He waved them away. “I could never eat all of those.”
“Then take them to your office and make everyone’s day.” She looked up at him with her big blue eyes.
The man caved, taking the plate from her small hands. “All right. They will be very pleased.”
Only an ogre could have said no to Sadie and a plate of cookies.
She beamed and turned to me. “I can help you clean up.”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry about that. I don’t want to keep you too late. It looks like more snow is on the way. I’d feel better knowing you all made it safely home before it hits.”
Sadie gave me a hug. “Are you excited that the Red Inkers is whole again?” She beamed at Renee and Simon. “I’m so thrilled to have you two in the group too.”
Renee grinned back, and Simon fidgeted. I suppressed yet another smile.
Richard offered to give Renee a ride home since they both lived near campus. Renee looked like she was about to turn down his offer, saying she was very fond of walking, but Sadie stepped in and encouraged her to go because it was so cold outside, well below zero.
Sadie winked at me as she was ushering the pair of front door. It seemed to me that my friend was playing matchmaker. I watched Simon as he shuffled out the door, seeming to be reluctant to leave until the others did. Or maybe, I thought, he was reluctant to leave until Sadie left.
Richard, Renee, Sadie, and Simon all left at the same time, and I smiled as I watched them walk down the porch steps two by two. I closed the door.
“What’s that smile on your face for?” I turned around to find Rainwater looking at me with a twinkle in his eye. In the last few months after meetings, Rainwater had opted to stay behind and help me clean up. At first, he had left as soon as the chairs were put away, but over time he had stayed longer and longer, and we would end up talking about his book, his niece, my students, and my dissertation. I had come to cherish these quiet moments with the police chief, whom I now considered a dear friend.
“What smile?” I asked as innocently as I could, but the innocence came off as false and I knew it.
“I have a feeling that you have a plan for Simon, and it has nothing to do with his poems.” He folded the last two remaining chairs.
I took one of the chairs from him and walked it back to the storage closet behind the spiral staircase. Rainwater followed with the second chair. “I don’t have any plans for Simon. He seems like a nice guy and a very good writer. Both he and Renee will add a lot to the group.”
He laughed as he handed me the second chair and I put it away in the closet. “I saw how you were looking at him and Sadie. My advice is to stay out of it. If they are meant to be, it will happen.”
I frowned. “You really believe that? That if people are meant to be together, it just happens? I think that discounts how much work a relationship takes. You can’t just coast along and assume you end up in the same place with the right person.” I took the chair from his hand and tucked it into the storage closet with the others.
When I turned, he was looking at me, and there was no more teasing in his eyes. “I do believe that. It gives me the strength I need to be patient. Don’t take that away from me.”
My throat felt dry. I couldn’t talk about this any longer. I felt like it was a slippery slope where my traction was already in question. As much as I liked Rainwater, how could I be involved with him or any man when I knew that I would have to keep my identity as the shop’s Caretaker secret from him? Keeping that secret hadn’t worked out for any of the Waverly women that came before me, including my mother and grandmother. It sounded to me like a recipe for heartache. I wasn’t prepared for more of that in my life.
“So, you went to Simon’s office today?”
Rainwater sighed.
“Did your visit have anything to do with Belinda’s death?”
“Violet,” was all he said.
“I know that it must. Had she bought an insurance policy recently? Was there a dispute about her insurance claim? Is Simon somehow involved in the murder? I really need to know that before I start planning his wedding to Sadie.”
“Violet, take a breath. You don’t even give me an opportunity to answer one question before you bulldoze to the next.”
I waited.
“Yes, the visit was about Belinda Perkins. No, I have no reason to suspect Simon at all. He wasn’t even the one who opened the policy in question. It was in the New York City office of his company. I went to his office because I had some questions about the legality of the policy that I thought would be easier to have answered in person.”
“What were those questions?” I closed the closet door and moved around the tree.
He followed me and then pressed his lips together into a thin line.
“Oh-kay, then, let me guess. My guess is that you went to the insurance office because Belinda had a life insurance policy on herself, and you wanted to see who was on the policy and therefore had the most to gain from her death.” I folded my arms, feeling quite pleased with myself.
“No,” Rainwater said.
I dropped my arms. “What do you mean, no?”
He sighed. “If you must know, a policy was recently opened on Belinda’s life, but not by Belinda.”
“What? Then by who?”
Rainwater looked as if he regretted even saying that much. Above his head, Faulkner walked back and forth on his branch in the birch tree, and Emerson sat on the top step of the spiral staircase dividing his attention between Rainwater and me and the bird.
“It was Sebastian, wasn’t it?”
He didn’t say anything.
“I know I’m right,” I said. “It has to be him.”
Again, nothing from the stone-faced police chief.
“But they weren’t married,” I said, talking myself out of my theory. “You can’t take an insurance policy out on someone that you’re not married to.”
