by Ellery Adams
Suddenly, the space where the tip of Nora’s pinkie finger used to be tingled. She stared at her hand, discomfited by the sensation. She’d never experienced the feeling before.
“Excuse me,” said a soft, female voice, and Nora hid her damaged hand behind her back.
“Yes? Can I help you?” she asked, averting the burned side of her face.
Like all strangers, the woman noticed Nora’s scars. However, she only gave them a cursory inspection. “Do you carry cookbooks with scone recipes? I just ate the most amazing scone at the Gingerbread House, but the baker said the recipe couldn’t be duplicated because her scones are based on people’s fondest memories. She told me that she uses a basic recipe and adds certain ingredients after talking to each customer.”
“That’s what I’ve heard as well,” Nora said. “What did yours taste like?”
“Oranges and cream.” The woman’s face broke into a broad grin. “The first bite brought me back to my grandmother’s house in Florida. She had orange trees. During my visits, we’d bake the most delicious things. Her kitchen was filled with clutter and sunshine. I loved every minute I spent with her.”
Nora came out from inside the ticket booth. “I have several cookbooks with scone recipes. The best anyone can do is to create a scone of their own.”
“I’d settle for that,” the woman said. She was younger than Nora, who was forty, but had the wise and slightly guarded eyes of someone who’d experienced a decade’s worth of anguish in a very short period of time. “If I could spend a few hours lost in memories of Granny, I would.”
As Nora led the woman to the cookbook section, two things occurred. First, the space just above her pinkie finger tingled again. Simultaneously, the second train whistle called out the imminent arrival of more people in search of healing.
The woman, who’d paused to pluck a Vaseline-glass fox from a bookshelf, hadn’t noticed that Nora had stopped walking.
“Granny had a fox just like this,” the woman said, running her fingers down the fox’s smooth back. “She let me touch all of her things, even when I was very young. My house was a veritable museum. It was more important to impress visitors than to be comfortable.”
“What’s your line of work?” Nora asked.
The woman’s mouth drooped. “I’m an accountant. I’m good at it, but I hate it.”
“Do you still enjoy cooking?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded unsure. “I might.”
Nora gestured at a club chair covered in purple velvet. “I’m going to put a stack of books on that cushion. I think you need to read these books. If you read every one, in order, I believe you’ll find an orange-scented, sun-filled kitchen of your own.” Twenty minutes later, the woman left with the fox and two shopping bags of books. One bag was weighed down with cookbooks, while the other held Eric Ripert’s 32 Yolks, Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club, Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, Richard Morais’s The Hundred-Foot Journey, Muriel Barbery’s Gourmet Rhapsody, and Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen.
Nora watched the woman walk toward the park with a light, eager step and hoped the books would do their job. If they did, the woman would make messes in her kitchen. She would buy knickknacks for her tidy, spartan apartment. She would let her hair down and take chances. She would find joy.
Still scanning the park square, Nora wondered where the trolley passengers had gone. The lodge’s green trolley was parked in its usual place, but no lodge guests strolled the sidewalks or meandered from the row of quaint shops on Bath Street to the Pink Lady Grill or the Gingerbread House.
Just then, a flash of red caught Nora’s eye and she groaned inwardly as a tall, shapely woman passed in front of the bookshop window. The woman yanked the door open, ignoring the riotous clanging of the sleigh bells, and settled into the closest chair like a queen awaiting the adulation of her subjects. Her pouty lips curved into a cat-with-the-cream grin. “Consider your next bibliotherapy session canceled.”
“Hello to you too, Estella.” Nora picked up the stray paperbacks a customer had left on the table next to Estella’s chair. “I assume you’re referring to the man I met on the park bench. Why isn’t he coming? Did you scare him off?”
“Me?” Estella pretended to be affronted, but Nora wasn’t falling for the act. “I didn’t even get a chance to meet him. I was up at the lodge wasting my time on a man I thought had some potential, but he’s already making payments to an ex-wife and needs to send three kids to college. There’d be nothing left for me.” She waved a manicured hand in dismissal.
Nora was itching to reshelve the books and check on the coffee. Though she didn’t dislike Estella, she was rarely at ease in her company.
Recalling the strange sensation she’d experienced as the second train whistle blew, Nora felt an inexplicable prickle of dread. She jerked a thumb toward the window. “Where is everyone?”
Estella’s grin returned. “At the train station. They’ve been drawn there like flies to sugar. The sheriff rolled in a few seconds ago, and since he and I have never gotten along, I made myself scarce.”
Nora, who made it a point not to look people directly in the eye, forgot her rule and gave Estella an impatient stare. “What happened? Just spit it out.”
Crossing her arms in disappointment, Estella murmured something about no one being any fun, but eventually complied with Nora’s request. “When your man on the bench placed an order for one of Hester’s comfort scones, he asked her to box it because he was heading over here to see you. He left the bakery, box in hand, but he never made it to Miracle Books.” Estella leaned back in the chair and smoothed the skirt of her white sundress. “I’m sure he’d rather be sitting in this comfy chair than where he is now.”
Nora knew she wasn’t going to like the answer to her question, but it had to be asked. “Which is?”
“On the tracks,” Estella declared breathlessly. “Someone pushed him in front of the three o’clock train.”
THE BOOK OF CANDLELIGHT
In the new Secret, Book, and Scone Society novel from New York Times bestselling author Ellery Adams, the rain in Miracle Springs, North Carolina, has been relentless—and a flood of trouble is about to be unleashed . . .
As the owner of Miracle Books, Nora Pennington figures all the wet weather this spring is at least good for business. The local inns are packed with stranded travelers, and among them Nora finds both new customers and a new friend, the sixtysomething Sheldon, who starts helping out at the store.
Since a little rain never hurt anyone, Nora rides her bike over to the flea market one sodden day and buys a bowl from Danny, a Cherokee potter. It’ll make a great present for Nora’s EMT boyfriend. But the next day, a little rain turns into a lot of rain, and the Miracle River overflows its banks. Amid the wreckage of a collapsed footbridge, a body lies within the churning water.
Nora and the sheriff both doubt the ruling of accidental drowning, and Nora decides it’s time for the Secret, Book, and Scone Society to spring into action. When another body turns up, it becomes clearer that Danny’s death can’t be blamed on a natural disaster. A crucial clue may lie within the stone walls of the Inn of Mist and Roses: a diary, over a century old and spattered with candle wax, that leads Nora and her friends through a maze of intrigue—and onto the trail of a murderer . . .
Amy Stern Photography
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ELLERY ADAMS has written over thirty mystery novels and can’t imagine spending a day away from the keyboard. Ms. Adams, a native New Yorker, has had a lifelong love affair with stories, food, rescue animals, and large bodies of water. When not working on her next novel, she bakes, gardens, spoils her three cats, and spends far too much time on Pinterest. She lives with her husband and two children (aka the Trolls) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.elleryadamsmysteries.com.
Contents
Praise for Ellery Adams’s Previous Mysteries
Also by<
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Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Epigraph
Also by
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
THE SECRET, BOOK & SCONE SOCIETY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
