“Yes, sir,” I said meekly.
They left, and Hatcher and I cleared the table.
“Do you have time to look around before the game starts?” I asked him. “For Dandy Dan stuff, I mean.”
“Sure.”
We started in the living room. The two of us stood for a moment in front of the portrait of our might-be-a-pirate ancestor. Did I detect a glint of mischief in Nathaniel Daniel’s eye? He certainly looked the part of a dandy, what with the froths of lace at his collar and cuffs and his fancy gold signet ring with an eagle etched on it. The same ring appeared in Obadiah Lovejoy’s portrait, and Jeremiah’s, and on down the generations. Gramps wore it now, and someday it would be my father’s.
“You sly dog,” Hatcher scolded, wagging his finger at the portrait. “Thought you could keep it a secret, didn’t you?”
“You don’t think there could be something hidden on the back of the frame, do you?”
Hatcher shook his head. “Nah, too obvious.”
We decided to check anyway. We carefully lifted the portrait off the wall and placed it facedown on the sofa. But Hatcher was right—there was nothing on the back to see.
“How about Prudence?” I asked.
Again, nothing.
“You’d think there’d be a clue somewhere as to Nathaniel Daniel’s true identity,” I said, disappointed.
My brother shrugged. “Maybe that is his true identity. Or maybe he was Dandy Dan, but he didn’t want anyone to know and carried his secret to the grave. It’s not like it was something he could brag about. It would have been a huge scandal! He probably liked being such a distinguished citizen and didn’t want to rock the boat.”
Hatcher was right, of course. Still, after he left to go watch the Red Sox game, I poked around a bit more. I started by making a circuit of the room, examining the bookshelves and taking down anything that looked super old. I made a pile on the coffee table, then sat down on the sofa and picked the books up one by one and riffled through their pages. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I figured I’d know it if I saw it.
It suddenly occurred to me that this was the first time I’d ever been in the house alone. My skin prickled. Old houses tended to make a lot of weird noises, and Gramps and Lola’s house was no exception. I found myself on high alert with every little creak and groan it produced. Was it my imagination, or did the shadows in the room’s corners suddenly seem deeper? As I scuttled around turning on all the lights, I decided I was done snooping for the night. No way was I going up to the attic by myself!
The front hall stairs creaked again. Thoroughly creeped out by now, I jumped up from the sofa and went over to the piano. The pile of Fourth of July sheet music we’d had out for the family reunion was still on the rack.
Sitting down on the bench, I placed my hands on the keys and swung into “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” one of my dad’s favorite military marches. Nothing like a little John Philip Sousa for chasing away the ghosts of Lovejoys past.
CHAPTER 26
The next morning, on the way to my piano lesson, I stopped by the bookstore to say hi to Aunt True and Belinda. Well, that and to rustle myself up some free mini blueberry donut muffins. I was barely through the door when I spotted a poster propped on the table at the front of the shop. I stopped short and stared at it, horrified.
“What is THAT?!” I screeched.
Aunt True, who was standing by the cash register, looked up in alarm. I pointed wordlessly at the poster.
She frowned. “Um, it’s an advertisement for a book signing?”
“I can’t believe you invited her to do a book signing at our store!”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Aunt True looked baffled.
Time to spill the beans, I decided, figuring my friends would understand.
My aunt’s eyebrows rose higher and higher as I explained about everything that had happened on Cape Cod. I showed her the passages I’d found in Saga of a Ship and told her my theory on Dandy Dan. I told her what had happened at the Brewster Store book signing and about the finders keepers law and how oddly Dr. Appleton had reacted to Mackenzie’s question.
Aunt True was quiet when I finished. One of the things I loved best about my aunt was that she always took me seriously. She didn’t waste time arguing with me that my theory was improbable or a “stretch,” as Hatcher had called it. She read the passages in the book I showed her, then sighed.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. “I can’t uninvite her. That would be rude and unprofessional. Plus, the best way to figure out what she’s up to—if she’s really up to something—may be to spend time with her and hope she lets something slip. The book signing will give us the perfect opportunity.”
I hadn’t thought of that. My aunt was not only a marketing whiz, she was also a genius.
“We can talk about strategy later,” she added, crossing back to Cup and Chaucer and grabbing a handful of mini blueberry donut muffins. She passed them to me and shoved me out the door. “For now, though, you’d better get going or you’ll be late.”
I was still so rattled by this development—Amanda Appleton? at Lovejoy’s Books?—that my piano lesson was pretty much a disaster. My fingers stumbled all over the keyboard, and everything I tried to play sounded horrible.
“Is everything all right, Truly?” Ms. Patel asked finally.
Her voice was soft and had a slight lilt to it. Mourning dove, I thought automatically.
“You seem nervous.”
I folded my hands in my lap and nodded. That was as good an excuse as any. “I usually
