Crime and Poetry Read online

  Praise for Crime and Poetry

  “An enchanting tale of mystery, magical books, and endearing characters. Prepare to be charmed.”

  —Heather Blake, national bestselling author of Some Like It Witchy

  Praise for the Amish Quilt Shop Mysteries by Amanda Flower Writing as Isabella Alan

  “Alan writes the most captivating, fun mysteries!”

  —Open Book Society

  “A satisfyingly complex cozy.”

  —Library Journal

  “Alan captures Holmes County and the Amish life in a mystery that is nothing close to plain and simple.”

  —Avery Aames, author of the Cheese Shop Mysteries

  “In the Amish Quilt Shop Mysteries, Isabella Alan captures the spirit of the Amish perfectly. . . . Throw in the Englischers living in Rolling Brook and the tourists visiting, and you have a great host of colorful characters.”

  —Cozy Mystery Book Reviews

  “A dead-certain hit.”

  —P. L. Gaus, author of the Amish-Country Mysteries

  “This is a community you’d like to visit, a shop where you’d find welcome . . . and people you’d want for friends. . . . There’s a lot of interesting information about Amish life, but it’s interwoven into the story line so the reader learns details as Angie does.”

  —Kings River Life Magazine

  “Cozy readers and Amish enthusiasts alike will be raving about this debut. It proves to be a great start for Isabella Alan.”

  —Debbie’s Book Bag

  OBSIDIAN

  Published by New American Library,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of New American Library.

  Copyright © Amanda Flower, 2016

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Obsidian and the Obsidian colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information about Penguin Random House, visit penguin.com.

  eBook ISBN 9780698410213

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Contents

  Praise for Crime and Poetry

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Murder, Handcrafted

  About the Author

  for Laura Fazio,

  for believing in the magic of books and me

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have always thought books were magical, so when I was given the chance to write a mystery series set in a magical bookshop, I took it. Thank you to my dream editor, Laura Fazio, for giving me this opportunity. We create some awesome cozy worlds together no matter the setting. Thanks also to my agent and dear friend, Nicole Resciniti, who is the best and kindest person in the book business.

  Special thanks to my readers who have followed me to yet another series. Your love of my mysteries keeps me writing. I’ve taken you from the Amish world to a Civil War reenactment to a magical place, and still you read on. Thank you! I promise wherever we go, a funny mystery will be found.

  Hugs to my dear friend Mariellyn Grace, who is my plotter in crime and has saved every book from destruction. Thanks to my beta reader, Molly Carroll, who reassured me that my ideas for this book made sense even before they did, and to Suzy Schroeder and Bobby Boos for helping me to craft the “rules” for my magical world. Thanks also to Sarah Preston and Suzy for a girls’ trip to Niagara Falls, so I could go on location.

  Love to my family, Andy, Nicole, Isabella, and Andrew, for their unfailing support of my big dreams.

  Finally to my Heavenly Father, thanksgiving for an incredibly unexpected year.

  Because I could not stop for Death,

  He kindly stopped for me;

  The carriage held but just ourselves

  And Immortality.

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  ONE

  “Grandma! Grandma Daisy!” I called as soon as I was inside Charming Books. There were books everywhere—on the crowded shelves, the end tables, the sales counter, and the floor. Everywhere. But there was no sign of my ailing grandmother.

  Browsing customers in brightly colored T-shirts and shorts stared at me openmouthed. I knew I must have looked a fright. I had driven from Chicago to Cascade Springs, New York, a small village nestled on the banks of the Niagara River just minutes from the world-famous Niagara Falls. I’d made the drive in seven hours, stopping only twice for gas and potty breaks. My fingernails were bitten to the quick, dark circles hovered beneath my bloodshot blue eyes, and my wavy strawberry blond hair was in a knot on top of my head. Last time I caught sight of it in the rearview mirror, it had resembled a pom-pom that had been caught in a dryer’s lint trap. I stopped looking in the rearview after that.

  A crow gripping a perch in the shop’s large bay window cawed.

  I jumped, and my hands flew to my chest. I had thought the crow was stuffed.

  The bird glared at me with his beady black eyes. He certainly wasn’t stuffed. “Grandma Daisy!” he mimicked me. “Grandma!”

  I sidestepped away from the black bird. I thought parrots were the only birds that could talk. The crow was the only one who spoke. None of the customers made a peep. A few slipped out the front door behind me. “Escape from the crazy lady” was written all over their faces. I couldn’t say I blamed them.

