Judith Bowen - Charlotte Moore

A bed-and-breakfast. That made sense. The house was definitely perfect for it, size-wise. The modernized kitchen made sense now, too. And, no, she couldn’t quite see Liam Connery in the hospitality business. The fact that Ada’s husband had died and her son had no interest would account for the generally run-down air. The house and yard, anyway, if not the dog kennels.

“Well, I’ll be on my way.”

Ada waved cheerfully but made no attempt to get up. Charlotte wondered if she wasn’t bothered by more than poor vision. Arthritis?

It had started to rain. By the time she reached the highway over the muddy, rutted red-earth road, the rain was coming down in sheets and Maggie was whining piteously. She smelled like wet dog.

“Miss Maggs, what are we going to do with you until that rotten sister of mine gets back?” Charlotte muttered, peering through the windshield when she came to the end of the lane.

Charlotte spotted a sign on the road, waving in the wind, lashed by the rain: Petty Cove Retrievers. A painted head-and-shoulders picture of two dogs, one brown, one black. Bear and Old Jimbo? And another sign, very faded, above it: Petty Cove Bed-and-Breakfast. With a crudely lettered Closed sign nailed over it. How depressing.

First things first. Find a nice, cozy place to stay for the night. Next, consider calling Laurel to give her a piece of her mind. At the Belize Hilton, if necessary.

“All arranged,” was it? Not according to Liam Connery.

Dear Lydia,

P.E.I. greetings from us both! Yes, Maggie is still with me and I’m writing this from the Bluefish Inn at Souris, up in the northeast corner of the Island. It’s raining here and I’m sick of traveling. And, yes, I’ve already met the man I used to dream about in grade five and have put that particular little fantasy to rest. He’s not at all the way I remembered him—so cold, so standoffish. Scary, almost. Still handsome, though, if you like rough and rugged.

There’s worse news. Wait until I see that sister of mine! Laurel set me up. Turns out there was no arrangement to have Maggie bred at Liam Connery’s kennel, after all, so now I’m faced with having to talk that terrible man into taking her on as a boarder, at least until Laurel and Frank get back. I can’t ship her home yet and I can’t keep her with me while I’m working. Speaking of which, guess what? I’m going to the Rathbone mansion tomorrow afternoon to get started. Really looking forward to it….

Love, Charlotte

P.S. Has Zoey gone west to British Columbia yet?

P.P.S. Will send an address when I rent a room somewhere. B&Bs are mostly closed already for the winter.

THAT’S RIGHT, Charlotte thought as she rounded the corner at Poplar Point on the return trip. I’m going to have to convince that unfriendly, annoying, unpleasant man to keep Maggie for a few weeks. Simple, really. He ran a kennel. He had boarders. Five of them; Jamie had said so. Well, here was another one. She was happy to pay whatever he charged. And she’d make damn sure Laurel paid her back.

The sky was clearing—an omen?—as she drove into Cardigan River, which was a tiny knot of buildings at the narrowest part of the small bay that opened to the east, to Northumberland Strait. As Ada Connery had said, there wasn’t much to it.

Bristol’s Store, with a faded Firestone banner draped in the window and one gas pump outside on the graveled lot, looked as promising as anything. The interior was dark and cluttered and smelled of cigarette smoke and hot dogs. A four-stool lunch bar ran along one side of the L-shaped counter. A large, dull-looking man, his tongue squashed pinkly between fleshy lips, occupied a wooden chair by the cash register. He wore a name badge that read Abner. A woman with her hair tied up in a kerchief and an apron around her thin waist scrubbed the counter with a rag.

She raised her head. “Help ya?”

Charlotte took off her sunglasses. “I’m looking for a room to rent. Do you know of anything around here?”

The woman left her cloth on the counter and stood straight, staring at Charlotte. “Room to rent? What for?”

“I’ll be working at the Rathbone estate for a few weeks. I need a place to stay.”

The cloth got picked up, slopped into a sink full of soapy water, pulled out, wrung and vigorously applied again to the cracked Formica. “Uh-huh. Round here, eh? Petty Cove? Nothing much there. Cardigan River?”

“Yes.” Charlotte waited through the long silence that followed, looking around a little desperately. The boy-man hadn’t changed expression and was twirling the dials on a transistor radio near the cash register. Electronic squawks filled the air.

“You could try Clara Jenkins. She takes tourists in the summer. Don’t know if she’s got any rooms free now. Quit fiddlin’ and put down that radio, Abe, y’hear!” She turned back to Charlotte. “You want me to call?”

“That would be very kind.”

“Oh, don’t mention it. Anything else for ya?”

“Bottled water?”

“Over by the pop cooler. Bottom shelf. Should be a few left from the summer folk. We don’t get much call for bought water from the reg’lars.”

As she spoke, the woman dialed an old-fashioned rotary wall phone. “Clara? Listen here, I got somebody in the store says she wants a room—what’s that? Okay, I’ll send her up. How’s John? Uh-huh. Oh, that’s a shame. Hope he’s feelin’ better soon. ’Bye, dear.” She hung up and turned to Charlotte without missing a breath. “You find your water all right?”

“Yes, thanks.” Charlotte opened her wallet. The bell over the door jangled and two men entered—young, handsome fisherman types, with longish hair and creased ball caps pushed back from their tanned foreheads. They both paused when they saw her, and Charlotte recognized the familiar, lightning-swift male appraisal. All men did it—almost all men, she corrected, remembering Liam Connery’s indifference. Then they swung themselves up onto stools at the lunch counter.

“Coffee, boys?” The store lady already had her hand on the coffeepot.

The cashier, Abe, took Charlotte’s money and made change slowly and accurately, counting under his breath. He wasn’t as young as she’d thought at first, with deep lines around his eyes and a little gray in his brown hair. She smiled encouragement and he smiled back, which seemed to amuse the newcomers.

“Coffee, Bonnie. And you can fill up my thermos jug, too. Say, got yourself a gal there, Abe?”

Abe shook his head. “Nope. She’s new. I don’t know her.”

“And of course you wouldn’t take a date with anybody you didn’t know, right, Abe?” The two men laughed again, but Charlotte could see it was all in good fun.

“Now, you go on up the hill and bear right at the first corner,” the woman called Bonnie said to her. “Second house on the left after you make the turn. Buff-colored, ya can’t miss it. Big lilac bush out front. Clara says she’ll be watchin’ out for you.”

“Oh!” Charlotte rapidly rearranged her plans. “I was going to go over to the kennel and then—oh, never mind, I’ll go up and see about the room.”

The two men exchanged glances. “Got a dog, have you? What kind?”

Charlotte nodded. It amazed her how perfect strangers here thought nothing of taking part in a conversation, but she was beginning to get used to it. There were no strangers on Prince Edward Island, she realized. There were only Islanders and People From Away, the “summer folk.”

“A Labrador retriever. It’s my sister’s, actually. I want to make arrangements to board her at the kennel.”

“That’d be Liam Connery’s place?” one drawled, his blue eyes interested.

“Yes.”