by Gail Sattler
If she had to say one good thing had happened, the forced diet helped her to lose that last five pounds she’d been fighting with for all of her adult life. When she could afford it, she would start by buying one pair of high-end brand-name jeans to celebrate. For now, there was always Walmart.
Stan followed her to the door, then into the kitchen where, as usual, he reached up to get the mugs out of the cupboard while she put on the kettle to make tea.
While the kettle heated up, she sat at the table. Stan dragged the other chair next to hers while she tore open the envelope.
You can’t see gnorman, but he can see you
With his gorgeous eyes of blue
From beneath Barry’s barbecue
gnorman has a message, and it is Boo!
They groaned in unison.
Amber thunked her forehead down on the table. “This is the worst one yet. Why do we bother? What does this person want from me? Why don’t they ever mention the trophy in these ridiculous notes?”
“I don’t know. All we can do is keep at it, and at some point our paths have to cross. We can do this, Amber.”
With her forehead pressed to the tabletop, she couldn’t see him, but she jumped when Stan’s fingertips brushed the back of her hand. He flattened his hand over hers and wrapped his fingers around it, giving it a gentle squeeze.
After all the pressure of the past few months, the tender gesture was more than she could handle. The backs of her eyes burned, and she feared she might start crying. As if she hadn’t done enough embarrassing things in front of poor Stan lately.
She kept her forehead pressed to the table and shook her head. “No, I’m not so sure we can continue this anymore.” As her head moved, she felt her hair flop down around her head. She hoped she’d wiped up the peanut butter she’d smudged on the table that morning.
She felt a slight bit of pressure on her hand at the same time as Stan’s chair grated on the floor and he shuffled closer to her. He slowly raised her hand off the table, and his grip changed as he grasped it from underneath, palm to palm. For a few seconds she felt his hot breath on the back of her hand, then the gentle brush of his warm lips as he kissed her there and pressed it to his cheek.
She should have yanked her hand away, but she couldn’t move. Earlier tonight Hayden had kissed her good night as they parted ways on her doorstep. It was just a light peck on the lips, but it was on the lips. She’d felt nothing except surprise that he’d done it.
All Stan had kissed was her hand, and her heart pounded like she was standing on the railway tracks with a train coming straight for her.
Amber rolled her head to the side, pressing her cheek to the table as she looked up at Stan. His eyes were closed and he sighed, her hand still pressed to his cheek. His lips moved to a small, satisfied smile as his thumb gently rubbed her wrist.
She didn’t know what he was doing, but she didn’t want him to stop, peanut butter in her hair or not. It was the most romantic thing Stan had ever done.
Actually it was the only romantic thing he’d ever done.
Romantic? Stan?
Using her free hand, she pressed her palm to the table to steady her as she righted herself.
At the movement Stan opened his eyes and released her hand, but he still wore the goofy grin. “I’d like to take you out for dinner tomorrow night. How would you like to go to the Fancy Schmantzy?”
Amber gulped. If she hadn’t been sure about last weekend when he’d taken her out, there would be no doubt about tomorrow. The Fancy Schmantzy would definitely be a date, and she wasn’t sure that was something she wanted to do with Stan. Her buddy. They’d seen each other in diapers. Not that she remembered that far back, but that didn’t negate the fact that it had happened. The only thing they hadn’t done together was play in the sandbox, because her mother wouldn’t allow it, always reminding them what cats did in sandboxes.
She wasn’t ready to go on a real date with Stan that weekend. She didn’t know if she would ever be ready.
She cleared her throat. “I can’t. I need to do some shopping. For new jeans.” Her single-digit bank account danced before her eyes. “I was going to go to Walmart tomorrow.”
“But—”
“Do you want to come with me?”
“. . . I—”
“They have a McDonalds in the front of the store. We can eat there.”
“. . . want—”
She sucked in a deep breath. “Please?” Just like in a sappy chick flick, she tilted her head and fluttered her eyelashes at him.
Stan’s mouth opened, but no words came out.
She folded her hands and pressed them up under her chin. “I’d really like that.”
He sighed. “Sure. I’ll pick you up after I close up the shop.”
With Amber beside him, Stan flexed a fishing rod, testing it to determine the point of give. “I like this one. I think I’m going to buy it.”
Amber made a sound suspiciously like a snort. “How many fishing rods do you need? You can only catch one fish at a time, and most of the time you throw them back.”
“How many pairs of shoes do you need? You only wear one pair at a time, and most of the time you try on half a dozen, throw them all back in the closet, and wear the black ones.”
When she whacked him in the back with her purse, Stan smiled. A trip to Walmart wasn’t what he had envisioned for the evening, but he was having a great time.
He hadn’t been looking forward to waiting while she tried on a dozen pairs of jeans, but when she walked out of the dressing room and modeled each pair for his opinion, he changed his mind. He’d very much enjoyed that.
Next, he was going to pay for the ones she selected and tell her that buying the jeans was cheaper than buying dinner at the Fancy Schmantzy, even though he still had every intention of taking her there. Just not today.
