Falling to Pieces

by Vannetta Chapman

  “Oh. I asked Margie to keep it for you, until you could come back for it. I believe she set it behind the counter.”

  “I don’t suppose the shop is open today. I’d like to return what was in the bag and purchase more supplies for Max.” Callie tucked her hair behind her ears, looked over at her dog who was sitting behind the fence staring at her as if she’d single-handedly invented dog chow. “He’s needing more dog biscuits already. He eats like a bear instead of a dog.”

  “Ya, much like my boys. I believe The Kaffi Shop is open. I drove by there on my way back from the feed store. They’d placed plywood over the broken glass, but a big sign out front said OPEN. I suppose they don’t want Margie losing money as well as being laid up sick.”

  “Maybe Max and I will walk over there when I close then.”

  “Okay, and come out to our place if you decide you don’t want to stay alone.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Callie smiled and waved as Deborah pulled her buggy out on to Main Street.

  “As if anyone would mess with you, Max.”

  Chapter 25

  CALLIE DIDN’T LEAVE at six when her shop closed.

  The Fed-Ex man showed up with the load of supplies she’d ordered. Fortunately, Zeke had stopped back to pick up the cell phone he’d left charging in the supply room, a cell phone he’d mentioned his parents knew nothing about.

  He kindly offered to stay and help her move the boxes into the storeroom.

  “We can unpack them in the morning,” she said once the last box had been stacked against the shelves.

  “You’re sure? I don’t mind staying.” He cast an eye toward the front window as he spoke, and Callie had heard his phone beep several times in the last half hour, indicating either a call or a text message. He’d been respectful enough not to check it while they were working, at least not while she was in the room.

  “I’m positive. It can wait. Now go and meet your friends.”

  The grin that spread across his face nearly eased the fatigue that was beginning to wash over her. Was there ever a time when a ride in a buggy made her evening?

  Come to think of it, probably not. But there was that old mustang her parents had helped her purchase her senior year in high school.

  “Go. Max and I have plans too.”

  Zeke didn’t wait for further coaxing. He pulled his wool cap a bit lower on his head, then headed out the door. His friends were waiting at the curb by the time he made it to the street. Funny how he still wore the wool cap but kept the cell phone tucked in his back pocket. He had one foot in both worlds, but then what teen didn’t?

  Callie grabbed her own cell phone, the replacement for the replacement since Shane had insisted on keeping hers, and the Agatha Christie book she was reading, and locked up the shop.

  Max started prancing as soon as he saw the leash. He was a good walker, and never pulled or strained on the leash, but the amount of energy he had at the beginnings of their walks sometimes made her wonder what his “full-speed-ahead” would look like.

  They made it to The Kaffi Shop in record time.

  The sight of the boarded up window in the front door tugged at Callie’s heart, but she took a deep breath and marched inside nonetheless.

  As usual, country-western music played over the speakers. Booths were fairly crowded with customers. And Haiden, Margie’s assistant, worked behind the counter. She wore blue jeans and a bright pink sun-top layered over a yellow T-shirt, but no Margie hovered near her—helping with orders, making sure she operated the espresso machine correctly, smiling at customers, exchanging comments about the latest bizarre item to pop up at the market.

  “How are you doing, Haiden?”

  “Hi, Miss Harper. Hey, Max.” Red-rimmed eyes contradicted her cheery tone, but she raised her chin, waved at the display of baked goods and sandwiches, and pulled a pen out of her pocket. “I’m okay.”

  “It’s good to see you’re open.”

  “Regular hours—same as if Mrs. Margie were here. Margie’s husband said it would be okay, and Kristen and I thought it would be a good way to, you know, show our support.”

  Kristen was the other part-time help, a sweet teenaged Amish girl.

  Callie peeked behind her. “Is Kristen here?”

  “No. She opened and was pretty worn out, so I told her I’d close.”

  “Are you going to be here alone?”

  “No, ma’am. Kristen was going to come back after she’d gone home for a few hours.”

  “Well, you girls are doing a fine thing.”

  “Thank you. Can I get you some dinner?”

  “Sure. I’ll take my regular sandwich and a coffee with a shot of espresso.”

  “Kind of late for that; isn’t it?” Gavin’s voice sounded as serious as ever, but when Callie turned she found him out of uniform—wearing blue jeans and a Hike Montana shirt.

  Hike Montana? She had envisioned him in a Go Army shirt, but not Hike Montana.

  He was standing directly behind her, looking as stiff and formal as ever, but she thought she saw a glimmer of humor in his eyes.

  “It’s never too late for espresso, Officer Gavin.”

  “Doesn’t it keep you awake?”

  “No. It used to, when I was younger. Now it just recharges me enough to keep me awake until dark.”

  “Anything else?” Haiden asked.

  “No. That will do it.” Callie paid with a twenty, and Haiden was handing her the change when Callie remembered why she’d stopped by in the first place.

  When she asked about the bag, Haiden remembered it immediately. “I helped her store it right here under the cabinet, but it’s not here. Let me check in the back.”

  “Great. I need to return it to the General Store and buy Max more treats.”

