by Gail Sattler
While it was true that clowns did have painted faces, Gnorman didn’t. The only coloring added was a sponge cut into a round shape that covered his nose. Amber approached Gnorman, poked the sponge, and swiped her thumb across his cheek. “At least they didn’t paint his face. That stuff is hard enough to get off of skin. I don’t know if that would have damaged his paint.” She extended one hand toward Gnorman. “I’ll get the trophy back. I promise I will.” If it wasn’t his imagination, Stan thought he detected a break in Amber’s voice, like she was trying not to cry.
Libby nodded. “Of course you will. But what are we going to do right now? Whoever put Gnorman here wasn’t thinking very clearly.”
“Why not?”
“Because I have a dog.” Libby grinned ear to ear, accenting the laugh-lines at the corners of her eyes. “Naomi didn’t catch whoever is doing this while he was in her territory, but Tobie and I certainly will.”
Stan kept his lips sealed, not wanting to mention that whoever put Gnorman in Libby’s yard had obviously done so despite Libby’s watchdog wannabe. However, if Libby had taken this as one-upmanship between herself and Naomi, this was something he could use to their advantage. Still, he would have preferred to do his own surveillance, but he didn’t want to be the one to cause the dog to bark, then ignore the dog’s barking when the Gnome Gnapper really showed up for what was turning out to be a series of middle-of-the-night rendezvous.
“Let’s go inside. I’ll start some tea, and we can let Tobie do his doggy duties.”
He pressed his fingers to the small of Amber’s back to guide her toward Libby’s house. “That’s great, but if you don’t mind, if Amber can loan me her car keys, I’d like to go home and get some chicken wire to put around Gnorman first.”
Chapter Nine
Amber took advantage of a slow morning to once again go over her financial statements.
Nothing was any better than last week, but at least it wasn’t any worse.
Only because she hadn’t been kicked out of the garden club, the home base of all her best customers, yet.
In what she knew was a futile effort, she’d placed an order that she couldn’t afford to include a stock of nongardening craft items, praying she could expand her business before she lost it all.
She’d taken a gamble, except it was probably already too late. Soon it would be time to pay the piper. Or, she could make another appointment for a loan at the bank, and be turned down again, just to be sure.
Amber lowered her forehead to the desk and covered her head with her arms. She didn’t know how, but she’d made it through the recession. She’d gone down to her last penny, but her financials had hovered just barely above going into the red. She’d thought she was safe. Recovery was slow, but it was recovery. A few more years, and she could have her loan paid off. Her parents, if they had still been alive, would have been proud of her.
But three months ago Uncle Henry had called in her loan. When she hadn’t been able to get another loan from the bank, he’d said he’d give her two years to pay off everything she owed him, but one late payment and she would forfeit and have to liquidate in order to pay what she could, which wouldn’t cover the loan. The worst condition of the loan said that if her business failed she would move to Chicago and work for her uncle until he saw fit that all the money, plus interest, was paid off to his satisfaction, and Uncle Henry set his own interest rate. Everything had been fine and fair while her parents were alive, but when the economy took a nosedive and people stopped buying luxury items, her profit margin plummeted to bare survival. With careful planning and a lot of cutbacks, she had survived. Until her uncle decided to play dirty.
The bank didn’t consider a craft store hovering on the edge of going into the red in a failing economy a worthwhile credit risk, plus she was locked into her lease for another four years.
Even though her uncle had doubled the interest on the loan, with her steady stream of customers from the garden club she was able to make it if she lived on macaroni and wieners. Her car, paid off and an old beater with the minimum insurance, was cheaper to keep running than pay delivery fees on her orders. Stan, of course, kept her old car running in tip-top shape, and even though he didn’t know why she insisted on keeping the old thing instead of getting something newer and in better condition, he never complained.
But if the board members of the garden club kicked her out for losing their historic trophy, that portion of her client base would be gone. Losing that chunk of income would be the straw to ultimately break the camel’s back. Everything she’d worked for in the last five years since she’d opened her business would be gone. She’d have to close her doors and declare bankruptcy to get out of the lease. Then she’d have to move to Chicago, if her car made it that far, enslaved to work in a cubicle in a high-rise office tower in downtown Chicago until her uncle released her from her contract. Or he would make her manage one of his stores when she would rather be managing her own. Uncle Henry wouldn’t give her the loan without that codicil, and his lawyer had drawn up the contract, so she doubted she could take it to court. Even if she did, Uncle Henry had more money for lawyer fees than she did, so her chances for winning would be slim. Bottom line, either way, she lost. She couldn’t be late for a single payment.
She didn’t hate Chicago; she’d even been there once. It was a nice city. But it was big, with crowds and noise and traffic jams and construction and tall buildings and bad air, and everything else that went with a big city. She’d been born and raised in small-town Bloomfield, where everyone seemed to either know each other or at least recognize them in passing. A person could walk to the shopping center, or work, if they wanted to, and probably know most of the people they saw well enough to at least chat with them, unlike a big city sea of nameless faces. Her friends were in Bloomfield, and even if she didn’t have any close family left here except for Great-Aunt Edna and Uncle Bill, she had Stan, who was better than family.
