Prose and Cons

by Amanda Flower

  “Experience helps, but it’s not a deal breaker. We can always train people to do the work. We can’t train them to have a welcoming personality, which is required for the restaurant business.”

  “Same goes for the bookseller business.”

  She laughed. “I suppose it does. I’ll talk to Adrien about it. He likes the police chief, and we both know Danielle. She’s quiet but a sweet girl. I certainly would want to hire someone to bring calm to work.” As she spoke, her excitement grew. “Thanks for the suggestion. Why are you calling so early? Do you need to put in a breakfast order? I know how fond Daisy is of Adrien’s quiche.”

  My mouth watered at the mention of Adrien’s quiche. I pushed thoughts of breakfast aside, and focused on the reason that I called. “I’m not ordering breakfast. I just called for a little information.”

  “Oh?” she said, sounding immediately perky. “What information is that?”

  “Do you know Anastasia’s brother, Coleridge?”

  “I know of him. Why do you ask?”

  “I’d like to talk to him about his sister, and I was wondering if you knew where he was staying.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh.” It had been a long shot, but still I was disappointed. I had been so excited about tracking Coleridge down that morning that the idea it would take some time deflated me. “Could he be staying at Anastasia’s house, do you think?”

  “Definitely not,” Lacey said. “A customer just told me that the police have the place under guard. Everyone is talking about you being chased out of the place two days ago.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “You don’t say.” I guessed I was right in assuming that Lacey had been talking about my nighttime encounter with Daven York.

  She clicked her tongue in disapproval. “It’s horrible what’s happening in the village. It makes it feel unsafe to even sleep in our own beds, you know?” A buzzer went off in the background on Lacey’s end of the line. “Those are the quiches. Violet, I have to go, but I will tell you what. I’ll start asking around. Someone who comes into the café today is bound to know where Anastasia’s brother is staying if he’s in the village. You know how the people in Cascade Springs talk.”

  I certainly did. “Thanks, Lacey. I really appreciate that.”

  “No problem. What are friends for?” The buzzer went off again. She shouted, “Gotta go!” in my ear and ended the call.

  So it looked like, as far as the Coleridge angle in the case was concerned, I had hit a dead end. I ran my hand through my tangled hair, and pulled at my sweater. I was wearing the same clothes I had worn the day before, but I still wasn’t ready to give up investigating just yet.

  I fell back onto the couch. I needed to think this through. Rainwater had said the night before that he was getting pressure from the county DA to arrest Sadie because of the evidence, and the only reason the DA wasn’t forcing the issue was that he believed she was still engaged to Grant Morton. The DA didn’t want to upset the influential family. It was only a matter of time before Rainwater or the DA learned, like I did, that Sadie was no longer engaged to Grant. When they learned of the broken engagement, her time would run out, because there would be no reason for the DA to make Rainwater wait to arrest her. I was running out of time and so was Sadie.

  I needed to remind myself that Coleridge wasn’t my only suspect. Yes, Fenimore had been eliminated from the list, with no connections to Anastasia or her writing as Evanna Blue. The police chief was right to tell me his guilt was very unlikely. But I did have other suspects. There was Daven York, the reporter who broke the story about Evanna Blue’s identity, and there was Anastasia’s literary agent, Edmund Eaton. Of the two, I thought Edmund was the most likely of the pair. He had the most to lose if Anastasia refused to write any more novels as Evanna Blue. He wasn’t going to be any easier to track down than Coleridge was. I stopped myself from calling Lacey back and asking her about Edmund as well, when I knew she was so busy at the café.

  I stood. I would just have to find Edmund Eaton myself. There were many B&Bs in Cascade Springs, but I had an immediate suspicion of which one the agent would be staying at, and I had just enough time to run over there and prove my suspicions before my grandmother arrived at the shop for the day. Just in case the trip took longer than I expected, I scribbled a little note for my grandmother, and set it in the open cash register drawer where she wouldn’t miss it.

  I looked down at my clothes. No New York City native would take me seriously in my current state. I looked more like a college kid who’d been out all night than a responsible and successful bookseller.

  I ran up the stairs to my apartment to get ready for the day.

  Twenty minutes later I came down the stairs dressed in my best pair of jeans and a printed blouse under a wool suit jacket. I knew it wasn’t NYC business attire, but it was just about as good as it got in Cascade Springs, at least in my case. Perhaps Grandma Daisy was right, and Sadie did need to give my wardrobe an overhaul. If I could keep her out of jail, I just might let her do it.

  The shop’s telephone rang. It was a little before eight and the shop wasn’t open yet. Typically, I would have let the call go to voice mail, but for some reason, I felt compelled to answer it. “Charming Books, where the perfect book finds you,” I said, repeating the greeting that my grandmother had drilled into me since I was a small child. Grandma Daisy always said people don’t truly remember something without repetition, so repeating the Charming Books tagline was essential. What I didn’t know as a child was how literally true the tagline was.

  “Yes, hello, this is Charles Hancock. To whom am I speaking?”

  I should have let the call go to voice mail. I put more warmth in my voice than I felt. “This is Violet. How can I help you?”

