by ACF Bookens
Once we were on the street, I groaned. “Now what do we do? The food is great, and the chef is nice . . . but Max. That man!”
Mart slipped her arm through mine. “He is something.” She glanced back through the window one more time. “Might be worth the trouble though.”
I smiled.
* * *
Mart walked me back to the shop and then headed out for her job at the winery. Some days I envied her because she got to jet off to wineries all along the east coast to consult, and on the days when her full-time job was winery manager, her hours were always at her discretion. She was that good.
I watched her stroll up the street toward her car and felt a little jealous, but then, I walked in the bookstore, heard that little bell over the door ring, and took a deep breath. Nothing gave me as much peace as the scent of paper and coffee. It smelled like home.
Behind the register, Marcus was just putting a copy of The Complete Illustrated Book of Herbs into a customer’s reusable bag, and as she walked toward me to leave the store, he rolled his eyes. “I never knew there was so much to know about the uses for thyme.”
“I bet you do now, though, huh?” Our customers were always eager to expound on their loves, and nothing gave people more license to talk about their passions than a new book on the subject. Well, nothing except a well-placed question. “Any tips?”
“I tuned out sometime around the part about fresh leaves in a rolled pork roast, but that did sound delicious.” Marcus smacked his lips together.
My assistant manager was an ideal co-worker. He was never late. He knew his subject, and he loved talking with customers even more than I did. Except, it appeared, when it came to culinary herbs. Before I’d hired him, Marcus’s reputation in town had been a bit marred – some by the fact that he’d stopped college and some by the racism that came with the fact that he was a Black man. But now, after he’d personally recommended a book to almost everyone in town with great success, he was one of the reasons people came to my store.
He was also the reason I could take long lunches and got an occasional day off. His mom also wrote a book matchmaking article in our newsletter, and much like Tannie Maria in the wonderful South African murder mysteries by Sally Andrew, she was a natural. We sold more books off her recommendations than on even my most eye-catching window display. I owed a lot to the Dawson family.
Just then, the bell rang over the door, and a white woman with very tan skin and the longest, thinnest arms and legs I’d ever seen headed toward the sports section. Given my recent weekend at the Humboldt Marathon, I recognized a runner when I saw one, and this woman was a serious runner. I gave her a few minutes to browse on her own just in case she’d come in looking for something specific that she could grab easily, but when she lingered by the two shelves of running books we stocked, thanks to Mart’s suggestions, I headed over. “Help you find anything?”
The woman turned toward me. Her face was pinched, like she’d pulled a muscle, but she smiled when she met my eyes. “I’m not sure. I’ve got terrible shin splints for the first time in my life, and I was hoping you might have a book about stretches or technique or something.”
I was way out of my element and wished Mart had come in with me before she headed off to work, but I scanned the shelves anyway. I had some flicker of a memory about a book Mart had suggested, something with a teal cover. Yep, there it was. I grabbed the copy of Running Rewired and held it up. “Something like this?” I pulled my mouth into a smile mixed with a cringe. “I’m not much of a runner, but my best friend thought this one had good resources. She’s a marathoner.”
“Oh, cool. Does she live nearby? Maybe I know her.”
“She does. We’re roommates. Mart Weston?”
The woman looked past my shoulder for a second as if thinking about something before meeting my gaze again. “Sorry, don’t think I know her. Does she train in the area?”
Before I thought I said, “Oh yeah, Coach Cagle over at the high school—” I stopped mid-sentence, remembering the man had just been killed.
“Oh, I know Coach, alright, but I don’t train with him anymore. How does – Mart, is that right? – how does she like him?” She was staring hard at an illustration of a hamstring, and I got the impression she didn’t want to make eye contact.
I sighed. I might as well tell her because the St. Marin’s gossip train would reach her anyway. “I guess you haven’t heard yet?”
She frowned. “Heard what? He didn’t harass some woman again, did he?”
I shook my head. “No, actually, he was murdered.”
