by Rickie Blair
“Too obvious,” Emy said from under the counter, where she was restocking the marmalade.
“So the organizers only want determined players,” I mused aloud.
“Well, sure.” Shanice shrugged. “You don’t give away a million dollars to just anybody.”
“A million dollars?” I halted with the butter knife halfway to my plate. “Is that the prize?”
“That’s what everybody says.”
Emy rose, placing a dish of marmalade on the counter. Catching sight of my expression, she pursed her lips. “I see that cynical look, Verity. Cut it out.”
“What do you mean? What look?”
“You think the contest is silly.”
“I do not. But I do wonder who’s behind it.”
She shrugged. “Nobody knows. It’s a mystery.”
Next door, the doorbell jangled in Emy’s Eco Edibles, the vegan takeout that shared the first floor with the 5X Bakery.
Shanice headed for the connecting door behind the counter. “Emy, where do you keep the recycled-paper napkins?”
“In the back room. Next to the seaweed snacks.”
Once Shanice disappeared through the passage and a muffled conversation began next door, I drained the last of my tea and held out my mug for a refill. Lowering my voice, I said, “How’s she working out?”
“Fabulous. She makes great sandwiches, and the customers love her. I wish I could keep her when the semester’s over.”
“Will the college send you someone else?”
“Fingers crossed. I was dubious about the culinary-skills internship at first, but now I think it’s great.”
“I did offer to help out, you know. For the winter, at least.”
“Yes, and I was grateful.” Emy bit her lips in a gesture I suspected hid a smile. “But we discussed it, Verity. We decided your baking skills might not be up to the challenge.”
“Ha. You underestimate my abilities.”
Emy picked up the tongs. “Perhaps another scone will soothe your ruffled feelings?”
“It might,” I said, accepting a second and reaching for the butter knife.
“Besides, Shanice has great marketing ideas. She thinks we should set up a parallel contest board in the bakery, so people can post crossword clues here, too.” Tapping thoughtfully on the counter, she gazed into the distance. “Why should the library keep all that foot traffic to themselves? They’re not selling anything.”
She turned to me with a twinkle in her eye. “You should investigate it.”
“Me? What on earth for?”
“You’ve been complaining about having time on your hands. Think of the positive publicity for your PI business if you solve a mystery the whole village is talking about.”
“Not that again.” I groaned. “For the last time, Emy—I don’t have a ‘PI’ business.”
“But you said—”
“I said I might consult on minor cases. Misplaced mementos, estranged relatives, missing puppies. That’s all.”
Emy nodded sagely. “Estranged relatives would be a good area to get into. Everybody has those.”
“I’m not contacting my father in Australia.”
“I didn’t mean him,” Emy objected. “And for what it’s worth, I’m not contacting mine, either.”
We shared a high-five. Our deadbeat dads had always been a bond between us.
“But still.” Emy crossed her arms, giving me a quizzical glance. “I don’t see why you won’t consider it. It’s the obvious solution to your problem.”
“Because I promised Jeff I wouldn’t do any more investigating.”
“That’s not true. You promised him you wouldn’t do anything dangerous,” Emy said with her usual precision. “Not the same thing.”
I considered that while chewing. Sipping my tea, I eyed her over the rim of my mug before placing it firmly on the counter.
“Jeff says I have murder on the brain.” I buttered another piece of scone before adding a dab of the new marmalade.
“Is that a bad thing for an investigator?” Emy flexed her eyebrows. “Besides, Coming Up Roses is in mothballs for the winter. From now until April, you have no lawns to cut, no leaves to rake, and no flowers to plant. Hence—no cash. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Hmm.” I sipped my tea.
“Tell me why you’ve ruled out bookkeeping.”
“Because it reminds me of Vancouver.”
Emy uncrossed her arms. “Verity. That was nearly three years ago. You’ve moved on.”
Licking crumbs from my finger, I shrugged.
Emy pointed to my plate. “Do you want anything else?” When I shook my head, she put my plate into the sink.
