Whispering Pines Mysteries Box Set 3

by Shawn McGuire

  I didn’t know how long Rosalyn and I would be welcome, but I had to see the initial meeting. Were the Pack members still connected? Would the friendships rekindle? Or would scabbed-over wounds split open?

  Laurel and Reeva were the only other members inside the sweet shop. I knew Briar would see him tomorrow. Who knew what sort of entrance Flavia would make?

  When Laurel and Reeva rose from their seats at a café table, Dad paled. The two women had both opted to ignore Flavia’s summon for the Pack to gather that night forty years ago. Of all of his old friends, Dad was probably most anxious about seeing these two. They didn’t judge him, though. If anyone was judgmental, it was him assuming they blamed him for things.

  Laurel approached him first. “Jayne told me you’ve been playing in the sand for the last decade or so.” She smiled as tears glistened in her eyes. “You’re as weather-beaten as I expected you’d be.”

  “And you”—he softened before our eyes—“have grown more beautiful than I imagined.”

  Rosalyn nudged me with her elbow and gave me a what’s going on there look. I shook my head. Maybe they had some kind of inside joke about appearances, but as far as I knew they’d always just been friends.

  He turned to Reeva next. “I understand you broke away for a while.” At her wince of pain, he said, “Sorry. I know there’s a long, unpleasant story behind why.”

  She placed an elegant long-fingered hand on his cheek. “I know what you meant. You got away too. I’m delighted that you’re finally back.”

  “Only for a visit,” he corrected immediately. “We’ll see how long I can handle it.” An awkward silence followed, and he filled it with a throat clearing and, “So, I’m the only man left standing?”

  “You know Karl and Horace left us,” Laurel said. “As far as we know, Gabe is still alive and kicking. Rae too. We haven’t seen either of them since they left.”

  Since the day Gran kicked them out of the village, she meant, although she wasn’t privy to that information. Only Dad, Flavia, Priscilla’s mother Velma, and Gran knew the truth about why the pair left. And Donovan. I assumed that between Velma and Flavia, he knew the whole story. Or some cobbled-together version of it.

  Rosalyn tugged on my sleeve. “Let’s go get coffee.”

  “Really? Now?” I whispered.

  “Yes, now. They need time without us.”

  She was right. No matter how badly I wanted to stay and be a witness, this was their meeting.

  I raised my voice and said, “We’re going to give you all time to talk.”

  Not one of them even acknowledged that I’d spoken. Probably hadn’t even heard me.

  With less than an hour to go before the shops shut down until Wednesday, I was surprised by the line of tourists at Ye Olde Bean Grinder.

  “They’re all about to hit the road,” Violet explained when we finally got to the front of the line. She seemed to be on autopilot, never pausing in her drink preparation. “They need a little boost to keep alert. You know how those roads can be at night. And I hear there’s more snow coming.”

  I noticed some villagers in the mix. “The locals will miss your coffee for the next five days too.”

  She gave me a wink, handed out the beverages to those waiting, and then sighed as she leaned on the counter in front of us, hands clasped.

  “Welcome back, Rosalyn. What can I get you two?” She held a hand up. “No, let me guess. Mademoiselle Sheriff wants an extra-large mocha with double vanilla and extra whipped cream. And an extra espresso shot. Mademoiselle Meeka would like biscuits. Mademoiselle Rosalyn would like an extra-large, extra-hot, half decaf, half espresso, soy latte, extra foam, two pumps of vanilla, one pump of hazelnut, and a sprinkle of cinnamon.”

  “You remembered?” Rosalyn beamed. That was the drink she ordered the first time she came into the Grinder. It was her “test coffee” for every new coffee house she visited. If the barista got it right, Rosalyn declared them a true professional. Not only had Violet gotten the test coffee right, my sister declared it the best cup she’d ever had.

  “Violet always remembers. She’s like a coffee psychic.” I thought back to May when I walked into the shop for the second time and she had my drink almost finished before I’d even told her what I wanted. An equally impressive talent was her ability to sense when a customer wanted to deviate from their normal drink. Like now. I wasn’t even a little surprised she knew about the extra espresso.

