Charlotte Moore. Judith Bowen
my, yes. Old fool, wouldn’t take no help from nobody.” The waitress brought her tea. “They say when he ran out of wood he busted up good furniture to put in the stove—”
“No!” Charlotte put her hand over her mouth. “He’s supposed to have a wonderful collection. Surely he didn’t put it in—in the fire?”
The waitress set Charlotte’s breakfast in front of her. “Just firewood to him. They say the place has been cleaned up some now. There’s a grandson there, I heard, lookin’ after things. One of Bertie’s boys, ain’t he, Sid?”
The man at the counter nodded. “Nick Deacon, Bertie’s youngest.”
“Anyways. Young fella from Massachusetts or Connecticut or somewheres down there in the Boston States— You want anything else, honey, you just holler.” The waitress clumped her way back toward the kitchen.
Charlotte poured the tea before it got too strong and added milk. The Rathbone collection—most of it dating back to the turn of the twentieth century—had been assembled mainly by the father and uncle of this Old Man Rathbone, brothers who’d settled the area just north of Montague, in Cardigan River, and accumulated a fortune from shipping and mercantile interests in the first half of the century. The late owner had been a widower for many years. Charlotte knew nothing about any family, but then, that wasn’t her area. The heirs, the estate, the will—lawyers took care of things like that. Her job was to catalog and estimate a fair price for the art and furniture collection.
“Anything else, dear?” The waitress called from behind the counter. Sid put his paper to one side and swung around, too.
Charlotte took a big breath. Why not? “You know of Petty Cove Retrievers?”
“You bet. That’s out there close by the estate you’re a-goin’ to.” Sid frowned.
“You know a Mr. Connery?”
“A Mr. Connery?” Sid and the waitress looked at each other again. “Which one, that’s the question,” he continued, smiling. “Connerys is thick as fleas on a dog’s back around here. Why Gladys here’s mother was a Connery, wasn’t she, Gladys. And there’s Connerys out at Princess Point and some west of town here and plenty up north, all the way to Bay Fortune, ain’t that right, Gladys? That’s where Amos Connery is, married to your cousin, ain’t he?”
Gladys topped up Sid’s coffee again. “That’s right. Amos married Ruthie, my second cousin.”
“I suppose you’d be lookin’ for a particular Connery, miss?” Sid’s face became suspicious, as though he’d remembered he was talking to an outsider, someone From Away, not an Islander.
Charlotte nodded and picked up her windbreaker, then moved toward the cash register. “Someone my sister went to school with years ago in Toronto.”
“Oh?” Sid shot another glance at the waitress.
Charlotte handed over a ten-dollar bill and received change, with the two of them regarding her curiously the whole time. “Liam Connery. You know him?” Charlotte left a two-dollar tip and pocketed her remaining change.
“Oh, we know him, all right—don’t we, Gladys?” The waitress nodded, her cheerful face suddenly worried looking. “Ah, no, miss,” Sid added, shaking his head. “You don’t want to look up that Mr. Connery. He’s an ornery bugger. Keeps to himself and he don’t like strangers snooping around.”
“But he has the kennel, right?” Charlotte persisted.
“That he does. Over to Petty Cove, next to Cardigan River, right near where you’re headed.” Sid rattled his newspaper loudly and snapped it against the counter, as though dismissing both her and her foolishness. “You might ask at Bristol’s Store. They’ll give you directions, if you’ve got your mind made up.”
“I do. I’m delivering a dog to him, you see.”
“Oh?” Sid’s expression was skeptical. “Well, I suppose that’s all right, then.”
“Thanks for the lovely breakfast,” Charlotte said, smiling at the waitress, who beamed back. “I’ll be on my way.”
Charlotte needed gas and then she had to find a place where she and Maggie could get out and stretch. Maggie had been patient with the limited exercise she’d had over the past four days. She was due for a good run; so was Charlotte. The gas attendant at the Irving station gave her directions to a beach usually deserted at this time of year, a few miles north of town.
Maggie whined as Charlotte put the vehicle into gear and turned onto the highway. The sign mentioned Georgetown and Cardigan River, as well as Annandale, Souris and East Point farther along.
Petty Cove, where Liam Connery had his kennel, was just a speck on the road map, but the beach she’d been directed to had to be pretty close to the cove. Maybe she’d run across him accidentally. What, sunning himself on the sand? Now, there was a ridiculous idea!
Sure, the place was small and everybody knew everybody—the entire island, Canada’s smallest province, had only 130,000 people—but how likely was it that she’d meet Liam Connery before she was ready to meet him? Not very. She had two free days until Monday, when she was due to deliver Maggie, according to her sister’s arrangements, and meet Mr. Busby from the Halifax auction house. Charlotte was looking forward to spending the weekend touring around with Maggie, maybe taking a drive up north, right to the end of the Island, at East Point. Or going to the province’s capital, Charlottetown, for the day.
She was in no real hurry to meet her first-ever crush again, now that she was actually here. Besides, what had they said at the diner? That Liam Connery was an ornery bugger who didn’t take to strangers?
Of course, she wasn’t really a stranger, was she? She was a—ta-dum! Charlotte imagined thirties’ radio music—“Voice from the Past.” Not that Liam Connery would give a tinker’s damn.
And what past? she reminded herself. She was the one who’d been in love with him, the lean, intense boy with the funny accent in her sister’s class. He might remember Laurel, but he sure wasn’t going to remember Laurel’s little sister, a scrawny kid with a pixie cut and a head full of dreams.
That didn’t matter; the idea back at the lodge reunion was just to see what had happened to the boy you’d had your first crush on. It was an exercise in curiosity, pure and simple. Had he turned out the way you’d imagined he would—wonderful, sexy, sensitive? Or was he paunchy and balding with a bad golf game and half-a-dozen kids? Was he the CEO of the local duct-cleaning service? Was he married? In jail? Dead?
That was all. Liam Connery, she remembered, had dreamed of flying. Turned out he’d become a dog breeder, of all things. C’est la vie.
No one, she was sure, not even her—and Charlotte knew she was definitely a romantic—expected this little exercise to be anything more than that. They’d have a coffee together, maybe, talk over old times—not that they had many in common—and move on. Their lives might have overlapped briefly once, but they didn’t overlap now.
She had to admit, though, she was genuinely curious. “Ornery bugger” didn’t scare her. Not unless it was shotgun-slinging ornery, and she doubted that.
Charlotte slowed, peering at the narrow road that had suddenly materialized to the left. Okay. This had to be the beach road—exactly one mile from the turnoff. That was what the man had said—exactly one mile, which meant 1.2 kilometers. Distance in Canada was measured in kilometers now, not that they seemed to have noticed that little detail on Prince Edward Island.
The rutted dirt lane led across an open field studded with frozen, rotted potatoes left after harvest, and wound downward toward the beach. Charlotte bumped along slowly. And happily.
The sun was high in the sky—it was noon—and there was no one, absolutely no one, on this deserted red sand beach. The scene before her was straight out of a travel brochure, except that there were no tourists here now and probably weren’t