Blackberry Summer Read online

  Ruth seemed to read her mind, in that uncanny way her mother had perfected. Claire managed to keep from grinding her teeth, but before she could answer, her best friend chimed in from the other end of the worktable.

  “Are you kidding, Mrs. T.?” Alex McKnight’s dimple, much like her brother’s, flashed with her grin. “You’ve got the town’s best and brightest beaders here. With all of us superwomen working together, we can probably cut the job down to three weeks, tops.”

  “I say we can do it in two,” Evie Blanchard, Claire’s assistant manager, spoke in her quietly cheerful way. Monday was supposed to be her day off, but when Evie heard about the burglary, she had insisted on cutting short a late-season cross-country ski outing to help with the cleanup effort.

  Evie and Alex were two of the seven women surrounding the String Fever worktable, each with a small kaleidoscopic pile of beads in front of them they were sorting by color and shape into compartmentalized trays that lined the middle of the table. After that, the spilled beads would have to be sorted by size and type—furnace glass, handblown glass, semiprecious stones, cloisonné—and organized once more on the shelves.

  Claire’s mother sat at one end near Maura—Alex’s next oldest sister—and Mary Ella, their mother. To Claire’s left was Evie and on her right was Katherine Thorne, who had sold her the store nearly two years ago, while Alex sat across the table.

  Chester, of course, presided from his place of honor on his favorite blanket, curled up on his side. Sometimes she thought half her customers came into the store just to visit her dog, who was never quite as happy as when he was stretched out in his corner at String Fever, listening to all the chatter.

  During those first difficult months after Jeff moved out, String Fever was where she found solace and calm, here amid her friends. Like beads on a wire, they were all connected, linked together by bonds of friendship and family, by shared experiences and a common passion for beading.

  “Did you hear about Jeanie Strebel?” Maura, Alex’s older sister, was saying.

  “No. What happened?” Claire asked.

  “She was knocking icicles off her roof with a broom the other night and a big one shot right down and knocked her over. Broke her leg in three places. Jeff did surgery yesterday, from what I hear. Her daughter told me she was going to be in the hospital until Sunday.”

  “Oh, no!” Mary Ella exclaimed. “And they’ve already been hit with more than their share of troubles since Ardell had his heart surgery three months ago.”

  Maura nodded. “I bumped into Brianna at the market this morning before I opened the store and she told me all about it. Have you seen those twins of hers, by the way? They’re growing like crazy and have the most darling dark curls and huge eyes. Anyway, guess what happened while her dad was at the hospital with her mom last night?”

  They all waited expectantly and Maura let the pause lengthen for dramatic effect.

  “Come on, Maur.” Alex finally ruined the anticipation. “Just get on with it. What happened?”

  “They had a visit from the Angel of Hope.”

  Excitement seemed to shimmer around the table at the announcement. Even Ruth leaned forward, her eyes wide. “Really? Another one?” she asked.

  “It had to be. Somebody left ten crisp hundred-dollar bills in an envelope slipped under their front door to help with medical expenses. You should have seen Brianna’s face when she told me about it. That sweet girl. Her eyes were all red and weepy and she just glowed from the inside out.”

  For the past few months, a mysterious benefactor had been stepping in to help people who most needed it. When Caroline Bybee’s ancient Plymouth coughed its final death knell last fall, she woke up one morning to find a later-model used sedan in her driveway, complete with a gift title and a note signed only “Drive Carefully.”

  A few weeks before that, a young divorced mother who sometimes came into the store told Claire someone had paid her heating bill for the entire winter. She had no idea how or why but the gas company assured her she had full credit on her bill to last into the spring.

  During the holiday season, Claire had heard that more than one struggling family—all with young children—had discovered envelopes full of cash on their doorstep with only the words “Merry Christmas from Someone Who Cares.”

  Those were only the things she knew about. She had to wonder how many acts of generosity had somehow escaped the winding tendrils of the Hope’s Crossing grapevine. She didn’t know who had first come up with the nickname Angel of Hope, but the whole town had been buzzing about the identity of the benevolent patron.

