Skin Deep (10 page)

Captain Howe sounded like he was taking his own deep, centering breaths. She couldn’t help being glad.

“I didn’t say that we wouldn’t be following up, Mrs. Durrell,” he finally said. “But cases that impact the town as a whole take priority. We don’t have an unlimited number of uniformed personnel nor an unlimited budget to cover overtime, and so far this week we’ve seen some fairly nasty vandalism at two summer houses in your neighborhood and a fisherman who went out clamming Sunday morning and never came home. When we have a chance, an officer will be out to speak with—with the man.”

“His name is Alasdair. Thank you very much, captain. I’ll look forward to that.” She hung up and sat frowning at the phone. He couldn’t be lying about being overextended. It would be far too easy for her to verify that houses near her had been vandalized, and surely the town would be abuzz about a missing fisherman.

Buzz. If she wanted to hear what was going on in town, it was time to call Kathy and take her up on that lunch offer.

* * *

“Well, you’re looking pleased with yourself,” said Kathy, eyeing Garland as she spooned up her quahog chowder the following day. Her joking put-downs notwithstanding, the Captain’s Bridge Inn made the best chowder in Mattaquason. “Positively glowing, in fact. Let me guess—did Rob Mowbray get lucky this week?”

“Kathy!” Garland looked around the crowded restaurant. The Mattaquason Women’s Club was having its monthly luncheon today and every table in the room was filled. “I barely know him, for Pete’s sake.”

A couple of women at nearby tables glanced over at them. Kathy gave them a wide, false smile and turned back to Garland. “Crap. If I’d known the Mattaquason Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society was lunching here today, we’d have gone somewhere else. So come on, what are you looking so pleased about? Let me guess again—Rob Mowbray’s
going
to get lucky?”

Garland stuck out her tongue. Someone at the next table coughed slightly. “Get your mind out of the gutter,” she murmured. “For your information, Rob Mowbray is right now spending his lunch hour checking Alasdair and Conn while I endure personal abuse from my dearest friend.”

“In that case, you’d better make it worth his while.” But the humor had drained from Kathy’s sparkling eyes. “Alasdair, huh? Why is he still there? Haven’t you found whoever he belongs to?”

“No, we haven’t. He’s had some memory loss and can’t remember much apart from that name. Believe me, I’ve tried to find out where he’s from, but the police have been about as helpful as a bushel of rocks. Poor Conn. He—”

“Shh!” All traces of a smile had thoroughly vanished from Kathy’s face.

“What’s wrong?” Garland asked her in a lower voice.

“The whole room doesn’t have to know about this—these people.”

“Why not? Wouldn’t it be better if the whole town knew about them so we can find out where they’re from? In fact, Rob suggested just today that we call the Mattaquason Mariner and get them to do an article.”

Kathy put down her spoon and began drumming her fingers on the table. “Someone needs to have a talk with Rob Mowbray, and soon,” she muttered darkly. “Garland, this is ridiculous. What are you going to do, keep them like a couple of stray puppies you found by the roadside? You don’t need this.”

“C’mon, Kath, they’re still swathed in bandages like Lon Chaney, Jr. Somebody has to help them.”

“I don’t see why it has to be you. Get
rid
of them. This is serious. All I’m thinking about is your well-being.” Kathy’s voice was angry, but her eyes were wide and…yes, there it was again. Anxious. Scared.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Maybe Rob can find some social service network that can take them in or something. I’ll ask him later—”

“Tomorrow, Garland. They should be out of there by tomorrow.”

It was time to change the subject. “So don’t you want to know why I’m looking pleased with myself?”

Kathy sighed and turned to her chowder again. “By all means. Though I still wish Rob Mowbray had something to do with it.”

“Give me a chance, Kathy. I’m not even formally divorced yet.”

“That didn’t stop Derek.”

“I’m not Derek, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Garland bent  to pull a plastic bag from her handbag and handed it to Kathy. “Now you can’t whine at me about not quilting anymore.”

