Heirlooms and Homicide

  Heirlooms and Homicide

  Hearts Grove Cozy Mystery, Book 1

  Danielle Collins

  Fairfield Publishing

  Copyright © 2019 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Thank You!

  1

  With a cup of coffee from Espresso Yourself and the town’s newspaper tucked neatly under her arm, Henrietta Hewitt entered the front door of H.H. Antiques ready to conquer the world. Or at least her to-do list for the day. There was something to be said about the smell of fresh coffee and the right attitude, at least that was what Henrietta’s mother had always said. She hoped that it would prove true because today, she needed to attack a massive list of projects and she could use all the help she could get.

  Sepia, a creamy tan Flame Point Siamese, ran across her path, nearly tripping Henrietta with her long tail. “Hey now,” Henrietta cautioned. “You don’t want me spilling this hot coffee. It would not be a pretty sight.”

  The cat, now safely across Henrietta’s path, sat and stared back at her with inscrutable blue eyes. She sent out a pink tongue, licking away part of her breakfast, no doubt, before turning to jump into the top of the old grandfather clock by way of a wing-backed chair and antique hutch in succession. If they ever sold the clock, Sepia would be forced to find a new roost.

  The sound of the tiny silver bells hung at the front door drew Henrietta’s attention away from the mischievous cat.

  “Hello?” she called out.

  “It’s just me,” a breathless voice replied. Then, through the narrow hallway of the Victorian house-turned-antique shop, Henrietta’s assistant and fellow historian appeared.

  “Why, Olivia, you’re early.”

  “Is it really that surprising?” the young woman said. Nearing thirty but not looking a day over twenty-five, Olivia wore a flowing, dark green tank top over jean capris. Her boxy, horn-rimmed glasses perched on a petite nose and when she smiled, her pale blue eyes sparkled beneath blunt-cut bangs.

  “No. Well, yes,” Henrietta said with a shrug.

  “I know. I’m usually late.” Olivia rolled her eyes at herself and mirrored Henrietta’s shrug. “But it’s never too late to turn over a new leaf, is it?”

  “Liv,” Henrietta said, staring her down with what she hoped was an encouraging look. “You do what you need to.”

  Olivia broke into a shy smile and nodded toward Henrietta’s coffee. “Already got a cup?”

  “Yes,” Henrietta said, sighing and turning to the counter where the cash register sat between a stack of antique books and a box of odds and ends that still needed cataloging. “It was going to be a morning without it.”

  “I hear that.” Olivia deposited her purse beneath the counter and subconsciously pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Mind if I pop next door?”

  The call of Espresso Yourself was strong and Henrietta didn’t know many who could resist. Having a coffee shop next door was a blessing and a curse.

  “No problem. Tell Gina it’s on me.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

  Henrietta responded with a look, and Olive flashed a smile before disappearing back toward the front door.

  So much for being on time, Henrietta thought good-naturedly. She’d hired Olivia two months prior and was fairly certain the woman hadn’t been on time once, but when it would have bothered her immensely in anyone else, Henrietta found that Olivia was worth the few minutes she missed at the beginning of her shift. She rarely went home on time and often stayed late to hunt down a date for an item or a price from an overseas carrier. Her tardiness was more than made up for by her effectiveness.

  Henrietta turned her attention to the yellow legal pad next to the register. She’d started her list last night before going upstairs into the living portion of the house. The list was extensive and possibly a bit too ambitious, but she was willing to give it her best shot before the clock struck six and she turned into a pumpkin. Or, more likely, before her feet turned into miniature pumpkins and she was required to put them up to rest.

  The bells rang again, and she called out, “That was fast.”

  “Miss me that much?” a masculine voice said.

  Henrietta looked up into the chocolatey brown depths of Ralph Gershwin’s eyes. His bushy eyebrows wagged up and down a few times and he cracked a smile.

  “Ralph? What are you doing here this early?”

  “Came by to see you,” he said, leaning against the counter and peering down at her list. The man made his late fifties look good, though Henrietta tried not to notice.

  “And?” she offered, waiting for him to tell her the real reason he was there.

  “And…” He looked up at her. “I’ve got a missing persons case.”

  Henrietta rolled her eyes heavenward. “Sepia, do you hear that? Ralph’s got a case! What has he done to deserve such favor?”

  “No need to be snarky,” he said with a low laugh.

  “I know. It’s just that…” She huffed out a breath and felt her hands go to her hips. He brought this out in her. “You come in here expecting a different answer, and I just can’t give it to you, Ralph.”

  “You wound me,” he said, clutching his hand to his chest.

  “If you’d like for me to read you my latest chapter, I’d be more than happy to, but aside from that and your occasional masculine help with lifting heavy objects, I don’t think we can afford to be in business together.”

