I tucked the ticket into my pocket. “Where do I find Town Hall?”
He considered me with twinkling blue eyes. “You looking for a hunting license?”
“Nope.”
“Fishing license?”
“Not in this weather.”
His blue eyes twinkled brighter. “Marriage?”
“Actually I’m trying to find your mayor.” Googling hadn’t turned up the names of any municipal officials, and Fran hadn’t been able to turn up anything through her sources either.
“Then you’re looking for Chloe Hobbs.” He pointed over my left shoulder. “You’ll find her in the knitting shop across the street from the library.”
I pictured a roly-poly gray-haired woman in sensible shoes, the kind who would knit baby booties for a stranger’s new grandkid. A rosy-cheeked Aunt Bee type who would spill everything she knew about Suzanne’s death in the first three minutes of conversation, then hand over names and addresses of everyone in town who might be able to help me.
That déjà vu feeling I’d experienced last night reasserted itself as I headed down the main drag, but I chalked that up to having watched too much TV as a kid. Sugar Maple was Mayberry R.F.D., Bedford Falls, and a New England version of Innisfree all rolled up in one.
Even the town meeting or whatever it was that I’d observed last night in the old church had had the feel of something from another era. I had almost expected Jimmy Stewart to amble into the room and make an impassioned speech that swept the skinny blonde off her feet and into his arms.
Frank Capra would have loved this place.
A group of down jacket-clad women were decorating the village green for the season, stringing lights, hanging huge glass balls from the branches of a giant fir tree next to the band shell. It was easy to imagine the green ablaze with flowers in the spring or welcoming a brass band for a Fourth of July celebration. It was classic Americana seen through post-modernist eyes. I wasn’t sure if the ten-foot-high replica of a lighthouse was a touch of kitsch or symbolic of some aspect of Sugar Maple’s history. Especially since the ocean was at least one hundred miles away.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee drifted from Fully Caffeinated at the corner of Nurse and Bishop. Bringing Mayor Hobbs a cup of something warm and sweet would go a long way toward ingratiating me with her. And assuming she still had her own teeth, a toasted bagel wouldn’t hurt.
Five minutes later I hit the street again with two cups of coffee light and three toasted sesame. I passed a young mother wheeling an infant in a black lacquer carriage. Her smile was bright, her hair was shiny, her face pretty and fresh-scrubbed in an all-American kind of way. The Gerber baby gurgled at me. I smiled back at them both. Back home in Boston I would have been brought up on charges but here it felt natural.
There wasn’t much street traffic. Two cars, both late models, drove by without incident. A man in a navy blue ski jacket jogged past with a pleasant nod of his head. A little girl with a giant golden retriever on the end of a Christmas green leash flashed me a guileless smile.
I pushed all thoughts of Stepford from my mind.
Sticks & Strings was on the east side of Carrier, wedged between a pet shop with an OUT OF BUSINESS sign posted on the door and a pizzeria. Lacy scarves and sweaters shared window space with baskets of brightly colored yarn that probably had a fancy name and cost a week’s pay. It was the kind of place I could walk by ten times a day and never notice until someone committed a felony.
I’d introduce myself to the mayor, schmooze her over coffee and bagels, then get the key to the makeshift police station I’d be calling home for the next few months. And the whole time I would be painlessly extracting information that would start me on the road toward piecing together the last few hours of Suzanne’s life. Hell, I’d have Mayor Hobbs’s social security number and e-mail password before she finished her coffee.
After all, I was a big-city cop and she was a small-town mayor with a knitting jones. How tough could it be?
The shop was dark but the WELCOME sign was in place. I opened the door and stepped into what had to be moth heaven. Wool was everywhere. Baskets of yarn hung from the ceiling. Floor-to-ceiling cubbyholes of the stuff lined the walls. More baskets overflowed onto the floor and on chairs and tabletops. An old-fashioned spinning wheel was set up by the display window.
The only thing missing was Chloe Hobbs.
