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Chapter 1
HEY, LITTLE SISTER
“You’ll need to make a decision soon,” my husband Calvin said. His tone was very gentle, but the expression in the dark eyes that met mine was almost stern, as though he knew he’d coddled me long enough…but time had finally run out.
Didn’t I know it. The first of March had come and gone several days ago, and that meant this baby would be here in two weeks whether or not I’d solved the conundrum of who should run my shop while I was on maternity leave.
“What decision is left?” I returned, knowing I sounded bitter…even as I also had to acknowledge that the current situation was at least partly my fault. True, no one could have foreseen that the first person I’d hired, Melanie Knowles, would turn out to be a murderer and a liar, but still, the analysis paralysis that had followed those terrible revelations was definitely all on me. The rational side of my nature would probably have been forced to admit that the odds of another candidate for the job being equally duplicitous were very low, and yet, even though I’d dutifully relisted the job on Craigslist and asked everyone I knew in Globe to spread the word, the couple of people I’d interviewed just hadn’t felt right to me.
I still believed I was offering an excellent compensation package, one that included insurance and paid days off, but it seemed not as many people were eager to relocate to a small town of only around seven thousand residents as all those Hallmark holiday movies might have led me to believe.
Calvin let out a breath. Not quite a sigh, because he knew better, but still, I could tell even his almost limitless patience had worn thin.
“People will understand if you have to close for a while,” he said. “It’s not forever. And it’s not as if we have to depend on the income from the store.”
No, we didn’t. His salary as chief of the San Ramon tribal police would have been enough on its own to manage our day-to-day expenses, but I was also sitting on a huge pile of money in various investments, thanks to the multimillion-dollar inheritance I’d received from Lucien Dumond, my one-time nemesis and former head of GLANG — aka, the Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild. Mostly I believed that he’d left me the money as a way of flipping the bird to his followers and his murderous younger brother, Eugene, but still, the money had made it so I — and, by extension, my husband — would never have to worry about our finances even if we were left with no other means of support.
All the same, I’d worked hard to make Once in a Blue Moon a fun and unique store, a place where locals and tourists alike could stop in to buy a crystal or a book on Bigfoot or a deck of Tarot cards, and the thought of leaving it shuttered for the next six months…or maybe longer…made me hurt deep inside. It hadn’t been Lucien’s money that had bought the shop and the accompanying apartment above it, but my own savings, helped by a modest windfall thanks to the California lottery back when I’d still been living in L.A. The apartment was long gone, now transformed into a design studio belonging to my friend Victoria Parrish, but I still felt far too connected to the building to just walk away for an indefinite period.
For the past few months, my friend Hazel Marr had been helping me out when she could, and I’d hired a girl named Olivia Barnes to come in afternoons and on Saturdays, but neither one of them was a long-term solution to my problem. Olivia was a senior in high school and had already been accepted at Arizona State University, so she would be gone after the end of July, and Hazel…well, Hazel was going to have her hands full in the very near future.
“Chuck and I didn’t want to tell anyone until we were sure,” she’d confided in me just a week earlier. “But everything’s progressing well, and I’m due at the end of September.”
Of course I’d had to hug her and congratulate her — and be thrilled that my best friend would have a child so close in age to Calvin’s and mine. I’d almost immediately gotten misty at the thought of the two of them playing together…even as I realized that the off-and-on help Hazel had been able to provide these past few months wasn’t anything I could depend on for the long term.
Which had made me redouble my efforts to find someone to run the store while I was on leave, even as I realized I probably was going to strike out yet again.
And that had led to Calvin and me sitting there at the dining room table, ignoring our plates of spaghetti while he brought up the uncomfortable subject. Just as well, because even though I’d eaten heartily through most of my pregnancy, these past couple of weeks the baby had felt as though he — or she…we’d decided we wanted to be surprised — was pressing directly on my stomach, and invariably I’d feel full after taking only a few bites.
“Then I’ll just have to close,” I said. “Yes, I could probably get Olivia and Hazel to keep things going for a few more months, but what would be the point? Especially since neither of them knows much about managing the inventory and keeping the books.”
