Chapter Twenty-Five
“What’s happening at the cabins?” Kit asked as she drew closer to the path. “Any signs of interlopers? Sap poachers?”
“Nope.” Abby picked up Benny. “But those little cabins sure could be cute. It would take a lot of work, though, and some money for air-conditioning and proper heating, but it could be done.”
“None of which is on the to-do list,” Kit reminded her. “Especially air-conditioning. We don’t even have that here in the house.”
Abby pretended not to hear as she set her son back on the path.
Kit looked at Hal, who shrugged. She’d love to know what Abby had been saying when they were touring the cabins.
“Doggy!” Benny cried excitedly and pointed off to the right along the tree line.
“Oh my God,” Kit exclaimed, “that looks like the moose I saw last week.”
Benny tried to run after it but Hal caught him and handed him to Abby. “Let’s just watch from here, okay, Benny?”
“Shh,” Abby whispered to her son. “You’ll scare her away. Let’s just watch her quietly.”
“I never understood—or appreciated—how huge they are until I saw one in the yard,” Kit whispered.
“It was probably this same one,” Hal told her. “There’s the young one, looks like a yearling. The calves usually stay close to their mothers until the next year’s calves are born. This one has maybe another month before Mom sends it on its way.”
“She’s not very pretty, is she?” Abby said. “I mean, with that hump on her back, and that long head and that thing under her chin.”
Hal chuckled softly. “Not pretty, not friendly, and she looks like she weighs about eight hundred pounds.”
“That girl needs a good diet,” Abby replied. “Atkins, WeightWatchers—whatever works.”
“She’s an herbivore,” Kit said, “so a high-protein diet is probably not the thing.”
The moose lumbered across the grass, the young one trailing behind as it had on its previous visit. A few minutes later, they could be heard splashing into the lake.
“Wow, that was a moment, wasn’t it, buddy?” Abby set Benny’s feet on the ground again. “She saw us but didn’t seem to mind that we were here.”
“Because we didn’t move and gave no sign of heading in her direction.
Trust me when I tell you that you do not want to be facing down a charging moose.
They can kill you.” Hal added, “And no matter how fast you think you are, I promise you, she can outrun you. Moose have been clocked at around thirty-five miles an hour. That calf could outrun you when it was a week old. They are way faster than they look.”
“Yikes!” Abby grabbed onto Benny and steered him toward the house. “Time to go see what Aunt Beth is doing.”
“Wanna see doggy.” Benny stared toward the place where the two moose had disappeared.
“Not a doggy, Ben. Moose.” She took his hand and turned to her mother. “Time to head in.”
“Moof,” he repeated. “Moof.”
“I’m right behind you,” Kit told her.
When Abby was a suitable distance ahead, Kit asked Hal, “Any clue why my daughter is so interested in the cabins? Did she say anything?”
“She just walked around inside them and seemed to be taking stock. If I were to guess, I’d say she was thinking about going all HGTV on them.”
“You can’t be serious.” Kit stopped walking. “Oh, but yes, this is Abby. She’s never seen a pup or a kitten or a bird she didn’t want to rescue. It shouldn’t surprise me that she’d want to rescue the cabins as well.”
“Might be fun,” Hal offered.
“Fun for Abby, maybe. Not so much for the rest of us, who would probably have to bankroll most of it.”
“I take it you lack the reno gene?” he teased.
“It just doesn’t make sense to put any energy into something that will probably not add much to the value of the property.”
“I’d think renovated cabins would add a good deal to the bottom line if you were going to sell the camp.” He hesitated for a moment. “Are you selling the camp?”
“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.” Kit was flustered. “My point is if they were properly and totally renovated, yes. I’m sure they would add to the value of the camp overall. But she doesn’t have the funds to do it proper and total.”
Kit stepped ahead of Hal, reluctant to talk about the future of the cabins in particular, the camp in general.
She hated the thought of someone buying what had been her family’s business for generations and knocking everything down and building a woodsy McMansion in its place.
She’d gotten the sickening feeling from several of the Realtors who’d called bragging about their deep-pocketed clients who were looking to build a high-end resort-like oasis for themselves and their families.
Where were the good people who wanted to live and work on an old-fashioned Maine sporting camp, she’d asked one, and was treated to a hearty laugh in reply.
“Kit,” Beth called from the dining room. “Come see! I’ve found hidden treasure!”
Kit hustled in expectantly, forgetting the police chief in her eagerness. She found her sister sitting at the dining room table, open shoeboxes across the tabletop.