I stepped deeper into the store, past a polished maple worktable piled high with pointed sticks and scissors and things that would never make it past airport security. The place smelled of lavender and licorice and a hint of mint. Lots of magazines with sweaters on the cover were stacked in neat piles on one side while an equal number of unfinished knitting projects were stacked on the other. I noted a ball of something blue and fluffy and picked it up. I squeezed it and the price tag jumped out and I quickly put it back down again. For
one
ball of yarn? This was worse than crack. Get addicted to this stuff and you would be living in your minivan.
“Hello,” I called out.
Nothing.
She had to be here somewhere. I listened for the sound of water running or a radio tuned to a local station, but the room was still except for an odd rumbling noise followed by a low whistle. I stopped and listened harder.
There it was again. Same pattern, same rhythm.
I peered around the tall free-standing display case adjacent to the worktable and saw her.
The tall, skinny blonde from last night was curled up on a tiny love seat tucked into an alcove near the crackling fireplace. She wore a black sweater that looked like it had been put on backward and faded jeans that had seen one too many spin cycles. Her long legs were tucked under her. Her hair, gathered into a messy ponytail, cascaded over her right shoulder. A bright red blanket lay pooled on the floor. Next to the blanket the fattest, blackest cat I had ever seen slept in a basket of what looked like pale gray fluff.
Did I tell you she was snoring?
Not the cat. The woman.
It wasn’t a wake-the-dead kind of snore but a pretty damn good one, all things considered. You wouldn’t think such a small nose could create such a loud noise. Actually the cat was snoring too, but so far the blonde was winning hands down.
I took another look at her. Her nails were bitten to the quick. She sported pale violet circles under her eyes. Small breasts. Long, elegant feet. Her toenails were painted fire engine red.
Cops notice things. It’s an occupational hazard. Noticing details about a woman’s appearance was part of a detective’s job description. It didn’t mean anything.
Not even if the cop in question found himself standing there with a stupid grin on his face.
As far as I could tell, I had three options.
I could use the opportunity to turn over a few balls of yarn there in her shop and see what I could uncover before she woke up.
I could leave and come back later.
Or I could pull up a chair and wait to see what happened next.
CHLOE
Remember when I said things couldn’t get any worse?
I was wrong.
Maybe it was the heat kicked out by the old furnace or the fact that I had been up all night while twelve of Sugar Maple’s most powerful villagers combined their magick to reassemble my cottage. I’m not sure what it was, but I guess I fell asleep not long after opening Sticks & Strings for the day.
One second I was deep into a dream about a gorgeous guy who could knit, purl, and cable without a needle and the next second I was looking into his eyes. Dark green eyes, bottle green to be exact, with flashes of gold like Fourth of July sparklers. I mean, what were the odds?
“Not funny, Lynette,” I mumbled, squeezing my eyes shut again. “Shift back
now.
” I really hated it when she started that mind-reading stuff and messed with my head.
I waited a handful of seconds then opened my eyes again.
The man of my dreams (literally) was sitting in the overstuffed chair catty-corner to the sofa. A big broad-shouldered stranger with one of those faces that gave away nothing at all. Dark, slightly shaggy hair. Dark green eyes. A thin white scar ran across his left cheekbone. A Fully Caffeinated travel tote sat on the tabletop next to him, and a copy of
Vogue Knitting
lay opened to a sock pattern next to it.
This time my friend had gone too far.
“I’m not kidding, Lyn,” I said, glaring at my shapeshifting friend. “Shift back now or else.”
“Shift what?” he asked. “Are you talking in your sleep or should I be scared?”
I was the one who should be scared. That wasn’t Lynette playing a practical joke on me. Unless I missed my guess, it was our brand-new rent-a-cop and I might have blown the town’s cover in the first five seconds.
“Who
are
you?” I demanded and probably not in the friendliest tone of voice. For the record, I don’t wake up each morning brimming over with the joy of life. The joy of life pretty much arrives around the same time as my third cup of coffee and the fourth round on my latest sock-in-progress. “What are you doing in my shop?”
