Prose and Cons

by Amanda Flower

  “What did you say, Violet?” Richard asked me.

  I swallowed. “Nothing. I was just talking to myself.”

  “I would be curious to hear what you said too,” Trudy commented with an edge to her voice.

  I felt rooted in the folding chair. “It was nothing.”

  Trudy slowly set her plate, with what remained of her cupcake on it, on the table beside her folding chair. She moved her expansive pocketbook to her lap and removed a gun from its depths. Cocking the small gun, she pointed it directly at me. “This is a derringer. It was my great-grandmother’s. I inherited it from my father, but I can assure you that it works just fine.” She adjusted her grip on the handle. “Now, what did you say, Violet?”

  My mouth grew dry. The words, they wouldn’t come.

  “Trudy!” Richard cried. “What on earth are you doing?”

  She didn’t even glance in his direction and kept the gun trained on me. “Stay out of this, Richard.” With her eyes boring into me, she said, “I asked you a question.”

  My voice returned. “I said the answer was in plain sight. You, you are the killer, and you were in plain sight of me this entire time.”

  “How long have you known?” Trudy asked.

  “Trudy?” Sadie asked as it dawned on her what was really happening.

  I glanced at Sadie and Richard, willing them to run to call for help, but neither of them moved. If I moved, I would surely be shot, and they might be as well. “I only just figured it out,” I said.

  “You killed her?” Richard was aghast. “Why?”

  Trudy’s gaze flicked in his direction just for a moment. “I didn’t mean to kill her. She was supposed to make a fool of herself at the Poe-try Reading. I never thought she would die. I only wanted to teach her a lesson. The nicotine was meant to disorient her, that was all. I wanted her to be humiliated over it. Afterward, I would tell her that I was the one who caused her humiliation. I knew then she would take me more seriously.”

  “By poisoning her with liquid nicotine?” I asked. “How does that teach anyone anything? Why would she take you more seriously because of it?”

  Trudy glared back at me. “It would teach her to keep her word! When I found out she was Evanna, I told her I would keep her secret if she’d help me. She said that she would, but she lied.”

  “How did you find out her secret?” Sadie’s voice trembled.

  “I dropped in on her one day with some soup. This was over a year ago when she’d had the flu. I thought I was doing the neighborly thing by taking care of her. I knocked on her door and there was no answer. It was unlocked, so I went inside. I found her asleep at her desk in her secret office. Trust me when I say that she was furious with me when I found out.”

  “You’ve known for a year?” Sadie asked. “You’ve kept her secret all this time? Why would you keep her secret if you hated her so much?”

  While Sadie asked her questions, I glanced around the shop, looking for some means of escape. I tried to catch Richard’s eye to signal to him to run for help, but he was too busy gaping at Trudy.

  “I needed her. I wanted to get published so desperately, you see, and I was running out of time. I asked her to talk to her agent about me and make him help me get published. I know my work is just as good as Evanna Blue’s, if not better.” She took a breath. “She claimed she talked to him and he said he wasn’t interested in my work. I knew she was lying. I have twice the talent she did.”

  “But, Trudy, you would have been published eventually. All the Red Inkers have always said that—well, maybe not Anastasia, but the rest of us have,” Richard said.

  “I don’t have time for eventually. Don’t you understand that I’m dying?” She coughed as if to emphasize her point. “I have lung cancer, you see, from years of smoking, smoking to cope with the death of my dream. Anastasia’s agent was my last hope!”

  “But why did you frame me?” Sadie asked in a small, childlike voice. “I’m your friend.”

  “I told you already that I didn’t intend for her to die. I only wanted to embarrass her. I was searching for a way to do it when I went to your apartment for the fitting. When I saw the liquid nicotine hidden in your linen closet—”

  “You went through my linen closet?” Sadie gasped.

  I glanced at Sadie. Now was not the time to take up the invasion of privacy with Trudy, especially when Trudy was holding a gun pointed at me. I swallowed. “What happened when you found the nicotine?”