Bloomfield was too big to realistically know everyone; after all, the population, according to the sign welcoming visitors to their small city, boasted 9,978 people. Most people still waved to each other even if they didn’t know one another’s names.
In her mind’s eye, she pictured Mayor Woody’s latest campaign to raise the population by those last twenty-two babies to reach ten thousand people. Here in Bloomfield, everyone knew he was serious, that it wasn’t just a joke.
When she left town with her tail between her legs, that would make it twenty-three more people needed to reach Mayor Woody’s goal.
Amber nearly banged her head against the desktop to knock some sense into herself. She hadn’t left yet. For now she was still a member of the garden club, and for now the garden club members stopped at her store first when they wanted accessories for their garden, or for unique gifts. If she could get this figured out and find out who was doing this, and why, and get Gnorman and the trophy back where they belonged, one day she would look back at this and laugh, even though she certainly wasn’t laughing now.
Her mind went back to the weeks before her store had been egged. Usually such an act was performed by bored teens, the same with dumping their soda all over her car. But the way someone taunted her, holding the trophy over her head, then running away with it again, even though they never actually showed it to her, was very adult. She didn’t want to play this game, but she had no choice if she hoped to recover the cherished trophy. Whoever wanted to pay her back for something had made her punishment into a cat and mouse game that she couldn’t win. She had to play the game until she either got the trophy back . . . or she didn’t.
More depressed than ever, Amber shut down her computer program and returned to the store to clear some space for what hopefully would be fast-selling and profitable items.
Maybe, if she made some Christmas in July signs and decorations, she could reap the benefits of some early holiday shopping, which was o
f course her busiest time of the year.
All her decorations were at home in the attic. Stan could help her bring them down. He would probably even get a laugh out of putting up Christmas decorations when the temperature would soon be in the nineties. He’d complain about it being too hot for Christmas. Then she would remind him that in Australia it was indeed hot like that in December, even hotter.
Amber sighed. It wasn’t like she was desperate.
Yet, actually, she was.
Instead of getting clinically depressed, Amber picked up the wholesaler’s catalog and paged through it again. She stopped to check out the Thanksgiving section when the phone rang.
The caller ID showed Libby’s name and number.
Her heart pounded in her chest. If little Tobie had sniffed out the Gnome-Gnapper-slash-Trophy-Taker, all her problems would be solved and life could go back to normal. Or as normal as could be until she paid off her loan shark uncle.
Before she could recite her greeting for the store, Libby interrupted her. “I’m so sorry, dear. Gnorman was here for four whole days, and this morning, when I got up to water my Forty-niners, he was gone. I don’t know why Tobie didn’t alert me, but this means only one thing.”
Amber held her breath. “What?”
Libby’s voice lowered. “It means Tobie knows the person who came into our yard and took your little Gnorman away.”
Finally the list narrowed. Amber reached for a pen and paper, waiting, pen poised and ready. “Then who could it be?”
“Someone in the garden club, of course.”
“Which means how many people? Who is familiar with Tobie?”
“Tobie comes with me to every meeting. He knows everyone. So if we count the two people who just joined, that means seventy-nine members.”
Amber’s heart sank. “Well. . . . That helps.” Or not.
“There’s more. Whoever took Gnorman left an envelope. I haven’t opened it. I’m leaving the house now, so I can drop it off at your store for you to read. I’ll see you soon. Bye, now.” The dial tone sounded in her ear.
Amber nearly groaned out loud. Another note.
She pulled the handset away from her ear but didn’t hang up. Instead, she stared at it so long that the tone changed to an annoying beep.
When she finally hung up, she did the only thing she could think to do.
She called Stan.
As the shop door closed behind him, Stan could already feel his ears burning. He suspected the guys had started talking about him before he reached the parking lot.
He’d taken more breaks from work in the past few weeks than he had in the entire past year, and he knew the guys had started talking about him before he was out of the parking lot. But he didn’t care. Amber needed him, and he wasn’t going to let her down.
He made the short trip to Amber’s house in record time, almost as if everyone got out of the way of his pickup. This might be true, if there were many cars on the road, which there weren’t. Still, it didn’t matter.
Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but today he heard something in Amber’s voice that was different. Instead of talking to her about it on the phone, he needed to see her.
He found Amber sitting on the stool behind the counter, staring at the latest note. Her eyes didn’t appear quite focused, just looking at it without actually reading it.
It unnerved him.
Before he could think of what to say, she turned to him with an expression almost like her dog had died, except she didn’t have a dog. Her gnome was missing, but since Gnorman wasn’t real, that wasn’t the same.
He cleared his throat to clear his brain, but it didn’t work. “What’s up?” was the best he could think of.