“Your door was unlocked. The open sign was in place. You’re lucky I didn’t clean you out.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t try. I have an excellent security system.”
“Up until today you didn’t even have a police presence.”
“We didn’t need one. We take care of our own.”
He looked down at Penny and grinned. “Yeah, she could cause some serious damage.”
“You should have knocked or something.” The thought that he had been watching me sleep made me shiver.
“I knocked,” he said, “and I said hello. You probably couldn’t hear me over the snoring.”
I gave Penelope a protective scratch behind the right ear. “Penny’s snoring isn’t that bad.”
“I wasn’t talking about the cat.”
I felt myself launching into one of those full-body blushes that end up embarrassing me more than whatever faux pas triggered it in the first place.
“You’re the cop, aren’t you?” Playing dumb had never worked for me. Neither had flirting, for that matter. I had been cursed with a blunt, straightforward personality that, coupled with my half-human bloodline, probably ensured permanent spinsterhood.
“Luke MacKenzie,” he said, extending a huge paw of a hand. “I’m looking for Chloe Hobbs.”
What was wrong with me? I couldn’t seem to find my voice. “Y-you’ve found her.” I sounded like an addled frog.
What was it about cops anyway? Don’t they ever blink? His hand was hanging out there like a catcher’s mitt, but something I didn’t understand was holding me back from making the connection.
“They told me Sugar Maple wasn’t too happy about my appointment but even boxers shake before they come out fighting.” He kept his tone light but I could see curiosity behind his green-eyed gaze and something else. Something even more unsettling.
What choice did I have? I had come close to exposing our town’s secret to him in the first thirty seconds. I couldn’t risk making him any more curious than he already was.
My hand touched his, and we both jumped back as silver-white sparks crackled through the space between us.
“What the hell—?” He looked at me as if I had pulled a gun on him.
“Static electricity,” I said, even though I had never seen anything like that before in my life. “It’s the wool.”
“Impressive.”
I just smiled. For all he knew, we were shooting sparks and tongues of flame around here every hour of the day.
He reached down and pulled an extra-large cup of coffee from the Fully Caffeinated bag. “I got this for you.”
I refrained from telling him we always keep a pot of coffee brewing at Sticks & Strings. “Thanks.”
“Light with sugar.”
“Perfect,” I said, even though I drank mine black. “Do all big-city cops deliver takeout?”
“Only the ones who are trying to get a smile out of the mayor.”
I glanced at the grandmother clock against the far wall. “Come back in three hours,” I said. “My smile doesn’t kick in until noon.”
“So you’re not a morning person.”
“So you’re not just a cop, you’re a detective too.”
“You read my résumé.”
“Lucky guess.”
Lucky? Who was I kidding. If there was anything worse than having a cop next door to Sticks & Strings, it was having a cop who was a detective next door.
A horrible thought popped into my head.
“What time did you get here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know... seven thirty, eight o’clock. Something like that.”
He couldn’t possibly have seen the team of sprites carrying my roof back from Procter Hill, where they had found Forbes the Mountain Giant using it as a snowboard. That was the kind of thing most humans would mention.
I tried to mask my relief with a businesslike attitude. “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
Again I had the sense that he saw more than he let on. I didn’t particularly like the feeling.
“Is that a problem?” he asked.
“The place isn’t ready yet.”
“Define ‘not ready.’ ”
“Well, I haven’t been in there lately but I know we need to get the power turned on, a phone line activated ...” I let my voice trail away. The truth was I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the empty pet shop next door and I hadn’t been overly worried about it. Janice had arranged for the same household elves and construction sprites who had repaired my house last night to whip the old pet shop into shape tonight. In fact, it would have been done by now if Dane and Gunnar hadn’t staged a throw-down in my kitchen.
“How long has it been empty?” he asked.
“Maybe three months.”
“I thought this was a popular town,” he said. “I’m surprised another store didn’t move right in.”