Calvin gave me a sympathetic nod. It was one thing to come in and assist customers and ring up purchases, and something else altogether to do all the finances and keep track of orders. I’d be the first to admit that I didn’t much like that part of the business, either, but I’d always looked at it as a necessary evil while working in a place that otherwise was a labor of love. Neither Hazel nor Olivia viewed the store the same way I did, and I couldn’t really expect them to. That was the whole reason why I’d wanted someone there full-time, someone who would care as much about the offerings in the latest catalog from Hay House as I did.
But because I hadn’t been able to find anyone like that, better to shutter the place for the next six months and then see what happened. Calvin and I had already agreed that six months was the absolute minimum I would stay home before going back to work. Yes, we had an ample supply of eager and willing babysitters, thanks to his large and extended family — and also including my mother, who would be arriving in Globe the day after tomorrow with her husband Tom so they’d be here just in case the baby came early — but still, I wanted to be home all that time so I wouldn’t miss a single precious moment with Calvin’s and my child.
Whether I’d feel all right about going back to work after just six months was another story. It was entirely possible that the moment would come and I’d feel as though it would be better to be a stay-at-home mother for the foreseeable future.
But that day was still many months away. Right now, I needed to focus on the next few weeks…or maybe just days. After all, babies didn’t always arrive when you expected them to.
“Okay,” I said, knowing how heavy my voice sounded, “I’ll start working on closing things down, and I’ll let everyone know this is the last week Once in a Blue Moon will be open for quite a while.”
Josie Woodrow stared at me, aghast. The weather had warmed up just enough that she’d abandoned the wool blazers she’d worn during the winter and now instead had on one that was heavy linen in a shocking pink shade that clashed wildly with her bright red hair. “You’re really going to close?”
“I don’t have much choice,” I said sadly. That conversation with Calvin had taken place on Sunday night, so at least I had a full week to be here at the shop and say my goodbyes to everyone. And because it was a Monday morning, I was there alone, since Olivia wouldn’t be in until three-thirty and Hazel only came to help out on Fridays and Saturdays. “I haven’t been able to find anyone to fill the position, and Hazel is going to have much better things to do with her time.”
Since Josie also knew about Hazel and Chuck’s impending bundle of joy, she gave a sage nod, her light blue eyes still troubled. “I just can’t believe you couldn’t find anyone to take the job. You made it very attractive.”
Yes, I did. However, I wouldn’t mention to Josie that it was most likely a reluctance to relocate to such a small town that had severely cut down my applicant pool. She was a native of Globe, and, as its number-one real estate agent — and mayor — she never wanted to hear anything negative about the only place she’d ever called home.
While I loved living here and didn’t regret for a second my impulsive decision to buy property in the small Arizona town and get the hell out of Los Angeles, I also had to admit Globe was just a wee bit lacking in amenities. The Super Walmart was the only game in town when it came to day-to-day shopping; otherwise, you had to drive a good hour and a half to get to Gilbert or the other southeast suburbs of Phoenix where you could visit the sorts of places I’d taken for granted when living in Southern California, like Trader Joe’s or Costco or any other of a number of chain stores. True, shopping wasn’t the only measure of the livability of a location, but it was still something most people needed to take into consideration when thinking about moving to a new town.
Also, with a population of just seven thousand people, Globe wasn’t exactly a hotbed of social possibilities for someone in their twenties or thirties who might be looking for a long-term relationship. I’d gotten lucky in finding Calvin…and Hazel and Victoria had been equally lucky in meeting their husbands…and yet I had to admit to myself that not everyone would have the same kind of good fortune.
About all I could do was make a noncommittal sound in response to Josie’s comment before adding, “But I’m going to try to make it fun for everyone — I’m going to make everything fifty percent off this week, which means it’ll be easier for people to stock up on the things they need before I close the store.”
This prospect — the idea had come to me while I was driving in to work — didn’t seem to mollify Josie very much. One penciled auburn eyebrow lifted, and she said, “That may be fine in the short term, but people are still going to run out of supplies they’re used to getting here at the shop. And what about Joyce?”
Joyce Lewis was married to Henry Lewis, the chief of Globe’s police force. He and I hadn’t exactly seen eye to eye on a lot of things, to put it mildly…he wasn’t enamored of having an amateur like me solve crimes on a regular basis…and yet Joyce and I got along very well, and I sold her wonderful candles in my store. Yes, she’d expanded her business to include shops in Gilbert and Queen Creek and even up in Payson, but I was still her biggest customer by far. Having Once in a Blue Moon closed indefinitely would for sure cause a hit to her bottom line.
