by Lena Gregory
Cass crumpled the wrapper from her breakfast sandwich and tossed it in the garbage. “Are you done?”
A sulking Bee picked at what was left of his sandwich. He shrugged. “I guess.”
Apparently she’d been wrong about him feeling better. “Look, Bee. It’s over and done with. You can’t change it, so stop worrying about it.”
“Easy for you to say, you won’t have to deal with Tank.”
She grinned, balled up the paper bag their breakfast had come in, and bounced it off his head. “Come on, Bee. It won’t be that bad.”
He shot her a scowl.
“All right, so it probably will be that bad, but he’ll get over it.”
The tinkling of the wind chimes Cass kept above the door startled her. Stephanie must have forgotten to lock it behind her.
“Cass?” An elderly woman peered into the shop and spotted Cass. “The sign says CLOSED, but I was hoping to see you before I head home.”
A genuine smile tugged at Cass. “Come on in, Grace. How are you?” Cass started toward the woman she’d become quite fond of since the first time she’d come into the shop sheepishly asking for a love potion. The crystals Cass had given her had obviously worked, because Rudy Hastings, the target of her endeavor, followed her into the store.
Grace’s gaze landed on Bee. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Of course not.” Cass gave Grace a quick hug, then turned to Rudy and did the same. “How have you been, Rudy?”
He glanced at Grace with such love it melted Cass’s heart. “Great, now.”
“Oh, go on, now.” Grace blushed all the way up to the roots of her blue-gray curls.
Cass laughed. Grace and Rudy could brighten even the worst morning, although last time they’d come in, Grace had been concerned about her granddaughter. She’d been trying so hard to get pregnant and hadn’t had any luck. Cass had sent Grace home with a basket for her. “Do you have time to sit and have a cup of tea? I’d love to catch up.” Cass led them toward a small, intimate seating arrangement. “How is your granddaughter doing? Sadie, was it?”
“Oh, she’s doing wonderfully, thank you. As a matter of fact, she’ll be here any minute. She dropped us off by the front door and went to park the car down the road.” Grace looked around the empty store and frowned. “Where is everyone?”
“What do you mean?” Cass started toward the counter to make tea, but Bee already had three foam cups lined up and was dropping tea bags into them, so she sank into one of the overstuffed chairs instead.
“The parking lot is packed. I figured the store would be mobbed.”
“I meant to flip the sign over after breakfast, but we just finished up.” She started to get up.
“No worries, sweetie. I’ll get it in a sec.” Bee placed a cup of tea on the coffee table in front of each of them and a fourth in front of the empty seat beside Grace on the couch, then he set out a tray of cookies and went to turn the sign around. “Hmm . . . the parking lot is full. It wasn’t like that when we got here.”
Bee opened the door for a young woman, then walked out onto the porch and let the door fall shut behind him.
“Sadie.” Grace stood and held out a hand, which Sadie took and squeezed with an affectionate smile at her grandmother. It was obvious the two were close. “Come, meet Cass.”
Cass stood and held out her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sadie.”
Sadie ignored Cass’s proffered hand and wrapped her arms around Cass in a hug, then stepped back, an adorable blush coloring her cheeks. In her face, Cass could see an image of a younger Grace; the features were so similar. Tears shimmered in her eyes. “I’m sorry.” She laughed a little. “I’m not usually prone to such random displays of affection, but I am just so thankful to you.”
It struck Cass before she had a chance to say anything else. She grinned. “Congratulations. When are you due?”
Sadie’s hands fluttered to her flat stomach. “How did you know? I didn’t even think I was showing.”
“You’re not, dear,” Grace assured her. “I told you Cass was brilliant.”
“Well, I just wanted to come and thank you. I can’t say for sure it was the crystals and essential oils you gave Grandma, but my husband and I tried for a long time, and nothing worked. Yet, three months after I started following all of your suggestions, here I am. Pregnant.” Happiness radiated from her.
Cass’s spirits soared. Nothing compared to playing a part in bringing someone such joy. “Well, for whatever part I might have played, you’re very welcome.”
“Sit, sit.” Grace sat and patted the seat beside her.
Cass returned to her chair, while Sadie sat down beside her grandmother.
“Sadie’s not the only one with good news today.” She fluttered her lashes at Rudy. “Rudy and I are getting married.”
Cass gasped.
“I know, we haven’t been involved romantically for very long, but we were good friends even before . . . well . . . you know, and let’s face it, honey, at my age I can’t afford to wait.”
“I’m so happy for you both.” Cass jumped up and kissed Grace’s cheek, then Rudy’s.
“We really just stopped in to let you know and to make sure you’ll come to the wedding.”
“Oh, I’d love to. Thank you.”
“You can bring your friend, Bee, if you want to. He’s such a sweetheart.”
“I’ll tell him, thank you.”
“No, dear, thank you. If not for your crystals, and your support, I’d still be ogling Rudy from afar. I’d never have had the courage to pursue anything more than friendship.”
