Legacy of Lies (5 page)

I glanced up, surprised. What an odd comment from someone who never forgot I wasn’t related by birth! “Did you expect me to be?”

“Children learn from the person with whom they live. Even as a teenager, your mother was always sweet-natured and gentle with people. She never had a harsh comment for anyone.”

“Still doesn’t,” I said, setting aside the cereal box.

“So where did you get that sharp tongue?” Grandmother asked.

I sighed and stood up. “Don’t know. Where did your child get her gentleness?”

I went for a run by myself that morning, following Scarborough Road away from town, passing field after field of harvested corn. I knew better than to expect an invitation to the football game that afternoon. After a long shower and a quick brunch, I asked Grandmother if she wanted to do some shopping in town. She informed me that she only mixed with “the riffraff” when absolutely necessary.

“I shall tell Matt to drop you off,” she added.

“Thanks, but I can get there myself.”

I figured it was only a twenty-minute walk to the stores on High Street, and I was too proud to accept any ride she had commanded.

In the early afternoon I crossed the bridge over Wist Creek. When I turned onto High Street, I saw a sign advertising “Sidewalk Saturday.” About four
blocks from the harbor, the shopping district turned into one long sale. Paperbacks were piled in wheelbarrows by the steps of Urspruch’s Books. Mobiles and wind chimes dangled from the sycamore tree in front of Faye’s Gallery. Teague’s Antiques had transformed its patch of bricks into a Victorian parlor with chairs and a sofa. Groups of people strolled in and out of the small shops, some of the crowd walking in the street. Cars crept along, apparently used to this weekend style of life.

When I arrived at Yesterdaze, Ginny barely had time to say hello. Her shop clerk had gone home ill, which left Ginny trying to guide shoppers and cover the register.

“Want some help?” I asked. “I work at Dad’s animal hospital. I know how to count change and do credit card purchases.”

“Oh, honey, it’s your vacation.”

“But I’d like to,” I told her. “Matt doesn’t want to hang out with me. Grandmother doesn’t want to hang out with anyone. This would give me something to do.”

Ginny played with the amber beads around her neck. “Well, I could sure use a hand,” she admitted, her eyes darting after a customer. “You’re on.”

Wearing a work apron embroidered with the shop’s name, armed with credit forms and a money box, I took my place at a table outside. I bagged and boxed. I read price tags and squinted at driver’s licenses, copying their numbers onto checks. Some customers were locals, but more were visitors, many
from Baltimore and Philadelphia. I enjoyed watching the parade of people and listening to the conversations around me. I learned that shoppers are not as easy to deal with as dogs and cats.

A senior citizen with salon-molded hair argued with Ginny for selling a jacket she had asked Ginny to hold over two months ago. Her nurse companion, a heavyset woman, forty-something, picked through the lace handkerchiefs on the table next to me. “She’ll go on like this for another five minutes,” said the aide. “Maybe ten. We’ve argued our way down two blocks of High Street. Always do.”

“Sounds like you don’t have an easy job,” I replied sympathetically.

She shrugged. “Easier than the last one. Pay’s better too. Mrs. Barnes thinks it’s still 1950.”

I looked up from the roll of quarters I had just cracked open. “Mrs. Barnes?”

“Out Scarborough House.” The woman kept wrinkling her nose and sniffling, while looking at the elegant handkerchiefs. I was afraid she was going to use one.

“Guess you’re not from these parts,” she said.

“I, uh, just arrived.”

“Well, let me put it this way. Mrs. Barnes makes ner”-she gestured toward the older woman-“seem like a saint to live with. As for that spooky old house on the Wist, where she’ll let you board ’cause she’s paying you peanuts, well, I wouldn’t live there for any amount of money.”

“How come?” I asked, curious.

“It’s haunted.”

My eyes widened. The woman saw she had an interested audience.

“My sister warned me,” she chattered on. “Said it wasn’t just the house. It was the family. None of them Scarboroughs was quite right in the head. That’s why Mrs. Barnes’s daughter ran off like she did. She had to get away.”

