by Sarah Fox
“We’ll stay with you until the police get here,” Louie said.
“Of course we will,” Gilda agreed. “And you’ll stay at my place tonight.”
My first instinct was to protest, but before I got any words out I realized that I didn’t want to argue with her. “Can I bring Wimsey over too?” I asked. “I don’t want to leave him alone at the mill after everything that’s happened lately.”
“We’ll go get him after you’ve spoken to the police,” Aunt Gilda said.
She put an arm around me, and I rested my head on her shoulder, grateful for her presence. I was still shaken, although with every minute that passed I felt a bit better. The cogs in my brain continued to turn, trying to figure out who my attacker was, but I came up empty. When a patrol car pulled up to the curb a minute later, I still had no real clues to share.
The responding officer turned out to be Vera Anderson’s nephew, Officer Eldon Howes. I told him what had happened in as much detail as I could—which was hardly any—and Grayson gave his brief account as well.
“We’ll do some extra patrols of the area throughout the night,” Officer Howes assured us.
Despite that promise, I didn’t have high hopes that the police would catch my attacker. He or she was long gone by now, and with basically no description to go on, my assailant would likely never be identified. Unless Eric’s killer was found and my attacker turned out to be the same person.
As Officer Howes drove off in his patrol car, Aunt Gilda returned her arm to my shoulders. “Let’s go pick up Wimsey so we can get you settled at my place.”
I glanced at Grayson, who was standing next to Louie. “I’ll just be a moment,” I said to Aunt Gilda.
As Louie moved to join Aunt Gilda by the streetlamp, I approached Grayson, rubbing my arms to keep warm. “Thank you for calling the police and for looking for the attacker.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I’m glad nothing worse happened to you.”
I was about to turn away when Grayson touched a hand to my arm. “Sadie.”
I raised my eyes to meet his.
“It really would be safer for you to leave the investigating to the police.”
If exhaustion hadn’t been seeping into my bones, his words would have annoyed me. As it was, all I wanted to do was snuggle up into bed with Wimsey, so I simply nodded and returned to Aunt Gilda’s side. She tucked her arm through mine, and Louie accompanied us as we set off toward the mill. When I glanced over my shoulder, I saw Grayson still standing out front of the restaurant, watching us. I focused on the mill ahead of me, too tired to sort out the conflicting emotions that the sight of him stirred up inside of me.
* * *
Less than an hour later, I was under the covers in Aunt Gilda’s guest room, Wimsey curled up on the pillow next to me. He’d stayed with me at Aunt Gilda’s apartment when I’d first arrived in Shady Creek, so he’d settled into our temporary accommodations easily, and now he was completely relaxed, his front paws tucked beneath him and his eyes closed.
If only I could have relaxed with such little effort. I kept closing my eyes, only to realize that I was once again staring up at the ceiling a few minutes later. I wished I’d brought a book with me, but I’d left my Kathy Reichs novel at home on my bedside table.
A couple of times during the night, I got up from the bed and tiptoed toward the window, opening it and shivering as I stuck my head out to peer down the street toward the darkened mill. When I saw that it wasn’t on fire or otherwise in jeopardy, I was able to return to bed and shut my eyes, but only for a short while. My worries wouldn’t leave me completely, and the scary moments from earlier in the night kept replaying in my mind.
Eventually, I managed to sink into a restless sleep, waking up around seven in the morning when I heard Aunt Gilda moving about in the kitchen. I’d left the bedroom door partially open during the night, and Wimsey was nowhere to be seen. I slowly disentangled myself from the sheets and headed out into the living area in my pajamas, yawning widely. Wimsey was in the kitchen, happily eating breakfast from a dish on the floor while Aunt Gilda stirred a pot on the stove.
“Did you manage to get any sleep?” she asked when I entered the kitchen and leaned against the counter.
I made a so-so gesture with my hand and tucked my messy hair behind my ear. “Thanks for letting me stay here.”
She left the stove to come over and kiss me on the top of my head. “You’re welcome here anytime. You know that.”
I smiled at her, and she patted my cheek before returning to the stove.
“I’m making you some oatmeal.”
I’d already suspected that from the smell I’d detected as soon as I’d entered the kitchen. “Yum.”
“It’ll be ready in a minute. Grab yourself a bowl. There’s a bag of chocolate chips in the pantry.”
A few minutes later, I was settled at the kitchen table, eating the delicious oatmeal topped with chocolate chips. Aunt Gilda assured me that she’d already eaten some toast for breakfast, but she joined me at the table with a cup of coffee.
“You should take some time to relax today,” she said. “You’ve been through a lot lately, and you should try to enjoy the festival.”
“I’ve got to be back at the tent by noon. And before that, I need to mix up the cocktails for the day’s samples.”
“I’ll leave that last part to you, but why don’t you let me look after the tent for a while?”
“You already helped out yesterday,” I reminded her. “And won’t you be busy at the salon?”
“Not today or tomorrow. I made sure to keep a couple of days free this week so I could check out the festival.”
“Then that’s what you should do,” I said. “Don’t worry about me and the Inkwell.”