Cass hugged her again, holding back tears.
“Okay, enough of this.” Grace sniffed and wiped her eyes, then sat and sipped her tea. “Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
“I had the upstairs of the shop finished off, and I’m going to have a group reading up there on Saturday night. If you’d all like to come, you’re welcome.”
“Oh, we’d love to.”
After a few more minutes of catching up, Grace, Rudy, and Sadie thanked Cass again and said their good-byes with a promise to see Cass on Saturday for the reading.
Cass wished them well, then started cleaning up. It always made her happy when people came back in to share their success stories. The door chimes tinkled, and Cass turned toward them with a smile.
Bee stood in the doorway, his face pale. He shut the door behind him and flipped the sign back to CLOSED. “Uh . . .”
“What’s the matter?”
“I think we have a problem.”
12
“What do you mean we have a problem?” Cass strode toward him, looking out the front display window past the boardwalk to the parking lot.
Vans, complete with satellite dishes on top and news station logos on their sides, were parked haphazardly throughout the parking lot. “What the heck?”
“Oh, that’s nothing. It gets even better.” He turned her around and propelled her toward the back window overlooking the beach. “Check out the view out the back.”
A small mob of people had gathered on the beach. Some held microphones, others carried cameras, while harried-looking uniformed police officers tried to corral them behind some kind of hastily constructed chicken wire barrier.
“What’s going on?” She leaned closer to the window, trying to get a good view of whatever was going on down the beach. “Don’t even tell me they found another body.”
“Bite your tongue, honey.” Bee leaned over her shoulder, breathing down her neck to see what was going on. “But word of the second body has apparently spread. As has word of your involvement in finding her.”
“Her?” Annoyed, she nudged him back and stood. “What are you talking about? As far as I know, they haven’t even identified him or her yet.” She stared at Bee,
waiting for him to contradict her, not sure she really wanted to know if they had figured out who was buried out there.
Bee shrugged. “Not that I’ve heard.”
“Mmm . . . hmm . . .” Cass crossed the store and flipped the sign back to OPEN. “And you think you’d have missed that piece of gossip?”
“Probably not,” Bee conceded.
She moved behind the polished driftwood counter and opened the register, then started counting out the change.
Bee kept his nose pressed against the glass in the back door. Every once in a while, he huffed out a breath or mumbled something she couldn’t quite catch.
After the third time she lost count of the nickels, she dropped them back into the register. “If you’re going to hang around, why don’t you make yourself useful and start moving the file cabinets to my office upstairs.”
He finally turned away from whatever excitement had gripped him out there.
Cass didn’t ask. She didn’t want to know. She’d had her first dream-free sleep in over a week last night, and she was hoping whatever spirit had been haunting her—or her own overactive imagination—was going to leave her alone now.
“You want the file cabinets up first?”
“And the desk.” She closed the register, grabbed her appointment book, and tossed it onto the table. She only had a few appointments scheduled for today, but she couldn’t remember the times. “I think it’ll be easier to get the office set up first. If we set the tables up first, we’ll have to move some of them to get the office stuff up there.”
Bee contemplated that for a moment. “Hmm . . . true. I’ll tell you what. I’ll take the file cabinets up for you now, so you can organize your paperwork in them if you get time today, but then I’m going home to bed. I’ll need help moving the desk anyway, so we’ll do that later, after you close.”
The tinkle of chimes drew her attention. “That would be great. Thanks, Bee.”
“No problem.” He started off toward the back room.
“Good morning.” Cass rounded the counter to greet a customer she didn’t recognize.
The young man glanced around. “Um . . . hey.”
He seemed nervous, fidgety, but with dark glasses covering his eyes, she couldn’t quite tell.
“Can I help you with anything specific?”
“I . . . uh . . . lost something.”
A small niggle of fear crept down Cass’s back. She couldn’t pinpoint the source, but she was sorry Beast wasn’t there and very glad Bee still was. “Lost something in here?”
“Oh, no. No. I lost something, and I was hoping you could help me find it. People are saying you can find things.”
“Sometimes.” Cass shrugged. “Depends on what it is and where you lost it.”
The guy nodded. Cass placed him at around twenty-five or twenty-six. It was hard to tell. His too-big shirt hung over loose, baggy jeans, hiding any details of his rail-thin frame. His sunken cheeks gave the impression he was older, but something about his manner seemed young, almost childlike. Acne covered the sides of his face where his shaggy, dark hair hung over it. He glanced over his shoulder. “It’s a necklace.”
A large crash came from the back room. “Ouch!”
The guy jumped and spun toward the door.
“Excuse me for a minute, please.” She stuck her head through the curtain into the back room, which was actually at the side of the store. “Bee? Are you all right?”
He shot her a grin. “Sorry. Dropped something on my foot.”
“What did you drop?”
He gestured toward the back corner of the room, where a pile of papers and folders laid scattered across the floor. “I didn’t know how to get the drawer out of the file cabinet.”
