Everything had turned out perfectly. Of course, Charlotte was making the trip, anyway, not only to replenish the antiques, folk art and other stock for her one-woman decorative arts supply business, which served a small clientele in the design and decor trade, but to carry out a very special estate appraisal on Prince Edward Island. Now, thanks to her sister, she also had an excellent excuse to meet her first love again, face-to-face—she had a dog to deliver to his kennel. He raised and trained retrievers and hunting dogs, it turned out. So much for being a pilot.
Charlotte studied the highway signs. She was on Route 104, near the exit to Pictou, where she planned to get something to eat, and Caribou, Nova Scotia, the ferry terminal. She slowed as she entered the Pictou municipal limits, watching for a fast-food outlet, preferably with a strip of grass where she could let Maggie out for a pee. She’d miss Maggie. Maggie had been wonderful company on the long drive, plus a Labrador retriever was a dog with a very large bark and, well, you never knew what could happen, a woman traveling alone…
According to Laurel’s plan she’d leave Maggie at Connery’s kennel to be bred to one of his dogs, and then, when the deed was done, Maggie would be crated and put on a plane back to Toronto. Connery would take care of all that, while Charlotte went about the rest of her business on the island.
“Nearly there, Maggie, my girl,” Charlotte murmured, slowing to inspect a seedy-looking fish-and-chip joint on Water Street. It was well past the supper hour and a gang of teens hung around the door, hooting at cars that drove by. She drove on, finally stopping for take-out at Amy’s Pizzeria in a residential area on the way out of town—a medium, all-dressed, a can of Pepsi, a tin of Altoid mints, which she was addicted to and a liter of water.
There were six cars at the dock when she arrived, an hour before the ferry sailed at ten o’clock. Charlotte got out of the Suburban and pulled on a heavy wool sweater. She flipped her hair over the collar, stretched and shivered, clasping her arms around herself. It was dark already, just after nine in the evening and past the fall equinox by two weeks, but the causeway was well-lit.
She took a deep breath. It was good to smell the sea air again, to hear the surf sucking at the shoreline. The waves were never very high in the Northumberland Strait, protected as the waterway was by the large mass of Prince Edward Island to the north, and Cape Breton to the northeast, shielding the Gulf of St. Lawrence from the wilder action of the north Atlantic. But sea air was sea air.
She ate her pizza, which was cold by now, sitting on a log that marked the edge of the parking lot, while Maggie explored. Then she snapped on Maggie’s leash for a walk down by the water—and was glad she had, when a cocker spaniel, also leashed, practically pulled his owner over trying to get near them. He began sniffing avidly at Maggie’s back end. The leash was a precaution; Maggie wasn’t supposed to come into estrus for another couple of weeks, according to Laurel, who knew about these things. Charlotte, who knew nothing about these things, didn’t want to take any chances. Laurel would kill her if Maggie ended up having the wrong dog’s puppies.
“Just trying to make friends.” The older woman who owned the spaniel apologized. She seemed a little discomfited at her dog’s determination to try again, oblivious to Maggie’s low growl. “Come here, Freddy! Stop that now!”
“Yes,” Charlotte said noncommittally, smiling. They moved away, down the rocky beach. She’d come across the comment many times. It was true; dogs were more interested in checking out each other’s rear ends than anything else, it seemed. She’d gotten over the embarrassment long ago.
“Come on, Maggs.” Charlotte led her back to the vehicle, where she shared the last two pieces of pizza with her beside the truck. Charlotte rubbed the retriever’s ears and bent down to kiss the top of her glossy black head. “Good girl! What would I do without you?”
And she meant it.
THIS TRIP to Prince Edward Island was a lot more important than just trying to finagle a meeting with her lost first love, Charlotte mused as she gazed over the dark water the ferry ploughed through on its way across Northumberland Strait. Or doing her sister a favor. The bid she’d won—to appraise one of the country’s fabled and nearly unknown collections of Canadiana furniture and folk art—was a definite coup for Charlotte Moore FolkArt Specialties. The extra option to help oversee the dispersal sale, together with the representative from Busby’s, the Halifax auction firm in charge, was icing on the cake.
Good money and a three-or four-week job. Then she’d continue with her annual fall tour of small sales and estate auctions throughout the Maritimes and New England, during which she’d stuff the Suburban to the roof with lamps, quilts, baskets, mats and folk art treasures—spending maybe another leisurely three or four weeks. She’d enjoy the fall colors along with the tourists, and arrive back in Toronto in time for the pre-Christmas rush. Her buyers were always eager for anything she brought back, to supply decorators or to sell to the public in their own retail outlets. Charlotte’s shop, which wasn’t really a shop since she just rented warehouse space and ran her business from a home office with the occasional help of a part-time assistant, was basically closed until she returned.
As she drove off the boat at midnight, she decided taking the last ferry hadn’t been one of her better ideas. She’d seen nothing during the ninety-minute crossing in the dark, and here, at the other terminal, Wood Island, there was no hotel, no motel, no bed-and-breakfast, nothing. Which meant a drive to Montague, another half hour, where she’d have to try and find accommodations that would take both her and Maggie. After enquiring at two that didn’t allow dogs, no matter how well-behaved, she said the hell with it and checked into a rather shabby motel a few miles out of town, leaving Maggie in the Suburban overnight. She’d done it before.
By the time Charlotte drove back into Montague for breakfast the next day, deciding on a place called Mackenzie’s Lunch, it was nearly ten o’clock. The diner was typical of the sort you’d find in any small town—lino floors, a counter with eight or ten stools, and booths lining the opposite wall with several Formica-topped tables between. A motherly looking waitress with swollen ankles came over to take her order. There was only one other customer, a man wearing a Husqvarna cap at the counter, with a newspaper spread out in front of him.
“Clam rolls for breakfast?” Charlotte asked, after a quick glance at the typed, grease-spotted menu.
“Some like it,” the waitress replied. “What’ll you have, hon?”
“Two poached eggs, brown toast on the side and a glass of tomato juice.”
“Coffee?” The waitress held the pot high, over the cup.
Charlotte covered the top with an open hand. “Tea, please.”
“Comin’ up!” The waitress waddled cheerfully back to the counter and poised her pot of coffee over the other customer’s mug. “Refill, Sid?”
He nodded and glanced toward Charlotte. “Traveling through, miss?”
“Not really,” Charlotte admitted, clasping her hands in front of her. How did people know, no matter where she went, that she wasn’t a local? “I’m doing some work at the Rathbone estate at Cardigan River.”
The man whistled and exchanged a meaningful look with the waitress. “Old Man Rathbone’s dead. Couple months ago. I guess you heard?”
“Yes. Actually, I’m here to do an appraisal for the heirs. Furniture, art, that sort of thing.”
Sid whistled again. “Now, there’s a job and a half, ain’t it, Gladys?”
“I would say,” the waitress replied, pouring boiling water into a stainless steel