On the way to the checkout, they became distracted at an end cap display of yarn. While he waited for Amber to pick just the right color from a selection of fuzzy stuff, a tiny lady next to Amber stood on her tiptoes and stretched as far as she could, trying to reach a ball of yarn on the top shelf. No matter how much she wiggled and squirmed, she couldn’t touch the one she wanted.
Stan reached forward, picked it up, and handed it to her. “Is this the one you want?”
“Yes, thank you,” she said as she read the numbers on the label, tucked it under one arm, turned to him and smiled.
Stan started to smile back, but his smile froze.
This was the woman from the store that was Amber’s competition. Florence was her name, as he recalled. But he couldn’t let her know that he knew that.
As she looked up into his face, she smiled. “I know you from somewhere. Where have we met?”
When Amber realized the woman was talking to him, she turned around. Like he did, she started to smile a greeting before she made eye contact. Stan could tell the split second Amber recognized the woman. Her eyes went as wide as saucers, and the color drained from her cheeks.
Gathering his courage, Stan faced the woman. “Maybe. I own and operate Stan’s Shop. I’m Stan Wilson. Have you ever brought your car in?” He already knew the answer. He hoped she would say no, then he’d grab Amber’s arm and drag her out of there to come back later, after Florence left.
“I don’t think that’s it. I never forget a face.”
Stan’s brain went blank.
Florence turned to Amber. “I think something about you is familiar, too.”
He recalled the fake accent Amber had used. The last thing they wanted to happen was for the woman to make the connection, go into Amber’s store, and start stocking similar items now that they knew what Florence sold in her own store.
“I don’t think so,” Amber said flatly.
Flo
rence turned again to Stan. Her eyes narrowed as she studied him. “You seem very familiar. Do you have a brother?”
“That must be it.”
The woman tilted her head and continued to study him. “I’m fairly new in town. Are you members of the Bloomfield Garden Club?”
Stan lifted his wrist and made a big show out of checking his watch. “Look at the time. We have to get going. It was nice meeting you.”
Amber needed no encouragement to take his cue. She grabbed two balls of yarn without reading the labels, and started walking away.
In two strides Stan caught up to her, and they didn’t break speed until they reached the line for the checkout.
She looked at all the people surrounding them, peeked down the aisle, and turned to him with a huge grin on her face. “A brother?”
He grinned back. “Yeah. Remind me to tell my mother that I’m not an only child anymore.”
She smacked him again, and her smiled widened. “Forget it. That secret baby stuff only happens in bad romance novels. I hope we have everything we came for, because as soon as we pay for this stuff, we’re so outta here.”
They placed their purchases on the checkout belt, and when it was their turn, Stan removed the divider and informed the cashier that he was paying for everything.
He raised one hand toward Amber to silence her when her mouth opened, then shuffled to the side so the clerk wouldn’t hear. “Don’t argue with me. This is cheaper than the supper you wouldn’t let me buy for you, so if you don’t let me pay, you’ll hurt my male ego.”
She rolled her eyes, telling him he’d won. This round, anyway. They’d already had the burger and fries he’d promised for dinner, maybe he would push his luck and stop for coffee and donuts on the way home.
Or maybe the Fancy Schmantzy was a possibility for next weekend.
Chapter Twenty-three
Just like what happened every other time, Gnorman stayed in Victoria and Barry’s garden for four days. In the middle of the day, when Stan and Amber were at work, and Victoria and Barry weren’t home, Gnorman disappeared. Again. Also like every other time, just before Stan was ready to close, Amber phoned to say that someone had called on her cell, telling her they’d found Gnorman in their backyard when they got home from wherever they had been.
This time Gnorman was at Pamela’s house.
When they got there, he couldn’t help but feel amazed. Pamela’s house wasn’t huge, but the design with the covered front porch protected by an overhanging roof supported by four pillars made it look bigger than it really was. The green clapboards were the same color but a little darker than Amber’s eyes, which instantly made him like it. With the gray roof and white trim around the old wooden windows, it made him consider painting his own house, and Amber would have no idea why he’d chosen the same paint as Pamela, just a little lighter.
As expected for the president of the garden club, Pamela’s front yard was loaded with flowers of every color under the rainbow, and then some.
He guided Amber up the stairs in the dark and knocked, surprised that the lightbulb above the front door was out. If burned out, since he was tall enough to reach it without a ladder, he would offer to change it for Pamela before they left.
Pamela came to the door, almost dancing. “This is so exciting. He’s finally come to my house. His little costume is so cute, you’re going to love it.”
They followed Pamela through the house and into the backyard, which was small, but still loaded with a million colors of flowers.
There was Gnorman, posed as if peeking through a bush, spying on Pamela’s yard. Probably because he was dressed like a spy.
“Just look at him!” Pamela joined her hands and pressed them to one cheek. “He’s so dashing, just like James Bond.”
