Threads of Evidence Read Online Free PDF Page A

bought one of the big modern homes being built along the coast? Those homes were clean, open, welcoming, energy efficient . . . and didn’t reek of mildew and rotting boards.
    â€œHow did you happen to find this place?” I had to ask. “What brought you to Haven Harbor?”
    As Skye turned toward me, a small piece of gray plaster fell off the ceiling onto her shoulder. “I like a challenge,” she said, brushing off the plaster. “I’d seen pictures of what Aurora once was. It’s always been my dream to restore an old home.”
    Maybe Aurora had been featured in a glossy decorator magazine years ago. Or in an article about the Gardeners. Wherever Skye had first seen it, she’d certainly picked a home with plenty of room for improvement.
    â€œI wish I’d seen it in its heyday,” said Sarah. She looked around once more and then opened her notebook and started to write. “The only thing in the hall worth appraising is the chandelier, and I’d need to see that closer to decide whether it was worth restoring.”
    â€œWhen the construction crew gets here I’ll ask them to take it down. I don’t expect you to climb a two-story ladder.”
    Sarah made a note. “Great. Where would you like us to start?”
    Skye pointed to Sarah’s right. “Let’s begin with the living room. The first floor is in better condition than the second and third floors. The other floors protected it somewhat from leaks in the roof.”
    The large living room was filled with upholstered furniture that squirrels or raccoons had torn apart. Some of the pieces had once been covered with needlework. The animals hadn’t cared. If any of the furniture was worth saving, all the upholstery would need to be replaced. I walked over to a large sofa with a carved oak back. Was it worth restoring? That would be up to Sarah and Skye. Victorian furniture wasn’t exactly my area of expertise. I took some overall shots of the room and then started at the door to the front hall and began photographing the furniture, paintings, and decorations on the right-hand wall.
    â€œThis room is going to take some time to document,” Sarah pointed out to Skye. “It looks as though everything is the way the Gardeners left it.” She looked into a pair of glass cabinets, where blue-and-white china shared shelf space with rounded sea stones, shells, and sea glass.
    I focused my camera on each shelf. I didn’t know anything about china, although that blue color was relatively common in Maine. But were these pieces the then-inexpensive china used as ballast by sea captains returning from the Orient in the 1800s or modern reproductions? I knew more about the shells and stones. Shelves in my bedroom were filled with similar souvenirs of the sea. How long had these summer finds been here? Who’d collected them?
    The house was over a hundred years old. I’d never thought of nineteenth-century “rusticators,” as summer visitors to Maine were called then, searching beaches for the same treasures I’d looked for as a child. But perhaps they had.
    â€œYour idea that we should walk through the house first to get an overview was a good one,” said Skye, stepping over a hole in the floor and heading out of the living room toward the room across the hall. “Why don’t you wait to take notes and pictures until after I’ve shown you the whole place? That way you’ll have an idea of how much work you’ll have to do. The dining room is this way.”
    Aurora’s long mahogany dining table could have seated fourteen people easily, and I suspected a wall-length sideboard would contain treasures. But what I saw first were the three mounted heads hanging over the marble mantel: one moose, complete with antlers, one bear, and a five-point buck. Displaying hunters’ trophies wasn’t unheard of in Haven Harbor, but it was much more common in