  “I saw my chance. I, of all people, know how poisonous nicotine can be and I knew that liquid nicotine could cause confusion if a large amount is absorbed through the skin. I saw the nicotine, and I remembered her dress. I knew what I had to do. It seemed poetic in a way that Anastasia’s humiliation would come from the same substance that was killing me.”

  “But the dress wasn’t wet when you left my apartment that night,” Sadie said.

  “Of course not,” Trudy snapped at Sadie.

  I appreciated that Sadie had her spunk back after the tragic events of the week, but I prayed that she didn’t push Trudy too far with her questioning while the gun remained in Trudy’s hand.

  “I waited until later that week when I knew the dress was in your shop. I waited until the shop closed, broke in, and poured the liquid on the dress. I even used a hair dryer to dry out the dress before I left. It wasn’t that hard to do.” Trudy said all this as if she were rattling off the steps to make a perfect cake, not how to poison someone.

  Sadie, Richard, and I all stared at her.

  “You don’t understand. I can tell from your faces that you don’t. Is it better to die with a dream unfulfilled than try one last time to make that life’s dream come true? I spent my life trapped in a classroom giving my all to children. I was good at it. The children loved me—you loved me.” She stared at me.

  I had loved her. She had been my favorite teacher. A lump caught in my throat.

  “But teaching wasn’t my passion.” She was shouting now. “It wasn’t the dream that I wanted. I wanted to write. When I retired, I promised myself I would finally write and publish a novel. It was finally my time to live my own dreams.”

  “You still can,” I said, thinking a lot of people write in prison, where she was surely destined to go.

  “There’s no time left now.” She coughed again. “The doctors have told me I have six months at best and that was a month ago. I suppose I could say that I have five months now. Five months to reach my dream of being a published author. It will never happen now.” Tears ran down her wrinkled face.

  I looked her in the eye. “So what are you going to do with the time you have left? Kill all of us? How is that reaching your dreams?”

  She licked her lips. “Do you want to see me spend the last few months of my life in a prison cell? Is that what you want to become of your old teacher?”

  “No,” I said. “But I don’t want to die either.”

  A great caw rang out in the shop, and Faulkner swooped down from the birch tree and onto Trudy’s head. He dug his talons into her pin curls.

  The retired teacher screamed out in pain. “Get it off me.” She waved the gun around wildly.

  While Faulkner did a number on her hair, Emerson went after her right ankle, biting down hard.

  Richard, Sadie, and I hit the floor to escape the line of fire. I covered my head, and the gun went off. I lifted my head and saw the bullet had missed everyone in the room. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees and gasped. The bullet had hit the birch tree and embedded into the trunk. My heart stopped. The tree. The tree had been shot. I had no time to absorb this realization because Trudy shot again, driving a bullet into the stone fireplace just over my head.

  I crawled behind one of the couches. Richard ducked behind the sales counter, and Sadie didn’t move. I felt like I might throw up. Had she been shot? I didn’t
know it for sure.

  Sadie finally struggled to her feet and ran behind the sales counter with Richard. I gave a sigh of relief.

  Somehow while I was distracted with Sadie, Trudy escaped the clutches of the crow and the cat. Her hair sprang wildly out of her head in all directions.

  Faulkner was flapping his wings, obviously perturbed, but otherwise okay. Emerson was crouched low beneath an end table. I prayed he was fine too.

  I started to get up, but before I could, Trudy stood above me with the gun trained on my chest.

  “I’m sorry that I have to do this, Violet—you always were one of my favorite students—but I can’t go to jail. I can’t.” She aimed the gun at me, and I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the bang.

  There was a great crash. I opened my eyes just in time to see a full bookcase topple over and land on Trudy. She screamed. There was no one even near it when it fell. Sadie and Richard were on the opposite side of the room. The shop itself was defending me. Trudy cried out in pain as the heavy bookcase pinned her on the floor.

  I scrambled to my feet and kicked the gun out of her hand. It slid across the room and under one of the couches.

  I crouched by Trudy, wondering how many of her bones were broken. Her right hand stuck out from under the bookcase.

