by Неизвестный
“Don’t bother,” he said. “The coffee’s terrible, and the company’s worse. These pain meds make me nod off mid-sentence. It’s too long a drive for the small pleasure of watching your old man snore. I’ll be home soon enough. What’s this about you getting the cat mixed up with another cat?”
“No mix-up. Your cat is a boy and always was. I did check the collar tag, so don’t try to make me worry. His name is Jeffrey.”
“All right. That’s easy to remember. Are you going to tell me your side of what happened yesterday? You can leave out the part about whatever horror was done to the poor cat at the clinic.”
I walked him through the previous day’s morning, glossing over my meeting with the real estate agent, and then on to Pam stopping by the gift shop with the pet carrier and my subsequent frosty discovery. I admitted to my cowardice, running off when the husky mail carrier started making accusations. My father chuckled at this but agreed I’d been wise to trust my instincts. He was very quiet when I described my trip to the police station and interview with Officer Peggy Wiggles, commenting only that she sounded like a good addition to the force, a “balancing energy.”
He got downright excited when I told him about dropping into Masquerade to ask about top hats. When I got to visiting Ruby Sparkes, I felt bad censoring myself, but I left out the details of her secret mirror window, admitting only that we’d had tea.
“Ruby has connections,” he said. “She’s a good contact for you, if you continue this line of work.”
“You mean running a gift shop?”
“Among other things,” he said. “How did you notice someone breaking in next door? Did you have the house under surveillance?”
I explained that I’d had my best cat on the job, and he’d alerted me. Then I’d called Tony, stationed myself outside to keep watch, and finally helped him catch the suspect by chasing “at a safe distance” before helpfully opening the gate in a neighbor’s fence. “I didn’t do much,” I said. “I just unlatched a gate.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said. “You kept a cool head and used the smarts you inherited. I’m very proud of you.”
I whispered, “Thanks.” I knew how lucky I was, having heard my father say he was proud of me countless times over the years. Some kids wait an entire lifetime and don’t get it. Finnegan Day was tough on people, but he always gave credit where it was due.
He burped. “Whoops. That’ll be the coffee, coming back for a second roundhouse kick to the taste buds.”
“That’s it,” I said with finality. “I’m driving over, and I’ll bring you some decent coffee. It’s either that or stay inside your house until the food runs out. You still have all those pickled beets?”
“You don’t have plans?” he asked.
“My employee can run the store without me. Dad, I need out of this town. If I show my face anywhere, people are all over me. It was humiliating before, and now it’s going to be worse. I need to get away, drive away, just get in the car and go.”
“No,” he said sharply. “You need to get back on the horse. Remember how we saw that thing on TV about brains, about things firing together and wiring together? I’ve seen it happen after a shooting. People get spooked, and they can’t do the regular things they used to.”
I remembered the documentary. “Neurons that fire together, wire together,” I said.
“Right. Neurons. Some folks will say you need time off, and sure, you do need rest, but if that horse bucks you off, you need to climb right back on.” He paused, waiting for a response.
“Sure,” I said. “Get right back on the horse. I just need a horse.”
“The horse is a metaphor,” he said.
A metaphor? I laughed. “Hello? Who is this, and what have you done to Finnegan Day?”
“Gotta go,” he said. “Dora is here to do unspeakable things to me.”
I asked him what these unspeakable things entailed, but he’d already hung up.
Jeffrey watched me with great interest as I crawled out of bed and dressed in the same jeans, T-shirt, and cat-fur-covered cardigan sweater I’d worn the day before.
I went downstairs to the kitchen, rustled up some food for both of us, and used my phone to catch up on messages.
My employee, Brianna, had sent a flurry of notes, all following a pattern. She’d ask me where some item was, and in another message time-stamped five minutes later, she’d tell me she’d found the item. There’d be a third message apologizing for the first two. She would be fine running the store without me that day. If anything, my absence would encourage her to become more self-sufficient.
I thought over what my father had said about getting back on the horse. For Brianna, dealing with various retail crises was her horse. What was mine?
I heard the thumping of boots on the front steps. Was facing the husky mail carrier my horse? I ran to the front door.
He must not have been expecting a wild-haired woman to yank open the front door. The poor man dropped his satchel of mail on the porch, and, by the look on his face, peed a little.
“Sorry for jumping out at you,” I said. “If you haven’t already heard, I thought you’d want to know the police caught the guy. Oh, and I’m sorry about ditching you at the crime scene yesterday. That wasn’t very nice of me, but look at how tiny I am compared to you.”
His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Sorry!” I said again. “It’s just that you’re a big guy. Not big in a bad way. You look strong. Do you work out? What can you bench? I bet it’s a lot.”
He stammered, “Wha-wha-what?”
“You look like you could bench-press a lot more than me. I went for a personal training session once, and you know what I lifted? The bar. With no weights on it. Just the bar. And I was sore the next day.”
He blinked. “Did they really catch the guy who killed Mr. Michaels?”
“I hope so. I can’t say who, unfortunately. I’m not going to start any more rumors.”
“It was someone local?”
I nodded. “He broke into the house last night. It was pretty stupid to come back, but my guess is he was worried about evidence.”
