My voice remained steady. “How have I gotten you, Maria?”
She gulped. “I’ve been going there to do more than just feed the cats.”
There was a sickening feeling in my stomach like I was on the downward part of a rollercoaster. This was not what I had expected at all.
“What have you been doing then, Maria?”
“I’ve been rearranging a few things,” she said, looking down at the carpet. “Taking out some of the new books and replacing them with old books—”
“You’ve been stealing from me!?”
“Not stealing! Just trying to improve what is great about the shop, what has always been great about it…”
“Oh, this is beyond unacceptable…” I was burning up. Was there a single person in this town I could actually trust? “Where are these books you’ve taken then?” No wonder she hadn’t wanted me inside her house.
“Claire, I was only trying to help.”
“Do you know what the police will say if they find out about this? Huh? Because I intend to tell them.” I was so mad that as I spun around, I knocked over one of the desks and the top lid came undone. I saw Maria’s face turn bright red. Now her whole face was wet.
I glanced down. A pair of gloves.
“Maria…what is that?”
I wanted to reach down and grab them, but then my prints would be on them. But I thought I’d just found the reason there were no prints found at the murder scene.
“Well, the door was open,” she said quietly, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You can’t blame me for that.” No remorse whatsoever.
Oh, this just got better and better. The sinking feeling was threatening to pull me right down. I had to steady myself. Get off the rollercoaster. This was really happening. Someone I trusted was a murderer.
“So, you were there the night that Nicole Marie was killed?”
Maria was staring at the gloves, neither of us game to go near them. “I was showing Nicole Marie the improvements I was making to the shop. She was helping me, actually. She and I always talked about how the bookshop needed to go back to the way it was before.”
Great. So not one but two people I thought I could trust were going behind my back.
I stepped forward. “So what did Nicole Marie do that night to make you kill her, Maria?”
She stopped sweating. She turned white. “No-nothing. Claire. I thought she had left! Honestly. As far as I knew, when I left the bookshop that night, Nicole Marie had gone safely home to bed.”
And all this time, I had been blaming Alyson. Well. She still had left the door open. But she hadn’t been the one sneaking into my shop to steal things and change things.
“What are these gloves?” I asked quietly.
“I—I don’t know. They must belong to a student.”
I shot Maria a cool look. Told her I was going to need every single book back and that all the old ones were going in the trash. And that she needn’t bother coming back ever again. She pleaded with me as I walked out.
“I have been tormented by guilt ever since, Claire. It has been eating me alive.”
Yeah, but not enough to actually come clean, or to tell the cops what she had seen.
“What are you so dressed up for?” It was the first thing I said to Alyson when she walked in, because it was the first thing I thought when she walked into Captain Eightball’s. I had seen Alyson Foulkes dressed up one time in my life and that was ten years earlier at our school formal, where she had worn a full-length, baby-pink gown her mother had chosen, and even then, the night had ended with her dress getting torn to shreds when she’d climbed over a fence to escape the official school party to go to an off-campus party.
“You know how my parents get about us sticking to a dress code in their house.”
No. I didn’t know that.
She sat on the barstool. She looked like she was bursting to tell me something but wasn’t allowed to.
Well, I didn’t have time to squeeze it out of her. “You were right. Something was up with Maria all along. She was there the night Nicole Marie was killed.”
I let that sink in for a moment.
Alyson nodded a little as she took it all in. “She probably went back in there the other night to cover her tracks.”
“Well, and to feed the cats.” It was still my instinct to calm Alyson down whenever she jumped to a wild conclusion. But maybe she was right about this too. She was on a bit of a winning streak.
“So, what do I do?” I asked, sure that Alyson would be so pleased about being right that she would want to come down to the police station with me to tell them everything she’d seen. And thought. But of course, she had to have the opposite reaction.
“She might have been in the shop that night, but I don’t think she killed Nicole Marie.”
“What?” I said, almost spitting out my drink. Except that Claire Elizabeth Richardson did not do things like that. “You have spent the last forty-eight hours trying to convince me she was guilty, and now that I believe she is, you say she isn’t?” It would have been frustrating if it weren’t so utterly predictable.
Alyson shrugged. “I thought she was hiding something. And she was. But, I dunno, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I really don’t think Maria would kill a woman.”
I stared at her. “You just can’t stand to agree with me. About anything.”
Alyson tried not to smile. I knew I had hit on the truth.
“Just saying. Keep this between us for a while. Maria trusts me. I’m her student.” Her plan was coming to life, I could see it in her eyes. “I’ve actually been her favorite student for fifteen years. And she has no idea that I suspect anything.” She shot me a look. “So I might actually be able to get more from her than the police ever will. And it’s not like the cops are gonna share anything with us, is it? Wells isn’t exactly a warm and open, cuddly teddy bear.”
Now, look. She did have a very good point. There was logic to what she said, and I was starting to be convinced. Alyson could be charming. And before she left, I even agreed to her plan.
