I hugged Emerson to my chest and shook my head. As much as I wanted to take Renee up on her offer to avoid getting wet, I wanted to be alone more. I had a lot to think about. Besides, the storm was still a ways off. I could outrun it. “I’ll be fine. I’ll go straight back to Charming Books, no stops.”
She sighed. “When you and your cat get soaked, don’t say I didn’t offer.”
I grinned. “I would never. Should I tell Richard about our earlier conversation? Maybe he just needs a nudge?”
“No. No nudges. He needs to ask me out on his own.”
I nodded and hoped he would. Like Renee said, she wouldn’t wait forever.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Emerson and I were on the trail that led through Cascade Springs Park when the skies opened up. The little tuxedo hunched down low in the basket. The rain was coming down so hard, I could barely see. Deep in the woods, it was black as night under the trees.
I thought of the village hall and hoped what Vaughn had said was right about the building holding strong through this storm. It would be a great loss if the village hall didn’t survive until there was enough money to make the necessary repairs on the foundation.
When I was pedaling past the springs, I thought I saw movement by the water. I slowed the bike and stopped.
Emerson lifted his head a fraction of an inch and yowled.
“Shhh, Emerson,” I said. Rain poured down, and I didn’t know how I hoped to see whoever or whatever was on the other side of the springs. I lifted my hand to shield my eyes from the worst of the downpour.
There was a streak of lightning, immediately followed by a crack of thunder. When the light flashed, I saw the clear image of a person on the other side of the springs, and I gasped as I recognized the slight figure.
“Jo!” I cried.
But the sky went black again, and I could no longer see her.
I stood there and waited for the lightning, but when it flashed, she was gone.
Emerson yowled once more from his spot in the basket, and I climbed back onto the bike. I would do more good riding back to the bookshop and reporting what I saw than forcing my way through the woods in search of Jo Fitzgerald on foot.
But I hated to leave knowing she was out there.
I started to pedal back to the bookshop. I rode hard and felt mud from the path splash all the way up my back as it was kicked off my back tire. I didn’t care. I wanted to hurry home so I could help Jo. When I reached the back garden of the bookshop, I parked my bike under the overhang by the back door, grabbed Emerson from the basket, and ran through the kitchen door just as another crack of thunder rumbled through the sky.
“Violet, where have you been?” Grandma Daisy asked. “I just got off the phone with Renee. She said you insisted on riding your bike home in this terrible weather. She called to make sure you were okay.” She froze in the middle of the kitchen. “Girl, you’re soaked to the skin, and look at poor Emerson.”
The little tuxedo cat yowled as if to agree with her assessment.
“Can you dry Emerson off?” I asked, and handed her the wet cat.
“Oh, you poor little creature,” she cooed, and grabbed the dish towel from the stove handle. She set Emerson on the stool next to the kitchen island and began drying him.
“Violet, you need to get out of those wet things, too.”
“I will in a minute,” I said. “I need to call Rainwater.”
My phone was in the back pocket of my jeans, and I took it out. Without explaining to my grandmother, I made the call. A glance in their direction showed me Emerson was mostly dry; it appeared the tuxie was enjoying the extra attention.
“David,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. He immediately could tell from my tone that this wasn’t a social call.
“It’s Jo.”
“Did you find her?”
“Not exactly.” I told him what I had seen in the park.
“We’ll search the woods for her. Did she look like she was okay? Was she hurt?”
“I only saw her for a few seconds during a flash of lightning. She was standing. I know that, and then she was gone. I should have gone after her.”
“No,” he said quickly. “You did the right thing. My officers and I will find her. This is a fast-moving storm, and according to the radar it should be out of the village in twenty minutes. We’ll search every inch of those woods to find her.”
“I know.” But even as I said this, I couldn’t expunge my guilt for leaving Jo in the park alone in the middle of the storm. “I want to come with you.”
“No. I can’t have two people lost in the woods. If she’s there, we will find her. I’ll get a couple of park rangers to help. They’ll know all the places someone is likely to hide.”
I wanted to argue more, but I knew that by keeping Rainwater on the phone, I was keeping him from finding Jo, and finding her had to be the first priority. “I understand. Thanks, David.”
He assured me he’d let me know the minute they found her. Trusting him and his ability to do his job, I ended the call.
“Violet, what is wrong with Jo?” Grandma Daisy’s forehead crinkled with concern.
I told her just what I’d told Rainwater.
“That poor girl,” Grandma Daisy said. “What is she thinking by hiding out in the woods? I know she is resourceful—she has had to be—but why hide out in the middle of the storm? She’d be safe with us and a whole lot warmer.”
“I know, and I have told her as much in so many text messages over the last several days.”
Water dripped from my hair and my clothes. I started to shiver.
“Violet,” Grandma Daisy said. “You need to go upstairs and get cleaned up. You’re not any good to anyone if you catch a cold.”
“How’s Emerson?”
Grandma Daisy smiled. “He’s fine, and he’ll be even better once I make him a bowl of warm milk.” The tuxie purred loudly in anticipation. She glanced over his head at me. “Then I’m sure he plans to lord his adventure over Faulkner.”
