Mabel wrinkles her nose. “I don’t. But I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Come to find out, this town is loaded with—”
“People who know things,” Morgan cuts her off. “Oh look, a crowd just walked in, and wouldn’t you know? Iona and Teddy are both late. I’d better tend to the register. Mabel, please finish getting the stuff together for the accountant. I have an appointment with him later this week.”
My mouth falls open. “Mabel, are you still working for the Haunted Book Barn?”
“That’s right, I sort of put the haunt in haunted.” She gives a little wink my way before glowering at her sister. “We’ll talk.” She floats right through the island, through the counter, and about a dozen tables laden with books. Just witnessing the supernatural sight makes me feel a little queasy.
“Don’t go green on me.” Morgan gives me a quick embrace. “You’ve got this, Billie. You’re going to be okay, just like Mabel turned out okay.”
She takes off, and I don’t have the heart to point out Mabel turned out dead.
Maybe that’s what’s wrong with me? I bit the big one as soon as I saw Harold take a bite out of Charlene.
It makes total sense. Not only am I not good at time travel, I’m not good at dying either.
Figures.
As if on cue, my phone pings and it’s a text from the coed muncher himself.
Spoke to the realtor. The house is getting some serious action. This is your last chance. You can still move back into it. Let me know and we’ll pull the cord. Harper deserves to be with her friends. Don’t be selfish.
“Don’t be selfish?” I practically gag on the words.
“He’s got a lot of nerve,” a female voice chirps from behind and I jump, only to find Teddy peering over my shoulder. She’s clad in turquoise from head to toe, and it’s a good look on her. “Tell him it takes a selfish jackass to know one.”
“I would, but that equation makes me a jackass, too.”
“That’s why I hate the new math.” She shakes her head as we head to the front of the café and help flush out a few customers. “So have you seen yourself yet?” She hitches her head to the door.
“Nope, I think you getting behind that register has something to do with it.”
“Why didn’t you say so? I’ll boot-scoot over right away.”
She starts to take off and I catch her by the elbow.
“Teddy, I saw Mabel this morning. She said something about Glimmerspell being loaded with something before Morgan cut her off. Is there anything you think I should know?”
She squints over at me. “I think you know what I know. Just don’t overthink things. That’s probably why you’re hopping all over next week. You’ve blown a gasket in your noggin.”
“Teddy, what things do you think I know?”
“Would you look at that?” Her body jerks toward the nearly empty entry. “I’ve got to help with the rush.”
She takes off and I pull out my phone and do a quick search on Glimmerspell, but all that comes up are a few advertisements on the shops down the street, including one for the Haunted Book Barn. I have to scroll three full pages before I can find anything on that paranormal lore, and even that’s pretty scant and exclusively related to the restaurants that are propagating the rumors to begin with.
Once I serve up a few more customers, I head over to the tables in front of the registers, to the very table laden with books on the supernatural. There’s a smattering of books on werewolves, more than twice that on the fae, with their sparkling covers that look as if they were sprinkled with pixie dust, and a handful on the bloodsuckers of the bunch.
Vampire Hunter’s Companion. The ornately carved black leather-bound book with a picture of a red rose catches my attention once again just the way it did the other day and I pull it forward.
The scent of warm musk takes over and I look up to find Iona glaring at me.
Her lips curve a notch. “Careful. You read that and they might come after you.”
“So they’re real?” I whisper, suddenly interested to carry out a conversation with the woman who brazenly threatened me the other night.
Her expression goes from glowering to mildly amused as she hitches that thick dark hair of hers behind one ear. She’s donned a pink and black tweed blazer over dark velvet pants and makes me feel like a slacker for my choice of accoutrements, my go-to sweater and jeans. I’ve always been a no-fanfare kind of a gal, and Harold never seemed to mind. On second thought, he may have minded.