She sucked in a breath. “Holy crap. No, I hadn’t heard that. Wow.” She kept staring at the illustration. “Man.” She shook her head a little bit but then looked back at me after letting out a hard breath. “The guy was a jerk but . . .”
“Yeah.” I looked from the book to her face. “Anyway, if there’s anything else you need, we’re right over there. Just let us know.”
She glanced over at the counter. “Thanks. Oh, and I’m Tiffany Steinburg. Nice to meet you.” She smiled warmly as she put out her hand. “This place is great.”
“Nice to meet you, Tiffany. I’m Harvey Beckett. This is my store.”
Tiffany looked around. “My first time in, but I like it. And this,” she waved the book, “looks perfect. If it’s okay, I’d like to take a look.”
“Please do. Customers are always welcome to browse.”
She waved as I headed back to the counter to take a gander at the day’s sales so far.
* * *
A few minutes later, Elle Heron from the local farm stand stopped by with two buckets of cut flowers. Each week, she delivered new stems for the tiny vases on the tables in the café, and recently, I’d added an order for a big bouquet to put on the front desk. I knew most people thought of flowers as spring-time things, but the fall colors – the sunflowers and late dahlias, even the weird green seed pods that Elle called “hairy balls” – made me happy.
“Oh, those look incredible, Elle. What are these?” I asked as I lifted flowers that looked like Dr. Seuss’s Christmas trees.
“Celosia,” Elle said. “They’re just so perky and bright.”
I nodded. I loved all the reds and yellows. “These will be perfect for the tables.”
“Yep, and this batch is for you.” Out of one bucket, she lifted a perfectly-arranged group of sunflowers in the most brilliant golds and oranges I’d ever seen. She slipped them into the green glass vase I had washed earlier for this very purpose, and they made the entire counter look more happy.
“Oh, I LOVE them, and you know Daniel’s favorite flowers are sunflowers.” I blushed a little at my impromptu confession.
“Well, then these should make him even sweeter on you than he already is, if that’s even possible.” She batted her eyes at me and put a finger in her cheek before she turned toward the bookshelves behind her. “Mind if I take a look at your business section. I have an idea for expanding my market share, but I want to be sure I revise my business plan before I go too far.”
I smiled. “Sure. You know where the business section is, right?”
“Yep.” She headed right toward it.
That was one of the reasons I loved Elle – she was a fellow businesswoman, and, like me, she was always looking for ways to improve her cash flow while also serving her customers better. The difference between Elle and me was that she loved a written plan, and I loved to wing it. Both of us had done alright so far, so I took that as yet another sign that it takes all kinds in the world.
As I ran a quick report on the morning’s sales, Marcus returned from the café with two mugs of steaming hot tea, for which I was mighty grateful. I’d have preferred a latte, but even a decaf one might have too much caffeine for my middle-aged body. I loved sleep too much to risk it.
“I thought yours smelled so good that I couldn’t resist,” Marcus said as he sipped from his own mug. “Can you smell it?”
I could. C
innamon and something sweet. “Is that nutmeg?”
He winked. “You’ll like it.”
I took a little sip, and grinned. “Seriously, pumpkin tea? I didn’t even know that was thing.” I perched myself on the stool behind the counter and took another sip. “It’s just a little sweet, but I don’t taste sugar.
“Nope. No sugar. The tea shop I get it from up in Easton doesn’t sweeten their blends,” Rocky said as she hopped up on the counter beside Marcus. “But the owner said that she thinks it’s the blend of spices that make people think it’s sweetened, like a pumpkin pie.”
“Well, I’ll take the illusion of sweetness without the calories. No problem there,” I said.
“Good because I brought in a bunch more of her teas, too, and she’s going to be here in the café on Saturday to do a demo of how to brew loose tea well. Hope that’s okay.” Rocky looked at me over the rim of her own mug.
“More than okay. I love that. I never have been able to figure out how to use an infuser without leaving bits of tea in the mug. Those little sprigs get caught in my teeth. I hate that more than I hate pulp in orange juice.”
