Craft Circle Cozy Mystery Boxed Set

by Stacey Alabaster

  Adam pondered this and took a sip from his coffee mug. No wine for him, he always said it gave him a headache. "This Brenda seems like the sort to sue for wrongful dismissal."

  "Oh, this is not wrongful dismissal!" I shot back, shocking even myself at how wound up I was getting. "The woman accused me of murder! And get this, Adam—this is not even the first time she has done this!" I resumed my pacing, or rather, stomping. "And I've put up with her, written her off as some harmless old biddy, but this..." I shook my head and finished off the last of my wine. "This is too much. I'm not putting up with this from an employee any longer."

  Adam grinned and I had to ask him what could possibly be funny at that moment.

  "It's just that this is the George that I used to know all those years ago. The one I married." His grin grew even wider. "I knew she was still in there somewhere, underneath all this new bright jewelry."

  "Yes, well, that was all a long time ago." I sat down next to Adam on the sofa. For just a moment, I longed to be back in those simpler days. Before everything had crumbled and fallen to dust, that was. Before the police came knocking and asked to see Adam, asked his whereabouts on that Monday night that our neighbor had been killed.

  "Do you remember that night?" I asked Adam softly.

  "What night are you talking about?" Adam asked.

  I looked down at the wooden floorboards. "You know the night I'm talking about," I said quietly.

  "Of course I remember it. I remember the way you protected me," Adam said, sitting up straighter. "Told the detective that I'd been home all night, even though, as per usual, you'd slept like a log and..."

  "And wasn't even sure if I was lying or not," I said, finishing his sentence for him. I looked up at him, into those deep hazel eyes that had once been so familiar to me. "It's not as though I could have testified against you, anyway."

  Adam shrugged. "You could now, though. We haven't been married for sixteen years."

  "Let's hope I don't have to," I said with a little nervous laugh. I was sure that it couldn't have been Adam that Brenda saw with Gem when Julie was killed. I was telling myself that she'd just gotten the idea in her head that it was Adam when she'd learned he had arrived in town that day, and was now fixing the evidence to support it. She was letting her judgements cloud reality. Her 'memories' were probably entirely fabricated.

  Adam edged a little closer to me on the sofa.

  "I'm not sure you fit in in this town, George. You always belonged in a big city. Where people are a bit more open-minded. More like you. You’re getting stifled in this town with all the small-minded prejudices."

  I looked at the floor again, wondering if maybe he was right. There was no way I wanted to give him the satisfaction of saying so, though.

  I sat up straight and folded my hands in my lap. "Some people in this town are all right. They’re not all small-minded," I said. "I've even made a couple of friends. One of the police detectives, for instance, has his wits about him." I smiled as I thought about Ryan, one of the few people in the town I'd managed to forge a connection with. "He's intelligent as well, and caring. And he doesn't judge people, he takes the time to get to know them. He's an old soul in a way..." I mused, leaning against the back of my sofa with my elbow, my feet suddenly tucked up underneath me.

  "Sounds like you have a thing for this guy," Adam commented. "Are we talking about your next future ex-husband here?"

  I stood up and walked over to the kitchen counter and poured myself another glass of wine. "I'm done with all that," I said firmly.

  There was a knock at the door.

  "Oh, I ordered some Mexican takeout," Adam said, looking at the time. "Took long enough to get here."

  "Yeah, well, there are about two takeout shops servicing the whole town. It tends to be slow," I said as I grabbed my wallet. "Don't worry, I've got it. In both senses," I said wryly as I walked to the door. It would be far less embarrassing for all of us if I just paid for the food and saved Adam from having to make excuses.

  "Ryan!" I said, straightening up as I answered the door. Hmm, did I want him there in my house with my ex-husband in the room behind me? It did seem a little strange, for several reasons. I mean, geez...Ryan was basically the age that Adam had been when I was married to him.

  "Um, it's actually not the best time for me right now," I whispered, leaning forward. "I'm just about to eat dinner, then I'll be getting to bed early."

