Death and a Dog

Yes, their Mom replied. But that had nothing to do with her cheesecake recipe.

Touché, Naomi replied.

Lacey laughed. Mom had actually outdone Naomi!

She put her phone away, tied Chester’s leash around the lamppost, then headed inside the brightly lit store. She whizzed about as quickly as she could, filing her basket with everything Martha Stewart told her she needed, then grabbed herself a precooked bag of linguine pasta and a small tub of premade sauce (which was conveniently placed in the fridge right beside it), and some pre-shaven parmesan cheese (located beside the sauce), before finally grabbing the bottle of wine beneath that proclaimed; goes great with linguine!

No wonder I never really learned to cook, Lacey thought. Look how easy they make it.

She went to the till, paid for her goods, then left, collecting Chester on the way out. They went back past her store—she noticed Tom was right where she’d left him—and collected the car from the side street where Lacey had parked.

It was a short drive to Crag Cottage, along the seafront then up the cliffside. Chester sat alert in the passenger seat beside her, and as the car created over the hill, Crag Cottage came into view. A feeling of delight swelled inside Lacey. The cottage really felt like home. And after tomorrow’s meeting with Ivan, she’d possibly be one step closer to becoming its official owner.

Just then, she noticed the warm glow of a bonfire coming from the direction of Gina’s cottage, and decided to head past her house and along the bumpy, single-track path to her neighbor.

As she pulled to a halt, she could see the woman standing in her wellies beside the fire, which she was adding foliage to. The fire looked very pretty in the dusky spring evening light.

Lacey tooted the car horn and wound down the stiff window.

Gina turned and waved. “Hey-ho Lacey. Do you need to burn something?”

Lacey leaned out the window on her elbows. “Nope. Just wondering if you wanted some help?”

“I thought you had a date with Tom tonight?” Gina asked.

“I did,” Lacey told her, feeling that odd mixture of disappointment and relief stirring in her gut again. “But he cancelled. Pastry-related emergency.”

“Ah,” Gina said. She dumped another tree branch onto the bonfire, making sparks of red, orange and yellow fly into the air. “Well, I’ve got everything here covered, thanks. Unless you’ve got some marshmallows you want to toast?”

“Darn, no, I don’t. That sounds nice! And I just went grocery shopping!”

She decided to blame her lack of marshmallows on Martha Stewart and her extremely sensible vanilla cheesecake recipe.

Lacey was about to wish Gina a good night and reverse her car back the way she’d come, when she felt Chester nudging her with his nose. She turned and looked over at him. The shopping bags that she’d placed in the passenger footwell had spilled open, and some of the items she’d brought had fallen out.

“That’s an idea…” Lacey said. She looked back out the window. “Hey, Gina. How about we have dinner together? I have wine and pasta. And all the ingredients to make Martha Stewart’s authentic New York City style cheesecake if we get bored and need an activity.”

Gina looked thrilled. “You had me at wine!” she exclaimed.

Lacey laughed. She reached down to fetch the grocery bags from the footwell, and earned herself another nudge from Chester’s wet nose.

“What is it now?” she asked him.

He tipped his head to the side, his fluffy tufts of eyebrow flitting upward.

“Oh. I get it,” Lacey said. “I told you off before for not stopping me from putting my foot in it earlier with Tom. You’re proving a point, aren’t you, that it all worked out nonetheless? Well, I’ll give you that.”

He whinnied.

She chuckled and petted his head. “Clever boy.”

She got out the car, Chester leaping out after her, and headed up Gina’s path, maneuvering around the sheep and chickens that were dotted about the place.

They headed inside.

“So what happened with Tom?” Gina asked as they walked the length of the low-ceilinged corridor toward her rustic country-cottage kitchen.

“It was Paul actually,” Lacey explained. “He mixed up the flours or something.”

They entered the brightly lit kitchen, and Lacey placed the shopping bags on the work surface.

“It’s about time he fired that Paul lad,” Gina said with a tsk.

“He’s an apprentice,” Lacey told her. “He’s supposed to make mistakes!”

“Sure. But then he’s meant to learn from them. How many batches of pastry has he ruined now? And for it to impact on your plans really does take the biscuit.”

Lacey smirked at Gina’s amusing phrase.

“Honestly, it’s fine,” she said, taking all the items out of the bag. “I’m an independent woman. I don’t need to see Tom every day.”

