Page 12 of Murder on the Page

“Your burgers will be up soon. Enjoy.” She moved to another customer.

Tegan swiveled to face me and toasted her glass to mine. She sipped and sighed. Not with contentment.

“Want to talk about Winston now?” I asked, her husband’s name tasting vile on my tongue. “I’m all ears.” How many nights had Tegan and I spent chatting until the wee hours about boys, school, parents, and our dreams? She knew all my secrets, and I was pretty sure I was hip to all of hers. Winston’s infidelity sure had come as a surprise, though.

“No,” Tegan said. “I was thinking about Auntie again. She was so . . . so . . . fragile.”

“Dehydration can make a person fuzzy.”

“Yesterday she was frowning like she was working through some idea she couldn’t form into words. And the other day, Mom asked her what was wrong, but Auntie wouldn’t say and told her not to mother her.” Tegan laughed. “That’s like calling the kettle black. Vanna heard us talking and barged in, demanding what was up. Man, she’s a bull in a china shop.”

I listened attentively, even though I’d heard it all before. She and her half sister had never gotten along. Perhaps it was the six years between them. Possibly it was because Vanna hadn’t taken after Noeline’s side of the family. I didn’t know much about Vanna’s father. He’d died in a climbing accident, leaving Noeline a widow at twenty-nine. But my guess was, female members of the Harding clan had similarly irritable personalities.

We stopped talking about family and directed our attention to books. She’d recently read a new bestseller but didn’t think highly of it, saying the heroine dwelled on her problems nonstop and the story never went anyplace. I told her about a mystery I’d read, but I refused to reveal the ending, promising if she checked it out, we could compare notes.

Two hours later, after a delicious meal, we went back to my place. By ten, Tegan was yawning so deeply that I worried she wouldn’t be able to drive to the B&B. I offered her the guestroom. She agreed and texted her mother so Noeline wouldn’t worry.

Around three a.m., I heard her pacing and muttering to herself. Clearly, she had to see a professional about her marriage. I would broach the delicate subject over a cup of coffee.

At six thirty a.m., careful not to wake my pal, I stowed the trays with all my baked goods on a rolling cart. I telephoned Marigold and told her I was running on time. Sounding breathy, she said she was already at the shop and looked forward to seeing me soon.

At eight, I knocked on the guest bedroom door, knowing Tegan would want to change before heading to the bookshop. I was surprised to find her gone. When had she slipped out? Why hadn’t she left me a note? Deciding she’d driven to the B&B, after all, I texted her but got no response. I tried not to worry. I understood how a breakup could disturb one’s sleep. I’d see her at the bookshop soon enough.

At nine, I threw a raincoat on over my white shirt and skinny black jeans and, after filling my van with the goodies, drove to Feast for the Eyes. When I arrived, I wasn’t surprised to see a huge knot of people lining up outside. Being a tourist town, Bramblewood lured plenty of visitors, as well as locals, who enjoyed reading on a hike, at their mountain retreats, or at one of the many coffee shops or cafés. But I was surprised that the front door wasn’t propped open. Maybe it was because the temperature was a brisk forty-two degrees. At the head of the line, I spotted Noeline and her new friend, Rick. Why hadn’t they entered? Was Marigold running behind?

I parked in a space not far from the shop and opened the van’s rear door. I lowered the trolley to street level, locked up the van, and pushed the cart to the shop. I set the footbrake and weaved through the throng to Noeline. She was wearing a camel-hair coat, tan boots, and matching purse. A red dress peeked from beneath the hem of the coat. Rick’s hair was mussed and his striped shirt, jacket, and trousers were rumpled, as if he’d thrown on his clothes in a hurry.Oho!Had he and Noeline been, um, messing around this morning and lost track of time?

Stop, Allie. Not your business.

“What’s going on?” I asked Noeline. “Why isn’t the shop open?”

“Marigold must be running late. Tegan too. I’ve tried calling them, but neither is answering. I’m worried. We all are.”

Rick knocked on the shop’s door. “Marigold! Hello! Are you in there?”

“Will you stop doing that?” Noeline snapped. “It’s plain to see no one’s inside.”

“I saw Marigold leave her house this morning around six,” Graham Wynn said. He was Marigold’s neighbor, a forty-year-old, baby-cheeked man, with thinning hair, sad eyes, and a partiality for clerical fiction. That preference surprised me, I was ashamed to say, seeing as he owned GamePlay, a store that sold video games, collectibles, and comic books. Not that a game-loving guy couldn’t enjoy religious-themed stories, but it didn’t seem a natural fit. At one of our book club meetings, Graham shared that he fancied himself as a preacher in another life. “She was climbing into her car to come here and had forgotten her coat,” he went on. “I reminded her to fetch it.”

“She should have remindedyou,” Piper Lowry teased. Dark-haired and willowy, she was a popular junior-college teacher and a do-gooder who volunteered at the Y, the blood bank, the theater foundation, and the hospital. Primarily, she read historical fiction, but she also perused mysteries. We had often found ourselves browsing the same aisle at the shop.

“Yeah, no coat. What an idiot, right?” Graham cupped his hands and blew into them. His sweater sleeves slithered up his forearms, revealing a wealth of tattoos on his right arm and a wide bandage on his left. New ink, I decided. Why hadn’t heput on a jacket or gloves? Hadn’t he consulted a weather app? “I didn’t want to be late.”

“Please tell me winter is not going to return.” Piper stamped her feet and tightened the belt of her coat. “I really love springtime.”

Many in the group agreed about the temperature. Had they forgotten that a month ago it was at least ten degrees cooler?

“When did you arrive?” I asked a woman I didn’t recognize to my right. She was carrying a map of the town and a couple of tourist brochures.

“Five minutes ago.”

Piper said, “I got here a few minutes before that.” Though she wasn’t a beauty, she had a ballerina’s grace. I asked her once if she’d danced, and she said she’d hoped to, but her parents had forbidden it. “When did you get here, Graham?” She turned and fluttered her thick eyelashes to great effect.

“Right before you,” he said, blushing.

Noeline eyed me. “My sister is never late.”

I said, “When I spoke to her earlier, she said she was already here. That was around six thirty.”

---