Threads of Evidence Read Online Free PDF Page B

sun-resistant glass. Can you do all that?”
    Sarah and I looked at each other.
    â€œWe can,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. “We could have these back to you within a month, unless we find major problems when we take them apart.”
    â€œYou’ll let me know about that,” Skye said. “Take them all when you leave today so they won’t get mixed in with the items we’re going to sell. I love these pictures. And if they take you a little longer than you think to fix, that’s all right. The house won’t be finished for more than a month or two.”
    A month or two? It looked to me as though the place would takes years of work. “We’ll need you to choose new frames when the stitching is finished.”
    â€œI’ll be here all summer,” said Skye. “I’ll be reading scripts, but I don’t have any projects lined up until late in the fall. Restoring Aurora is my priority now.”
    We moved on.
    The kitchen pipes had broken at some point; the floor there was so rotten we didn’t dare examine the cabinets or their contents. I suspected Mrs. Gardener hadn’t done much cooking in the years she’d lived here alone. Either she’d had a cook, or she’d eaten out a lot. When the family had been here, the cook probably had an assistant or two. The kitchen was as large as a small diner. Now it was unusable. And it looked as though it had been that way more than the almost-twenty-years since Mrs. Gardener had died.
    Everywhere I looked, the house needed serious repairs requiring even more serious money.
    I hoped Skye had some blockbuster scripts to read. Did she have any idea how much it would cost to restore this place? It would be cheaper to paper it with dollar bills.
    â€œWe have to be careful where we step on the second floor,” said Skye, leading the way up the front stairway. “Patrick and I found rotten boards in several rooms. Some are under the carpeting.”
    I sniffed. Mildewed carpets. They would all have to go.
    The only furniture in the second-floor hallway was a built-in window seat overlooking Haven Harbor. The clear glass windows were outlined in green-and-blue stained glass. Unfortunately, two sections of the glass were missing, so rain and snow had blown in. Ocean breezes filled the hallway.
    â€œI can hardly wait to have this sitting area repaired,” said Skye, looking at the damp seat cushion and the several needlepoint cushions on it. “I don’t think these pillows are worth trying to save.”
    I agreed. The pillows were water-stained and mildewed; their threads faded. One had been torn apart. By a bird in the house? A squirrel? “They must have been lovely once,” I said, looking at one of a puffin and another that might have been a laughing gull. “But I agree. I don’t think we could reclaim them. What do you think, Sarah?”
    She shook her head. “No. They’re gone. Sadly.” She picked up one of a chickadee. “We could reproduce them, though, if you were interested.”
    Good for Sarah! I hadn’t thought of that.
    â€œI like that idea,” Skye said. “Let me think about it. In the meantime let’s not throw them out.”
    Sarah followed her into the room on the right side of the hall. I stared at the window seat for a few more moments before following them. Had Jasmine Gardener sat on that window seat, looking out at the harbor? It would have been a perch hard to resist. If she’d been a reader, maybe she’d curled up with a book and leaned against those pillows. Or maybe the pillows had been done after Jasmine died, and her mother had sat here, watching the harbor, thinking of what might have been. The world the Gardeners lived in had been far from the Haven Harbor I knew. And yet they’d chosen to summer here. To look down at the harbor, instead of staying in what I assumed was a palatial New York City