“What do you think?” Iona is quick to lob the question right back at me. “Rumor has it, bloodthirsty beasts have been hunting humans in this area for ages. Some think a serial killer is on the loose, looking to ride on the coattails of those rumors. There’s been an uptick in corpses as of late. I’d watch my back. You never know who the killer will pick off next. It might just be you.” She bleeds a dark smile before heading back to her post at the registers.
Something tells me I should be marking off these threats with tally marks.
I give the tome in my hand a quick once-over before setting it on a stack of books that make a small tower in the middle of the table. There was nothing new it had to offer.
Want to fight off a vampire? Invest in a crucifix and holy water. A wooden stake works well in a pinch, and that whole garlic thing was wishful thinking on some poor unsuspecting human’s part.
Another crowd moves over to the café, and I quickly outfit them all with their choice of pricey lattes. And once they get settled, I pull out my phone and look up the murder ratio in this part of Maine.
Silent Glen, Moonlit Falls, Mulberry Lake, Cider Cove, Edison, Winchester County, and Glimmerspell seem to be a hot zone as far as homicides are concerned. Cider Cove is where Bizzy lives. She mentioned she’s been hunting down killers now for a while and that she uses her telesensual abilities to help bring down the criminals.
So I’m not all that shocked to see Cider Cove on the list.
“Psst! Billie the Kid!” Teddy hisses from the register. I look up in time to see the Saturday night version of myself walking into the bookshop.
“Oh my word,” I wail, and no sooner do the words leave my lips than that wayward version of me locks eyes with mine. The two of us freeze solid for a moment before I hightail it to the kitchen and peer out from behind the wall.
Elliot walks in on her heels, follows her over to the book table, and I can see him watching me—her.
His eyes ride up and down the back of my body as if he were eyeing me like a snack.
Okay, so that might be wishful thinking. His ex is ten times hotter than any woman I know, and I’m pretty sure the only thing he wants from me is answers, per his exact words.
The Saturday night version of me jerks before walking over to Teddy, and Teddy quickly tells her to get back where she belongs in not so many words.
Teddy and I watch as the old version of me quickly blinks out of sight as the air around her grows blurry.
“Snickerdoodle!” I yelp. I gave up expletives when Harper was born and have been casting creative curses ever since. Snickerdoodle is a longtime favorite, and it happens to be one of my favorite cookies, too.
I look back at Elliot, who seems to have missed the whole show because he’s preoccupied looking at the vampire hunter’s guide that I set on that tower of books earlier.
To think, if I didn’t do that, he might have seen me doing my impersonation of thin air.
Holy smokes. I hustle off in his direction.
“Detective Greenly.” I force a smile as he shoots me a look.
“I see you’ve changed your mind.”
My chin juts out. “Oh right, that whole Jenny-interrogation thing.” I make a face at the book in his hands. “Some light reading for you?”
“No.” He lands it back in its proper position where I found it this morning. “I’m not interested in things that go bump in the night. I’m interested in tracking down a killer. What do you know about Jenny?”
<
br /> “She was having an affair with the perverted professor and things were going south. But that’s old news. She says Vera Henley is the original woman scorned. She’s the next suspect on my list.”
“On your list?” His brows hike a notch and I greedily take in the far too handsome man before me.
There should be rules about ladening one human with so many comely features. It’s not fair that no matter how much my mind demands to dislike him, my hormones make my heart go pitter-patter. Fine, a few other parts of me are jumping as well.
“That’s right, my list. In fact, I was just about to track her down and see if we could have a quick word. And much like Jenny, I don’t think I’ll have a problem getting Vera to open up to me. Do you want to know why? Because I’m a woman. Women trust other women—even though, sadly, there’s another woman at the other end of the dumpster fire that took down my life. But that’s neither here nor Harold,” I say as I try to head for the kitchen, but he quickly blocks my path.
“Billie, you can’t go off questioning suspects. Eventually you might wind up questioning the killer, and if he or she gets wind of the fact you’re onto them, you might be the next person they jab with a needle full of poison.”
