Hex on the Beach by Kelley Armstrong
Chapter Nine
I’m at the shop the next day, helping Kennedy. Hope is with us. There’s been no sign of Rian. He’d apparently been MIA at the grand opening because his parents dragged him back to Boston. Quite literally. They sent an SUV to pick him up, with no advance warning.
As Kennedy muttered when she found out “Gotta love parents who kidnap their own kids.” Rian was recalled to the home front, and that had Aiden fretting this morning, so Kennedy insisted he drive to Boston and check on him. Aiden promised to return by lunch and spend the afternoon helping in the shop. In other words, par for the course this weekend. A ruined Grand Opening, followed by an exciting late-night bit of sleuthing, and then couple-separating family drama.
The pendulum of Fate swings back that morning, as we discover, to my relief, that the ruined opening was not a portent of things to come. The shop is busy enough to keep Hope, Kennedy and myself hopping all morning, with Marius helping customers carry items to cars, as we sell half the large items to antique-shopping tourists.
Of course, that starts Kennedy fretting that her grand opening looks more like a going-out-of-business sale. One worried text to Ani, and within an hour, three locals show up with antiques to sell on consignment. I’m not always a fan of small towns, but when the right people live there, they can be a wondrous thing.
We also have five people stop by to ask about a “cursed” object they own: either selling it or having it uncursed. The family business is closed this weekend to focus on Kennedy’s shop, but a note on the door directs people here. Those who fear grandma’s silver vase is cursed now have two options in Unstable: pay to get it uncursed or sell it to Kennedy as is. In Boston, she’d kept the phrase “formerly cursed objects” to herself. In Unstable, it’s a selling point.
A young couple is inquiring about one of those right now—a Victorian pendant brought from the Boston store that actually had been cursed. Kennedy is regaling them with the tale when the local police chief comes in. Kennedy looks startled, but the chief only nods and motions that she’ll speak to Hope instead.
I walk over as the chief asks Hope whether there were any problems with the shop last night.
“Any sign of intruders? Anything missing?”
Hope shakes her head. “We have a security system. It didn’t go off. Most things of real value are too big to steal. The jewelry and whatnot goes into the safe at night. Kennedy opened that this morning. Everything present and accounted for.”
“Good.”
“I heard other alarms after the fire,” I say.
The chief looks from Hope to me. Hope performs the introductions, and then Chief Salazar addresses me directly with her answer. “We’re still investigating, but there seemed to be a few break-ins and a few thefts. Oddly, unrelated.”
“Unrelated to the fire?”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m sure they’re related to that. People taking advantage. I mean that the shops with the triggered alarms had nothing stolen. It was other shops that did.”
Kennedy walks over, catching the end of that as she brings the necklace to wrap for the customers. “Diversion, then? Set off the alarms, and then rob other shops that are still open?”
“That’s a theory,” she says. “Seems elaborate, though. We’ll know more when we get a full accounting of what’s missing.”
Kennedy and I exchange a look.
“What about tonight’s Lisa Lake tour?” I ask. “We bought a block of tickets, but I’m presuming it’s been cancelled.”
“There will be extra security, but we wouldn’t do that to Ms. Dowling. She put a lot of work into this tour. She’s sold out Saturday and Sunday, and has asked to do another one Monday. The council is considering it, though some people aren’t happy about that.”
“Because of the thefts?”
“No, they just don’t like dredging up that history. Mitch Keeling came to see me this morning, with a few other concerned citizens. I told them to speak to the mayor, but I can’t imagine anything coming of it. We gave her the permit, and no one’s eager to withdraw it halfway through the weekend. Especially when there’s a film crew coming out tomorrow night to tape her tour.” She slaps the counter. “I should move on. Checking in with all the businesses.”
“We appreciate that,” Kennedy says, and the chief heads for the door as four more people come in.
This morning over breakfast,when telling the others what we discovered last night, Jonathan had offered to compile what he could on the Lake case from the town archives. After the police chief leaves, I head to the library to see what he has. At breakfast, he’d been discussing it with Ani, so I’d presumed they do it together, but instead I find him alone in the library, which is closed except for special events.
“Where’s Ani?” I ask as he lets me in.
“Volunteering, volunteering and more volunteering.” He takes a stack of books to the counter.
“I thought I heard you two saying something about spending the morning together?”
“At the dunking booth,” he says. “That’s where she is. But it was slow enough that I decided to come back to the library and gather what you guys are looking for.”
In other words, my attempt to bring them together actually meant that they lost precious weekend time together. Wonderful.
“Oh, but it’s such a lovely warm day,” I say. “You really should be out at the dunk tank.”
“And I will be. I got your text as I was leaving, so I stuck around to give you the bad news in person.”
“Bad news?”
He heads for the door, waving for me to follow. “The archives are Lisa-free.”
“What?”
