A Safe Place to Land Read online

  A Safe Place to Land

  An Eastern Shore Romance

  Dee Ernst

  Copyright © 2018 by Dee Ernst

  All rights reserved.

  All the characters in this book are the product of an overactive imagination. Any resemblance to a real person, living or dead, is a tremendous coincidence.

  To find more of Dee’s books, go to

  www.deeernst.com

  Comments? Questions? An uncontrollable desire to just chat? You can reach me at

  [email protected]

  ISBN - 978-0-9985068-6-9

  Created with Vellum

  This one is for Melinda Blanchard, who introduced me to the Eastern Shore, and all the amazing friends in my life who discovered it with me.

  Also by Dee Ernst

  Stealing Jason Wilde

  Am I Zen Yet?

  Better Than Your Dreams

  A Slight Change of Plan

  A Different Kind of Forever

  Better Off Without Him

  The Mt. Abrams Mysteries

  A Mother’s Day Murder

  A Founders’ Day Death

  A Killer Halloween

  A Deadly New Year

  A Malicious Midwinter

  A Fatal April Shower

  The Eastern Shore Romances

  A Safe Place to Land

  Building Home

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  A quick look at the next Eastern Shore Romance…

  Chapter One

  A single woman of a certain age on the Eastern Shore of Virginia was not what you would call a rare bird. In fact, there were so many of us in and around Cape Edwards that it was suggested we form our own official organization, complete with a clubhouse and a secret handshake. We joked about it, of course, and when Terri Coburn suggested we make the Edmonds’ oldest son, a strapping young man who won the state wrestling championship, our official mascot, well, the idea really picked up some steam. But since we really didn’t want to be single—or middle-aged—we chose not to make our status part of any official organization. Over the years we strengthened our friendships, watched some of us marry, embraced the newly single, and met once a week for breakfast at the Town Pharmacy.

  Cape Edwards didn’t have a CVS or a Rite-Aid, or even a Walgreens. We had the Town Pharmacy, right at the end of Main Street before you took the left to get onto State Road 31. Town Pharmacy was so much more than a mere drugstore. It sold cards, home accessories, candles, stockings, and oddly enough, Vera Bradley. There was also a luncheonette that served from six in the morning until two in the afternoon. I ate breakfast there, almost every Saturday morning, and had for almost fifteen years.

  There were now five of us, as some of the original ladies from years back had moved on, one way or another. We met at eight thirty, sat at the same table, and pretty much ordered the same thing every week. Marie Wu sometimes asked for pancakes instead of her usual waffle, but our waitress, Wendy, was a quick young thing and never batted an eye.

  It was at this breakfast table on an otherwise ordinary Saturday morning that I heard the news about Sam.

  Stella Blount and I pulled into the parking lot at the same time from two different directions. Stella owned a shop of Main Street called Tidal Gifts, and during the summer season she made enough money to stay open for the other eight months of the year. She was short and round with hair cut in a short Afro with a patch of dark purple along one side. She was a shrewd businesswoman and a good friend.

  “What’s the word?” I asked as we met by the front door.

  She shook her head. “There was something happening last night, but I don’t know what it was. I imagine we’ll find out in 3..2…1…”

  Three faces looked up as we walked in, and I could tell by the looks that the something that had happened was bad.

  “Should we be sitting down for this?” I asked.

  Karen nodded her head and patted the empty seat next to her.

  “Yes” she said. “You too, Stella.”

  Stella sat gingerly across from me. “Who died?” She said it lightly, sarcastically, but…

  Terri took a deep breath. “It’s Sam. He’s gone. Last night, Charlie said. Heart attack.” She reached across the table to grab my hand, holding it tightly. “I’m so sorry, Jenna.”

  They all watched, and I felt tears. “Damn,” I muttered, and reached for a mug of coffee, poured in an excessive amount of sugar and stirred slowly with my free hand.

  Sam had been my husband for almost five years. They had been the happiest and most miserable five years of my life. We were an unlikely couple to begin with. I’d been barely eighteen and had never been farther from Cape Edwards than Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Sam blew in from New York City and opened a bar on Main Street and hired me to waitress. He was forty at the time, traveled and experienced, had lots of money and a wicked sense of humor. We had what could best be described as a whirlwind courtship. My mother howled and complained and protested. She promised me trips to Europe and threatened to disown me. But I was in love, so Sam and I married, right there on the beach, both of us barefoot and a little high.

  “Heart?” I asked.

  Marie Wu nodded, her dark, bobbed hair dancing around her face. “Yep. Collapsed behind the bar. Glory and Charlie took turns doing CPR, but it was no use. By the time the EMTs got there, he was gone. I’m so sorry, honey.”

  I drank my coffee. We hadn’t been very successful as a married couple, but for years we’d been the best of friends. “Well, that sucks.” I’d been on Main Street last night. A headache kept me from staying late, but I’d had my usual beer with Sam around nine-thirty. He’d been fine.

