Cut to the Corpse (27 page)

It was Nate. He was leaving. As if aware of her eyes upon him, he paused at the door to raise his hand in good-bye. She lifted her fingers off of Dom’s shoulder in return.

As the door shut, Brenna couldn’t help feeling as if her heart had left the building with him. Then Dom pulled her close, and she let him. If she had learned one thing from Margie Haywood, it was to not hold on too tightly to what she wanted but rather to let it be.

First, apply a thin layer of glue on the votive and position your first paper cutout, which should be thin enough to let the candlelight through, on the glass. Brush over the cutout with more glue. Then press a wide strip of tissue paper (a pale color is best) over the paper cutout and brush on more glue. Work your way around the votive, making sure there are no air bubbles in the tissue paper, until it is completely covered in cutouts and tissue paper and a final coating of glue. Once it is completely dry, light a small votive candle inside of it and watch it glow.

Place a block on the picture and use it to trace six even squares. Now cut the picture into six squares. Place the pictures on top of six blocks, re-creating the original picture, and glue each picture onto its corresponding block. Let them dry completely. Using the five remaining pictures, repeat the previous steps on the five remaining sides of the blocks. Now you have a six-sided puzzle. To make it last longer, you can use more glue or polyurethane to make a protective coating on each side of the blocks.

“Well, what do we have here?” Ella Porter asked. “Is that Nate Williams driving with a young woman I’ve never seen before?”

“It is,” Marie Porter, Ella’s twin, confirmed.

Brenna Miller reared up from her crouched position at the back of the Jeep and smacked her head on the open hatch door. Ouch!

She clapped a hand on her head and turned to follow the directions of the sisters’ gazes. Sure enough, Nate’s vintage pickup truck was leaving a trail of dust behind it as he roared up the drive toward the communal lot where Brenna was parked.

The trees that lined the road behind him were ripe with the vibrant autumn colors of candy apple red and golden butterscotch. The late September sun was warm but the air held a bite of the New England winter rapidly approaching.

The windows of the truck cab were down and Brenna saw Nate flash a smile at her as he pulled up beside them. As always, she couldn’t help but return his smile. The man was a charmer for sure.

He climbed out with a wave and circled around to open the door for his companion. The first thing Brenna noticed was that she was young. Her wavy brown hair was styled in a bob, reminiscent of a flapper from the twenties. Her jade green earrings dangled and she smiled up at Nate as he helped her out of the truck. She carried a vintage carpetbag and wore a cute yellow dress with a slightly poofy skirt that ended at her knees, very retro.

Nate walked over to Brenna and the Porter sisters with the young woman beside him.

“Good afternoon, Brenna, ladies,” he said and he inclined his head.

The twins, who were within bragging rights of reaching their seventieth birthday, twittered beneath his attention, while Brenna said, “Hi, Nate.”

“Let me introduce your new neighbor,” he said. He gestured behind him. “This is Siobhan Dwyer. She’ll be staying in the cabin next to yours for a while. Siobhan, this is Brenna Miller, one of our resident artists. I let Brenna stay here even though she likes the Red Sox, because she makes the best brownies in town.”

The Porter sisters glanced between Nate and Brenna with identical looks of speculation. She could only imagine what the two gossips were thinking, that she and Nate were shacking up, so she’d best diffuse the situation before things became awkward.

A bark came to her rescue as Hank, Nate’s golden retriever, came bounding up the hill as if he hadn’t seen Nate in days instead of just hours. Jumping up on his hind legs, he licked Nate’s face and then turned to jump on Brenna as well. While she rubbed his ears, Nate retrieved his tennis ball from the grass and threw it back down the hill toward the lake. Hank set out after it with a happy bark.

“You also put up with me because I’m a great dog sitter,” Brenna said.

“Hank does adore you,” Nate agreed with a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes, and made Brenna hope he wasn’t just talking about Hank.

“Well, I guess I know who to see when I want a brownie,” Siobhan said, bringing the attention back to herself. “Although, I find too many sweets can ruin a girl’s figure. But then, you’re not exactly a girl, are you?”

Brenna blinked, uncertain of whether she’d just been insulted or not. She decided to write it off as a bad attempt at humor.

“No, I’m definitely a grown-up,” she said with a forced chuckle. “Welcome to Morse Point, Siobhan.”

She held out her hand. The young woman hesitated and then brushed Brenna’s fingers with hers for just the briefest moment. Her fingers were icy cold and Brenna resisted the urge to rub her hands together to warm them up.

She turned and gestured to the elderly twins. “These ladies are Ella and Marie Porter. We’ve just gotten back from a furniture salvaging expedition over in Auburn and they’re helping me unload.”

Siobhan looked the women up and down but did not offer her hand. “A pleasure.”

“Likewise,” the sisters said together. They didn’t sound very sincere.

“Nate, would you be a love?” Siobhan asked as she ran her hand down his arm and then motioned toward the back of the truck. There were several boxes, an easel, and what appeared to be a stack of canvases. “I’m just exhausted from my trip.”

“No problem,” he said.

Brenna and the Porters watched as he hefted a few of the boxes and headed down the trail toward the cabin. Siobhan followed behind him, carrying nothing, not even her carpetbag, which she’d left on the ground at their feet.

“I don’t like her,” Ella hissed when Siobhan was out of earshot.

“You don’t like anyone,” Marie said.

