The next morning, I woke up after Rainwater had already left for the police department. He had stuck a note on the bathroom mirror saying that he had to go in early to deal with the case and that he hoped to be home at noon. I wasn’t holding my breath that he would be back by then.
Because Rainwater had to work, I felt I should get back to work as well. Our Vermont honeymoon was on hold. Rainwater couldn’t leave the village until Roma’s case was solved. I understood, but I was also in need of a vacation.
Until then, I would work. I spent the morning trying to shoehorn David’s clothes into my very full closet. When late morning came around, I was more than happy to abandon the project and get the shop ready to open. I opened Charming Books just as I normally would on a Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful December day. Bright sunlight danced on the snow, making it sparkle with that special snow blue hue. As I swept a fresh dusting of flakes from the porch steps and the walk, all I could think about was Roma and the book. What had happened to Walden? A part of me felt guilty that I was as preoccupied with the whereabouts of the book as with Roma’s death.
I had only spoken to her briefly on Wednesday morning, and I didn’t hear from her after that. Had she been in Cascade Springs this entire time? Had she been planning to come back and talk to me about the book again after the wedding? Why was she at the wedding? It was impossible to know the answer to the last two questions, but I was certain that Rainwater was working on the first one.
I stood on the shop’s front porch. I didn’t have a coat on and the chill in the air cut through my sweater. Motivated by the cold, I made quick work of sweeping the steps.
The rental company had already come and collected the chairs and decorations from the wedding. It was like it never happened. While I was alone all morning, I wondered if it all had been a dream.
I leaned my broom against the porch post so that I could use it later to clear the walk again because more snow was predicted for later in the afternoon. As long as the snow remained light, I could keep the path to the sidewalk clear with just a broom. However, the meteorologist promised a night of heavy snow. I would be using the shovel by the evening.
When I turned back to go inside, I stopped short at the sight in front of me. Emerson was sitting on a book that lay on the threshold. When I had gone outside to clear the sidewalk, there hadn’t been a book there—I knew that for sure. Again, the shop was not so subtly trying to get my attention.
I leaned over, Emerson hopped off the book, and I picked it up. The book, Walden—no surprise there—was opened to a page. My eyes scanned the text, and as I wondered if they knew all along where they should look, they landed on:
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
It seemed to me that the shop’s essence was confirming what I already thought, which was that I had to find Walden. The special volume was truly a treasure that needed to be protected. Best case scenario, it would be donated to a library or museum now that Roma was gone. That was assuming that it belonged to Roma. I couldn’t get out of my head what my grandmother had said about Roma’s cheating past. It made me wonder if Roma had stolen the book from someone else just to have it stolen from her.
I carried the book into the shop and set it on the sales counter, keeping it open to that page as if I needed a reminder to keep working at it. I needed to reach out to my contacts in the rare book world. If someone had stolen the book and wanted to sell it, that person would be most successful trying to sell it to a rare book dealer. Maybe that’s why I was so surprised that Roma had come to me. I was a bookseller, but I didn’t work in rare books. Was it because she had no provenance records that rare book dealers had turned her away?
The closest rare bookstore was just one town over in Camden, called Tattered Spine. If I had stolen a valuable book, that is where I would go first. The shop was owned by Heathcliff Howell. As far as I knew, he was the only person who worked there too. Although I’d never been to the shop before, I knew Heath from bookseller association events in the region. He was an academic man with a precise beard and wire-rimmed glasses. He looked exactly how you might imagine a rare book dealer to look. I didn’t know if he acquired the look due to his profession or if he acquired the profession due to his look. In any case, his store was the place to start my investigation.
Rainwater could concentrate on Roma’s death. I would focus on her book.
I called Tattered Spine, but my call went straight to voicemail. This wasn’t altogether surprising. Many of the smaller shops in Western New York weren’t open on Sundays. Even so, I was disappointed. I had half a mind to close my shop for an hour or two to run over there and knock on the door. However, that idea was quickly put out of my head as some last-minute Christmas shoppers came into Charming Books.
The shop was still bustling when Sadie stopped by a little past noon.
I handed the customer standing in from of me his receipt and thanked him for his purchase.
After he left, Sadie came over to the counter. “Vi, how are you?”
I cocked my head. “That seems like a loaded question.”
“It is,” she said. “You should be on your honeymoon right now.”
I sighed.
She gave my hand that rested on the counter a squeeze. “Chief Rainwater will figure this all out, and you will be on your trip in no time.”
The truth was that I wasn’t in as much of a hurry to go on the honeymoon as I was to find out what happened to that copy of Walden.
She shook her head and her ponytail bounced. “Anyway, I have all your wedding gifts over at my shop. I figured that, with everything going on, you and David wouldn’t want to deal with them last night.”
“Thank you, Sadie. I completely forgot about the gifts.”
She grinned. “I knew you would. They can stay there until you get back from your honeymoon, and we can open them together. It will be fun.”