She set down her coffee cup. “Honey, of course I’m going to worry after all that’s happened lately. I had a walk around the festival yesterday, and I’ve got tomorrow off too. You mix up the cocktails. Then I’ll hand out the samples, at least for a few hours. No arguments.”
I set down my spoon in my empty bowl and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “Thank you, Aunt Gilda. You’re the best.”
Once I was dressed, I gathered up my overnight bag and put Wimsey into his carrier. After hugging Aunt Gilda, I headed for home, the cool morning air working together with the coffee Gilda had served me to bring me fully awake.
As soon as I was out on the street, my gaze zeroed in on the mill. With relief, I saw that it was still standing. I didn’t know if I had reason to fear for my home and business, but I was concerned nonetheless. Before, I’d been able to comfort myself with the thought that the slashed tires and the ominous placement of the gas can might have been nothing more than meanspirited pranks, but now that someone had tried to attack me directly, I didn’t have a single scrap of peace of mind left to grab on to.
I tried to remain calm as I walked, breathing in the crisp morning air scented with a hint of wood smoke, but I couldn’t keep myself from looking this way and that, checking to make sure no one was following me or showing too much interest in me. Everyone seemed to be absorbed in their own business, most of which related to the festival on the village green, but I still couldn’t relax completely.
I checked that Creekside Road was free of oncoming traffic and then stepped out onto the street. Three strides later, I came to an abrupt stop, staring at the mill. The building was still standing, but all of the windows were streaked with a gooey substance.
“Oh, Sweet Sherlock. What now?” I muttered as my heart broke into a fretful gallop.
I took a step closer to the mill and stopped again, realizing that all of the windows had been egged.
Anger bubbled its way up through my initial wash of anxiety.
My unknown enemy had struck again.
Chapter 20
A car honked at me, and I realized I was still standing in the middle of the road.
I strode quickly to the other side of the s
treet and across the footbridge, setting down my bag and Wimsey’s carrier on the grass. I marched along the side of the mill, noting that fragments of eggshell littered the ground and had stuck to the stone walls. I wouldn’t have been surprised if steam had poured out of my ears. I was tempted to release my frustration by yelling at the top of my lungs, but the first tour bus of the day had just unloaded its passengers onto the green, and I didn’t want people avoiding the Inkwell because they thought I was a crazy lady. So instead, I muttered a few choice words under my breath and rested my hands on my hips.
What a mess. It would take ages to clean up.
If I hadn’t been so angry, I probably would have sat down on the ground, ready for a good cry. Since I was too irate for that, I stormed around the entire building, checking each of the windows. Not one had been spared.
When I returned to the front of the mill, I heard a plaintive meow come from Wimsey’s cat carrier. Some of my anger drained away at the sound, and I hurried over to my cat.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” I said, leaning down to talk to him through the door. “Let’s get you inside.”
Under other circumstances, I would have opened the door right there, but I was too uneasy to let him run free at the moment. Who knew what else the culprit would be willing to do to cause trouble in my life? I didn’t want to give them the opportunity to harm Wimsey in any way.
Once up in my apartment, I set Wimsey free, although I kept the cat doors shut tight. Then I grabbed a bucket from the storeroom on the first floor and filled it with soapy water. I plopped a sponge into the water and grabbed a squeegee before heading outdoors. Since I wanted as few tourists as possible to see the condition of the mill, I started with the windows visible from the green—the ones on the creek side of the mill.
I was still fuming when I got to work scrubbing down the glass with the soapy sponge, so I channeled that energy into the task of cleaning. By the time I finished the ground floor windows near the waterwheel and the ones on either side of the pub’s front door, my anger had reduced to a simmer. That allowed my mind to clear, and I realized that I should have reported the incident to the police. I wiped my hands on my jeans and dug my phone out of my pocket, deciding to get that over with. Lately I’d made far too many reports to the police for my liking, and I hoped that would soon change.
There must not have been much else going on crime-wise in Shady Creek that morning, because a patrol car showed up within five minutes, Officer Delaney at the wheel. I told her what had happened and showed her the upper windows that were all still streaked with egg. She promised to make a report and went on her way within minutes of arriving.
Leaving the bucket and squeegee on the footpath, I crossed the grass to the shed and unlocked the double doors, pulling them both open so the daylight would allow me to see into the small building’s dim interior. I had to move two sawhorses and a rake to get at the extension ladder stored on one wall, but I was soon hauling it out onto the grass.
When I stepped out into the sunlight, Damien was crossing the footbridge toward me.
“What’s going on?” he said when he saw me. “I thought I’d find you mixing cocktails, not wrestling with a ladder.”
I tried to brush a clump of cobwebs out of my hair, but only succeeded in dropping the ladder to the ground with a clatter.
“Let me,” Damien grabbed the ladder. “Where do you want this?”
I pointed toward the mill. “I’m trying to get at the second-floor windows.”
I could tell that he was about to ask me why, but then he took in the sight of the windows and swore instead. “When did that happen?”
“Sometime during the night.”
As he carried the ladder over to the mill, I explained to him what had happened on my way home from Shontelle’s the night before. “And when I came home this morning, every single one of the windows had been egged.”
