Mary Brady - Better Than Gold

“Won’t be for me, either. They’d have called me if they’d wanted me.” Mia patted the pocket where she kept her phone. The pocket was empty. “Or not. My phone’s in my work jeans.”

“How’d they find you here?”

“Because my social life is so grand as to have a total of three options, the Pirate’s Roost, my house or yours, and maybe because my kiwi-green SUV is parked in your driveway.”

“And is likely to be there all night because you drink like a fish.” Monique gave her a twitchy-faced smile and the bell rang again.

“Your doorbell is ringing.” Mia smirked.

“You’re closer.” Monique tossed the pillow back.

“I guess since you provided the lobster dinner, I can answer your bell.”

Mia got up, successfully taking a sip of wine as she went, and opened the door to find Officer Lenny Gardner on the stoop. One more for the short list of bachelors in Bailey’s Cove. She looked him up and down. How could they have forgotten fastidious Lenny? Everybody in town knew he would take either of them as his wife, and having grown up with him, neither of them wanted a man that badly. But the boy had certainly grown up to be a well-built man.

“Hey, Lenny.”

“Chief wants to talk to you,” said the police officer who did everything he could to make himself attractive, including aftershave and a smartly pressed uniform and, holy cow, he must lift pickup trucks at the gym. The ploy might even work if he weren’t so bossy.

“What did he find out?”

The cop eyeballed the wineglass in her hand. “I’ll drive you.”

She looked at the glass and then at him.

He shifted his gaze over her shoulder at Monique, who had come up behind her, and the expression on his face said her small ash-blond friend was Lenny’s first choice.

“I’ll drive you there and back,” he promised when he turned his attention back to Mia, this time with the pursed lips of judgment. “We can’t have you endangering the townsfolk.”

She stifled a two-and-a-half-glass-of-wine grin, but she couldn’t deny that he might be right.

Monique poked her in the back. When Mia turned, her friend tilted her head toward Lenny as if to ask, what about him?

Mia handed over the glass, made a deranged face and mouthed, “For you.”

Monique made a “call me” sign with her pinky and thumb. Mia nodded, grabbed her coat from the hook behind the door and followed Lenny to the squad. The chill in the night air sobered her a bit.

Be good to me, Chief, she thought.

“Lenny, what did the chief find out?” she asked once they were in the squad and he couldn’t dodge the question as easily this time.

“If Chief Montcalm wanted me to tell you, I’d have told you.”

That couldn’t be good. “No hints?”

Lenny kept his gaze straight ahead, both hands on the wheel and didn’t comment. When they arrived at the police station, he escorted her inside with a hand in the middle of her back. If she hadn’t known him long enough to have seen him tinkle in the sandbox when they were four, she might have pointed out just how politically incorrect that old-fashioned gesture was. For all she did not like about Lenny, he wasn’t a chauvinist. He meant the gesture in the same polite and helpful way he would if she were his grandmother.

There was a lot to be said for homegrown Maine boys in today’s world. Maybe Monique should snap him up.

“Ev’ning, Ms. Parker.”

The chief greeted her plain-faced in the doorway of his office and gestured her to a visitor’s chair in front of his desk. That couldn’t be good, either. If he wanted her to sit down before he told her anything, he must be expecting an untoward reaction.

“Thanks for calling me in, Chief.” She wondered if she sounded sober. She hoped so.

As she settled into the chair, she heard the door click shut behind her. Whatever he had to say, Mia was sure she didn’t want to hear. But, let it rip, like a Band-Aid off tender flesh.

That was definitely the wine.

The chief sat down in his chair and placed his hands flat on the old-fashioned green blotter. “I thought you might like an update.”

“Oh.” She bunched her shoulders and then let them sag. “I’m ready, Chief Montcalm. Lay it on me.”

“We’ve removed the body and brought it here to our small crime lab. There was no ID with the body, but we did determine from the clothing remnants the body has been there for a long time.”

She almost stood. “If the body’s gone, can I have my building back now?”

“I’m afraid not. The crypt and the surrounding area will need to be studied.”

He tried to make his words sound kind and conciliatory, but she slumped in her chair.

The chief officially calling it a crypt somehow made things seem more creepy or maybe the wine was... She stopped the thought and brought her mind back and tried hard to listen, the way he did when she spoke.

“Since the circumstances are suspicious by nature of the body being in the wall, this has to remain a police matter. I called in the state’s criminal investigation division.”

More people, more time. She dropped her chin to her chest. Of course he called the CID and processing an old skeleton most likely moved slowly through the state system. So they would probably not be there tomorrow. Her brain buzzed with calculations of lost time and the impact delaying the work would have on getting the restaurant open, especially if the state investigators couldn’t get here until, say, Monday.

She might have to cancel the finishing work set up for next week, go bankrupt, move to the poorhouse and let the town of Bailey’s Cove be completely taken over by a population of non-Maine city dwellers seeking to escape on the weekends and for a week or two during the summer.

It wouldn’t be so bad if these people were all lovely friendly people who wanted to visit a great small town and then go quietly away, but there was that ten percent who couldn’t help leaving their mark by damaging what wasn’t theirs. The town council had decided to take things slow and Mia agreed with them. If too many visitors arrived before the town’s infrastructure was upgraded, Bailey’s Cove wouldn’t be able to protect itself and could turn into a place the natives would not recognize.

Then when the tide of visitors ebbed, the town’s two-hundred-year-old structures like Braven’s tavern, Pardee’s Donut shop, the town founder’s home overlooking the town from up on Sea Crest Hill, the boathouse, even the docks would all bear the marks of these visitors. No amount of tourist dollars would make up for that kind of damage. Meanwhile Edwin Beaudin would have packed up and left Pied Piper–like because townsfolk listened to Monique’s granddad.

“Ms. Parker?”

She snapped her gaze up. Two glasses of wine next time and that would be it. She swiped the back of her hand over her forehead.

“I get it. More people, more time. Okay.” But she didn’t get it. She didn’t get how she was going to do this. Her life wouldn’t end but getting back on her feet could take half a lifetime and she’d have to do it away from Bailey’s Cove, out there where life had definitely not been good to her. In Boston, where she had completed her college degree, she had been downsized from her job and lost the first love of her life. In Portland, her home state, she’d lost another job and gained a fiancé who eventually left her.

The chief gave her a look that spoke of an apology.

“What now?” she asked. She’d let the chief finish first, then she’d don her rags and go find a bridge to live under.

“Because of the age of the case, the CID expects to be here in two weeks, three at most.”

Mia took a big gulp of panic. The partially demolished wall was the center of everything. Even if she were allowed to demo and build around the wall, the work would come to a disastrous halt by the end of two weeks for sure. “That long?”