Stan didn’t think Gnorman looked like any James Bond he’d ever seen. Gnorman looked ridiculous with the glasses and trench coat, but this costume was certainly better made and put together with more thought than the ghost costume they found him wearing at Victoria and Barry’s place.
He waited for Amber to take the newest envelope from Gnorman’s hand, and while Amber and Pamela exchanged small talk, he changed Pamela’s lightbulb. Announcing that he had completed the task provided a good excuse to interrupt the conversation, and they drove back to Amber’s townhouse.
This time she didn’t bother to make tea. They sat at the table side by side and read the new note.
gnorman is more than a gnome on a mission
He is a spy, and he ain’t gone f ishin’.
His clandistine capers and plans have a reason
Because he’s keeping the trophy at least for the season.
As she read the note, Amber squeezed her eyes shut and stiffened. “At least this time they mentioned the trophy, although I don’t know if that’s good or bad. My membership is up for renewal in a couple of weeks, and maybe this is a warning that they won’t pass my renewal application.”
“They’ll let you renew. Everyone likes you.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t a popularity club, it’s a garden club, and my garden is horrible. It barely meets the minimum requirement for membership. If only one person opposes my membership, then I’m out. Do you remember last year, they did turn someone down. I don’t remember the reason, but they did. The same thing is going to happen to me. Someone wants me out of the garden club.”
“Let me see that.”
Amber pushed the note across the table, allowing him to study it. “Somewhere, in all the notes and costumes, there has to be a common thread, no pun intended. We know it isn’t Zoe, the seamstress. Some of the costumes have been really good, but others have looked like throw-togethers, especially the ghost. We’ve got to find something with the notes that will point us to one person. There’s certainly been enough of them by now.”
Stan tried to recall the other notes. A couple of them he nearly had memorized. A few were pretty funny, but most were pretty bad. Despite what had to be true, the notes they didn’t show an obvious personality. In fact, they were very disjointed. They weren’t even glued together in a uniform manner. Some were glued with the precision of a typesetter, and others splattered with glue as if pieced together by a child. One of the early notes had donut sprinkles mixed in with the glue. “I can’t think of any common wording or style. I only know that whoever this is, not only is he or she a bad poet, but they can’t spell.”
Amber craned her neck to look at the note in front of Stan. “Can’t spell?”
Stan pressed one finger to the note. “Right here. Clandestine is spelled with an E, not an I.”
Amber’s eyes widened. “Let me see that.”
He slid the paper across the table. “Clandestine isn’t a common word. See, it wasn’t even cut out as a word from the newspaper. It’s pasted together from a few other words. It’s even different sized letters. Since it’s not the newspaper making a typo, someone has spelled it wrong.”
“I’ve seen this spelling before.” Amber pressed her fingers to her temple. “I know someone who spells it that way.”
She tapped one finger to her forehead, reminding Stan of a childhood image from Winnie the Pooh. He bit his tongue, stopping from blurting out, “Think, think, think.” He wished he could think of who spelled it like that, but people didn’t write him notes. They told him the troubles they were having with their cars, and he wrote the notes, trying to figure out where to start tinkering. “I know how to spell it, but clandestine isn’t a word I’d use in conversation. Who would?”
Amber turned to him, her finger still moving. “No one I know. Besides, it wouldn’t be in a spoken sentence. I’ve seen it written down. Spelled this way. Wrong.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “What kind of person would put a word like clandestine into a sentence?”
He knew the answer to that one
. “That’s easy. Mystery writers.”
Amber shot him a scathing dirty look. “Like we know a mystery writer. Here in Bloomfield.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “You never know. Mystery writers have to live somewhere. Why not here?”
“Do you know anyone who writes mystery novels for a living?”
He wondered what kind of person wrote mystery novels at all, never mind for a living. All he’d learned about writers was what he’d seen in movies or on television. Most of the time writers of any genre were portrayed as reclusive, a little strange, and a lot quirky. While he knew a lot of quirky people, he didn’t think any of them were writers. His neighbor was a quirky guy. Matt worked from home testing video games all day, every day, even weekends, and had never been fishing in his life.
The quirkiest person he’d ever met, even though he’d only met the man once, was the guy who looked after the cemetery. That guy was more than quirky, he was creepy. Someone had to take care of the cemetery, but this guy enjoyed it just a little too much.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t know anyone who writes mystery novels. I don’t know anyone who writes any kind of novels.”
Amber’s eyes brightened. “Then maybe it’s someone who reads mystery novels. Who reads that kind of thing?”
“I do. That’s how I recognized the wrong spelling. I read mystery novels when I have time.” Which he hadn’t lately. Maybe if he picked up a few, that would get his brain in sync with following clues and solving the crime. In a way, this was a crime, since the trophy had sort of been stolen. Although he honestly believed it would be returned, when the Gnapper’s purpose was finished. Whatever the purpose was.
“You’re not helping. It’s obviously not you. Who do you know that reads them? Do you swap books, or discuss the latest one you read with anyone?”