  Violet eyed Rosalyn and shook her head. “That’s not what you want this time.”

  “No, I won’t make you do all that.” Rosalyn winked. “You can skip the decaf.”

  “Where’s Basil?” I asked of Violet’s twin brother and business partner.

  “Visiting his girlfriend,” Violet explained while starting our drinks.

  “I didn’t know he had a girlfriend.”

  She shot me a pointed look over her shoulder. “It’s ‘complicated.’ She wanders the globe on humanitarian missions and only gets back here every six months or so. Her family lives on the east coast, so he went to spend the holidays with them.”

  “You’re all alone?” Rosalyn asked.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Violet set our drinks and a parchment bag stuffed with biscuits for Meeka in front of us. Normally she used personalized ceramic mugs from a rack behind the counter for the locals. Today everyone’s orders came in compostable paper cups. She wouldn’t have to wash mugs when she closed that way. “I’ll be at the celebration tomorrow and the full moon coven gathering on Saturday. Other than that, I’m not getting out of my pajamas for three days.”

  “I can’t imagine you sitting still for that long,” I teased. “You’re always moving at full speed.”

  My theory was that she absorbed caffeine by contact with the beans. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her actually drink a cup.

  “I have to recharge my batteries sometimes,” she said.

  I took a sip of my mocha and Meeka headbutted my leg. My mistake. The furry one’s needs were always supposed to be met before mine. I plucked a biscuit from the bag and held it down to her.

  “There seem to be more treats in the bag than usual,” I noted.

  “I’m closing in twenty minutes. No sense letting biscuits go stale when there’s a willing customer right here.” She peeked over the counter at my pup. “Happy Yule, Miss Meeka.”

  Meeka looked up, tail wagging, biscuit clenched between her teeth, and let out a muffled ruff.

  Violet smiled. “See you two at the celebration tomorrow.”

  “Is it okay if we drink our coffees in here?” I asked. “We promise not to make a mess.”

  “Sure,” Violet hesitantly agreed. “You’ve got twenty minutes and I kick you out.”

  Fair enough. We took advantage of every second of those twenty minutes. We sipped slowly, savoring the perfectly blended flavors of our drinks. With fifteen minutes to go, Violet brought us the four remaining eggnog scones from the countertop container, warning us about crumbs. At ten minutes to five, she took the various coffee condiment containers from the narrow table along the far wall.

  “Five minutes,” Rosalyn reported from her comfy, slouched position in the overstuffed leather chair by the fireplace. “Should we go?”

  “We should.” I shoved the two remaining scones into the inside pocket of my coat along with Meeka’s biscuits. We cleaned up the area, Meeka helping with the dozen or so crumbs we dropped, and from the front porch, I hollered, “See you tomorrow, Violet.”

  She was next to us in a flash, ready to lock the door behind us. “Blessed be.”

  I swear, the building itself sighed with relief as the deadbolt clicked into place.

  “What’s going on over there,” Rosalyn asked as we descended the Bean Grinder’s front porch steps.

  She pointed across the pentacle garden at Alan Thibodeaux and April O’Connor having a discussion near the negativity well. And it didn’t look like a very friendly one.

  Cha
pter 7

  Discussion was way too mellow a description for what was going on with Alan and April. This was a full-blown argument.

  “Hang on.” I nudged Rosalyn toward them. “I should see what’s going on.”

  “Uh-oh. Time for Sheriff Jayne to keep the peace.”

  We moved closer, but the two were so deep into their conversation, neither of them noticed us.

  “I already told you,” Alan’s voice was strained, “I can’t take responsibility for what she does. I mean I literally and legally can’t do anything. I am the executor of her will, but I have no authority, no power of attorney, nothing like that while she’s still alive.”

  “Well, someone has to do something,” April responded. “I don’t care that she’s dying. She can’t keep turning people’s lives upside down. My family is a wreck. My husband tosses and turns all night, and my son, Sutton, knows something serious is going on. He barely eats. And if you know anything about thirteen-year-olds, you know how huge that is.”

