Murders and Metaphors

by Amanda Flower

  He pressed his lips together. “I don’t know why it’s your concern, Vi. Are you interested in the wine business?”

  “Only in regards to how it relates to Belinda Perkins’s murder.”

  He paused. “I heard from my mother.”

  “That’s my cue to leave,” Grant said, and walked away.

  Nathan scowled at his brother’s back.

  “And what did your mother want?” I asked as innocently as I could manage.

  He studied me with his dark eyes. “She said that you went up to the vineyard and snooped around with a private investigator.”

  “I wasn’t snooping around with a private investigator. I don’t even know him. He followed me there. He said that he was hired by Sebastian Knight to look into the murder.”

  Nathan frowned. “Sebastian doesn’t have faith in the police?”

  I shrugged. “I think it’s a safe bet to say that Sebastian doesn’t have faith in anyone. I’m not even sure that he loved Belinda. He certainly loved her money,” I said, thinking of the life insurance policy.

  “Mr. Mayor,” Miles Rathbone said as he joined us. “I’m so very glad that you could come to our meeting. You secretary said that you wouldn’t be able to make it.”

  Nathan plastered on his mayoral face, which I had come to recognize as a pleasant mask. “You know I try to always make time for the guild when I can.”

  “Of course, of course,” Rathbone said. Miles Rathbone was a slim, short man with a perfectly manicured goatee. He couldn’t be much more than forty. “I don’t believe I have met the lovely woman standing next to you.”

  “This is Violet Waverly,” Nathan said. “She owns Charming Books, the bookshop in the village, with her grandmother Daisy.”

  Rathbone paled some at the mention of my name. “Oh, I have heard many things about you throughout the village.”

  “All good, I hope.”

  “All interesting,” he said.

  “I’ve heard some things about you too,” I said. “Belinda wasn’t fond of your wines. How has that impacted your business?”

  His face turned white. “I don’t know why it’s any of your business.”

  “She’s dead, and the police are looking to find the person who killed her. It seems to me that a lot of people had a motive to kill her, including you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I wouldn’t kill anyone.” He laughed nervously. It wasn’t the most convincing claim to innocence I had ever heard.

  “But you were upset with Belinda, weren’t you?” I asked. “She wrote an unfavorable review of your ice wine that was so bad you had to take it off the market.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do,” I said. “I was there when you asked Belinda to sign your book to the winery she destroyed, your winery. I’m sure that is especially hard to take since she is your ex-wife.”

  Nathan’s mouth fell open. “What?”

  Rathbone’s face turned a deep red. “How dare you come into my winery and guild meeting and speak to me like this?”

  Nathan stared at him. “You were married to Belinda?”

  “Years ago, for a very short time. It has nothing to do with what is happening now.”

  “The bad review must have been extra painful, though,” Nathan said. “More personal.”

  “If I wanted to kill that woman, I would have when I was married to her. She was conceited and selfish and I was happy to be rid of her. I know she wrote that review of my winery out of spite, but according to the wine community, Belinda Perkins can do no wrong. There was nothing I could do to stop her.” With that, Rathbone stomped away.

  He said it with so much venom that I couldn’t help but believe that he was capable of murder.

  The old man who had been sitting next to me stood up. “Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow …” The old man hobbled away.

  “Vi, what’s wrong?” Nathan peered at me. “Do you need to sit?”

  I forced a laugh. “No, it’s just that quote. I know it.”

  “Where’s it from?”

  I shrugged. “I probably read it somewhere.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  On my way out of Bone and Hearth, I spotted Grant and Nathan talking to writer Jack Zule out of the corner of my eye. I knew that they would want all press about Morton Vineyards going forward to be good press.

  I left the winery more determined than ever to get back to the shop and get to the bottom of what the shop’s magical essence was telling me as far as Little Women went. I didn’t know if I was misinterpreting the passages that it wanted me to read because it was being purposely obtuse or because I had lost my knack for understanding what the shop wanted me to know. In either case, it ended tonight, even if it took all night. I was determined to solve the clues.

  When I turned onto River Road, I drove slowly up the street looking for any sign of Redding’s gray sedan. It was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the only mode of transport that I passed was a carriage and its white horse making its way back to the livery.

  In the winter when there wasn’t a special event taking place, Cascade Springs became the quiet little river village that I imagined it had been when my ancestress Rosalee Waverly came here for the first time in 1812. She fell in love with the spring water and with the village as a whole. It could easily be done. It wasn’t until I had returned to the village after all that time away that I realized how much I had missed this place. There was something special about Cascade Springs. I just hadn’t realized how special until I came back and learned about my role as the Caretaker.

  I parked the Mini in front of the shop and walked through the front door. The shop door was still unlocked even though it was after closing time.

  Emerson met me at the door and cocked his black and white head. I narrowed my eyes at him. “And what have you been up to all day?”

  He wove around my ankles and purred.

  “Grandma!” I called into the shop.

  There was no answer. That wasn’t all that unusual. Often Grandma Daisy got caught up in a project and lost track of time. I was guessing that was why the front door was still unlocked.

