Verse and Vengeance

  Verse and Vengeance

  A MAGICAL BOOKSHOP MYSTERY

  Amanda Flower

  For David Seymour a Rainwater of my very own

  Acknowledgments

  As always, thank you to my dear readers for loving the Magical Bookshop Mysteries, so much that the series has continued. Your support means the world to me.

  Special thanks to my editors Matt Martz and Marla Daniels and everyone at Crooked Lane who worked on this novel.

  Always thanks to my super-agent Nicole Resciniti, who makes me a better writer and encourages me to reach my full potential.

  Thanks to Bobby Dimauro, who advised me on the bicycle accident in the story and lent me his name for one of the characters.

  Thank you to my friend Mariellyn Grace for her encouragement while writing and editing this book and to David Seymour for his unfailing support. Also to my family for their support. I’m blessed to have all of you.

  A very special thank you to Walt Whitman for writing Leaves of Grass. His poetry shares reality, vulnerability, love, and hope in brand-new way, and I am grateful for the impact his words have played in my own life and this novel.

  Finally, to my Heavenly Father, thank you for poetry.

  Not a day passes—not a minute or second, without an accouchement!

  Not a day passes—not a minute or second, without a corpse!

  —Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

  Chapter One

  He was out there. I could feel him watching and waiting. He was searching for a mistake that would reveal the truth. I peeked around the curtain for a better look, but it was late, and all I could see was what was directly under the gas lamppost in front of my bookshop, Charming Books. He wasn’t in the small pool of light it gave off. He would know to hide himself from my view.

  I knew lawn chairs and ribbons already lined the street for tomorrow’s bike race, a massive fund-raiser that was my grandmother’s doing. When the village fell short of funding, Grandma Daisy—as the new mayor of Cascade Springs, our little village outside Niagara Falls, New York—went big. There was no simple bake sale for her. Nope, my grandmother had planned a regional bike race that had earned the village over twenty thousand dollars. Hundreds of riders had signed up.

  “Violet?” a voice said behind me.

  “Ahh!” I screamed and fell on the floor.

  My grandmother stood above me in her usual jeans, Charming Books T-shirt, and gauzy scarf. Tonight’s scarf was decorated with pineapples, a nod to the coming summer. Her cat-eye glasses slipped down her nose at she peered at me sprawled on the floor like a flattened spider. My grandmother’s style hadn’t changed a bit since she’d been elected mayor.

  “Can I help you with something, Grandma?”

  “Did you know they found a body at the bottom of Niagara Falls? According to reports, it’s badly beat-up.”

  I scrambled to my feet. I could imagine that. The jagged rocks at the bottom of the American Falls would not be kind. “I had heard. It’s all customers have been talking about today. Several customers mentioned it. What a tragedy. By everyone’s guess, it was a suicide.” I grimaced. Suicide by Niagara Falls was more common than anyone was comfortable admitting.

  “I hope they can identify the body soon,” she said. “Closure is essential for those left behind.” She said this from experience that I knew came from having outlived her only child, my mother, Fern. I was raised right here in Charming Books by my single mother until she died when I was thirteen from cancer. After that, I lived with Grandma Daisy until I left Cascade Springs at seventeen. I came back only a little over a year ago to help my grandmother run the bookshop. My father was never in the picture. In fact, I hadn’t known who he was until he’d shown up on our doorstep last Halloween. I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of having a father.

  I went back to my window and peered outside.

  “What has gotten into you, girl?” Grandma Daisy asked.

  I glanced behind me.

  My black-and-white tuxedo cat, Emerson, and the shop crow, Faulkner, seemed to wonder the same. Emerson walked over to me and put one white paw on my foot, and Faulkner flew down from the birch tree that grew in the middle of our shop, landing on his perch by the front window. The perch was a favorite spot for the large bird because he could glower at the tourists walking up and down River Road.

  “It’s Redding. He’s driving me crazy. Every time I have left the shop in the last week, he has been there.”

  Joel Redding was a private investigator I’d met over the winter when my friend Lacey had been caught up in a murder investigation. He had been hired to solve the murder. From the get-go, Redding and I had been at odds. Mostly because he’d thought Lacey was guilty of the crime, and I’d known that was impossible. In the end, I was proven right, but there had been a cost. Redding had followed me often during that investigation, and because of his close observation, he’d started to take note of the odd things about Charming Books. The way the birch tree stayed green even in the winter, Faulkner and Emerson’s curious behavior, and worst of all, my connection to the bookshop.

  When the case was finally closed, I’d hoped that I would never see him again. He did leave, and it had looked like I would have my wish until he’d popped up again about a week ago in the village. Ever since then, I’d seen the man and his guitar case, which he supposedly used as a briefcase, everywhere I went. When I’d tried to confront him on several occasions, he’d run off. I didn’t know what his game was or what had brought him back to the village. It was making my crazy.

  My grandmother brushed dust off the back of my shirt. “We really need to sweep the floors more often, Violet. It looks like you rolled in dirt.”