Gina grabbed some wine glasses and poured them each a glass, then they got on with making the dinner.

“You’ll never believe who came into my store before closing time today,” Lacey said, as she gave the pasta a cursory stir in its pot of simmering water. The instructions said no stirring was required during the four minutes it took to boil, but that just felt too lazy, even for Lacey!

“Not the Americans?” Gina asked, in a tone of distaste as she popped the tomato sauce in the microwave for the whole two minutes it required to heat.

“Yes. The Americans.”

Gina shuddered. “Oh dear. What did they want? Let me guess, Daisy wanted Buck to buy her an overpriced piece of jewelry?”

Lacey strained the pasta in a sieve, then shared it out between two bowls. “That’s the thing. Daisy did want Buck to buy her something. The sextant.”

“The sextant?” Gina asked, as she dumped the tomato sauce on top of the pasta, inelegantly. “As in the naval instrument? What would a woman like Daisy want a sextant for?”

“Right? That’s exactly what I thought!” Lacey sprinkled parmesan shavings on top of her pasta mound.

“Maybe she just picked it at random,” Gina mused, handing Lacey one of the two forks she’d retrieved from the cutlery drawer.

“She was very specific about it,” Lacey continued. She carried her food and wine toward the table. “She wanted to buy it and of course I told her she’d have to come to the auction. I thought she’d drop it, but nope. She said she’d be there. So now I have to put up with the two of them again tomorrow. If only I’d put the damn thing away rather than leaving it out in plain view of the window over lunch!”

She looked up as Gina took her seat opposite, to see that her neighbor was looking quite flustered all of a sudden. She didn’t seem to have anything to add to what Lacey had said, either, which was extremely uncharacteristic for the usually chatty woman.

“What is it?” Lacey asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, I was the one who convinced you that closing up shop for lunch wouldn’t hurt,” Gina mumbled. “But it did. Because it gave Daisy the chance to see the sextant! It’s my fault.”

Lacey laughed. “Don’t be silly. Come on, let’s eat before this goes cold and all our effort goes to waste.”

“Wait. We need one more thing.” Gina went over to her herb pots lined up on the window ledge and picked some leaves off one. “Fresh basil!” She placed a sprig on each of their bowls of badly presented, gloopy pasta. “Et voila!”

For all its cheap cheerfulness, it was actually a very tasty meal. But then again, most convenience foods are filled with fat and sugar, so it would have to be!

“Am I a decent enough substitute for Tom?” Gina asked as they ate and drank wine.

“Tom who?” Lacey joked. “Oh, you just reminded me! Tom sort of challenged me to cook him a meal from scratch. Something native to New York. So I’m doing a cheesecake for dessert. My mom sent me a Marth Stewart recipe. Want to help me make it?”

“Martha Stewart,” Gina said, shaking her head. “I have a much better recipe.”

She went over to the cupboard and began rummaging around. Then she pulled out a battered cookbook.

“This was my mother’s pride and joy,” she said, putting it on the table in front of Lacey. “She collected recipes for years. I have clippings in here going all the way back to the war.”

“Amazing,” Lacey exclaimed. “But how come you never learned to cook, if you had an expert at home?”

“Because,” Gina said, “I was far too busy helping my dad grow veggies in the garden. I was a proper tomboy. A daddy’s girl. One of those girls that liked to get my hands dirty.”

“Well, baking can certainly do that,” Lacey said. “You should’ve seen Tom earlier. He was covered head to toe in flour.”

Gina laughed. “I meant I liked to get muddy! To play with bugs. Climb trees. Fish. Cooking always seemed too feminine for my tastes.”

“Better not tell Tom that,” Lacey chuckled. She looked down at the recipe book. “So do you want to help me make the cheesecake, or aren’t there enough worms to keep you interested?”

“I’ll help,” Gina said. “We can use fresh eggs. Daphne and Delilah both laid this morning.”

They cleaned up their dinner and got to work on the cheesecake, following Gina’s Mom’s recipe rather than Martha’s.

“So, other than the Americans, are you excited about the auction tomorrow?” Gina asked as she crushed up biscuits in a bowl with a potato masher.

“Excited. Nervous.” Lacey swilled the wine in her glass. “Mostly nervous. Knowing me, I won’t sleep a wink tonight worrying about it all.”

