Craft Circle Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  Caroline's mouth fell open a little. "Another one?"

  I nodded. "Our neighbor was killed. A woman, in her thirties. She was a decade older than us at the time. We never had much to do with her, but some people started these rumors that she and Adam were involved...and he had no alibi the night she was killed." I shook my head as I recalled the whole thing.

  "And did you believe he was guilty?" Caroline asked. She leaned forward eagerly like I was about to impart a juicy piece of gossip and she couldn't wait to gobble it up. She almost knocked her coffee over in the process.

  "At the time, I wasn't sure," I answered. "Well, I wasn't confident in myself like I am now that I am a bit older and wiser. And the rumors about Adam and the woman clouded my judgement. Of course, I had to believe deep down that he was innocent. But my parents got inside my head. They told me that I couldn't risk it, could I? Living with a murderer. Being married to one. I needed to get out of there."

  Caroline still looked shocked by the entire story. It was reactions like this that usually kept me from telling it to people. They always thought that Adam was guilty.

  I shook my head. Like usual, I jumped to defend him. "I suppose the thing that I keep coming back to, is, how could I have married him and not seen that side of him, if it was there all along?"

  Caroline scoffed. "People can surprise you though, George. You can believe, with all your heart, that they are good, that they would never do anything to break the law, anything that could hurt someone else..." She stared at me. "And then they do something that shocks you to the very core."

  I nodded. I didn't know who she was talking about, exactly, but I agreed that the sentiment was correct. "I stupidly believed that Gem Dawes wouldn't do anything to hurt me."

  Caroline looked up at me sharply. "You should never have trusted that boy."

  I nodded. "Maybe I do need to get away from this place."

  Caroline shrugged and looked down. "I mean, half the reason I do the job I do is so that I can escape this town half the time."

  I frowned. "Why don't you just move away, then?" I asked. "There are plenty of other towns and cities that you could base yourself out of."

  "My family needs me here," she said. "My sisters need me."

  "Sisters?" I asked, confused. I placed my coffee down and stared at her.

  "Well, just sister, singular, I suppose."

  Oh, right, she had just made a mistake. She just meant Julie.

  "But now you don’t have any sisters here, right?" I asked, a little tactlessly. Didn't quite come out how I meant it. "I only meant, you have no ties, now."

  Caroline narrowed her eyes at me. "No, I still have my other sister, Sophie."

  My blood froze in my veins for a second. "I didn't know that you and Julie had another sister..."

  "Yes," Caroline said coolly, sipping her coffee. "She worked at the shop with Julie on occasion."

  I gulped. "Was she working there the day that Julie died?" I asked quietly. "Does she happen to have brown hair?"

  Caroline sat her coffee down, her face made of stone. "Drop it, George. If you know what is good for you." She pushed back her seat and stood up. "Maybe you should take your ex-husband's offer. Get out of town."

  Chapter 11

  "Adam," I called out, jogging toward the bus stop. "Please, stop! Don't get on the bus!"

  I stopped when my ankle almost gave out beneath me. "I don't think I've run this much since we were married," I said breathlessly. I was practically breaking out in a sweat.

  Adam dropped his bags and walked toward me with a wide grin on his face. "George, does your being here mean..."

  Oh. I realized he must have thought I'd chased him down at the bus station to tell him I was going with him. He thought I was going to profess my love for him, say that my feelings for him had never faded, and that I wanted to run away with him. I kinda couldn't blame him for jumping to that conclusion, given the scene I was making.

  "Um, Adam. I think you might have misunderstood." I shook my head. "No. I can't leave town with you."

  His face fell. "Then what are you doing here?" he asked defensively.

  "I found out something about Caroline and Julie... I can't believe I am saying this, but Brenda was right. Julie was killed by her sister. I thought...I thought you might want to..."

  Adam nodded. "Right. So now that you've realized I'm not guilty after all, you've come to find me? Is that it?"

