Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Loud tapping on the front door of the shop early the following morning had Natalie glancing up from where she’d been filling the antique cash register slots with the necessary stacks of small bills, mostly singles and fives with a few tens.
It wasn’t a surprise when she saw Harper through the glass. She knew Harper’s ranted postmortem of the evening’s events during the walk home last night hadn’t been enough of a purge for the insulted author. It might take a solid week, maybe more, for Harper to get it out of her system.
Since she could see the two large coffee cups and bag of pastries Harper held, Natalie was okay with being the audience for her friend’s continued complaining.
After unlocking the front door and flipping the sign to Open, Natalie pulled the door wide and stepped back before Harper knocked her over.
“I’m sorry I’m here so early.” Harper made a beeline for the back counter.
“Not a problem,” Natalie said, following behind her.
“I just couldn’t get last night out of my head.” Harper set the coffees and bag on the counter and spun to face Natalie.
“I can imagine.”
As she pulled her jacket off and tossed it on the shelf beneath the counter, Harper continued, “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. When Stone left for the farm at dawn, I just got up too. Of course, I was too upset to write.”
“Of course,” Natalie agreed.
Harper lifted both coffee cups and thrust one at Natalie. “This will be like my third coffee this morning.”
Natalie bit her tongue and didn’t say what she was thinking. That it was pretty obvious Harper was over caffeinated. The coffee in addition to her being angry and upset was going to make for a very animated and borderline manic Harper and a very interesting morning for Natalie.
“But can you believe what Pompous Doug said to me? He thinks he can sue? Me? Ha! Though I shouldn’t be surprised really.
This is the man who convinced the planning board to write an ordinance that calls for jailing any village resident for up to fifteen days if they have more than three yard sales in a year,” Harper spat while pacing in front of the counter.
As Harper ranted, motion in the back of the shop caught Natalie’s eye. She saw Liam halt in the doorway, take one look at Harper and then back away.
Liam was too afraid to face a Harper rant. Coward.
He’d no doubt slip out the back door to go hide in his lab where he knew Harper wouldn’t step foot unless it was for very good reason. Not that Natalie could blame her. There were too many random body parts, and most recently brains, lying around in there.
But Natalie was definitely going to text Liam later and make fun of him for fleeing the scene.
Meanwhile, Harper had moved on to the other insults she’d received, or at least perceived, last night.
“…tell me that bar doesn’t get more business thanks to my books. So I called it a dive in like one book. That gives it character! That’s why the visitors come.” Harper gestured wildly with her coffee cup.
Natalie braced herself, ready to duck if coffee came flying out of the sip hole in the lid. Luckily Harper must have already sucked down enough of the liquid, so nothing spilled. This woman could be dangerous, or at least a menace, when she was angry.
“Don’t you agree?” Harper asked, spinning to face Natalie.
“One hundred percent,” Natalie said with an enthusiastic nod.
She knew her role in this relationship. Supportive friend. At least for today, her job was to be Harper’s yes-man...or woman.
Natalie was ready to trash talk Pompous Doug, or the flirty MILF-wannabe yoga teacher from the other end of Main Street, or the cranky old man whose name escaped her who always had a very strong opinion on how to fix everything he thought was wrong with this town, which was a lot.
Any or all of the characters in Harper’s books.
Bring on the trash talking. Fueled with coffee and sugar—she’d peeked in the bag and saw honey buns—she was ready.
What she wasn’t ready for was Gabe running at full speed through the front door and skidding to a halt in front of them.
“Dead!” he cried, panic written clearly on his face.
“What?” Natalie asked.
“What, what?” Harper repeated, frowning at Natalie.
“Gabe is here,” Natalie explained then turned her attention back to the panicked ghost. “What’s wrong?”
“The guy who threatened to sue Harper over the books last night,” Gabe began
“Pompous Doug?” Natalie gasped. The man Harper had, none too quietly in a room full of people last night, violently argued with. The man she’d killed off in her book…
“That’s the one. He’s dead,” Gabe said in a definitive tone that left no doubt it was true.
Over Gabe, Harper asked, “What about Pompous Doug?”
Natalie really did wish everyone could hear Gabe all the time, instead of just when he was physically in contact with Millie. All he had to do was hold his ghost girlfriend’s hand while he talked and everyone could hear him. Hear them both.
Natalie didn’t know why it worked, all she knew was her life was so much easier when Millie and Gabe were together and she wasn’t playing interpreter for the livings.
But for now it was up to her to deliver the grim reality. So she turned to Harper and said the only thing she could say. “Pompous Doug is dead.”
Harper reacted about how Natalie imagined she would. With surprise and disbelief.
That’s when Mudville’s deputy sheriff Carson Bekker pulled his official department vehicle up to the curb and parked in front of Natalie’s shop door just as Gabe was saying, “And they’re blaming Harper for killing him.”