“Okay, let’s review. Snow removal is—”
“Don’t even.” Shivering, I drew my sweater tight around my neck. The idea of rising before dawn to push snow around for hours in my aging pickup left me as cold as the January winds outside.
“Which brings us back to my original, and brilliant, idea.”
“I’m not getting involved in any more murder cases.”
“Who’s talking about murder? I’m only saying that, given your history, Leafy Hollow residents would happily pay you to clear up their little mysteries. You could uncover frauds, for instance.”
“I’m not a certified accountant, Emy, and definitely not a forensic one.”
“So what? Look how helpful you were when Mom was involved in that embezzlement thing. People don’t always call in the big guns right off the bat. Sometimes they need a little advice from someone who’s not going to—”
“Arrest them?” I asked drily.
“Exactly.”
I must have looked doubtful, because Emy leaned in with her forearms on the counter. “The police don’t investigate minor stuff. Especially when there’s no crime involved.”
“Then why would anyone—”
She held up a finger. “I have the perfect example. Yesterday, Henri Vartan came in for bacon-toffee shortbreads.”
I snickered. “Do you want me to track down the bacon? Or is it the toffee that’s missing?”
“Haha. Anyway—”
“Hang on. Didn’t Henri say your shortbreads have no place in a healthy diet?”
Emy rolled her eyes. “Imagine. I use nothing but the finest butter and cream. Organic, in fact. The bacon, too. Farm-raised. Besides, he only says stuff like that when the girls are around. The rest of the time, he can’t get enough of those shortbreads.”
“By ‘girls,’ he means the two women in his artists’ collective?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.” I hoped Henri wouldn’t call me a ‘girl’ the next time we met. Otherwise, I’d have to go all Krav Maga on his ample rear.
“Anyway, Henri told me how he found the oddest thing the other day outside the new Leafy Hollow art gallery—”
“Which is his house, right?”
“Yes, but listen—”
I sat back, trying to appear attentive.
“So, there he was, bending over to pick up mail off the floor in his hall, when he noticed a flash of red under a shrub. It turned out to be a red calfskin wallet. Someone left it there on purpose, Henri thinks.”
“Couldn’t they simply have dropped it?”
“It was tucked under the branches. No one walking past could have seen it. Henri only spotted it because when he bent down, it was visible through the sidelight by his front door.”
“Any money in it?”
“Twenty bucks.”
“Did it have a contest clue in it?”
“No, that’s the weird part. It was a regular wallet, with ID and credit cards.”
“Someone dropped their wallet. Not much mystery in that.”
“Wait—I’m getting to the mysterious part. Henri went to the police station to turn in the wallet. The next day, an officer called and told him all the ID was fake. They couldn’t match any of it to a real person.”
“Forgeries? That is strange.”
“I know,” Emy said smugly.
“What about the credit cards?”
“Same thing—forgeries.”
“And the twenty dollars?”
“They told Henri he could have that. He went back to the station to get it.”
“Is the gallery that hard up?”
“Twenty bucks is twenty bucks. Besides, he was intrigued. He wanted the wallet back so he could look into it himself. The police kept the fake ID, though.”
“Still not seeing my role in this.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Henri’s curious. He wants to know why someone left a wallet with fake ID outside his front door. But he doesn’t know where to start. I suggested you could look into it for him.” She raised her eyebrows. “For a fee.”
“A fee? Henri doesn’t have any money.” I knew Emy gave him samples whenever he came by the bakery. “He’s one of those starving-artist types.”
“It’s possible I suggested you’d do it pro bono—you know, for the publicity. Since Hawkes Investigation Agency is only starting out.”
I gaped at her.
“Sorry.” She waved a hand. “Obviously, you’ll come up with a better name.” At my continued silence, she added, “What? It’s not like you’re doing anything else.”
“That’s not true. I’m working on designs for a client’s woodland garden.”
“Is that the only job you have?” Emy’s eyebrows rose. “You can’t plant that for months yet. Those sketches can wait.”
