Prize and Prejudice_A Cozy Mystery Novel Page 4

  “I just got a divorce. I didn’t have anything better to do.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.”

  He shook his head. “I’m where a lot of men would want to be, if they could. Nothing and nobody to tie me down, a motorcycle to take me anywhere, and no rush to get there.”

  “I hope it’s fun,” Angie said.

  “Not as much as I thought it would be. I should have done this when I was eighteen and wouldn’t have gotten a crick in my neck from sleeping under the stars.”

  She didn’t want to get tied down in the conversation, so she changed the subject. “Do you think you have a shot at finding the painting?”

  “I’m a data analyst,” he said. “I suppose I have as good a chance as any. I’ve been running analyses on births and deaths, trying to see if there are any anomalies around when the couple would have been together.”

  “You think there was an illegitimate child?”

  “I think that if there was, then looking at births and deaths might be a good way to find out who the mother was.”

  “That’s true,” she said. She leaned back in her chair and thought about the queries she could run—but no. She wasn’t eligible for the prize money, so she really shouldn’t be doing the work. “It’s an interesting approach, anyway.”

  “I thought so.” Looking slightly less discouraged, he walked back to the comfy chair by the window that he had previously claimed.

  Angie went back to the café area, checked that she wasn’t running low on anything—the restock of pastries that Jo had brought earlier was a lifesaver—and did another pass through the store. Customers thronged the shelves, but in a good way: none of them were desperately trying to rip her shelves off their supports this time.

  Mentally, she toted up the days since the contest had been announced.

  The contest had officially started on December Fourth. And today was December Thirteenth.

  With luck, things were finally starting to settle down a little.

  At noon, Aunt Margery walked through the back door, took off her jacket, and rearranged the silk scarf across her shoulders. “Have you eaten?”

  “I have not.”

  She handed Angie a paper bag that was both warm and fragrant. “I want you to hide in the stock room for half an hour and not come back until you have read at least three chapters of something.”

  Angie confessed that she had pulled a book off the shelves for just such a purpose, and opened the bag. Inside was a foam container of lobster bisque and a toasted cheese sandwich with bread at least an inch thick.

  “Yum.”

  “You have an anonymous admirer,” Aunt Margery said.

  “It’s Sheldon, isn’t it?” Angie asked. Sheldon Table owned Sheldon’s Shuckery along the harbor, and it was definitely his bisque.

  “Close. Jeanette sends her regards.”

  Jeanette was Sheldon’s French wife, who still managed to look elegant and dignified while married to the worst punster on the island. Or possibly the second worst—sometimes her jokes were so terrible they topped his. She was also an excellent cook.

  “Does she want something?” Angie asked.

  Aunt Margery made a face. “She would like to talk to you about some papers.”

  “About what?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me,” Aunt Margery said, and walked toward the café area, where a pair of customers were waiting.

  Angie retreated into the furthest corner of the stock room with the Louise Penny novel. One of the café comfy chairs had developed a wobble, and she’d moved it into the back so no one could hurt themselves in it. Carefully, she curled up in the chair, pulled out the bisque and put it on top of a pile of cardboard boxes, spread the paper napkin out on her lap, and began to read.

  Bliss.

  Chapter 4

  At Wit’s End

  It seemed only a moment later that Angie heard her name being called, but she was already a hundred pages into the novel. She tore a slip from the paper bag and used it as a bookmark, then stood up and looked around. The stock room hardly seemed real, but that was pretty normal when she first came out of a book.

  “Angie?”

  “Coming.”

  She got up and walked toward the front of the store. Aunt Margery handed her the store phone. Angie started pacing back and forth behind the desk. “Hello?”

  “It’s Walter.”

  She put on a smile that felt a little stretched and thin. “Hello! Are you back?”

  He paused before answering. “No, not yet. I just wanted to call and see how everything was going.”

  Mentally, she tried to make the adjustment from “work mode” to “talking to more-than-a-friend mode.” It wasn’t easy, partly because she had started to assume, before she met Walter, that she’d never again have cause to use the latter.

  “Busy,” she said, feeling awkward.

  “Because of the treasure hunt?”

  “It’s going well. I mean, really well. And of course everyone wants to come to the bookstore and see what we have for research materials. Which honestly haven’t been written yet.”

  “An opportunity for a good writer to pen the whole sordid tale,” he joked.

  “Yeah, I’m sure it’ll sell like hotcakes—after Aunt Margery knows what to write for the ending.”

  Aunt Margery, who had walked over to the café counter to ring up a pair of customers and make them some drip coffee, snorted.

  “Aunt Margery’s writing a book?” He sounded genuinely delighted.

  “She will if I can nag her into it.”

  “Would you? I think it would make great publicity for the island.”

  Angie rolled her eyes. What she wanted was a romantic conversation where Walter told her how much he missed her and wanted to see her again,. not a business conversation where they talked about marketing strategies for Nantucket Island. She had just gotten in the right frame of mind for talking to a more-than-friend, after all.

  Not that she was willing to hang up or anything.

  “It would,” she agreed tactfully.