I smiled. I wished that I was as confident as Sadie that there would actually be a honeymoon. At this point, I just didn’t know. Thankfully, the shop was busy which kept me from dwelling on it for too long.
Christmas was on Friday, and everyone who came into the shop was desperate to find a book for someone they loved. The good thing was Charming Books never disappointed in this regard. It was the shop where the books literally picked you.
The shop’s essence had the ability to put the book that someone needed, whether it was for themselves or for someone else, right in front of them. At times, books flew across the store behind customers’ heads—that was always nerve-racking for me—and other times the book just appeared close by so the customer couldn’t possibly miss it.
By the time the sun began to set after four, I was exhausted. Every customer who had come in the store left with one or more books that they’d needed. But I had spent the last three hours playing interference between customers and the shop’s mystical essence so the patrons wouldn’t catch on to how I knew what their next read should be.
After the last customer walked out of the shop, I sat on the couch by the fire and sipped my tepid coffee that I had forgotten on the counter while I was working. It had been a good day monetarily for the shop, but it certainly wasn’t how I’d expected to spend the day after my wedding.
Right now, one of my assistants or Grandma Daisy should have been managing the store while I was away in a Vermont cabin with my new husband. We’d planned to stay there for the week and come back after Christmas. It would have been my first time leaving the village for any substantial amount of time since I’d moved back. I had been looking forward to it, but any time I felt sorry for myself, I reminded myself of the woman who’d died.
It seemed the shop believed I needed a reminder of what really mattered too because the volume of Walden that had been sitting on the sales counter flew across the shop and landed in my lap.
I rubbed the tense spot between my eyebrows that seemed to grow more painful by the second.
The book fell open and my eyes were drawn to the words:
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.
I turned my gaze to the tree. “So you are telling to get to the root of the problem?”
As usual, the tree said nothing in return, but Faulkner said, “Strike at the root!”
I rubbed my forehead again. “Please don’t tell me you can read too. I don’t know if I’d be excited or horrified at that news.”
Before Faulkner could answer me, the front door of Charming Books flew open with a bang. A cloud of snow blew in behind an elderly woman holding a cane. To me, the cane appeared to be more of an accessory than a necessity as she was holding it a foot off of the floor. Her hair was tethered in a long silver braid. She looked around the shop, and the braid that ran all the way down her backside whipped back and forth like a rope. It made me wonder how long her hair was when it was unbraided. On the top of her head, she had on a royal blue beanie that was tilted at an angle.
Faulkner cawed and flapped his wings in protest. If anyone was to be making loud and disruptive noises in Charming Books, he wanted it to be him.
I set the copy of Walden aside to stand up, and I smiled at the woman. “Can I help you?”
“You!” The woman said and thrust her mittened hand in my direction. She must have thought the mitten wasn’t effective in assigning blame because she ripped it off and pointed her sharp nail at me. “You’re the one who has my book!”
Faulkner flapped his wings in the tree branches above our heads. Emerson was nowhere in sight, but I was certain that the tuxedo cat was looking on from one of his many hidey-holes in the shop. Emerson could move around Charming Books and the entire village of Cascade Springs without being seen if he wanted to.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“You have the book! I demand you give it back. I’m the rightful heir. It’s mine. It needs to be returned to the family.”
“What book are you talking about exactly? This is a bookshop. There are thousands of books in here.” Even as I said it, I knew what she was going to say.
She shook her finger even harder at me. If she wasn’t careful, she might hurt herself. “Don’t mock me. You know the book I mean. Walden! You have my copy of the book that had been passed down in my family for generations. It’s mine!”
“I have copies of Walden for sale.” I was stalling her. She was so visibly upset that I wasn’t sure what she would do.
“Don’t you play dumb with me.” Her lip curled in disgust. “It’s a very unattractive quality. I know that woman came to you with the intention of selling the book. The troll. She abused our friendship and turned her back on me. She stole my book and then tried to sell it for her own gain.”
“Do you mean Roma?” I asked.
“Roma Winterbourne. Yes. Yes, that’s who I mean,” she snapped. “She told me she sold the book to you. She had no right to do that. She stole it from me, and now, you have to give it back.”
I took a small step away from her just to make sure I was out of the range of her cane if she chose to drive her point home with it. “I don’t have the book. Roma did come to the store and offer to sell it, but I didn’t buy it.”
“Liar!” she cried.
Emerson leapt onto the counter and hissed.
I moved behind the sales counter. Being called a liar shredded my last nerve. “It’s the truth. And who are you? How would you know if I was lying to you or not?”
She straightened her shoulders and tapped the end of her cane on the wide plank flooring for good measure. A silver ID bracelet clattered on her wrist each time the cane hit the floor. “I’m Imogene Thoreau, and that book is mine. It was written by my great-great-great-great-grandfather Henry David Thoreau.”
“That’s impossible.”
She glared at me. “Are you saying that Henry David didn’t write that book?”
“No, I’m saying it’s impossible that you are a direct descendent of Henry David. He didn’t have any children.”
She threw her cane at me.