, Lake had announced that closing time was inching closer. Now, a short line began to form behind Alice, who tended to wait until the very last minute to bring her selections to checkout.
“When will this branch ever connect to the main library system?” Alice grumbled. “San Sebastian offers a kiosk and the technology for self-check-in/checkout.”
Lake put her finger to her lips for quiet and smiled at the teenager. Alice’s negative attitude could get even louder if the girl thought Lake was ignoring her.
As Lake began stamping the cards inside each book, in a low voice barely above a whisper, she pointed out, “I get this question from you every time you grace us with your presence. The answer is we’re working on it. Keep in mind San Sebastian has had a library since 1959. We’ve only been around for less than seven years. That’s a sixty-five-year head start. And recently, San Sebastian added another branch across town. And wouldn’t you know that both locations have the latest software? Yay for them. Just remember, Alice, you’re always free to make the hour round-trip drive there to use their state-of-the-art facilities any time you want.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “That’s so lame. You know I don’t have a driver’s license yet. No wonder everybody calls you a mean old maid.”
“There is that,” Lake returned cheerily, continuing to add the due date using the old-fashioned method—a stamper with a rhythmic ka-thwack that echoed past the bookshelves.
“Why not give us a chance to catch up before you go saying mean things?” Another teen piped up. “Tell her, Ms. Marigold. Tell Alice that you’re waiting for funding from the mayor for a new computer system. Be patient for once, Alice, without running your mouth.”
Nikki Augustine was the other teenager who preferred to spend her time after school browsing the bookshelves instead of heading home. Nikki unloaded the books she held and stacked them on the counter, nudging Alice out of the way. “Besides, I like the way Ms. Marigold does things around here. Who needs more technology just to return a book? I certainly don’t. Usually, all I do is open the flap and pull out the card. Voila! It tells me when the book is due—every single time. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.”
Alice rolled her eyes again, this time at Nikki. “You would say that. It’s like you prefer to live in the Stone Age.”
Nikki shoved her glasses on her nose and cleared her throat, like a teacher lecturing another student, she leaned over toward Alice. “People who lived during the Stone Age had a life expectancy of thirty-three short years, so I doubt anyone would choose to live during that period of time.”
“See? You can be such a snotty, know-it-all nerd,” Alice charged. “That’s why you make such a great kiss-up in class. You’ll probably turn out just like old Ms. Marigold. She’s never even had a boyfriend.”
“I’d rather be a nerd without a boyfriend than a total lame ass in class, too dumb to figure out when her book is due back,” Nikki fired back.
“Ladies,” Lake began in a steady voice, her tone getting slightly louder, her patience waning, “as much as I’d like to stand around and referee this difference of opinion, I’d like to get home to my dogs and eat supper before I turn into an even older old maid than I am now. So maybe continue this argument off school grounds and out of view of the public library. Why not try practicing a détente of sorts over an ice cream cone? After all, I know you’re both walking the same way home.”
“See what you’ve done? You’ve upset Ms. Marigold,” Nikki accused.
Lake let out a sigh. “I’m not upset. I’m hungry.” She stamped Nikki’s last book and shooed the girls toward the front door. “Go. Get out of here and finish your homework.”
“I’ve done mine,” Alice snorted.
“Good for you,” Lake returned, glancing at the last two people she had yet to stamp their books.
Once the girls exited, the library became the quiet temple Lake loved.
“Are they always like that?” Julianne Dickinson asked. “Those two used to be best friends in grade school before they started high school.”
“Who knows how the teenage mind works? They snipe at each other more than an old married couple,” Lake noted, stamping the one book, a cookbook, that Julianne had selected. “I don’t know how you keep all these kids in line but consider me one of your biggest fans.”
Julianne, who was now school superintendent for both Pelican Pointe Elementary and Ocean Street Academy, smiled. “I don’t know how you run the library and keep everything so up to date. I, for one, think you do a marvelous job.” Julianne tapped the jacket cover of the cookbook. “Hayden has this on backorder and won’t be getting in another shipment until the first week of June. I can’t wait that long.”
“Somebody got a pasta maker for Christmas,” Lake said with a laugh as she ran a hand over the cover. “I can’t keep this one copy on the shelves. It’s popular because the author breaks down how to make each special dough and turns each one into so many different shapes. She goes over all the fillings and then gives you a multitude of recipes for sauces.”