Kathy raised one eyebrow and pulled out a bundle of fabric. She held it up to let it unroll and gasped. It was the landscape Garland had created the other morning.

“It’s just the quilt top,” Garland explained. “I’m going to set up my new long-arm quilting machine today, and I’ll need a day or two to play with it and get a feel for how it works before I quilt this. So do you like it?”

She hardly needed to ask. Kathy was gaping at the square of piecework in her hands as if it had hypnotized her. Garland leaned sideways in her chair and regarded it as well.

“Urgh. Now that I look at it in here, I don’t much care for the fabric I used for the islands on the horizon. Sorry, Kathy, I guess I’m a little rusty yet. Or maybe a lot rusty.” Garland held her hand out for the quilt top and noticed that the restaurant had gone almost totally silent. She glanced up and saw that all eyes in the room were on her quilt. Several women had even left their seats to get a better look at it.

“Garland, it’s perfect,” Kathy finally whispered. “It’s the view from your house. I can see it…jeez, look—you used a piece of blue fabric that had a green streak in it, right where that green buoy is off your beach.”

“Did you make that?” asked a tall woman, coming to stand behind Kathy. Four or five others joined her, and then it was as if the entire dining room, wait staff included, was clustering around their table and straining to get a look at her quilt top.

“Yes, she did.” Kathy seemed to snap out of her spell. She rose, then climbed on her chair and held the quilt top up, slowly turning. More murmurs arose as she made a slow circle.

“Kathy, get down from there before you fall.” Garland was sure that her face was crimson.

“This is Garland Durrell, ladies, and she’s just moved down Cape from the Boston area. Her quilts will be in my gallery later in the spring and summer after she gets settled in. I hope you’ll all come and see them,” Kathy called out in ringing tones. Her face, permanently tanned from her years in exotic locales, was pink with excitement. “Captain Hayes Gallery, across Main Street—but you all know that.”

“When will
that
quilt be there?” called a voice from somewhere to Garland’s left.

Kathy looked down at Garland and cocked an inquiring eyebrow at her. Garland tried to answer, but her voice had been snatched away by shock.

“Soon,” Kathy replied. “Give the poor woman a chance to finish unpacking. She hasn’t even been here a week, after all. Come on, Garland, stand up and say hello.” She gestured with her head.

Garland would have preferred to dive under the table. But Kathy wouldn’t be gainsaid. She glared at Garland while still managing to smile sweetly at everyone else, so Garland reluctantly climbed up on her chair and gave the room a tentative smile.

“Oh, I know you,” said another voice. “You’re down on Eldredge Point, aren’t you? I see you in the summer at the library.”

Murmurs of agreement rose around her.

“Garland has been an active supporter of the Mattaquason Historical Society and the Friends of the Library for several years,” Kathy affirmed. “She’s just getting through an unpleasant divorce and is making a new life for herself here. I hope you’ll all welcome her and join us for her first one-woman quilt show in August.”

Garland nearly fell off her chair. What was Kathy doing, telling everyone about her divorce? And
what
quilt show in August? “Kath!” she muttered urgently.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll all want to get back to your lunches before they get cold. Thank you for welcoming my friend, and if you stop in at the gallery next week you might see the completed quilt.” She shot a look at Garland, who nodded meekly.

The crowd of ladies resumed their seats, a few stopping to greet Garland as if they were old acquaintances. She recognized several volunteers from the library and the Historical Society, and even remembered a name or two. Kathy beamed at her like a proud parent till everyone had sat down again.

“That was terrific! I couldn’t have planned it any better if I’d tried.” She was nearly dancing in her chair with glee as she rolled the quilt top back up. “That was practically the entire female half of the population that matters in this town. Two of them were selectmen’s wives, and one
is
a selectman. You’ve just gotten the Mattaquason equivalent of a two-page spread in the
New York Times
for your work.”

Garland accepted her quilt top back with a glare. “What did you do that for? I felt like I was on display up there.”