  Alan shoved his hands in his jacket pocket and stared at the ground, contemplating his reply. “How exactly is she turning your lives upside down?”

  April’s lips pinched before she said, “She claims she and Rourke had a . . . relationship.”

  Alan laughed. “I assume you mean of a sexual nature.”

  She flamed a deep berry-red.

  “Well, that’s absurd, Mrs. O’Connor. Aunt Suzette is on her deathbed. You know that.”

  “Not a recent relationship.” April sighed as though he were the absurd one. “She says she has proof that they were involved years ago. She’s threatening to make that proof public if we don’t wire five thousand-dollars into her bank account by Christmas Eve day.”

  Alan blinked, clearly at a loss for a response.

  “You need to do something about this,” April demanded.

  “You honestly believe that an eighty-pound, cancer-riddled woman is going to, what, go public with scandalous photos?”

  “I don’t know, but the threats alone are making us sick.” She slapped her hands to her hips. “I’ve gained fifteen pounds from the stress. I’ve heard that she’s making similar threats to other villagers too. She’s rapidly becoming the village’s most hated woman.”

  Rosalyn rested her chin on my shoulder and whispered, “I thought that was Flavia Reed.”

  “It is,” I whispered back. “Shush.”

  “I’ll try and raise the topic with her,” Alan said. “But honestly, you need to ride this out. As far as I know, she has no computer skills so no way to publish photographs, if that’s what she means. Considering she also can’t leave her house on her own, how is she going to do anything with this supposed proof?”

  “She’s blackmailing people!” April threw her hands in the air. “She could easily give pictures to someone on her hit list and demand that they put them on Facebook. Or wherever. As long as she has a telephone, she’s connected.”

  “April, this is almost over for all of us. She won’t likely see the new year.”

  April took a step closer to him and jabbed a gloved finger into his chest. “If you don’t get her under control, she may not see the full moon on Saturday.”

  My shoulders jerked back, startling Rosalyn and making Meeka yelp. At the sound, April turned toward us, paled, and then plastered on a smile.

  “Hey there, Sheriff. We keep running into each other today, don’t we? First at Hearth & Cauldron and now here. Isn’t Reeva’s shop a joy? I can hardly wait for her retail inventory to arrive. Rourke already knows to work kitchen supplies into the household budget because I’ll be one of her most loyal customers.” She glanced at her wrist as though looking at a watch but didn’t lift her sleeve. “Good Goddess, is that the time? I need to be going.”

  As April scampered off, Rosalyn murmured out of the corner of her mouth, “No, she’s not guilty at all.”

  “Threats don’t equate to guilt.”

  “Okay,” she amended, “she looks guilty as sin.”

  That I couldn’t argue with.

  Alan came over to us before I could respond. “I assume you heard all of that?”

  “Not all,” I said, “but the important parts came through loud and clear.”

  “I had no idea my aunt was causing such problems. Has anyone talked to you about it?”

  I shook my head. “I knew she could be unpleasant and wasn’t well-liked, but I hadn’t heard about the blackmail until earlier today.” I glanced at April’s retreating form. “Do me a favor?”

  Alan stood at attention. “Sure. What?”

  “I’d prefer to do as you suggested and ride this out. And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that will be a very long ride. If you do talk with your aunt about this, let me know if you think there’s anything behind these blackmail rumors. I can’t do much about a verbal threat if there’s no accompanying action, but I’d like to know what’s going on in my village.”

  He visibly relaxed at this, which made me wonder if he knew more about what Suzette was up to than he let on.

  “Will do, Sheriff. I have to go track down Nina. She was in that metaphysical shop. She’s probably spent this week’s pay on crystals and candles.”

  He took off before I could respond.

  “He looks kinda guilty too.” Rosalyn continued playing detective. “And don’t you think his comment was concerning?”

  “Which comment?”

  She looked at me as though to say, weren’t you paying attention? “He said, ‘this is almost over for all of us.’ What do you suppose he meant by that?”

  Good question. Something I’d also need to stay on the lookout for.

