The Chesapeake Diaries Series (194 page)

“The burgers are really good here,” the waitress told her softly.

“I was hoping for more than a sandwich,” Ellie said without looking up.

“A baked potato can be substituted for french fries, you could get a side salad.” The waitress leaned a hand on a nearby chair and repeated pointedly, “Like I said, the
burgers
are real good.”

Ellie got the message.

“Thank you. I’ll have the burger, baked potato, side salad.”

“Good choice. Dressing for the salad?”

“Vinaigrette?”

“I guess you could call it that.” The waitress smiled and wrote down the order. “Can I get you a cup of coffee or tea, or something while you wait?”

“I would love a good cup of coffee,” Ellie admitted.

“We’re not Starbucks but I’ll make a fresh pot.”

“Thank you.” Ellie took a seat at the closest table and checked out the decor. Crab traps hung from the ceiling and nets covered the walls.

A second waitress emerged from the kitchen with a
tray that she served to a party of six—two tables pushed together, Ellie noted—and a few moments later, Ellie’s waitress returned with the promised cup of coffee.

“Thank you,” Ellie said.

“So, you just passing through?” The waitress leaned on the back of the chair opposite Ellie.

“How can you tell?”

“If you were local, I’d know you.”

“Well, I guess I’m almost local. I inher—
bought
a place in St. Dennis and just arrived here today.”

“Oh, which house did you buy? There weren’t that many on the market, last I heard.”

“It’s on Bay View. An older place, needs a lot of work.”

The waitress nodded. “A fixer-upper, estate sale? Best way to buy, if you’re handy. St. Dennis is still a pretty hot ticket, draws a lot of visitors. ’Course, you probably already know that or you wouldn’t have bought here, right? Prices aren’t down here the way they are in other places. You should see this place in the summer.” She shook her head. “You can barely get a table. Some weekends, there’s a line out the door.”

The door opened and three women entered.

“I hope you got a good deal on it,” she told Ellie before she turned to greet the newcomers.

“I did.”

“Good for you, hon.” She patted Ellie on the shoulder as she walked past. “I wish you all the best luck with it.”

“Thank you,” Ellie whispered, suddenly a little choked up, though she couldn’t have put into words why. Maybe it was the kind words from this stranger,
or the nice offer from the girl at the Laundromat, but after almost a year of feeling as if she’d been batted around by just about everyone she’d ever known, the unexpected goodwill she’d met with today made her feel like crying. It had been quite awhile since she’d felt this emotional.

Not that she’d cry in a public place, but still.

The waitress brought out a bag with her takeout, and Ellie followed her to the cash register.

“Anything else, hon?”

“No, I think I’m good,” Ellie told her. “Wait, yes. I’d like a Diet Pepsi.”

“I only have fountain. That okay?”

“That’s fine.”

The waitress got the drink, added it to the bill, and Ellie handed over what she owed plus a tip.

“Oh, wait. You forgot to add the coffee,” Ellie told her.

“It’s on the house. Come back again when the rock-fish are running. The cook does a real nice job with the fresh fish. Off-season, the frozen … not so much. But the burgers are always top-notch.” She winked at Ellie and headed for the kitchen.

“Thanks …,” Ellie called after her, but the waitress had already disappeared through the door.

She carried the drink and the bag of food to the car, left the food, and took the drink into the Laundromat.

“Your stuff’s done.” The girl glanced up only long enough to see that it was Ellie.

“Thank you. I appreciate your help.” Ellie placed the tall container of soda on the girl’s small desk.

“What’s this?” the girl asked.

“I noticed your drink was getting low.” Ellie made her way to the block of dryers. “Which machine?”

“Oh. The third one from this end.” Clearly surprised, the girl was still staring at the drink Ellie’d brought her.

Ellie opened the dryer, folded the sheets, and closed the dryer door again. She waved to the girl as she was going to the door.

“Wait, I didn’t pay you for the soda,” the girl called after her.

“No charge.”

“Hey, thanks. This was … nice. Really. You didn’t have to,” the girl told her.

“You didn’t have to put my stuff in the dryer.” Ellie opened the door. “See you.”

“Hey, come back anytime.”

