Murders and Metaphors

by Amanda Flower

  I remembered Lacey’s mother. In my memory, she was a lot like Lacey was now. A soft woman with a ready smile and a kind face. She was the kind of person you’d find yourself telling your life story to. I felt like I might be sick. “I wish I had known at the time.”

  “It happened while you were away, maybe three or four years after you left.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come back for the funeral.”

  She frowned. “Would you? When you left the village, you were so angry over what happened after Colleen’s death that you swore up and down you would never set foot in the village again.”

  I opened my mouth as if to protest, but she was faster. “Maybe I did the wrong thing by not telling you, but it wasn’t that long after you left, and you still hated this village so much. I wanted you to forget how you hated it so you would come back to it someday not just for me, but for the tree and your job as the next Caretaker.” She nodded at the tree behind me. “I thought if you came back to the village too soon when you were still hurt by it, you would never permanently return.”

  My heart constricted, and I felt terrible that I hadn’t known about Lacey’s mother’s death. If I had been a true friend to her, I would have known that. When I’d lost my mother at age thirteen, Lacey had come over the next day with a plate of sugar cookies she had made herself. They had tasted awful. It was a good thing that Adrien was the chef at Le Crepe Jolie and not Lacey, but the cookies had been a gift to help me in my grief. I had done nothing for her when her mother died.

  I couldn’t blame Grandma Daisy. She’d thought she was doing the right thing by not telling me. I had been so hurt by how I’d felt the village had betrayed me, I had told my grandmother I didn’t want to hear anything about this place or anyone in it. I realized now how much I had missed by turning my back on the village and my old friends here and how selfish I had been. I could make up for it by helping Lacey now.

  Faulkner flew over our heads as he did a loop around the shop and cawed.

  Grandma Daisy shook her finger at the bird. “I know that you are also a member of Charming Books staff as well, my dear Faulkner, if that’s what you’re afraid of, but you don’t have be in on every meeting.”

  “Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love,” the crow said, and came in for a landing on top of one of the bookshelves.

  Emerson watched Faulkner from the staircase. His black tail swished back and forth along the wooden step.

  Impressive. I squinted at my grandmother. “Are you teaching him Shakespeare?”

  She grinned. “I thought if he planned to go around here talking all the time, he should say something of worth. Besides, how poetic is it to have a shop crow who can quote Shakespeare? It will attract more customers when the word gets out. I assure you of that.”

  “Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow,” Faulkner quoted as he walked along the top of the bookcase. His talons made a click, click, click on the wooden surface.

  “That’s not Shakespeare,” my grandmother said.

  “No.” I swallowed because my mouth suddenly felt very dry. “It’s not Shakespeare at all. It’s Louisa May Alcott. It’s from Little Women.”

  Grandma Daisy set her duster on a bookshelf and too a closer look at me. “Violet, what is it? You’re white as a sheet.”

  I swallowed. “Last night right before I left for the signing, Little Women appeared.”

  “Appeared, you say? Delivered by the shop’s essence?”

  I nodded.

  “You know what that means, then, don’t you, my dear? The clue for what happened to poor Belinda Perkins is found in that book. You must study it.”

  “I have been. At least I started to last night after I got home, but it was so late, I didn’t get very far. I know the story about the March sisters and their mother Marmee of course.”

  She nodded. “Four March girls, four Perkins girls. This must be the reason that the shop picked it to deliver the clues to you.”

  “I can see that too, but I can’t make sense of what the clues are. All it has done is put the book in front of me, little else. The book itself is over five hundred pages. I’m a fast reader, but there is no way I would be able to read it word for word and know what the shop’s essence is trying to tell me. I don’t know where in the story that it wants me to look.”

  My grandmother set a slim hand under her chin. “Then, I think, you have to ask it.”

  “Did you ever ask it when you were Caretaker?”

  She shook her head. “No, but when I was the Caretaker, it wasn’t having me solve murders like it does you.”

  “That’s a good point.” I scanned the large room, and my gaze ended as it always did on the majestic tree in the middle of the shop.

  “Wait to ask the shop when you get back,” my grandmother said. “It has a different sense of timing than we do. It would be best that you were here for a while after you ask. Right now, you should go check on Lacey. She could use a friend.”

  I nodded and told my grandmother goodbye as I walked to the front of the shop. As I walked past the birch tree, I looked at it. I wished, not for the first time, that the shop’s magical essence worked a different way. That it was a little more direct and just told me exactly what to do to solve the murder. The cryptic clues were getting old. As a literature scholar, I thought getting messages through books was all well and good, but it left a lot up to personal interpretation.

  As I left the shop, I half expected to find a stack of Little Women novels blocking the front door, but there was nothing there. I glanced at the tree. What was the essence not telling me? I didn’t know. Emerson, still on the stairs, blinked at me.

  I grabbed my coat, hat, and scarf and then left the shop. Normally when I traveled around the village, I used my mother’s old aqua cruiser bike that my grandmother had refurbished for me just before I moved back. Now that I thought about it, she’d had my apartment redone at the same time. She must have been pretty confident I was going to move back to Cascade Springs when she’d spent all that time and money.