  I locked the door and went in search of my grandmother. I circled the shop but didn’t find her. Then I went into the kitchen, which was the most likely place. She wasn’t there either. Shaking my head, I went up the narrow servants’ stairs behind the kitchen. The steps creaked under my weight. I pushed open the door and entered the fairy room loft. Emerson sat on one of the red-and-white toadstools as if he had been sitting there for hours waiting for me.

  I frowned when I noticed that the door to my apartment was ajar. We always kept the door closed and locked when the shop was open just so customers didn’t wander into my personal space.

  With my toe, I pushed open the door. Grandma Daisy sat in the middle of my sofa holding a letter. I immediately recognized the letter as Fenimore’s and my stomach dropped.

  I wanted to scold and yell at her for going through my private things. She had no right to do it, but when she looked up at me, all the harsh words died on my lips. She was pale, and her cheeks were sunken in.

  “What is this?” she asked in a hollow voice.

  “Did you go through my things?” The question came out harsher than I meant it too.

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I didn’t mean too. I thought that I was helping you. You’ve been so stressed lately with the shop, your classes at the college, your dissertation, and now Belinda’s murder, that I thought I would do you a little favor and fold your laundry. It’s been sitting in the basement for a few days.” She took a breath. “I didn’t mean to find this, but it was sitting on your nightstand.”

  “My nightstand? How did it get there? That’s not where I kept it.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But that’s where I found it.”

  The shop’s essence had moved the letter. I knew it in my heart.

  “As soon as I
saw it,” Grandma Daisy said, “I recognized Fern’s handwriting. I know it was wrong to pick it up, but I couldn’t help but touch it. She was my only child.”

  “Did you read it?” I asked.

  She handed me the letter. “I wanted to. That’s why you caught me here. I wanted to read that letter so badly. I wanted to hear my daughter’s voice in my head again, but I couldn’t. The letter is not addressed to me. It’s not even addressed to you, even though you are the one who has it. Why is it addressed to Fenimore?”

  Fenimore was a traveling troubadour that came to the village every year for the festival. He traveled all over the Niagara region and into New England playing his guitar and harmonica. That’s how my grandmother knew him. She didn’t know that he was the one man my mother had fallen in love with. She didn’t know that he was my father.

  “Maybe you should read it,” I said. “I’m not sure that I can explain. The letter will do a better job than I can.”

  She took it from my hand again. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded and perched on the armchair across from her.

  She stared at the letter and then took a deep breath. She unfolded that piece of yellowed paper and read. Tears gathered in Grandma Daisy’s eyes. “Why didn’t she tell me? I wish she would have told me.”

  I didn’t have an answer for that, so I asked, “Do you want me to make some tea?”

  Tea was always my grandmother’s go-to in times of distress.

  “Yes, dear, I think we’d both do well with a cup.”

  My apartment didn’t have a kitchen. I used the one downstairs in the main part of the house, but I did have an electric teapot for emergencies. This was an emergency if I’d ever seen one.

  I walked over to the credenza along the wall where I kept the teakettle and teacups. The vintage tea set decorated with classic children’s book characters had been a Christmas gift from Sadie. After filling the kettle with water from the bathroom sink, I plugged it in and sat across from my grandmother again.

  She folded the worn letter back up and tucked it into the envelope. “I wish that she had told me.”

  “According to Fenimore,” I said, “they didn’t tell anyone. They met in the summer, and by the end of the season, their relationship was over.” I was quiet for a moment. “When my mother was pregnant, did you ever ask her who the father was?”

  Grandma Daisy held the letter out to me, and I took it from her hand. I set it on the table between us. For some reason, seeing it there made me feel better. I hadn’t known how much it was bothering me being the only one who knew this secret about my mother. Now that I no longer had to carry the burden alone, I felt so much lighter.

  “I asked her several times in many different ways, but your mother was stubborn and wouldn’t tell me. I had to make a choice. Did I alienate my daughter by continuing to press the issue or let her tell me in her own time? I decided on the latter. I always thought she would tell me one day, but life got busy, she got sick, and you know the rest of the story.”

  I certainly did.

  “When did you find out?” Grandma Daisy asked.

  “Around Halloween,” I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know how to. I felt like I needed to come to terms with the information before I came to you with it. I wished that Mom had told me herself, but I don’t know what difference that would have made. It took Fenimore almost sixteen years to give me this letter. I don’t know what good it would have done me knowing all that time. Maybe it would have hurt more to be so young, know there was a father out there but he didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “Oh, my dear. If he knew what you were like, he would want to know you. I’m sure of that,” my grandmother mused.

  I wasn’t as sure. Fenimore knew what I was like now, and I hadn’t heard a peep from him since he had given me the letter.

  The teakettle whistled, and I got out of my seat. At the credenza, I poured hot water over tea bags in two of the small teacups.

  “English breakfast tea,” I said. “You’re favorite.” I handed her the teacup with a scene from Charlotte’s Web painted on it. I took the Alice in Wonderland teacup.

  “You are too good to me, my dear. You’ve always been a good granddaughter.”