I rolled my eyes. “You don’t think they really talk to each other, do you?”
“They might not speak a language we can understand, but make no mistake, those two can communicate with each other just fine. Go upstairs and change so you will be ready when David brings Jo here.”
“Will he bring her here?” I asked. “She’s a suspect in a murder investigation.”
“If he knows what’s good for him, he will. I’m the mayor of Cascade Springs.”
I stopped short of rolling my eyes. I knew Rainwater hadn’t gotten along with the last mayor of the village, Nathan Morton. A lot of that had to do with the fact that Nathan had been my ex-boyfriend, but I couldn’t say for certain that the police chief thought things had improved much since Grandma Daisy’s election. Sure, the two of them respected each other and got along much better than Rainwater and Nathan ever had, but Grandma Daisy certainly kept Rainwater on his toes. She kept everyone on their toes.
When I stepped into the apartment, I half expected to see a stack of Whitman’s poems in the middle of my bed, but there was nothing there. I wondered if Whitman had stepped in this very room when he visited LillyAnn. I guessed probably not, since these would have been private quarters even back then. If LillyAnn had met with Whitman, it would have been in the main room of the bookshop. I wondered what he’d thought of the birch tree growing in the middle of the house.
After changing my clothes and giving my own hair a brisk towel-drying, I hurried back downstairs. I found my grandmother in the main room of the shop starting a fire in the massive hearth. “It may be May, but there are still chilly nights, and you could have caught your death of a cold. I want to have this fire going for when David brings Jo here.”
I pressed my lips together. My grandmother was so certain Rainwater was going to find Jo, but I wasn’t so sure. The college student had been able to hide for days without being detected. What were the odds that the police coul
d find her in the middle of this terrible storm?
As if to make my point, there was a flash of lightning through the skylight window that was almost immediately followed by a crack of thunder.
Grandma Daisy stood up, and as if she could read my mind, she said, “If Jo is in the woods, David and his team will find her.”
I nodded absently. Perhaps I should have left Emerson and my bike and gone after Jo. If she’d fallen and hurt herself in the time that it took me to ride back to Charming Books and alert the police chief, I would never forgive myself.
Emerson walked into the main room from the kitchen, licking milk from his lips. His fur still appeared to be a bit damp, and he jumped onto the stone hearth, walking up and down in front of the fire to warm himself. Finally, he curled up as close to the fire as possible without burning his tail.
“At least wet cat doesn’t have a smell like wet dog does. That’s the worst.” Grandma Daisy shivered as if just the memory of the smell was too upsetting to recall.
I went back into the kitchen and grabbed my shoulder bag from the island. I spread the contents on the counter so they could dry, but what I was really looking for was the damp copy of Leaves of Grass. The pages of the book were already curling as they dried. I wasn’t too worried about losing this particular newly printed edition of the book. If I did, I knew the shop would send me another copy, which was why Grandma Daisy’s less-than-accurate filing and inventory system worked for Charming Books. Because, really, if the shop could manifest books at whim to suit the needs of a reader, even the most detail-oriented filing system would fail to compensate for the magic.
I carried it back into the main room of the shop.
“Where did you go?” Grandma Daisy asked. “Did you hear anything from David?”
“Not yet.” I held up the book. “I went to go get this.”
“Oh, I hate to lose a book to the elements like that. Place it in front of the fire; maybe it will dry out.”
I did as she asked, opening the book to the very middle. I wasn’t sure if would do much good.
“Have you discovered why the shop wants you to read Walt Whitman?”
“Maybe,” I said. “At least for the first time in all of this, I feel like I’m finally getting somewhere, and it might be more tied to this shop than we ever knew.”
She arched her brow at me. “I think I might need to sit down for this.” She perched on the arm of one of the sofas near the hearth.
The heat from the fire radiated into my back and was so soothing. It felt like the warmth was burning away all my aches and pains from my fast ride through the woods. I wished too that it could burn away my worries, especially those worries I had for Jo. I hated to think that my student was out there in the cold and rain. I closed my eyes for a moment. It probably would be better for me if I didn’t think about Jo at the moment, so instead I concentrated on a long-dead poet. “Did you know that Walt Whitman visited Charming Books?”
“What?”
“Walt Whitman was here in this very room.”
She blinked at me. “Where did you hear that, my girl?”
I removed my phone from my pocket and showed her the photos I had taken at the college archives.
She whistled. “My. That is something. I think we should make a plaque or something to advertise that Walt Whitman was here. It’s quite a feather in our literary cap.”
“Is it mentioned in the ledger?” I asked.
She smiled. “You are the Caretaker. You are the one to answer that.”
I frowned and walked over to the sales counter. Crouching down, I remove the ledger from the safe. It was the best place I could think to keep it. I carried it back to the couches in front of the fireplace and sat down. Carefully, I opened it. The pages crackled. I realized I should have been wearing white gloves as I had in the archives when handling the old mayor’s journal.