  "I'm not actually here to see you, George," Ryan said, taking his hat off. "At least, not right now."

  "Oh, okay. Who are you here to see then?" I asked.

  Ryan scratched his head. "I hope this isn't too awkward," he said. "But I'm here on official police business. I hear that you've got a lodger staying with you?"

  I pulled away from the door. "You're here to talk to Adam?" I asked. Suddenly I had flashbacks from that night seventeen years earlier and I could feel a cold sweat breaking out.

  "George?" Ryan asked. "Are you all right? You look a little pale."

  I nodded quickly. "I think I'm just hungry," I said, looking over his shoulder. I laughed nervously. "I'm just waiting for a food delivery... They always take so long, don't they? I mean, geez, sometimes I think I'd be better off closing the craft shop and opening a takeout restaurant, I'd probably make a killing..." I stopped talking when I reached the word 'killing' and realized I'd been awkwardly rambling.

  Ryan cleared his throat and took a step forward. "Can I come inside?"

  I chugged down another glass of wine while I listened to the two of them talking. The entire bottom half of my house was open plan so there wasn't another room I could go to even if I'd wanted to. And I didn't. I wanted to hear every last detail, no matter how terrible it was.

  Why on earth would Ryan think that Adam had anything to do with Julie's death? How would Ryan even know about Adam at all?

  I already knew the answer, though.

  Brenda had opened her big fat mouth. Of course she had.

  "Mr. Thornton," Ryan started to say. I hadn't heard Adam referred to like that in a long time. And it had been even longer since someone had called me "Mrs. Thornton." To this day, Adam's was the only last name I ever took. After our divorce, I reverted to my maiden name and kept it even throughout my subsequent marriages. "When did you arrive in town?" Ryan continued, ready to jot the answer down on his notepad.

  "Wednesday morning," Adam answered. He seemed calm enough as he spoke, but I knew him too well and I could see from his mannerisms, by the way that he kept moving his hands around, that he was nervous.

  "And how did you arrive in town?"

  "Bus." Adam's answers were short and to the point.

  "And was anyone else on this bus with you?" Ryan asked.

  "Yes," Adam replied.

  Ryan looked up from his notepad. "Anyone you know? Anyone who can confirm?"

  Adam shook his head. "No one that I knew. I didn't speak to anyone during the journey. I slept for most of it. I only woke when we arrived in Pottsville."

  I tried to read Ryan's face. He kept it pretty straight, but I couldn't help feeling like he wasn't buying Adam's story. "Where did you go when you got off the bus?" Ryan asked.

  It took a long time for Adam to answer. I was starting to get nervous. "I went into a cafe, in, erm, in the middle of town." He coughed and cleared his throat. "It was a long bus ride. I was hungry."

  "And I guess no one saw you go into this cafe," Ryan said wearily.

  "I'm not sure."

  I tapped my fingernails nervously against my wine glass. Just cut to the chase, Ryan.

  He did.

  "I have to ask you," Ryan said. "Where were you between the hours of midday and three pm on Wednesday afternoon?"

  Adam looked up at me, a slightly pleading look in his eyes. "I was with George. Wasn't I, George?"

  Great, I thought, trying to catch my breath. I'm really back here. I'm seventeen years in the past.

  Both men stared at me as they waited for my answer. />
  "Yes," I finally said, making the same mistake twice. "Adam was with me the whole time."

  By the time Ryan left, the Mexican food that had arrived halfway through the interview had gone cold and I had lost my appetite anyway.

  "Thanks, Georgie..."

  I turned my back on Adam and called Jasper to come and sleep at the foot of my bed this time. "You're not staying downstairs tonight, Jasper." I shot a look over my shoulder at Adam. "And this is the last night you’re staying here, Adam. In the morning, you need to be out of here."

  Adam nodded sadly and trailed off to the sofa, flicking the lights off, and I was left standing, in a daze, at the top of the stair case.

  What had I done?

  And what did Adam have to hide?

