Chapter Seven

Police officers who were dressed in suits and dresses for the wedding came running down to the riverbank. I recognized two EMTs and the coroner as well. Rainwater was the chief of police, so it made sense that all of these people were guests at our wedding. The sound of an ambulance cut through the winter evening air.

The two EMTs gently guided Rainwater to the side. He shivered as he gave orders through chattering teeth.

I grabbed an officer’s arm as he ran by. “Chief Rainwater needs medical attention. He could get hypothermia from being in the water.”

“Right.” The officer removed his coat and ran over to him. Rainwater tried to refuse, but in the end, he accepted the coat and put it on.

More EMTs arrived. They had been on duty and were in uniform. Two of them whisked Rainwater up the riverbank and into the bay of an ambulance. I ran up the slippery bank with the hem of my dress in my hands.

A female EMT put her hand out. “Ma’am, you can’t be here.”

“I’m his wife,” I pleaded.

She jerked back.

“She is,” Rainwater said from inside of the ambulance.

The EMT stepped aside and let me climb into the ambulance.

His soaked tuxedo jacket was on the floor in a heap. He was wrapped up in a solar blanket. The heat in the ambulance bay was going full blast.

“One of my officers should be here soon with a change of clothes for me and another coat. I always have an extra uniform at the station,” Rainwater explained.

I nodded as the surreal aspects of the last few minutes hit me. It was my wedding day. I should be inside of that heated tent celebrating with friends and family. Instead, here I sat in the back of an ambulance with my new husband who had almost frozen to death pulling a dead body from the river.

I shook my head. I shouldn’t feel sorry for myself. A woman was dead. “It’s her.”

His brow wrinkled. “Her who?”

“The woman from the shop,” I said and then lowered my voice. “The one with the first edition of Walden.

He sat up. “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. I first recognized her by her coat. It was the same one she had on in the shop and at the wedding.”

He nodded. “You still don’t know her name?”

I shook my head. “Did you see her hand?”

Rainwater nodded. “It said ‘They stole my book,’” he said.

“It has to be Walden.”

“So this could very well be the reason she was killed.”

An EMT tried to get Rainwater to lie back down, and Rainwater waved his hand away.

“I know it was her,” I said.

“We can’t jump to conclusions just yet. The coroner will determine if it was murder. She just as easily could have slipped on the ice and drowned.”

“I know that,” I said softly.

“Oh, Violet, does this remind you of Colleen?”

My childhood friend Colleen Preston died that very same way—drowning in the river. Some of the people in the village believed that she had been murdered. I was questioned and subsequently fled the village to escape their scorn even though I was completely innocent. It was only when I came back to Cascade Springs as an adult that it was proven her death was accidental. So yes, I knew very well how an accident could look like a murder.

Even so, I said, “I don’t think it’s an accident, and if it is murder, the motive was to steal that book.”

“Who would do this?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I started to shake.

Rainwater reached out a hand to me. “Are you okay?”

“Yep,” I squeaked.

He smiled. “That’s what I thought.” He paused. “When my clothes get here…”

“I know. You have to investigate.”

“I can get the investigation rolling. My officers and the coroner can process the scene. I’ll be at the reception as soon as I can.”

“Should we even have the reception? It doesn’t seem right. A woman is dead.”

He nodded. “Yes, we should still have it because we got married today. It’s still a meaningful day.” He studied me. “What is it? You have a strange look on your face.”

“There’s a dead body outside of our wedding tent. I think it would be odd if I didn’t have a strange expression on my face.”

“What—” He was cut off by his officers.

“Chief,” Officer Wheaton stepped into the ambulance with a duffle bag. “We have your clothes.” Officer Wheaton, who never had much use for me, shot an irritated look my way.

“Thank you, Wheaton.” Rainwater tried to stand up but couldn’t because of the low ceiling. He took the bag from Officer Wheaton. “Any new developments?”

Officer Wheaton glanced at me.

“You can speak frankly in front of my wife, Wheaton,” Rainwater said.

“A water-logged matchbook for the Starlight B&B was discovered in the woman’s pocket, sir.”

Rainwater nodded. “Good. Check that out. Also talk to the wedding photographer and see if she got any photographs of the woman. Violet saw her at the wedding ceremony, so there might be pictures of her.”

“Right.” Officer Wheaton gave a stiff nod.

“Tell the group by the scene that I will be there in five minutes.”

Officer Wheaton scowled at me once more and left the ambulance.

“Violet, go to the reception tent and get warm. Find something to eat while you’re there too. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I frowned.

“Please.” He stared at me with those amber eyes, making it impossible for me to look away.

I sighed. “Okay, but I’m going just to see if anyone at the reception saw anything.”

“Whatever it takes. I’ll send a couple of the officers over to speak to the guests too.”

“What about Grandma Daisy? What do I tell her?” I asked. “She is going to want to know what is going on.”

Rainwater let out a resigned sigh because he knew this was true.

