Verse and Vengeance

by Amanda Flower

  She smiled at me and accepted the clothes.

  “Can I ask you one more question?” I asked.

  She sighed. “Sure.”

  “Do you know why Redding was killed?” I search her face. “Is that why you’re hiding? You’re hiding from whoever killed him?”

  She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “That sounds a bit dramatic, doesn’t it? You make it sound like I’m in the middle of a spy movie.”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  She frowned. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I know that you were watching me for Redding. Why were you doing that?”

  Her eyes went wide. “How do you know?”

  I let out a breath. I thought she might deny it, but as painful as it was to hear from her, I was grateful she didn’t. “The police found your file.”

  She shook her head. “I knew I should have taken it with me or burnt it. I didn’t have enough time to go back to my apartment to do either.”

  “Why? What are you running from? Jo, I’m your friend, but I’m your teacher first. I can help you.”

  “Why would you want to help me after what I did?” she asked bitterly. “I wouldn’t in your place.”

  “Because I know people make mistakes when they are your age—we all make mistakes—but only a few mistakes can truly ruin a person’s life.” I paused. “One of those is murder.”

  “I told you I didn’t kill anyone.” Her voice was sharp.

  I noticed that a puddle was forming around her feet and sighed. “We can talk more when you get cleaned up.”

  She nodded and held the clothes I gave her so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “Thank you, Violet. No matter what, you are a great teacher and friend. You don’t deserve what I’ve put you through, and I’m sorry for all of it.”

  “I just want you to be okay, and I think the best way for you to do that is to turn yourself in to the police. They can protect you from whatever it is you are so afraid of. Chief Rainwater is a good man. I’m not just saying that because he’s my boyfriend, either. When I was in trouble with the law, he listened to me and believed me. He will believe you too if you give him a chance.”

  She nodded. “All right. I’ll do that if you go with me to the police station.”

  “Of course I’ll go. The bathroom is just there.” I pointed to the closed door on the other side of the room. “I’ll leave you to it.” I picked up the stack of Whitman’s poetry and went into my small living room.

  A moment later, I heard the shower turn on. I couldn’t blame Jo for wanting to take a shower if she had been in the woods these last few days; she needed one. I shivered at the very thought. I would have made a terrible camper if I’d ever tried it, which I never had.

  I waited in the living room for five minutes and then removed my phone from my pocket. I didn’t know for certain that Jo wouldn’t change her mind about going to the police station. Maybe it would be better to have the station come to her, and, I told myself, she would be more comfortable talking to Rainwater by the fire in Charming Books than she would in a sterile interrogation room.

  Even with my rationale in place, I felt like a traitor texting Rainwater. However, I didn’t have much choice. I knew Jo needed more help than I could give her. If she really was in trouble and hiding from whoever had killed Redding and probably killed Bryant Cloud too, she needed protection, more protection than I could give her.

  I texted Rainwater. JO IS HERE

  WHERE

  BOOKSHOP. SHE WAS HIDING IN THE SHOP THE WHOLE TIME YOU WERE HERE.

  I’LL BE THERE IN TWO MINUTES. DON’T LET HER LEAVE.

  OKAY.

  I waited another minute. I could still hear the shower going in the bathroom, and then a feeling of dread fell over me. I knocked on the door to my bedroom. “Jo?”

  There was no answer.

  I knocked and repeated her name again. When there was still no answer, I went inside. The bathroom door stood open and the shower was on. There was no one in it. I went back into my bedroom, and she was gone. Her wet clothes were on the floor and the window was open.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I realized my mistake. I’d never thought Jo would go out my second-story window. I peered out the window.

  The Queen Anne Victorian had a wraparound porch under the window. My guess was that Jo had lowered herself out the window to the porch roof and then shimmied down one of the porch posts. It would be at least a six-foot drop from my window to the porch roof. A risky move on a night with good weather, and this wasn’t good weather. The roof was slick with rain. I would never have tried it for fear of breaking an ankle.

  She must have been desperate to do that. Jo was afraid. I should never have left her alone. Guilt washed over me. I felt like I’d betrayed my student for telling the police she was there, and I felt like I’d let Rainwater down for letting her get away. There was no way I was going to come out on top of this.

  There was a knock at my apartment door, and I jumped, hitting my head on the widow frame.

  “Violet.” Rainwater came into the bedroom with his hand on the hilt of his gun. He was dry and in civilian clothes.

  “How did you get inside the house?” I asked.

  He blushed. “Your grandmother gave me keys in case of emergency years ago. I thought she would have told you that.”

  “No, she never mentioned it.” My eyes narrowed. “In all the time that we’ve been dating, you’ve never told me about the keys.”

  “I’ve never had a reason to use them until now,” he said. “I never thought to mention it. She didn’t give me a key to your apartment.”

  Like that was supposed to make me feel better.

  “I can give them back if you don’t want me to have them.”

  “No, no.” I closed my eyes for a moment. “It’s fine, but a little warning next time; you startled me. I almost fell out the window.”