“Someone checked out all the records. Which is odd, because we don’t normally allow those to leave the library. I also can’t find a record of the check out, so my guess is that another librarian let someone take them, probably Ms. Dowling.”
“Isn’t that a bit odd?”
He laughs as he reaches for the door. “It’s Unstable. I can say that we usually don’t let someone borrow our archival material. I can also say that they’re supposed to check out whatever is taken. But if I’m not the one on the desk, the rules are more like guidelines. We have one librarian with Alzheimer’s and while she never works alone, whoever’s with her could have been busy at the time. Or it was the other librarian, who decided to bend the rules for a professional interested in local history. I’ll track down the archives, but it won’t be this weekend.”
“You wear a lot of hats in this town, don’t you?” I say as we head out. “Head librarian. Town councilor. Volunteer worker.”
He shrugs. “I like to get involved.”
“You and Ani both work very hard, for your careers and your community. It must not leave much time for personal lives.” I rap his arm as we pause behind the library back doors. “Young people need to be careful of that. Work-life balance. When’s the last time you’ve been on a date?”
He glances away and rocks on his heels. “It’s been a while.” He comes back with, “But that’s not me being busy. Just . . .” He wrinkles his nose. “Still bouncing back from a bad experience. It’s an old story. Meet a girl, think she might be the one, and then she’s not.”
“It’s a good thing you realized that in time.”
“Oh, I wasn’t the one who realized it. Totally out of left field for me.” He locks the door. “But, yeah, in retrospect, it was probably for the best. We weren’t a match.”
“Uh-huh.” I take out my sunglasses and put them on as we step into the gardens. “And what about Ani? Is she seeing anyone?”
He pauses, and his eyes narrow. “Oh, no. No, no, no.”
“No, what?”
“Please tell me you are not trying to match make.”
“Why not? You and Ani are obviously very—”
“Very good friends. Lifelong best friends. Naturally, we should end up together. As we have been hearing since we were, oh, roughly five years old.”
“And it’s not what you want?”
“Who knows what we want?” he says, with genuine frustration in his voice. “No one will back off enough for us to figure it out.” He sighs. “They mean well. But it’s as if the whole town has bought tickets to our wedding, and we’re ruining everything by not actually getting married. My parents, Ani’s sisters, the entire town—they’re all part of a giant conspiracy to get us together.”
“And you just want them all to back off. Give you breathing room.”
“Yes.” He exhales. “That was more than I meant to say. Just please don’t add to the fray.” He clasps his hands together, raising them, mock pleading. “Please, please, please. Let us be friends. If there’s more there, let us find it on our own.”
“Everything okay?”Marius asks. I’m in the Bennett’s living room after dinner, everyone else out in the backyard.
“I made a mistake,” I say. I glance over his shoulder and lower my voice. “With Ani and Jonathan. I should leave them alone. They don’t need anyone else interfering.”
He shrugs as he lowers himself onto the sofa with me. “Didn’t seem like you were doing much interfering. Just little nudges that weren’t really working out. They’re both very busy this weekend.”
“They’re always very busy. I just hate to see . . .” I exhale. “I can joke about mortal lifetimes, but I hate to see opportunities slipping away. I want to grab people and shake them and tell them how quickly it will be over. How much they can miss by doing the wrong things and throwing away their lives but also by doing too much of the right thing.”
I exhale. “I’m not making sense.”
He entwines his fingers with mine. “You are to me. You’re worried that Ani and Jonathan are so caught up in their careers and their community and helping others that they’re missing out on each other. Except they’re not.” He waves toward the back. “They’re out there right now, staking out a corner of the yard and talking like they’ve been separated for weeks.”
“Which means—” I cut myself off. “Which only means they truly enjoy each other’s company, not that they need more. Not yet at least.”
“They’re moving at their pace,” he says. “They aren’t even thirty yet. They have plenty of time if that’s what they want.” He leans back, hand still in mine. “I’m more worried about Aiden. At least Ani and Jonathan have balance. Work, family, community, friends. Aiden?”
He shakes his head. “Work, work, and also work. Family, too, but not in a good way. With Kennedy, I think he sees the possibility of more. That’s a start. I’d just like to figure out what the devil is up with Rian.”
“Have you talked to him?”
He grimaces. “Tried to, but he’s not sure what to make of me. He cracks a few ‘god of war’ jokes and escapes as fast as he can.” He pauses. “He reminds me of Denny. He comes off as the wild child, the black sheep, proud of his place in the flock but . . .” He shrugs. “There’s damage there, just like with Aiden. Just like with Denny.”
“Kennedy said something like that earlier. I just wish Rian wouldn’t make things so difficult for Aiden. He—”
The patio door whirs open.
“Vanessa!” Hope calls. “Marius! Tour time!”
She runs in waving her phone. “Thirty minutes to go. You’re both still in, right?”
I smile as we stand. “We wouldn’t miss it.”