The Book of Candlelight

by Ellery Adams

  Also by Ellery Adams:

  The Secret, Book, and Scone Society Mysteries:

  The Secret, Book & Scone Society

  The Whispered Word

  The Book of Candlelight

  Book Retreat Mysteries:

  Murder in the Mystery Suite

  Murder in the Paperback Parlor

  Murder in the Secret Garden

  Murder in the Locked Library

  Murder in the Reading Room

  The Book of Candlelight

  ELLERY ADAMS

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Reader’s Guide for The Book of Candlelight

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2020 by Ellery Adams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2019950881

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-1243-1

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: February 2020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-1245-5 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-1245-5 (ebook)

  For my Loves,

  Tim, Harrison, Sophie

  She had only a candle’s light to see by, but candlelight never did badly by any woman.

  John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

  The Secret, Book, and Scone Society Members

  Nora Pennington, owner of Miracle Books

  Hester Winthrop, owner of the Gingerbread House

  Estella Sadler, owner of Magnolia Salon and Spa

  June Dixon, thermal pools manager, Miracle Springs Lodge

  The Inn of Mist and Roses

  Lou Simmons and Patty Meacham, proprietors

  Sheldon Vega, guest

  Micah Foster, guest

  Bo and Georgia Gentry, guests

  Chapter 1

  And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.

  —Truman Capote

  Nora Pennington had no idea how much the rain would change her life.

  According to the saying, spring was supposed to come in like a lion. And so it did.

  It plodded into the little western North Carolina town like a wet cat looking for a comfortable place to nap. Having settled in, it was in no rush to leave.

  The rain began on a Monday in early April. It was tentative at first. Gentle. The kind of rain that coaxed people into slowing their pace and speaking in softer voices. It was chilly. Thick cardigans, already packed away in anticipation of balmier weather, were unpacked. Extra cups of coffee were brewed. People craved soup and homemade bread for supper.

  It rained all day. The roads glistened. The soil turned dark. The vegetation was weighed down by fat water droplets. When the storm tapered off late in the evening, the townsfolk assumed that Tuesday would bring a change. A little sunshine. A rise in temperatures.

  The next morning revealed another gray sky. By lunchtime, it was raining again.

  The rain fell every day that week. As the consecutive days of wet weather drove the locals and the tourists indoors, Nora’s bookstore became a sanctuary for book lovers and for those searching for a cozy place to wait out the rain.

  Miracle Books had never seen such a steady stream of paying customers. They bought books and hot drinks—one after the other—until Nora feared she’d run out of coffee beans or tea bags. She’d never had to stock so much milk before. By Friday, she was down to her last twenty sugar packets.

  Her coffee bar supplies weren’t the only things being depleted. Her stock of shelf enhancers was also thin. Shelf enhancers were what Nora called the antique and vintage items decorating her bookshelves. As beautiful as books were on their own, Nora felt they shined even brighter when surrounded by interesting objets d’art like an etched cranberry glass vase, a Steiff fox terrier, a hand-painted wooden rooster, chintzware candleholders, cut-glass powder boxes with silver lids, a singing bird toy in a brass cage, and, because Easter was around the corner, a selection of vintage plush bunnies, windup chicks, alabaster eggs, and handwoven baskets in every color of the rainbow.

  Nora couldn’t complain about the rapid disappearance of her inventory. She was selling stacks of books and a dozen shelf enhancers a day. In addition to these sales, she was taking in a tidy profit from the coffee bar, which included the sale of the book pastries made by Hester Winthrop of the Gingerbread House bakery. In short, Miracle Books was having a banner week.

  By Friday, the bookshop was a mess. Not an eclectic jumble. Not charming dishevelment. A flat-out mess.

  Due to gaps on the shelves, books leaned against one another like tired children. The Holistic Medicine section needed a good dusting, as did the shelves in Romance. Nora noticed that the display of vintage teacups she’d lined up in front of Victoria Holt’s novels were no longer quaint but pathetic looking. A few days ago, the ten floral teacups had been filled with sprigs of dried lavender and rosebuds. Since then, eight of the cups had been sold and someone had removed the posies from the remaining two cups.

  I can’t blame them, Nora thought, listening to the steady drumbeat of the rain outside her window. Everyone is desperate for a little color. A bit of cheer.

  After hanging the CLOSED sign that evening, Nora did some tidying up and then rode to the grocery store on her bicycle. By the time she returned to her tiny house located behind the bookstore, she was drenched. Leaving her bike on the deck, she entered what had once been a working train car. The locals called Nora’s house Caboose Cottage, and as she peeled off her wet clothes, she wished she could push it onto the tracks and ride to a place awash in sunshine.