Damien set the ladder up against the mill, the top of it resting under the sill of a second-floor window. “Did you tell the police?”
“An officer just left a few minutes ago.” I rested my hands on my hips and glared up at the dirty window above me.
“This is getting serious,” Damien said. “You need to be careful.”
“I plan to be.”
“I’ll look after the windows. You go get ready for the festival.”
“Your shift doesn’t start until this evening,” I reminded him. “Don’t you have other things you want to do?”
“I was coming by to have a last look at the catapult, but that’ll keep. I’m doing the windows, so there’s no point in wasting your breath arguing with me.”
I gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks, Damien. I seriously don’t know what I’d do without you and Mel.”
He shrugged out of his leather jacket and draped it over one of the straw bales decorating the lawn. “Let me know if you need a hand with the cocktails.”
I thanked him again and headed inside. It didn’t take me long to prepare the drinks, so I grabbed a second sponge before heading back outside. All the windows that would be visible to anyone coming to the pub were now spotless. When I headed around to the forest side of the mill, I found Damien up the ladder, working on the last of the upper-story windows.
“That looks great,” I said as he gave the pane one last swipe with the squeegee.
He descended the ladder, the bucket in one hand. “It shouldn’t take long to finish the last of them. Then there’s just the shells to pick up.”
“The cocktails are done, so I can take over now.”
“I’ll stay until the job is done.” He started in on one of the ground-floor windows.
I dunked my sponge in the water and got to work on the next window. We worked in silence for a few minutes before the urge to ask questions distracted me from the task at hand. I glanced Damien’s way, but he didn’t seem to notice. He finished up the window he was working on, grabbed the bucket, and moved past me to work on a different window.
“Do you think I’m a terrible boss?” The question burst out of me despite my efforts to keep it tucked away.
Damien paused with his sponge against a pane of glass. He sent a sidelong glance my way before resuming his scrubbing.
My stomach flipped over, and I wondered if I was about to get an answer I didn’t want to hear.
“Is that the impression I give you?” he asked.
The fact that he hadn’t answered my question only intensified my anxiety.
“I’m not sure.” I returned to cleaning the window in front of me. “I guess I have trouble reading you. I’m not sure if you don’t like me or if you’re just reserved.”
Another stretch of silence—punctuated only by the squeak of my sponge running across the glass—sent my stomach into another somersault.
“It’s not that I don’t like you,” he said at last.
“But?” I prodded, sensing he’d left something unsaid.
He dipped his sponge in the bucket and set to work on another pane. “I suppose I’ve been wary.”
“Of me? Why?”
“I want to send my girls to college,” he said, referring to his two teenage daughters, whom he was raising on his own. “To do that, I need both my carpentry work and this job.”
I stopped cleaning, holding my sponge away from me so the excess water would drip on the ground instead of my clothes. I thought I understood what he was getting at. “And you weren’t sure if I’d be able to keep the business going.”
A slight tip of his head indicated that I was right.
I stared at the egg-streaked window in front of me as I sifted through my thoughts and emotions. As soon as I’d taken on the pub, I’d felt a weight of responsibility toward my employees. I didn’t want to let them down and leave them without work, so I understood his point of view. In his shoes, I probably would have been wary too.
Even so, I couldn’t help but want the confidence of everyone around me. I’d never had that, though. I wasn’t blind to
the fact that there were some people in town who thought a city girl who’d never owned a business would drive their favorite pub into the ground. On top of that, my own mother and older brother thought I was foolish for buying the pub and bound to fail within the first year. As much as I wanted to prove all of those people wrong, there were times when I wondered if they were right.
“I like you as a person, Sadie,” Damien said, as if to reassure me.
“But not as a boss?” I tried not to sound hurt.
“I’ve got no complaints there either.”
“But as a business owner?”
A hint of a smile showed on his face. “Let’s just say that I’m less wary than I was three months ago.”
That wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for, but it could have been worse, and it would have to do. Maybe one day I’d earn his full confidence.
We finished off the remaining windows without much further conversation, and Damien took off on his motorcycle not long after. I emptied the bucket and walked around the mill, picking up bits of eggshell and dropping them into the pail. I didn’t get every little piece, but by the time I’d made my way around the building, the worst of the mess was cleaned up.
My spirits weren’t particularly high as I dumped the eggshells into the pub’s compost bin and washed my hands. Knowing that someone had targeted me once again wasn’t at all comforting. Would they ever stop, or would they keep causing trouble for me? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to that question.
When I checked my phone, I had a message from the local mechanic, letting me know that my car was ready to be picked up. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go get it right away. All I really felt like doing was lounging on my couch and cuddling with Wimsey, but at the same time I didn’t want the gloomy cloud hanging over my head to envelop me completely. Maybe if I did as Aunt Gilda suggested and tried to enjoy the Autumn Festival, my mood would improve.
First, though, I decided to go get my car. It only took me twenty minutes to walk to the garage, and once I’d paid my bill, I drove back to the Inkwell, parking in the empty lot at the edge of the property. It wasn’t quite time to haul the coolers over to the tent, so I stood beneath one of the maple trees, thinking about what to do next.