“Ooh, what kind of poison? I’m guessing we’re talking something far more caustic than your run-of-the-mill nightshade, something that works quickly, something that attacks the nervous system and stops the heart on a dime.” I shrug. “I’ve been doing a little light reading myself.”
It’s true. I was up all night researching what toxin could cause someone to drop dead on the spot and foam at the mouth.
Detective Greenly is right back to glowering at me.
“Ricin,” he says, loosening up a bit. He tips his head back as if he were tossing out a dare on some level.
“Ricin? Geez,” I hiss. “That’s one toxin you don’t mess with.”
“Now you’re catching on. And the killer is someone you don’t want to mess with either, Billie. I bet they’ve got more where that came from and believe me when I tell you it’s a painful way to die. Now”—he straightens—“how about you tell me everything you know about Jenny and Vera, and I’m looking for far more details than you laid out. Then you can get back to the café.”
My eyes lock over his as I examine this sexy beast. I mean sexist beast.
Good grief, he’s not only hijacked my hormones, he’s taken my brain hostage as well.
“No,” I bite the air between us. “Vera is mine. Go find your own shiny little suspect to play with. And before you go throwing any of that obstructing justice malarkey my way, Vera and I are just a couple of friends looking to catch up.”
Morgan walks this way and I lift a finger in her direction.
“Morgan, any idea where I can find Vera, the gal that miked me up the other day?”
She squints past me, and for a fleeting moment I’m afraid I just posed the question to thin air as far as Elliot Greenly was concerned. But thankfully it’s not Mabel’s ghost I’m talking to, it’s Morgan. Note to self: double and triple check next time in an effort to avoid looking like a lunatic.
“Let me see.” Morgan whips out her phone and her thumbs dance across the screen. No less than six seconds go by than she glances back my way. “Stage crew is hosting a birthday lunch for one of its members at Wolfgang’s Bistro today.”
“What a coincidence,” I say, quickly working off my apron and crumpling it into a ball. “It just so happens to be my lunch hour.”
Morgan opens her lips as if to say something but decides to shoot Elliot a dirty look instead.
“Fine, I’ll have Teddy cover the café. Take your time.” She takes the apron from me as I manufacture a smile for the morose man before me.
“I guess I’m going out for lunch.” I shrug his way. “I hear Wolfgang makes a mean sandwich.”
“That’s funny,” he says, no smile. “I was heading in the exact same direction.”
Chapter 8
Wolfgang’s Bistro is a dank, dark cave with moody music pulsing from the speakers. There’s an abandoned stage to the left and a bustling bar to the right. Between the two is a sea of tables with a decent number of patrons, most of which are buzzing with conversation. But it’s the sharp scent of a fresh grilled burger that has my appetite on full alert.
“It looks as if we beat the party to the punch,” I say as a blonde with a set of French braids that run down to her shoulders licks her lips as she looks to Elliot.
“The special is a roast beef sandwich with au jus.” Her lips extend when she says that last word until it looks as if she’s blowing him a kiss. And I have no doubt she is.
“Sounds good,” I tell her.
“Same here,” Elliot says as he casts his monstrous bad mood in my direction, and for a brief moment I wonder what he looks like under that dark coat, under that padded jacket that gives him the body of a linebacker.
The blonde with the braids skips off, and it’s just the two of us again. I didn’t drive down with him, not that he offered. I would have walked if the snow wasn’t piled five feet in every direction, but I’ve never been a fan of hiking through frozen tundra.
“What did Jenny say?” He cuts right to the chase.
“She was into the naughty professor. Apparently, he was seeing Vera first and soon both Jenny and your buddy Griffin ended up on Vera’s bad side. I’m guessing it made her edgy. But edgy enough to kill?”
“You tell me. You’re a woman who’s been scorned. Are you edgy enough to kill?”