  Too tired to return the phone calls or texts she’d received from Jedediah Craig, the handsome, charismatic paramedic she was dating, or any of her Secret, Book, and Scone Society friends, Nora dropped on her bed and fell into a deep sleep. Neither the rumbles of thunder nor cracks of lightning could wake her.

  The next morning, there was finally a break in the rain.

  Buoyed by the sight of a pale sun fighting its way through the haze, Nora rode to the old tobacco barn where the flea market was held every weekend.

  Hoping to find a treasure trove of new shelf enhancers inside, she shopped the booths of her favorite sellers first. These were the people who treated her like a human instead of a burn victim. They were the people who’d look into her hazel eyes before letting their gazes stray to the octopi-shaped burn scars on her neck or the jellyfish bubbles swimming up her right arm. Eventually, they’d find the space above her pinkie knuckle. A space created by hungry flames.

  Nora had been an attractive woman before the fire had marked her. She didn’t regret her scars. She regretted the event that had caused them. Her recklessnes
s had almost cost a mother and her young son their lives, which was why Nora refused to allow the plastic surgeon who’d operated on her face a few months back to repair the skin on her neck, arm, or hand.

  “You already worked a miracle on my face,” she’d told him during one of her follow-up visits. “If I wear the right makeup, you can hardly tell that I was burned.”

  She chose not to use the makeup, preferring to let her skin breathe, to let the thin scars show along her hairline where Dr. Patel had worked his magic. Nora didn’t want to erase the evidence of her car accident, the fire, or the months in a burn unit. The married, suburbanite librarian she used to be had died that night, and the woman who’d left the hospital to start a new life in Miracle Springs was a better person. She was uglier, poorer, stronger, and more compassionate than the woman who’d sped along that dark highway, fueled by rage and alcohol.

  “You want me to take off three bucks because of that tiny wrinkle?” a vendor named Beatrice asked Nora. “You want my six kids to starve?”

  Beatrice loved to haggle. Her eyes were already glimmering at the prospect of a good back-and-forth session with Nora.

  “Six? Last week, it was five,” Nora said, holding back a smile. “And you know how fussy my customers are. They won’t focus on the blue butterfly inside this paperweight. They’ll focus on the crack.”

  “That’s no crack. It’s a dimple,” Beatrice objected.

  Nora put the paperweight aside and held up a vintage Bakelite alarm clock. Its yellow hue reminded her of a ripe lemon.

  “What about this? If I buy both of these, will you knock five bucks off the total?”

  “Five?” Beatrice acted affronted. “There’s not a damn thing wrong with that clock.”

  The haggling continued for several minutes. When it was over, Nora left the booth with the paperweight and clock as well as a hammered copper inkwell and blotter.

  She moved around the flea market, asking for discounts from every vendor. Though it had been a record-breaking week for Miracle Books, there was no telling what would happen next week. Life in retail was filled with uncertainty.

  An hour later, Nora’s backpack was stuffed with treasures wrapped in newspaper. Deciding to return for more on Sunday, she headed for the exit and ran into her friend June.

  June Dixon managed the thermal pools for the Miracle Springs Lodge, the biggest hotel in town. June was in her fifties but looked a decade younger. Her café au lait skin glowed with health and her close-cropped, black curls accentuated her high cheekbones and drew attention to her best feature: her golden-brown eyes.

  “Are you coming or going?” June asked Nora.

  “Going. You?”

  June frowned. “I stopped by to find out about booth rental. I want to sell my socks here, but it’s too pricey. I’d have to knit around the clock to pay for the privilege of sitting on my ass all weekend. No, thanks.”

  “I told you I’d sell your socks in my shop.”

  “And you wouldn’t burn me like the folks who run the gift shop at the lodge, but that experience made me realize that I don’t want to owe anybody anything. I want to sell my stuff my way.”

  The two friends ambled over to the last booth in the row. Situated close to the door, the booth belonged to an artisan known to the locals as Cherokee Danny. Every weekend, he and his wife arranged their wares on tables covered with handwoven blankets. Danny was a potter and his wife was a basket maker. The couple had been at the same spot since Nora had moved to Miracle Springs, but she’d never purchased anything from them.

  Living in a tiny house meant that Nora only had space for items she used on a daily basis. Other than her favorite books and a few antiques, she bought collectibles for resale only. No matter how wonderful the item, it was priced and put on a bookstore shelf.

  Nora looked at the wares in Danny’s booth and remembered telling Jed that he could jazz up his spartan kitchen by buying a few pieces of pottery. She now knew that most of his salary went toward his mother’s medical expenses, so he couldn’t afford pottery. He didn’t even own a couch. He lived like a monk so that his mom could receive the very best care. Jed was a good man.

  As Nora admired a bowl glazed a rich, walnut brown and stamped with swirls, she realized that she and Jed weren’t the kind of couple that exchanged gifts. She wasn’t sure what kind of couple they were, but she felt like buying him a gift anyway.

