“Lyle Merrick. Runs the Steep.” She tipped her head at the front of the shop.
“The Steep?” I felt like I’d landed in a foreign country where everyone else spoke the language and I was fumbling with my internal Google Translate trying to follow along.
“Tea shop across the square.” She sounded almost offended, and I followed her gaze to the shops that ran along State Street on the other side of the green space that was the town square. “What can I get you?”
“Iced coffee with cream and sugar please.”
“Coming right up.” Rosie went to work behind the counter. A stack of flyers next to the tip jar screamed with the headlineStop the Hearthstone Gated Community. “So yeah, Lyle saidEvelyn sold, but I knew that was wrong right away. Then he said Evelyn had left the house to the historical society. I always knew it would go to you though.”
She was clearly proud about her victory over Lyle.
Her certainty threw me. After all, I hadn’t been back to Blackwell Hollow since I’d left with my mom. “Why me?”
“Evelyn couldn’t stop talking about you!” She said it like it was obvious. “She was always talking about how smart you were and how proud she was of you, living in the city and having an important job and everything. She even showed us pictures!”
“Pictures?” I hadn’t sent Aunt Evelyn any pictures.
“From your socials,” Rosie said, pouring coffee over ice.
“My… socials.” Okay, I know I sounded pretty dim here, but who could blame me? I didn’t even know Aunt Evelyn had had social media, let alone that she’d been following me. Then again, I didn’t pay much attention to my social media accounts, and I only posted a picture once a month at best.
“Yeah. Congrats on the job by the way.”
Wow, this small-town thing was wild.
“Thanks,” I said weakly. I’d gotten my new job the year before, but it was the only one she could have been referring to.
Rosie poured syrup into my coffee, then added half-and-half from a silver pitcher with a printed label. “To be honest, I’m not surprised about Harold, although I’m sorry you found his body,” she hurried to add. “Obviously.”
“Why aren’t you surprised?”
“Because of the Hearthstone development.” Rosie’s way of saying surprising things like they were obvious was clearly a tic. “Everyone knows Harold was a no.”
I gazed longingly at the coffee, still on Rosie’s side of the counter. “On the town council you mean?”
Rosie nodded. “He would never have voted yes.” She glanced around the coffee shop even though no one was there but us andthe two women still at the table next to the wall. “Plus there was the fight with Victor last week.”
“Who’s Victor?” I was torn between wanting to reach across the counter for my coffee and wanting to dig deeper into the mystery surrounding Harold Pembroke’s death.
“Victor Ames. He’s some kind of liaison for Hearthstone. He acts like he’s one of us but everyone knows whose side he’s on.”
I reached into my bag for my wallet, trying to give Rosie the message that I wanted my fudging coffee. “And this… Victor had a fight with Harold?”
She nodded. “Just last week on the sidewalk. Harold looked like he’d swallowed a lemon. And then, after I closed up two days ago, I passed Victor skulking around the square.”
My gaze was locked onto the coffee, still on Rosie’s side of the counter. “What do you mean ‘skulking’?”
Rosie must be a reader. I was pretty sure I’d never heard a person use the wordskulkingin real life.
She waved her hand in the air. “You know…skulking.” She dropped her volume a notch. “I’m not saying he’s a murderer just because he’s working with Hearthstone but…”
She was saying Victor might be a murderer just because he was working with Hearthstone.
The bell on the door rang and I turned to follow the sound. A familiar-looking middle-aged man pushed into the shop wearing linen pants and a matching linen tunic under a patchwork vest, a leather portfolio tucked under his arm. I recognized him immediately as the man who’d crossed the street with the hairless cat in a stroller when I’d first arrived in town.
He used his backside to hold the door open, then pulled the stroller in after him.
The hairless cat, alert and blinking in surprise, looked around the shop like he (she?) was scouting for enemies.