  Chapter 5

  "I have to talk to you," I said to Brenda as soon as I stepped through the doors. I threw my purse onto the counter with so much force that it knocked over a carton of buttons, scattering them everywhere.

  "Well, you’re just going to have to wait," she said through a tight, forced smile while she tended to another customer. "And in the meantime, you can clean up the mess you just made."

  I did no such thing. I stomped to the back of the shop and found my checkbook, where I began to write out Brenda's pay slip. Two week's severance seemed fair enough; she was lucky she was even getting that.

  Twenty minutes passed before she was finally free and the shop was briefly empty. I handed her the check and she just stared at it for a moment, her mind working overtime to work out what was happening.

  The penny finally dropped.

  "You can't fire me!" Brenda screamed in outrage. "Not after all my hard work. I have been the one managing this place, covering for you while you sleep in and run all around town, chasing after men..."

  "I do no such thing!"

  Brenda shoved the check back into my hands and stood stubbornly. "I have been the model employee. I have never done a single thing wrong!"

  "You've been talking to the police," I said. "I had a visitor last night, asking for Adam. Asking him where he was when Julie was killed. You're the one who started the whole rumor that he was involved. So the only conclusion I can draw is that you are the one who has been running your mouth."

  Brenda crossed her arms. "You can't fire me for speaking to the police," she said smugly. "I will have a case for unfair dismissal."

  Darn it, she was probably right.

  I looked at the check in my hands. Suddenly it was starting to feel more like a bribe. I quickly shoved it in my pocket.

  "Why are you trying to make trouble for me, Brenda?" I asked in disbelief.

  "I'm a good, law-abiding citizen of this town," Brenda replied. "And I only told the police what I saw. I told them that a person that I recognized and knew very well was walking away from the scene of the crime."

  "You don't even know it was Adam!" I practically shouted. "And you hardly know him 'very well.' You've never even met the guy."

  Brenda's face was full of confusion. "What are you talking about?" Brenda asked. "It wasn't Adam that I told the police I had seen."

  I was speechless. "Then who did you see?"

  Brenda shook her head. "I didn't want to have to do this, Georgina, but your actions gave me no other choice. I wanted to be loyal, and I was torn, but at the end of the day I had to be honest about what I saw."

  "What are you talking about Brenda?" I said, just about ready to grab her by the shoulders and shake the information out of her if she didn't hurry up and come clean.

  "Georgina, I saw you walking away from the scene of the crime."

  "She's really gone too far this time," I said to Adam as we hurried along the pavement that was about to come to an end when we reached the edge of town. "She's not just making accusations now, she's going to the cops with her half-thought out theories." I was walking so fast that the wind, still pushing against me, was no longer a match for me. It didn't slow me down at all.

  We were headed back to Julie's shop. I knew that the answers—or at least something that could save Adam and I—must lay there. There must have been clues I missed the first time I was there, thanks to Jasper and his inquisitiveness.

  "I don't understand," Adam said. He was breathing heavily as he practically jogged to keep pace with me. "How could she have seen you at Julie's store that day?"

  I shook my head. "She couldn’t have. I didn't leave work that day. I was at the store the whole entire day up until..."

  "Until what?"

  "Until I saw you." I stopped walking and gasped for breath. "Oh no..." I said, remembering. "I did leave for a little while. For ten minutes to get lunch and go to the bank. Well, it was actually twenty minutes." I started walking, but slower this time.

  "You saw me?" Adam asked.

  I nodded, lost in thought. I stared down at the bright beads I was wearing around my wrist and used the other hand to twist them. "This isn't good, is it?" I murmured. "Both of us out and unaccounted for during those important minutes..."

  Adam laughed uneasily. "I know you didn't do anything, George." He cleared his throat for a moment. "But do you know the same of me?"

  I stopped and stared at Adam. "Do you know what kind of trouble I can get in to, for lying for you like I did? What if Ryan finds out?"

  Adam glanced around and told me to keep my voice down. He was right. The street wasn't crowded, but there were a few stragglers and I was panicked, talking far too loudly.