“That’s such a relief.” The shorts-wearing man knelt to gather his dropped mail, his bare knees pink against the snow.
I asked him, “Have you been looking over your shoulder all morning, wondering if the killer was someone you deliver mail to?”
“I’ve been jumpier than a baby squirrel sitting on a barrel of pecans.” He stood, digging around in his satchel, pulling out a good-sized carrot.
I took a step back. His carrot looked like the one that had formed the snowman’s nose, nearly a foot long, thick and unpeeled.
“You must love carrots,” I said.
“Not really.”
He kept crunching away as he thumbed through envelopes from his satchel. Another bite later, he thrust my father’s mail directly at me.
“There you go,” he said. “Mail’s delivered and a killer’s been caught. All’s well that ends well. The town can sleep easy tonight.”
“Totally.” I nodded in agreement.
He took another bite of his giant carrot, stomped down the porch steps, and carried on his way, whistling a carefree tune. He seemed to sense my eyes on him, turning to look over his shoulder and give me a cheery wave.
What was he so happy about? Was it simply relief that a killer had been caught, or relief that he’d gotten away with something? Walking around chomping on giant carrots was no crime, but it seemed distasteful, given recent events.
Jeffrey wound his way around my legs, drawing a figure eight with his body. We both stood in the doorway, but he didn’t seem interested in leaving the warm house. A black-capped bird flew down from a nearby tree and perched on the porch railing, but even that didn’t entice Jeffrey outside.
I crouched down and stroked his smooth gray fur. With each pet, my paranoia over the mail carrier eased up. I did have to get back out into the world before
I drove myself crazy.
The bird, a cheeky little chickadee, hopped closer along the porch railing. Jeffrey watched, yawning.
“You’re so mellow,” I said to him. “Don’t you want to get back on your horse? You can patrol the street, chasing birds and meowing at girls.”
He sat on my foot and gave me a sweet, slow blink, telling me I was all the woman he needed.
We went back inside, where I gave serious consideration to my mission for the day. Looking around for paper, I found Pam’s sketchbook and spent a few minutes flipping through her sketches of store windows and houses. When I came across a page of wedding dress sketches, I made a gagging sound and put the book back where I’d found it, on the coffee table.
Jeffrey jumped up and sniffed the sketchbook, his tail swishing back and forth in gray question marks.
“Can you manage without me for a few hours?” I asked.
He knocked a crumpled ball of paper to the floor and chased it out of the room. Yes, he’d be fine. I found some junk mail and jotted down a dozen things I could do that day. Because I wanted to make my father happy, I pulled on my coat and boots and bravely headed out to get back on my metaphorical horse.
Chapter 19
My employee, Brianna, greeted me cheerfully when I walked into Glorious Gifts. When she looked up from the display rack of tableware accessories and saw it was me, she said, “Oh, it’s just you.” With a devilish look on her round face, she said, “Never mind.”
I clutched my free hand to my chest, feigning hurt feelings. “I don’t warrant a good morning?”
“My boss prefers for me to save the charm for the paying customers.”
“She sounds like a real tyrant.” I raised the tray of hot beverages I’d been hiding behind my back. “A mean boss like yours wouldn’t bring you a hot mocha, would she?”
Brianna clapped her hands and jumped up and down on the spot girlishly.
We gathered behind the counter to pull the lids off our drinks and dip in the biscotti I’d also picked up. Brianna was twenty-one, but with her large eyes, round face, and tiny nose and mouth, she resembled the innocent-looking dolls we sold. She was quite petite, so if she didn’t wear makeup, she could pass for about fourteen. It was hard for me to reconcile the fresh face in front of me with the person who ran the gift shop as well as she did.
She didn’t ask me about the events of the previous day, but I could tell by the way she kept watching me, she knew what I’d been through. I’d been happy to relay all the details to my father over the phone, but thinking about going through it again and again, answering people’s questions, made me feel like hiding under the counter. If Brianna could pretend nothing was out of the ordinary, I could do the same.
“Did you call everyone with special orders?” I asked.
“Yes, Boss.” Brianna bobbed her head, her straight brown hair swinging around her doll-like face.
“Did you sort out the recycling?”
She grinned. “Yes, Boss.”
“Order more cash register rolls?”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Grow five inches so you can dust the top shelves without a ladder?”
She stood on her tiptoes. “Working on it.”
“Did you get that tattoo you were talking about?”
“Not yet.” Her big eyes widened. “Wanna come with me?”
“Let me get back to you on that.” I crouched down and started moving bags so I could reach the lockbox and the safe. “I’d better do a bank run for the deposit and get some coins, since you’ve made me look bad by doing your job and most of mine. If you need me, I’ll be in the office for a few minutes, running reports.”
“Sounds great.” She took her mocha and returned to her task, organizing a new display of tablewares.
A minute later, the door jingled. Brianna called out, “Good morning, sir!”
I was kneeling behind the counter refilling the lockbox with rolls of coins, so I didn’t see who’d come in, but he said hello back to her with a deep voice that sent a ripple up my spine.
