5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
Remington James
“ M mmm two snacks that taste great together,” I mumble to myself. Moved carefully aside by Wilder and Grady as they help Ceily move heavy shelves over to make room, She has them nailing ladders on the wall for a quilt display. I can’t tear my eyes away from them.
Keenan snickers next to me, rolling his eyes, he says in a teasing tone, “Permission to stare a while longer?”
How do they keep their hands off each other? I feel the chemistry any time I’m in their vicinity, it may be wishful thinking but the three of us together sizzle and pop chemistry wise. Keenan presses his finger into my cheek. “You’re doing that moony-eyed gaping again, sweetheart.”
Can he blame me? I think not. “Ceily where did the hats go?” Her impressive display that I helped mount from upside down umbrellas is nowhere to be seen.
Shuffling from behind the checkout counter, she stands with her hands on her hips. “Hmph. It was nice while it lasted, but the stuffy mayor’s wife stopped in again about that heirloom necklace, and it was a windy day. One of the umbrellas bopped her on the ole noggin’.”
I shouldn’t giggle, but picturing it and her permanently pinched face, I can’t hold it in. “Do you mean the necklace that Wilder disposed of in the lake?” That gets his attention, he turns making a face. “It belonged to her family originally, right?”
“Mmm, lawd yes. She caterwauled on and on. She could start an argument in an empty house that one. I told her what I did last time she came in, that I was never sold that item, don’t even remember it in stock here.” If she’s showing back up about it, that could mean that the detective knows about it, too. I hope so anyway.
Running my hand over the beautiful ivory bird locket necklace that Wilder gifted me as an apology, I smile to myself. A reminder that I’m healing, even if it’s out of spite. Inside the locket, I put a folded note he left me one morning. Patron saint of all hopeless life forms, there’s a broken mess next door that thinks you were heaven sent.
Grady holds the ladder up over his head, while Keenan and Wilder use step stools to reach it, pounding nails into the ladder rails. “Is that the one that you had at the drive-in?” he asks. “The one that is supposedly cursed?” He may be joking, but Wilder's sharp look cuts his hilarity. “Remind me why we think that?”
“I don’t… Wilder, this is on you.” Damn. Watching his arms while he nails the ladder, makes me wish he was nailing something else altogether. I’m a goner. “Like most of the rumors around here, it’s about the drownings.”
He recounts the details about the girls that had the necklace drowning near The Bends, the necklace disappearing to reappear again… over and over. The more I think about it, the more unlikely it all sounds. It’s still sitting on the weed choked bottom of Lake Hollow since Wilder’s last deposit. A piece of me expects to see it laying in the cabin somewhere each day.
Hopping up to sit on the counter, I fold my legs, the Sharpie drawn picture of a bug-eyed frog holding a heart spanning my calf, makes Keenan stick his tongue out at me before grinning. Like a treasure map he keeps pointing out my drawings as if I hadn’t done them. “Do we think someone dropped it off in your shop, Ceily? To get rid of it or something?”
She finishes straightening the tea set on the shelf near her, looking at me thoughtfully with eyes framed in eyeliner not quite on the lash line. “I suppose that’s one explanation, or it was inside something else that was sold to me.” She shrugs as she pats my sunburnt knee. “Kind of reminds me of the whole loon pin fiasco.”
This is new. “What was that?”
She goes on to tell us that she had purchased a box of costume jewelry from an estate sale a few towns away ten years ago. One of the pins discovered in the lot Carlotta found out was worth thousands of dollars, but Ceily insisted she only pay what it was marked as, which was twenty-five dollars. For reasons that Ceily doesn’t know, a few weeks later Bonnie Gibson stopped in asking about the pin. Then one day in church she noticed that Bonnie was wearing it. She asked Carlotta if she’d given it to her, and it made Carlotta flustered not answering the question. She proceeded to ask Ceily a dozen questions about Bonnie’s visit to her shop.
“Anyway, saw it on Bonnie at Lala’s funeral. It made her angry when I pointed it out. It kind of upset me if I’m being honest that she bit my head off about it.”
“Meemaw, is that why you didn’t feel well?” Keenan asks her, trying to pay attention while gawking at Grady.
She nods. “One of the reasons.”