  This deep into winter, however, the bike was an impractical choice. There was too great a risk of wiping out on the ice. Instead, I made my way to Le Crepe Jolie by foot.

  In my calf-high snow boots, I walked out of the front yard, which was surrounded by a white picket fence. Across the street, all the lights were on in Midcentury Vintage, and I could see Sadie moving around the shop as she spoke to two customers. I continued toward the Niagara River and the Riverwalk. Just before the river itself, River Road took an abrupt left-hand turn to follow the path of the river.

  I walked along the sidewalk on the side opposite the river. Across the street from me, beyond the park on Riverwalk, was the large half-frozen river. Although there were a few boulders that the water splashed over, Cascade Springs sat on a relatively quiet stretch of the Niagara. But in the deep, dark part of winter, the water was much more turbulent. The river was frozen on either side, three feet from either bank. In the center of the river, the water flowed freely.

  In the park, huge chucks of ice had been chiseled into unicorns, skiers, and lions from the ice-sculpting contest the previous weekend.

  “You’re blocking the sidewalk,” an irritated male voice said to me.

  I looked up from my hands to see who was speaking. Much to my surprise, it was Belinda’s fiancé Sebastian. He recognized me as well. “You’re that lady from the bookstore who found Belinda.”

  I nodded. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I know that it must be particularly painful to be in the village where she grew up.”

  “The sooner I get out of this sad excuse for a town, the better.” He wasn’t wearing a hat, but he turned up the collar of what looked like a very expensive overcoat, maybe even more expensive than Nathan’s, and the mayor liked nice things. He added, “I have never been treated so poorly in all my life!”

  I raised my eye
brows. Cascade Springs was known for being a friendly place to visitors. Tourism was the village’s bread and butter. It couldn’t survive without it. “Did something happen?”

  He glared at me. “Of course something happened. My fiancée is dead, and no one in this village wants to do a thing about it.”

  “I’m sure Chief Rainwater is giving the case his full attention. I know he is investigating. He will get to the bottom of this.”

  “Rainwater! He’s the worst of them all. I told him who did this and who he should arrest for Belinda’s murder. He refused to move on the tip.” He held leather gloves in his hands but didn’t put them on. His hands were slightly blue. I felt cold just looking at them.

  “Who did it, then?” I paused. “I know the police chief rather well and might be able to talk to him.”

  He looked at me like he didn’t believe what I was saying. “Her sister. The one who crashed her book signing last night. Lacey. She’s the killer. I’m as sure of that as I have been sure of anything in my life.”

  “She didn’t crash the signing. Lacey’s husband was catering the event. She was there to help him.”

  “I don’t care. She should have never tried to talk to my love. Do you even know how torn up it made Belinda to see Lacey? She had to leave the signing for a break after that. I wanted to go with her to comfort her, but she wouldn’t let me. If she stayed in the tasting room or if she would have let me go with her, she would still be alive.” Tears filled his voice. “Can’t you see that? But she left the signing, and her sister was waiting for her and killed her.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “After everything Lacey has done to her … It’s terrible how she came to the winery last night. She came there begging Belinda’s forgiveness, but after what she had done, she had no right to ask for that.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but he stopped me. “My fiancée was terrified of her.”

  “Terrified of Lacey? Lacey Dupont? Are you sure we are talking about the same woman?” I was certain that no one had ever been afraid of Lacey, well, ever. With her round cheeks and bright, shining smile, she wasn’t the type of person that you were afraid of. She just wasn’t.

  “She was. She told me many times. After what Lacey did to their mother, it made sense. The police wouldn’t do anything about that suspicious death then either.”

  I froze. “What do you mean?”

  “I thought everyone in this village knew the reason Nela Perkins is dead is because Lacey killed her.”

  “No,” I said. “No, they don’t.”

  Before I could say anything more, he walked away, leaving me standing in the middle of the sidewalk in shock.

  Chapter Twelve

  I stared in the direction Sebastian had gone. As he disappeared around the corner, I realized I’d missed an opportunity to ask him about the murder and what his part of it might have been.

  No matter what Sebastian said, I knew that Lacey hadn’t killed her mother or her sister. There had to be another side to the story of Nela Perkins’s death, and the only person who could tell me that story was Lacey. I continued down the walk to her café.

  Le Crepe Jolie had one of the nicest spots in the village. It stood directly across from the riverside park and beside the town hall, a surprisingly large building in a village as small as Cascade Springs.

  In the summer, the Duponts arranged for wire tables and chairs outside their café so that customers could admire the view of the park and river while they enjoyed Adrien’s delicious food, but in the middle of winter, those tables and chairs were tucked away until spring.

  Before I entered the café, I peeked through the front window. Le Crepe Jolie was busy. Danielle Cloud hopped from table to table, filling coffee cups and nodding to diners’ comments. Her long black ponytail floated behind her while she moved. Danielle was as beautiful as her brother David Rainwater was handsome, and her daughter Aster was a mini version of her mother.

  My stomach rumbled as I watched. Danielle set a strawberry-covered crepe in front of a customer. Even though I had eaten two—okay, three—of Adrien’s doughnuts for breakfast, my mouth watered. I was never too full for Adrien’s food, especially his crepes.