  “I’d get a Roomba if I didn’t think Emerson would attack it.”

  The little tuxie looked up at me and mewed. In his way, he was saying Bring it on!

  I turned back to my grandmother. “I really do think Redding is up to something. Why else would he be watching the shop?”

  “Have you said anything to David about it?”

  I frowned. David was Chief David Rainwater of the Cascade Springs police department, who also happened to be my boyfriend. “It’s not that simple. Our situation with the shop makes it complicated. We have Rosalee to thank for that.”

  When my ancestress Rosalee Waverly had moved to Cascade Springs after her husband was killed in the War of 1812, she’d built her home around the same birch tree that sat in the middle of the shop today. Knowing the mystical healing powers of the Niagara region and especially the natural springs here in the village, she’d begun watering the tree with the spring water, and that’s where the magic began. She was the first Caretaker of the tree, and since then the job had passed down through the direct line of Waverly women until it had landed squarely on my shoulders on the cusp of my thirtieth when the responsibility was passed on to the next woman in line. My great-grandmother had turned the house into a bookshop, and today the shop’s essence sent messages to the Caretaker, me, through the books themselves. It also had a knack for picking books for customers in the shop. It always knew what a reader wanted or needed. However, it never revealed itself to the customer. A book would fly across the shop when the customer wasn’t looking, or he would reach for a volume on the shelf and come back with something completely different that he needed more. At times, I felt like the essence cut things a little too close. More than once a customer had almost seen a flying book, and that would have been the end of our secret. I know that’s a lot to swallow, and at times I can’t even believe it—and I have lived it close to a year now.

  “Besides,” Grandma Daisy said, interrupting my black thoughts. “Maybe Redding is just in Cascade Springs for a vacation. We do have an a
dorable little village.”

  “Right,” I said. “Does his vacation have to include standing outside our shop watching us for hours? He never comes inside. Just watches. It’s maddening.” I stared out the window again. A shadow moved in on the lamppost. “I’m right! He’s out there. I can see him.” I marched to the front door and threw it open.

  “What are you doing?” Grandma Daisy held on to the end of her scarf.

  “I’m not going to sit in here and cower.” I was down the steps and through the front gate before I thought about what I was going to say to Redding. It was just another example of me throwing myself into something without thinking it all the way through. I pulled up short a few feet from him.

  He waited for me under that lamppost. “Hello, Violet.”

  I folded my arms. “What are you doing here?” The question came out harsher than I intended it to.

  “That is not the small-town welcome I have come to expect in Cascade Springs.”

  I bit my lip. “I’m sorry for coming off rude, but what are you doing outside my shop in the middle of the night?”

  He smiled. “I’m on an evening stroll. I thought that’s what people in the village did.”

  “You’ve been out here every night for the last week.”

  “That’s an exaggeration.”

  “Are you on a case?” I asked.

  “I’m always on a case.” He seemed nonplussed.

  “What is your case, and what does it have to do with me?”

  He cocked his head. “It’s very strange for you to think that I would be investigating you, Violet. Should I have a reason to be curious about you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “You’re a very interesting person, and your shop is fascinating. I find the tree particularly intriguing.”

  Despite myself, I shivered.

  “Did you catch a chill?”

  I folded my arms. “No, I’m fine.”

  His lips curled into another smile. “I should be on my way, then. Tomorrow is the big race. I’ll probably see you around.”

  “Not if I can help it,” I muttered.

  He laughed, picked up his guitar case, and strolled down the street toward the Niagara River and the Riverwalk.

  I went back inside Charming Books, where my grandmother was waiting for me. “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. He said he was out for a walk.”

  “That could be true.”

  “Maybe. Maybe he’s just visiting the village as you said and he goes for a walk every night outside my shop. It’s not illegal, but it feels off.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I feel like I’m waiting for something to happen, but I don’t know what it is.” I rubbed my forehead. “Maybe I’m just tired. The last two months have been crazy, between finishing up teaching this semester at Springside and defending my dissertation and …” I almost added juggling the shop alone since my grandmother became mayor of Cascade Springs. I didn’t have her to rely on as much to watch the shop when I needed to study or teach my courses. I would never say that to her, though.

  My grandmother had run the shop and been the Caretaker for over forty years. She more than deserved a break to try something new. She would have given up her Caretaker duties much earlier had my mother still been alive.

  “I just don’t want to be the one who lets every Caretaker before me down by letting the truth of Charming Books get out.”

  She smoothed her perfectly straight silver bob that fell just below her ears. “My girl. The Waverly women have been able to keep the magical secret of this place for the last two hundred years. One small-time private investigator isn’t going to topple that.”

  I hoped she was right.

  “And, he won’t have much luck gathering any information tomorrow. With the big race in the village, he will be lucky to get within twenty feet of the shop. The racers will ride right past Charming Books on the way to the finish line. Do you feel ready for tomorrow?”