  We decided to head back to Treat Me Sweetly to see how Dad was doing with the Pack members. As soon as we’d circled the negativity well, we saw a figure standing on the sweet shop’s front porch. She was dressed in a cape, a long tent-like dress, and a puritanical hat that a pilgrim woman might have worn. It could only be Flavia. I had teased her about the hat outside Grapes, Grains, and Grub one day.

  “When the temperature drops below freezing,” she sniffed, “warmth is the only necessary consideration. Not fashion.”

  I gave her shapeless housedress beneath her equally shapeless cape the once-over. “When exactly is fashion a consideration for you?”

  Her lips began moving in silence. She was probably attempting to put some kind of a hex on me. I did drop my Triple G to-go bag after she walked away, but I chose to credit my chilly fingers and not her supposed hex.

  Now, I watched as she reached for the door handle and then pull her hand back again. She rubbed her hands over her hips as if they were sweating inside her elbow-length wool gloves and let them dangle at her sides.

  “Were you planning to go in?” I asked.

  Flavia startled and spun toward me. Her eyes were wide like she’d gotten caught stealing recipes from her sister’s household grimoire.

  “That is why I’m here,” she insisted. “I just arrived and needed a moment to prepare. I imagine this will be a stressful situation.”

  “At least you’re starting on a positive note,” Rosalyn quipped, for which she received a glare from Flavia.

  I held the door for them both. Rosalyn entered, and Flavia insisted I go in ahead of her. The Pack members turned toward us, and when Flavia appeared behind me, it was like the air froze or time stopped. Dad tilted his head in confusion, and it took him a minute to realize this woman standing before him was indeed Flavia Reed.

  Briar had told me a few months earlier that Flavia was a beauty when they were teenagers. The woman with the tightly pulled-back hair and scrubbed-clean face before us now apparently didn’t look anything like the flirty, pulled-together teen from back in the day.

  According to Briar, Flavia didn’t change her appearance until she became pregnant . . . with Reeva’s husband’s baby. Word of Flavia and Karl’s affair spread through the village, but Flavia was able to hide the pregnancy until a couple months before the baby was bo
rn. At that point, Reeva proclaimed she’d tried to forgive the affair but couldn’t stay married to her husband any longer. Flavia left with Reeva under the guise of helping her sister get settled elsewhere, and then once baby Yasmine was born, Flavia returned to Whispering Pines, and Reeva raised the girl as her own.

  All of that had happened years after Dad had left the village, so it wasn’t surprising that the woman before him wasn’t familiar.

  None of us spoke as Dad and Flavia stared at each other. It was a standoff over who would speak first. I didn’t know what was going on in his head, but I knew what I saw on his face. Forty-year-old pain rose to the surface and clouded his normally sharp-blue eyes. As surely as the rest of us were standing in the sweet shop, Dad and Flavia seemed to have slipped back in time and were in the Meditation Circle on that fateful night.

  Neither of them twitched a finger in a move toward even shaking hands, let alone hugging each other the way Dad and the others had. There wasn’t a curt nod or even a crisp “hello.” Just a staredown.

  Finally, Dad took a few steps toward her until they were about a foot apart. He looked her square in the eye and simply said, “You ruined everything.”

  Before Flavia could acknowledge the words, Dad turned to the other four women standing behind him. “I’ll see you all tomorrow at The Inn.” His eyes met mine as he left the sweet shop. “I’ll meet you at the car.”

  Everyone, Flavia included, looked stunned. She, naturally, blamed it on me. “You could have warned me it would have been a waste of my time to come here.”

  “Me? How could I possibly have known how he’d react to you?”

  “What he said,” Sugar began with a superior tilt of her chin, “was accurate. Until that night—”

  “Those events happened decades ago,” Flavia hissed. “We were children doing childish things. We will not speak of that night.”

  “We weren’t there.” Laurel pointed to herself and Reeva. “Honey and Sugar were only there for a short time. None of us can speak factually about that night. Only you, Dillon, Briar, Gabe, and Rae know for sure what happened.”