Page 201 of The Seven Rings
With a longMmmmm, Maddy walked over to examine the sofa first. She walked around it, poked, prodded, got down to study the frame.
“This is going to be horsehair.”
“So I’m told.”
“I’m going to tell you something else.” She turned to one of the chairs, did the same examination. “You’re a smart girl, and one that hits me where I live. They don’t build them like this anymore, and that’s a fact. Preserving these? Not just decor, not just something to sit on, but history. Imagine the butts that have sat on these over the decades?”
Standing, she nodded. “They’re beautiful, and we can make them good as new while keeping that history. I’m going to get measurements.”
As she reached into her huge bag, pulled out her tape measure, the Gold Room bell rang, and rang, and rang.
Maddy glanced over. “Somebody want something?”
“Somebody would prefer nothing changes in the manor. I assume you know the legend. The Lost Bride Manor legend.”
“Except for a few years of wanderlust, I’ve lived in Poole’s Bay all my life. Not everybody agrees on all the details, but everybody knows about Lost Bride Manor.”
“That’s Hester Dobbs.” Sonya nodded toward the bells. “She stays, well, pissed off.”
“Is that so?” Maddy fingered the crystals around her neck. “Doesn’t seem to bother you much.”
“I’ve had my moments. If you’d rather, I can have the pieces brought to you.”
Maddy shoved up her glasses, as they’d slid a bit down her nose.
“During my wanderlust, when I was, oh, twenty-two or so? I worked in housekeeping at this castle hotel in Scotland. A genuine castle, not a place built to look like one. It was full of ghosts.” She shrugged, started measuring. “We learned to coexist.
“I tended bar for a while in an Irish pub, lived in the flat over it. You haven’t lived until you share space with drunk Irish ghosts. And damn if one of them—they called him Seamus—didn’t leave the toilet seat up every blessed night.”
Sonya laughed with real appreciation. “I’m glad to say we don’t have a Seamus type here.”
With her tape, and an app on her tablet, Maddy measured, calculated, measured, and calculated.
“All right. I’ll go out and get my sample books out of my truck.”
“Why don’t we do the selections in the kitchen? I’ll get my housemate. Would you like coffee?”
“I never turn it down. You know it’s not just that Dobbs, don’t you? This place is full of spirits.”
As Maddy started to put her tablet away, it played “We Are Family.”
“My grandmother,” Sonya explained. “Clover. She runs the house music. She was married to Charlie Poole, and died after giving birth to my father and uncle.”
“I’ve heard something about that recently. How she married young Charlie, then the old bat, Patricia Poole, gave one baby away, kept the other as Gretta’s kid. That was Collin. My mother knows Gretta some—I guess everybody around here of a certain age knew her some. Strange woman.”
Having Maddy take it all in stride made everything easier. When she went out to the truck, Sonya texted Cleo.
With the sample books on the table, Sonya made introductions.
“Beautiful crystals,” Cleo said.
“I’ll say the same. Is that black tourmaline?”
“It is. My grandfather gave it to my grandmother, and she gave it to me.”
“We’re having coffee, Cleo.”
“I could use some. Juggling work,” she said with a smile for Maddy.
