“We had a tour booked,” Gerald explained. “And now we’ve missed out on the chance to visit the Mainyard Winery.”
“Not a bad thing to miss, if you want my opinion,” Lyndon said with a satisfied grin. “That vineyard doesn’t know the first thing about getting the best from its grapes. They don’t even have a proper blender employed on staff.”
“I don’t know very much about the winery,” Willow admitted. “But I’m sure that a day out in the fresh air would be a lovely thing. I can open up the doors if that suits you.”
“I wouldn’t mind if we kept them closed for the time being,” the woman said with an appreciative smile. “Gerald’s always saying I’m far too susceptible to the cold.”
“You are, Rosemarie. I wouldn’t say it otherwise.”
As if realizing that his words could be taken in a negative light, Gerald picked up his wife’s hand and pressed a gentle kiss against her inner wrist.
For the second time that morning, Willow’s thoughts alighted on Charley. She wouldn’t half mind if he did something as romantic as that. Just watching the fleeting exchange clean took her breath away.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Willow said, backing up a step. “Let me know if I can freshen up a glass or pot.”
As Willow walked back into the kitchen to take a gulp of air, Harmony followed hard on her heels. “You have to come quickly,” she said with a laugh, then ran from the room.
Having quite enough surprises that morning to last her for a month, Willow reluctantly followed in Harmony’s footsteps and closed the door behind her. When she saw the present waiting for her at the bottom of the garden, she increased her speed, bursting along the back path.
“Reg! I can’t believe you got it up and running!”
Willow gave a bark of laughter at the sight of her friend ferrying a boatload of guests up the river that ran behind her property. Although Harmony had mentioned he was trying the method to get customers to her doorstep, Willow had dismissed it from her mind as a long shot. Now, as the boat bumped up against the riverbank, she had to revise her opinion.
It was a pity there wasn’t a jetty for them to dock against. The river bank had absorbed a lot of the rain that had fallen over the weekend, leaving its shores muddy and posing a potential hazard to any customer who ventured over the side of the dingy.
“Just wait there a moment,” Willow cried out as Reg tried to jump onto the slippery shore. “I’ve got a couple of sacks of gravel in the shed that’ll firm that up and prevent some accidents.”
She rushed back up the path, waving at the curious stares from her customers inside the tea room. Willow had purchased the gravel a while back to decorate the beds alongside the track when she had to move them because of the renovations. It would be a heavy haul to get the bags down to the riverside, but it should do an excellent job of preventing slips on the muddy bank once she got it there.
Willow flung open the shed door, flooding the inside with light. She headed straight for where she knew the bags were, not bothering to wait for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
As she tripped over a sneakered foot, Willow realized that she should have waited for a moment. Someone was in the shed. Hiding.
Thoughts of the murdered hotel manager flooded Willow’s mind, and she opened her mouth to scream, just as a hand clamped over it.
Chapter Seven
“Don’t yell,” a male voice whispered in Willow’s ear before he pulled away the hand.
Although sorely tempted to ignore the man’s advice, she swallowed hard and kept her voice low and level. “Who are you?”
“It’s Gary, from the hotel.” The man edged a step farther into the sunlight streaming through the open door. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“I do now you don’t have your filthy hand over my mouth,” Willow said in an annoyed voice, swiping at her lips with her sleeve in a haphazard effort to clean them. She reverted to anger to avoid showing the man just how much he’d scared her. It was either that or start to cry, and there was no way she would give him that satisfaction.
“They’re not filthy, just covered in dust,” Gary Riley said, holding his offending fingers aloft and twiddling them. The gesture made him seem so innocuous that Willow felt an extra layer of affront that he’d scared her at all.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “Shouldn’t you be down at the hotel doing your job? Or did you quit as well?”
“No chance,” he said and stared down at his feet as though they were suddenly the most fascinating objects in the world. “There’s been a bit of a kerfluffle down there this morning, and I’d just as soon hide away.”
