Ivy dropped her gaze to the first image of a large boat moored on a dock. The ship, named the Maisy Adams, had a flat bottom and three levels outfitted with white railings and ornamental trim. On the top tier was an awning that stretched over the back half of the vessel, and under the cover were a dozen people at the railing, all waving to the photographer. Twin black smokestacks stood silent, with no trace of smoke rising.

“A showboat?” Ivy asked.

“They were popular on the intracoastal waterways from about 1900 to the late 1960s. I called a friend and asked about the Maisy Adams, and she told me the showboat did a good book of business until the mid-1960s.” The inland waterways stretched from the southern tip of Florida up into Boston. The route, a collection of canals, rivers, inlets, bays, and sounds, had been used to move goods and services for over a century.

“Basically, a traveling show or circus,” Ivy said.

“That’s about right. They’d have had singers, actors, magicians, jugglers. Anything that they thought would sell tickets found its way into an act.”

“So why does Ruth have a camera with a picture of the Maisy Adams? Did her parents take her to a show?”

“Maybe, but this camera was not cheap back in the day. The Wheelers were known to squeeze every penny they could out of a buck. This doesn’t seem their style.”

Ivy flipped to the next picture, which captured a light-colored Buick with a white convertible top. It was the blue car in one of Ruth’s paintings. “They weren’t the kind to drive a car like this.”

“That Buick dates back to the late 1940s. The kind of car driven for fun, not function.”

The next picture featured a woman with bottle-blonde hair twisted into a chignon. Pencil-dark eyebrows accentuated light eyes and grinning painted lips. Her smile was wide and infectious. Her light-colored top rested on the edges of her shoulders and dipped just below the crest of full breasts. “That certainly was not Ruth’s mother.” From what Ruth had said about Edna Wheeler, she’d been loving, dedicated to the hotel, and a bit dour. “She has to belong with the car and the showboat.”

The next image was of the Seaside Resort. In those days the bungalows had been painted limestone white and flanked the main building, which had housed the dining hall. On the other side of the central building would have been the pool. It all looked so new, nothing like the tired, careworn place she remembered. The SEASIDE RESORT sign appeared newly installed, and NO VACANCY was lit up. Again, like the painting. “The place stayed booked solid for a couple of decades’ worth of summers.”

“It was the place in its day,” Bob said.