Abby followed from the kitchen. “Ooh, I hope it’s sparkly and worth a fortune.” Her face fell when she saw what her aunt held up.
“Photos, girls. From so many eras! Look, this must be our great-great-grandmother—I forget what her name was, we’ll look it up later, but isn’t she one formidable-looking woman?” Beth’s eyes shone with happiness.
“This is the treasure?” Abby made no effort to hide her disappointment.
“Where were these?” Kit peered over Beth’s shoulder.
“Behind those lower doors in the cupboards, all the way in the back. I thought maybe there’d be more china or maybe some vases.
I found some Roseville and Weller pottery vases behind the stacks of china on the shelves.
I just love American art pottery, you know?
When I saw the boxes stacked up in there, I admit my mind went where Abby’s just did. ‘Oh, hidden treasure!’”
“It’s treasure of a different sort.” Kit picked up a photo and began to inspect it, when she remembered Hal. She looked up, red-faced. “Oh, Hal, I’m sorry. I—”
He laughed. “It’s okay. I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear about the DNA.”
“Let me walk you out.” Kit put the photo on the table.
“No need,” he said pleasantly. “I know the way.”
“Thanks, Hal.”
“I’ll be talking to you. Beth, Abby, good meeting you both.” He paused as he left the room. “You too, Benny.”
“Kit, I think you have an admirer.” Beth wiggled her eyebrows after they heard the front door close.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m married.”
“Are you?” Before Kit could respond, Beth handed her a shoebox.
“Start with this one. I think we should separate them by the generations, the camp owners, like, the first Meadowses who lived here. See if we can identify the earliest ones and so on. That way, we can trace the history of the camp. Fun, huh?”
“Divorced,” Abby said.
“What?” Kit asked as she opened the lid of the box.
“Chief Anderson. He’s divorced.” Abby looked across the table and met her mother’s questioning gaze. “I asked.”
“Why?” Beth looked up.
“Why what, Aunt Beth? Why is he divorced or why did I ask?”
“Why’d you ask?”
Abby shrugged. “Just curious.”
“So glad it wasn’t the other,” Kit said dryly. “God forbid you should ask someone you just met an inappropriate question.”
Abby sniffed with faux indignation. “I was raised better than that.”
Beth laughed and waved a photo at her sister. “Look, Kitty. Here’s a bunch of school pictures. Look at Mom’s bangs. Could they be any shorter?”
Kit looked at the photo and laughed. “Mamie Eisenhower bangs. Back in the fifties, Mamie Eisenhower was the wife of President Eisenhower, and she had these ridiculously short bangs that for some odd reason lots of women thought looked good enough to copy. Apparently our mother or our grandmother was one of those women.”
“Oh, but not Maxine.” Abby held up a photo. “She was doing her own thing even back in grade school in the fifties.”
Beth and Kit both paused to look at the five-by-seven-inch photo of the dark-haired girl, who even at seven or eight was beautiful, her long hair cascading over her shoulders.
“I bet she was beautiful at every stage of her life,” Beth said. “She just had ‘it,’ didn’t she?”
Abby went on. “It may not be a popular opinion, but I don’t know how Nana didn’t harbor at least some small amount of resentment toward her sister. Younger, prettier, smarter? Who wouldn’t feel just some little pinch of envy if your little sister looked like that, was all that?”
“A little pinch of envy isn’t the same thing as a resentment deep enough to leave your sister when she’s still grieving the loss of her loved one,” Kit said. “There had to have been something more than simple sibling rivalry.”
“I doubt we’ll ever know. You’ve been here for almost two weeks and you don’t know more than you did when you came here.” Beth pretended to think for a moment. “I know! We’ll kidnap this Mr. Banks and keep him in the attic till he talks.”
“Perfect! I’m in. We’ll only feed him dry sugary kids’ cereal till he spills the tea,” Abby said gleefully. “We’ll get the truth out of him one way or another.”
Kit rolled her eyes. “Great plan, girls. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself.”
“Seriously, Mom, I don’t understand his reluctance to help you out where that’s concerned. What does he have to lose? Both women are dead now and you’re alive, and you and Aunt Beth deserve to know what happened. Why is he still refusing to help you?”
Kit sighed. “Because he was a good friend to both of them, and he gave his word to Maxine. Maybe to Mom as well, we don’t know.
As frustrating as it is for me to still not have a clue—to be in Maxine’s house and going through her things and even returning her telephone calls and still not know why my mother left her home and her sister behind for all those years—I have to admire his integrity.
He gave his word to a friend—who was also his legal client—and he’s kept it.
You have to admit, that sort of loyalty is rare these days. ”