She sighed and looked down at the note, giving him the impression that she deliberately avoided making direct eye contact. He didn’t like that.
“I don’t know,” she mumbled with her lips barely moving.
He strode to the counter to see for himself. “I don’t get it. This looks exactly the same as the last note.”
“It is the last note. The new note from Libby’s house only said to follow the clue from the last note. I don’t see any clue here.”
He read it again, hating clowns even more. “I don’t either.”
Without asking, she pushed what must have been the new note across the counter to him.
He picked up it. It was constructed exactly the same as the previous notes—words and letters cut out from the newspaper.
Follow the clue from the last note.
“You’re right. That’s exactly what it says.”
“So here’s the last note. All it says is not to be a party pooper and bring out the balloons. There are no balloons here. I don’t even own balloons. I hate balloons. They’re not environmentally friendly.”
What a somber pair they made. He hated clowns, and she hated balloons. If the clue was about them being party poopers, they both were certainly that. Although he didn’t think that was going to help find Gnorman and the trophy.
Instead he put his finger on the note and looked at her face, even though she had turned away. “Maybe the clue is that Gnorman is going back to Becky’s garden, with the trophy inside a balloon.”
She made a very unladylike snort. “That would be too easy. I don’t suppose you have any balloons at your shop or your house?”
“Jordan’s wife bought me one of those foil helium balloons for my last birthday and brought it to work. The guys all sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ badly, I might add, then Hank accidentally let the balloon go, and it’s still stuck up in the ceiling rafters.”
“I don’t think that would count.”
He waited for her to say something more, but she didn’t.
With the last outfit, bad as it was, Stan had been starting to get into the mood to follow Gnorman around town until whoever was playing cat and mouse with them decided to give it up or decided they were worthy of the prize. He’d taken it as a challenge, and he’d never met a challenge he didn’t follow.
The last challenge was when Amber told him that even though he was a decent cook, he could never make decent deviled eggs. He’d taken her up on that, then while he’d waited for the eggs to cook, he’d turned on the television and got distracted watching the last period of an NHL playoff game, and the eggs boiled dry. He hadn’t known eggs could explode. He still found pieces of egg in the strangest places in his kitchen. But he’d met her challenge, and done it again without turning on the television, and made a very tasty batch.
But he didn’t know what kind of challenge could involve balloons.
Amber sighed, poked the note with her finger, and then . . . nothing. She wasn’t excited. She barely looked interested. Usually a stickler for details, she liked little mysteries. Today she seemed lost, discouraged, and even a little depressed.
Stan walked around the counter to stand beside her instead of having a barrier between them. “You’re kind of quiet. Is something wrong? Not that Gnorman and the trophy going missing like this isn’t wrong enough, but something else?”
She turned and stared out the window as she spoke. “No, not really. I’m just thinking about stuff.”
Now he knew there was something else wrong. She wouldn’t look at him.
He had to do something to fix this.
“I have an idea. Since we can’t figure out what the clue is, how about if we blow up a balloon and tie it to your door? Even if it’s wrong, at least whoever is doing this will know we’re trying, and maybe they’ll give us a better clue to follow.”
He held his breath, waiting for a spark of excitement. Agreement. A better idea. Anything.
She blinked and sighed. “Sure. I guess. Why not . . .” Her voice trailed off and she sighed again.
All Stan could do was watch her as she continued to stare blankly out the window. He wasn’t sure what to do, but the thought entered his head that maybe Amber could use a hug, except he wasn’t a huggy kind of guy. Although, when he thought of holding Amber, more crossed his mind than a simple hug. She’d be soft and warm, and her hair would smell like fruity shampoo, and she’d fit against him in all the right places.
But this was Amber. His buddy who’d pretended to be beavers with him in primary school when they’d both lost their baby incisor teeth at the same time.
He shook his head and stepped away from her until his rear pressed against her counter. “I’m going to the five-and-dime across the street. I’ll be right back.”
Chapter Ten
Amber didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She really felt like both, but that might make people think she was going crazy. Maybe she was, but she didn’t want to advertise it.
The balloon Stan had tied to the door of her store hadn’t drawn in the Gnome Gnapper, but it had attracted the attention of many passersby, most of whom weren’t members of the garden club. Because of the balloon, everyone who’d wandered in had asked if she was having a sale. She hadn’t planned on it, but she quickly put a few featured items on special and called it an impulse rainy day sale, despite the clear skies. She hadn’t sold so much in one day since the Christmas shopping season, and this time she hadn’t spent a dime for advertising.
Unless she counted the dollar plus tax Stan spent on the bag of balloons.
The next step would be to replenish her stock, then expand her product list to include more of the type of items people had seemed interested in, but she didn’t have the right color or some other small detail. Someone had asked her if she was going to have a similar sale next time it really rained and promised to return to catch a few items she’d been interested in but weren’t on sale because it wasn’t raining.
Amber had never prayed for bad weather, but rain wasn’t really bad unless there was too much of it at once.