In answer, he simply spun around and bounded up the stairs.
“Good grief,” she muttered, hurrying over. “Wait for me.”
21
As Maris was taking the silver chain to the kitchen where they kept the polish, the front door opened and Bowdie came through. For a moment she recalled the lunch they’d shared earlier in the day. But now she also remembered that even earlier, she’d watched Bear help him start his car. As she put the two images together, a thought occurred to her. She paused as he closed the door. With none of the other guests here, Maris saw her opportunity.
“Bowdie,” she said, smiling. “The performances must be over.”
He smiled back at her. “Yeah. I think I’ve seen my fill too. Or at least my feet are telling me that.” He took a deep breath. “It’s time to kick back for a bit.”
“That sounds good,” she agreed. “By the way, I wanted to ask you about what you thought of the sandwich from Delia’s Smokehouse?”
His face beamed. “Oh, it was excellent! I had the Shrimp Po’ Boy. Wow, what a meal. It had the cole slaw right in with the shrimp. Super tasty.”
“Good to hear,” she said. “I know I’m a fan of Delia’s but I like to keep tabs on what others think. It helps me make recommendations when people ask.”
“Well it gets a big thumbs up from me,” he said. “And that was very nice of your friend to buy lunch.”
“Mac is wonderful,” Maris said, smiling. “You’d never suspect that he’s the Medio County Sheriff.”
Bowdie’s eyebrows arched. “Mac? He’s a sheriff?”
“The sheriff,” Maris corrected. “For the entire region.”
“Oh wow,” Bowdie said. “You’re right. You’d never know. He seems so laid back.”
She grinned. “He is laid back. That’s what Pixie Point Bay does to you.” She glanced at the open door to the parlor. “But he’s also a blues fan, as you know. In fact, yesterday he noticed that one of the more collectible albums in the parlor was missing.”
Bowdie’s smile slipped just a little. “Oh really? You don’t say.”
“Of course I told him that, with all the blues folks at the B&B right now, it’s just been misplaced.”
“Right,” Bowdie said quietly. “Right.”
“But he’s a law enforcement officer, through and through,” she said. “Next thing you know, he’ll be fingerprinting that entire room.”
“Fingerprinting?” Bowdie said, trying to sound nonchalant but not succeeding. “I mean, seriously?”
Maris nodded. “Oh yes. He liked that album.” She watched as a tiny bit of sweat glistened on the thin man’s furrowed brow. “Of course as soon as it turns up—as I’m sure it will—he’ll drop the whole thing.”
Bowdie rubbed his chin. “I see.”
Maris pretended to fidget with the silver chain. “Well, I was headed to the kitchen for some polish. Is there anything that I can get for you before I go to vanquish some tarnish?”
Bowdie had been staring at the parlor. “Uh, no. Thanks.” He headed toward the stairs. “I think I’ll just lie down for a bit.”
22
In the kitchen, Maris took the silver polish from under the sink, fetched a couple of rags, and went to work on the counter. Working on one small section of the silver chain at a time, she carefully applied the thick paste in tiny back and forth motions. Once the polish was wiped off, the gleam of the metal provided immediate gratification. This was how she remembered the chain, each bunch of flowers shining.
“There you are,” said Megan from the doorway.
Suppressing a sigh, Maris smiled instead, and looked over her shoulder at the approaching journalist. “Megan. The festival must be over for the day.”
“The music’s done for today, but the work doesn’t stop.” She focused her hawkish gaze on the silver chain for a moment, then looked around the kitchen, before returning her attention to Maris. “Would you mind if I ask you a few questions about the lighthouse?”
“Not at all,” Maris said, dabbing a bit more polish on the next section of the chain. “Go right ahead.”
Megan opened her journal. “When was it built?”
“The lighthouse itself was built in 1885,” Maris told her.
“Who built it?” the journalist asked as she made a note.
“The town of Pixie Point Bay commissioned its design and paid for it.”
“Hmm,” Megan said, flipping back several pages in her journal. “Let’s see. So the town was founded in 1771 by Wicca practitioners who’d fled the witch trials.”
Maris looked at her. “I didn’t know that.”
Although Megan didn’t look up from her notes, she nodded. “That’s according to Alfred Page over at Inklings. But it’s his wife who’s the historian.” She flipped back another page. “Right. It was a colony back then, whose location has since been lost.” The journalist peered back at her. “The lost Pixie Point Bay Colony of 1771. Apparently no one seems to know where it was actually located.”
“Really,” Maris said, interested. “I’ve never heard any of this.”
Megan smirked a little. “It took some digging. But a Wicca colony that magically disappears? That’s a good one.”
The last thing that the town would want is someone associating magic with it, so Maris decided not to comment rather than risk drawing attention to it.
The journalist turned back to the page where she was making new notes. “Okay, so it took about a hundred years for the colony to get its act together and build a lighthouse.” Maris forced herself not to frown. She wouldn’t have phrased it quite that way. “The bay has probably always been a natural harbor. It’d make sense in terms of money to keep the ships coming and going.”
This part of the lighthouse’s story was something Maris did know. “Ships that entered the harbor were charged a tonnage tax of one penny per ton, collected at the pier. It helped to pay for the upkeep and the lightkeeper.”
Megan rapidly jotted all of that down. “Interesting.” She looked up