  A slim woman stepped out from between packed bookshelves. She wore jeans, a hot pink T-shirt with the bookshop’s logo on it, and, despite the summer’s heat, a long silken scarf. Silk scarves were Grandma Daisy’s signature. I could count on one hand the number of times I had seen her without one intricately tied around her neck. Today’s scarf was white with silver-dollar-sized ladybugs marching across it. Her straight silver hair was cut in a sleek bob that fell to her chin. Cat’s-eye-shaped glasses perched on her nose. She was a woman in her seventies, but clearly someone who took care of herself. Clearly someone who was not dying.

  My mouth fell open, and I knew I must look a lot like those tourists I’d frightened. “Grandma!” The word came out of my mouth somewhere between a curse and a prayer.

  “Violet, my girl.” She haphazardly dropped the pile of books she had in her arms onto one of the two matching couches in the middle of the room at the base of the birch tree, which seemed to grow out of the floor. “You came!”

  I stepped back. “Of course I came. You were dying.”

  More customers skirted for the door. They knew what was good for them. I wouldn’t have hung around either. The only one who seemed to be enjoying the show was the crow. He was no longer in the front window, but on the end table to my right. Great. A crow was loose in my grandmother’s bookshop. I wished I could say this surprised me, but it didn’t.

  Grandma Daisy chuckled. “Oh, that.”

  “‘Oh, that’? That’s all you can say?” I screeched. “Do you have any idea what you’ve put me through? I left school. I left my job. I left everything to be with you at your deathbed.”

  Grandma had the decency to wince.

  “Look at you. You look like you are ready to run a marathon. When I spoke to you on the phone last night, you were coughing and gasping. You sounded like you were at death’s door.”

  Grandma Daisy faked a cough. “Like this?” Her face morphed into pathetic. “Oh, Violet, I need you. Please come.” Fake cough. Fake cough. “The doctor said I don’t have much more time.”

  Heat surged up from the base of my neck to the top of my head. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been this angry. Oh yeah, I did—it was the first time I’d left Cascade Springs, twelve years ago. I had promised myself that day I would never come back, and look where I was, back in Cascade Springs, tricked by my very own grandmother.

  “You were dying,” the crow said.

  “Quiet, Faulkner,” Grandma Daisy ordered.

  The large black bird sidestepped across the tabletop. Seemed that the crow was a new addition to the shop. It’d been twelve years, but I would have remembered Faulkner. I wondered why Grandma Daisy had never mentioned the bird. I would have thought a talking pet crow would have made a great conversation piece.

  Grandma Daisy searched my face. “I may have fibbed a bit. Can you forgive me?” she asked, giving me her elfish smile. It wasn’t going to work, not this time.

  I spun around, ignored Faulkner, who was spouting “You were dying!” over and over again, and stomped out of the shop.

  Behind me the screen door smacked against the doorframe. I stumbled across the front porch and gripped the whitewashed wooden railing. Charming Books (“where the perfect book picks you”) sat in the center of River Road in the middle of Old Town Cascade Springs, a historic part of the village that was on the National Historic Landmarks list. Every house and small business on the street was more adorable than the last, but none were as stunning as Charming Books, a periwinkle Queen Anne Victorian with gingerbread to spare and a wraparound porch that was twice the size of my studio apartment back in Chicago.

  The tiny front yard was full to bursting with blooming roses and, of course, daisies—Grandma’s personal favorite. On the brick road in front of me, gas lampposts lined the street on either side and prancing horses and white carriages waited at the curbs, ready to take tourists for a spin around the village and along the famous Riverwalk at a moment’s notice. The horses’ manes were elaborately braided with satiny ribbons, and their drivers wore red coats with tails and top hats.

  It was charming. It was perfect. It was the last place on planet Earth I wanted to be.

  I had half a mind to jump in my car and head west for Chicago, never looking back. I couldn’t do that. My shoulders slumped. I was so incredibly tired. Coffee wouldn’t be any help. Coffee had lost its ability to keep me alert my third year of grad school. And as much as she vexed me, I couldn’t leave Grandma Daisy without saying good-bye. For better or worse, she was all the family I had left in the world. And then, there was the whole pom-pom hair situation, which could be tolerated for only so long. I’d need a hairbrush and maybe a blowtorch to get that under control.

  The screen door to the Queen Anne creaked open. I didn’t have to turn around to know it was my grandmother. The scent of lavender talcum powder that always surrounded her floated on the breeze. “Violet, I know it wasn’t right for me to lie to you.”