  As tough as she sometimes found living in the same town with Jeff and Holly, stories like this provided another reason to stay. People here cared about each other. How could she doubt it, with her dear friends rushing to her aid in her moment of need?

  “You’re all my angels of hope,” she told them fiercely. “I can’t tell you all how much I appreciate your giving up your lives to help me for a few hours.”

  “Of course we would come in to help you.” Mary Ella smiled, her green eyes so much like her son’s bright with affection. “You didn’t even need to ask, my dear. The moment I heard your store had been robbed and that the little shits had left such a mess behind, I knew I would be spending the afternoon helping you clean it up.”

  “I still can’t believe anybody in town would be so vindictive as to cause such trouble just for the sake of making a mess.” Katherine seemed to be taking the burglaries as a personal affront.

  “I’m betting it was somebody staying at the ski resort.” Evie tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “What are the police saying?”

  “Chief McKnight said he would touch base with me later, but I haven’t heard anything yet. It’s been only a few hours.”

  “Now there’s a familiar story. Another woman waiting in vain for one of Riley’s phone calls.”

  Alex’s levity earned her a frown from her mother. “His social life is one thing,” Mary Ella said sternly, “but you’d better not let me hear you say anything about your brother’s devotion to duty, Alexandra. Riley is an excellent police officer. You know Katherine and the rest of the city council wouldn’t have voted to hire him as the police chief if he wasn’t.”

  Katherine looked vaguely alarmed at being dragged into a family discussion. “We feel honored that Riley would even consider coming back to Hope’s Crossing. When he agreed to take the job, I was a little worried we would have a hard time keeping him busy.”

  “Is that a confession, Katherine?” Claire teased. “Are you telling us you broke into a half-dozen stores along Main Street just to keep Riley busy enough that he’ll want to stay permanently in Hope’s Crossing?”

  “Claire Renée!” Ruth sounded positively scandalized. “You know perfectly well Katherine would never hurt our town like that, no matter how good Chief McKnight might be at his job and how much the city council might want to keep him.”

  Alex rolled her eyes, just out of Ruth’s view and Claire bit her cheek, relieved she could find anything funny after this miserable day.

  “Of course I know that, Mom,” she said. “Joking. Again.”

  “It’s actually a very clever idea.” Katherine smiled. “Wish I’d thought of it. Of course, if it had been me, I wouldn’t have left such a big mess behind me for you to clean up. And I certainly wouldn’t have destroyed poor Genevieve’s wedding dress.”

  That was a phone call Claire had hated making, one she hoped she’d never have to repeat. As any bride would be, Genevieve had been traumatized to learn her wedding dress had been shredded, but another telephone call to the dress designer had ended in prim assurances that another gown could be sent within the next few weeks—for a premium, of course. Claire would have to foot the bill for it until her insurance policy paid up, but she figured it was a small price to pay to keep the peace with the Beaumont family.

  “Katherine, you’ve always got your ear to the ground.” The nimble finger
s Alex used for slicing and dicing in the restaurant kitchen at the resort didn’t stop dancing through the beads as she spoke. “What’s the scuttlebutt about who might be behind our dastardly crime spree?”

  “I wish I knew. As of an hour ago when I stopped in at the diner, all kinds of rumors were flying, everything from some Ukrainian mafia moving into Hope’s Crossing to California gangs setting up a drug operation to some secret government conspiracy. Riley’s got his work cut out for him sifting through all the crazy tips.”

  “He’ll figure it out,” Mary Ella said, her voice confident. “That boy has been stubborn since he came into the world. He won’t stop until he gets to the bottom of the burglaries and puts the offenders behind bars, no matter what he has to do to find them.”

  “Which is Ma code meaning her only son is sneaky and conniving,” Alex said.

  “And manipulative and underhanded,” Maura added.