  “What are you doing with your head out the window?” He took a step forward.

  I frowned. “I was looking for Jo.”

  “She left?”

  I nodded. “I’m sorry. I left her in the bedroom so she could change out of her wet clothes. I thought she was taking a shower.”

  Rainwater went into the bathroom and turned off the shower. I hadn’t even realized it was still running. He came out of the bathroom again. “That’s the oldest trick in the book.”

  “Well, it’s never happened to me before, so it’s new to me.”

  He moved to the window. “The rain is tapering off, but I’m in no mood to go back into those woods tonight and look for her. She’s very good at hiding and could be anywhere. Tell me everything you learned from her. Where’s she been? Where she’s staying? Why she ran away? I don’t believe it’s because she knows we think she’s the killer. There’s something more to it.”

  I walked out of my bedroom into the living room and to the door. “Grandma Daisy would say that we need some tea for this. Let’s go downstairs so we can talk.”

  “I need a lot more than your grandmother’s tea, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Rainwater said.

  “I have harder stuff, at least I think so. Renee brought wine to the last Red Inkers meeting. There’s an unopened bottle. She would understand if we broke into it.”

  He followed me down the spiral stairs. “No, I need to keep my wits about me. I never drink when I’m working a case. I need to be able to think clearly and to act at a moment’s notice.” He stood by the fireplace. Without being stoked, the fire was starting to die down.

  Faulkner stood on the hearth with his wings out. Apparently he liked the feeling of the heat on his feathers. Emerson had finally fully recovered from his soggy ride through the park and watched Faulkner with narrowed eyes from the sales counter.

  I perched on the arm of the sofa.

  “Tell me everything Jo told you,” he said in his best cop voice.

  I tried not to take his cop voice personally and told him what I knew. “She’s d
efinitely hiding from someone. She didn’t say as much, but I think she knows who the killer is.”

  “Then she should come to the police. We can protect her.”

  “That’s what I told her, but I think she’s too afraid to do that or she thinks the police won’t believe her.”

  He made a face.

  “I tried to convince her otherwise.”

  “I know you did.” He sat on the couch. “This case is the most frustrating of my career, because I know Jo holds all the answers, but I can’t get to her. If I just had a shot to talk to her, I know it would be solved quickly.”

  “She’s just a scared kid.”

  “I know that, believe me, I do. And I have compassion for her. But we can’t forget, if she doesn’t turn herself in, others could be hurt or worse. She could be hurt.”

  I gasped.

  “She’s alive, but if she is this afraid, for how long will that be?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t bear to think of real harm befalling the girl. Rainwater, too, frowned as if already contemplating Jo as the next victim. And it was true. While I’d been so focused on finding Jo, protecting the shop, and figuring out how Walt Whitman tied into this entire mess, there was one big, glaring fact I’d steadfastly refused to acknowledge. There was a killer on the loose, one who had killed not one person but two.

  “Why was Jo watching you for Redding?”

  “If I told you, I’m not sure you would believe me.”

  He rubbed his hands through his hair in frustration. “Violet, you either tell me or I’m leaving. You can’t push me away like this forever. If you want to be with me, I have a right to know what’s going on.”

  I stared at him and realized that in all this time I had been worried about tell him about Charming Books, I’d never considered giving him a chance to understand. That wasn’t fair to him or to me.

  I walked over to the tree and ran my hand up and down its white trunk. “Once you asked me how the tree healed so fast after being shot. You wanted to know why there wasn’t any mark. I never answered your question.”

  “No, you didn’t.” His voice had an edge to it.

  “I healed the tree.” I dropped my hand from the trunk.

  “You?”

  “It wasn’t me specifically. It was the water, from the springs.” I turned to look at him.

  “So you don’t collect the water for Daisy.” His voice was mild, like he was trying to remain calm to process everything I was saying. I didn’t blame him for taking it in slowly. It was a lot to digest. When I’d heard it the first time, I hadn’t believed. I didn’t want to believe. I was perfectly happily with the boring life I had before I knew about my inheritance as the shop’s Caretaker. Some days, when the shop’s essence was quiet, I still didn’t think I would believe if the tree weren’t there as a constant reminder to me of my responsibilities.

  “No. I collect it for the tree and the shop.” I placed my hand on the tree again. The tree’s smooth bark was cool to the touch. “This tree is over two hundred years old. If you look it up in any nature guide, birch trees aren’t meant to live that long, and honestly, it’s probably older than that, but my ancestress Rosalee found it just after the War of 1812 and built this house around it. She was a mystical healer and knew of the power of the spring water in the village, which wasn’t even a real village then, only a collection of Native American and white settlers. In any case, she knew of the Seneca tribe’s tales of the springs, so she moved here from Cleveland after her husband was killed in the Battle of Lake Erie. At some point after she built the first, much smaller version of this house, she started watering the tree with water from the springs.

  “We will never know the reason she started it, but she watered the tree every other day from water collected from the spring. The water went directly from the spring to the tree. Every daughter in the family after that has done the same.”

