Mariner's Compass Read Online Free PDF Page B

wood trim perfectly restored and flawless, served as a coffee table. On the table was a pipe stand cradling two very used pipes and a carved horse’s head on a pedestal. I picked it up and ran my thumb over the horse’s muscled neck. There was something vaguely familiar about it. Mr. Chandler had been true to the wood, a light hard wood I couldn’t name, following the grain, letting the wood tell him where to carve. I turned it over and read the named carved on the base—Harley.
    I sat it back down on the trunk, my hand shaking. Harley had been my first horse. A chestnut-colored, part quarter horse, part standard breed with a single white star on his forehead, he’d died of old age when I was twenty-two. I picked up the pale oak carving. He’d even gotten the scar on Harley’s neck right—a scar from a protruding nail in the old corral behind the barn.
    How did he know what my first horse looked like? A tiny ripple of apprehension scuttled crablike down my spine.
    Scout nudged my hand, and I absently scratched behind his Lab ear, which I’d discerned was a favorite spot. “Who is this guy, Scout? You want to give me a clue?”
    All I got was another Morse-code tail thump.
    Since I’d been curator of the folk art museum I’d become a lay expert on a variety of different arts and crafts. Whenever a new artist was accepted into the artists’ coop or whenever we installed a new exhibit, I read everything I could find at the library and Elvia’s bookstore about that particular subject. We’d had a wood carving exhibit cosponsored by the San Celina County Woodcarvers Guild last winter. Their museum and headquarters was north of here near the town of San Simeon. It was one place I could begin my inquires about Jacob Chandler.
    A perfunctory inspection of the remainder of the house took only a few minutes. It was tidy in the way that lifelong bachelor quarters are, though the conclusion that Jacob Chandler had never been married was purely speculative on my part. Here I was already making judgments before possessing all the facts, something I was trying to avoid. His queen-size bed, a simple, walnut four-poster, was covered appropriately with a Mariner’s Compass quilt made with navy, slate blue, and gold fabric. The pattern, looking just like its namesake, had sixteen points radiating from a gold center. The workmanship was expert. An Ocean Waves lap quilt in blues, teals, and greens was folded neatly over the bed’s footboard. The room held only one nightstand and a chest of drawers, both in the same dark wood as the bed. The three handmade quilts I’d found told me that someone in Mr. Chandler’s life was a quilter.
    “Or he is,” I said to Scout. “There I go again, making assumptions.” Next to his bed was a fancy L.L. Bean dog bed in a hunter green plaid. “So, is this your bed? If it is, it looks like you’re used to the best, my friend.” Scout’s tail wagged politely.
    Predictably the bookcase in his bedroom held many wood carving manuals and books on old sailing ships and an Audubon book on North American birds. But there were also some well-thumbed poetry collections—Frost, St. Vincent Millay, Yeats, and Kipling. He also seemed fond of puzzle and game books—chess strategy, Mensa quiz books, cryptograms, logic puzzles, a Scrabble dictionary.
    A game player. Something told me that wasn’t a good sign.
    “One thing for sure, Scout, I have plenty of time to go through everything if I’m going to be staying here the next two weeks, so right now I think I’ll take a quick tour of the yard and then see where you really belong, though I’m half tempted to offer ten bucks for you.” I encircled his muzzle in my hand and gave it a little shake.
    He wiggled away, barked joyfully at the game, then licked my hand.
    “Okay, fifty bucks. But that’s as high as I’m going. Then I have to go home and let Gabe know what’s going on.”
    Scout followed me back through the simple white and yellow