“You hate pulp in orange juice?” Marcus asked. “What is it? Too much like an actual orange.”
“Precisely. I don’t like oranges either.” I laughed and then watched Elle come back to the counter, a book in her hand and a frown on her face.
She gave a subtle swing of her head back toward the direction from which she’s come then asks, “You know that woman over there? The thin one?”
I catch a glimpse of Tiffany’s legs and say, “Just met her. Tiffany Steinberg. Apparently, she’s a runner.”
Elle took out her debit card as I rang up her book, with the employee discount of course. “That makes sense then. She was just talking with someone about Coach Cagle.”
“Oh yeah, she knew him, I guess. But pretty much everybody’s talking about his murder, right? Something else?” Elle was still frowning, and I knew my friend well enough to recognize when something was troubling her.
“I’m not sure. She was saying that she was glad somebody took care of him. ‘He got what he deserved.’ That’s what she said.” Elle shrugged and shimmied her shoulders. “I don’t disagree, but something about how she said it.”
I pursed my lips and leaned over to see more of Tiffany in the wing chair. She was reading again, so it wouldn’t do me any good to eavesdrop by pretending to straighten the books there.
“Maybe he harassed her,” Rocky said. “If someone had been harassing me, scaring me like Coach did a lot of women, I’d probably be relieved if he was dead.”
Elle shrugged again. “Yeah, maybe.” She smiled. “Well, thanks for the book, Harvey. Rocky, Marcus, good to see you, too.”
“You’ll let us know about this new angle of the business?”
“As soon as I get the details in place, you’ll know. Trust me.” She winked as she slip her book under her arm.
Ooh, another mystery, I thought.
4
On Tuesday morning when I got to the store to open, a huge, wooden, flat trailer was parked in the alley behind the shop. The float had arrived.
Daniel nearly scared me out of my skin when he dropped an arm around my shoulder as I stood by the trailer, a bit flabbergasted.
“Sorry,” Daniel said as he bent to kiss my cheek after I had jumped nearly high enough to clear the trailer. “Didn’t mean to startle you. You were really concentrating there. Brainstorming how to decorate?”
I looked from him to the trailer and back again. It was so big, and I didn’t know if our doghouse, the shrubs that the garden center next door were loaning us, and our scant cast were going to fill it enough. We might look far more like Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree than I wanted. I mean, I appreciated the symbolic nature of the cartoon, but on a float – we might just look cheap or even worse – uncreative. “More like trying to decide how many pumpkins I can buy to fill her up. Does that stand out by the highway still have a lot of them? Maybe I can buy their old ones, the ones that are starting to go? I don’t think I can afford to buy dozens of fresh pumpkins, but the slightly rotted ones will look okay if we pile them up, right? Or maybe I can make a whole bunch from papier-mâché? I can go a couple nights without sleep—”
“Whoa, Harvey. Take a breath. We’re okay. The float will look great. You and Mart have done a great job designing it. And look,” he pulled a bright yellow T-shirt out from behind his back, “I have my costume well in hand.”
I stared at the shirt and said, “It’s not striped.” I felt my panic starting to rise again.
“That’s what this is for.” He held up a fat, black marker.
“You’re going to draw the stripes? What if you—”
“And this,” he said as he drew a ruler out of his back pocket. “It’ll be perfect, Harvey. Besides, it’s the local parade. We’re not passing in front of Macy’s or anything . . . unless of course there’s something you haven’t told me yet.” He feigned a look of panic by making his eyes wide and dropping his jaw. “We aren’t going to New York are we?”
I punched him lightly in the stomach. “No. I just,” I sighed, “I just want it to look good. It’s advertising, but more, I don’t want to let the town down.”
Daniel snorted with laughter. “Harvey, the last thing you could do is let this town down. Your events bring new people all the time, and the number of fundraisers you’ve done for folks hasn’t gone unnoticed.” He drew me against his chest. “Honestly, I think you could probably walk down the street reading Harry Potter and people would still cheer.”