  I removed my stocking cap, tapped down my unruly waves, and walked to the door. As soon as I walked into the café, the room grew dead silent. I glanced around and looked down at my coat, wondering if I had put it on backward or something. Danielle stared with the rest of them, but I realized she wasn’t looking at me at all.

  Lacey stood just outside the kitchen, and all eyes fixed on her. Lacey appeared to be trapped in fright. She was pale, and her hair was falling from its usually neat barrette. It wasn’t hard to guess what the main topic of conversation had been just a moment ago.

  I, of all people, knew what it was like to be the center of village gossip. The talk surrounding Colleen’s death had kept me away from Cascade Springs for twelve years. I supposed that as a teenager, I had expected my village to be more trusting of me, and when they’d turned on me, I’d been so disappointed that I had fled, leaving behind Charming Books, my grandmother, and Lacey, who had dealt with her mother’s death without me. I wished my grandmother had told me about Nela’s death at the time. I wanted to think I would have done the right thing and returned to Cascade Springs to be at Lacey’s side, but I didn’t know if I would have. My grandmother had saved me from making a choice.

  Lacey’s hands shook. I might not have been there all those year ago, but I could help her now.

  “Lacey!” I said, beaming from ear to ear. “Are you ready for our walk? It’s a perfect day to start our New Year’s resolution.”

  “Our walk?” she asked. “Resolution? But it’s already the third week of January.”

  I laughed. “Better late than never, right?”

  “To start a resolution?” She still sounded confused. I would have been confused too, since I had just made up our resolution on the spot.

  “Sure!” I picked her coat off the rack by the door. “We talked about this. We both want to get more exercise this winter. It’s tempting to stay in when it’s cold, but we should be outside enjoying the beautiful winter months just as much as summer.”

  Her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “I guess so. But don’t you hate winter?”

  “I’m turning over a new leaf this year.” I chuckled. “If I tell myself I like winter, I might actually like it. Let’s head out.” I handed her the coat.

  She put it on. “I can’t be gone long. Adrien needs my help. We’re very busy.”

  “Danielle will tell him where we’ve gone.” I smiled at Rainwater’s sister, who smiled back at me as I ushered Lacey out the door.

  Even in the cold, Cascade Springs was still a tourist town, and there were several determined horse-drawn carriages parked by the Riverwalk waiting for passengers. In the winter, the carriages were equipped with warm bricks for the tourists’ feet and blankets to drape over their laps.

  The white horse at the front of the carriage shook his bridle as we crossed the street and stepped onto the ice- and snow-covered path along the river.

  The Niagara River flowed beside the path. I marveled at how powerful the river remained even when half of it was frozen. The rushing water forced its way through the large chunks of ice, spraying upward when it hit a large piece of ice as if it had run into a rock.

  Lacey pulled a stocking hat out of her coat pocket. “Thank you back there. You saved me.” She pulled the hat down over her ears. “I know they were talking about me. The entire village is.” She turned back into the wind and started to walk north along the river toward the livery where the horses and carriages were kept.

  I skipped to catch up with her. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Lacey. I know that seems like a hollow thing to say at a time like this. Platitudes like that frustrated me when my mom died, but I’ve since learned that people say them because they don’t know what else to say.”

  She looked at me with
tears in her blue eyes. “I know. But the truth is, I lost Belinda a long time ago. What I lost last night was the chance of ever making things right between us, which makes me saddest of all. I so much wanted us to be a family again, and now that will never happen.”

  I shoved my hands deep in the pockets of my coat. “What happened between the two of you? As soon as Belinda saw you, she lost it.”

  Lacey sighed. “It’s very painful to talk about.”

  “You don’t have to tell me, but it might help if you did. Lacey, I have to be honest with you. It doesn’t look good that you got into an argument with Belinda and a little while later she was dead.”

  She removed a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her down coat and rubbed it under her nose. “I know that. Chief Rainwater told me the same thing. He wanted to know what our argument was about last night too.”

  “And did you tell him?”

  “Sort of,” she said.

  “Sort of?” I asked.

  “I told him it was over our mother’s death, which was nine years ago now.”

  I touched her arm. “Grandma Daisy told me about your mom. I’m so sorry that I didn’t know. I wish I had been here for you.”

  She shook her head. “It’s all right, Violet. You have been a good friend to me, and you had your own tragedies to deal with back then. I wouldn’t have wanted to add to them.”

  Her sweet and typically Lacey response only made me feel worse. “Grandma Daisy told me about the accident.” I paused. “But she said that your mother didn’t die until a week later.”

  “That’s right.” She looked at her feet while we walked down the path. “In the accident, our mother was paralyzed from the neck down. She was on life support from the moment she arrived at the hospital.” Her voice caught. “We never got a chance to talk to her. She was in a coma too. The second day, the doctor told me she wasn’t waking up and had significant brain damage. I can’t tell you what it was like to see my vibrant mother in a state like that. She was just a shell.” She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and removed a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her coat. She pressed it to the corner of her eye. “The doctors told me that I had to make a decision whether or not take her off life support.”