  “Are you looking for yourself or for someone special?” asked Danny’s wife. Nora didn’t know her name.

  Nora wasn’t sure what to call Jed. She was in her forties, and it seemed silly to say that she had a boyfriend. The term sounded juvenile. Significant other was no good and Nora wasn’t the type to use idioms like partner in crime or my better half.

  “A friend,” she said. “He could use a bowl like this for pasta. Or salad. If he ate salad.”

  The other woman laughed. “The only way I can get Danny to eat veggies is by drowning them in butter.”

  “Hello, I’m sitting right here,” said Danny.

  “I know,” his wife retorted playfully. “I wasn’t trying to be quiet.”

  There was a smile in Danny’s voice as he said, “Like you’ve ever been quiet a day in your life.” To Nora, he said, “If you’ve got any questions about my work, let me know.”

  “Can your pieces withstand everyday use? Like microwaving or dishwashing?” she asked.

  “Not all,” he said. “That bowl you and my girl were talking about can handle high heat, though.”

  Nora picked up the pot and saw the price sticker affixed to the bottom. “I’ll take it.”

  While Danny’s wife wrapped the bowl in newspaper and chatted with June about her baskets, Nora and Danny griped about the rain.

  “We live thirty minutes away,” said Danny. “Our house is right on the mountain, and I don’t know how much longer it’ll stand if the rain doesn’t let up. If we get another week of this, our place will slide down the mountain like a sled.”

  He made a downward motion with his hand.

  Wanting to offer him a little hope, Nora said that the upcoming forecast called for two days of partly cloudy weather.

  Danny shook his head. “That’s wrong. More rain is coming. I’ve seen the signs. It’s coming today, and it won’t budge until it’s made us even more miserable.”

  After thanking Nora for her purchase, Danny moved off to help another customer. His wife handed Nora the bowl, now cocooned in white paper. “May this humble pot bring many blessings to the home it enters.”

  Nora didn’t know how to respond to the woman’s words or to her warm fingers lingering on the back of Nora’s scarred hand. The touch itself felt like a blessing. She managed a quick “thanks,” before she and June made for the exit.

  Just outside the doors, the two friends parted. June headed for her car and Nora walked to the bike racks. As she put the paper-wrapped bowl in her bike basket, it began to rain.

  Cursing under her breath, Nora pulled the hood of her raincoat over her head and donned her helmet. A few hours of weak sunlight weren’t enough to dry the muddy parking lot, which meant Nora had to maneuver around dozens of deep puddles. The shoulder of the main road was just as bad. In a matter of minutes, Nora’s sneakers, socks, and pant legs were completely saturated with muddy water.

  She rode across the bridge and entered the downtown shopping district, surprised by the number of cars on the road. Seeing a line of red taillights ahead, Nora decided to cut through the park.

  This seemed like a brilliant idea until she came upon a tree branch in the middle of the sidewalk. She tried to swerve around it, but her tires slipped out from under her and she went down hard.

  She’d fallen before, but not directly onto her hip and elbow. Pain tore through her entire left side as water splashed over her pinched face. It took her a few seconds to sit upright.

  Her jeans were torn at the knee. Blood soaked the frayed denim around the hole, turning the blue fabric purple.


  Nora heard the sound of boots in the water. Someone put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Are you okay?”

  It was Hester, looking adorable in a red-and-white polka-dot raincoat.

  “Yeah.” Nora got to her feet. “But I don’t think I can say the same for my flea market finds.”

  Shoving a tendril of frizzy blond hair out of her face, Hester said, “Come into the bakery. I’ll make you some tea.”

  Hester carried Nora’s backpack and the bag with the pottery bowl into her warm kitchen.

  “Have you ever thought about buying a car?” she asked once they’d shucked off their raincoats. The aromas of melted butter, baking bread, and cinnamon wafted through the space, settling around Nora’s shoulders like a cashmere shawl. Spilled flour, halos of powdered sugar, and bits of dried dough covered every surface.

  “I don’t need a car. I don’t go anywhere,” said Nora. She gestured around the kitchen. “What happened? It looks like a spice rack exploded.”

  After pulling a tray of dinner rolls out of the oven, Hester slid one onto a plate. She cut the roll in half, buttered it, and pressed the halves together. Putting the plate in front of Nora, she said, “I can’t keep up with the work. I thought the rain would slow things down. Nope. People want my food more than ever. My cash box is stuffed, but I’m running on empty.”

  Nora took a bite of the roll and moaned. “No wonder they line up for your stuff. This tastes like the feeling of putting on PJs at the end of a long day.”

  Hester smiled. “Thanks, but the bakery’s popularity might also have something to do with my over-the-top April Flowers theme.”