Cottage on Gooseberry Bay: Charmed Summer by Kathi Daley (big screen ebook reader txt) 📗

her legs up under her body and settling the laptop on her lap. She then began to type. I knew this might take a while, so I turned my attention to Josie.

“The other charm that we feel fairly certain about is the book,” I said to Josie. “The book has the name Brewster’s inscribed on it. Ellery did some research and discovered that there had indeed been a bookstore named Brewster’s Books in Gooseberry Bay back in the nineties.”

“Sure. I remember that place. It was located in the building where the museum is now housed.”

“How long ago did it go out of business?” I asked.

Josie paused and then answered. “Maybe four or five years ago, I guess. The little store lasted longer than some of the other independents in the area, but the owner, a woman named Kendra Hart, decided to retire, so she liquidated the stock and sold the building to the historical society.”

“Does Kendra still live in the area?” I asked.

“Yes, she does. In fact, Kendra volunteers at the museum.” Josie’s eyes widened. “You’re hoping that she’ll remember the woman with the bracelet.”

“It’s worth asking.”

“I’m off tomorrow. I’ll go to the museum with you if you want. If Kendra isn’t working tomorrow, whoever is should know when she’ll be in. It might be a good idea to bring the actual charm bracelet when you speak to her.”

“Let’s confirm she’s available to speak with. If she is and she wants to see the actual bracelet, I’ll call my client and have her meet us there.”

“Okay, guys. I have the list of entrants for the Bay to Boardwalk Run in nineteen ninety-six,” Jemma said.

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “How long is it?”

“There were six hundred and forty-two entrants.”

“Yikes!” I narrowed my gaze. “That’s a lot. Can we narrow it down?”

“I eliminated the men and pulled up a list of women only, which brought it down to three hundred and eighty-four.” Jemma sat staring at her screen.

“I know this is a guess, but if Ellery is correct and her mother spent the summer in Gooseberry Bay, only to end up pregnant and alone, chances are she was young. How young, I don’t know, but abandoning a naked baby in a church doesn’t sound like something someone with maturity would do.”

“I guess I can set some age parameters. The run is open to everyone sixteen and above, so how about sixteen to twenty-two?” Jemma asked.

“That sounds like a good place to start.”

She typed in the parameters we’d discussed and then sat back. “It didn’t help much. There are still two hundred and four entrants.”

“Okay, let’s print out a list with those names,” I suggested. “Let’s also print the list of all the female entrants. Maybe someone will be able to remember some of these individuals. I have to assume that quite a few of them were local. We can ask around and begin to eliminate those individuals who are known to others and who definitely weren’t pregnant during the winter between the summer of ninety-six and the spring of ninety-seven.”

Josie sat on the sofa, thumbing through the photos on my phone. “A couple of these charms, like the shoe, if it turns out that it is associated with the Bay to Boardwalk Run, seem like they might provide a clue, but other charms, like the ice cream cone, are too common to be of much use. Even if you settled on the idea that the cone represented an ice cream shop and the shop was important to the story, which shop?”

“I suppose we can go down to the Chamber of Commerce and get a list of all the ice cream shops in Gooseberry Bay that held licenses and did business in nineteen ninety-six,” I said. “There couldn’t have been that many. Sure, Gooseberry Bay is a beach town which probably does have a higher ice cream shop to population ratio than some towns, but still, we’re probably only looking at a handful of vendors.”

“What about all the ice cream carts on the boardwalk?” Josie asked. “There are a bunch of them in the summer, and I’m not sure they have business licenses.”

“I guess that’s true,” I admitted.

“And we don’t know for certain that the ice cream cone represents an actual place. Maybe the woman who owed the bracelet simply liked ice cream.”

I wrinkled my nose as I considered this idea. “There are seven charms on the bracelet. Seven memories were chosen to commemorate a summer filled with hundreds of experiences. If we’re correct, and that’s what was going on, I think we should assume the charms are important and not a whim.”

“Like the rose,” Josie said. “You said the blanket Ellery was wrapped in had roses on it, and the bracelet also has a rose. I would think that a rose is an important clue.”

“Maybe, but it’s also pretty general. Maybe the woman who owned the bracelet just liked roses. And even if it is an important clue and we can track it back to a flower shop, we don’t know for sure that all the charms were all gathered over one summer, let alone all in Gooseberry Bay,” Jemma pointed out. “Perhaps we can determine that this piece of information will help us with the remaining charms, but at this point, the only charm associated with nineteen ninety-six is the shoe.”

Jemma was right. I supposed I was getting ahead of myself.

Josie continued to thumb through the photos, pausing to consider each one. “I wonder if the movie reel is supposed to commemorate Gooseberry Bay’s annual Movies on the Beach event the town holds every other Friday during the summer.”

“There’s a movie on the beach event?” I asked.

She nodded. “A movie is shown on a huge screen made out of an old sail down on Land’s End Beach every other Friday from