  “You say it like it would be a bad decision, and I just can’t believe that.”

  “Ralph…” She leveled her gaze at him, willing the full force of her feminine persuasion to convince him. “I will not join your private investigation business.”

  “Yet.”

  “What?” She had already turned away to start numbering the items on her list.

  “You forgot to add ‘yet’ to the end of that statement.” He stood with his hand out and affected a nasally, almost feminine tone. “Ralph, I will not join your private investigation business—yet.”

  “I—”

  “Tisk tisk,” he said with an upheld finger. “Let me tell you more about this case.”

  She was going to refuse but the bells rang again, and she thought the phrase ‘saved by the bell’ had never been more appropriate.

  “Olivia and I have much to do. Good day, Ralph.”

  He looked wounded, but she knew it was an act. As much as he tormented her, trying to get her to join his father-son private investigation agency, she also counted him as a friend and knew better than to think her declining his offer would stop him.

  “Maybe another time,” he said, looking at Olivia and winking. She giggled and nodded in an exaggerated way.

  They were both insufferable.

  “Good day,” Henrietta said.

  “Bye, Henri,” he said with a laugh before turning to leave.

  “What did Ralph want?” Olivia asked, setting her coffee down on the counter and brushing her hand through her wind-tossed bob.

  “The usual.”

  “You offered to read him your chapters again, didn
’t you?”

  “So what if I did?” Henrietta said, not looking up from her list prioritization.

  “No wonder he left so quickly.”

  * * *

  The Blackberry Festival was only a few days away and Henrietta felt confident it was going to be their biggest year yet. Then again, every person in town always thought that that year was going to be the best yet. Perhaps it was the pull of festival season, the warm weather and beautiful days, or maybe it was the cute little town buried deep in Washington, but Henrietta was happy to believe the best about each festival season as it came.

  “You’ll have it, won’t you?” Mayor Ricky Lawrence said, his thin hands nervously clenching and unclenching in front of him.

  “Of course, Ricky.” Henrietta took a moment to move to the window in the mayor’s office. It was four stories up in one of the tallest buildings in Heart’s Grove, and it afforded a lovely view of the ocean. “Have I ever let you down?”

  “What? Oh, no, no, no,” he said in his characteristic twittering tone. “It’s not so much that as the pressure. Oh, the pressure.” While Ricky was something of a visionary, he was a worrier five times over.

  He’d checked in with Henrietta at least once a week starting two months before the festival to make sure that she’d contribute her usual item for the silent auction.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, turning back to him. “I’ll have something extra special. I’ve got a few items in mind, actually.”

  “Care to give me a hint?” he asked, coming to stand next to her at the window. Somehow, the beautiful view didn’t seem to distract him as it did her.

  “Not yet, but soon.” She offered him a confident smile as she picked up her purse from the side chair. “I’m off. You’ll be hearing from me soon.”

  “Shouldn’t you already have the item?” he called after her.

  Her only response was a raised hand offering a wave.

  They went through this dance every year: Ricky worrying about every minute detail of the festival, Henrietta assuring him that she had her part under control, and him asking a thousand questions that she dodged artfully until she was ready to answer them.

  A woman’s mystery is never to be underestimated, Henrietta remembered her mother saying. It seemed as appropriate in this situation as it did in many other aspects of life.

  When she reached her Mini Cooper, she climbed inside and tossed her purse on the seat. She had an auction to get to and if she didn’t hurry, she might miss it.

  The sound of loud rapping on her passenger window startled her enough to entice a short scream. Ralph’s grinning face was enough to turn the scream into a growl. She rolled down the window.

  “You know better than to scare a woman who’s got her foot on the brake,” she said.

  “That I do. Your break lights weren’t on yet.”

  She let out a sigh. “They were about to be.”

  He laughed. “Mind if I tag along?”

  “To?”

  “The auction you’re going to.”

  She opened her mouth but closed it. How had he known—

  “You saw the paper on my desk this morning.”

  “Bingo.” He opened the door and began to slide in, almost sitting on her purse before she yanked it away from him. “Can’t get anything past you, Henri.”

  “I really wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

  His knees hit the dashboard. “Really? Why do you have to drive a clown car?”

  Feeling as if his cramped space was punishment enough, she decided to forgive his fright-inducing interruption to her day. “How’s the missing person case going?” she asked as she pulled into traffic.

  “Thought you weren’t interested?”

  “I never said that.” She narrowly avoided someone pulling into traffic—making Ralph gasp and flinch—before she shot a look his way. “I merely said I wouldn’t join your agency.”

  “Feels like the same thing to me.”

  “Believe me, it’s not.”

  He tried, and failed, to adjust his position to give himself more room as she turned onto a two-lane highway. If they continued west, they’d end up in Port Angeles, but they weren’t going that far.

