Page 13 of First Street (Harbor View Cozy Fantasy #1)

Chapter Ten

Skye

The mess downstairs was daunting, but it had to be dealt with. By eight a.m., I was showered and dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. Coffee in hand, I was ready to get the day started. Research was second nature to me, an essential part of my job.

Eons ago, back when I was still in college, I wanted to be an engineer.

But that lasted only three semesters before I switched to English.

As it turned out, that unlikely combination would shape my career.

I became a freelancer, writing articles for tech journals and translating complex research pieces on innovations into accessible, engaging and readable stories.

I interviewed developers and startup entrepreneurs, always looking for the human angle behind emerging technologies.

Working remotely meant I could be there for Ocean as she grew up.

Because of my line of work, I’d already looked into the steps I needed to take, now that Clare was gone. I knew I had to locate the important documents. Checkbook, credit cards, insurance papers, Social Security information.

I went right for the file cabinet in the front room that sat beside my mother’s desk.

It was half-hidden now behind a stack of mismatched furniture.

I knew it would have everything from my childhood immunization records and middle school art masterpieces to the ledger books she used while running the antique shop.

The disarray was so unlike Clare. She was always meticulous about how she kept that business space. There was barely enough room for me to pull out the battered old desk chair she’d used since I was a kid. And I still had to move a few things around to gain access to the cabinet.

Jo had not made an appearance so far today, and Ocean was still asleep. I’d been doing my best to shift the furniture around as quietly as possible.

A sharp knock at the front door broke the silence, and I froze. I hustled over to a front window and peeked out.

An ancient pickup truck was parked crookedly in the driveway behind Clare’s station wagon. Bernie Doyle. It was the same truck he’d been driving since I was in grade school.

When I opened the door, Bernie seemed to be studying the overgrown weeds in the yard.

A lit cigarette hung from the corner of a hard mouth.

Average height, wiry build, completely bald except for a few stubborn wisps that refused to give up.

A retired fireman. And for as long as I could remember, he always sported a Band-Aid on his forehead from run-ins with doors, ladders, or life itself. He had one there today too.

Bernie was Clare’s go-to guy. Handyman, moving guy, errand-runner, and occasional partner in gossip. If there was something she couldn’t do and needed done, he was the person for the job. When he showed up, usually unannounced, he always smelled of cigarettes and WD-40.

He dropped his current butt and crushed it under his boot when he saw me.

“How ya holding up, kid?” he growled with a voice like gravel.

“Okay,” I said softly, opening the door wide and motioning for him to come in. “Want some coffee?”

“Yeah. Why not,” he grumbled. “I’m already jittery enough to climb a ladder and never touch a rung. Doctor keeps nagging me to cut back, but at this point, coffee’s the only thing keeping me civil. Pour me a cup.”

“Did your doctor say anything about quitting smoking?”

Bernie closed the door behind him and followed me into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he said. “Told me to quit a dozen times. I told him I’ll think about it right after I stop breathing.”

I hid my smile, remembering all the stories Clare used to tell me about riding Bernie to quit. She didn’t want him kicking the bucket on her watch.

And now, she was gone.

“A dash of milk and two sugars?”

“Good memory.” He took the cup from my hand, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

Every time I saw someone who knew my mother, grief surged up, threatening to choke me. I just hadn’t fully grasped the fact that I’d lost her. Not yet. Historically, the women in her family lived well into their nineties, and Clare still had so much life left in her.

I sat down across from him.

“She should still be sitting right here,” he said.

“That’s true. Her story wasn’t close to finished yet.”

“Nope. She still had too many chores to do.”

“Talk about chores.” I pointed toward the front of the house. “What the heck’s going on here? All this extra furniture. The barn’s packed too. What’d she do, buy someone else’s business?”

He raised an eyebrow and shook his head.

“Nope, just some stuff from a big house over on Fourth Street. I told her it was crazy. She had no room for that much furniture. Took us two trips to get it all here. Clare just said, ‘Drop it wherever you can find room.’ Me and my crew were supposed to come back the next day to either move things around or haul what she didn’t want to the dump. ”

“You saw her the morning before she died.”

“Sure did.” He took a gulp of his coffee. His face grew sad, and he stared into his mug. “Next morning, I had a job early, and by the time me and my boys got here, the ambulance was in front. The EMTs were already in the barn. Arthur and I just stood in the driveway while they took her out.”

A sharp ache pulsed behind my eyes as I rubbed at the tension headache gnawing at me. The thought of her on a gurney, being handled by strangers. It was too much to bear. Bernie must’ve seen it in my face, because he reached over and laid his leathery palm gently on my hand.

“I’m really sorry, kid.”

My phone dinged. I pulled it from my pocket. A text from Arthur.

Are you up?

Yep. Bernie’s here.

