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Chapter One
There is nothing more perfect than a Maine summer day, when the sun is bright in the sky, the water is the color of cobalt, and the breeze is perfumed with the scent of salt air tinged with roses.
It was my first summer back in Maine since I was a child, and every day I woke up enchanted once again by the sound of the bell buoy in the distance, the cries of the gulls above the harbor, and the low grumble of lobster boats heading out for the day. Now, as I put a pan of Mississippi Mud Bars into the oven and glanced out the window at the bright morning, I thanked my lucky stars once again that I’d managed to find my way back to my favorite childhood haunt, Snug Harbor.
I had an hour before the bookstore I’d recently bought, Seaside Cottage Books, opened: enough time for a walk while the brownie base of the bars I’d just made cooled. I gave my customers a free cookie with every purchase, which meant I got to spend a lot of time experimenting in the kitchen. It was a fun idea, but a couple of months into owning the business, I was realizing I was going to have to expand my marketing beyond the kitchen to bring more customers in.
I sprinkled mini marshmallows over the warm brownies and popped them back in the oven, setting the timer for three minutes. As the marshmallows puffed, I grabbed my shoes and the leash from the hook by the door, calling Winston, my rescue Bichon frisé, who was still snoozing in a sunbeam on my bed.
“Come on, lazybones,” I called as I walked into the bedroom, the wood floors creaking under my feet. Winston rolled on his back, presenting his tummy, and tilted his head. “No, you don’t get to stay here. We both need our exercise!”
By the time I managed to wrangle him into a leash and into the living room, the timer had gone off, and I pulled the pan of brownies—now with a puffy marshmallow top—back out of the oven and put it on a rack to cool while we walked. I’d finish it with a thick, fudgy frosting and try not to eat half the pan before the store opened. This particular recipe was popular with both the customers and me, and I’d made several batches over the past few weeks.
I had opened the back door and was coaxing a reluctant Winston down the steps to the beach path when my phone rang. I picked up as I got to the bottom of the steps; it was my friend Denise, who managed Sea Beans coffee shop.
“Got some free time this afternoon?” she asked.
“I do, actually,” I said. My assistant, Bethany, and my daughter, Caroline, were scheduled to take over the store from two to closing. “What did you have in mind?”
“I need to run something by you, and I thought maybe we could go blueberry picking and talk.”
“Everything okay?”
“It is,” she said. “I just… I’m not sure what to do about something. I can’t go into it now, but can I pick you up?”
“I’ll be free at two,” I said.
“I’ll swing by then,” she said. “Thanks.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I told her, and hung up, wondering what she needed to talk about. Last I’d heard, business was good at the coffee shop, and the staff was doing great, but as I was quickly learning, all kinds of things could come up when you ran a small business. Low sales, for example, I thought with a twinge of worry; the last month’s receipts had been about 20 percent short of what I’d hoped, and since summer was the big season in Snug Harbor, I really needed to find a way to get customers in the door. As we walked down the path to the beach, I glanced over my shoulder at the cottage, which was nestled among trees at the top of a gentle hill. Although I loved that the store was a little off the beaten path—I didn’t have to listen to the questionable live music acts at some of the restaurants closer to the center of Snug Harbor’s lively downtown—traffic was definitely lighter than it would be if I were on the main street. I enjoyed lovely views of Snug Island and the harbor, instead of the back of another building, but the downside was that fewer people made it out to the fringes to shop and look for souvenirs. Was there some way to get customers to walk down to Seaside Cottage Books? I wondered.
I’d have to pick Denise’s brain about it, I decided as I brushed past the blooming roses—I still marveled at their deep magenta petals and winy scent—and paused as Winston decided to relieve himself on a rounded hump of granite.
The morning was fresh and clean and new. As I got to the beach, Winston sniffing busily and trailing just a bit behind me, I turned toward town, eyes sweeping the wet pebbly beach, looking, as always, for gleaming chunks of sea glass. As I walked toward town, I could hear the sound of dishes clattering from one of the several restaurants that backed the harbor, along wit
h the low call of a horn as one of the bigger tourist boats left the dock—I was guessing it might be one of the birdwatching cruises, or a whale watch. Whale-watching was on my bucket list for the summer. I’d heard one or two occasionally came close to shore, and I’d spotted a few porpoises and dolphins in the harbor—always a thrill—but there was something magical about seeing those massive creatures slipping through the water. It always amazed me to think that they lived in another world, so close to and yet so far from our own.
Winston tugged at the leash, bringing me back to the beach; at the same time, I spotted a gleam of white against the gray of the rocks and the blue of broken mussel shells. I stooped down to pick up what looked like the delicate handle of a cup, smoothed with age; a part of the cup still attached to the graceful arch of white china. Who had sipped from this cup? And how had it ended up tumbled on the ocean’s floor?
I was full of dreamy ideas today, I thought as I tucked the treasure into my pocket. If only I could translate some of them into profitable action items. The anxiety made me hungry for chocolate, or maybe a piece of coffee cake from Sea Beans, but even small extravagances weren’t in the budget at the moment. I’d have to settle for a Mississippi Mud Bar when I got home. Not that that was by any means a sacrifice.
A cool breeze ruffled Winston’s fur as he and I clambered over one of the granite boulders near the dock. Barnacles encrusted the weather-beaten piers, and seagulls called overhead, searching for an opportunity to grab a snack from an unwary tourist.
As I picked my way through the granite boulders with Winston at my side, a voice drifted over from the shore path above us. “What are you going to do with the body?”
I perked up.
“I figure we can weight it down and sink it,” a second voice replied.
I looked up to see who it was, but a clump of rosebushes obscured my view. It was definitely a man and a woman.
“We want it to turn up, though,” the woman said
“True,” he acknowledged. “Maybe we don’t bother moving it.”
“It depends on where we do it,” she said. “And how.”
As they spoke, I crept to one side, hoping to find a gap in the bushes. I caught a glimpse of brown hair glinting in the sunlight, and maybe a blue shirt, but that was it. How was I going to find out who these people were?
“Poison?’ he suggested
“How would we get it to her?”
“True,” the man said. “It bears thinking about. We have time.”
“Not too much, though,” the woman warned. “We’ve got to get on with it.”
“All unpleasant tasks grow when you put them off,” he said. “I guess you’re right. As he spoke, I could hear the voice drifting away; I’d gone the wrong direction. I made a sharp turn and hurried to the other end of the rose bushes, hoping to catch a glimpse of the pair, but Winston darted in front of me as I was about to jump to another rock. I spun in mid-air, trying not to squash him, and my foot slid between two rocks, wrenching sideways. I yelped and sat down hard, then stood up, testing it gingerly as Winston eyed me with concern. It was sore, but not broken… if anything, a mild sprain.
Limping just a little bit, I hurried as best I could toward where the voices had headed, but by the time I got to the end of the line of rose bushes, no one was in sight.
Pre-order your copy of The Lies that Bind now to find out what happens next… release is just days away! (Kindle edition available for pre-order now… paperback available at release date, December 30.)