  I shook my head. Although I wasn't entirely sure he was wrong. "I thought you might want to help," I said. "I thought you might want to help me catch the real killer. I still care about you, Adam, even if I can't skip town with you. What do you say, for old time's sake?"

  Adam hung his head sadly. "I hope this all works out for you, George. Not just this mystery, either, but your life here. But if you don't want me to be a part of it, then, well..." He picked his bags up again and glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the waiting bus.

  I nodded, biting my lip and trying not to show the emotion. I understood why he had to leave.

  "Goodbye, Adam."

  "I thought you might like a little help," a familiar voice called from several feet behind me.

  I spun around. "Gem," I said with a soft smile. "You don't know how glad I am to see you here right now." I waited for him to catch up to me. "And yes. I could use some help," I said warmly. Then I shivered a little as I glanced at the police station that loomed large about a yard away.

  "Gem, are you finally ready to be honest?" I asked him. "I spoke to Adam. I know that he didn't do it. Why did you say that he did?"

  He was back to being a petulant kid. "Of course Adam just wants to protect himself..."

  I cut him off. "I spoke to Caroline too. Tell me, Gem, why you wanted Adam to look guilty. Why were you protecting Sophie?"

  "I wasn't," he mumbled. "I was protecting myself." He shrugged. "And Julie, I guess," he said, a little sadly.

  I had come to a complete stop. Before I headed inside to see Ryan, I needed to hear this. "Protecting Julie?"

  Gem stomped his foot on the ground and stared at the sky. "I suppose I may as well tell you now. I'm already in for it. Julie and I... We had a deal going on. She would give me big ticket items to sell for her, black market, and then she would write off the items so that she could take a loss, tax-wise."

  I just stared at him. "Are you sure about this?"

  Gem rolled his eyes. "Why would I make this up? We'd had the same setup for years. She always printed me off a fake receipt so that if I ever got caught with a hot item, I could claim I bought it."

  I narrowed my eyes. "So you aren't in to crafting, then."

  Gem shook his head sheepishly. "No. I'm sorry. I'm sure it's great and all..."

  "So what happened?" I asked him. "Was Sophie involved as well?"

  "No. Sophie used to work at the shop. Julie kept it a secret from her, but one afternoon, she over heard us discussing a 'deal' and, well, she lost it."

  "Lost it?" I asked.

  Gem nodded. "Sophie wanted to buy into the business. Julie had lied to her, cooked the books to show her it was making more of a profit than it was. Sophie felt betrayed. That day, Adam and I were there..." Gem stopped speaking and gulped. "I saw Sophie do it, George. I'm sorry. I should have said something. But I was involved too and Adam was there..."

  "And he was an easy person to lay the blame on," I whispered.

  Gem nodded. "None of this has been easy for me," he said. "How do you think I make a living now?"

  "That's why you stole from me?" I asked.

  Gem nodded. "I'm sorry."

  "Caroline must have been trying to protect Julie as well..." I murmured.

  Gem shoved his hands in his pockets. "I knew that if I came forward that I would be in big trouble."

  "But you didn't kill Julie," I said firmly. "And you need to help the person who did be brought to justice."

  Gem nodded. He looked terrified.

  "I didn't want to do it, at fir
st," he said. "But Julie offered me a larger and larger cut until I agreed. And she told me that if I helped her out, then she might be able to offer me a legitimate job, working in the shop. I never had one of those, you know."

  I nodded. "I understand, Gem. I don't approve, but I understand." I started walking again, hurrying toward the station. I needed Gem to come with me and repeat all of this to Ryan.

  "It was tough for Julie to make the rent of her shop, seeing as she was so far out of the central business district," Gem said, almost tripping over his untied shoelaces. We didn't have time to stop, though.

  "I always wondered how she stayed open there," I said, "when almost all the other shops had closed down."

  The darn wind had picked up again. It pushed against us as we made our way down the street. Was it a sign that we should turn back?

