Sweet Tea and Secrets

by Joy Avon

  Sweet Tea and Secrets

  A TEA AND A READ MYSTERY

  Joy Avon

  Also available by Joy Avon

  In Peppermint Peril

  Acknowledgments

  As always, I’m grateful to all agents, editors, and authors who share online about the writing and publishing process. A special thanks to my amazing agent, Jill Marsal; my wonderful editor, Faith Black Ross; and the entire talented crew at Crooked Lane Books, especially cover illustrator Brandon Dorman for the eye-catching cover with Daisy at its heart. And of course to you, reader: thanks for picking up this story: I hope that the warmth and togetherness of the Fourth of July lit up your heart as you were reading. You’re invited to join Callie and Iphy again as Heart’s Harbor gears up for a Valentine’s Day to remember.

  Chapter One

  Book Tea’s door opened, and a group of women came out, talking and laughing. The relaxed expression on their faces suggested they had spent a quiet few hours on the high tea offerings and were now energized to tackle anything that came their way. Book Tea had that effect on people. The delicious treats with bookish clues, the perfect tea blends, and the mystery books lined up along the oak-paneled walls created a safe haven where guests could sit back and enjoy, letting the stress of their everyday lives wash away.

  Still, as Callie Aspen watched the door close again upon all those inviting delights, nerves wriggled in her stomach, and a small voice in the back of her mind whispered, Are you sure you made the right decision?

  Last time she’d been here, it had just been for the Christmas holidays. Some time off from her busy life as tour guide for Travel the Past, a company that specialized in trips to historic venues.

  Heart’s Harbor had always been her hideout for the holidays and as a kid in the summers, a place where she could play hide and seek, build forts, and watch the stars light up in the skies. Those happy childhood memories, in combination with the warmth and coziness of Book Tea and the new friends she had made during her Christmastime adventures, had convinced her it might be time to say goodbye to the life she had built so far and start over completely. Now Heart’s Harbor was becoming her full-time home. Her apartment in Trenton was empty, waiting for another tenant to come and move in. And her position at Travel the Past had been taken by an eager young history graduate who couldn’t wait to take her first group to Vienna later this week.

  Callie’s furniture was en route to Heart’s Harbor, and in the back of the rental car were her suitcases packed with clothes and other personal things that she hadn’t wanted to trust to the movers.

  Everything that had formed the basis of her life for the past few years was over and done with, and she was about to start over, here, in the town of her fond childhood memories. No more taking groups past buildings, explaining about architecture and royalty; now her days would be spent baking cakes and organizing bookish tea parties. She had looked forward to this moment as she had taken careful steps to change her life, but now, standing here watching the tearoom, she wasn’t sure what lay in store for her. Could she just leave everything she had built for something so completely different? The last time she had been here, in December, the air had been full of snow and sleigh bells, the houses lit up with colorful lights, and the warmth of the Christmas season wrapping itself around her, making her long for togetherness and family. For a steady life in one place, instead of all the traveling.

  Now, however, in the sun-drenched brightness of a June afternoon, she wondered what on earth she had done. Was she really cut out for small-town life? Would she miss her colleagues at Travel the Past and her groups of history-loving people who drank in every word she said? Would a few weeks here show her that she had made a terrible mistake?

  Maybe it would have been better to keep her apartment and take a leave at the company, to see if this was really what she wanted to do?

  Why had she burned all of her bridges?

  Shaking her head with a rueful grimace, Callie walked to the door and opened it. Inside the tearoom, an invigorating scent of ginger tea was in the air. Several tables were filled, and voices hummed on the air.

  From the back, something small and furry came running for Callie, and she squatted to pat Daisy, the Boston terrier she had inherited from her boss’s mother and who had been part of her reason to want to move here. All of her traveling wouldn’t have allowed her to keep the dog. But giving up Daisy had seemed impossible. Just feeling the soft fur under her fingertips and seeing the trust in the dog’s eyes as she looked up at her, Callie knew she had been right about that. Daisy was hers.