“There’s a water feature, too. A recirculating brook. Aunt Adeline is helping me plan that part. We think—”
Emy held up a hand. “It will be lovely—once the snow melts enough that you can actually work on it.” She glanced at the front window, buffeted by so many swirling flakes the hardware shop across the street was barely visible. “Meanwhile, you need to make some money.”
I sat back in disbelief, preparing to ridicule this incredible suggestion. But something held my tongue. I’ve never been able to resist a mystery. And this time, there were no dead bodies involved—a definite point in the scheme’s favor.
Also, Emy was correct—I needed cash. The restoration of my nineteenth-century fieldstone cottage was on hold, but only temporarily. Carson Breuer, the laconic handyman who considered it a personal project, had lived in my driveway so long I started to think of his tent-trailer as a permanent fixture. I’d been surprised to return home one nippy autumn day to find it gone.
A selfie of Carson and Reuben posing in front of his trailer was taped to my fridge at home. Above their heads—one slightly balding, the other sporting a floppy red cockscomb—a painted sign displayed a vivid orange sunset and the words, Welcome to Key West.
I had no idea how Carson got my pet rooster across the border. Knowing him, it was probably best not to ask. Anyway, on the photo’s back, Carson had penned, “See you soon!”
Which meant a little cash coming in would be handy.
I slumped over the counter, twisting the mug in my hands while I considered it.
“You’re intrigued, I can tell,” Emy said.
Pushing the mug away, I stood up straight. Jeff was a trained and experienced detective—a true professional. He worked hard on his cases. Whereas I didn’t even qualify as a dilettante. My only talent, if it could be called that, was insatiable curiosity.
All the same, there was no harm in paying Henri a visit.
“I guess it can’t hurt to talk to him. And I am curious about the new gallery.”
“There you go, then. A perfect opportunity to catch up. I’ll call Henri and tell him you’re on your way.” Emy handed me a white box tied with string. “Give him these shortbreads.”
I eyed the box suspiciously before plucking it from her hands. “You already had that packed. Am I that predictable?”
Emy smiled. “It’s an honor to be on intimate terms with Leafy Hollow’s newest investigator.”
Chapter Three
Before I could interrogate Henri Vartan about his odd discovery, I had an errand to run at the Leafy Hollow Library. I could satisfy my curiosity about the strange puzzle contest while I was there.
Clutching my copy of Clara Callan, a previous book club selection, I climbed the broad stone steps and pushed open the carved wooden door. After stamping my feet on the Welcome mat to shake off the slush, I unzipped my parka.
A second door led into the overheated main room with its twenty-foot ceiling and soaring mullioned windows. A reading area with wooden armchairs faced the worn walnut expanse of the front desk. Behind that, ten rows of tall, double-faced shelves held books, CDs, and DVDs. These open stacks, normally crowded with a dozen or more readers, were empty.
The small, closed section behind that, marked No Admittance, was accessible only with librarian approval. It housed old books and documents about Leafy Hollow. Usually, one or two visiting historians would be perusing those materials, eyeglasses pushed up over receding hairlines. But that area was also empty.
Instead, a hum of conversation drew my gaze to the bulletin board by a front window. The board normally held council memos, garage sale notices, knitting club updates, and “Free to a good home” posters—I avoided those, since Rose Cottage already had a resident feline, the grumpy one-eyed tomcat General Chang. These notices—many curled with age—were usually ignored. Not today, apparently. Judging from the chattering crowd at the bulletin board, Leafy Hollow was confronting either a glut of homeless kittens or a very unusual knitting pattern.
“Verity!” Hannah Quigley, assistant librarian, gave me a cheery wave from behind the front desk. I walked over to greet her. Hannah’s gray-streaked bun and horn-rimmed glasses would have given her the look of a frontier schoolmarm if it hadn’t been for the tattoos that swirled over her forearms. “Ready for the book club meeting next week?”
