“And she’s Dan Jeffrey’s—or Roger Hopkins’s—cousin.”
“So everyone says. Hopkins is a good old Cape Cod name, of course. There was a Hopkins on the Mayflower. Although I don’t know if there’s any connection to these Hopkins! Around here, everyone wants to claim a Mayflower connection.”
“Diana says her parents lived in that house when she was a baby.”
A lady Schoenhut acrobat with a bisque head fell over, and Gussie stopped to lean her against the larger of the two elephants in the circus parade she was setting up. “That would have been twenty years or so ago. I don’t remember. Maybe Ellen would. Ben would have been a baby then, too. New mothers remember other new mothers.”
“This morning Cordelia told me the house wasn’t hers until three years ago. It belonged to Roger Hopkins.”
“Three years ago? That would have been before he ‘died’ in Colorado,” Gussie said. “Did he give it to her or did she buy it?”
“From the way she put it, I assumed he’d given it to her,” Maggie said.
“I never had the feeling Cordelia had much money,” said Gussie. “Ellen would know more, but that little house of hers must be worth a small fortune. It has beach front. I’d guess its value is over half a million. Maybe closer to a million. Her property taxes must be incredible. A lot of local families have had to sell their homes because they can’t afford the taxes in the current market. I wonder how Cordelia has been paying hers? Those dolls she makes don’t sell that well.”
“She told me that until she owned the house three years ago her cousin sent her money for taxes and maintenance,” said Maggie.
“Interesting,” said Gussie. “He must have had a very good job at that bank in Colorado. Or she must have another source of income.” She looked at her watch. “We have to get going. We’re meeting Jim at the bakery. A wedding cake tasting awaits us.”
Josie’s Bakery, home of the delectable morning pastries, employed a pastry chef who specialized in creating spectacular wedding cakes. Luigi Ferrante greeted Gussie at the door and whisked them away to a private room.
“Ah, it is the bride! I have made samples of three cakes, just as you and your handsome groom requested! Come in, come in!” He moved a small table and several chairs so the table was in front of Gussie, and the chairs were arranged around it. “And where is the groom? We do not want to start without him!”
“Here he is,” said Jim, slightly out of breath, as he pushed through the heavy door, and kissed Gussie. “What a morning. But I made it! I see you haven’t started yet.”
“We would not begin without the groom,” said Mr. Ferrante, hovering around the three of them. “Now, let me remind you what cake you have selected.”
He opened a loose-leaf notebook filled with photographs of elaborately decorated cakes and flipped to the page he’d marked: a four-layer cake with white trim, topped by white roses made of frosting and a cascade of roses curving down the side.
“Oh, it’s lovely!” said Maggie. “Very elegant.”
“Now, I need you to make very certain this is the one you want.”
Gussie and Jim looked at each other. Gussie nodded. “We’re positive. It’s exactly what we want. You know we considered a lot of options. But we liked the flowers best. We almost went with real flowers, Maggie, but we decided the ones Mr. Ferrante made were so lovely we would go with one of his special creations.”
“Very good,” Mr. Ferrante beamed.
“And we want a four-layer lemon cake with chocolate filling between two layers and raspberry for the other one,” Jim added.
“Ah, yes! That will be perfect!” agreed Mr. Ferrante. “The flavors of chocolate and raspberry are certainly very…romantic, wouldn’t you say? Almost an aphrodisiac! For a wedding night, very appropriate.”
Maggie almost choked.
Jim kept smiling. “Shall we taste those cake samples now, Mr. Ferrante? We’re looking forward to deciding which of your delicious lemon cakes we’ll choose. ”
“Of course, of course!”
And as Maggie tasted the samples, all of which were delicious as far as she was concerned, she couldn’t help thinking about the note someone from the Lazy Lobster had left for her.
She needed to talk with someone connected with that baseball team.
Chapter 21
Kirtland Raspberry. Hand-colored steel engraving of a raspberry branch, showing seven ripe red raspberries and five leaves. Published by New York Commissioner of Agriculture, 1866. Now considered an “heirloom raspberry,” the Kirtland was a new variety in 1866, developed by Dr. Jared Peter Kirtland (1793-1877), a nineteenth-century naturalist from Lakewood, Ohio, who was one of the founders of both the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Western Reserve Medical School. 5.5 x 9 inches. Price: $45.
Any food would have been a letdown after tasting that wedding cake, and when Jim said he’d need to talk to Gussie about the guest list (“Some of the Southern cousins don’t seem to be on the list at all, and others are having trouble getting plane reservations into Boston”) over lunch, Maggie decided to bow out.
“I’d like to wander around Winslow and sightsee,” she said, before either of them could interrupt her. “And I know you’ll want to rest after lunch, Gussie. Why don’t I meet you back at the store at about three-thirty. We can finish unpacking the books and toys for the back wall then.” She waved and kept walking.
She wanted some time by herself.
And she couldn’t add anything to discussions about Southern relatives.
Her walk took her to the Winslow Library. People kept referring to the death of Tony Silva last spring. The local newspaper would give more details. Not every small-town paper was on the Internet yet.
The librarian at the front desk was happy to refer her to the reading room, where stacks of local newspapers were piled on a bookcase along with copies of the Boston Globe. Of course, Maggie immediately realized, the disadvantage to having the actual newspapers in front of her was, there was no index.
But she hadn’t gotten her doctoral degree without being comfortable with research challenges. Tony Silva had died last spring; everyone agreed about that. And it had shaken the town. It had certainly been a front page story locally. She’d start there.
She started looking in February; she found the headline in mid-March. TONY SILVA, 15, WINSLOW FRESHMAN, FOUND DEAD. She started reading. And taking notes. Then, based on what she’d read, she went back to issues earlier in the year. And then to later issues.
By the time she’d finished, Maggie had a much better idea of what had happened in Winslow. It was more complicated than one boy having somehow, possibly mistakenly, taken an overdose of prescription medications.
Small towns, Maggie kept reminding herself. Small towns took care of their own.
Beginning as early as January the “Winslow Police Blotter” had reported teen parties that were rowdy and “out of control,” and where there was “no adult supervision present.” Some of the parties included young people, usually boys, as young as thirteen.
Some gatherings appeared to have been at closed-up homes belonging to summer people, because trespassing was among the charges mentioned. In most cases charges were dropped and the “juveniles were remanded to their parents.”
Right, Maggie thought. Send them home with a lecture.
In mid-February a small article on the front page announced a new lecture series at the high school focused on both the medical and legal problems of drugs and alcohol. The school doctor was to talk about the medical dangers of substance abuse, and Chief Irons would discuss the legal consequences. That would certainly make a difference to teenagers, Maggie thought. Explain to the kids they’re rotting their brains; they’ll change their evil ways and never have another drink or touch a joint again. Right. That’s always worked. And make sure you tell them they’re breaking the law, since they never knew that.