“Well . . . looks like you figured it out.”
“Sorry.” He bit his lip and looked around at the mess.
It would take hours to reorganize all the paperwork he’d managed to wreck in a matter of seconds. She took a deep breath and bit back a curse. Nothing she could do about it. He was helping her, after all, and accidents happen. “Don’t worry about it. I needed to go through it all anyway.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
“I have a customer right now, though, so . . .” If the guy hadn’t already bolted. She let the curtain fall closed and turned back to the shop.
The guy was leaning over the table, leafing through her appointment book.
Shocked, Cass stopped. “Excuse me!”
He jumped up, stared at her, and gave a nonchalant shrug.
“What are you doing?”
“Um . . . I was just waiting for you to come back. So, what’s the deal? Can you help me find the necklace I lost, or what?”
Cass stared at him for another minute. Just nosy, or looking for something specific? What in the world would he be looking for, though? She blew off the paranoia trying to take hold—he was obviously just plain rude—but she did put the book back where it belonged before taking a seat at the table.
“Have a seat, and tell me a little about the necklace, um . . .” She couldn’t remember him giving her his name. “I’m sorry, did you say your name?”
“Uh . . . John.” His gaze darted to the side.
Yeah right.
He pulled out a velvet-covered chair and sat across the table from her, his gaze roaming over the shop as he spoke. “I have to find this necklace. It’s really important.”
“When did you last have it?”
He frowned and stared down at his hands fidgeting on the table in front of him. “I last saw it a few months ago.”
“What does it look like?”
He shrugged. “It’s on a silver chain, and it has, like, a big, whitish stone in the middle of some kind of silver design, and the stone kind of . . . changes color when you move it around.”
“An opal?” An opal necklace. Where had she seen one lately? Somewhere, because it sounded familiar; something about it gave her pause.
He shrugged again but didn’t offer any more details.
“Where did you last see it?”
“Does that matter?”
She tried to curb her temper, but her patience with this guy was wearing thin. “Of course, it matters. If you want me to help you find it, we have to figure out where you saw it last.”
“Okay.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort. “I was working in the art gallery down the boardwalk, and I saw it in there.”
An image shimmered behind him, started to form, then dissipated.
She stifled a gasp. Thankfully, the guy was still looking at his hands and didn’t notice her surprise. “Did you go in and ask the owner if she’s seen it?”
His head shot up. “No . . . uh, you know what . . . this was probably a stupid idea, right? What are the chances you could find something like that, anyway?” He started to stand.
“Wait.” Cass reached toward him, but he jerked his hands back.
“D-do you think you could, you know, maybe not say anything to the owner that I was asking?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, and started backing toward the door. “The necklace, it wasn’t mine. It belonged to someone else, and I was just wondering if you could find it for me. No big deal. Sorry to waste your time.”
“You’re not wasting my time—”
He didn’t even wait for her to finish her sentence; he just reached the door, ripped it open, and bolted.
The image that had started to form returned. The same woman from her dreams, her bodyless head hovering in front of the door “John” had just fled through. A thought struck. Had he seen her? Is that what had him so spooked? Surely Cass wasn’t the only one who could see the dead. Or something.
The woman winked out of existence an instant later, but just before she did, a glint of something around her
neck caught Cass’s eye. No way! Could that have been where she’d seen an opal necklace? No. She couldn’t remember ever seeing a necklace on the woman in her visions before, and she was certain that wasn’t what the glint was, but something tugged at her. Had the woman in the painting in the art gallery window been wearing a necklace like that? Or any necklace? She couldn’t remember. Dang. She was going to have to get another look at that painting. But how could she do that? Leighton hadn’t exactly welcomed her interest in the painting last time she was there.
“Bee?” Where was he, anyway? She hadn’t noticed him taking the file cabinets upstairs, and the back room was surprisingly quiet. She pulled the curtain aside and peeked in.
Bee lay sprawled across the Oriental rug in the middle of the room, snoring softly. At least he’d stacked the papers from the drawer he’d spilled on her desk before conking out in the middle of the room. He must have really been exhausted. Too bad she was going to have to wake him. “Hey, Bee. Wake up.”
He jerked awake, shielding his eyes with his hand. “Cass?”
“Yeah, you slacker. What are you doing sleeping on the job?”
He groaned and rolled over.
“Come on, Bee, you have to get up. I need you to do me a favor.”
“Honey, the only thing I’m doing when I get up off this floor is going home to bed. It’s past my bedtime.”
“Well, you’ll just have to wait a little while longer. I have to do this while Beast is still at the groomer, and I need you to run interference.”
He propped himself up on his elbows and quirked an eyebrow. “Interference?”
Good. She’d piqued his interest. Now to get him to go along with her plan. “Did you see the customer who was just in here?”
“No, sorry. Why?” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes.
“He said he lost a necklace.”
Bee shrugged. “So?”
“He said he lost it when he was working in the art gallery.”
“He’s an artist?”