  I folded my arms, refusing to look at her. I knew it was childish, but I was going on two hours of sleep and tons of betrayal. Being a grown-up wasn’t on the top of my priority list.

  She placed her hand on my shoulder. “It was wrong of me. Very wrong, but it was the only way I could convince you to come back here.”

  She was probably right in that assumption, but I wasn’t going to make it easy for her. “So you pretended to be dying?”

  She let out a breath. “What I said about needing you to come back was true. I do need you here. I want you to stay.”

  She had to be kidding. She knew what had happened to me in this town. She knew why I’d left the day after I graduated high school. She knew better than anyone. “Well, that’s too bad,” I said. “I’m not staying.”

  “Can’t you stay a little while? For me?”

  I felt a pang in my heart. I didn’t want to leave Grandma Daisy, and despite the whole lying thing, it was wonderful to see her, but I couldn’t stay. It was too hard. “I’ll wait until tomorrow, but I’ll leave in the morning.”

  Of course that last statement came to be known as “famous last words.”

  TWO

  “Well, then,” Grandma Daisy said, her face breaking into a smile. “You should come inside, and I’ll fetch you a cold drink.”

  My shoulders slumped in defeat. She got me, and she got me good. “Okay.”

  I followed Grandma Daisy back inside the shop. We were the only ones there besides Faulkner the crow.

  I nodded at Faulkner. “What’s up with the crow?”

  She chuckled. “He showed up in the garden during the winter with a broken wing. He was a young bird then, barely more than a chick. I nursed him back to health, and he decided to stay. Every bookshop needs a mascot.”

  “What’s wrong with a cat?”

  “You know I’m not a traditionalist,” she said with a smile.

  I frowned as I looked around the shop. “I’m sorry I scared away all your customers.”

  She smoothed her silky bob. “It’s no matter. If they needed something, it would have found them.”

  My eyes slid to her. “You mean they were just browsers?”

  She gave a small smile. “You could call them that.”

  I wanted to ask her what that meant, but she scurried away, muttering about lemonade. As Charming Books was an old converted house, there was a full kitchen in the back. I almost followed her, but my surroundings stopped me. Charming Books was, well, charming. There was something about it that was beguiling. I had been to dozens of other bookstores in my life and never felt the same jolt of wonder as I did while in my grandmother’s shop. It was a feeling of warmth and understanding I got as I looked around the room, like the books were alive and old friends. I knew that was ridiculous, and I would never say that aloud to anyone. The villagers of Cascade Springs thought I was a lot of things. I didn’t need to add peculiar to an already lengthy list.

  Now that I wasn’t blinded by the fear I would find my grandmother dead, I was able to take in my surroundings. The bookshop looked exactly as I remembered it. A vaulted ceiling spanned half the room, stopping in the center of the shop at a metal spiral staircase that led to the second floor. The staircase wrapped itself around a live birch tree with three trunks, each as thick as a grown man. Once a year, grandmother had a tree service come in to prune the tree so that it didn’t break through the historic building’s slate roof. Currently, its branches stopped six inches from the ceiling.

  Sunlight poured into the shop from the windows and the large skylight on the second floor and reflected off the birch tree’s white, silver-flecked bark. The tree, just like the house, had belonged to my family for generations, since my ancestress Rosalee Waverly built the home at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although the structure had shifted over the last two hundred years, the most notable change occurred at the turn of the twentieth century when one of Rosalee’s descendants transformed the home into a Queen Anne Victorian, as was the fashion at that time.

  At the top of the staircase, I could see through the black iron railing into the children’s room, which was decorated as a wood sprite’s palace that would have put Tinker Bell to shame. It had been the perfect place to hide during my mother’s chemo treatments.

  For the moment, I would have to wait to visit the fairy room. Faulkner the crow stared at me from one of the tree’s branches as if daring me to climb the stairs. I wasn’t up to facing him. I hadn’t been the least bit surprised that my grandma had nursed Faulkner back to health. When I was a child, she had a revolving door of injured and sick animals going through her house. She was just kindhearted. I sighed. If she was that kindhearted, why would she lie to me, her own granddaughter, about being sick? What was so important that made her want me to move back to Cascade Springs? Part of me was afraid to ask, because Grandma Daisy could be very convincing when she wanted to be, and apparently, after the “I’m dying” speech over the phone, she could be quite an actress too.