But as soon as she left, I knew it was a bad, bad idea. I pulled my phone out and called the police station.
What would be would be. It was out of my hands now. But I couldn’t knowingly break the law just because Alyson had a bright idea.
I jumped a little when I saw Matt come out of the kitchen. I didn’t know he was even working that day. He shot me a cautious smile. Was I in the good books or the bad books? “Claire. Hi. I feel like I haven’t spoken to you in ages,”
“You’ve been busy,” I said, trying not to sound too pointed and bitter. I wasn’t sure I succeeded. Oh well, lucky it wasn’t that far from my usual tone anyway, so he may not have suspected anything.
“I can always make time for you,” Matt said, shrugging a little.
It didn’t seem that way. “I’m not sure we should even be talking, Matt,” I said to him.
“So what, we kiss one time and the entire friendship is over?” He sounded hurt. But I was more hurt by what he had just said. So it was just a friendship to him. And that was the only thing he wanted to preserve.
“Sure, we’re still friends,” I said, standing up and walking off into the rain.
14
Claire
“This would have been helpful information to know from the start,” Wells said dryly. The rain was starting to pound on the roof of the station. We were almost at the shortest, darkest day of the year.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t know it right from the start, did I?” Unbelievable. You try to do the right thing and you get into trouble for it.
“And she has a pair of keys to the property.” That same wry tone again. He wasn’t understanding.
“Well, yes, but I only gave those to her after this happened.”
“Can you be sure?”
“Yes. I know when I gave her the keys.” For crying out loud. This guy was the worst. Wasn’t there a single other cop in Eden
Bay that I could deal with? I actually looked around in the hope that someone might relieve him of his duties. No one.
“Can you be sure that she didn’t have access to a pair before that?”
I shook my head. “It’s not relevant. The door was left open that night.”
He checked his notes. “Yes, by an Alyson Foulkes. Can’t say I find that too surprising.”
I almost laughed at that. At least we were on the same page about one thing.
“Thank you for coming in today, Miss Richardson.” He stood suddenly, striding to the door and holding it open for me impatiently.
“Is that it?” I asked incredulously. “Can you at least keep me up to date with what happens next with Maria?”
He almost seemed amused by that. Except he’d probably never been amused by anything in his life. “I am not going to give you a transcript of my chat with a suspect.”
Well, that seemed a little unfair. I mean, it seemed thoroughly legal. But still unfair.
I was leave, but I’d gotten a little wet in the rain coming in, so I ducked into the bathroom for a moment to check my reflection in the mirror. Ugh. Flat hair. A little bit frizzy. Mascara running just a touch. Boy, was I going to be glad when the rain finally eased up. I decided I’d call a cab rather than walk home and destroy my hair even further.
Right outside the bathroom, there were two female police officers hovering, about to come in. They mustn’t have realized that I was there. “Seems like he is taking this case a little too personally,” one of them said to the other.
The other replied, “I’ve never seen Wells this emotional about a case before. Nicole Marie must have really gotten to him.”
I stopped and listened in, almost in a state of shock. I wanted to laugh.
Emotional? Not the word I would ever use to describe Sergeant Wells. But I could say he had seemed extra ‘invested’ in this case.
“Well, I guess it is hard having to investigate the death of an ex.”
My heart stopped for a moment. Nicole Marie was Sergeant Wells’s ex?
I took a deep breath. I’d been shy. Nervous. Worried what Simon would say if I told him the truth. But this was too good of an idea to just keep to myself, right?
Simon was more than pleased to meet up with me when I told him I had something I wanted to discuss. I wasn’t going to tell him all the details. I had to speak to Alyson first. This case was mine and hers, and my loyalty was still with her, even if she annoyed the heck out of me half the time.
“I know you get this all the time,” I said, staring across at him at the same restaurant we’d been to two days before. I needed to be back in front of the warmth of the open fire.
Simon burst out laughing and threw his head back a little, then he nodded knowingly. “So. You’ve got a book idea.”
I sighed. “I know what it sounds like. I sound like all these other wannabe writers that you deal with every day. The ones you have to fend off with a broomstick.”
He pursed his lips and shrugged a little. “No, I am remaining open-minded. You never know who the next young literary sensation will be. She could be sitting right across from me.” He winked.
I wish I could have said that his opinion didn’t mean anything to me, but the truth was, it did. He was an editor at a major publishing house and it sounded like he was brutally honest in his critiques of writers. So he wouldn’t just tell me what I wanted to hear.
“I have actually written a little something…” I was a bit coy to tell him that I had actually finished five chapters. So I made it seem like I had just written a few paragraphs. Less pressure.
“Show it to me,” he said, sounding encouraging.
“What, now?” I paused with my soup spoon midair.
“Why not?”
I coughed. “Oh gosh no, not while I am sitting right in front of you.” I couldn’t think of anything more traumatizing than watching someone read what I had written. I’d be holding my breath the entire time, checking for every little change in facial expression. I’d have a heart attack.
