Jayne Castle - Canyons of Night

It wasn’t just the atmosphere inside the Preserve that had changed, Fletcher thought. Jasper’s dreams had begun to change, too.

Fletcher walked through the gallery to join Jasper at the window. Together they watched Slade Attridge leave Looking Glass and walk down Waterfront Street toward the police station.

“When do we tell him that we think there’s something dangerous going on inside the Preserve?” Jasper asked.

“When we know for sure that he’s the right man for the job. When we can be certain that he’ll stay on in Rainshadow.”

“THEY TOOK THE BODY AWAY ON A POLICE BOAT OUT OF Thursday Harbor,” Charlotte said. “The chief says I can open the shop anytime I want but somehow I don’t feel in the mood to conduct business as usual.”

“I don’t blame you.” Rachel Blake came out from behind the counter, two steaming mugs of tea in her hands. She set both mugs down on the small round table. “Finding a dead body first thing in the morning is not a great way to start the day. Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Charlotte picked up the mug of tea. “Well, I am now. I had a panic attack when I found the body but, hey, I think I deserved it under the circumstances.”

“Absolutely. A dead body is enough to give anyone a panic attack.” Rachel paused, the mug halfway to her lips. Her dark eyes shadowed with concern. “You’re still having problems with panic attacks?”

“They aren’t nearly as frequent as they were when I was coming into my talent, thank heavens. But if I get too anxious or badly shaken, my talent automatically flares from zero to sixty. If that happens, it can set off an attack. I’ll concentrate on starting the inventory this afternoon. That will take my mind off what happened this morning.”

They were in the small coffee shop at the back of Shadow Bay Books. Like Charlotte, Rachel had spent many summers on Rainshadow. They were the same age and, in addition to sharing the normal trials and tribulations of the teenage years, they had shared the bond that came with the development of talents that neither of them had wanted or understood.

Rachel’s great-aunt and the aunt’s lifelong partner had owned the bookshop in those days. But a year ago the couple had retired unexpectedly and offered the business to Rachel. They had instructed her to do whatever she wanted with the shop and then they had moved to the sunnier climes of a desert retirement community.

Rachel had confided to Charlotte that at first she had been stunned because she had no idea the pair had the financial wherewithal to finance a high-end retirement community in the desert. I always thought they were just squeaking by on the income from the bookstore and a few investments they made over the years. Who knew the investments were in a couple of small start-ups that got bought out for a fortune?

Rachel had matured into an attractive young woman. There was a lively energy about her that was infectious. But Charlotte sensed shadows and mysteries in her friend’s amber brown eyes that had not been present all those years ago.

The summer friendship between the two women had gone into a long period of hibernation after they went off to college and started their separate adult lives. But when they had both found themselves back on Rainshadow it was as if they had never been apart. There was still a lot of history to catch up on but the old bond between them had snapped back into existence immediately. It was as if they had never been apart.

“So this Jeremy Gaines was a client of yours?” Rachel asked.

“Ex-client.” Charlotte sipped some tea. “Can’t imagine why he came here or why he was in my shop last night.”

“Got any ideas?”

Charlotte smiled wryly. “You sound like the chief. The answer is no idea whatsoever.”

“How did your association with Gaines end?”

“Badly. And from the way you phrased the question, I think you’ve been reading too much suspense and mystery fiction.”

“Not like there’s much else to do here on Rainshadow,” Rachel said.

“Which brings up the obvious question—why did we both come back?”

“Don’t know about you,” Rachel said, “but I needed a change and I’ve always had this fantasy of operating a bookstore. You didn’t answer my question.”

“I more or less fired Jeremy as a client. He got pissed. Made a pest of himself for a while.”

“Stalker?”

“My family was starting to think so,” Charlotte admitted.

“And then he shows up here inside your shop. You know what? I’ll bet he was stalking you. Probably came here last night to do something very nasty inside Looking Glass. That’s the sort of thing stalkers start out with.”

“I suppose it’s a possibility,” Charlotte said.

“Lucky he dropped dead of a heart attack when he did. Guys like that, they just keep going and the violence tends to escalate. The only way to stop them is to kill them.”