“Is it still morning?” she asked with a giggle. “Sometimes I say that all day, even after it’s past lunch time. There should be another greeting that you can say all the time.”
“Hello,” the man said.
“Hello, yourself,” she said.
“I mean you can say hello all day long, morning or evening.”
She snorted in response. Brianna was an agreeable, joke-loving girl, an aspiring cartoonist with her own web comic, but this man was eliciting far more than her typical friendly patter.
“Are these for curtains?” the man asked.
“Those are technically napkin rings, but you could use them for anything you like. I think you could use them with a curtain rod, if you got the right hardware. Is that something you’re looking for? A curtain rod? We mostly carry gift items, but we can do special orders.” The way she was carrying on, I half expected her to offer to sew him some curtains out of our best tea towels.
I straightened up enough to peer over the top of the counter. The customer was a handsome, dark-haired man in a gray suit paired with a trenchcoat-style jacket.
If my brain were able to make cartoon sound effects, it would have made one now, perhaps the AWOOGA of a jalopy honking.
This dapper-looking customer was Logan Sanderson, my new tenant who didn’t know he was my tenant. He’d recently trimmed his mountain man beard to a refined and fashionable length and looked nothing like the sloppily dressed drifter I’d seen the day before.
“Why do napkins need these beaded twirly things?” he asked Brianna. “Do napkins have a habit of getting all unruly?”
“Napkins have been known to misbehave.” She twirled a lock of brown hair around her finger.
He continued, “Then I’ll need these for future dinner parties. If the napkins are bare-naked, everyone will know I’m a dumb bachelor who doesn’t know anything.”
“You don’t look dumb to me. Aren’t you that new lawyer guy?”
“That’s me, the new lawyer guy. Let me know if you require any legal services. Do you find yourself getting into trouble a lot, here in the bustling metropolis that is Misty Falls?”
“We’re not that boring!” she squealed. “We had a real murder. Technically, they think the murder happened two weeks ago, but the body was frozen inside a snowman.”
“I did hear about that.” He continued browsing, moving over to the cloth napkins and tablecloths.
“My boss found the body,” she said.
“Your boss?”
Brianna clamped her hand over her mouth. “Actually, forget I said anything about that. I shouldn’t talk about other people’s business, and my poor boss didn’t deserve to get caught in the middle of anything.”
“I heard that my new landlady was the one who found the body, so I guess you and I have something in common.”
She glanced over at the hall to the office, presumably looking for me. I ducked the top of my head below the counter quickly to avoid detection.
“Your landlady is my boss?” she hazarded.
He chuckled. “And we both live under her iron rule. Does she put up bossy signs around here, too? There’s one in the basement laundry room, about not leaving wet clothes in the washing machine because it makes the whole house smell of mildew.”
Still in my hiding spot behind the counter, my jaw dropped open with indignation. The bossy sign in the laundry room had been there when I bought the place. Sure, I agreed with it, which was why I hadn’t taken it down, but it wasn’t an unreasonable request.
“I can’t complain,” Brianna said through giggles. Then she got louder, presumably for my benefit. “Stormy is a terrific boss. I’m extremely grateful to be working here. Yes, Stormy is very nice, and totally cool for a lady in her mid-thirties.”
I thought my jaw couldn’t drop open more, but it did. Mid-thirties? Thirty-three was early thirties, barely thirty, not mid-thirties.
“So, she’s
my age,” he mused. “From the stories and the signs, I imagined someone much older. Do you know where she is? I’ve been keeping an eye out for her at the duplex, so I can properly introduce myself, but she hasn’t been around.”
“I’ll get her for you. I think she’s in the office.”
I heard footfalls as they walked together to the back of the store.
“Not if she’s busy,” Logan said. “I don’t want to disturb her.”
“It’s no trouble. I think she takes naps in the office when she’s here.” She let out a laugh. “I’m kidding about that, by the way. Stormy is not the kind of lady who takes a nap. You’d need to give her warm milk and sleeping pills to get her to slow down.”
Brianna walked past the counter, not noticing me where I crouched. She creaked open the door of the office and called my name.
I didn’t respond because that would give me away. She would see me upon her return unless I hid better.
The space under the counter was a hodgepodge assembly of cabinets and scrap wood. There was a curtain to hide the mess, but we always kept the curtain open for easy access. Still crouching, I inched my way back, huddled up, and squished myself into the cupboard. I pulled the curtain across, but it got stuck and wouldn’t close all the way.
“Stormy?” she called again into my office. The door clicked shut. “You might catch her at the bank,” she told Logan.
She walked past me again, not looking down to see me huddled below the store’s counter, half hidden by a curtain.
“She must have slipped out the back,” she said apologetically and then abruptly cried, “Oh, no!”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“She left her coffee behind, and she barely had a few sips. Such a shame.”
He made a hmm sound.
Brianna asked him, “Do you want to leave a note for her?”
“No, but I will buy some cloth napkins and the beaded things that keep them from becoming unruly. Can you help me pick out a good combination? I’m colorblind.”
“Aww, you poor thing,” she said.
“It’s just blues and greens that are hard to tell apart. That’s why I always wear brown suits and brown ties.”