  Despite everything, I reached for it and held it delicately in my own. “It’s going to be okay, Trudy. It’s going to be okay.” I wondered how many times when I was a child she had comforted me in the same tone of voice.

  I heard the sirens blaring up River Road. Rainwater was coming. I gave Trudy’s hand another reassuring squeeze.

  EPILOGUE

  A week later on Halloween night, I came through the back door of Charming Books, taking a moment to stare at the staircase, which was no longer surrounded by crime scene tape. Trudy was out on bail, awaiting trial. The last I heard, she had a good chance at an insanity plea, claiming that she had been driven crazy by her jealousy of Anastasia and her own devastating diagnosis. I hoped that she wouldn’t go to prison. I knew what she did was wrong, but despite everything, I didn’t want my first-grade teacher to spend her last days on earth in a prison cell.

  “Violet? Is that you?” I heard my grandmother call me from the other side of the kitchen door. “Hurry up and water the tree if you want to do it before the trick-or-treaters arrive.”

  “On my way!” I called back.

  Emerson waited for me on the other side of the swinging door that led from the kitchen into the shop. I hurried over to the birch tree with my watering can.

  Grandma Daisy clicked her tongue. “It’s not doing well. I’ve never seen it like this in all my days.”

  Some Caretaker I was. The birch tree was dying and on my watch too.

  As part of gathering evidence over what had happened at the last Red Inkers meeting, Rainwater had dug Trudy’s stray bullet out of the tree’s trunk with a pocketknife. Since then, the tree had not been doing well. Every morning, I came downstairs to find leaves on the floor, and those still clinging to the branches were turning brown. I knew I had to do something.

  “I hope this works,” I muttered to my grandmother.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” she replied.

  I took a deep breath, lifted the watering can, and poured the springwater into the bullet hole. It was the only thing I could think to do to save the tree. The water bubbled and fumed like a potion boiling in a medieval cauldron. It did that for a full minute, and then the bubble evaporated. The trunk was smooth in the spot as if nothing had ever happened. The tree was whole again. I bent my head back and stared in amazement as the leaves turned from a sickly brown to a vibrant green right before my eyes.

  Faulkner, who had avoided the tree ever since the shooting, swooped from his perch at the front window and flew into the tree. He settled on his favorite branch near the top and began to clean his feathers.

  Tentatively, I touched the spot where the bullet hole had been. It was cool to the touch and felt no different from any other place on the tree’s trunk. “Wow,” I whispered.

  “I second that,” my grandmother whispered. “Things are mended.”

  I poured what water was left into the dirt around the tree, shaking the final few droplets from the can. “Some things are mended,” I murmured, thinking of the letter from my mother to Fenimore hidden away in my sock drawer upstairs in my apartment. I’d yet to read it, and I hadn’t breathed a word of it to my grandmother.

  “Are you thinking of Nathan and David?” she asked.

  I hadn’t been, but now that she mentioned it, that was another thing that needed to be mended—if not mended, then decided. Nathan hadn’t spoken to me since he saw me kiss Rainwater on the cheek outside Charming Books. After I’d avoided him for so many months, now he was avoiding me and I was surprised to find that I missed him.

  Grandma Daisy touched my cheek. “I don’t know which one you will choose, Violet, my dear. I just want you to be happy. Your heart will guide you to the right decision. Both of them are worthy of you.”

  She said this as if it were only up to me. I suspected Nathan and Rainwater had to have a say in any decision, if there was even one to make now that Nathan was avoiding me. Thinking of my mother and the choice she’d made to push the man she loved away because she knew that she was the next Caretaker, I said, “Is there even a point? Don’t all the Waverly women end up alone?”

  A pained expression crossed my grandmother’s face, but before she could argue, the doorbell rang.

  I set the watering can on the closest table. “Those must be the trick-or-treaters.” I grabbed the bowl of candy from the sales counter and sprang for the door, so grateful for the distraction.