  “Or you could write it.”

  “I’m…I’m more of the fiction writer type,” she said, completely out of the blue. But it felt right.

  “Murder mysteries?”

  “Maybe. I haven’t thought about it too much. And it’s not like I have time right now.”

  “I think it’s a great idea.”

  Her face heated. Both because the idea was a more than a little overwhelming, and because she was embarrassed about the uncharitable thoughts she’d been thinking just a few moments before.

  “Thank you,” she said, trying to keep her voice even.

  He chuckled. “Well, I can only apologize for dropping such an unexpectedly large amount of extra work on everyone this holiday season. I wasn’t thinking. I’ve been hearing from a few secret sources at the Chamber of Commerce that what I’ve done is completely unforgivable.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” she said.

  He laughed again. “Because you’re too tactful to say something like that!”

  “I don’t have to be tactful if I don’t want to,” she said. “I can be very rude if I need to be.”

  He chuckled while she spoke. “Angie, you are one of the most delightful people I have ever known, do you know that?”

  “I am not delightful,” she said, but she was smiling.

  “Positively delightful.”

  She rolled her eyes again. But of course she was flattered, and just a little tongue-tied.

  “All right,” she said after a moment, “You’re forgiven.”

  “Whew. All right, I have to go now. But I’m glad to hear your voice.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “I hope everything goes well with your cases.”

  “Thank you. Pick out a few books for me, would you?”

  “What would you like?”

  “Surprise me.”

  Now it was her turn to laugh. “People hate surprises. They just
want someone to pick out the perfect thing that they would have wanted, if only they had known how much fun it would be beforehand. But I can do that.”

  “That…sounds wonderful.”

  He sounded genuinely touched. They said their goodbyes. Angie hung up, feeling refreshed.

  “How’s Walter?” Aunt Margery asked.

  “Stressed,” Angie said. Now that she wasn’t overwhelmed by trying to keep up the witty banter, she realized that it was true. His voice had sounded strained. “He says he’s sorry he dumped all this extra work on everyone without warning and that they’re having a huge meltdown over at the Chamber of Commerce over it. He thinks you should write the story of the Lost Monet once we figure out the location of the painting and so on, and that I should write mysteries, and he also wants me to put together some books for him to read the next time he can come back.”

  “Mmm,” said Aunt Margery. “I had been thinking about writing up a few posts for the Chamber of Commerce blog. What we know, what we don’t know…‘The mystery unravels’ kind of thing. But I hadn’t been thinking about a book. Tell him I think it’s a fine idea.” Her mouth curled up on one side. “A mystery writer? You?”

  Angie said, “Why not?” She was feeling just a bit defensive about the idea now.

  “Why not indeed?” Aunt Margery said. “Romantic suspense. The lovers are being pursued and it’s a race against time between the killer and a nice juicy sex scene.”

  “Aunt Margery!”

  “Or a cat mystery. Captain Parfait and the Case of the Missing Bookmark.”

  Angie rolled her eyes. “How about a nice puzzle mystery?”

  “Yes, that sounds about right. Something that can be solved using the leetle gray cells, no?”

  They both laughed.

  “The mystery of the missing pastries,” Angie said. “The detective with the butter stains on his shirt stands in the room full of caterers and says, ‘The culprit must be…me!’”

  “Or one of those funny ones where the narrator did it,” Aunt Margery said.

  “Not for my first mystery,” Angie said. “Those are too hard.”

  “The butler did it.”

  “Dvoretskiy,” Angie said.

  “What?”

  “That’s the Russian word for butler. I’ll just name the butler Dvoretskiy. Brilliant.”

  Aunt Margery tossed a wadded-up napkin at Angie as she chuckled and left to check on the customers. She’d have to thank her great-aunt later. Reading a book—and talking to Walter on the phone—seemed to have put her in a better mood than she’d been in for over a week.

  Janet arrived on time and with a great attitude. Angie talked to both her and Aunt Margery about going out to supper with Reed Edgerton and asked whether they thought they could handle the store if another rush of customers came in.

  They both claimed they would be fine without her, but Angie couldn’t help worrying that they wouldn’t be. Something might go wrong. She started giving Janet a list of instructions that were completely hypothetical, as in, “If someone comes in with Canadian money, don’t accept the money, unless they look really desperate or they can’t pay for it otherwise and then go ahead and take it anyway.” She was listening to herself talk, and it even sounded ridiculous to her.

  Finally Aunt Margery took Angie by the arm and said, “The Chamber of Commerce called.”

  Angie couldn’t remember the phone ringing, but then again she might have missed it while trying to explain to poor Janet what to do if a customer wanted a book that wasn’t available in the store and how to order it on the computer, in case Aunt Margery had to step out for a moment. As if Janet wasn’t competent enough to write something down on a piece of paper.

  “They called?” Angie asked stupidly.

  “Yes. They called, and they desperately need more coffee, and they can’t send anyone over right now.”

  Angie said, “I’ll just step over there, pick up the empty pots, come back here, refill them, and—”

  Aunt Margery turned Angie bodily toward the coffee pots. “Janet just made some coffee. Take two pots and go.”

