Verse and Vengeance

by Amanda Flower

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What—”

  I didn’t get to finish my question, because the front door opened and a family of four trooped in. I bit my lip.

  She shook her head. “Go help your customers. I’ll be fine.”

  “I—”

  “Miss,” the man in the group said.

  I looked back to Jo and then to the man and felt my shoulders droop. I turned and walked over to the family. I put a smile on my face. “How can I help you?”

  When I looked over my shoulder again, Jo was gone.

  I had a rush of customers. Most of them bought multiple books, but I wished they would all leave so I could find Jo.

  When the last customer left, I gave a sigh of relief and looked around in case Jo was still there. She was nowhere to be seen. Emerson sat on the steps that led up to the children’s loft and meowed. He looked up.

  Taking the hint, I climbed the steps. I found Jo sitting on one of the toadstools in the middle of the room. She stared at her hands, which were folded in her lap. The hand-painted woodland fairies that peeked out from around the bookshelves watched her.

  Jo looked up. “Redding is dead, and everyone is going to think it’s my fault.”

  I grabbed a second toadstool and put it in front of her. “Why do you need my help?” I tried to keep my question neutral, but inside I was shaking. Maybe I would be able to clear up Redding’s murder before the day was even over. Not that I believed Jo could do this. She might be flighty, but she wasn’t a killer.

  She looked down at her hands again.

  “Jo?” I prompted.

  “I gave him the bike. The one he was in an accident with. I didn’t know anything was wrong with it. Bobby said the police questioned him about it and said the brake line was cut. He said because I was the one who gave him the bike, I was responsible.”

  “Did you know that the brake line was cut?” I asked.

  “Of course not! I would never give someone a bike if I knew it was broken or tampered with.”

  “Did you know Redding?”

  She looked at her hands again. “No.” Her answer was barely above a whisper.

  She was lying.

  “Jo.” I leaned forward on my toadstool. “If you want me to help you, I have to know all the facts. If you know Redding, you have to tell me how you know him. Chief Rainwater will want to know.”

  “I’m not talking to the police.” Her voice was bitter. “That’s why I’m talking to you.”

  I frowned. That wasn’t how it worked. Rainwater would want to talk to her himself if he knew she was somehow involved with Redding’s death or a witness. I didn’t say that to her, though. It was clear she was upset. Jo might be flighty and a little prone to giving away things that didn’t belong to her, but she was a sweet girl. She was scared and needed my protection.

  “Why did you give Redding the bike?”

  “He asked for one. He said he was joining the race.”

  “But he wasn’t registered?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did he say why he wanted to join the race at the last moment?” I asked. I watched her face carefully for a reaction again.

  Again, she looked at her hands, which I was discovering was a type of tell for when she was lying. “No.”

  That was definitely a lie. I would have bet the whole of Charming Books that Redding had told her why he was joining the race.

  I sighed. “Just tell me what happened this morning, from the beginning.”

  She seemed to deliberate over that request, her whole body motionless and her gaze far away for several seconds. Then she nodded. I was glad. If she’d continued to lie to me, I would’ve had to call her out on it, and I didn’t want to put added strain on her.

  “I was helping Bobby with registration,” she began. “Just before the race, after I saw you, Bobby had to leave for a bit, so I was alone at the registration desk for a little while.”

  “Where did Bobby go?” I shifted my position on my toadstool.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

  “Okay.” I nodded, encouraging her to continue.

  She took a breath. “So the race was about to begin, and this man—Redding—came up to me, said that he wanted to register for the race and needed a bicycle to ride. I told him that it was too late to register. The race would start in five minutes, but he wouldn’t take no as an answer.”

  “What do you mean when you say he wouldn’t take no as an answer?”

  She looked at her hands again. “He just wouldn’t.”

  “When he didn’t take no as an answer, what did you do?”

  “The booth was so busy with the race about to begin, and there were some last-minute riders who needed to check in and get their bibs, and Bobby wasn’t there. Everyone was angry with me, so I gave him the bike to make him go away. Before he left, I told him to take a helmet too. I made him promise that he would return the bike at the end of the race.”

  “Why did you give him that particular bike?”

  She licked her lips. “It was the last bike we had. He was so insistent that I just gave it to him. I know that I shouldn’t have. Bobby was furious with me when he got back that I let Redding take the bike.”

  So then Bobby knew about Redding and the bike. Interesting.

  I hadn’t thought Bobby was lying when I’d purposely questioned him about the registration, but then I didn’t know his tells the way I knew Jo’s.

  Jo’s story wasn’t quite aligning, though, and I was inclined to ask, “How did you know what his name was when he took the bike if you didn’t know who he was?”

  Her face flushed red, and still she wouldn’t look at me. “He must have told me.”

  Uh-huh. “Do you have the rental paperwork from the bike?”

  “We didn’t do any paperwork,” she said regretfully. “There were so many people there needing so many things that I didn’t have time. Bobby is going to kill me.”

  I grimaced. He might not literally killer her, but he was going to be mad, that was for certain. At least this all explained why Redding wasn’t on the roster of riders Bobby had shown Officer Clipton and me.