  Max yelped lightly and several customers turned to look at him.

  “Harper, I’m sure you’re not supposed to bring animals in here.”

  “Could you do me a favor?” Callie turned, smiled sweetly at the officer who could not have been older than her. “Lighten up.”

  Before Gavin could answer, Haiden returned. “No bag. I looked where we put it and on the Lost and Found shelf.”

  “It was kind of large. Had SHOP SHIPSHEWANA on the outside, and it was filled with dog stuff.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  Max lay down on the floor and put his head on his paws.

  “Does that dog actually understand what you’re saying?” Gavin asked.

  “Are you sure it’s not behind there?” Callie asked Haiden, ignoring both Gavin and Max.

  “You can look for yourself, but it would be hard to miss.”

  Callie thrust Max’s leash into Gavin’s hand and walked around the counter. “That’s strange. I left it here Monday when Black showed up and arrested me again.”

  “Technically you weren’t arrested.” Gavin still hadn’t moved. He stood there, still not smiling, holding Max’s leash, studying the two women. “What? I’m just saying.”

  “Thank you for that observation, Officer.” Callie rolled her eyes.

  “I remember,” Haiden said. “I was working Monday. You left, Deborah rushed out with the bag, then rushed back in, and asked Margie to hold it for you. Margie placed it right here under the shelf. It was here when we closed Monday night. I know it was, because I asked Margie if she wanted me to take it by your place.”

  “Monday night was when the burglar—” Callie turned slowly and stared across the counter at Gavin. “Was anything else reported missing?”

  “I can’t reveal the details of an ongoing—”

  Callie sprinted back around the counter. Gavin backed up two paces, but Callie closed the gap. “Was anything else missing?”

  When he didn’t answer, she turned back to Haiden.

  The girl shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me someone broke into this store and assaulted Margie so they could steal Max’s dog toys. That doesn’t make any sense. Why would they
do that?”

  “Maybe you should calm down,” Gavin said.

  “I don’t want to be calm. I want answers. Tell me it didn’t happen that way, because it doesn’t make any sense. There has to be more to it. There has to be another answer.” Callie suddenly knew that she had to have fresh air, she had to be out of the little shop that was becoming smaller by the second.

  She pushed past Gavin, heard him say to Haiden, “Hold her order. We’ll be back for it in a minute.”

  Some part of her knew that he was following her, bringing Max, but she kept walking, across the street to the bench. The same place she had sat with Trent less than forty-eight hours ago when they’d first seen the ambulance pulled up outside The Kaffi Shop.

  Gavin stood in front of her, still holding Max’s leash. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’ll wager it’s wrong.”

  Callie didn’t bother answering him. She was trying to deal with all the images and ideas going through her head—quilts, eBay, Stakehorn, murder, Shane Black, Margie, Max.

  What did they have in common? Or did they have anything in common?

  Was she trying to force a connection where none existed?

  “Talk to me, Harper.”

  He crouched in front of her, and when she continued to stare at the ground he reached out, placed his hand under her chin, and gently raised her head until her eyes met his.

  “Talk to me.”

  “Nothing was missing from the store.”

  His silence confirmed what she already knew.

  “The same way nothing was missing from the Gazette office.”

  “You’re not a detective, Callie.”

  “I know that.” She felt her temper snap, and for the first time he smiled. Why did her anger make him smile? “I wish I were a detective. I’m just a shop clerk, out of my league. But somehow I’m caught in this, and it’s not making any sense.”

  Andrew stood, handed her Max’s leash, then sat beside her on the bench.

  “So sometimes it helps to talk things out, rather than chasing them around in your head.”

  “I talk them out,” she mumbled. When Gavin leaned forward and gave her the look, she added. “I tell Max almost everything.”

  Then the tears started tracking down her cheeks, and it made her even angrier. She did not want to cry in front of this man. She didn’t want to feel vulnerable and weak. The last thing she wanted to be was helpless—again—helpless. She’d traveled twelve hundred miles, yeah she’d looked up the distance on Google maps and wasn’t that absolutely pitiful. Twelve hundred miles from Houston to Shipshewana.

  But what difference had it made?

  She was as lost here as she’d been there.

  And it seemed she was no more in control of her life now than she had been then.

  Gavin reached over and tapped the book she didn’t realize she was still clutching. “I guess you know your aunt was fond of Agatha Christie.”

  “Yeah.” Callie swiped at the tears with the heels of her hand. “There’s an entire shelf in her apartment.”

  “Did you know Max’s name came from Agatha Christie?”

  What escaped was half laugh, half sob. “You’re making that up.”

  “I’m not. She told me so one day when I stopped by to help her with a flat tire on her old truck.”

  “You know more about my aunt than I do.” More tears threatened to fall, but Callie blinked them back. “I found a journal of hers. I’ve started reading it, and it’s like I’m getting to know her, but I didn’t realized she had a truck.”

  “Everyone seems to know everyone in a small town—I’m sure you’ve figured that out in the short time you’ve been here. Daisy had that old truck the entire time I knew her, a couple of years at least. She finally got rid of it last summer when she realized she liked walking and it was cheaper to hire a driver like the Amish.”