“Tell her we have everything under control.”

I could tell her that, but it didn’t mean she would believe it.

I stumbled out of the ambulance and looked toward the river. There was a tight circle of emergency staff and police officers around where Rainwater had left the body. Red and white lights from the ambulance reflected off the ice-laden trees and trampled snow.

I started toward the reception tent, but I didn’t get very far when my grandmother came running toward me. “Violet, my girl, are you all right?”

Her glossy silver bob blew about her face in the wind and her long cape fluttered around her shoulders. She looked like a queen who was sorely disappointed with her subjects. All that was missing was the crown. Faulkner was on her shoulder, which was a nice touch, though.

She crushed me with a hug.

“I’m okay,” I managed to wriggle free despite the tight hold she had put me in.

She dropped her arms. “What’s this about a dead body? Did you really find a dead body on your wedding day? Are you trying to set a record for finding dead people at the most inconvenient times?” She stepped around me and pointed to the officers by the river. “Is that where you found the body?”

Before I could answer any of those questions, my grandmother started off to the river’s edge.

I sighed and followed. Rainwater wasn’t going to like this.

“Excuse me, excuse me. Mayor coming through. Step aside,” my grandmother said as she forced her way toward the crime scene. “Mayor and her crow coming through.”

Officers backed away, but I thought that had more to do with Faulkner’s beady eyes than my grandmother’s words.

I wove through the crowd behind her.

Grandma Daisy stopped abruptly. “Oh my land, Roma Winterbourne! How did she come to an end like this? What a terrible fate for her. I can’t say I’m surprised though. It seemed like luck was never on her side.”

Rainwater, who appeared at my side in new dry clothes and a warm coat, asked, “You know her?”

“Yes, I do,” my grandmother said. “I would recognize Roma Winterbourne anywhere. Some people change, but never enough for me not to know who they are. A person’s face doesn’t transform that much with age, at least in my opinion. And as you know, my opinion is always right. This doesn’t include the people who get plastic surgery, of course. They cheat.”

“This woman was in the shop a few days ago,” I said. “She never mentioned she knew you.”

Rainwater put a hand on both of our shoulders and directed us away from the riverbank. “We need to give the emergency responders room to work.”

Grandma Daisy nodded. Faulkner bobbed his head along with her.

“Grandma Daisy, why didn’t she mention you when she was at Charming Books?” I asked. “It’s your shop.”

She shrugged. “How am I to know? Besides, it’s your shop, my dear. You’re the Caretaker now.”

As soon as she said this, she looked around to see if anyone might have overheard her. No one appeared to be listening.

“And she wouldn’t ask after me in the shop because I had already spoken to her that day.”

My mouth hung open. “What?”

“Grandma Daisy,” Rainwater said. “You had better start at the beginning.”

My grandmother tucked her hands into her cape. “I already had a conversation with her earlier in the day. She had been looking for someone to buy a copy of Walden from her, and I told her to go to Charming Books. I was quite proud when I said that my granddaughter had her PhD on that very author.” She wrinkled her nose. “I have to say Roma wasn’t as impressed as I would have liked her to be, but she said she would talk to you all the same. She was desperate to sell the book.”

“How do you know her? How do you know her name?” My questions came out in a rush.

Grandma Daisy fluffed her coat. “She was my college roommate way back in the stone age. Until this week, I hadn’t seen her in over fifty years. Let me tell you, it was a shock when I ran into her on the street. I’m sorry to say that she looked like she had fallen on hard times.” She looked in the direction of where Roma Winterbourne’s body lay. “The last time I saw her, she was a chipper and motivated coed planning to start a job in journalism in the big city. I was a little jealous, I will admit, because I knew there was no big city in my future. My future was coming back to Charming Books and tending to the bookshop and the tree.”

I didn’t know my grandmother had wanted a life other than caring for the shop. She had never let on that she had once wanted something more. It was hard for me to come back to Cascade Springs to accept my inheritance, but I always thought that struggle was unique to me.

I shook my head. “You had a friend come to my shop and you didn’t tell me she was coming? All you had to do was shoot me a quick text message.”

“I didn’t say she was my friend. She was my roommate for one year, my freshman year. We were assigned to live together. We got along okay. She was an odd duck, but sometimes people say that about me. They’re wrong, of course. I’m as normal as it comes considering the magical inheritance and all.”

Rainwater and I shared a look.

“What? You don’t believe me?”

Faulkner cocked his head as if to say he was ready to come to Grandma Daisy’s defense if needed.

“Why didn’t you ask me if the woman had stopped by, though? I have seen you dozens of times since her visit, and you never once brought it up,” I said.

“And you never told me that she came to the shop. I assumed that she changed her mind about talking to you. I didn’t want to give you one more thing to worry about this close to the wedding. I knew that if there was some rare edition of Walden floating around out there, you would try to find it.”

Now, I had plenty to worry about because Roma was dead at my wedding. Somehow that was better?