“Did you murder Aaron Meiser?” Willow planted her legs apart with her hands on her hips as she stared him down, waiting for the answer. If she genuinely thought he had, she would have made an excuse and hurried back to the safety of the house. However, she wanted to see what he had to say for himself.
“Of course, I didn’t.” Gary shuffled from foot to foot—as shifty as any man Willow had seen before. “It’s just that I don’t need the sheriff poking about in my past if you follow me.”
“No, I don’t follow you.” Willow’s voice came out far louder than normal, and she took a second to swallow and bring the volume down. “I’ve been stuck at the Bonaventure for over an hour this morning, having Sheriff Wender investigating my business, so I can’t see what’s worrying you so much.”
At that, Gary tilted his head back and gave her a sharp look. “Why would the sheriff think you had anything to do with it?”
“Because I had a run-in at the hotel with you yesterday evening and caught the tail end of Lyndon handing in his badge. Sheriff Wender seemed to think that made me the prime suspect number one.”
“Over that?” Gary shrugged and dug the toe of his shoe into the dirt floor of the shed. “It’s a bit of a weird coincidence, but still, I wouldn’t think that was enough to drag you from your home.”
“Nobody dragged me anywhere.” Willow shifted her weight to her back foot and took her hands off her hips. After a second, she folded them across her chest instead. “I went down there to see why none of my staff could make it through for my opening day.”
“They closed the intersection,” Gary said in a mild tone.
“Yes, they did. Only I didn’t know that at the time.”
“Listen,” he said, then sank back into the shadows a step as Harmony approached, calling out Willow’s name.
“I’m in here,” Willow called back to her friend. Gary flailed his hands around, obviously trying to convince her in sign language she shouldn’t tell anybody about his current location. “I’ll just be a minute. There are spiders crawling everywhere.” That was the magic word guaranteed to stop Harmony from joining them in the shed.
“Ugh. I’ll leave you to it,” Harmony called back, hurrying away again.
“I’m not a murderer, but if you don’t mind me hanging out back here, I’d just as soon camp where I am rather than explain myself to the police.” Gary peered at Willow’s face with a pleading expression.
“Fine. At least you can hand me the bag of gravel in the back there,” Willow said. She had customers waiting, and it wasn’t as though Gary was standing there with a loaded gun. “If you’re going to stay in my shed, just make sure you keep it tidy.”
Gary handed her the bag, giving her a grateful tilt of his head. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
“By the time this day is finished, you’ll probably owe me three or four.”
She manhandled the bag down to the edge of the river, with Harmony stepping forward to lend a hand as soon as Willow assured her no spiders were clinging to the sack. The gravel formed a nice gritty surface for the river-goers to step out onto, and soon they were walking up the garden path.
“I’ll go fetch another boatload, then stop in for a cuppa,” Reg said. “I’ve told so many folks I had a way of getting them across, that I reckon I could charge them for the trip.”
&nbs
p; “You should,” Harmony told him. “Where did you get the boat from, anyhow?”
“My mate came through for me there,” Reg called back as the dingy drifted away from the bank. “You owe Owen Marshall a plate of scones, the next time he calls around.”
From that moment on, Willow’s day turned into a non-stop merry-go-round of orders, kitchen duty, clearing tables, and cashing out the tickets as people left, happy and replete.
Reg was relieved of ferrying duty just after one o’clock in the afternoon when the sheriff finally cleared the intersection, so traffic could once again have free rein on her side of town.
Full of unneeded apologies, Wendy and Tiffany turned up a few minutes after the blockade came down. By that time, Willow was so into the swing of things she had no trouble issuing orders—a task that had been weighing on her mind earlier.
“Take a break,” Harmony ordered when Willow had to put a hand out to support herself momentarily on the bench. “Let your waitresses take over—that’s what you’re paying them for.”
