“No one can interrupt a private session of the council. I know that Mayor Daisy has been lax with this rule, but I will uphold it.”
Oh-kay, so chatting with my grandmother for the time being was out of the question. That was probably for the best. Grandma Daisy would take one look at me and know something was wrong and that it was something more than a murder in the village.
“Did you see part of the race?” I asked, doing my best to make small talk with the prickly woman.
She sniffed. “I have no interest in this event or anything that has to do with the fiasco created in the village hall. It’s downright shameful. This was a beautiful place until Mayor Daisy got ahold of it. Look at it now.” She pointed at the hole in the marble floor. “I hope she’s happy. We’re the laughingstock of the state.”
I doubted that any of the other cities or villages in the state cared that there was a giant hole in the marble floor in the Cascade Springs village hall. If they didn’t read the village paper, it was unlikely they even knew about it.
I looked down at the hole and felt a twinge of sympathy for her. “If the construction hadn’t started, the foundation problem could have gone on to the point that it was irreversible, so in the long run it was a good thing this was discovered now.”
Bertie stared at me like I was speaking another language. “People who go and look for problems are the ones who find them. That’s always been my experience. If you don’t look for trouble, trouble won’t find you.”
I felt my brow wing up. Was Bertie’s comment pointed? Did she think I went and looked for trouble and that was the reason I kept getting caught up in murder investigations? I shook my head. She could be talking about something else entirely.
“I won’t keep you,” I said. “I know you need to be getting back to the council meeting.”
She scowled at me. “You shouldn’t be in here alone. You don’t work for the city.”
I frowned. “I’m going to do a walk-around of the exhibit to make sure everything is all right for Grandma Daisy. She’s been too busy to check on things herself. Would you like to visit the exhibit with me?”
“No, I have no interest in that.” She waited.
I waited too.
She crossed her arms.
I crossed my arms too. “If you want, you can stay here while I check the exhibit. It might take a little while.”
She sniffed. “I don’t have time for that. I have somewhere that I have to be.” Without another word, she marched across the rotunda floor.
The hall’s door closed with a thud after her, and I walked over to one of the windows that looked down on the street. I couldn’t see Fenimore any longer, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there, watching and waiting for me to reappear. The previous October, he’d told me he was my father, proving it with a letter in my mother’s hand. Since that time, I hadn’t heard a peep from him. He’d made his announcement and then disappeared. Why would he come back now? And maybe I was being too self-centered to think he had come back to Cascade Springs to see me. Maybe he was just here to make tips off the thousands of bike riders and spectators on hand for the bike race. Maybe, like all those riders and spectators, he would be gone from the village tomorrow.
I frowned. It had been a trying day, and I wasn’t ready to decide whether or not I wanted to find Fenimore and confront him or pretend I never saw him. I should return to Charming Books and check on Richard and Faulkner and find Emerson. And I had a murder to solve, if the copy of Leaves of Grass with Redding’s body was any indication.
I would be returning to the shop a bit earlier than I’d planned, since I’d told Richard I wouldn’t be back until later this afternoon, but I was certain the English department chair wouldn’t mind the help. He was a great teacher; he wasn’t as great at running a credit card machine.
I had turned to open the front door of the hall when movement caught the corner of my eye. A flash of black and white that I recognized all too well darted into the museum construction site. I’d told Bertie I wanted to check on the site for my grandmother, and it looked like I was going there after all because of my wandering cat.
Chapter Ten
I pushed back the plastic sheeting that was protecting most of the construction site from view. “Emerson?” I asked. “Are you in here? You’re in so much trouble and are so grounded.”
I didn’t get so much as a meow in response. Maybe starting off telling the cat he was grounded wasn’t the best way to entice him to come out.
Emerson was a master at getting into odd and impossibly small spots, causing me to find him in all sorts of complicated predicaments. To date, the most confusing had been when he hid behind a secret wall in a mansion. To this day, I don’t know how he got there or how he planned to get out if I didn’t come along.
I adopted Emerson—or more accurately, the cat adopted me—after his previous owner, Benedict Raisin, who also happened to my grandmother’s last love, died. Benedict had been a Cascade Springs carriage driver, and he’d let Emerson tag along on all his rides, which was a charming addition for Emerson and riders alike. The only downside that came out of it was that Emerson was accustomed to traipsing around the village. While other cats wanted to lounge in a sunny spot or on a favorite pillow, he had a need to explore. It was almost impossible to keep him in Charming Books, and the times that I had been able to keep him in the shop, he had made his disgust more than apparent, usually by shredding a pillow. Or if he was really mad, he might go after my jeans that I had carelessly left lying across the chair in my bedroom. Bottom line, Emerson didn’t like being told what to do. He was a true Waverly that way.
I looked around the space that was half drywall, half studs and plastic sheeting. The ceiling was as high as it had been in the rotunda, so I guessed twenty feet up. My grandmother had wanted to keep that height because she thought it would be a good place to suspend signs and perhaps a hanging timeline of Cascade Springs during the nineteenth century.