  Karen Helfman reached around me to give me a hug. She was older than I, just fifty, and was a yoga instructor. You wouldn’t think there was much of a demand for yoga in a small town like Cape Edwards, but her studio was quite popular, drawing clients as far north as Exmore. She was very much into an all-natural way of living, so her hair was very gray and her face was wrinkled from too many walks in the summer sun. Her body was that of a twenty-year-old, but she looked sixty-five from the neck up.

  “What are you going to do with the bar?” she asked.

  I glanced around the table. They all leaned in expectantly.

  Wendy came up to our table. She’d been working there for five years and knew us all too well. “The usual, ladies?” she asked.

  Heads nodded around the table. I pushed my mug to the center.

  “I over sugared this, Wendy. Sorry. Another cup?”

  She nodded. “Sure, hon. I don’t blame you, with losing Sam and all. We all know how much you still loved him,” she said, and vanished.

  “I didn’t still love him,” I muttered. I glanced up. All four faces showed perfect disbelief.

  “Well, I didn’t,” I said louder.

  “Then why the tears?” Marie asked. She was a tiny woman, Korean, and she was a lawyer up in Cheriton, specializing in property law. Property was a big deal on the Eastern Shore, and surveys had a tendency to be quite fluid and flexible things, keeping her quite busy.

  “Look, we all loved him. He was my friend.”

  Terri reached across the table to grab my hand again and squeeze it. “Jenna, we all know why you never married again.”

  I pulled my hand back. “I never married again because there was no one around here worth marrying.”

  Marie clucked softly. “What about all those doctors across the Bay? Huh?”<
br />
  I sighed. She was right, there had been plenty of doctors on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, but most of them were already married. That hadn’t kept me from sleeping with a few of them, but it really squelched any marrying plans.

  “None of you remarried. Were you all in love with Sam?”

  Terri shook her head. “Fifteen years is a long time to be without a man, Jenna.”

  I made a face. “And what makes you all think I’ve gone fifteen years without a man?”

  The giggles erupted as Wendy brought my fresh mug of coffee.

  “What’s the joke?” she asked.

  “Jenna here was just about to tell a few tales out of school,” Marie said with a smirk. “Apparently, she’s been milking a few locals without us even knowing.”

  I waved my spoon. “No locals. I told you, this town is dry. But those doctors…”

  More giggles, and Wendy joined in. “There’s a new doc moving into the Booker place.”

  We all sat up. Wendy’s mother was the realtor in town, and that made her a prime source of information.

  “Married?” Stella asked.

  Wendy shook her head. “Don’t get too excited. A woman. Just her name on the paperwork, Mom said. She’s planning to gut the whole house. She’s got the McCann brothers to do the work.”

  Now, the McCann brothers were as close as Cape Edwards came to eligible bachelors, but they both worked so much that the women in town had a hard time getting them into any kind of social situation. Lord knows, enough of them had tried to get either of those boys, but it was hard to put the moves on a man when he was putting up sheetrock.

  Terri raised her eyebrows. “Very useful information, Wendy. Thank you. When is she moving in?”

  “Soon. Closing in a few weeks. Told Mom she’s starting at the Riverside MedCenter first of the month.” She glanced back at the kitchen. “I think you’re up,” she muttered, and moved away.

  “Well now, that’s good news,” Karen said. “We could use another smart, successful woman in town.”

  “Maybe. But Jenna,” Stella said. “What about Sam’s place?”

  “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I never gave it much thought.”

  “Well, darlin’, you were the only family he had, right?” Marie asked.

  I nodded. “Yes. I mean, he never mentioned anyone except an aunt up in Long Island somewhere, so he may have cousins? But I guess I just never thought he’d actually die.”

  Karen snorted. “He was over sixty, drank like a fish and smoked those damn cigars. The only cardio he ever got was when he got worked up over a football game. I’m surprised he lasted this long.”

  “Oh, Karen, hush. I know exactly what Jenna means,” Terri said. “Sam seemed…eternal.” And she was right. He had boundless energy, charm, and a kind heart. He was a force. And now he was gone.

  “Well, you have to keep it open,” Stella said. “Sam’s on Main is an institution now. I don’t know what we’d do without it. And you know how popular it gets in the summer.”

  Wendy put our plates in front of us and disappeared, promising more coffee.

  I stared at my eggs. Sam’s had originally been a simple bar, dark and closed in. Sam had lived on the second floor when he first opened it, making, he said, for an easy commute.

  When we married, we bought a house right on the Chesapeake Bay, a long, rambling brick affair on eight acres at the end of a road so twisted and rutted I always wanted to put up a sign that read, “Here There Be Dragons.” It was there that Sam and I lived and loved and fought and loved some more until he left, went back to New York, and filed for divorce. I signed the papers, which gave me half the house and alimony for ten years.

  The bar had remained shuttered until Sam made his reappearance two years later. By then, I’d finished college, had my nursing degree, and worked at a hospital across the bridge in Norfolk. I had stopped thinking he was the worst person in the world. It took a few months, but one night I walked back into his bar, ordered a beer, and we began the journey back to friendship.

