I arrived back at the inn before 11:00 a.m. to find my grandmother waiting under our reconnaissance tree. She held her laptop and gave me a look that filled me with trepidation. She had found something. That or she had finally made good on her threats and set up a dating profile for me. Heaven forbid.
“I have interesting news,” she said. “Take a seat, Charlotte.”
“What’s going on?”
“Firstly, I’ve had Jemimah scour the grounds for any sight of animal tracks and there are none. No wolves in sight. It’s exceedingly strange. And secondly, well, it seems that one of our suspects has been up to no good.” Gamma paused, tilting her head. “Pardon me, no. Most of them have been up to no good, but this one in particular.”
“Who?”
“Take a look at this. My cameras picked it up early this morning.” She pointed toward the cameras situated atop the porch roof. They pointed down into the front yard, one directed toward the distant fountain and bushes and the other toward our bench.
“What is it? The suspense is killing me.” I shifted closer to my grandmother and peeked over her shoulder at the screen.
Once again, video footage had been pulled up, but it wasn’t Jessie Belle-Blue snooping around the inn this time.
Glendaree Bijon descended the front steps of the inn on the screen. She wore a silver kaftan, her gray tresses piled atop her head. She hurried off to our bench under the tree and sat down, a book on her lap. She opened it and began paging through it, frantically.
“This was taken this morning at about 06:00 a.m. when everyone was indoors and occupied,” Gamma said. “What do you make of it?”
I squinted at the book on Glendaree’s lap. “It’s her recipe book, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure, but it sure seems that way. The only thing I don’t understand is why she’d come read it out here and not keep it in her room.”
“You mean the only thing you don’t understand apart from the fact that she hired me to find a book that was never stolen in the first place,” I replied, and hot anger flashed through my core.
Glendaree had acted strangely from the start. She was an outsider yet had known that I was Gossip’s problem fixer. She had sought me out to find her recipe book and now, she had made a fool out of me. The recipe book had never been stolen.
“Take a breath, Charlotte,” Gamma said. “We don’t know whether this is true or not yet.”
“It has to be. What else could that be?” I pointed at the book in Glendaree’s lap on screen.
“Go find out.” Gamma shut her laptop.
I knocked once on the door to the Lavender Room before inserting a key into the lock and entering. As one of the maids, I had the keys to every room. I never used them to disturb guests, but this was an exception to the rule.
Gamma had stayed downstairs to help Lauren with lunch and to ensure that if the chef’s water broke, she went to the hospital instead of staying to finish her baking.
“What is the meaning of this?” Glendaree Bijon was at her dressing table, a book open in front of her. She slapped it shut and covered it with both arms, drowning it in her silver kaftan.
“Mrs. Bijon. I’ve come to talk to you about your case.”
“My case? I assume you’ve yet to solve it,” she replied, sniffing and tossing her head, but it was clear she was nervous.
I had hoped that the blurry image of the thick, hardcover book on Gamma’s laptop had depicted a work of fiction, in more ways than one. But Mrs. Bijon’s actions were transparent to me. She was trying to hide her recipe book.
The one that had been “stolen.”
Be calm. Channel your grandmother’s cool demeanor.
Gamma was the queen at handling tough situations, but this was infuriating. I had been lied to. Mrs. Bijon had already paid me the first half of my fee to find the recipe book that was in her possession.
“Well?” Mrs. Bijon insisted, trying to act natural even while she lay half of her body over the book she was trying to hide. “What have you discovered? Why have you burst into my private space like this? I could report you to your employer, you know? I’m sure Georgina Franklin would be very interested to hear how rude you are and—”
“Why did you hire me to find a book that was never stolen?” Was it connected to Brenda’s murder? Had she sent me over there to find Brenda’s body, after planting that mysterious note mentioning the recipe book under the fridge?
But no, that didn’t add up.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Glendaree replied. “I hired you to find my stolen recipe book.”
My patience vanished. I walked over to Mrs. Bijon, calmly reached beneath her arms and wrenched the recipe book out.
Glendaree let out a squawk of horror. “How dare—”
“Case closed.” I held up the recipe book. “Why, Mrs. Bijon, did you hire me to find this recipe book when you had it all along?”
“This is just… it’s a copy of my recipe book,” she said, clearly thinking on her feet. “That’s all. A copy. I don’t know who stole the original.”
“Liar.” I opened the recipe book. The pages were well-worn with plenty of Glendaree’s personal notes in the margin. “Why did you do this?”
But Mrs. Bijon wouldn’t talk. She clammed her lips shut and stared at me, blankly.
“And why did you take it outdoors to read it on the bench?”
Again, no answer.
“What was it, Bijon? Was it because you wanted to cast suspicion on Brenda, last year’s runner-up? You wanted her to get in trouble for a crime she didn’t commit? What was it?” My voice was loud in my ears, and Mrs. Bijon recoiled.
Calm down, Charlotte.
My grandmother’s voice rang through my mind. This wasn’t like me. I had spent years staying calm under pressure. You couldn’t be a spy without a tough skin, without assessing the situation at hand with logic and clarity.
I took a breath and dropped Mrs. Bijon’s recipe book onto her lavender-frilled comforter. “I’m firing you as a client,” I said. “I’ll be keeping the upfront fee you paid me but you can keep the rest. I don’t work for liars.”
Rich coming from an ex-spy, sure, but this was different. She wasn’t hiding out from a rogue spy. And her recipe book had been implicated in a murder case. Except she’d had it all along.
I gave Mrs. Bijon a final moment to tell me what was going on. She didn’t. I left her at her dressing table staring into space.