An hour later, Paxton woke up to her cellphone ringing. She reached over Sebastian to her tote bag but couldn’t find the phone. She ended up dumping the contents out onto the carpet and fumbling through them until she found it.

She felt Sebastian put a hand on her back and lightly stroke.

She looked at the screen. It was Maria, the manager at the Madam. She’d had an appointment with her an hour ago about last-minute details with the gala. She groaned as she put the phone down and turned to Sebastian. “I have to go.”

“Okay.” He sat up and winced as he scooted back to lean against the wall.

“Are you all right?” Paxton got up and started picking her clothes up off the floor.

“My back. This is why I don’t camp out. Can I buy you a bed as a housewarming gift?”

She smiled as she dressed, well aware of the fact that he was watching. It didn’t bother her, for probably the first time in her life. “I’ve seen your bed,” she said. “You have very good taste in beds.”

“You could try it out, you know. To get a feel for it.”

She walked over to him and went to her knees beside him. “This is real, isn’t it? It really happened.”

He put his hand to her hair. “Regrets?”

She took a deep breath. All she smelled was cut grass from the open living room window and the sugary smell of the doughnuts she’d brought in and put on the counter. “None,” she said. “What about you?”

“Not a single one. Well, maybe the lack of bed. Love me, love my creature comforts.”

She took his hand in hers. “I do love you, Sebastian. And I’m scared out of my mind.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Willa said happiness means taking risks. And if you’re not a little scared, you’re not doing it right.”

That made him laugh. “If that’s the case, we have nothing to worry about,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her. “Let’s be terrified together again.”

Which ended up making Paxton another hour late.

SEVENTEEN

Fly Away

Wednesday morning, Willa got to her store before Rachel did, so she started taking the chairs off the café tables by the large window, which was as blank as a movie screen because of the morning mist. Occasionally, the lights from a car would speed by, and it was unquestionably a local. Only locals knew where they were going at this time of morning. Tourists got lost and drove slowly in circles until the fog lifted.

She had just started the coffee when the bell above the door rang and Paxton entered.

“Hi,” Willa said, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

Paxton shrugged. “I was taking a different way to work this morning and saw your light.”

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, that would be great. Extra cream, no sugar,” Paxton said.

Willa flipped through Rachel’s coffee notebook on the bar and said, “According to my barista, Rachel, your coffee order means you want comfort but you’re afraid to ask for it.”

Paxton didn’t ask who Rachel was, or what strange coffee anthropology she was studying. She just laughed and said, “That is uncomfortably accurate.”

“She claims it’s a science.”

“This is a great store,” Paxton said, looking around. There was a short silence before she finally said, “Actually, I stopped by to thank you.”

“For what?” Willa asked as she poured the coffee into two large red-and-white-striped cups.

“For going to see Sebastian yesterday. For telling him to come see me.”

Willa picked up the two coffee cups and walked to a café table. “So, things worked out?”

“They worked out very well,” Paxton said as they pulled out chairs and sat. “I actually stayed at his place last night.”

That made Willa grin. “That’s why you were taking a different way to work this morning.”

Paxton hid her smile behind her cup of coffee. “Guilty. I take it Colin stayed with you?”

“I left him asleep. I didn’t have the heart to wake him up.”

“My mother is probably having a conniption right now,” Paxton said.

“You don’t sound too unhappy about that.”

“I’m not.”

Willa leaned back in her seat. “So what’s on your agenda today?”

“I’ll be at the Madam all day. Last-minute details for the gala. Plus, I have to write my speech.” Paxton gave her a worried look. “You’re still coming, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I’m going to wear that vintage beaded dress your grandmother gave Georgie.”

Paxton gasped. “Oh, Willa, that’s perfect.”

The bell over the door rang, and they both turned in their seats. Woody Olsen had just entered.

As always, it took Willa a moment to recover when she saw him, to see past all the potential bad news he could bring.

Paxton said, “Good morning, Detective Olsen.”

Willa finally found her voice. “Woody, what are you doing here?”

He stood awkwardly by the door. “I’m on my way to work. I saw your light. I worried you by coming in here a couple of weeks ago, and I wanted to put your mind at ease. Maybe it’s good that you’re here, too, Paxton. I was going to tell you today. We can’t determine the cause of death of that skeleton found at the Madam. There was trauma to the skull, but it also appeared that he’d suffered what would have been a fatal fall. Maybe it was an accident. I don’t think we’ll ever know what happened, or how he got there.”

“A fall?” Paxton repeated.

“Excuse me a moment,” Willa said to Paxton as she stood and walked over to Woody. “I’ve been thinking about when you were in here last. You asked me if I recognized anything in that suitcase buried with the skeleton. You were talking about the photo in the scrapbook, weren’t you? The photo of Tucker Devlin that looks so much like my dad.”

Except for his eyes darting once to Paxton, who was still at the table and deep in thought, Woody gave nothing away in his expression. “I was the only one who made the connection. And I didn’t say a thing.”

“Thanks, Woody.”

He nodded. “Your dad was a wonderful man. Best teacher I ever had.”

The bell over the door rang again. Woody automatically stepped out of the way to let whoever it was enter. But no one was there.

“Don’t pay any attention to that,” Willa said. “It’s been doing it a lot. I think it’s broken.”

“You know that old superstition, don’t you, the one that says when you hear a bell ring, good fortune is pouring down? It means you should cup your hands out and catch it.”

Willa automatically held her hands out. “Like this?”

“Exactly,” he said as he turned to leave. “Now I bet your bell is fixed.”

Willa smiled and shook her head, then she walked back to Paxton. “I think what he was really trying to tell me was that my grandmother was in the clear. So now we know Agatha won’t be dragged into this, either.”

“But I don’t get it,” Paxton said. “If Tucker Devlin died from a fall, why did Nana Osgood say she killed him?”

Willa wrapped her hands around her warm coffee cup. “I have a feeling our grandmothers never wanted anyone to know the whole story.”

“But what could be worse than what Nana Osgood told us?”

Willa raised her brows. “Do you really want to know?”

“No, you’re right,” Paxton said, shaking her head. “It’s time for things to finally be laid to rest.”

When Paxton drove to the Madam two hours before the gala was to begin on Friday night, the sky was twilight blue and the windows in the Madam were bright yellow against the evening clouds, giving the impression that the sun had actually set into the house itself and was now sitting inside. The old oak tree by the house was steadied by several cables tethered to the ground, and spotlights were aimed at it. The effect was like an old performer onstage, basking in the glow of one last ovation. As she approached, she could see the leaves on the tree shaking slightly, which was partly from the sprinkler system in the branches to keep it hydrated while it took root, but also from the dozens of birds that had flown here en masse and had taken up residence in the tree. They’d been the bane of Colin’s existence all week. He could get them to fly away, but they always came back.