“That’s what I heard. This one got rave reviews when it came out last fall. You see, I did get a pasta maker for Christmas,” Julianne confessed. “I’ve been promising Ryder a homecooked meal ever since. Plus, we have company coming for Easter. With spring break next week, I thought it was the perfect time to crack open a cookbook and serve something other than ham for Easter dinner.”
As a vegetarian, Lake nodded with approval. “Great idea. Start with the wild mushroom sauce on page 257. It’s delicious. But do take your time reading it from cover to cover. That way, you’ll discover your own favorites by trying each recipe.”
Julianne hugged the book to her chest. “I’m looking forward to it already. Thanks, Lake. If I don’t see you tomorrow, have a great weekend.”
“Be sure to let me know how the Easter dinner goes.”
“Will do.”
The last patron of the day was fifty-year-old Gloria Peacock, who worked at the courthouse and checked out five mysteries by the same author per week.
Lake stamped each book and grinned. “This must be your Michael Connelly phase.”
“Definitely. I like to read everything by one author before going on to the next writer.”
“Now that’s a plan I should push to our younger readers. How many of these do you read in one day?” Lake asked the petite woman.
“What with nothing on TV these days but trashy reality shows, I read during my lunch break and evenings, which means I’ll be back in here next Wednesday ready to switch authors. I’ve already read everything else Connelly’s written. Do you ever get so fed up with those two silly girls squabbling that you want to ban them? All they do is call people names.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever banned anyone before, maybe because I’m used to their bickering. Alice always finds something to complain about, and Nikki always takes the opposite point of view. That’s why they never sit together when they’re here, preferring to keep their distance at separate tables.”
But Lake didn’t add that she knew both girls stayed here after school because they didn’t want to go home. She didn’t have the heart to turn them away.
Instead of taking the time to gossip further, Lake turned the lock behind Mrs. Peacock and wandered the aisles doing a quick sweep through the computer area and bookshelves to make sure no one had been left behind. When she was satisfied that everyone had cleared out, she reached beneath her desk to grab her cardigan, her bookbag, her bike helmet, and the yellow retro 1965 Snoopy lunch box that had belonged to her dad, the one she carried every day to bring lunch from home.
As was her routine, she exited out the side door, which automatically locked behind her, to where she’d parked her bicycle, a Huffy cruiser left over from her teenage years. She tossed her bag and lunch box into the basket and slipped the helmet on over her head before bending down to undo the lock.
Thanks to daylight savings time, she still had at least two hours before sunset. Lake intended to make the most of her time outdoors. After being cooped up most of the day indoors, she breathed in the fresh air and straddled the bike, gladly taking her time pedaling toward home.
On the corner of Pacific Street and Bishops Bay sat the hundred-year-old shingled-style house where Lake Marigold had grown up. Built with a hint of Victorian influence, it was painted in a subdued grayish blue with white trim and stood out from the rest of the houses on the block because of its age. But it also had an odd look about it. With its tall mansard roof, its ornate Italianesque accents, yet slender wooden columns with fashionable spindles adorning the long porch, the property had been in Lake’s family since 1900 when the land had belonged to a farmer who grew oranges.
Her great-grandfather William Marigold had changed all that.
He’d been a young tightfisted Scrooge from San Francisco who had sought to buy cheap land where he could build a decent-sized home for his growing family. He struck a deal with the struggling grower who had fallen on hard times. Some say Marigold flat-out stole the property from under the farmer for a ridiculously low price. Others claimed he rescued the land from developers. Still, others argued that the citrus trees were infested with pests and, therefore, the fruit unsellable.
Whatever the true story was, once her descendant had taken possession, he leveled the orchard to make room for a modest one-story cottage-style house.
It remained that way until around 1914 when William hired an architect from Long Island named Leland Sloan. Sloan would add a second story and change the fa?ade to a more traditional Second Empire look with its roots born in nineteenth-century Paris. Sloan copied a style popular on the East Coast at the time, specifically along the waterfront in Lloyd Harbor.
By the close of World War I, what had started out as a humble abode had become a showplace befitting the town’s newly appointed bank president, which happened to be William Marigold. A decade of prosperity followed. But William’s good fortune would come to an end with the collapse of Wall Street in 1929. Wiped out like so many others, William died of a heart attack two months later on the 29th of December at the age of fifty-six, leaving his wife Edna with five children to feed, the youngest aged eight and the oldest seventeen.