  “Name’s Cybil Markham. Young girl, early twenties, black hair, hazel eyes. Apparently, she’s run away from home.”

  “Seems like a case for the police,” Henrietta mused.

  “Sure, sure.” He nodded, knowing full well that Henrietta was right. Ralph had been a police detective for most of his life and, after deciding to retire from the force early, had created a private investigation agency with his son, Scott, a kind, single man in his early thirties. “The parents are from New York—”

  “Do they think she’s come here?”

  “Are you going to let me brief you on this or do you want to keep guessing, Agatha Christie?”

  She made a face, and in her silence, Ralph got his answer.

  “Her parents, in New York, went to the authorities. They searched her room and found a note saying she was leaving. Since there was a note and she’s of age, they really had nothing else to go on.”

  “So, they hired you to find her. Again, I ask, why here?”

  “Apparently,” he said, drawing out the word in exasperation, “she purchased a bus ticket from there to here by way of Seattle. That was the end of her trail. They contacted me—found me on the web and emailed me—and the rest you know.”

  Henrietta couldn’t help her smile. Ralph had been bragging about the amazing job his son Scott had done in setting up a website for their agency. While she had to admit that it was a nice site, the pride which Ralph spoke of his presence on ‘the web’ was more than a little inflated.

  “Any leads?”

  “Not really,” he shifted his weight, groaning. “I’ve got a few things I’m looking into, but—”

  “Don’t even think about it,” she said, pulling onto a long, paved driveway toward a cliff-side mansion.

  “But—”

  “Nope.” She shot him a sideways glance, and he pursed his lips. “But you can help me search for the perfect item for the Blackberry Festival auction.”

  “I thought you were already supposed to have that.”

  “Not you too,” she said with exasperation.

  They pulled up as close as they could and parked on the grass as an attendant instructed. As they climbed out of the car, Ralph making an over-exaggerated grunt that sounded like “Freedom,” Henrietta took in the massive house. It was at least three stories high in a Victorian style and looked to have been newly painted. She assumed they were preparing it for the market after the death of the home’s original owner. There were likely a lot of wonderful things to find within its historic walls.

  “Let’s go!” she said cheerily.

  Ralph looked as if he wanted to say something—likely something about her participation in his case—but he closed his mouth and gestured for her to lead the way.

  They’d see just how long his silence lasted.

  2

  Climbing the front steps of the Victorian home, Henrietta imagined what the house must have been like before it was modernized. Brushed copper fixtures had no doubt replaced the original wrought iron gas lamps. The front door, now a modernized, boxy design, had taken the place of a crafted door with molding inlays and an antique ringer that made a charming bell noise when the knob was turned. Even the original, thin-width deck boards had been replaced with larger planks and painted over.

  While Henrietta hadn’t seen the house up close until today, she could imagine all these things with perfect clarity. They would have been standard in most Victorian homes in this area and she felt a pang of sadness at the reality that those things were lost to the way of the modern footprint.

  “You look sad,” Ralph observed.

  “Not so much sad as disappointed.”

  “Why?” He held the door open for her.

  “They’ve completely modernized this place.”

&nbs
p; “Likely fixed to sell.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, stepping into the modernized foyer, “but there is a way to preserve history while affecting modern change that preserves the historical accuracy. It merely takes a little creativity. Something their designer certainly lacked.” She lightly touched the tip of a modern, metal sculpture in the corner of the entryway. It was large and garish, in her opinion, and had no artistic structure to it. Not like the Victorian era.

  “Buy this place and fix it up,” Ralph said with a laugh. His neck was craned to take in the ceiling and he missed Henrietta’s expression, which she was thankful for. There was no need to tell him she’d considered that very thing not moments ago.

  “Welcome to Patton House. We’re pleased that you could join us today. Do you need a pamphlet for the auction?”

  “I brought mine along,” Henrietta said with a smile.

  “Delightful,” the tall man said. He had thinning gray hair and a smile that said he was paid to be courteous. “We’ll begin in twenty minutes in the library. Just that way.” He indicated an extremely large hallway that led toward the north wing of the home.

  He walked away as another couple entered and began his welcome again.

  “What do you do at these things?” Ralph said. He looked out of place in his khaki cargo shorts and knock-off Hawaiian shirt. All he was missing was a fishing hat and he’d fit right in on the deck of a fisherman’s boat.

  “We observe,” she said with raised eyebrows.

  “Ah, something I should be good at.”

  She resisted the barb that came to her almost as easily as breathing and led the way up the wide staircase. It wound around to each floor in turn, but she stepped off on the first. Thankfully, the banister had been preserved in its original form and she admired the scrollwork and rich mahogany coloring of the wood.