Gypsy Sins by John Lawrence Reynolds Page A

box. “Keys,” he said, handing the envelope to McGuire. “The big one opens the front door, the little one opens the back door. There’s an old cast iron key in there—I think she said it’s for Terry’s room. There’s a key for her old Saab in the garage. I think it’s drivable. I know she had the tag renewed this year.” He looked around at the others. “Complained that Massachusetts should give a rebate to her estate if she died before it expired,” he laughed. “She was serious too.”
    The others smiled and grinned. “Good old Cora,” Blake Stevenson said in his gravelly voice.
    â€œAlso a key for the box, the one with Cora’s deed to the house and some other legal papers in it, just tax bills I think, that kind of stuff. You might as well keep it. She gave it to me a couple of years ago, after she had her first heart attack.”
    â€œThanks for everything,” McGuire said, taking the small file box from Leedale and heading for the door.
    â€œDon’t forget this.” Parker Leedale handed McGuire his canvas bag. “See you tomorrow. Ten o’clock, my office. Right across from the library, second floor. You want a ride down?”
    â€œI can walk it,” McGuire answered, hefting the bag on his shoulder.
    He stepped into the late afternoon air, closing the door behind him.
    Now they’re free to talk about me, he thought, studying the flagstones as he walked.

Chapter Eight
    McGuire’s shadow preceded him down the Leedales’ flagstones and across Miner’s Lane to Cora’s house.
    To his left, Miner’s Lane curved toward Mill Pond Road and downtown Compton; to his right, it led across the broad peninsula of land known as The Thumb, which extended into the brackish waters of Stage Harbour. There were neither sidewalks nor streetlights on Miner’s Lane. The houses were on oversized lots and widely scattered, each distinctive from its neighbours in design and proportion yet identical in detail: cedar shingles, working louvered shutters, massive brick chimneys and twin dormers.
    Cora Godwin’s house—now his house, if what June Leedale said was correct, McGuire reminded himself—was set like its neighbours well back from the road, amid an expansive lawn with flower gardens planted down both sides of the building. Small flakes of white enamel paint coated the surfaces of the window sills and door trim. The shutters, open wide to welcome the late afternoon sun, were finished in Wedgwood blue, as was the solid pine front door. A white stain spread like bird droppings from the base of the massive whitewashed brick chimney down the steeply pitched cedar shingled roof and between the dormers.
    McGuire slung the canvas bag over his shoulder, tore open the white envelope Parker Leedale had given him, withdrew the largest key, dropped the others in his pocket and unlocked the front door.
    Like a time machine, he thought in silent awe as he entered the house. Like stepping from this life into a previous one that’s been waiting all these years on the other side of the door.
    He recalled his aunt striding across this very living room, drying her hands on a towel or brushing flour from her apron, to greet him on his arrivals from Worcester. Her figure remained slim and while the years had deepened the lines of her face her eyes kept their bright and blue radiance. He could picture her now, walking with perfect posture toward him.
    Her strong voice echoed in McGuire’s ears.
    â€œSo what do you think of those Red Sox?” she would say. “Give me a hug now, then up the stairs and change into some clean clothes, your mother packed clean clothes for you, didn’t she? Then come on down and have some blueberry pie and I’ll fetch Terry from wherever he is. The baseball diamond maybe, or over at the bluffs near the lighthouse.”
    So alive. So active. So eager to challenge whatever the