“From what?”

“Avril Scarborough, I suppose.”

I recognized the name from the gravestone.

“She was murdered, you know.”

“Murdered!” I repeated with disbelief.

The woman’s head bobbed. “The family covered it up. Said it was an accident. It wasn’t.”

“How do you know it wasn’t?” I asked.

“I’ve seen the ghost. In the rear wing, the room above the kitchen, the only night I stayed there. Say what you want, but happy dead folks don’t come back to haunt.”

“Alice,” the older woman hissed. “I’m ready to go.”

“Never asks if I’m ready,” Alice muttered to me, then stepped forward to take the woman’s arm and guide her down the street.

I stared after them. My mother would have told me if someone in her family had been murdered. It’s just gossip compounded by Alice’s imagination, I thought.

For the next hour we were extremely busy. Still, as I ran my finger down a tax table and stuffed tissue in
boxes, I found myself wondering what could have spawned Alice’s story. Small-town boredom? Jealousy of a family that had more money than others? Or was there a suspicious event that could be interpreted that way?

I became so lost in thought, I didn’t hear what a customer had just said to me. “I’m sorry. What?”

The red-haired girl gazed back at me with wide, clear eyes and smiled a little. “I didn’t say anything.”

I was certain she had, but perhaps it was the blond girl who had stopped with two friends to sort through items on our sidewalk tables. She looked like the passenger I’d seen in the front seat of Matt’s Jeep yesterday. Her two friends echoed whatever opinion she had. She liked the beaded purses, so they liked the beaded purses. She thought the jewelry was for old ladies, so they thought the jewelry was for old ladies.

I noticed that the redhead looked up at the girls once or twice, as if to say hello, but they didn’t acknowledge her. Snobs, I thought. She seemed used to it and went back to her own browsing, lifting up a silver chain that dangled a clear blue stone. The gem had the same mystical look as her eyes.

“Try it on,” I told her. “There’s a mirror inside the store.”

She quickly put it down. “I can’t buy it.”

“So? Doesn’t mean you can’t try it on.”

She looked at me uncertainly, then smiled, picked up the pendant, and went inside.

When I turned to a woman waiting to buy a lace
collar, I saw the two echoes watching me, but the blond quickly got their attention with a comment about the shop’s ugly old jewelry. I focused on finding my customer the right-size box, pulling out a flat piece of cardboard, then fitting the tabs into their slots.

“Matt! Hey, Matt!” the blond called out, and I glanced up.

My cousin and three other guys strode toward her and her friends.

So that’s what you look like when you smile, I thought. It was a terrific smile, I noted grudgingly, then lined my customer’s box with tissue.

“Hi, Kristy,” he greeted the blond. “Amanda, Kate.”

“We missed you,” Kristy said to him. “We didn’t see you at the game.”

“Oh, I think you did,” he replied lightly. “I was sitting with Charles, remember?”

“Your sports buddy.” I heard the sneer in her voice; raising my head, I saw it on her face.

“He’s my teammate,” Matt said, still smiling. “You’re always sitting with your teammates,” he added, nodding at the echoes.

Boy, did he know how to flirt with those eyes! The girls on either side of her giggled.

“They’re friends,” she told him, in a fake, quarreling voice. “We don’t play a sport.”

“Partying,” he said. “Isn’t that one?”

They all laughed.

I stamped my customer’s check with an irritated
thump. Why was he so flirty and charming to some people and such a jerk to me? I handed the package to my customer.

“Thanks very much. Come again,” I said quietly.

Apparently, not quietly enough. I was turning my George Washingtons face up, counting the singles, when I realized that Matt’s group of friends had stopped talking. I looked up to see him staring at me.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. He sounded as if he’d caught me trespassing.

“Working. You got a problem with that?”

The blond-haired guy next to Matt glanced sideways at him and smiled.

“You’re supposed to be visiting Grandmother,” he told me.

“I don’t remember clearing my schedule with you.”

His friend laughed out loud, which annoyed Matt.