“I’m fine,” Willow countered. “Just opening day jitters getting the best of me. Could you grab a new pot of jam if you’re not doing anything? It’s needed on table three.”
Although she had expected that there’d be a lot of customers on their first day, even her deepest wishes were surpassed by the steady influx of clientele. There was barely time enough to clear one customer’s dishes away before the next was champing at the bit to be seated.
“I can rest when I’m dead,” Willow said a few minutes later when Harmony shot a raised eyebrow her way again. “Not from the herbal tea,” she reassured an eavesdropping customer. “That’s as right as rain.”
The scones were long gone, even the batch she whipped up after Wendy and Tiffany’s arrival, and the store-bought cookies she’d kept on hand for emergencies had also well and truly sold out.
Not only were the tables ordering food beyond her capacity, but the small boxes of herbal tea in fancy packets for making the same treat at home had sold out. Earlier in the morning, Willow’s concern was that they’d expire before she could sell them. Now, she worried that she wouldn’t have the capacity to package up enough for the next day’s trading.
“And closed,” Willow said on the dot of five p.m. as she ushered the last table of guests out of the tea room. She turned the sign on the door around and waited until the customers had made it back to the sidewalk before following in their footsteps to retrieve the sandwich board from the street.
“Didn’t I tell you not to worry?” Harmony said with a smile when Willow walked back indoors. “Instead of being concerned about having too much space available, you might have to consider building another extension.”
“I’ll wait until I’ve repeated this a few more times, thanks.” Willow stretched out her neck until it clicked. “Today might just have been an opening day bonanza.”
“Is it okay if I get home now?” Tiffany asked. “I would stay to make up for how late I was getting here, but I’ve got the kids about to be let out from their after-school care.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Willow reassured her, including Wendy with a nod. “It’s not your fault that the sheriff decided to close down our side of town. Thank you for doing such a great job today. Both of you really hit the ground running.”
Once the waitresses had left, Willow picked up Mavis and put her into the playroom system that Reg had put together for her. The kitten looked delighted with herself, and no surprise. After having been the object of adoration all day, Willow could hardly blame her.
When Mavis was safely occupied, and out of harm’s way, Willow turned to her friend with a frown of concern. “Now, I didn’t want to worry you earlier, but I think I might have a slight problem.”
“With the business?”
“No. Out in the shed.”
Chapter Eight
Harmony was a lot more behind the idea of reporting Gary Riley to the sheriff’s office than Willow had been. It took a fair bit of persuasion on his behalf before Willow felt safe to bring him indoors. Even then, Harmony was clear she was only putting up with this foolishness on sufferance. As she led him inside, Willow made it obvious to the man he’d better not put a foot wrong.
“I’m sorry to have troubled you. I didn’t know where else to run to when the sheriff closed off the road. If I’d stopped in at anyone else’s property, they probably wouldn’t have recognized me. I’d have had the law called on me in a second.”
“You still should have,” Harmony insisted, only relenting when Willow cast a stern expression her way. “Why on Earth did you feel the need to run away from them, to begin with? What past are you hiding?”
“I’m not a Russian spy or anything like that,” Gary insisted, then followed it up with a long sigh. “Tell you the truth, I committed the worst of my offenses back when I was a teenager, and it was never anything more troubling than being caught trying to lift stock from an outside stall.”
“Trying to steal?” Willow raised her eyebrows.
“I’ve always been too clumsy to get away with anything,” Gary admitted as though it pained him to say. “The first time I try anything naughty, I get caught out. It only took a few times, and I learned my lesson.”
“If that was all back when you were a teenager, I don’t know why you think the sheriff would give a fig about it now.” Harmony made no secret of not trusting the man. She’d narrowed her gaze to such a thin line, it surprised Willow that she could see at all.
“He possibly doesn’t,” Gary said, then gave another enormous sigh. “I never followed up on those boys you came storming in about last night.”