On the first page, there was a list of all ten Caretakers, ending with my own name. I recognized that it had been added in my grandmother’s hand. Each entry had the birth and death dates next to the Caretaker’s name. Only Grandma Daisy and I had no death date. My fingers hovered over my mother’s name and her date. I bit the inside of my lip. I couldn’t let the old and familiar grief overcome me now; I had to help Jo.
I flipped quickly through Rosalee’s entries of helping people to LillyAnn’s. It seemed from what I read that LillyAnn had the gift of calming others with her touch. She helped many people with nerves by doing this. I flipped to 1880, which was the year I knew Whitman had visited Niagara Falls.
There was a short entry that caught my eye. “The poet had pain of lost love and pain of the stomach. I did what I could for him, giving him the herbs my mother taught me for his stomach. The broken heart is much more difficult to heal, but he said my touch soothed him to see happiness in this world.”
There was no mention of the poet’s name, but it was June 1880, when Whitman would have been at Niagara Falls. Had LillyAnn purposely left his name off, when the names of so many others were clearly written in the ledger? Had she known that the mayor didn’t approve of Whitman’s visit and omitted his name just in case the ledger was ever found by someone outside the family? These were questions I would never know the answers to.
I told Grandma Daisy what I had found. “But what does it mean in relation to Redding’s murder, and not only that, what does it mean in relation to the tragic death of Bryant Cloud?”
“Who is that?”
I told her about Danielle’s ex-husband and the conversations I’d had with Rainwater’s sister.
“This is a tangled case and seems to be affecting everyone you hold dear.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she was right. Was I the connecting person in all of this? I shook my head. That couldn’t be. I’d never met Bryant before he died.
The front door banged open, and a very wet Rainwater, followed by Officers Clipton and Wheaton, came inside. I jumped out of my seat and looked for any sign of Jo. She wasn’t there.
Rainwater shook his head ever so slightly.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“We tore the park apart, but we couldn’t find her. The rain washed away any tracks.”
“I know she was there.”
“And I believe you.” His face fell. “I’m sorry, Violet.”
My heart ached. He looked so crestfallen. All I wanted to do was give him a hug, but Clipton and Wheaton’s being there held me back.
Grandma Daisy didn’t have the same qualms, as she gave Rainwater a hug. “Chin up, my boy. Jo will reveal herself when she is good and ready. I’m sure she has a very good reason for hiding in the woods. When the time is right, all will become clear.” She stepped back from him. “You all look like a group of drowned rats. Here, warm yourself by the fire before you head back out into that weather.”
Wheaton shook out his coat, sending water specks flying all over the room, even on the books. It was all I could do not to say something, but I held my tongue. It wouldn’t do much good as far as Wheaton was concerned. I was certain the police officer liked to get a rise out of me.
Clipton scowled at him. “Watch you what you’re doing, Wheaton.” I liked her a little better for saying that.
Grandma Daisy held out her hands. “I’ll take your wet jackets and hang them to dry. Violet, can you start a pot of tea?”
“Of course,” I hurried into the kitchen, happy to have an assignment. I didn’t think I could have sat there any longer just looking at Rainwater’s down-turned face.
In the kitchen, I put the kettle on and gathered the tea tray, just as my grandmother had taught me when I was a little girl. I stacked it with teacups, saucers, cream, and sugar. I selected English breakfast tea, even though it was the afternoon. It was my favorite.
Then I added a plate of cookies from Le Crepe Jolie. It seemed that we always had some on hand from Lacey and Adrien. We could never pay them back in books with the amount of food they gave us on a daily basis, and they re
fused to accept any money. But I did try to return the favor and kept their cookies out at busy times in the shop. The moment I saw a shopper reach for one, I was quick to tell them just where they could purchase more. I liked to think that the “advertising” benefited Lacey and Adrien.
The swinging door to the kitchen opened, and the kettle whistled at the same time.
I picked the kettle up from the stove and poured the boiling water into the waiting teapot. “The tea is almost ready.” I looked up, expecting to see my grandmother there, ready to help me take the tray into the shop.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Rainwater said.
I smiled at the police chief. “I thought you were Grandma Daisy.”
He laughed. “I hope you weren’t disappointed.”
“Never.” I finished filling the pot with hot water, set the kettle back on the stovetop, and placed the lid on the teapot. When I turned around, Rainwater was standing directly behind me. I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him tight. His police uniform shirt was damp against my cheek, but I didn’t care. “I wanted to do that the moment you walked into the shop. You looked so upset.”
He hugged me back. “I could tell. I can always tell when you want to say more, Violet.”
“Am I that I obvious?” I asked in a lighter tone, and stepped out of his arms.
“Your forehead wrinkles, and you press you lips shut like you are trying to physically keep the words in.”
“Hmm, how very telling. I’ll have to work on that.”
He smiled briefly and then sighed. While I enjoyed our banter, I wasn’t the only one with a tell. I watched David’s lips turn down and his jaw clench, and I knew I wouldn’t like whatever he had to say next.
“Out with it, David.”
“There is some information about Jo that I need to tell you.”
I raised my brow. “I thought you didn’t find anything.”
“We didn’t. At least we didn’t find anything in the woods. Earlier today, I learned something else …”
Verse and Vengeance Page 19