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Near the end of the race,” I said. “After Redding’s accident. Where did you go? I went to the Riverwalk to talk to Bobby, and he said you had wandered off.”

  “Oh.” Her face flushed. “I had something to do.”

  “What?” I asked bluntly.

  “It doesn’t have anything to do with what happened.”

  “I need to know. The police are going to want to know.”

  She jumped off her toadstool. “I came here because you’re my friend and I thought you would help me. Looks like I was wrong.”

  “Jo, I do want to help you.” I stood up too. “I can’t help you if you’re not telling me the truth. I know you’re holding something back.”

  She spun around and ran down the steps to the main floor. Faulkner cawed in the birch tree and flapped his wings. I was halfway down the steps when the door slammed closed after her.

  I ran to the front door of Charming Books just in time to see her disappear across the street around the corner of Midcentury Vintage. My shoulders sagged. I felt like I had just failed that young woman as her teacher and as her friend.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After Jo left Charming Books, I tried to call Rainwater to tell him what had happened, but he didn’t pick up. I wasn’t surprised. He was in the middle of a murder investigation and the village was in the process of cleaning up after the race. I sent him a text to call me and left it at that. I knew he would when he could.

  I didn’t have time to think about Redding, Jo, or even Walt Whitman until around four when my grandmother waltzed into the shop. “Violet,” she said. “There you are, my girl. I had wondered where you’d gone.”

  I raised my brow at her. “Where did you think I’d be?”

  �
��My dear, there has been a death, so I expected you to be in the thick of it. Didn’t we have Richard watching the store for us?”

  “I let him go home,” I said.

  “Violet, you should have kept him on so you could do a little bit of sleuthing. You’re so fond of it.”

  I sighed. “I was about to do a bit of sleuthing, but I don’t know what good it would do.” I gave her an abbreviated version of Jo’s visit.

  “That poor girl. She sounds scared. She knows more about Joel Redding’s death than she let on. She trusts you. She’ll come to you again for help when she’s ready.”

  I nodded, wishing I had handled her with more care. Maybe she would still be in Charming Books now if I had. Although part of me felt that the secrets Jo was keeping might take more than a little while to come to the surface. Jo was an enigmatic girl, a private person, and while she trusted me, I couldn’t help but think Jo didn’t trust anyone wholeheartedly. I only hoped Grandma Daisy was right and I’d get another chance to help the young girl.

  “Violet, I know that David will clear up this mess with Redding—with your help, of course.”

  I didn’t think Rainwater wanted my help, but I didn’t bother to say that. I think everyone in the village knew I was going to poke my nose in the case. I had to now, in any case. Jo had asked for my help. It didn’t matter that she had been lying to me about how she knew Redding. She was a scared young woman, and as her professor, I had to help her.

  Grandma Daisy beamed. “I do have a bit of good news. We raised over twenty thousand dollars just today. I believe between this event and the others we have planned throughout the summer, we will have no trouble of reaching our goal. The museum will happen! I have to call Vaughn to tell him to get back to work.”

  Her mention of Vaughn reminded me of the necklace I had found at the village hall. “Wait here for a moment. I have something I want to show you.”

  “Oh, part of the mystery, is it? I would love to see. I knew that you would be on the case, Violet. Is it something the books have revealed to you?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Redding. Hang tight, and I’ll go get it.”

  When I’d gone to my apartment to freshen up when Richard was still at the shop, I had completely forgotten about the necklace. I hoped that it was still in my pocket. I plucked my biking shorts from the hamper and checked the one tiny pocket. The necklace was gone.

  I swallowed. That couldn’t be right. The pocket was too small to let anything fall out of it. It was one of those slit pockets in the waistband of activewear that was just big enough to slip a key into. A penny wouldn’t even have been able to escape it.

  I shook the shorts out just to see if the necklace would fall to the floor. Then I pulled every bit of clothing from the hamper and poured over each piece of laundry. The necklace was gone.

  I went into the bathroom and checked the counter, floor, and shower. I even looked behind the toilet, although heaven only knew how it could have gotten back there. Still nothing. The necklace was truly missing.

  Where could I have lost it? I remembered thinking of showing it to Richard, but I had thought against it. Then I remembered when Vaughn had lifted me off the ladder. Had he pulled some kind of magician’s trick and taken the necklace? But why? How would he have known I even had it? I hadn’t told him.

  “Violet,” my grandmother’s voice floated from my living room. “What on earth is going on up there? I can hear you running around all the way downstairs. And what was it that you wanted to show me?”

  I came out of the bedroom and sat on the arm of my sofa. “It was a necklace, a garnet necklace, actually. There were three stones and they were shaped into three teardrops.”

  My grandmother nodded. “It sounds lovely. Did David give it to you as a gift? I do love that man. As your grandmother, I was more hopeful that it would be an engagement ring.”

  I rolled my eyes at the comment. I wasn’t going to be pulled into a conversation about engagement rings with my grandmother—or anyone, for that matter.

  I shook my head. “It’s not mine. I found it at the museum.”

  “When were you in the museum?” she asked.