  “But then you’ll be short.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  Aunt Margery said it in such an annoyed tone that Angie finally picked up on the hint. They were giving her an excuse to leave. She had been at work since 6 a.m. in the morning, and had planned to work until it was time for supper with Reed. Then she had planned to come back and close up the store, staying until at least midnight again. Then she would do it all over again the next day.

  She took a deep breath and said, “Did they want anything else?”

  “No.”

  Angie put her jacket on, picked up the two coffee pots, and headed out the front door. They were both the vacuum-pump type of pots that would stay perfectly warm on the short walk to the Chamber building.

  It was a cloudy, overcast day. She’d vaguely registered the weather at some point, but when that was, she couldn’t exactly remember. There were a lot of things that she couldn’t exactly remember. The last time she’d been so spacy had been at her old analyst job. There had been just too many things going on at the same time, all the time, and her brain hadn’t been able to keep up.

  She sighed and watched the steam billow up in front of her face.

  She needed to relax, calm down, figure out what policies to put in place so that she wasn’t constantly driving herself up the wall all the time like this. Hiring Janet had been a good step forward, but she hadn’t sorted out what she wanted Janet to do, or how much responsibility she should delegate to her.

  Angie rolled her shoulders and kept walking.

  Janet was working at the bookstore while she was staying on the island with her father. She said she had no plans to find work on the mainland. What did she want to do with her life? When Angie had hired her, she had only been grateful that Janet would work for her—period. The fact that she was so reliable and level-headed was a bonus.

  Why did Janet want to work at a bookstore? She liked to read, Angie knew that, but what? She’d asked during the interview but now she couldn’t remember. Not mysteries. Did she want to be a writer? Did she want to be a librarian? Did she want to be a bookstore owner?

  Finding out Janet’s hopes and dreams would be essential to finding out what Angie could or could not ask of her. What if she liked numbers? She might be trusted with some of the bookkeeping. A writer? Then book ordering wouldn’t be a bad idea.

  She’d have to fit the girl’s talents and interests to ongoing tasks that she could do in her down time. That way, Janet would have extra skills to take to the negotiating table at her next job and a better idea of what she liked and what she didn’t. Angie, meanwhile, could hand over some of the tasks that were eating up her brainpower and spend more time helping customers—and figuring out bigger business questions.

  This huge, seemingly unending rush caused by the constant flood of tourists onto the island for Christmas and the treasure hunt wouldn’t last forever.

  And then what? Did Angie want to try to grow the business? And if so, how quickly? Did she want to keep her stock relatively general, or should she start specializing? And what if she expanded the business to become a small publisher of local books, like a book on the Lost Monet? She could do that, she knew. She had a number of bookstore owner friends on the mainland, and she was on a number of mailing lists, newsletters, and message boards. A lot of other bookstore proprietors were discussing the possibility of opening small presses on the side. One or two had already started working on it.

  And it was making her jealous.

  She could either hang onto every little detail at the bookstore, or she could learn to give simple, clear instructions to her employees and start building a rapport of trust and support with them.

  Standing in front of the red siding and white trim of the Chamber of Commerce on the cobblestone street, it almost sounded easy.

  Inside was chaos.

  The front desk was aba
ndoned, and there was shouting coming from the hallway leading to the back. Shreds of paper lay on the floor. There was an overturned styrofoam coffee cup behind the hotel-style desk, which was topped with two small vases whose carnations had turned completely brown and wilted.

  As Angie bent over to pick up the cup, someone burst through the door to the back hallway and said, “And how can I help you?” in a perfectly nasty tone of voice. The shouting in the back of the building didn’t seem to have died down at all.

  The woman glaring at Angie was one of those solid, frosted-haired women who could probably take down any given teenager in a wrestling match out of pure stubbornness. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was wearing a teal green polo shirt and a silver watch with a wide band around her left wrist.

  The pin on her right shoulder read Tabitha Crispin. Angie recognized the name, even though the two of them hadn’t worked together before. Jasper usually handled everything having to do with the bookstore during festivals and other community events.

  Angie decided to go with the simple answer. “Coffee,” she said.

  “We’re out.”

  She pointed at the two coffee pots that she had left on the desk in order to pick up the fallen coffee cup. “Refills.”

  Tabitha’s face softened. “Oh. You must be from the bookstore. Jasper said something about that.”

  “Yes. Angie Prouty.”

  “Margery’s grandniece.”

  “Yes.”

  They shook hands. Tabitha’s handshake was firm and warm, humid but not quite sweaty. Angie smiled. Tabitha’s face stretched. Angie couldn’t quite call it a smile, but at least the woman was trying.

  “Is everything okay? Is there anything I can do?” Angie asked.

  “We are at wit’s end,” Tabitha announced calmly, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to say. “But no, thank you. You’ve already done enough. I mean, you’ve already done what I would have asked you to do anyway. The coffee.”

  “Okay,” Angie said carefully. “May I pick up the empties? And when do you think you’ll want some more?”

  Tabitha took a breath and said, “I’ll go back and get them.”