I didn’t have the appetite to eat the rest of my lunch. Val and Ava-Rose had to leave for a meeting with one of the caterers they were considering for the million-dollar Thanksgiving celebration. It all sounded like an awful lot of work to me, not to mention money. Even without Drake’s proposed raised fee.
Everything that was going on aside, I was grateful to be looking forward to my first Thanksgiving at home in a few years. When I was across the country and running a business, it wasn’t always easy to get home for all the holidays. And my parents always made them special.
I also was cautiously optimistic that Lucas would be with me for Thanksgiving. We hadn’t talked about it yet. His family lived in Virginia, but he didn’t mention them much. Not that we’d talked about the holidays yet, but still. All signs pointed to things going well enough for us that it might be a thing.
Of course, I should probably ask him first. But that was a conversation for later.
I pushed Thanksgiving out of my mind, my thoughts drifting back to my sister and this whole yacht club debacle. I was sorry that Val was in the middle of all this, but I felt strongly that Ava-Rose needed to go straight to Ellory’s office and tell him everything she’d seen. And now I was rethinking my original decision of not mentioning the crazy lady to the cops. I pondered going there now, but I’d be tempted to tell them about Ava-Rose’s run-in with Holt and Drake and that wasn’t my story to tell.
My thoughts turned to Drake. He was a whole other ball of wax. And somehow I’d signed up to question him. I wondered if I should bring Grandpa along. Let him know about this whole weird Ava-Rose business. But if I did that, he wouldn’t let Ava-Rose off without going to the police. And when she found out I’d betrayed her, she would probably fire Val and blackball my whole family on the island, which would be very bad.
So I guessed it was my problem.
At this point I wanted to go back to bed and not wake up until Holt’s hit-and-run was solved and the crazy lady was escorted off the island. Since that didn’t seem like a viable option, I checked my watch. I needed to stop by the market, see that storefront, and then I’d promised Lucas I’d stop by the grooming shop to see him. And JJ was waiting in the car for me.
The good thing was, the storefront wasn’t far from Lucas’s place—which was another point in the plus column of actually renting it—so I could park somewhere near both and just walk between them. I hurried back to the car, relieved to see JJ still sound asleep on his blanket, and drove over to the main drag. The one good thing about the cold season was the plethora of parking spaces. I hit the market first, then drove down a side street and parked.
I scooped JJ into my arms—he only gave a small squeak of protest—and hurried down the street. I found my potential new storefront nestled between two businesses that were shuttered for the season—a Vineyard Vines boutique and an art gallery. Nice. I already liked the high-end theme. I stepped forward and peered into the windows, trying to remember what had lived here before. Unfortunately, stores came and went, sometimes after only one or two seasons. My mom had actually toyed with the idea of opening a shop, which she probably would’ve been great at, given that she was one of the most popular people on the island. Everybody loved my mom. She’d lived here most of her life aside from college, and Grandma and Grandpa were island lifers as well. Plus, she just had that amazing, welcoming personality. Any shop she opened would likely be jammed with people from opening to closing, whether they were actually buying or just in there to chat.
Actually, that was probably why she’d settled instead on an Etsy shop to sell her handmade scarves and blankets, as well as her funky jewelry. Between that and her mystery writing, she kept herself pretty busy. And she’d realized that the cost of the overhead and the commitment to being in the store for a certain number of hours every day wasn’t the way she wanted to live. My mom was a total free spirit. She lived her life exactly how she wanted, whether it suited other people or not. She definitely kept my dad, the straight arrow, on his toes. But he adored her. Everyone did. You couldn’t really help it. Sophie James was a force.
As for me, I still liked the high of being in a store, watching people come in and get excited about a healthy, yummy green juice, bring their friends in, and, even better, return often. Same with my cafe. And I was feeling like this might be a really good location for Ethan and me to jump into our second venture. The space was wide open and empty—now that I thought about it, it may have been a gallery of some sort—and I could already see where we could put the counter and some tables and chairs, along with the refrigerator case for some of the other healthy, vegan goodies we’d had success selling.
I pulled out my phone and sent an email to the Realtor and texted a few photos to Ethan, then headed back in the direction of Lucas’s place. I tucked JJ into my coat and pulled my scarf halfway over my face, to combat the wind that seemed to be picking up, I thought again of Jason Holt and how he might have ended up hit by a car and tossed into icy water. I wondered if he’d been dead on impact or if he’d died in the frigid water. Who would hit someone and not try to get help, if it was an accident? Which was probably why they were using the word murder. Lost in thought about this terrible event, I almost walked right into someone on the sidewalk just as I was nearing Lucas’s. “Sorry,” I mumbled, barely glancing up.
And then I did a double take.
She realized it was me at the same time I realized it was her. The crazy woman from my cafe who wanted JJ.