  I smiled at the kindness of my grandmother’s comment. I hadn’t been that great of a granddaughter. When I fled from the village, I had seen my grandmother only one or two times a year until I returned to the village. I hadn’t been a good granddaughter then.

  Grandma Daisy sighed. “I wish your mother told me. I could have helped her more.”

  “You were a great help. Mom always appreciated what you did for both of us.” I sipped my tea. I cupped the teacup in my hand. “Maybe she was afraid to. Maybe she thought something would happen to Fenimore,” I said. “Aren’t the Waverly women destined to be alone? Maybe she thought it would be easier this way.”

  Grandma Daisy studied me. “Is this something you’ve worried about?”

  “You must admit it’s a pattern.”

  “There is no rule that it has to be that way,” she said quietly.

  “But it is that way. It has always been that way. You told me that. Why has it always been like that?”

  “You can’t keep a secret like that from someone you love so dear. Take it from me, it starts to eat at you. I can’t tell you how many times I almost cracked and told my beau Benedict.” She sighed. “I was planning to tell him everything,” she went on. “When he died suddenly, I was glad that I hadn’t said a word.”

  “Why?” I whispered the question.

  “I’m not sure how he would have taken it. It is a lot to absorb.” She finished her tea and set it on the side table. “Maybe you will be the one to find the right man to share the secret with. Maybe you will be the luckiest one of us all.”

  I thought of Rainwater. Could I trust him? I knew my family’s secret was the heart of my hesitation with him.

  I picked up my grandmother’s teacup and took both our cups back to the credenza. Just inches away from the electric teapot lay a copy of Little Woman. I knew that it hadn’t been there when I made the tea. I reached for it, and the book fell open. There were no fluttering pages, just a gentle thunk as the front cover hit the credenza.

  I bit my lip and then peered at the page. My eyes dropped to the text. “Unfortunately, we don’t have windows in our breasts, and cannot see what goes on in the minds of our friends; better for us that we cannot as a general thing, but now and then it would be such a comfort, such a saving of time and temper.”

  The passage was from when Jo spoke out of turn to her aunt March and so lost her chance to go to Europe. Amy was asked instead. Was the passage telling me to hold my tongue?

  “What’s wrong, Violet?” Grandma Daisy asked.

  I picked up the book and took it back to the chair with me. “This.” I showed her the book.

  “Have you learned anything at all from the books?” She frowned. “You seem to be confused this time.”

  I looked up from the book. “That’s because I am confused. I don’t know what the shop is trying to tell me.”

  I made a move to turn the page when the book snapped closed. I moved my hands out of the way and stared at it on my lap. A second later the book fell open, but to a new page. It was to a chapter not long after Meg married Brooke. She was remembering her mother’s warning about her new husband. “ ‘He has a temper, not like ours—one flash and then all over—but the white, still anger that is seldom stirred, but once kindled is hard to quench.’ ” I read the passage aloud to my grandmother. “Whoever killed Belinda was angry? At least that much is clear, and this would lead me to believe that whoever killed her didn’t do it in a fit of rage, but instead thought and planned it for a long time.”

  “Do you think the book is saying that her killer was a man?”

  “I’m not sure I would take it that literarily.” I frowned. I closed the book and stood up. “I promise I will study that book tonight, b
ut first I have something more important to do.”

  “What is that?”

  “I have to water the tree.”

  She nodded. “That is more important.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The sooner winter was over, the better it would be for me. Running into the woods in the middle of night to avoid being seen to collect water for the tree from the natural springs was much more fun when I didn’t fear frostbite on my nose.

  I burrowed deeper into my scarf and pulled my hat down over my ears with gloved hands as I walked at a fast clip toward the springs.

  Two nights ago, on the night of Belinda’s book signing, I had run to and from the springs in a frenzy, knowing how late I would arrive at Morton Vineyards. It wasn’t until Belinda died that I’d realized being late was the least of my worries.

  Hoot, hoot, an owl called from somewhere high in the trees. Without their leaves, the trees looked alien against the night sky. I felt like I was in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon where the faceless eyes in the woods were watching me. I shook off the creepy feeling that I knew was more self-inflicted than anything else. This was a time when having a vivid imagination was not a good thing.

  I quickened my pace, but I didn’t run. Finally, the path opened up and the natural springs bubbled in front of me. Much of the water was frozen. Even the small waterfall that trickled down the rocks was frozen in place. I walked to the edge of the spring and picked up a large rock. I hit the rock on the ice over and over again until it made an indentation in the ice. I hit it again, and water began to pool over the sheet of ice. I collected what I could. My finger cramped from the cold and my gloves were soaked.

  Finally, I had enough spring water to fill the watering can. I stood up and hurried back down the trail. I was halfway back to the bookshop when I heard a stick snap to my left. It sounded like a gunshot on the still winter’s night. I froze and listened. I didn’t hear another sound. I told myself that it was a deer in the woods or another animal. Nothing to be afraid of.

  I started walking again, and I’d moved a few more feet when I heard the same sound, followed almost immediately by another. Up ahead a shadow cast across the path, and it was in the shape of a man. The moonlight distorted the shadow, making the shape look like a giant.