“So?” Ella asked. “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong about this one. There’s something very cat chomping on a canary about her. I’m only surprised feathers don’t fly out of her mouth when she speaks.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Marie said. “What do you think of her, Brenna?”

“Nate must have a reason to be renting to her,” she said. Although, privately, she couldn’t imagine what it was since, like Ella, she did not get a warm and fuzzy feeling from the girl.

“Oh, lookie here,” Ella said from beside Nate’s truck. “Someone certainly has a high opinion of herself.”

She had peeled back the brown paper wrapping from one of the canvases and revealed a portrait that was obviously Siobhan. It was very Frida Kahlo, a headshot with a severe expression done in bold colors.

“Ella, get away from there,” Brenna demanded.

She glanced at the cabin to see if Nate and Siobhan were returning.

Marie leaned in close and said, “The name in the corner is Siobhan. It must be a self-portrait.”

Ella dropped the paper wrapping back over it and curled her lip in distaste. “A very high opinion of herself it seems.”

“That’s not for us to say,” Brenna said. She turned back to the Jeep and pulled out a drawer from the dresser she had found in the secondhand shop and handed it to Marie.

“I wonder where she’s from,” Marie said as she cradled the drawer and headed down the hill toward Brenna’s cabin. “She’s definitely not from around here.”

“How can you tell?” Brenna asked, handing another drawer to Ella before taking the last one herself.

“We’d know her people,” Ella said as if it were obvious.

“You don’t know everyone,” Brenna said.

“Yes, we do,” they said together.

Brenna rolled her eyes. The twins were an information superhighway unto themselves, no doubt, but even they couldn’t know everyone.

The three of them wrestled the bulky dresser out of the back of the Jeep. They were about to heft it down the hill when Nate came sprinting up to them.

“I’ll get that,” he said.

Ella and Marie sagged in relief and dropped their end on the ground.

“You don’t have to,” Brenna said.

Nate just gave her a penetrating stare as he lifted the small dresser out of her arms and made his way down the hill with it.

“So nice to have a man around.” Marie sighed.

“Indeed,” Ella agreed. “And just look at the way his back muscles bunch, why I bet he could pick me up with one hand.”

Brenna and Marie gave her identical looks of disbelief.

“What?”

Brenna shook her head, refusing to comment. She helped the sisters pack their own treasures from the secondhand store into their Buick and waved as they headed down the dirt drive to the main road. They departed quickly as Marie was driving and she was well known for being heavy on the accelerator. Brenna cringed slightly when Marie didn’t stop at the end of the drive but hauled that Buick carcass across two lanes and sped toward town. Thankfully, there were no other drivers on the road at the moment.

She perched herself on the open back of her Jeep and played fetch with Hank. She told herself it was because he looked lonely, but she knew better. Her eyes kept straying toward her new neighbor’s cabin, and she knew she was waiting for Nate to make an appearance. He had taken the last load of stuff to Siobhan’s after he had helped her with her dresser. Not that it was any of her business who this girl was, or why she was here, still, she had no intention of moving until she saw Nate come out of her cabin.

Hank dropped a slobber covered ball at her feet and she scooped it up and threw it across the meadow that stretched out behind the row of cabins on the other side of the lake. Hank took off in a flurry of fur and Brenna glanced back to find Nate walking back up the hill toward her.

“You spoil him,” he said as he sat on the open back of the Jeep. “I had a perfectly well-behaved dog before you came along.”

Brenna scoffed. “Oh, please, I’m the disciplinarian. You’re the pushover.”

“Ha!” Nate said. “Who lets him eat at the table?”

“Beside the table not
at
it,” she corrected. “Who lets him sleep in the bed with his head on the pillow?”

“He keeps me warm,” he argued.

As if he knew he was the object of their conversation, Hank wagged his way over, nudging his head between them, demanding love.

They both obliged and when their hands collided in his fur, Brenna moved hers to run down his back, wondering if Nate felt the same spark of awareness she felt or if it was all in her head.

“So, a new tenant?” she asked.

“Temporarily,” he said. “She’s a friend of an old art school buddy of mine. He e-mailed me last week and asked if she could stay here for a few weeks.”

“Oh, so she’s not from around here?” Brenna asked.

Nate grinned. “The Porter sisters could tell, eh?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed.

“I figured,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know much about her. I picked her up at the train depot in Milstead. She’ll be here for a few weeks. She seems nice enough.”

“Hmm.” Brenna said nothing more.

“So, are you up for the game tonight?” His gray eyes met hers and as always, Brenna found it impossible to look away.

“I don’t know why you put yourself through the torture,” she said. “You know the Red Sox are going to spank your sad little Yankees right out of any hope they have to make the play-offs.”

“Spoken like a truly deluded member of Red Sox Nation,” he said. He rose and stretched his back. “Eight o’clock, my cabin, big screen, be there.”

Brenna grinned. “I’ll bring pie. Chocolate cream, okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “For chocolate cream, I’ll even let you boo my team once.”

“Twice,” she haggled.

“Once per slice,” he countered.

“Deal,” she said.

“Oh, and I invited Siobhan to join us,” he said. “Since she’s new in town and all, it seemed the neighborly thing to do.”

Brenna frowned. Nate had never been concerned with being neighborly before.

“That’s okay, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah, it’s great!” she said, forcing a smile. Big fat lie.