  “So Max was a character in a mystery novel?”

  “No. He was Agatha Christie’s second husband. They were married forty-six years. I remember it struck me as amazing how she knew the exact number of years. She said Max was faithful to her, same as the author’s husband had been faithful.”

  Callie reached down, rubbed her dog as he leaned against her leg. He felt warm and safe and comfortable. He provided a connection to her past and her family—to people who loved her.

  “Thanks, Gavin. Guess I needed to hear that right now.”

  “Call me Andrew.”

  “Andrew, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  So she did, and she told him her fears about being connected to Stakehorn’s murder and Margie’s assault.

  Andrew wasn’t buying it though. “I’ve seen a lot of coincidences. Sometimes when you’re afraid, you connect things that don’t belong together at all.”

  “But what about the bag of Max’s things? Why would that be the one thing missing?”

  “You don’t know it was. Until Margie can tell us what she did with it, you’re making an assumption.”

  Callie pulled in a deep breath. One part of her knew he was right. Another part, a small nagging part that felt more like a twitch, wondered.

  “I’m not saying I blame you,” he continued. “Shipshe is a small, safe community. For two random acts of violence to happen in less than a week is disconcerting, but you don’t have anything to be afraid of.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Suddenly Callie remembered Deborah’s list and the two names she hadn’t spoken to yet. “Can I ask you one more thing?”

  “Of course.”

  “You argued with Stakehorn—the night he was murdered.”

  She didn’t think he would answer, though she felt him stiffen beside her. “Is there a question in there somewhere?”

  “I was wondering what it was about.”

  “I didn’t always agree with what Dennis wrote in his columns. The newspaper was his business, though. He was the editor.”

  “Do I hear a but in there somewhere?”

  “But sometimes he stepped over the line. Actually most of the time he did. Hurt people, and hurt them unnecessarily.” Andrew stood, refused to meet her eyes.

  Callie moved in front of him, even put her hand on his arm until he looked down into her eyes. This intimacy didn’t feel odd to her like it might have just a few weeks earlier. The shell she’d so carefully kept around her life was beginning to crack, and it wasn’t as painful as she’d expected. Callie looked down at her hand still on his arm, then back up into his eyes. “Are you saying you confronted Dennis Stakehorn over what he wrote about me?”

  “Yeah, Callie. I did.”

  “Why would you interfere? You didn’t even know me then. We hadn’t even met.”

  Andrew shrugged and the slow smile that spread across his face was charming enough to melt even Callie’s heart, a heart she’d kept well guarded since the day her husband had died, maybe longer.

  “I knew you well enough to understand you were doing a good thing helping the ladies out with those quilts, taking over your aunt’s shop, even coming here.” He waved out and over the town which lay in front of them. “Many people would have sent a packing company to ship her things. You came and looked after family. That says something about you.”

  “It always comes back to family, doesn’t it?”

  “For the good guys I think it does. We’re mostly doing the best we can and chasing the American dream—two-point-five kids, a little garden, and a roof over our head.”

  Callie nodded, emotionally drained, but certain that they could wipe Andrew Gavin’s name off Deborah’s list. He might have the technical ability to kill someone, but he didn’t have the heart, that much she was sure of.

  “Let’s go pick up your dinner. I’ll walk you back home.”

  “I’m fine now.”

  “It’s no problem.” Suddenly Andrew’s phone blipped, not once but three times in quick succession. He pulled it out of his back pocket and checked the screen. “There’s been a wreck out at th
e highway intersection. I need to go. If you’d like to wait here and eat your dinner, I could swing back by when I’m done and—”

  “Don’t worry about us. I’m going to grab it to go and head home. We’ll be fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “All right. Put my private cell number in your phone though.”

  “Officer, is that really necessary?” Now Callie was smiling full throttle, and Andrew was smiling back.

  “It might not be necessary, but it’s not going to hurt either.”

  “I bet you use that line on every girl.”

  “No, ma’am. Only the ones with great dogs.”

  Gordon watched through his scope, saw when Andrew received the text about the accident.

  He spoke to the brunette a moment longer, then left in his truck.

  Good. All of Shipshewana’s police department—the entire force of half a dozen—seemed to be accounted for. He’d have the half hour he needed to search Daisy’s Quilt Shop.

  There was a marketing scheme that made no sense to him. An entire shop just for quilts?

  Regardless, this job had turned into a fiasco. Time to get back on top of things. He’d been hired because he guaranteed results.

  He watched the lady walk back into The Kaffi Shop as dusk began to settle on the sleepy little town.

  With any luck she’d spend half an hour eating dinner and reading whatever novel she had stuck under her arm. And wasn’t he fortunate she’d taken the mutt with her?

  It was about time his luck changed.

  He disassembled the rifle, placed it back in his bag, and hustled down the stairs of the vacant building.

  Find the package, and he could put this town in his rearview mirror by the time darkness had fully settled.

  Which was a good thing since their famous market days were over for the week. Once the Wednesday crowd left, he stuck out like a sore thumb—he was not looking forward to another five days of lying low in a town of six hundred.