“That’s not true,” Rainwater said. “You can take an insurance policy out on anyone if you can prove that their death would cause you financial hardship.”
“Aha! Then I am right!”
Rainwater sighed.
“This explains the private detective.”
He folded his arms. “The what?”
I went on to tell him about meeting Joel Redding outside the shop earlier that day. “Honestly, I was surprised that you didn’t run into him outside. I thought he would come back at some point to take up his post. He seems to think I know more about Belinda’s murder than what I told the police.”
Rainwater gave me a level look. “And is he right?”
I gave him the same look back. “No.”
The police chief was the first to look away this time.
“Doesn’t this make Sebastian look guiltier?” I asked. “Hiring a private investigator is a lot of trouble to go to.”
“Or it could be he wants this case closed quickly so that he can file his insurance claim.”
“Oh.” There was that.
Rainwater didn’t say anything, and we stared at each other in silence. Neither of us willing to give in. Behind Rainwater, a book fell onto the floor with a bang. Both he and I jumped. Rainwater turned around and picked up the book. Even before he handed it to me I knew it would be another copy of Little Women.
He put the book in my hand. I was right. It was a thick paperback edition of the novel, much like the one I’d had as a little girl when I read it for the first time.
“An American classic,” Rainwater said. “There is a lot of wisdom in that novel.”
I looked up at him. “You’ve read Little Women?”
He smiled. “I have. I hope you aren’t one of those people that think the book is only for women.”
I blushed. “Of course I don’t.”
“Admittedly, I read it not that long ago,” Rainwater said. “Within the last few years. I thought if I want to write for children that I should read some of the masters. Alcott was at the top of m
y list. You have to respect a novel that lasts the test of time so well.”
I smoothed my hand over the book’s paper cover. “You do.” I removed my hand from the cover and the book flew open. Its pages flew.
“What the …” Rainwater began.
I stared up at him in horror. What was the shop doing by opening the book in front of the police chief? I spun around, trying to shield the fluttering pages from Rainwater’s view.
“Violet, what’s going on?”
The book stopped move as abruptly as it had begun. My eyes fell onto the passage in front of me. “ ‘I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead. I don’t know what, but I’m on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all someday.’ ”
I stared at the passage for a moment. The words were spoken by Jo March, the second-oldest and most famous of the March sisters from the story. She was the tomboy. The girl who wished she was born a boy, so she could be rough-and-tumble and go to college. Were they directing me to Lacey because she was the second sister in her family? But these words didn’t suit Lacey at all, especially now that I’d heard Charles’s account of her as a child. She’d never had such aspirations.
Belinda. Belinda was the sister with big dreams who had wanted to make her mark before she died. And she had, both in life and in death.
“Violet.” Rainwater stepped around. “What’s going on?”
I swallowed and look up at him.
“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
“No ghost.”
He frowned. “Was it a ghost that opened that book?”
I laughed. “That’s ridiculous. I was just flipping through it.”
“I don’t think so.” He studied me.
I laughed again. “You can’t be implying that anyone else opened the book but me. I was the only one touching it. Honestly, I think you have been writing fantasy novels for far too long.”
His face clouded over, and I wished that I could take back my harsh words. At the same time, I had to shoot this conversation down. Rainwater couldn’t know about the shop’s magical essence. This was my burden as the Caretaker. In the succession of Caretakers, I didn’t want to be the one who gave away the Waverly family’s greatest secret.
He took a step back from me, and for the second time in a short period, I thought that I had made the wrong move with him. But it had to be done. No one could know about the shop’s essence, not even Rainwater, no matter how much I was dying to tell him about it. In a way I felt like he was the one person in the village other than my grandmother who would understand, but still I couldn’t tell him.
He sighed and stepped back. “You want me to tell you everything that I know about my investigation into Belinda’s Perkins’ murder, but you don’t trust me.”
I snapped the book closed. “What are you talking about? I trust you.”
He shook his head. “No, you don’t. I know that something odd is happening in this shop and with you. I know that you don’t want to tell me what it is because you don’t trust me.”
“There’s nothing odd going on.” My denial sounded hollow.
“And Violet, look at the tree. Someone shot it last October and it’s completely healed. The mark where the bullet hit it isn’t even there. That’s not normal. The tree even being alive is not normal. A book that opens under its own volition is not normal.”
I chewed on my lip. After the tree had been accidently shot, it had started to die, so I had done the only thing I could think of and poured the mystical spring water into the hole in the trunk that the bullet had made. I had been so relieved when it healed the tree, I hadn’t thought of concealing this miracle from the public. Rainwater had taken note of it right away.
“If anything between you and me is going to work, you have to trust me with whatever you are hiding.”
“What are you talking about?” I felt like I was losing my breath.
“You know what I mean. You have to choose.”
“You’re speaking in riddles.”