  She lifted the dog in her arms and carried her past the tables filled with women who threw adoring glances at the cuddly terrier, to reach the doors leading into the kitchen area. Great-Aunt Iphy stood at the counter, scooping fresh raspberries onto chocolate cake. She didn’t turn her head as she said in a tone of full concentration, “If you could just get me the whipped cream from the fridge.”

  Callie guessed that her great-aunt had taken her for one of her helpers, and lowered Daisy to the ground. She put a finger to her lips to indicate that Daisy shouldn’t betray her presence.

  As if she understood right away and played along, the Boston terrier stayed perfectly still.

  Callie went to the fridge and got out the bowl of whipped cream. She put it on the counter beside Iphy, who was fully focused on arranging the raspberries.

  “Thank you,” she muttered in a distracted tone.

  Callie stood beside her, watching the creation take shape, grinning to herself as she wondered how long it would take her great-aunt to notice it wasn’t one of her helpers beside her. As usual, Iphy looked impeccable in a cream blouse and long, flower-patterned skirt. Her pumps were the same pale blue as the flowers on the skirt and the thin gauze shawl around her neck. Her hair was made up into a neat bun at the back of her head, secured with a pearly clasp.

  At last Iphy was satisfied with the arrangement on the plate and looked up. “You can take this to table …”

  Her eyes widened as she took in Callie. “You’re here! Why didn’t you call to tell me it would be today?”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You’re staying now, right? This is the move?”

  Callie nodded, smiling despite the nerves in her stomach. The move was exactly what worried her. The finality of it all. No turning back.

  Iphy reached out and wrapped Callie in a hug that was surprisingly tight and strong for a frail elderly woman. “Welcome home, Callie. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have you here at last.”

  Callie hugged her great-aunt back, for a moment thinking that she might have done the right thing after all. Iphy needed her to help out both at Book Tea and in the preservation of majestic Haywood Hall, a rambling old house on the outskirts of town, inhabited by Heart’s Harbor’s oldest resident, rich widow Dorothea Finster.

  That was, everybody had believed Dorothea to be rich until the presentation of her new will at Christmastime had revealed that she was deeply in debt and needed others to help her preserve the house. Callie had agreed to help out, along with Iphy, and she realized now that the house that had fascinated her as a little girl was part of the new life she was going to build there in Heart’s Harbor. That was amazing in itself. No matter how much she might miss traveling to historic sites, there was a historic site right here for her to preserve. Her own contribution to keeping town history alive.

  Iphy held her shoulders and smiled up at Callie with laughter wrinkles around her clear blue eyes. “It’s not too busy. I can sneak out and show you the cottage I got for you to live in. It wasn’t easy. Everything gets rented to tourists in the summer. But I found you something I know you’ll like. It does need a little work.”<
br />
  Callie froze. “What do you mean work?” She didn’t intend to spend her sunny summer days trapped in a fixer-upper.

  “Well, Mr. Neville, the elderly gentleman who owns it, used to do repairs himself, but he isn’t up to it anymore, so he just let the place sit empty for a bit. I heard about it and thought it was a shame for such a nice house to be vacant just because of a few minor things. The wallpaper isn’t very pretty anymore, and the paint is chipping. Could be a bad plank in the porch here and there. I had someone look it over before I decided to take it. It doesn’t need major repairs. You won’t have a leaky roof on your hands or bad plumbing.”

  “Phew. That’s a relief. Although wallpapering isn’t my strong suit either.”

  “I know, and I put up a little notice at the community center to ask someone to help out with it. We’re a strong community here—we’ll have someone in no time. Mr. Neville was delighted when I came to see him with the first rent check, saying the house needed a heart again. You’ll be that heart—I just know it. You wait and see.” Iphy patted Callie’s arm. “Do you want to go look at it or not?”

  “Absolutely. Should we take my rental or your station wagon?”