I squeezed him and then took a step back to look into his face. “Okay, I’ll stop fretting. Thanks. But maybe I should get a few pumpkins?”
“Fret not. Let me take care of any pumpkin-related needs, okay?” He pointed to the doghouse. “For now, let’s work on getting this up there.”
We spent the next few minutes hefting the doghouse – okay, Daniel did the hefting, and I supervised –and putting it into position. It took up a good quarter of the flatbed, and I could see we would be fine. I did jot down “yellow and orange streamers” on the palm of my hand, though. The sides needed something.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s this invention called paper.” Cate’s voice echoed off the back of the store as she walked up the alley. I could see her car down a ways, behind the art coop she ran.
I looked at my hand and then at my dear friend. “I’ve heard of that material. Flat. Often white. Porous.”
“That’s the one.” She gave me a hug. “Seriously, Harvey, just put a notebook in your pocket.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” I rolled my eyes. “You know, I’ve tried over and over again to carry a notepad with me, but I always end up setting it down somewhere. But my skin, it’s always here.”
Now Cate rolled her eyes and turned to look at the float. “That doghouse looks great. How does Mayhem like it?”
My pup lifted her head from the patch of grass she’d claimed when we’d arrived and looked less than stoked by the idea of a doghouse. Beside her, Taco snored from his completely prone position with his butt against her back.
“You actually think she’s going to sleep in a doghouse?” Daniel said. “Only if Harvey puts it on her own bed inside the house.”
Cate laughed. “You’re one to talk, Mr. Bassett-Hound Sofa Man.”
Daniel puffed out his chest. “Taco is a fragile flower.” He laughed. “Mind if he spends the day, Harvey?”
I looked over at the two dogs who were now making a perfect T in the grass with their bodies, smiled and said, “I don’t know. He might be a handful.”
“Only if you try to pick him up,” Daniel said over his shoulder as he headed down the alley. “Lunch?”
“Perfect. Lu’s got a new mole sauce I want to try.” Ever since we’d been dating, Daniel and I had been meeting for lunch at Lu’s lunch truck. He’d introduced me to her tacos on one of our first dates, and I wa
sn’t willing to swear that his taste in food wasn’t what had made me fall in love with him.
Cate helped me coax the two hounds into the back door of the shop, and once in, they headed right to the front window, where their matching dog beds were waiting. I didn’t complain. We’d had more than one new customer come in because of the cute puppies in the window.
“What brings you by on this fine morning, my friend?” I asked as I logged into the register and then moved to the back of the store where Rocky was already brewing coffee in the café.
“I saw the trailer and wanted to get a sense of scale for the pumpkin. I’m going to start it tonight.” She tucked her small frame into a chair by the window and flipped her sleek black hair behind her ears.
I took a deep breath, but I still heard the squeak in my voice as I sat down across from her and said, “You haven’t started yet?”
Cate laid her hand over mine. “Don’t worry. Lucas built the frame over the weekend. I’ll do a few layers each night and paint it on Friday. We’ll be ready in plenty of time for Saturday. papier-mâché is really easy.”
I shivered as I remembered my attempt to make a piñata for my own thirteenth birthday. All that had resulted was a big pile of rock-hard newspaper that my mom had needed to help me pry off our dining room table. “Easy for you, maybe?” I said.
“I am an artiste,” Cate said with a laugh. My friend was a very talented photographer, but she had none of the pretention that so many people think artists carry. If anything, she was one of the most down-to-earth people I knew. She squeezed my hand. “I also wanted to see if you’re still game to try the new hair salon in town. I’m going this afternoon, and I booked you an appointment, too, just in case you could get off.”
I laughed. “You’re very optimistic.” I frowned. “Or you really think I need a haircut.” I had a thick mop of hair that required a drastic amount of pomade, a kerchief, or a baseball cap to tame.
“You know I love your curl.” Cate reached up and tugged on a lock that was dangling over my left eye. “My parents gave me many things, but fun hair is not one of them.”