  “Violet? Very good,” he said in his powerful voice. “I have fulfilled my mission and tracked down the rogue who had the audacity to slander my sweet Daisy and thrust her business into a media circus. He should be banned from the village, no, from the state.”

  “You’ve done what?” I asked, confused.

  “I found Daven York. I’m following him down River Road as we speak.”

  “You’re what?” I cried.

  THIRTY-THREE

  “The rogue has the nerve to walk around our village as if it was his God-given right. As soon as I catch up to him, I plan to give him a piece of my mind and my cane.”

  “Don’t do that!” I said.

  “Whyever not? He has dishonored my beloved Daisy. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”

  I couldn’t let an eighty-year-old man with a Don Quixote complex knock Daven silly with his cane before I had a chance to speak to the reporter myself. “I know that, Charles, and as her granddaughter, I appreciate that,” I said, hoping that statement didn’t come back to haunt me. “But I think to save Grandma Daisy any more public scrutiny, we need to deal with this delicately. That means no giving anyone a piece of your cane.”

  “I wasn’t going to hurt him.” He paused. “Too badly.”

  “Where are you? I’ll come to you. Are you still on River Road?”

  “Yes. He’s just come out of La Crepe Jolie with a muffin and coffee. I don’t know how he can live with himself let alone eat after what he’s done.”

  “Stay there! I’ll be over as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t you think I should follow him?”

  “No! Please stay. It’s what Grandma Daisy would want.”

  “If you’re sure . . .” He trailed off.

  I ended the call, shoved my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, and ran for the door.

  This early in the morning, the traffic at the Food and Wine Festival was light. There were only about a dozen pedestrians on the Riverwalk, as the festival tents wouldn’t officially open until ten, although the vendors were already th
ere for the day setting up their stations. I spotted both Grant and his mother in the Morton Vineyards booth, unpacking crates of ice wine. I sped by them on my bike, hoping I could pass without being seen.

  I slowed my pedaling as I closed in on La Crepe Jolie, but Charles was nowhere in sight. Lacey stepped out of the café and shook out a tablecloth onto the sidewalk. Tiny crumbs flew in the air like confetti. “Violet, what are you doing here? I didn’t expect to see you here after our conversation this morning.”

  “I didn’t expect to come,” I said as I straddled my bike. “Have you seen Charles Hancock? I was supposed to meet him here.”

  “Charles Hancock?” she asked. “Yes, he was here. When he said that he was planning on meeting you, I thought he was confused. You know he is getting up there in years. Personally, I’m not sure that he’s all there anymore.”

  “I think Charles might know what’s going on in this village more than the rest of us do. Do you know which way he went?”

  She dusted some flour off her sweater sleeve. “He said that he was going to the arts district. He said to tell you that his quarry—whatever that means—was staying there.”

  I put my right foot on the bike pedal, preparing to kick off. “Thank you so much, Lacey. I have to go. I’ll see you later.” I pushed my left foot off the sidewalk and rolled my bike onto the street.

  “Whatever you are up to, be careful,” she called after me.

  I raised my hand to acknowledge that I heard her, but I was too focused on finding Charles Hancock to reply. Despite how annoying he could be, if Charles got hurt while on a mission that I’d foolishly given him, I would never forgive myself. Thankfully, I knew exactly where to go. There weren’t many bed-and-breakfasts in the arts district, and I knew just the one a journalist from NYC would choose for his lodgings.

  Puffin Lane B&B was in the arts district of Cascade Springs. The small touristy village had attracted many artists and craftspeople over the decades as they collectively settled in the Bird neighborhood. I only called it that because all the streets in that section of the village were named after birds. There was Puffin Lane, Sparrow Street, Lark Avenue, and several more that wove through the west side of the village on the opposite end from the river and the natural springs.

  The B&B was on the corner of the street at the entrance to the rest of the neighborhood and looked like it would be more suited for the streets of New Orleans with its wrought ironwork and numerous terraces than for a Western New York village.

  Before I even reached the front door to the B&B, I spotted Charles standing on the corner with a pair of binoculars pointed at the B&B’s second-floor terrace.

  “Charles!” I called.

  He dropped his binoculars from his eyes and lifted a finger to his lips. “Shh!” In a hushed voice, he went on to say, “The scoundrel is up there. He might hear you.”

  I jumped off my bike and leaned it against a tree. I removed my bike helmet and hung it from the handlebars. “Can I see?”

  Somewhat reluctantly, Charles handed me the binoculars. I held them in front of my eyes. Daven York was on the second-floor terrace. He sat at a white ironwork table and faced away from me, but he wasn’t alone. I could just make out the shadow of another person on the terrace with him. Daven hadn’t been my quarry when I awoke that morning. I had been determined to track down Anastasia’s brother, Coleridge, but now that I saw Daven, I couldn’t let the opportunity go by. I hadn’t seen him since he’d chased me from Anastasia’s house two nights ago. Honestly, I was surprised he was still in town. I would have thought he’d fled the moment his story broke to the press. He hadn’t been seen anywhere when Charming Books was surrounded by reporters the day before.

  “What shall we do? Shall we storm the B&B?” Charles asked.