  Gem stopped a few feet away from the precinct. "Gem, what are you doing?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "I can't do it," he said, before he turned and ran away.

  "Gem!" I screamed after him. But he was gone with the wind.

  I shook my head and started running after him.

  Gem had already disappeared from sight by the time I arrived in front of Julie's shop.

  I gulped as I looked up at it. Something drew me toward it. Is this where Gem is hiding?

  Turn back, George, I told myself. You can always go to the cops with what you already know. You don't need Gem.

  But reason didn't win out that time, and I took a step inside the empty, still-closed-for-business shop.

  "Gem?" I called. When I heard footsteps, I breathed a sigh of relief. "It's okay, Gem. You just freaked out for a moment. I'll come with you for moral support when you tell your story to the police. You can tell them everything you know about Julie and Sophie, and I can back you up."

  It wasn't Gem who stepped out of the shadows, though.

  "Caroline!" I gasped. "What are you doing here?" I took a step backwards, but it was dark and I banged into one of the aisle shelves, causing a bucket of random buttons to scatter to the ground. When I tried to run, I skidded on them and Caroline got to the door ahead of me.

  "I can't allow this secret about my sisters to get out," she said, standing in front of the door.

  "Caroline..." I said, trying to reason with her. "You're one of the suspects in Julie's murder. There's no sense in you taking the blame for what happened. Who does that help?"

  She moved away from the door, resigned, and leaned against the now empty shelf. "It helps Julie," she said, shaking her head. The emotion was finally showing in her voice. "I don't want anyone to know that she was involved with this dodgy scheme." She looked up at me. "And Sophie is my baby sister," she whispered. "I can't turn her in."

  "Don't worry, I'll do all of the turning in," I said, actually trying to be helpful, but Caroline's face was dark, not grateful.

  "I can't let you do that," she said in a low tone. She grabbed a vase—a blue and white floral design, just like the one in my home—and held it up, her eyes glaring down at me.

  "Caroline..." I said, backing away with my hands up.

  It looked like Sophie wasn't the only one of the William’s sisters who was willing to kill to keep a secret.

  We both gasped when the back door opened and a woman, familiar looking yet foreign to me at the same time, walked into the store.

  So. There was a third woman that looked like both of us, after all.

  Sophie had slightly longer hair, and it was a little darker than mine and Caroline's, but with the curls and bright jewels, she could easily have been mistaken for our double. Or would that be for our triple?

  There's still no way I'm going to apologize to Brenda for any of this.

  Gem had made the unknown things, the eyes that hid in the forest, seem like the scariest thing. But it was the real, tangible threats, the ones that walked toward you with a crowbar, that are truly the scariest.

  "Sophie," I said, holding my hands up as I walked away. I already knew what she was capable of. She'd killed her own sister. And I was a perfect stranger. Maybe reason would work. It was worth a shot. "You don't want to add another murder to your list," I pointed out. "You'll never get out of prison in this lifetime.”

  With a crazed look in her eyes, she smiled at me and then her smile fell. A sadness took over her face and for just a second, I thought she was going to lower the crowbar. Instead, she lunged toward me and aimed for my head. I barely moved out of the way in time. Thankfully, instead of the crowbar hitting me square in the head it came down hard on my shoulder, knocking me to the ground. I cried out in pain as I scrambled to move away from her.

  The crazed look and smile was back as she inched toward me. Suddenly my back hit something. I looked behind me to see that I had backed into the wall. There was nowhere else for me to go. I covered my head as she took a step toward me and I tried to brace myself for the blow. I let out a scream as I sensed her arm coming toward me.

  I heard the noise, but it didn’t register at first what it was. I looked up to see Sophie lying on the ground in front of me. Caroline was standing behind her, shaking and holding part of vase—the rest of it shattered on the ground around Sophie’s head.

  It took me a minute to command my body to move. I was still terrified and my arms wanted to remain plastered over my head to protect it.