“You know the riddle, but you’re the only one who can solve it. You have to choose to trust me. Whatever you’re hiding, I can handle it. I promise you that, but if you don’t make up your mind, you could very well end up alone.”
I stared at him. Alone. But wasn’t that my destiny anyway as the Caretaker of Charming Books? Not a single Waverly woman had any luck at romance. They always ended up single in the end. Why should I fight it?
I stared into Rainwater’s understanding amber gaze. Because of him, I thought. I couldn’t say it though. I wasn’t that brave. I wasn’t sure if I would ever be brave enough to say what I wanted so desperately.
Faulkner flew over our heads from the tree to his perch by the window and cawed, “Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow …”
I shivered.
Rainwater watched the bird. “You can’t tell me a crow quoting Alcott is normal either.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, I would tell him everything. When I did, there was no going back.
The police chief leaned toward me and kissed me softly on the lips. “Good night, Violet Waverly. Make the right choice for both our sakes.”
And then he left.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Please read chapter six in your textbooks for next week. We’ll have a quiz on the content,” I said to my freshmen composition class as the students shuffled out of the room with a groan.
I gathered up the papers that they had turned in at beginning of class. Several students in the class were natural writers. I wished that they would embrace that instead of hating the course so much. But as I left the room, I was more distracted by Belinda’s murder than by my students’ papers. Usually after my second class for the day, I went back to Charming Books to work until my afternoon class at two, but this time I decided to stay on campus and do a little research at the college library. I texted my grandmother to tell her not to expect me at the shop until after the afternoon class was finished.
My English classes were in the humanities building, which was on the other side of campus from the three-story library. The day was warmer than the past week had been, but the snow blew hard outside. Through the glass door leading into the humanities building, I could see shapeless figures bending forward against the drafty squalls as they forced their way through the blustery campus. My car was parked semi-legally in front of my building and I was half tempted to give up the library idea all together and go home.
However, I knew the shop, and my grandmother would give me no peace until I found out what the shop’s magical essence was trying to tell me through the words of Little Women. I took a deep breath and headed toward the library.
A few minutes later, I blew through the front doors of the library with a puff of snow in my wake. Renee sat at the information desk typing on a laptop. She grinned when she watched me shake the snow off my coat and out of my hair.
“You take the winter weather with you when you leave,” she said.
“I would if I could. It seems to me that the winter is just getting started.”
“That’s life in Niagara for you. Snow comes down by the feet, not by the inches, and the college never closes. At least it never has for snow in the six years I’ve worked here.”
I wasn’t looking forward to that. It was my first winter back in Cascade Springs, and I remembered how nasty the past winters had been. “I came by to ask for your expertise, but you look busy. I don’t want to bother you if you’re working on something.”
Renee closed the lid to her laptop. “I’m a librarian; it is my job to be bothered. Besides, you’re pulling me away from a boring circulation report. Whatever you have to ask me I know will be much more enjoyable.”
“I don’t think it will be too hard to find either, but since you’re the searching expert, you will be much faster at it than I would.”
/> Renee cracked her knuckles in preparation. “Flattery will get you everywhere. What do you have?”
“Belinda wasn’t just a sommelier. She was also a writer and wine critic. I’m wondering if you could pick up some of her reviews, especially of wineries within a reasonable driving distance.”
“That would be a lot of wineries,” she said. “It’s a big industry around here. Are you thinking on both sides of the Canadian border? Because that really would be a lot.”
“Good point. Let’s just stick to wineries in western New York to start.”
“That’s easy enough.” She opened her laptop and started clicking on the keyboard so fast I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if she had the ability to type two hundred words a minute. As she searched, she asked, “What’s with the interest in her writing?”
“Her reviews were known to be harsh, harsh to the point that it would affect a winery’s business if she gave a bad review.”
“So you are thinking that someone who was poorly reviewed by Belinda might have wanted to seek the ultimate revenge against her.” Her glasses had slipped to the tip of her nose. “It’s not a bad motive.”
“Thanks.”
She grinned from ear to ear. “I knew it. I knew you were poking around in the murder.”
“I’m not poking around,” I said defensively. “Also, there is one review in particular that I’m looking for that she wrote about the winery Bone and Hearth.”
She looked up from her computer. “That’s the newer winery in the village, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “I got a tip that she didn’t care for it.”
“A tip, eh? Now we are really detecting, aren’t we?” She cracked her knuckles.
“I’m just looking for other possible suspects so the police will look for someone other than Lacey.” I almost told Renee about private investigator Joel Redding but thought better of it. It wasn’t the time to get Renee off on a research tangent. I needed those articles.
She rolled her eyes. “Lacey is as gentle as a bunny rabbit, and bunnies don’t kill people.”
“You’ve read Bunnicula, haven’t you?”
“That was a very rare case of crazy bunny. Most rabbits are perfectly nice.”
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