Софи Райан - Telling Tails

I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “You’re sure she’s okay?”

I heard her exhale. “I promise,” she said softly.

Elvis put his paws on my leg, his eyes locked on my face. He adored Rose, too. Without thinking about it, I began to stroke his fur. “What happened? Where was she? I thought she was here,” I said.

“Here” was my house, a two-story restored Victorian from the 1860s within walking distance of downtown North Harbor. It was divided into three apartments. Elvis and I lived in the front, main-floor unit, Rose had recently taken over the small back apartment, and Gram—when she was home—lived upstairs. On paper it didn’t sound like it should work, but so far it had.

“She wasn’t mugged,” Liz said. “Not exactly. Remember the man who came into the shop this afternoon and wanted to have those candlesticks delivered to his wife?”

I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead. “Tell me she didn’t do what I think she did.” I owned a repurpose shop, Second Chance, with an eclectic selection of merchandise, much of it given new life—a second chance—in our work space. Rose worked part-time for me.

“Oh yes, she did. She went over to that cottage to deliver those candlesticks. And I have the damn things, by the way.” I could hear the click of Liz’s high heels. She was probably walking in a hospital corridor, I realized. “She gave in too easy, you know,” she continued. “We should have known. Rose has a stubborn streak a mile wide, and before you start on about people in glass houses throwing stones, I’m going to remind you that I am not stubborn. I’m persistent, which is a completely different thing.”

“Noted,” I said. I wasn’t going to argue over word choice. Liz was just as stubborn as Rose was, which meant their longtime friendship got contentious at times, but this wasn’t the time to point that out. “I’m on my way,” I said. “You’re at Northeastern?”

“The ER. Just ask at the desk,” she said. “I better get back. Alfred could probably use some moral support.”

“Okay, I’ll be there soon,” I said.

Elvis had already jumped down from the chair and started for the living room. I turned off the TV and stood up. Liz had said Rose was all right. That was what mattered.

It took me only a couple of minutes to pull on a pair of jeans and grab my purse and keys. Elvis watched me from the top of his cat tower.

“I’m just going to make sure Rose is okay and I’ll be back,” I told him. He bobbed his head as though he were saying that was fine with him, and for all I knew maybe he had understood every word I’d said and that was exactly what he meant.

Northeastern Medical Center is a ninety-nine-bed full-service hospital with a trauma center just off the highway exit for North Harbor. It’s one of the top-rated hospitals in the state of Maine. As I drove I realized I hadn’t asked Liz how Rose had gotten from the cottage on the shoreline, where I was fairly certain she’d been assaulted, to the health center. Liz had mentioned Alfred, who was Rose’s “gentleman friend,” but she hadn’t said anything about whether Rose’s children—who didn’t live in North Harbor—had been called. Knowing Rose, I was pretty certain the answer to that was no; in fact, I was surprised Rose had called anyone at all.

Liz was right about Rose’s stubbornness. I’d seen that dogged streak in action enough times. I should have known that just because she seemed to acquiesce when I asked her not to deliver those candlesticks, that didn’t mean I’d won the battle.

Why had someone attacked Rose if it wasn’t for the two silver candlesticks she had with her? They were antiques, made by S. Kirk & Son more than a century ago. Kirk had learned the silversmith trade in Philadelphia and then opened a shop in Baltimore. His work was exquisite and in demand by collectors all over the United States and beyond. Finding them for the store had been nothing short of serendipity.

I’d gone to an auction up in Bangor and at the end of the day bid on the contents of a sealed cardboard box. It wasn’t the kind of thing I ever did, but I’d been with my best friend, Jess, who had encouraged me after two other boxes had gone for twenty-five and thirty-two dollars, respectively.

“Go for it. What do you have to lose?” she’d whispered in my ear.

“I could lose thirty-two dollars,” I’d hissed back at her.

“So bid less,” Jess had retorted, and before I’d really thought about it, I’d raised my hand and nodded in the direction of the auctioneer. I’d ended up getting the box for twenty-seven dollars. Inside I’d found a selection of ladies’ vintage gloves, which Jess had happily taken, a Brambly Hedge full-size teapot, several hand-crocheted dish towels and the badly tarnished candleholders. It was an auction jackpot. Rose had washed and blocked the dish towels and they’d sold in the shop for enough to cover the twenty-seven dollars I’d paid for the box.

“Are you going to say ‘I told you so’?” I’d asked Jess as she sorted through the gloves, which had been in a white pillowcase with a crocheted lace edging.

Jess had held up one long black evening glove with a rhinestone clip at the opening edge and smiled. She owned a small shop down along the waterfront with two other women where she sold her up-cycled clothing. I could tell by the gleam in her blue eyes that she already had some ideas about what to do with her find.

“Nope,” she’d said, rooting around in the pillowcase for the mate to the glove she was holding. She found it, admired the pair and then gave me a sideways glance, the smile still pulling at the corners of her mouth. “It’s enough to be right. I don’t need to rub it in.” Then she’d put her free hand over her heart and tried to look humble. She didn’t exactly get there, and I couldn’t help laughing.

I’d known as soon as I saw the teapot that I could probably get more than a hundred dollars for it. I’d had no idea how valuable the candlesticks were. After I’d gotten back to Second Chance and figured out what I had, I’d taken them downstairs and asked Rose if she’d polish them.

“I’d be happy to, dear,” she’d said. “They’d look lovely on that cherry table Mac has been refinishing.”

“You’re right,” I’d said, putting one arm around her shoulders to give her a hug. “In fact, I’m going out back right now to see how it’s coming.”

Behind the shop, along the back edge of the parking lot, was a garage that we’d converted into work space and storage, although we all still called the space the garage. Mac, my second-in-command, jack-of-all-trades and good friend, had been working out there, stripping a coat of brown paint from a dining room table we’d found at the curb during North Harbor’s annual cleanup week in the spring.

When I’d returned to the shop, Rose had caught me just as I stepped into the store proper from the back workroom. Her gray eyes were sparkling behind her glasses. She was barely five feet tall, with short white hair, and she was a cross between a mischievous elf and Cinderella’s fairy godmother, with a little doting grandmother thrown in.

“Sarah, would you take four hundred dollars for those candlesticks?” she asked.

I glanced across at the cash desk, where a man in jeans, a black T-shirt and a pair of bright red running shoes was standing, one hand resting possessively on the top of the silver candleholders.

“They haven’t been polished,” I said. “I haven’t even logged them into our inventory yet.”

“I can do the cleaning,” Rose said. “And you can take a picture of them. Then Avery can do all the rest of the computer work later.”

Avery was Liz’s granddaughter and another of my employees. She’d been taking on some of the work of logging in new stock and doing it much faster than I could.