  Over the years the bar had grown. He’d bought the building next door when it had become vacant and added more windows and tables, and a kitchen. He went upward, breaking open the second floor and put in a balcony that ran around three sides. He still had his bachelor flat over the original place, two small rooms and a bath. He would joke that when he retired, he’d claim his half of the house and move back in with me.

  “I guess the house is all mine now,” I said slowly.

  “I love your house,” Stella said, dunking her toast in egg yolk. “A tough place to be in the weather, but it’s just beautiful.”

  “But the bar, Jenna,” Marie said. “You can’t sell it.”

  I looked up. “Why not? I can’t run it.”

  “Course you can,” Karen said. “How hard can it be?”

  “I have a job, remember?”

  “But only three days a week,” Stella pointed out.

  “Three twelve-hour shifts a week,” I corrected her. “And taking care of the house and the dogs and the garden, not to mention the goats…I don’t have time to run a bar.”

  “You could quit nursing,” Karen said. “Work right here in town. You’ve said for years now how you hate the commute over that dang bridge.”

  I sat back slowly. Quit my job? But I loved my job.

  No, actually, I didn’t. I’d just been doing it for so long I couldn’t imagine doing anything else with my life.

  “I guess I’ll have to hear what Ellis has to say,” I said, gratefully sipping my fresh coffee.

  Terri rolled her eyes. “What do you think Ellis is going to say? The bar is yours, Jenna. And didn’t you say you wanted to do something new and exciting now that you’re the big four-oh?”

  Forty is a big birthday. Ask anyone who’s survived it. I’d spent the day alone, looking out over the Chesapeake Bay, trying to decide how I felt about being alive for so long. I’d thought about my work, my life, and about what I’d have done differently. I had also thought about what I’d want going forward.

  The only definitive thing I’d decided was that I wanted a change. I didn’t know what change, or how to go about that change, but I knew that was what I needed.

  Sitting there, thinking about it, I thought that running Sam’s on Main might be the answer.

  I was still thinking about it when I got home. I shut off the car and sat, looking at the water, thinking about what it would mean to own Sam’s on Main. Then I put my head down on the steering wheel and started to cry, and didn’t stop until it seemed there were no tears left in the world.

  The Sunday paper had an official death notice, saying nothing more than Sam Ferris had died of a heart attack on Friday evening, and that he was to be cremated, and that an official memorial service would be announced at a later time. Ellis Summer, the lawyer in town, had put the notice in the paper. Ellis spent a lot of his time doing that sort of thing. He was a family lawyer, which meant he took care of things that families in trouble or under duress forgot about doing.

  Ellis Summer had an office on Main Street, right over the Grove Gallery. You had to walk up a narrow flight of stairs, perch on a landing so small you couldn’t have more than two feet and the tip of an umbrella on it, and wait for Ellis unlock the door. He claimed he couldn’t afford to have a stranger walk in while he was with a client. There was no waiting room or receptionist, no clerk slaving away in a dark corner office. There was just one long room with an ancient desk, a worktable, a wall of filing cabinets and a bookcase of law books.

  Ellis had been in my class in high school. I’d known him all my life, and I knew he’d be a lawyer, just like his father, Eaton Summer. Eaton had handled my divorce, but as soon as Ellis passed the bar, he moved into his father’s office, and Eaton Summer spent his retirement fishing and driving his poor wife crazy. They both died last year, within a week of each other.

  I worked Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but I called out for that
Monday and rang Ellis first thing in the morning. He told me to come right over. I went up the stairs, knocked, and waited until he opened the door. He greeted me somberly, pointed to the familiar client chair, then settled behind his desk.

  “Hey, Red,” he said. Everyone I knew from high school called me Red, because I’d been the only person in the entire school with red hair. I’d hated the nickname, but over the years had accepted my fate. “I’m sorry about Sam. Thanks for coming by.”

  I nodded as I sat.

  The file was right there in front of him. He opened it and cleared his throat. “I have his will,” he began.

  I nodded again. I’d learned years ago that to interrupt him for any reason only gave him the excuse to go back to the very beginning.

  “Sam’s wish was to be cremated immediately after his death. As executor of his estate, I’ve already instructed Kenny.” Kenny was Kenny Malcolm, owner and operator of the Malcom Funeral Home, right in Cape Edwards.

  “One year after his death, he wished to have a memorial service in the bar, with free food and drink for all, after which his ashes were to be taken out in Fred Harvey’s boat and dumped in the Chesapeake Bay.”

  I took a breath. That sounded about right. “I wondered about that. He’d always said he didn’t want a funeral. I was here to offer my help, but I guess I’m not needed?”

  Ellis pushed up his glasses. “No, but thank you, Jenna. Around here we all still thought of you as a couple, albeit an unusual one. So I can understand your concern. I also appreciate the fact that you’d have expectations. However, Sam left everything to his son, Craig Ferris, of Chicago, Ill.” He sat back. “Everything except for five thousand dollars to cover the cost of his cremation and the, ah, after party.”