I’m coming over.

Front door’s open. Want coffee?

Darling Skye, you couldn’t make coffee if your life depended on it. I'll bring my own, thanks.

Arthur was from the school of thought that full sentences were necessary in a text. I told Bernie what was going on. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and motioned toward me for permission.

“Clare’s house, Clare’s rules,” I reminded him. Which meant no smoking inside.

He huffed and pocketed the pack as Arthur knocked once and came in.

The two men had known each other for years, and their relationship was a mix of respect and old-school rivalry.

Bernie was also the handyman he used. But from the stories Clare told me, Arthur’s obsession with perfection always drove the older man crazy.

‘To the brink of setting the bookstore on fire and being done with it. Or worse yet, to charging Arthur triple the going rate for a job.’

They nodded a greeting.

“Look, Bernard,” Arthur said in his dryest tone. “I know you never got paid for the last job. But it’s too soon to shake down the kid. She just got here.”

Bernie snorted. “I’m here to pay my respects, not collect a damn bill.” He turned to me with a wink. “Tell this one if I said anything about money. He’s always accusing me of stuff.”

“I’m so sorry you weren’t paid,” I told him. “I didn’t know.”

Clare had always been on top of things like that.

In fact, more times than I could count, while I was in California, a text would show up out of the blue saying, ‘Check the account’.

It was as if she knew exactly when I was struggling financially, and I was always grateful. Her generosity toward me had no limits.

“Do you have the invoice? I can?—”

“No need,” Bernie cut in. “The job’s not done yet. We can talk money once you’re settled and we’ve cleaned up this mess.”

“You’re a good man, Bernie.” I touched his hand. “Thank you.”

Arthur’s expression was comical. Half eye-roll, half grin. As if he couldn’t believe Bernie was getting credit for being decent. But he didn’t argue.

“I’ll leave you two be,” Bernie said, starting to rise from his chair. “Just give me a call when you’re ready for me to come back and help clear out the front room and the barn.”

“Hold your horses,” Arthur said, motioning for him to sit back down. “I’ve got something here I think you both need to see.”

My head was starting to throb. I got up, went to Clare’s medicine cabinet in the half bath and rummaged through until I found a bottle of acetaminophen. I swallowed two pills with a sip of water, then returned to the table.

“Remember the neighbor’s security camera? The New York shysters?” Arthur had propped his phone against his coffee cup so we could all see the screen. “He sent me the footage from the night Clare died.”

I focused on my breathing, silently begging the headache to ease.

Arthur hit play. It was a view of First Street and the sidewalk in front of Clare’s driveway. A car passed. No pedestrians.

Bernie yawned and said, “If I wanted to stare at nothing, I’d go watch your committee meetings at Town Hall.”

“Hold on,” Arthur said.

Sure enough, at that moment, a tall figure in a hoodie came into view and stopped on the sidewalk by the driveway. He looked in the direction of the Salt Box, then glanced up and down the empty street. The three of us watched as he quickly vanished from view in the direction of the barn.

“Damn it,” Bernie muttered under his breath.

Arthur fast-forwarded the video, and in the next shot, the same person came back into view, quickly disappearing down the street.

Arthur backed up the video and zoomed in on the man’s face.

I didn’t recognize him. Though, to be fair, I hadn’t lived here in years. “Who is he?”

“Mateo.” The handyman cursed under his breath. “One of my helpers. He’ll be senior at the high school this fall. Comes in before and after classes. Weekends too. He’s a good kid. Rough home life, lots of family trouble. But damn it, he’s solid. What the hell is he doing here?”

“I have to hand this over to the sheriff,” Arthur said.

“Don’t,” Bernie barked. “You know what happens to kids like him. Toss ’em in jail and lose the key. That boy can’t afford a lawyer. His family depends on every dime he makes and brings home.”

He kept talking about Mateo as I looked closer at the image on Arthur’s phone. It was difficult to make out his features, shadowed by the hoodie.

“Let me bring him here after school this afternoon,” Bernie said. “You can talk to him then. He was helping me move furniture into the barn that morning. There’s got to be a reason why he came back. He only turned seventeen last month. I don’t want to ruin his life if he can explain.”

I had a teenager. I knew how vulnerable they were and how easily they made reckless decisions.

The impulsiveness, the need to prove themselves, it made them susceptible to things they didn’t fully understand.

I had seen the stupid choices, the mistakes made in the heat of the moment.

My head was still pounding, but I forced myself to focus.

One thing was for sure. The three of us had a better chance of getting answers than some bored sheriff sitting behind his desk.

I’d met Craggs. He was more focused on his breakfast and his retirement than on getting to the bottom of any possible crime.

He’d definitely shown no interest in figuring out what happened to Clair.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk to him this afternoon.”