  “Don’t forget mule-headed and obstinate,” offered Claire, who figured that while she wasn’t a sister by birth, she had been the object of his torment enough that she deserved the right to chime in.

  All the women laughed, except for Ruth, whose mouth tightened. Despite her friendship with Mary Ella, Ruth held Riley in severe dislike and never found much of anything amusing when it came to him. She couldn’t get past the wild troublemaker he’d been in the past, the pain he’d put his mother through. Still, the rest of them were still chuckling when the front door chimes rang out and the man in question walked through the door.

  He stood just inside the store, his dark hair slightly ruffled from the cold wind and a brush of afternoon shadow along his jawline, practically oozing testosterone amid all the sparkly beads and chattering women. Claire had a sudden mental image of running her fingers along those whiskers, of tracing that firm jawline and the dimple at the side of his mouth.

  Color heated her cheeks. What on earth was wrong with her? The stress of the day. That’s what she would blame for her completely irrational response.

  Riley surveyed the group of giggling women and Claire noticed she wasn’t the only one unable to meet his gaze, although she was quite certain she was the only one whose insides had taken a long, slow roll.

  “Okay, now why do I suddenly have the funny feeling my ears should be burning?” he murmured.

  “No reason, darling,” Mary Ella assured him, although she winked at the rest of them.

  “A little narcissistic, are we?” Alex smirked.

  He tugged at his sister’s dark curls in response before leaning in to kiss his mother’s cheek. Claire was close enough to catch his scent, earthy and masculine.

  “How nice of you all to help Claire with her mess. This looks like it’s going to take months.”

  “Told you,” Ruth muttered.

  “I guess you know everyone here,” Mary Ella said. “Oh, except for Evie. Evie Blanchard, this is the new police chief of Hope’s Crossing and my baby, J. Riley McKnight. Evie works here for Claire.”

  Riley gave his mother an exasperated frown. “I generally prefer youngest to baby, thanks all the same, Ma. It’s nice to meet you, Evie.”

  He shook her hand and from his reputation, Claire might have expected him to put out the vibe, maybe offer up the same flirtatious grin he’d employed on her earlier. Evie was beautiful, after all, ethereal and blonde and deceptively fragile-looking, especially with those shadows in her big blue eyes. But Riley only smiled at her in a polite but rather impersonal sort of way.

  “How’s the investigation coming?” Maura asked. “We were just talking about it. Did you come to tell us you’ve caught the little bastards?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Geez, Maur. Your language! And in front of Mrs. Tatum and Councilwoman Thorne, too. Watch it or Ma will wash out your mouth.”

  “That’s right,” Mary Ella said, apparently conveniently forgetting she’d used her own pithy words earlier.

  Maura never cared much about what anybody thought of her, one of the reasons Claire admired her so much. “You saw what they did here.” She gestured to the mess the women were helping Claire set to rights. “What else would you call them?”

  “Point taken.”

  “I guess I’m just lucky they didn’t hit the bookstore.”

  “So have you caught them?” Alex asked.

  “Still working on it. I need to ask Claire a couple of follow-up questions.”

  “Please. We’d like to know what’s going on.” In her quest for information, Ruth had apparently decided to momentarily overlook her dislike of Riley.

  “If you all don’t mind, I’d like to speak to Claire in private. Certain details of the investigation are somewhat sensitive.”

  Ruth didn’t bother to hide her disappointment as Claire rose and led the way to her office. Riley shut the door, then stretched out in her visitor’s chair, rubbing at his forehead. He looked tired, she thought. His day likely had been even harder than hers. She’d only had to deal with one robbery while he’d been faced with a whole crop of them.

  “Would you like some coffee?” she asked. “Or I’ve got tea.”

  “I’m good, thanks. If I have any more caffeine today, I’m going to be jumpier than a grasshopper on lawn-mowing day.”

  “You have information for me?” she asked.