  "Why did I need to lie, Adam?" I asked. "Tell me what you are really hiding."

  He began to walk again, slowly. "Nothing," he said, burrowing his hands in his pockets. "I just know how bad it looks that I have no real alibi for that time."

  I pulled on his arm and made him stop again. "Just tell me something, Adam. Do you have anything to hide? Just be honest with me. If I am covering for you, at least let me know what I am getting myself into." I placed a hand on my hips. "I don't want a repeat of what happened seventeen years ago."

  He looked into my eyes and shook his head. "I promise you, George, that I did not hurt Julie. I never even saw her or met her. If you showed me a picture of her, I wouldn't even be able to recognize her. I didn't even go anywhere near that part of town after I got off the bus."

  "Well, that is where we’re headed now." I watched for any change in his eyes. If he'd really never been there, he shouldn't look worried.

  He didn't seem concerned at all. I wasn't sure if I was relieved or disappointed. "Let's go then," he said. "I'm as eager as you are to find out what really happened. It took me a long time to throw off my reputation last time I was questioned for murder. I don't want it happening again..."

  We walked in silence for a few minutes, the only noise the sound of the wind whipping all around us.

  "Hey, it's kind of nice, don't you think?" Adam asked.

  I couldn't possibly see what he was referring to at that moment. The fact that we were both being accused of being murderers? The wind that was blowing so hard it felt like a hundred tiny knives against the skin? "What is kind of nice?" I asked in disbelief.

  "Us two, back together like this, us against the world," Adam replied.

  I shook my head. Maybe Adam was having a fun time reliving old times, but I just wanted to get the whole thing cleared up so that Adam could get out of town and I could get my old—new—life back.

  Adam grabbed my arm. He even gasped a little. "George—" He pointed ahead. There was a real look of fear in his eyes. He looked positively spooked.

  With a shaking voice, he whispered, "Who is that?"

  Okay, now I really had seen a ghost.

  "We gotta get out of here," I said, tugging on Adam’s arm so we could get the heck out of there.

  But Adam was rooted in position, like a tree that had stood there for a thousands years.

  "Adam!" I said, turning away so that I couldn't see the person up ahead.

  "Don't you want to find out who that is?" Adam whispered.

  I
shook my head. My answer was firm. "No. It is bad luck to see your doppleganger. Do some research, Adam! Seeing your doppleganger means you are about to die!" I wanted to move, but it was like I was paralyzed.

  "The George I remember wouldn't be scared so easily," Adam said with surprise. "She would have walked straight up to this woman and asked what on earth she was doing, impersonating her."

  Is that what the woman was doing? Impersonating me? I had a thousand thoughts flooding my head and most of them were too scary to dwell on.

  I knew how stupid I was about to sound, but I said it anyway. "But what if this woman is not flesh and blood?" I whispered. "What if it really is an apparition? I mean...how can someone who looks exactly like me have just walked around the corner? When I am clearly standing right here?"

  "Why don't we go and find out?" Adam asked. Then, without warning, he placed his hand in mine and began to pull me toward the mysterious imposter. And suddenly, the thought of confronting a ghost was the least of my concerns. I yanked my hand out of his grip, just about ready to slap him across the face with it.

  "You don't get to do that," I snapped. "You don't get to hold my hand."

  "Sorry, sorry," Adam said, holding his hands up in remorse. "I was only trying to..."

  "Oh, I know what you were trying to do," I said, wrapping my shawl around my shoulders as I hurried off. Adam tried to run after me but I raced ahead, no longer waiting for him as I closed in on the woman. "Go back home, Adam!"

  The wind whipped at me while I tried to run. The woman was fast and I had to hurry so that I wouldn't lose sight of her.

  She was headed toward the hills.

  Great.

  Knowing it was best to catch her before she headed up their spooky slope, I increased my pace to a jog.

  "Wait!" I called out breathlessly, but the wind swallowed my words. I stopped to catch my breath and this time shouted, "Stop!"

  The woman froze and spun around.