  I found the excitement in his voice more than a little alarming. “We aren’t storming anything. He’s not alone on the terrace, but I don’t know who’s with him. I’ll see if I can get close enough to overhear their conversation. You did a good job, Charles, and I will be sure to tell Grandma Daisy that, but I can take it from here.”

  He tapped his cane on the sidewalk. “Are you mad? I am not going to run away now, not moments before battle.”

  I grimaced. Maybe Lacey had been right and Charles was a little bit confused as far as reality was concerned. “There will be no battle. You can stay,” I conceded because I couldn’t see any way of ridding myself of him without attracting the attention of Daven, not to mention every sleepy resident of the arts district.

  The arts district was a drowsy place in the early morning. Many of the artists who lived there preferred to wake up midday and work on their masterpieces late into the night. At the same time, it was too far from the Riverwalk to have any overflow festival traffic this early in the day. Because of this, the street was empty. There wasn’t even a jogger or a dog walker to disturb the quiet. “But please follow my lead.”

  He sniffed. “Typically, I am the one at the front lines, but I will permit you take the lead just this once.”

  “Thanks so much,” I muttered with as much grace as I could muster, which admittedly wasn’t much. I handed Charles the binoculars back. “Keep watch. I’m going to cross the street to see if I can get close enough to see who Daven is talking to.”

  He nodded and accepted the binoculars without further complaint.

  I crossed the street and positioned myself underneath the terrace. I stood just below where Daven sat and pressed my back against the whitewashed brick wall of the building.

  “I write for a trade magazine, not the New York Times. I’m not willing to go to prison for this,” Daven snapped. He did nothing to modulate his voice as if he didn’t care who heard him.

  “No one’s asking you to go to prison, but I see no reason to reveal my name to the police. What will that get you?” a second man’s voice asked.

  I pressed my body harder against the cool brick and listened.

  “It’s your fault that I’m still here. I stayed to talk to you, and now I’m trapped in this storybook reject of a village because the police won’t let me leave.”

  Storybook reject? I thought that was a tad harsh.

  Daven went on to say, “The village police chief thinks that I might have had something to do with her murder. I have already been charged with breaking and entering. I don’t work for a newspaper where committing a crime in the name of the press earns me street cred. Believe me when I say that my editor and publisher are not amused, even though my story has single-handedly increased their circulation and views online by eighty percent in the last week. They threatened to terminate me.”

  There was a banging sound as if Daven brought his hand down on the tabletop where he and the other man sat. “That’s all the thanks I get for doing good work.” Daven’s voice shook with anger.

  “I understand, but just give me a little more time,” the second man pleaded. “I promise I will give you the story that will make your publisher not only forgive you, but kiss your feet.”

  Daven said something else I couldn’t hear.

  I stepped back from the wall and craned my neck back, hoping to get a good look at the two men. Although I could see the back of Daven’s head, I couldn’t see the man that he was talking to, and I needed to know who it was. He might just be the key to breaking open this entire case, and at the very least he was Daven’s informant, which meant that Chief Rainwater needed to talk to him.

  The scraping of chairs echoed as the two men stood up to leave. No, I haven’t seen the informant yet.

  “Wait,” the informant said. “Just give me two minutes more.”

  “Two minutes is more than you deserve,” Daven said. “But fine.”

  Two minutes. That’s all the time that I had to spy whomever the journalist was talking to. I had to see who it was. Because whomever Daven was speaking to had to be the person who’d tol
d him Anastasia’s true identity and how to find the secret room in Anastasia’s mansion.

  I tried the front door of the B&B. It was locked. Apparently, guests were required to enter with a key or knock. What was I going to say when I knocked on the door? Oh, hi, I just need to run upstairs to have a look at one of your guests so that I can reveal his identity to the police. That would never work.

  Charles waved at me from across the street.

  “What?” I mouthed.

  He used his cane to point to the corner of the B&B where a trellis covered in ivy was tethered to the side of the whitewashed building. It was roughly three feet wide and extended all the way to the second-floor terrace where the men spoke.

  “Bad idea,” I whispered.

  Charles kept pointing at the trellis like his life depended on it. Maybe it did, because his face was impossibly red from the exertion.

  “You have one minute left,” I heard Daven say to his companion. He might as well have said it to me, because his comment made me spring into action.

  I waved to Charles, hoping that he would relax some, ran over to the trellis, grabbed it with both hands, and shook it. It didn’t budge. I saw that it was bolted to the side of the brick building. As I fit my shoe in the bottom rung of the trellis, I thought that this was going to be one of those ideas that I would come to regret.

  As the trellis held with every rung I climbed, I gained confidence, climbing faster. Finally, I climbed far enough up the trellis to peek through the ironwork onto the terrace. Daven’s back was still toward me, but I could clearly see the man facing him. It was Anastasia’s literary agent, Edmund Eaton.

  The only problem with such a clear view of Edmund was that he also had a clear view of me, or at least of the top of my head.

  His face paled. “There’s someone watching us.”

  Daven spun around. “You!” Daven pointed at me.

  I yelped and my body jerked back. The trellis made a terrible cracking sound as the wooden frame broke away from the building.