That horrific scene that took place in my old bedroom bounces through my mind and a growl expels from me.
“Darn right, I am.” I shrug. “Or at least I was in the moment. But I had the good sense not to do it.” I bite down on my lip. “Okay, so I may have wrapped my hands around my soon-to-be ex-husband’s neck, but despite the fact, he’s still kicking.” I glower at the floor because a part of me wishes I could kick Harold a few more times.
Elliot’s brows swoop low as he considers this. “I’m sorry you went through something so terrible. That you’re still going through it. How are things going with that?”
Something in me softens when he asks the question.
“As well as can be expected. The house I thought I’d live in forever is on the market. My ex and his trollop are engaged—have I mentioned she’s wearing my old engagement ring? Oh, that’s right, I keep bringing it up, don’t I?” I tease because I distinctly remember telling him about it at Rex’s the other night. “And, of course, they’re expanding their family.”
He gives a long blink. “I can’t imagine how you must feel.”
“Well, that’s honest of you. And you know what? I don’t think I’ve figured out how I feel yet either. Harper is so upset she hasn’t said two words to him in months—at least not any I can repeat.”
His lips twitch side to side. “What about your family?” His eyes bore into mine, and there’s something about the way he looks at me that sears me from the inside. And just like that, I’m right back to envisioning how he looks sans the suit and the attitude. In my mind’s eye he’s dropping his jacket, unbuttoning his shirt, and dropping his—
“I have a mother!” I sit up with a start and clear my throat. “She loves to travel.” The waitress lands a couple of ice waters onto the table, and I take a few gulping sips. “I have a sister, too. She’s pretty much lost in space. She worked as a management consultant, and once she was laid off, she sold all her belongings and became a beach bum in South America. I think she weaves baskets for tourists in exchange for cold, hard cash. She takes a bartending job when she can get it. She says she’s living her best life. Never married, no kids. I used to think she was wasting her life, and now I’m starting to envy her.”
The idea of a smile stretches across his face. “I’m starting to envy her, too.”
“What about you? Morgan mentioned she gets the milk for the café straight from your mother’s dairy farm. You don’t strike me as a dairy farme
r yourself. Any siblings other than Rex?”
“More than I care to count. And you’re right, the dairy business isn’t my calling, but my mother understands that.”
Before he could go on, a scruffy looking man with curly dark hair, a short beard, and a wily gleam in his amber eyes comes over and takes a seat next to Elliot, forcing him to scoot over a notch.
“Gentry James.” He holds out a hand and I shake it. “I’m the owner here. Pleasure to have your company. What the heck are you doing wasting your time with this guy?” He shakes his head with a touch of disappointment as if he meant it.
My mouth opens, and I’m about to say something when the man raps his knuckles over the table.
“I’ve got a steak on the grill I’m about to burn. Come by more often—without him if you can.” He jumps from his seat and shoots Elliot with his fingers. “You owe me money from that game last week.”
He takes off and a laugh gets caught in my throat.
“What’s this?” I tease. “The good detective betting on a game?”
“It’s all in fun.” He scowls. “Until you lose.”
Our food arrives, but neither of us dives in.
“Elliot—” I lean in. “Can I call you that?”
“What else would you call me?” His lips flicker with a hint of a smile. “What can I do for you, Billie?”
A spear of heat spikes through me when he says my name and my lips part, but nary a sound comes out.
I clear my throat. “I did a little research and this part of Maine has had its fair share of homicides, not to mention disappearances.”
His lips purse. “I’m aware. But if safety is your concern, I wouldn’t worry about it. What happened the other day at the Book Barn isn’t representative of Glimmerspell. Both you and your daughter can breathe easy.” He reaches over and rests his hand over mine. “I want you to feel safe here.” An electrical spark jumps from him to me and travels straight up to my lips, and now they’re somehow convinced they should be in on the action.
Midlife in Glimmerspell Page 10