Bet on that
, Ellie thought as she loaded the clean laundry into the back of the car.

She drove back to the house and sat in the driveway for a few moments to watch the sun as it faded on the water.

Nice.

She remembered the burger that was getting colder by the minute, and took the food into the house. She sat at the kitchen table and ate with the plastic fork the waitress had tucked into the bag, used the plastic knife to put a touch of butter onto the potato, poured dressing from a small plastic cup on the salad, and used the bag as a place mat. Who knew when the table was last cleaned, and what might have crawled over it since?

The thought made her shudder.

The burger was, as promised, delicious, and the
baked potato and salad just right. It was hardly the fare she’d been used to all her life, but she sensed that this was not a home where gourmet dinners had been prepared by master chefs. This was a place where comfort food had been prepared by loving hands, she felt certain.

Tonight she’d take the first steps to get the house cleaned up. She debated the merits of starting in the kitchen as opposed to starting in the bathroom. Before too long, she felt overwhelmed, so she finished eating and went back to the car to bring in her laundry and her purchases. At least she had clean sheets to sleep on, and she had enough food for the next few days.

She dug through the bags for one of the containers of cleaning product and a sponge. She was just about to head upstairs when her phone rang.

“Hey, you. How’s it going? How’s the new home?” Of course, Carly Summit, Ellie’s best friend—her
only
friend, the friend who had opened her home to Ellie, loaned her a car and money, and stood by her when everyone else in her life vanished—would call to make sure everything was okay.

“It’s … different. Different from what I expected, but in a good way. I mean, it isn’t terrible.” Ellie walked into the living room, turned on two of the lamps, and sat in one of the club chairs that faced the Bay. “Actually, it’s quite charming in a shabby chic sort of way.”

“You sound upbeat. That’s good.”

“I am upbeat. I think with some elbow grease and some paint, this place will clean up quite nicely.” Ellie paused. “I’m talking a full crap load of elbow grease
and buckets of paint, but still, the end result should be fine.”

“Shades of Counselor Wilson at Camp Bedlam.” Their shared name for Camp Bedlingham in the Berkshires where they’d spent several summers.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking earlier. Though now I’m grateful for all those hours I spent scrubbing porcelain.”

“So do you have a game plan?”

“Of course. Tonight I’m going to clean the bathroom I’m using on the second floor, then put sheets on the bed, after which I will fall face-first into it. That’s all I’ve got so far. I’m exhausted.”

“Long drive?”

“Not so bad.”

“Look, Ellie, you know that if you need anything—I mean anything—all you have to do is call.”

“I know that, and I appreciate it. But you’ve already done so much for me. I’ll never be able to repay you for everything, Carly.” Once again, that pesky lump tightened Ellie’s throat.

“ ‘Pshaw,’ as my great-grandmother used to say. Have I done anything for you that you wouldn’t do for me, if the tables were turned?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, then, there you are. Who knows, someday, when things are super for you again, maybe I’ll be down on my luck and you can give me a hand.”

“Carly, you’ll never be down on your luck.”

“You never know. We’d have said the same about you two years ago.”

“True enough but …” Ellie paused. “Carly, is everything okay there?”

“Perfect, as always. I was just trying to make the point that friends do what they can. Right now you’re in a situation and I’m in a position to help out.”

“But you’d tell me, right?”

“Of course. Who else would I tell?”

They chatted a little longer, Carly exclaiming, “Ohhhh! Waterfront! Fabulous!” when Ellie told her that the house faced the Bay. “I may have to buzz on down there soon.”

“Anytime. Really. Please. I miss you,” Ellie told her.

“I miss you, too, El. I’ll fit in a trip when I get back to the East Coast. In the meantime, you can scrub up one of those bathrooms for me.”

“Will do.”

“Now, tell me all about your new house and that little town.…”

After Ellie had told all and the call disconnected, she sat in the silent room, the phone still in her hand. Hearing Carly’s voice reminded her that regardless of how it felt sometimes, she wasn’t totally alone. Everyone else may have written her off, denied their friendship, and forgotten that she’d existed, but there was always Carly, and while Carly wasn’t physically with her, talking to her had cheered Ellie. Such was the power of friendship.