  “I guess you could call it information. For what it’s worth anyway. It’s not much, I’m afraid, but I did tell you I would pass along what I could. We found a possible eyewitness who saw a suspicious vehicle pulling away from the pizza place at an odd time in the early hours of the morning. A late-model dark blue or green or black extended-cab pickup truck. The eyewitness didn’t get a good look and is uncertain whether it was a Dodge or a Ford.”

  “Great. That should narrow it down to, oh, maybe half the town.”

  “I know it’s broad, but at least it’s something. Not all the security cameras in the other businesses were disabled. We’ve got security footage at the bike shop that shows three different individuals at the scene, but they’re all wearing ski masks and cheap disposable raincoats over their parkas to hide any identifying clothing.”

  With some degree of shame, she realized she hadn’t given much thought to the rest of the affected stores. “Was the damage serious at the other businesses?”

  “It varies. Computers, a little cash. They took a high-end mountain bike from Mike’s Bikes.” Despite the fatigue still etched into his features, his gaze seemed to sharpen. “Yours was the only store to see actual vandalism.”

  Lucky her. “I still don’t understand why. Maybe they were angry that I didn’t have much for them to steal for their trouble.”

  “Could be. Or maybe it was more personal. I’m sorry, but I have to ask, Claire. Can you think of anyone with a grudge against you, besides Dr. Asshole?”

  She stared at him and then started to laugh. She couldn’t help herself. “Jeff? You think Jeff had something to do with this? That’s completely insane! He would never be involved in anything like this. Anyway, he has no reason to have a grudge against me. If anything it’s…”

  “The other way around?”

  Any trace of laughter shriveled. “Jeff and I have tried very hard to get along, for the sake of our children.”

  “Ah, that rare beast, the amicable divorce.” Although he spoke in a light, mocking tone, she saw something in his eyes, some hint of bitterness, and she remembered the raw shock of his parents’ breakup. She and Alex had just been starting their senior year, so they would have been about seventeen. Riley would have been about fourteen, she estimated. Although she had seen it all through the prism of her best friend’s experience, she knew all six of the McKnight children had been confused and angry, devastated by the destruction of what had always seemed a happy family to everyone in town.

  She knew Riley had struggled the most, the lone male left in a household of women after their father abruptly moved away from Hope’s Crossing to follow his own scientific ambitions.

  “We’ve worked to make
it as amicable as possible,” she finally answered stiffly. She really hated talking about her divorce.

  “What about the new wife? We believe at least one of the individuals on the security footage might be a female.”

  She tried to picture Holly skulking around town with a band of cat burglars, breaking into businesses, stealing bikes and computers and trashing String Fever—and Genevieve Beaumont’s wedding dress. The image was even more amusing than the idea of Jeff on a wild crime spree.

  “You’re telling me you suspect that a woman who is five months pregnant might be some ruthless criminal mastermind?”

  His dimple quirked. “Hard to say under the plastic raincoat whether she was pregnant. But, okay, probably not.”

  “A word of advice. You might want to rethink dragging Holly into your little room with the lightbulb for an interrogation.”

  He gave a full-fledged grin at that, all those shadows of earlier gone. He’s a pest, she reminded herself, but it was very tough to remember that when he gunned her engine like it hadn’t been revved in a long time.

  “It would help the investigation if you could spend some time trying to think if anyone might have reason to be angry with you. Maybe ask your employees if they can come up with anyone who might have a grudge, against either you or them.”

  She hated thinking someone out there who might dislike her or any of her employees. Katherine worked part-time for her sometimes, but she was one of the most admired women in town. Evie couldn’t have been in Hope’s Crossing long enough to make many enemies—except for maybe Brodie Thorne, Katherine’s son, who for some strange reason seemed to actively dislike the other woman. Brodie was one of the town’s most prominent businessmen, though. She could picture Holly and Jeff as some Bonnie and Clyde team before she could imagine Brodie in that role.

  That left only Maura’s daughter Layla, who worked in the store after school and on Saturdays.

  And, of course, Claire herself.

  “I’ll do that,” she said. “I really appreciate you stopping by to keep me up-to-the-minute with the investigation.”