“Okay,” he said with a bright smile. “Email it to me then. Is that less terrifying?”
I nodded and went back to my soup with a laugh. “Far less frightening. Thanks, Simon.”
We left with him giving me a peck on the cheek. The awkward thing was that for a moment, it seemed as though he was going for the lip kiss, but I turned my check at the last second and we both just pretended it had never happened.
I pondered it for a moment as he wandered off. Hmm. What was wrong with me? It wasn’t as though I wasn’t attracted to him. He was charming, intelligent, flirtatious, slightly older. All the things that were my ’type.’ And yet something was holding me back. I was pretty sure that thing started with a big letter “M.”
But I built up the courage when I got home to email Simon, at least. Thanked him for the meal and politely refused to mention the almost-kiss. Still pretending. I attached the five chapters I had written and then told myself that it didn’t matter what he had to say about them. If he liked them, great. If he hated them, fine, I could live with it. No bruised ego. Haha. Yeah, right.
When I hadn’t heard back for an hour, I started to think that he hadn’t even read what I’d sent him at all. Fair enough. It made sense. He was hounded by dozens of writers, why would he make time for the girl who had refused to kiss him?
Maybe I should have just kissed him.
But then there was a ding on my phone, and I had a new email. Simon.
“Stay cool, Claire, stay calm,” I said as I opened it up.
“This is really promising, Claire. Can I see some more? You’ve got real talent, kid.”
I could go to sleep with the glow from that praise keeping me warm, because tomorrow, there would be serious work to do. And we were about to enter the coldest, darkest day of the year.
15
Claire
The wind practically blew my umbrella shut, but I managed to make it to Alyson’s apartment without getting too wet. Of course as soon as I arrived at the door, the clouds began to clear.
“We need to work together if we are going to take down a law enforcement officer, Alyson.”
It seemed like we spent half our friendship calling truces with each other. She was still furious that I’d gone and told Wells about Maria—because of course she had things “perfectly under control”—but I had to point out that if I hadn’t done that, I never would have found out about Wells’s relationship with Nicole Marie. And now we finally had a breakthrough.
There were wet footprints all over Alyson’s floor and her hair was wet. She must have braved an early morning surf in the rain. “What do you remember about the night you called him?” Alyson asked as she dried her hair with a towel. “Was he acting weird at all?”
I shook my head and tried to remember. “You know what Wells is like. He doesn’t give anything away. If he had committed the crime and was trying to cover it up, well, he did a very good job of acting like nothing was the matter.”
Alyson raised her eyebrows and put the towel down. Something had occurred to her. “What about the fact that there were no fingerprints?”
I thought about those gloves in Maria’s house. But Alyson was shaking her head. “There were no fingerprints because Wells didn’t want there to be. He was first on the scene.” She raised her eyebrows. “In more ways than one.”
I sucked in a deep breath. “That’s a very good point.”
She nodded. “You’re right, we need to work together. And fast. If Wells is the killer, he has the whole police force at his disposal. He’s already erased his prints from the evidence. What else is he going to do?”
I glanced at her. “He could try to frame someone else.”
She nodded. Gulped. “Like Maria.”
I was finally allowed to reopen the bookshop. I wasn’t expecting a single customer, but I was still there at 9am with my key, just in case. Sigh. No one. Not even after standing around waiting for ten
minutes. Alyson kept texting me, saying we were letting valuable time slip by. “There is no time for books!”
But this was my grandma’s shop we were talking about. I couldn’t let her thirty years of hard work die just because Nicole Marie had. I couldn’t give up.
I knew what I was going to have to do. I was going to have to go home to get my espresso machine. “Meet me at the bookshop at eleven,” I texted Alyson. “I need at least one customer.”
Funny that a little bit of coffee could make people forget that a murder had taken place inside these four walls. Alyson paraded up and down the front with a sign saying that we were now serving coffee—“Free with book purchase”—and by lunch time, there were a dozen people in the store and I’d made five sales.
“It’s so fun to sit here and drink coffee and read!” Sadie exclaimed, the cute little white cup in her hand as she perched herself on one of the new stools I’d brought in.
“It is quite sophisticated, isn’t it?” I smiled to myself as I glanced around and saw the happy customers. If even Sadie was impressed with me and having a good time, then maybe there was hope after all.
“Hi, Matt,” I said, my heart stopping for a moment when he walked into the shop. I was surprised to see him, but happy. He wasn’t a regular visitor to the bookstore. Maybe Alyson had told him to come in as we needed the extra bodies.
“What is that?” he asked, pointing to the corner.
“Ah, that,” I said proudly, “is my own little idea to spruce up the place.” I shimmied a little.
I thought Matt was going to be happy for me. But he was glaring at the espresso machine. “Do you have a license?”
I blinked a few times. “A license?” You needed a license to have a coffee machine? Must have missed that law. That would mean that half the apartments in my complex were breaking the law.
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