“Deal with it. If you want your quilts to sell, you’ve got to be visible. But mostly I expect your quilts will sell themselves. Oh, wait till I call Sonya Feinberg in New York. Or better yet, those two friends of hers who came in and told me they wanted the next Garland Durrell quilt, no matter what color or design. Ooh, I can just
taste
that winter home on Antigua. Or maybe St. Croix—it’s less crowded, I hear—”

“Hey—earth to Kathy. What quilt show in August? What black hole did you pull that idea out of?” Garland wasn’t sure whether she wanted to laugh or throttle her friend.

“What do you think? A show in the gallery in August is perfect—it’s peak tourist season. All the really filthy rich ones come in August. You’ll get maximum visibility.”

“Oh, sure. There’s just the teensy little fact that I haven’t even finished one quilt yet.”

“Don’t get sarcastic with grandma. August is years away. You’ll have plenty of time to make—let’s say, a dozen quilts? Eighteen would be better, of course. I’ll schedule it for the end of August, rather than the beginning. Will that help?”

“No problem. I’ll just give up sleeping till then.”

Kathy snorted. “You can sleep when you’re dead. Look how quickly this top went together. And if you’ve gotten yourself a quilt machine, that’ll make them go even faster. I know you like to hand-quilt, but you can save that for next winter when you’ve got more time. Just make some more wall-sized beauties like this one, and we’ll be golden. Literally.”

“Kathy—”

“Oh, look, here’s our lunch. Hey, Sandy, did the chef actually cook this or just stare at it really hard?” she asked as the waitress set her blue-cheese-and-bacon burger down on the table. “I like my burgers rare, not just stunned and left to die of blood loss like the one he served me last week.”

“Well, it’s not trying to crawl off your plate and escape, Ms. Hayes.” Sandy grinned and put Garland’s smoked turkey Reuben in front of her. “Boy, Mrs. Durrell, that quilt you made is gorgeous. You can, like, really feel the waves in the water. I can’t wait for your show.”

“Um, thanks.”

Across from her Kathy sang the chorus from “Kokomo” under her breath as she sprinkled salt and vinegar on her fries. Now that she was in a better mood, maybe it was time to find out if Howe had been lying. “So, uh, Kathy. What’s this I hear about a missing fisherman?”

Kathy stopped singing and put down the bottle of vinegar. “Who told you about that?”

“Captain Howe, when I called yesterday. What happened? Did he—”

Kathy glanced around her at the other tables. “Look, let’s not talk about that right now. The guy’s wife is beside herself, and most everyone in this room knows her. It’s not…it’s not something to discuss in public.”

“What do they think happened to him? He was clamming, right? What about his tools? Are they gone too? Do they think he ran away with another woman or something?”

“Drop it, Garland.”

The rest of their lunch was quiet.

* * *

Garland was grateful that her dinner with Rob on Friday was less public than her lunch with Kathy. But only slightly less. She could feel the eyes of everyone in the room on them as the hostess ushered her and Rob to a fishnet-shrouded alcove in Jason’s, one of the few upscale restaurants in Mattaquason that stayed open in the off-season. Most of the groups at the tables they passed called out greetings to Rob. Garland herself recognized one woman who had been in the Captain’s Bridge yesterday. She returned her greeting, then watched from the corner of her eye as the woman turned  to her companions and began to relate something in a low-pitched but animated voice.

“Small town life,” Rob commented. Garland looked up and saw that he too was watching the woman. “They didn’t warn us about this in med school. I never thought I’d find myself a local celebrity just because I’m the new doc in town.” His tone was wondering and slightly sheepish.

He really thought everyone idolized him just because he was a doctor. Garland smiled inwardly. Being extremely personable, civic-minded, good-looking, and unmarried had nothing to do with it, of course.

“At least there aren’t any paparazzi shoving cameras in our faces,” she said aloud.

“Thank God for that.” He smiled and nodded as a waiter brought a free-standing ice bucket with a bottle of champagne and two flutes to the table. “I hope I didn’t mistakenly assume you liked champagne.”