However, this part of the museum was much further along than the entrance. There were even a few artifacts sitting in a corner as if waiting to be displayed. An old yoke, a wagon wheel. There was a set of chains that made me shiver. I didn’t know if they were actual chains slave catchers had used to drag people back into slavery or replicas. Either way, they were chilling. I was ready to leave.
“Emerson,” I hissed.
Still nothing.
I shivered again, this time not from the artifacts but from the cold. I was wearing only biking shorts and a race shirt, and it was at least thirty degrees cooler in here than it had been outside. The building was well insulated with stone.
“Emerson!”
This time there was a faint mew in response, but it came from above me.
I looked up. Emerson was crouched above my head on top of the scaffolding that went all the way to the ceiling twenty-some feet up. The scaffolding was under some water damage in the ceiling, another expense for the museum.
I put my hands on my hips. “Emerson, get down here this instant.”
He flattened himself on the wooden plank above my head.
“I’m not coming up there after you,” I said like I meant it.
He meowed.
“I’m serious.”
He meowed again.
We were getting nowhere with this fast. I could always leave the cat in the museum. Goodness knew he’d gotten himself into and out of scrapes of all sorts in the past.
Emerson yowled again.
My shoulders slumped. Who was I kidding? I wouldn’t be able to walk away from him. I stood below the scaffolding and studied it. It appeared to be easy to climb, and I knew some of the men that were working on the project. Several of them outweighed me by at least one hundred pounds. If the scaffolding could hold them, it could hold me. Even so, the last time I’d climbed something like this, I had fallen a story to the ground, hurting my shoulder and my pride in the process. The pride had required the longer recovery time.
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p; Emerson yowled again.
“I’m coming,” I muttered, and put my hand on a rung.
Emerson peered over the edge at me.
“You’re really going to make me climb up there? The woman who loves you and cares for you and gives you plenty of food to eat?”
He meowed and shuffled back on the landing. I guessed that was cat for yes.
I started to climb and the rungs held my weight, which made me bolder, and I climbed faster. The sooner I got Emerson down, the sooner I could go home and take off this spandex.
I was halfway up when Emerson jumped onto my head and then my shoulder, then used my shoulder as a springboard to the marble floor below.
I rubbed the top of my head, looking down at him. “You used me as a trampoline!”
The cat didn’t say anything back. A year ago, if a cat had spoken to me, I would have fallen to the floor. If it happened to me now, I would wonder why he hadn’t spoken sooner. I suppose that’s what happens when you find out you are a magical Caretaker of a birch tree and bookshop. Reality is skewed.
I was about to make my way down when something caught my eye. A piece of metal glinted on the landing. I hesitated for a moment, then climbed all the way up. On the edge of the scaffolding was a delicate garnet necklace on a broken golden chain. It was clearly a woman’s necklace. I couldn’t see it being worn by any of the men working on the project. I tried to remember if I had seen any women on the work crew. I couldn’t remember any, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a female carpenter among them.
The necklace didn’t look old enough to date back to the Civil War like the other artifacts in the display. Also, jewelry and small trinkets hadn’t been brought into the museum yet.
I debated for half a second if I should leave the necklace where I found it, but I didn’t know how whoever lost it would find it on the scaffolding twenty feet in the air.
I picked up the necklace and tucked it in the minuscule key pocket at the waistband of my shorts. I would show it to my grandmother and see if she might know who it belonged to. My only guess was a member of the village council. If that was the case, my grandmother would be able to return it to its rightful owner immediately.
I started down the ladder again. It was time to go home and put on clothes I was much more comfortable wearing. At least Emerson was the only one seeing this unflattering view of me in biking shorts. I shivered to think of anyone else seeing me climbing around in that outfit.
The rungs creaked. Emerson watched me from the floor below, and his narrow black tail swished back and forth across the cool tile.
“Don’t you look at me like I should hurry up,” I scolded the tuxie. “It’s your fault that I’m here in the first place.”
“Excuse me?” a deep male voice asked, causing me to misstep and miss a rung. My foot dangled out in space, and I lost my balance. Strong hands caught me around the waist, plucked me off the scaffolding, and lowered me to the floor. “Easy there.”
He let go of my waist, and I turned around to see a man with light-brown hair and hazel eyes giving me the once-over. “Judging from your dress, you were in today’s race. Did you get lost on the way to the finish? You shouldn’t be in the museum. This is a construction site.”
I dusted myself off and sidestepped to put some space between us. “I was looking for my cat.”
“I don’t see a cat.”
I glanced around. Sure enough, Emerson was gone. I inwardly groaned. “He was here a moment ago. I’ll let my grandmother know so she can be on the lookout for him. I’m Violet Waverly.”
Recognition lit his eyes. “I work for Museum Fabricators. I’m Vaughn Fitzgerald.”
I nodded. “You’re Jo’s brother. She told me you were working on the museum.”
“You know my sister?”
“I teach English at Springside Community College. She’s a good kid and a great writer.”