Harmony gave a sniff, and Willow felt a thread of disappointment run through her body. “When we left, you said you were going to sort it out.”
“I was. It’s just that with Lyndon leaving us in the lurch, I needed to find a janitor to come in this morning to replace him. By the time I got that sorted, I’d completely forgotten there was anything to chase up at all. It was only when I heard the noise and saw Mr. Meiser laying outside I realized those boys must be responsible.” Gary broke down, choking for a while rather than getting any words out. “If only I’d done something about it, perhaps I could have prevented his death.”
“Well, you certainly must talk to the sheriff now, if that’s what you think happened.” Harmony crossed her arms and glared at Gary until he nodded in agreement, shame mottling his face. “You realize that you’re one of the few witnesses who might have some useful knowledge to pass on.”
“Wait a minute.” Willow held up one finger. “If you didn’t do anything about it, how do you know the people responsible for the stone-throwing last night were boys.”
Harmony raised her eyebrows, then nodded in appreciation.
“I saw them,” Gary admitted. “That lad whose mother does the washing for the hotel. Him and one of his ragged little friends.”
“You mean Barrett Glasner?” Willow remembered the name of the boy that Lyndon had told her about that morning. Gary nodded.
“Who’s that?” Harmony asked, sounding miffed to be the only one not in the know.
“I don’t know him personally, but from what I hear, he likes to drop things on cars from the overpass.” Willow shook her head. “I can’t imagine why anybody has allowed him to get away with that.”
“I suppose I should just have ‘fessed up this morning, shouldn’t I?” Gary said with a miserable expression on his face. “Now, it’ll look like I’ve been laying low because I’m guilty.”
“It’ll seem like you were hiding away because you were scared,” Willow said in a gentle voice, “because it seems to me that’s what you were doing. I’ll come down to the office with you if you like. Then, at least, you won’t need to sit in the sheriff’s waiting room, worrying all by yourself.”
“Would you really do that for me?” Gary stared at Willow with wide eyes.
“It’s the least I can do, after letting you skulk in
my shed all day long.” Willow gave a laugh. “I never would have let you do that if I hadn’t been so busy on my opening day, I could tell you that much!”
“I’ll come along too,” Harmony offered. “After all, I was there last night when we first encountered trouble. If the sheriff is taking things the wrong way—or too far—I’m quite happy to correct him.”
The three of them headed out of the house, nervous but determined.
* * *
“Hilary,” Willow exclaimed as she walked into the sheriff’s office waiting area to find the cleaner already sitting there. Mary-Jo was on the front desk, busily examining her long nails and ignoring all of them. “What are you doing here?”
Hilary turned around, looking a good ten years older than she had that morning. She also seemed in desperate need of a caffeine pick-me-up as she gave an enormous yawn, only belatedly covering her mouth with one hand.
“They called me in to ask some follow-up questions or something,” Hilary explained with a shrug. “And to sign the statement I gave this morning. I don’t even understand what I’ve said that’s so interesting to them.” She glared at Mary-Jo who didn’t appear to notice. “Nobody is really telling me anything much at all.”
“Can you let Sheriff Wender know that Gary Riley is out in his waiting room?” Willow said with a touch of polite deference to the bored-looking receptionist. Mary-Jo tapped away on her keys for a minute, presumably sending the sheriff an email rather than picking up the phone or walking the five yards inside the office to his desk.
“Take a seat,” Mary-Jo said, waving at the three chairs on offer. “He’ll be with you in a moment.”
“She’s been telling me that for the past half-hour,” Hilary grumbled. “As if I had nothing else to do with my evening.”
“Did you have plans?” Willow asked after introducing her to Harmony.
“Just a nice soak in the tub,” Hilary answered, “and ordering in some Chinese so I didn’t have to cook.”
“You haven’t eaten?” Willow shook her head. “You must be starving.”
Tea Shop Cozy Mysteries - Books 1-6 Page 22