After she’d given him the information he wanted and been soothed to the best of her ability, Amanda stood for a moment at the window, phone in hand. She glimpsed movement and spotted Sarah approaching up the path, carrying a basket on her arm.
Amanda opened the door even before Sarah reached it. Here was her chance to speak to Sarah privately, and she hadn’t had to go looking for it. That seemed to bode well for her goal.
“Sarah, hi. Come in.”
“I don’t want to disturb you. Are you getting settled in all right?” Sarah’s cheeks were like two red apples when she smiled.
“I’m all set. Thanks again, so much. The cottage is perfect. As you can see, Barney is making himself right at home.”
Stepping inside, Sarah glanced at Barney, who was sitting up, looking, Amanda hoped, like a perfect gentleman. “It’s gut you have him. I’d hate to think of you alone here.”
Amanda shook her head. “I wouldn’t be lonely, but he is good company.” Sarah probably couldn’t understand that, living in a house with so many family members crammed in.
“Well, here is some streusel coffee cake, just in case you get hungry before you have a chance to get groceries in. And milk. Just to tide you over.”
“That’s so nice of you.” Amanda took the basket and set it on the kitchen table. The coffee cake looked so delicious she was tempted to have a piece immediately.
“Ach, it’s nothing.” Sarah waved a hand to dismiss her kind gesture. “I’m sure you have things to do. Trey said you have business in town.”
Something about that sentence made it into a question. It seemed Sarah was as curious about her as she was about what Sarah might know.
“I’m here looking into some questions that came up after my mother’s recent death. There seemed to be a...a connection to Echo Falls.” How could she find out anything and still be as careful as Trey and Robert seemed to want?
“Ach, I’m so sorry for your loss.” Sarah’s face clouded, and she reached out and touched Amanda’s hand lightly in sympathy. “It’s hard to lose your mother.”
Amanda nodded, her throat tightening. “Yes.”
“So you said something about Echo Falls? Was your mother from here?” Sarah leaned against the table as if prepared to stay and talk for a while.
“Not exactly.” She hesitated, trying to think how to ask the questions she wanted without getting into an explanation she didn’t want to give. “But I think she may have been friends with someone who grew up here.”
“Yah?” Sarah looked puzzled but interested.
“You might have known her. She died in an accident at the falls. Her name was Melanie Winthrop.”
For an instant Sarah’s face seemed to freeze. Then, before Amanda could say anything, she’d turned away and headed for the door.
“I... I’d forgotten something I must do. I’m sorry. I can’t help you.” She left without waiting for a goodbye.
Amanda stood at the door and watched her go—fleeing, almost, as if from something she didn’t want to face. Slowly she closed the door.
Well. Amanda blew out a long breath. If that was the sort of reception she’d get whenever she mentioned the name Melanie Winthrop in this town, she wasn’t likely to find out anything.
* * *
LEAVING THE LIBRARY behind the next day, Amanda walked toward the café. She’d agreed to meet Trey there for lunch to share the fruits of their efforts. When she’d suggested that they didn’t need to have lunch together to do that, he’d countered with the fact that they’d have lunch in any event, so they may as well eat while they talked.
She hadn’t found an argument to that, at least not without coming out and admitting that she was trying to prevent a repeat of the feelings she’d experienced the previous day at the falls.
Trey, however, seemed friendly in a businesslike way, and his manner reassured her. Once Esther waved them to a table in the corner, he looked around as if something were missing.
“No guard dog today?”
Amanda shook her head. “I thought he’d better stay at the cottage. Somehow I didn’t think he’d be welcome at the library.”
“No, I don’t think so. Mrs. Gifford runs a tight ship. She used to make us kids empty our pockets before we went back to the stacks, just to be sure no sticky candy was going to get on her books.”
She had to smile. “I did think her rather intimidating. To say nothing of curious. She seemed to find a lot of reasons to walk behind me while I was scanning the microfiche.”
“That’s unfortunate, but it’s about what I expected. It won’t be possible to keep your mission a secret very long.”
Trey seemed to take that more seriously than she did. Maybe it was a sign of his mixed loyalties. Or possibly being overly cautious was part of the attorney’s job description.
“I never thought keeping it quiet was a viable option. If I’m going to find answers, people will have to know what the questions are.” A spurt of annoyance went through her. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” His eyebrows lifted, giving his face a momentary look of caricature. “The Winthrop family might well take offense at a stranger bringing up the painful past.” He held up a hand when she would have spoken. “Okay, let’s not go over the same ground again, especially when Esther is heading this way.”
Maybe he was right. She tried to focus on the menu, but ended up ordering the chicken potpie because Esther seemed to expect it. Meanwhile she wrestled with the unpalatable fact that if she made enemies of these people to start with, they were hardly likely to be cooperative.
Once Esther had gone, Trey glanced around the café, and he was apparently satisfied that the other customers were focused on their own meals and conversations. “How did you make out with the newspaper accounts?”
Amanda shrugged off her irritation. “Slim, very slim. Pictures of the falls, an account of the difficulty the volunteers had in bringing her out, a sketchy account of her being spotted by a hiker. And a carefully worded obituary a day later.” She toyed with her spoon. “It allowed me to visualize Melanie a little better, but it was short on helpful facts. I ran across a photo of her,” she said, setting it on the table. “She looked very young, very naive. She was barely eighteen when she died.” That was inexpressibly sad. Amanda glanced at Trey, to find him studying her face. “What? Do you see a resemblance?”
“Not in coloring, so much, but maybe in your features. What do you think?”
“I don’t know.” She’d wanted some confirmation one way or the other in the photo, but she didn’t see it. Certainly no one had ever said she looked like Juliet, and now she knew why. “For an instant I thought she looked familiar, but then it passed. Anyway, a black-and-white newspaper photo hardly gives an idea of how someone looks.”
“True enough. Did the newspaper say anything about where Melanie had been? Or mention her leaving town at all?”
Amanda shook her head. “It said she’d recently returned from a visit to friends in New York. I suppose that was what the family told the reporter.”
“And he’d be unlikely to print anything else, even though the town had been whispering about Melanie’s departure for months.”
“But what was the point, if people already guessed the truth?” She let her exasperation spill over. “What’s the use of trying to manipulate the news, then?”
“Darned