“In fact,” I added, “I don’t remember
you
showing an interest in anything I was doing.”

Everyone but the grinning guy looked uncomfortable. Kristy moved closer to my cousin. “Who is she?”

I prickled at her tone.

“Megan, my cousin, sort of,” Matt replied.

“What do you mean by sort of?” asked the smiling guy.

“Matt’s father is my uncle, sort of,” I said.

The guy looked from Matt to me. There was a brightness in his blue eyes, a spark of laughter. I liked him immediately. “So, who are you?” I asked bluntly.

“Alex Rodowsky.” He held out his right hand.

“Your sort-of cousin’s friend. I hope he’s not grumpy like this at home.”

“He is.”

Matt scowled.

“When he starts it with me,” Alex said, “I just ignore him.”

“Is he like this a lot?” I asked. “How long does he stay this way?” What a scowl!

“Don’t you know? You’re his cousin,” Alex pointed out.

“We met for the first time yesterday. Though Matt has disliked me long before that.” Alex looked puzzled.

I heard Matt suck in his breath and let it out slowly. “Maybe we should talk at home, Megan.”

“Why, that would be a nice change!”

He didn’t reply.

“Megan?” Ginny called through the door. “Can you give me twenty singles?”

“Be right in,” I said, banding the stack of bills I had just counted.

Matt’s friends drifted off. The way the girls bent their heads together, I figured they were discussing me. I picked up the cash box to carry inside, but Ginny met me at the door. “Thanks, honey. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

I returned to my post in time to see Alex pull Matt back from the departing group.

“What’s this sort-of cousin stuff?” he asked, not
bothering to keep his voice down, perhaps thinking I was inside. “Is she or isn’t she?”

“Legally she is, but not really,” Matt replied. “She’s adopted.”

“Which means you can date her,” Alex said. “Are you interested?”

“No,” Matt answered quickly.

“Good. I am.”

“She’s got a mouth,” my cousin warned.

His friend shrugged. “Makes it easier to kiss.”

Matt must have made a strange face because Alex laughed at him, then walked off to join the others. Matt glanced back over his shoulder. His jaw dropped a little when he realized I was standing there.

I turned away just as the redhead was coming from inside the shop.

“Want to see how it looks?” she asked, smiling shyly. “Miss Ginny told me to try these earrings with it. The stone is aquamarine.”

“I knew it would look great on you!”

She touched the stone lightly, then reluctantly reached back for the clasp.

“Too much?”

“Yes,” she said, handing it to me. I glanced at the tag. “Whoa! That’s a lot of Big Macs.”

I put it back in the velvet case and she set the earrings next to it.

“I’m Sophie. Sophie Quinn.”

“Megan Tilby,” I told her.

“Nice to meet you. I, uh, was standing at the door when Matt was talking to Alex,” Sophie said. “Matt’s your cousin?”

“Legally.” Darn, I thought; now I’m making that distinction. “I’m visiting for two weeks.”

“I hope you have a real good time. I probably shouldn’t ask this, but has Matt told you anything about the girls at school and, well, who he likes?”

I started to laugh at the thought of him confiding in me, then stifled it, realizing Sophie might have a crush on him. “Why? Are you interested in him?”

She blushed a little. “Every girl in the senior class is interested in him,” she told me. “And Matt never lets on who he really likes, which makes all the girls crazy.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t have a clue. I don’t really know him.”

Sophie nodded. “I guess he’s just one of those people who gets along with everyone.”

Nearly
everyone, I thought.

five
 

At four o’clock Ginny told me to take a break and sent me to Tea Leaves with some money. Figuring that tonight’s dinner would be leftovers from last night’s, I splurged and got a piece of chocolate cheesecake.

The café was a comfortable place with a worn tile floor and painted tables and chairs, none of the sets matching. At the back was a long glass case filled with bakery items, as well as a refrigerator case with yogurt and salads. A lady with fuzzy hair and a man who looked like a fifty-year-old Pillsbury Doughboy waited on customers. The man had a round, pleasant face that creased easily into a smile. He called many of the customers by name.