To make ends meet, the two older boys got jobs at a nearby lumber mill while their mother began taking in boarders, filling every bedroom with long-term, paying guests, and forcing the children to share cramped quarters in one room downstairs off the kitchen.
Through hardships and another war, the Marigolds somehow managed to hold onto the house, handing it down from one generation to the next until it came to Lake’s father, Samuel Marigold.
Long gone were the great uncles, lost to battle and combat or old age. Long gone were the great aunts, who had married and moved away to start their own lives in other parts of the country.
No longer a boarding house, Samuel Marigold, a mathematics professor at Cal Poly, now living three hours south in San Luis Obispo, had deeded the property as a graduation present to his only daughter. With her Ph.D. in library science in hand and a local job, Lake could ensure the house stayed in the family for as long as she wanted to remain in Pelican Pointe.
And Lake Marigold had no plans to go anywhere.
She lived a quiet life with no desire to shake things up. She liked the familiar, waking up to the same things every day and keeping to her routine. Unlike her mother, who had found everything about routine boring, especially small-town life in Pelican Pointe, Lake loved it. That was probably why Lake had turned out more like her father than Dina Marigold—now Dina Whittaker, who lived out of state and married to a Texas oil man. Everyone in town knew the story. Dina had taken off in the middle of the night, leaving behind her daughter and husband so she could be with a prosperous man twenty years her senior.
Lake had been five years old when her mother left.
Since Dina’s departure, Lake knew Sam had done his best to be both mother and father. And she was fine with that. She’d made her peace a long time ago growing up without a mother. She saw no reason to change the way she felt now as an adult.
To say she was firmly planted in the town she loved was to understand Lake Marigold. She preferred staying home on a Saturday night to bar-hopping. You could usually find her curled up with her nose in a book in the study, surrounded by her two dogs. It wasn’t her nature to flitter about wasting time or money socializing in a crowded, stuffy bar. She’d tried that a time or two in college and decided it wasn’t for her. No, for her, nailing the job as the town’s librarian was a dream come true. And she intended to make the most of the opportunity.
It was the reason she loved her life.
She felt incredibly lucky to live in the same house where Marigolds had endured lean times yet persevered through a depression and two world wars, where they’d scrimped and saved their way to make sure they held onto the land despite the hardships.
If she didn’t include the miserly great-grandfather, there was something comforting in knowing she tilled the same earth every spring and fall as her descendants had worked. While they had grown a garden out of necessity to put food on the table, Lake didn’t have five or six mouths to feed. But she still kept that tradition going, giving away half of what she grew to the neighbors. Whether it was taking baskets of tomatoes, cucumbers, or peppers to the library and putting up a sign that read, “Take what you need,” or setting out bowls of blueberries and strawberries on the porch at the height of summer to share with the neighborhood, Lake simply loved gardening and liked growing things.
Her front lawn was proof of that.
Inside the old iron fence that made up her front yard, she had less grass to mow each year because she kept adding more flower seeds into the already crowded pops of color. She adored seeing them blossom. She wasn’t one to wait for a man to send her bouquets on special occasions. Instead, even before Lake had inherited the house, she decided in her first year of high school to turn the front lawn into an English-style garden.
Her father had encouraged it.
March through October, she breathed life into sturdy perennials like English lavender or pink and blue dianthus and urged wide patches of blue and purple phlox into bloom. On the outer edges, she grew swaths of scarlet amaryllis set in a sea of paperwhites bounded by wild indigo growing alongside rows of herbs. In the middle of summer, her lawn invariably turned into a red, white, and blue tribute to the Fourth of July.
Daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths filled the flower beds on both sides of the house. Lake believed the secret to keeping a prolific flower garden growing year-round was to baby bulbs and seeds over fall and winter. Thus, she worked in the yard twelve months out of the year, guaranteeing a steady yield of orange zinnias and yellow chrysanthemums would take her straight into Halloween.
She didn’t care if kids thought she was odd or quirky or referred to her as the “Marigold Spinster” or an old maid behind her back. At thirty-two, she had heard all the insults they could muster. Growing up without a mom, classmates often bullied her, calling her names and making fun of her name. And yet, here she was, thriving, self-sufficient, and living every day working around the thing she treasured most—books.
Lost in her thoughts, Lake had almost reached Bishops Bay when she remembered she’d used the last spoonful of coffee for breakfast. Not one to scrimp when it came to her one true addiction—coffee—she circled the intersection and aimed her bike back toward Murphy’s Market to pick up her favorite dark roast.