“I have an idea,” Gina said then. “Once we’re done here, we should go and walk the dogs on the seafront. We can take the east route. You’ve not gone that way yet, have you? The sea air will tire you out and you’ll sleep like a baby, mark my words.”

“That’s a good idea,” Lacey agreed. If she went home now, she’d only fret.

As Lacey put the messy cheesecake in the fridge to chill, Gina hurried into the utility room to fetch them both rain macs. It was still quite chilly in the evenings, especially by the sea where it was more blustery.

The huge waterproof, fisherman’s coat swamped Lacey. But she was glad for it when they stepped outside. It was a cool, clear, evening.

They headed down the cliff steps. The beach was deserted and quite dark. It was kind of exhilarating being down here when it was so empty, Lacey thought. It felt like they were the only people in the world.

They headed toward the sea, then turned to follow the easterly direction that Lacey hadn’t had a chance yet to explore. It was fun to explore somewhere new. Being in a small town like Wilfordshire sometimes felt a little stifling.

“Hey, what’s that?” Lacey asked, peering across the water at what appeared to be the silhouette of a building on an island.

“Medieval ruins,” Gina said. “At low tide there’s a sandbar you can walk along to reach them. Definitely worth a poke around if you can be bothered to get up that early.”

“What time is low tide?” Lacey asked.

“Five a.m.”

“Ouch. That’s probably a bit too early for me.”

“You can also get there by boat, of course,” Gina explained. “If you know someone who actually owns one. But if you get stuck over there, you have to call out the volunteer lifeboat and those lads don’t appreciate using their resources on clueless folk, mark my words! I’ve done it before and got quite a stern talking to. Luckily my gift of the gab had them all chuckling by the time we reached shore, and we’re all on good terms now.”

Chester began to strain on his leash, as if trying to get to the island.

“I think he knows it,” Lacey said.

“Maybe his old owners used to walk him over there?” Gina suggested.

Chester barked as if in confirmation.

Lacey bent down and ruffled his fur. It had been a while since she’d really thought about Chester’s old owners, and how unsettling it must have been for him to lose them so suddenly.

“How about I take you there one day?” she asked him. “I’ll wake up early, just for you.”

With an excited wag of the tail, Chester tipped his head back and barked at the sky.

*

Just as she’d predicted, Lacey struggled to sleep that night. So much for the sea air tiring her out. There was just too much swirling around her mind for her to switch off; from the Crag Cottage sale meeting with Ivan, to the auction, there was just too much to think about. And while she was excited about the auction tomorrow, she was also nervous. Not just because it was only her second time doing it, but because of the unwelcome attendees she’d have to deal with in the form of Buck and Daisy Stringer.

Maybe they won’t come, she thought as she stared at the shadows on her ceiling. Daisy will probably have found something else to demand Buck buy for her.

But no, the woman had seemed intent on buying the sextant specifically. It obviously held some kind of personal significance for her. They would be there, Lacey was certain of it, even if just to prove a point.

Lacey listened to the sound of Chester’s breathing and the waves crashing against the cliffs, letting the gentle rhythms lull her into relaxation. She’d just started dropping off when her cell phone suddenly started vibrating loudly on the wooden dresser beside her head. Its eerie green light filled the room with flashes. She was usually careful to put it on night mode but it had obviously slipped her mind tonight with everything else she was thinking about.

With a fatigued groan, Lacey flailed out with her arm and grasped the cell. She brought it close to her face, squinting to see who had decided to disturb her at this ungodly hour. The name Mom flashed insistently on the screen at her.

Of course, Lacey thought, sighing. Her mother must have forgotten the rule about not calling her after 6 p.m. New York time.

With a sigh, Lacey answered the call. “Mom? Is everything okay?”

From the other end of the line, there was a moment’s silence. “Why do you always answer my calls like that? Why does there have to be something wrong for me to call my daughter?”

Lacey rolled her eyes and sank back against the pillow. “Because it’s two in the morning in the U.K. right now, and you only ever call me when you’re in a panic about something. So? What is it?”

The following silence was enough of a confirmation to Lacey that she’d hit the nail on the head.

“Mom?” she prompted.

“I was just at David’s—” her mom began.

“What?” Lacey exclaimed. “Why?”

“To meet Eda.”

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