Ellie locked the front door and carried what she needed upstairs, where she turned on the light in the room she’d claimed as her bedroom and went into the bathroom. She turned on the faucet, and jumped back when a stream of rusty water coughed out.

“Seriously?” She watched it run down the drain in rusty swirls. After a while the color began to lighten, and a few minutes later, the water ran clear.

“That’s more like it.” With cleanser and a sponge and the “all-purpose” cleaner, she managed to get the bathroom in respectable order in a little less than an hour.

“Not bad.” She stood back to admire her work. “Not bad at all. Counselor Wilson, you’d be proud of me.”

She changed the sheets on the bed, then realized she hadn’t looked for blankets. She found a pile of old quilts in a chest in one of the other bedrooms and brought two of them into her room. One went onto the bed, the other she folded at the bottom. They smelled slightly of mothballs, but she decided it wasn’t so bad that she’d risk freezing. She turned off the lights on the first floor and lowered the thermostat, took a quick shower, got ready for bed, and crawled under the covers.

Flat on her back and looking up toward a ceiling she couldn’t see, Ellie relived the day, from leaving Carly’s town house to driving straight through to St. Dennis, to meeting Jesse Enright. Stepping for the first time into the house she now owned, navigating her way to find the things she needed. She thought about the waitress at the Crab Claw who’d given her coffee and steered her away from the fish that might not have been so good, and the young girl at the Laundromat who’d offered to put Ellie’s things in the dryer so that she could do her shopping and buy dinner.

“I told you, it’s a friendly little town,” Jesse had told her. And later, “I hope you’ll think about what I said and that you’ll give the folks around here a chance. Everyone isn’t out to hurt you.”

If everyone in St. Dennis were like the people she’d met that day, she’d concede that he was right. Of course, how kind everyone would be if they knew she was Clifford Chapman’s daughter—well, that would be the test, wouldn’t it?

Not a test anyone would be subjected to. When she’d told Jesse she wasn’t there to make friends, she wasn’t kidding. Friendship required honesty, trust, and Ellie knew she wasn’t going to go there.

She’d trusted Jesse because she had to, but she wouldn’t be hanging around St. Dennis long enough to find out who else she could trust. After she’d been burned so badly by the two people who should have most loved her—her father and her fiancé—trust was hard to come by these days.

Ellie still couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that her father—the same father who’d been her champion all her life and had always seemed to have put her, his only child, above everything else—was worse than a common thief because he didn’t steal out of necessity but out of a greed so out of control there had been no end to it. If he hadn’t been caught, she was certain he’d still be stealing the life savings and pensions of people who trusted him.

Ellie, too, had trusted him.

When the charges were first announced, she’d been blindsided. The moment when her father had looked her in the eyes and admitted that he—aided by Henry—was in fact guilty, that he had in fact done everything the FBI and the SEC said he’d done, Ellie had felt her entire world crack and shatter. That both her father and Henry—she’d planned on marrying that man!—had woven the tangled web in which thousands of
people lost everything they had, devastated Ellie. Carly had been in Paris but had flown home the second she heard the news, had stood by Ellie while she was grilled six ways to Sunday by one investigator after another. When the interrogations were over and Ellie had been cleared of any involvement, Carly had taken her home, where Ellie fought off the pain and shame for the next three months.

The entire past year had been totally surreal, had turned Ellie’s world inside out, and made her question everything she knew about herself, her life. What her father and Henry had done went beyond betrayal.

No, best to bury Ellis Chapman so that Ellie Ryder could get on with her life.

Chapter 3

C
ameron O’Connor parked his aging Ford pickup at the corner of Old St. Mary’s Church Road and Cedar Lane, then walked the half block to the law offices of Enright & Enright. He didn’t have an appointment, but given the foul mood he was in, he’d muscle his way past Jesse’s elderly receptionist if he had to. He wasn’t a man who was quick to lose his temper, but today he was
this
close.

He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself before he opened the firm’s front door. As usual, Violet Finneran sat like a sentry at her desk to the left of the foyer. Cam was tempted to ignore her and just walk into Jesse’s office, but better judgment prevailed.