A chill shivered through Charlotte. “You speak from experience, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “I do.”

“WORD AROUND TOWN IS THAT THE GUY WHO DROPPED dead in Charlotte’s shop was stalking her,” Myrna said. “Probably came here to vandalize her store or leave a dead rat on the premises in order to frighten her. Good thing he dropped dead when he did.”

Slade stopped at the desk and scooped up a stack of printouts. “It was convenient.”

Myrna started to say something else but she got distracted by Rex, who came bouncing down the hall from the direction of the break room.

“Oh, good,” Myrna said. “Looks like he finished the rest of today’s loaf of Thelma’s zucchini bread.”

“You gave him some more?” Slade asked.

“It’s either that or I start dumping the bread off the cliff at Lighthouse Point. No human being could possibly eat as much zucchini bread as Thelma is making this year. She had a bumper crop of zucchini, enough to go into commercial production.”

Rex vaulted up onto Myrna’s desk and chortled a greeting. He clutched a black beaded object.

“What on earth does he have in his grubby little paws?” Myrna asked. “He’d better not be bringing a dead bird in here. Hmm. Looks like an old evening purse, one of those tiny little bags ladies use to hold a lipstick and a compact.”

Slade looked at the beaded purse.

“Damn,” he said. “Rex must have snuck into Charlotte’s shop while we were getting Gaines’s body ready to transport.”

“Uh-oh,” Myrna said. “If it came from Looking Glass, it’s probably not just some old evening bag. It’s probably a valuable antique.”

“Probably,” Slade said.

Rex put the purse on the desk. He selected a few shiny paperclips from Myrna’s stash and put them into the bag. When he was satisfied, he grabbed the purse and jumped back down to the floor. Then he dashed off in the direction of Slade’s office.

“Something tells me the purse may have lost some of its value,” Myrna said.

“I’ll put it down as an office expense,” Slade said.

“Speaking of Charlotte, how’s she doing? Must have been quite a shock for her, walking in on a dead body like that.”

“She said something about conducting an inventory, so I think she’s recovering.”

“Not to change the subject, but how was your date last night?”

“We both survived it,” Slade said.

The door of the station opened. Kirk Willis, Slade’s one and only officer, entered. He used both hands to remove his sunglasses in a practiced, deliberate gesture.

Myrna smiled but said nothing.

“Heard the dead guy was a stalker,” Kirk said.

Kirk was in his early twenties, a tall, still-gangly young man who didn’t look a day over nineteen. He had been with the department for less than a year when Slade had arrived to take over as head of the department. Kirk had made no secret that he was not enthralled with his job. He had entered the police academy only after he had been forced to accept that his dream of working as a ghost hunter down in the catacombs was not going to happen. Kirk could pull a little ghost light but not enough to make him a Guild man.

Police work was a fallback profession as far as Kirk was concerned. Winding up in a small department in a town that was nothing more than a dot on the map on an island that wasn’t even on a lot of maps had been a soul-crushing experience for him.

Kirk’s attitude had improved briefly after they had taken down the drug runners who had ducked into the harbor earlier that week, but Slade didn’t expect the newfound professional pride to last long. He empathized with the younger man. After all, he was planning to get the hell off the island, himself, as soon as possible. But being a short-timer was no excuse for an unprofessional attitude. He was going to have to have a chat with Kirk. There was a job to be done, and as long as Kirk was getting a paycheck from the town of Shadow Bay he was going to do that job right.

“The stalker theory makes sense,” Myrna said. “I heard that Gaines was a former client of Charlotte’s back in Frequency. Evidently he tried to date her and she declined.”

“Explains what he was doing on the island,” Kirk said. “Right, Chief?”

“It does,” Slade said. “And for the moment, that is the official theory of the death.”

Kirk and Myrna stared at him, eyes widening.

“Official theory?” Kirk repeated cautiously. “Are you saying it might not be the correct theory?”

“We are going to conduct an investigation to rule out homicide,” Slade said. “But this will be a very low-profile project. Neither one of you will say a word about it outside this office. Not to anyone. Is that understood?”