  My grandmother had organized the race with the hopes that she could continue to fund Cascade Spring’s Underground Railroad Museum. The total cost of the museum was much more than the village budget could allow after a foundation problem was discovered during construction. To make up for the unexpected deficit, Grandma Daisy had been having a number of fund-raisers over the spring and summer, including the Tour de Cascade Springs tomorrow. Yes, my grandmother had come up with the name for the race. She claimed the name struck the right tone for the village. I suspected she just liked saying it.

  The race was costing the village next to nothing to put on. All the swags, booths, publicity, and more were being donated by area businesses. The registration fees that the cyclists paid to enter the race were all being applied to the museum fund. Then there were the extensive private donations and racer sponsorships. It seemed people were inclined to donate toward this good cause, and the tax write-off helped too, of course. Grandma Daisy herself courted all those donors. She was a force to be reckoned with.

  “I’m as ready as I ever will be. I’ve never ridden more than twenty miles at one time, so I’m more than a little apprehensive to do thirty miles tomorrow,” I said, answering her question. “But I don’t know why Rainwater got this idea in his head that we should ride together. He’s going to be bored to tears if he’s stuck in the back of the pack with me.”

  My grandmother smiled. “I think it’s lovely he wants to ride in the fund-raiser beside you.” She gave me a look. “And my dear, he wants to be beside you in all things. You need to be beside him, too.”

  I shifted uncomfortably and rubbed my back as if my fall had caused some sort of unseen injury. I knew what my grandmother was hinting at. David Rainwater was a very smart man. He knew I was hiding something. Just like I was keeping my connection to the shop from everyone else, I was keeping it from him. I thought he’d given me a pass all these months because I’d been so stressed over my teaching schedule and my dissertation, but now both of those “excuses” were off the table. If my relationship with the police chief was to go anywhere, I knew I had to take the risk and tell him. I just wasn’t sure if I had the nerve to do it. It might ruin everything.

  My grandmother studied me. “You don’t know if it will ruin everything. Telling David might open everything up. You have to be brave, my girl.”

  I chewed on my lower lip. I would have to make the choice to tell him the truth or let him go.

  She patted my cheek again. “David will understand. Trust in that, my dear.” She took a breath. “Now, you need a good night’s sleep, and stop worrying about Redding. The fates will take care of him. They always do.”

  Before I could ask her what she meant, she said, “I’m heading home, and you should go up to bed. I can see that Emerson is ready.”

  Just like every night when he thought it was time for me to go to sleep, Emerson sat on the bottom step of the spiral staircase that wound around the birch tree and led up to the children’s loft and my one-bedroom apartment on the second floor of the house.

  After Grandma Daisy left, Faulkner swooped down, dropping a book at my feet. I bent to pick it up. It was Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. After finishing my PhD on nineteenth-century New England writers, focusing primarily on transcendental writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, the last thing I wanted to read was Whitman, a contemporary of Emerson. I picked up the book and held it out to the bird. “I’m taking a summer break from heavy reading. Why didn’t you bring me something a bit lighter?”

  Faulkner flew to the tree and landed on the second limb down from the top. He tucked his long black beak under his wing and pretended to be asleep. I wouldn’t get any more information out of him that night.

  “Okay, Emerson,” I said to the cat. “Let’s go to bed.”

  The tuxie mewed and then jumped to the next step. When he moved, I spotted the leather-bound book he had been sitting on. It was a second copy of Leaves of Grass. That’s when I knew the crow hadn’t picked the book to torment m
e at all. The shop itself had.

  Chapter Two

  There was barely enough room to get my mom’s old cruiser bike through the crowd standing near the starting line of the Tour de Cascade Springs. There must have been five hundred riders in front of the imposing village hall that sat slightly elevated on a man-made hill overlooking the Riverwalk, the Niagara River, and Canada on the other side. My grandmother had told me that one of the things she loved most about being the mayor was having that view every day. It was the highest point in the village and had been intentionally built that way in the 1850s.

  The village hall was what all of this was about. The building was decaying much worse than anyone in the village had known until my grandmother started construction on the museum. That was when the foundation issues were discovered and the ground underneath the village hall was ruled as potentially unstable. Although safe enough to hold the mayor’s and a few other city offices, it wasn’t deemed safe enough for tourists. Everything had to be fixed before the museum could be completed.

  I recognized the slight form coming around the back of the museum. She was in her early twenties but looked much younger because of her diminutive size. Her dark curly hair was cropped close to her head. She made up for her small stature—and her childlike appearance, I thought—with a hoop pierced through her tiny nose. She wore leggings, a flannel shirt, and combat boots. A chain hung down just below the hem of her shirt.

  I know teachers aren’t supposed to have favorite students, but we would be lying if we said we didn’t. Jodi “Jo” Fitzgerald was that student for me. She’d been in my composition class last semester, but even before that class, I’d gotten to know her because she worked in the English department office.

  It was a tiny department that consisted of one full-time professor and a few other adjuncts like me. Up until this spring semester, Jo had worked for all of us. As I’d written my dissertation the last two semesters, I’d put in extra time at the office. Over that time, Jo and I had become more than student and professor—we’d become friends.