A strange expression crossed Vaughn’s face when I said his younger sister was a good kid. It was almost as if he didn’t believe me. “Have you seen my sister recently?”
“Not since before the race.”
“You really shouldn’t be in here, and climbing on the scaffolding is absolutely off-limits.”
I crossed my arms. “And I was in here looking for my cat,” I repeated. “He was up there.” I pointed to the top. “He’s a black-and-white tuxedo cat. You might have seen him around. His name is Emerson.”
His face cleared as if the expression had never been there. “Now that you mention it, the mayor told my team to be on the lookout for a black-and-white cat. That’s yours?”
I nodded. “He kind of considers himself the deputy mayor of Cascade Springs and goes wherever he pleases in the village.”
“Why were you up the scaffolding, though?”
“That’s where Emerson was hiding. I climbed up after him, and he used the top of my shoulders as a trampoline. Now I can only guess where he might be hiding in the hall.” I sighed. “Daisy is my grandmother, so I think that’s why Emerson believes he should have run of the village hall.”
“Makes sense,” Vaughn said with a smile.
“What are you doing here? I thought work stopped on the site when the money ran out?”
“Oh, well.” He looked surprised. “I just like to come to the site every so often to make sure everything is where we left it. It’s a great project, and it was very hard to leave when we ran into those issues. However, I know that if your grandmother has anything to do with it, we will be back at work in no time.”
“How many people are on the team building the museum?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
“There are six members of my crew, but we have any number of contract workers going in and out all the time, or at least we did.”
“Any women?”
He frowned. “No. You want to sign up? I saw you scale that ladder, so you might be good at it.”
I shook my head. “I already have more work than I know what to do with.” And it was true. Between being an adjunct professor at Springside Community College, running Charming Books, and being the Caretaker of the birch tree and the shop’s essence, I was fully booked, literally.
I started to put my hand to my pocket and ask him about the necklace, but something stopped me. I would ask my grandmother about it first.
“I was hoping to run into Jo again. Have you seen her? I thought she was working for Bobby’s Bike Shop during the race, but she wasn’t there. Bobby didn’t seem to know where she’d gone.”
“Jo’s got a bit of growing up to do.” He stopped just short of rolling his eyes. “She needs to settle on something.” He said this in such a way that I guessed it was something he’d repeated to Jo many times before.
He arched his brow. “I can tell from your face that you think I might be too harsh on her. I just want her to pick something to do. She’s twenty-two years old and should have some sort of path by now. Instead she flits from part-time job to part-time job, half-heartedly taking classes at the community college. I would like her to settle on something.” He sounded much more like a parent than an older brother, but I guessed that Vaughn was eight to ten years older than Jo. Perhaps because of the age difference, he had always treated her that way.
Vaughn clapped his hands, and the sound of the smack echoed throughout the hall. “The site looks fine. I’ll be glad when we have the green light to get back in here to work.”
“I know Grandma Daisy is looking forward to it too. The museum is a special project to her, and it will add to the culture of the village. Cascade Springs is much more than ice wine.”
“Yes, it is much more. It’s a special project to me, too.” His voice softened. “Some of my ancestors came up through Cascade Springs as runaway slaves. I feel honored to work on this project and preserve their history. I probably wouldn’t be standing in front of you today if not for them.”
My eyes fell on those horrible chains again, and I shivered.
Chapter Eleven
“This must be the mysterious cat,” Vaughn said with a laugh.
“That’s one name for him.” I quietly approached Emerson and gave a sigh of relief when he allowed me to pick him up. He placed his forepaw on my shoulder as if he wanted to give me a hug.
“He seems to really like you. I can’t imagine this little cat using you as a trampoline.”
I smiled. “Appearances can be deceiving.”
“I know all about that,” Vaughn said in a much darker voice than I would have expected. He shook his head. “I should get back to the office. Even though I can’t work here at the museum today, there are other projects that could use my attention. It was nice to meet you, Violet.” He paused. “And if you see my sister, can you tell her I’m looking for her?” He didn’t wait for an answer and went out the door.
Emerson and I shared a look.
After I left the village hall, taking Emerson with me, I made my way up River Road toward Charming Books and away from the finish line. The further I moved from the Riverwalk, the quieter it became. I blew out a breath, hoping some of the stress I felt would leave with the exhale of air.
That didn’t seem to work. As I walked, my eyes darted in every direction, searching for any sign of Fenimore. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I saw him again. Would I be a coward for a second time and run away? I couldn’t say I was proud of ducking into the village hall. A more adult thing to do would have been to face my father head on. I promised myself I would work up the nerve in case I got another chance, which I might not. Last time I’d seen Fenimore had been six months ago; he could be gone for another six months or more before I saw him again. I didn’t know if that made me relieved or disappointed. Maybe both.
Charming Books came into view as soon as I turned the corner south. The periwinkle-blue Queen Anne Victorian with its wide wraparound porch, tower, and gingerbread was the showpiece of the street.
Verse and Vengeance Page 6