“Almost.” I was way behind on this month’s reading. It wasn’t entirely my fault. I would have preferred a book set in a warmer climate—Bermuda, maybe. Our current choice—Minds of Winter, a wide-ranging novel about historic polar exhibitions—made for chilly reading. Southern Ontario was suffering through its coldest winter in a decade, and I could have done without the book’s descriptions of “razor-blade air.” I kept putting the book down to make cocoa.
I deposited Clara Callan on the Returns Here cart beside the desk. “How’s business?”
Hannah grinned. “It’s so exciting, Verity. We’re contest central here.” Handcrafted bangles jangled on her tattooed wrist as she pointed to the bulletin board. “The whole village is abuzz.”
“Exciting” was not a word normally used to describe the Leafy Hollow Library, so it was with considerable curiosity that I turned my head to watch the half-dozen people milling around.
A slightly built woman, with skin so pale that blue veins stood out on her forehead, pointed to the board and mumbled something. The dark-haired woman beside her nodded. Even with their backs to me, I recognized “the girls,” as Henri Vartan called them. It seemed a condescending label, but since Henri was at least two decades older than the twenty-something artists, I assumed he meant it in a kindly way. Unfortunately, the name had caught on, and now everyone in the village referred to them as “the girls.”
The blue-veined woman was Irma O’Kay, who lived in a stone cottage at the corner of Lilac Lane, a fifteen-minute walk from my own Rose Cottage. Irma’s beautiful watercolors were easier to spot in the village than Irma herself. It must be quite a contest to lure the reclusive artist out of her studio. Although, from a brief conversation once at the grocer’s, I knew Irma volunteered with the elderly. Perhaps she was more comfortable with shut-ins.
Zuly Sundae, Irma’s best friend, stood beside her, both of them peering at the board. With their heads almost touching, Zuly’s long, luxuriant black hair contrasted sharply with Irma’s thin, mousy-brown waves.
The rest of the group crowded around, chatting and pointing. An elegant silver-gray standard poodle stood off to one side, patiently wa
iting for its owner—a middle-aged woman in a sheepskin coat and leather gloves. The impeccably trained animal didn’t even have a leash. I wondered if it had its own library card.
One person stood out—a scruffy young man wearing a Peruvian wool hat with tasseled earflaps. Rather than studying the board, he was smirking at the contestants. Unaware I was watching him, he burrowed a finger under his hat to scratch his scalp.
Turning, Irma caught sight of him. At the sudden change in her expression, I sucked in a breath. She was giving him a look of pure disgust.
He seemed not to notice.
Zuly touched her arm, and Irma turned away, back to the board.
“Hannah,” I whispered. “Who’s that guy in the hat? Standing next to the girls?”
She harrumphed. “Mickey Doig. Probably posting a notice about his dog-walking business. Or some other nonsense.” Hannah leaned over the desk to point to my book, which was the only one on the Returns cart. “Here—I can take that.”
I handed it over, surprised by her zeal to keep on top of returns. Normally, Hannah would be sipping a cup of tea and talking books with one of the patrons while the volumes piled up. Perhaps she was stepping up her supervision because Emy’s mom, librarian extraordinaire Thérèse Dionne, was away on a much-deserved Caribbean vacation. Sighing with envy, I imagined myself drinking a mai tai on the beach under a blistering tropical sun.
Resignedly, I returned my attention to the contest. “Is the crossword on the bulletin board?” I asked.
“It is. Take a look. Maybe you can guess the missing clues.”
Obediently, I swiveled to face the board with my elbows propped on the desk behind me. “How does it work?”
“The blank puzzle appeared on the library’s front desk a few days ago. We didn’t know what it was until people started finding clues all over the village. They bring them here, then everybody debates the answers and we post the best guesses on the board. It’s fun.”
I liked crosswords as much as the next person, but they were rarely fascinating enough to interest an entire village. “Why is everybody so engrossed? It’s only a puzzle.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Hannah said. “The grand prize is one million dollars.”