  I threw open the door to find Minnie Mouse, Little Bo Peep, and Captain America on my doorstep. The children held out their pillowcases to me. “Trick or treat!” they cried in unison.

  After that, the trick-or-treaters came in droves, and there was no time for Grandma Daisy to resume our conversation about Nathan and Rainwater.

  I was just dropping a Snickers bar into Frankenstein’s bag when I saw a tall man and a pint-sized knight come up Charming Books’ steps. Chief David Rainwater grinned at me, and my stomach flipped inside my body.

  In front of him stood a glorious knight. Rainwater hadn’t been kidding when he said that his niece, Aster, planned to trick-or-treat as Joan of Arc. Aster had the complete ensemble from the helmet to the shield and the thankfully plastic sword to the chain mail.

  I dropped a piece of candy into her bag. “Where’s your mom?” I asked.

  “Mom had to work,” Aster said. “She really likes it.”

  I smiled. “I’m so glad.”

  “I’m glad too,” Rainwater said. I could feel him watching me.

  Grandma Daisy pushed me aside. “Come in out of the cold for a moment,” she insisted. “Aster, I was saving a stash of king-sized bars just for you. They’re in the kitchen. Let’s go check them out.”

  Joan of Arc pumped her tiny fist. “Yes!”

  Grandma Daisy and Aster hurried back to the kitchen, leaving the police chief and me standing alone.

  “I see Danielle found the chain mail,” I said.

  “Just in the nick of time too.” He chuckled. Rainwater wandered over to the tree and stared at it. “Where’s the bullet hole?”

  “Ummm . . .” I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had been so focused on saving the tree, I hadn’t thought about covering up the evidence of the tree’s miraculous healing. Now I realized my mistake.

  The police chief ran his hand up and down the tree’s trunk. “Where did it go? This isn’t possible.”

  I shrugged. “I guess the tree healed itself.”

  He studied me. “I’m beginning to wonder if there is a lot more to this than a self-healing tree.”

  I swallowed and was saved by the
return of Grandma Daisy and Aster. Aster tugged on her uncle’s arm. “Uncle David, come on. I need more candy.”

  He laughed. “All right.”

  The little girl spun around, and her chain mail clinked together. “Violet, you should come with us. It will be so much fun!”

  “You should,” Rainwater agreed with a smile.

  I hesitated. “I should stay here and help Grandma Daisy pass out the candy.”

  “You don’t think I can do it myself?” my grandmother scoffed.

  “I wasn’t saying that,” I protested.

  “Go on, Violet,” my grandmother urged, her eyes sparkling. “Emerson and I will do a fine job of passing out what’s left of the Halloween candy.”

  Aster jumped up and down, her chain mail jingling together like a collection of tiny bells as she hopped in place. “Please!”

  I glanced at Rainwater.

  “I could use the company,” he said. “I’m completely outnumbered out there by pint-sized ghosts and goblins. I could use an adult at my side for backup.”

  My face broke into a smile. “Okay,” I said, and followed Joan of Arc and the village police chief out into the crisp autumn air on the most beautiful Halloween in my memory.

  Read on for an excerpt from the first Magical Bookshop Mystery by Amanda Flower . . .

  CRIME AND POETRY

  Available now!

  ONE

  “Grandma! Grandma Daisy!” I called as soon as I was inside Charming Books. There were books everywhere—on the crowded shelves, the end tables, the sales counter, and the floor. Everywhere. But there was no sign of my ailing grandmother.

  Browsing customers in brightly colored T-shirts and shorts stared at me openmouthed. I knew I must have looked a fright. I had driven from Chicago to Cascade Springs, New York, a small village nestled on the banks of the Niagara River just minutes from the world-famous Niagara Falls. I’d made the drive in seven hours, stopping only twice for gas and potty breaks. My fingernails were bitten to the quick, dark circles hovered beneath my bloodshot blue eyes, and my wavy strawberry blond hair was in a knot on top of my head. Last time I caught sight of it in the rearview mirror, it had resembled a pom-pom that had been caught in a dryer’s lint trap. I stopped looking in the rearview after that.