  “I think the station wagon would be better. The dirt road leading to the cottage isn’t … well, it could be better.”

  Callie frowned. Her feelings about the cottage were like a quickly changing tide: one moment she couldn’t wait to see it; the next she heard something that made her wonder if she’d made a huge mistake. “It isn’t in the middle of nowhere, is it? I’m not easily frightened, but I don’t like isolated places.”

  “Nonsense. It’s perfectly close to the lighthouse. It’s no longer manually operated, but the cottage where the lighthouse keeper used to live is still inhabited. The couple living there organizes treasure hunts on the beach.” Iphy waved her out of the kitchen.

  “Treasure hunts?” Callie queried as she followed her great-aunt, with Daisy hot on their heels.

  “Well, it’s more like beachcombing, but to make it exciting for families with kids, they call them treasure hunts. You have an hour to walk along the beach and collect as many interesting items as possible. Whoever has the most, or the most spectacular find, wins a prize. The kids all get a beachcombing diploma, and then they can roast marshmallows. The couple also maintains a little museum of the best finds inside the lighthouse. You can explore the lower parts of it. You’re not allowed to go up to the higher sections as it can be dangerous. It’s quite a drop, you know.”

  Callie didn’t like heights and nodded with a shiver.

  Outside Book Tea, the bright sunshine pierced her eyes a moment, and she lifted a hand to shade them. On the other side of the street, a man in uniform was circling a car, apparently trying to determine whether it was allowed to be parked there.

  Callie felt her heart skip a beat, thinking it might be Deputy Falk, with whom she had worked to solve some unpleasantness at Christmastime. At the tea party where Dorothea Finster had planned to reveal her new will, a valuable heirloom had vanished, and someone had been murdered. The crimes had touched Dorothea’s nearest and dearest, unsettling the atmosphere in town so close to Christmas Eve.

  Callie still wasn’t sure how she had managed to clear everything up, but she would never have been able to do it without Iphy, other Heart’s Harbor residents who had lent a friendly hand, and of course Falk, who had, despite his doubts as to whether citizens should be involved in a criminal investigation, shown an open mind to their suggestions and who had, in the end, even saved her from the killer.

  It was odd how two people could go through something so emotional together and feel like they had forged a special bond, and then January rolled around and they went back to their normal lives. Callie had emailed Falk a couple of times to tell about her travels, but he had either not replied or just sent a few sentences that hadn’t suggested great enthusiasm. Maybe he was really busy or disliked emails, but either way Callie felt like whatever there had been on that wonderful Christmas Eve when they had traveled in a sleigh together, and had laughed and talked like they were old friends, had vanished completely. She had even felt a little silly for being excited about seeing him when she moved to Heart’s Harbor and possibly getting to know him better.

  Good thing he had no idea what she had been thinking. No embarrassment there.

  Callie quickly got into her great-aunt’s station wagon and strapped herself in, but couldn’t resist throwing another look at the busy deputy when they drove past. It wasn’t Falk, but his colleague, whom she had only seen in passing at the police station when she had been there for the murder case.

  She wanted to ask Iphy how Falk was doing these days, but she knew Iphy had a nose for what she called “affairs of the heart” and Callie wasn’t eager to draw her great-aunt’s attention to anything potentially romantic, or there would be no end to the well-meant suggestions about how to best handle the situation.

  * * *

  It wasn’t a long drive to her new living quarters, and Callie was glad to see there were houses strewn along the road right until they turned into the dirt road that Iphy had called “not too good.” That had to be the understatement of the century: the station wagon shocked and groaned as it traveled slowly across the uneven surface, with Iphy zigzagging to avoid the deepest potholes.

  “Can’t the town do something about this?” Callie asked with a desperate look out the side window.

  Iphy sighed. “The new mayor has been busy catching up with other matters, I suppose. He stepped into a hotbed of suspicion and distrust after the discoveries made and … well, the council was decimated as well.”