  Rainwater was quiet, but I felt him watching me. I didn’t look to see if the feeling was correct.

  I cleared my throat. “The Seneca said that Niagara water was special, and Rosalee believed that too. It became more apparent over time, as the water and the tree were able to give gifts or to send messages to Rosalee’s descendants. To me.”

  I turned around to face him. Rainwater was watching me. He had his mask up. I couldn’t read his expression. I couldn’t tell if he believed me or thought I was crazy.

  I looked away from him. “That’s why Grandma Daisy had me come back to the village. It wasn’t just to be closer to her. She wanted that too, but I had to come back to become the Caretaker of this shop and the tree. She knew that it was time to pass on the responsibility that she had carried for so long.” I took a breath. “My mother should have been the Caretaker now, but since she’s not here, it had to be me.”

  “There’s more …” David prompted after a minute.

  “My grandmother’s mother turned the family home into a bookshop because she didn’t want to be a Caretaker; she refused her gift. Grandma Daisy didn’t. Now it does the same with me.”

  “How?” Rainwater asked.

  “The shop will tell me passages to read from books.”

  He glanced at the pile of Leaves of Grass. “Like Whitman?”

  “The shop has been putting Whitman in my path ever since before Private Investigator Redding died. I knew something was going to happen, but I didn’t know what. I know that somehow Whitman’s poems are connected to Redding’s death. I have been trying to find out why Redding took the book with him on his fatal bike ride. I was especially curious because he had been following me. I know this. I saw him around the shop, and you told me that he hired Jo to follow me too. She admitted to that, by the way. Well, technically, not that she was being paid, but she admitted to following me and keeping a file. She said she regretted not destroying the file.” The thought of her trying to cover her tracks or destroy the evidence of her spying on me hurt as much as discovering she’d done it in the first place.

  “How does this connect to Redding?”

  I drew a deep breath. “I think it was the shop’s secret that he was after. I think that’s why he had Jo watch me. He so desperately wanted to know what was happening inside Charming Books. If he learned what it was, he might get a lot of attention or even money for revealing my family and me to the world. Not that I really know how he would profit much from it after the initial curiosity wore off. He might have spent months trying to figure out what was going on and be disappointed when he finally learned the answer.”

  “Does Jo know your secret?” His voice was low.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Grandma Daisy and now you are the only ones who know for certain. Jo may suspect something odd is going on, but nothing more than that. She surely suspects something about why I gather the water from the springs.” I took a breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I was afraid to. Everyone before me, my mother, my grandmother, going all the way back to Rosalee, ended up without love in their lives. It seems to be the cost of the gift for the Waverly women. I expected the same to happen to us, so I’ve held you at a distance. Now you know everything. I’m not holding anything else back. You can decide what you want to do with that. You can decide if it’s too much and you want to leave.” My voice caught.

  He shook his head. “I need to process this. It’s a lot to process.”

  “I know,” I said. “I felt the same way when I returned to Cascade Springs last year and Grandma Daisy told me about my inheritance. It wasn’t something I wanted to hear. I didn’t even want to stay in the village.” I felt tears gather in my eyes. “Now I can’t imagine leaving, and a lot of that has to do with you. I can’t imagine leaving you, and now that I’ve told you the truth, you’re going to leave me. It was all for naught.” A single tear slid down my cheek, and I dropped my chin to my chest.

  “Violet, look at me.”

  I couldn’t look into those amber eyes that might judge me. It was too painful.

&
nbsp; “Violet.” He lifted my chin with his finger and made me look at him. “Violet,” he said again. “This is a lot to take in. Basically, you are telling me you can magically talk to books.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t talk to them. I interpret the passages the shop reveals to me.”

  He smiled. “Okay, talk was a bad word. But you are telling me that some kind of mysticism is behind this, that the shop, the tree, whatever it is, communicates with you, and it is your inheritance to accept those communications.”

  I nodded and looked away from him.

  “Look where I’m at. I’m still here.” His voice was soft. “It’s not going to chase me away from you. Nothing can.”

  I met his eyes.

  “I’ve known that this shop, the birch tree, and you were special. I knew there had to be something more going on here than you wanted me to know. I knew you would tell me when you were ready. That doesn’t change how I feel about you. I loved you before this and I will love you after.”

  His eyes were soft and reminded me more now of warm honey than of amber. I was fairly sure I was crying with happiness and with relief, but I was too much in awe of his reaction to know for certain.

  “Nothing can change that,” he said. “Nothing.”

  Then he kissed me.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The conversation about the shop essence with Rainwater had gone nothing like I had expected it to go. I’d thought it would chase him away, but it had had the opposite effect. He loved me. I was one of the women he loved like his sister and Aster, but very different too. If I’d known that was going to happen, I would have told him a lot sooner. I would have told him I loved him too instead of burying it deep inside my heart for fear of what he would say when he learned the truth about Charming Book and about me.