  “I went there after the race,” I said.

  “Why?” She cocked her head.

  I bit the inside of my lip, wondering if I should tell Grandma Daisy that Fenimore was back in the village. I assumed that if she’d known, she would have mentioned it to me. She was the only other person who knew who he was to me, who he was to both of us.

  Then I remembered the cat.

  “Emerson.”

  “Ahh.” She smiled as if that made perfect sense.

  As if on cue, the little tuxedo cat walked into the room from my bedroom with no explanation as to how he’d gotten there. I hadn’t seen him in the bedroom when I had been looking for the necklace. I had long ago given up on asking Emerson how he moved about the world. It was far too confusing.

  “So you took the necklace from the museum? Why?”

  Yikes. When she put it like that, it certainly sounded suspicious …

  I went on to tell her about Emerson, the scaffolding, and Vaughn’s unexpected arrival. “I assumed it belonged to a woman on the village council, and I was going to give it to you to return to her. Now I wonder.”

  “What happened to it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I can only guess that Vaughn took it when he helped me down.”

  “Why would Vaughn take the necklace from you? I know him. He and his company have done an amazing job on the museum so far, and they have been so patient with the financial troubles we’ve had. I know other companies would have abandoned us at this point, or worse, sought to litigate, but Vaughn and his team hung in there.”

  “He said the museum was important to him, too,” I said.

  She nodded. “Then why do you suspect him?”

  “I don’t know what else could have happened to it. It was in the pocket of my bike shorts when I climbed down the ladder, and now it’s gone.”

  “Well, could you just ask him?” she asked reasonably.

  “I just realized that it was gone, but I will.” I frowned. “I need to talk to him about Jo, too. I’m worried about her.”

  “It sounds like you have every reason to be.”

  “Yes.” I paused. “But what am I supposed to say when I ask him about the necklace—‘Hey, did you put your hand in my pocket and take a necklace that wasn’t even mine?’”

  “Good point, but you can mention that you saw it at the site and wondered if anyone picked it up. Watch him closely and see if he gives anything away. Truly, I can’t believe Vaughn would do this. Of the two Fitzgerald siblings, he is the more responsible one.”

  Grandma Daisy must have seen the look on my face that showed I was about to protest. “Nothing against Jo, in the least. I like the girl very much, but you have told me of the many times she didn’t turn in her classwork. I can’t imagine Vaughn doing that. He’s always been punctual with everything at the museum.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “I wish I knew where Jo went. She needs help.”

  “I can tell that you won’t be able to rest until you track this down,” Grandma Daisy said. “And you have been stuck in the shop most of the day. Why don’t you go into town and see if you can find out what’s going on?”

  It wasn’t a bad idea.

  “David was still at the Riverwalk when I left,” she said.

  I bit my lip. “Did he ask you anything more about Redding?”

  She shook her head. “What is worrying you, my dear?”

  “I’m afraid that Redding was here in the village to investigate us. All the signs point to that.” I lowered my voice even though we were the only ones in the building. “He asked Richard questions about the tree.”

  She pursed her lips together. “That is worrisome. He might have asked others too.”

  “That’s what I think, too.” I paused. “It could be seen as m
otive …”

  She snorted. “David would never believe that about us.”

  I didn’t bother to say that Rainwater had thought it about us both before. She knew it as well as I did.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “What would we do if others found out about the shop’s essence?” I asked my grandmother. “That’s what we don’t know. That’s what you’ve never told me.” I couldn’t keep the accusation from my voice.

  Her eyes went wide. “Violet?”

  I bit my lip trying to hold back the words, but I couldn’t keep the questions at bay any longer. “Grandma, you tricked me to come back to Cascade Springs almost a year ago to take my place as the Caretaker of the shop and the tree, but you have told me very little about them.”

  I supposed part of me was still a little miffed at my grandmother’s methods to convince me to return to Cascade Springs last summer. I had been in Chicago, where I’d lived ever since I left the village at seventeen. The moment I’d graduated high school, I was out the door. Most of that had to do with being accused of killing my best friend, Colleen. She had died in a tragic drowning accident in the Niagara River. It was later proven that no foul play was involved, but I was a teenager and couldn’t get over how most of the village had been convinced I was somehow behind it. I had to get out of there, and I planned to never come back. I had stuck to that plan for twelve years until one day Grandma Daisy called to tell me she was dying. I was terrified of losing her. She was all the family I had in the world. I was in the middle of my doctoral studies at the University of Chicago and dropped everything to come to Cascade Springs to be at her bedside. What I found when I arrived was a woman in perfect health. In fact, my grandmother had the physical fitness of a person half her age.

  I was furious and was about to leave when she told me I was the next Caretaker. She told me the books weren’t communicating with her like they once had. It was time to turn the job over to the next generation: me.

  Now she started to speak, and I held up my hand. “Please let me finish. I know the story of Rosalee, and I know that the shop’s essence communicates with the Caretaker. I have seen that with my own eyes. But why do we have to keep it a secret to the point that we drive away people that we love?” I said this thinking of my own mother and father and every Waverly woman who had ended up alone before me.