  Callie felt a twinge of guilt at what she had set off with her investigation into the murder around Christmas, but then it hadn’t been possible to solve it without digging into town secrets. Well-kept secrets that had involved an ever wider circle of people as the investigation had progressed. To change the subject, she said quickly, “I can already see the lighthouse.”

  “Your cottage is to the right here …” Iphy turned onto an even smaller road, which led to an open space where a gray stone cottage stood. It had a wooden porch, several windows, and a cute low roof that gave it a bit of an English country–style vibe. Callie immediately saw the potential, but she also saw the porch step that sagged, the chipped paint everywhere, and the chimney that had twigs sticking out of it as if birds were nesting in it.

  She glanced at her great-aunt. “You’re sure we’re not at the wrong house?”

  “Very funny. With a little care it will turn into a very nice place.”

  “Yes, I do realize that, but I don’t really see when I’ll have the time to …” She fell silent when a figure suddenly appeared around the side of the house.

  The man came from the back and was holding a notepad on which he scribbled with a pen. He was tall, blond, and in his forties, Callie guessed, dressed in a faded red T-shirt and stonewashed jeans, with beige sneakers that had seen better days.

  Iphy braked and squinted at the figure. “I have no idea who that is. You?”

  Callie shook her head. “I thought you knew everyone around town.”

  The idea that a stranger was prowling around her new house didn’t settle well with her. She got out of the car, put Daisy down on the grass, and marched up to the man. “Hello there. What are you doing here?”

  “Making a list of what needs to be done. Judging by the outside, of course. I don’t have a key, so I can’t get in.”

  He had a pleasant, deep warm voice, but Callie wasn’t about to be impressed by it, or by his keen blue eyes. She said, “Of course you can’t get in because you have no business here. This is my new home.”

  Her sharp tone didn’t faze him. On the contrary, he broke into a smile. “Oh, perfect. Then we can talk about it right away.”

  He reached out his hand. “Quinn. I saw the notice at the community center, asking for a handyman to get this place into shape again. I’m a pretty good painter. My
wallpapering is rusty, I admit—haven’t done that since my college days when my mother declared that a room without wallpaper was like a freezer without pizza. I do love pizza, so I listened to Mom. Can’t guarantee I can get it on without the occasional bubble, but I will certainly try. I work fast, neat—”

  Callie raised a hand to stop the flood of words. “I’m not really sure yet that I actually want to hire anyone to do the work. My great-aunt put up that notice at the community center.”

  Quinn looked her over. “You’re going to spend these gorgeous June days inside, in the fumes of drying paint and wallpaper glue? When you could let me handle the headache, literally, and enjoy the sun and the beach?”

  He had a point there, of course. Callie seemed to remember that the scent of drying paint didn’t do wonders for her head.

  Quinn continued, “If money is a concern, I can assure you my hourly rates are very fair.” He looked down at Daisy, who had circled his legs and was now waiting for attention. Crouching down, Quinn patted her. The Boston terrier grunted in satisfaction and pressed her head to his leg.

  Quinn looked up at Callie. “We can even agree on a flat fee. Whatever you want to do.”

  Callie was tempted. After all, she had enough to do in the run-up to the big Fourth of July tea party that Iphy had casually mentioned to her over the phone, before the move. It was supposed to be an event for the entire town and all of the tourists as well, focusing on events from Heart’s Harbor’s rich history. The program wasn’t fully planned out yet, and things like that always took more time than you calculated at the start.

  Quinn said, “Look, I can imagine you’re not eager to hire a perfect stranger, but I took the liberty of peeking in and saw it’s all still empty. I can work best when nobody is around, so maybe you could stay in town for a few days while I get everything done. With your great-aunt?”

  He nodded at Iphy, who had also gotten out of the car and closed in on them. She answered his smile with a wide grin of her own. “Hello there. Delighted to meet you. So you can do some work here, get it into livable shape again?”