  Caroline looked down at her sister and stared at her with a bitter expression washing over her face. She bent over and checked Sophie’s pulse. "She's breathing just fine," she said in a morbid tone that drifted away as she spoke.

  But the vase had not gotten away so unharmed. It was split right up the center of its blue and white floral center and chipped into a hundred pieces that glue was never going to be able to put back together.

  "Looks like we won't be able to sell that," Caroline said flatly.

  "I'm not going to say I told you so," Brenda said. "Because you never even gave me a chance to tell you so. But maybe if you had listened to me, you wouldn't have almost died..."

  I had barely even gotten a chance to turn the sign to 'open' before Brenda had turned up to definitely not tell me she told me so. She'd clearly already heard everything.

  "You can have your job back," I said, cutting her off. "You’re good at your job and our customers like you." I glanced around at the mess that seemed to have grown worse during the couple of days I'd had to close up while I was babying my badly bruised shoulder at home. "And you seem to have a system that works better than mine does." I even managed a small smile. "Maybe you could even show it to me some time."

  She tried to speak, but I still wasn't done.

  "But, Brenda, I won't have you talking to me the way you have been. I have to put my foot down. I am the boss, and you are the employee. You have to treat me with a little respect."

  Her mouth dropped open like she was about to object.

  But I knew she wasn't going to turn down the chance to come back to work. And I was right, she didn't push it. She just silently walked to the counter, picked up her apron, and tied it around her waist.

  She didn't say much for the rest of the day, but she couldn't help needling me just a little.

  "So what happened to this other business you were going to buy?" she said. "Did you realize that was a stupid idea?"

  "Not stupid. Just not for me, at the moment."

  "And what about this town?" Brenda asked. "I thought you were going to throw that in as well. Run away. People talk, you know, George."

  Oh, I knew.

  "I decided to stay put," I mused while I fiddled with a flower display in the window. "I have a couple of friends in town now. So, I think I'll be sticking around."

  Epilogue

  With her new red hair, Caroline was almost unrecognizable.

  "I was wondering recently what I would look like with red hair," I said to her as I entered her shop, nodding my approval. "Quite good, as it turns out. Maybe I will have to give it a try," I said, a little teasingly.


  "Don't even think about it," Caroline warned.

  I laughed. "Okay then. At least not until we’re living in different zip codes."

  "I take it you’re not going to leave town any time soon then?" Caroline asked.

  I shook my head slowly. "Not for now. I decided it was time for new adventures. Not old."

  Caroline laughed. "It's a new adventure for me too. Looks like I'm the only sister left standing now, so I've gotta make this business work."

  "It looks good in here," I said to Caroline. "I'm impressed by how quickly you’re getting things cleaned up." I nodded. "And all the new light fixtures make the place look a lot more modern."

  "And it's going to be an honest operation from this point forward," Caroline said firmly.

  Caroline was going to give up life on the road. She was going to try settling in Pottsville, and I was going to try it with her.

  "I just hope you're up for the competition," Caroline said. "I heard that you took most of our customers while we were closed. You're going to have to get prepared for us to poach some of them back."

  I nodded and smiled at her. "I like a good bit of healthy competition," I said.

  I didn't like living with regrets, which was why I found myself back at the bus station the day after I had said goodbye to Adam.

  I might have given up my chance to go with him, and I didn't regret that, but I did regret the way things had ended.

  "Back again?" the heavy-set bus driver asked as he stepped out of the coach. He must have recognized me from the scene I'd made a day earlier. "I'm afraid I'm not making another trip out of here till tomorrow, ma'am."

  Ma'am? I was at least a few years younger than this man, I was sure of it.

  But I decided to be charming. "I was looking for one of your passengers. My ex-husband, Adam. Do you remember him?"

  The driver nodded. "I do."

  "I don't suppose you could tell me, at least, what station he got off at?" I asked with a sad smile that I tried to make bright. "He never even left a forwarding address."