Chapter Nine
Nine
As predicted, Daphne had her hands full at the trailhead.
While some people had accepted her news of the cancellation, others would not be deterred until she could explain in detail why Sebastian wasn’t coming. When I arrived, there were still seven people clustered around the parking lot, all of them in a semicircle around my poor, flustered employee.
“I’m sorry, I really don’t know the answer to that,” Daphne told a woman in cargo shorts. “If you want to head home for now, we’ll have more details later.”
The woman was not going to take this as an answer. “Well, I want to know why Sebastian isn’t here. Wasn’t this whole thing so he could go find some gosh-darned tangerine bird or something? Did he get worried one of us would find it first? Typical influencer.”
I wouldn’t have described someone who made a living talking about birds as a typical influencer , and I was mad on Sebastian’s behalf that this woman was being so rude about him when he couldn’t even defend himself from beyond the grave.
“Good morning, everyone.” I came to stand next to Daphne, and she visibly relaxed, her tight shoulders sagging as she took an almost imperceptible step behind me, letting me take over the situation. “I’m terribly sorry about the last-minute cancellation, but Sebastian was . . . not able to come this morning. I know this is disappointing for everyone, but it couldn’t be helped. The hike is on a self-guided trail, so everyone is obviously welcome to go on ahead and enjoy it, or to head home, but I can promise you Sebastian didn’t go on the hike without us, and he isn’t coming.”
This caused a new buzz with the remaining group, and I could tell Cargo Shorts wanted to argue with me a bit longer, but one of her friends interjected, saying, “Well, we’re already here, Louise; we might as well go on the hike.”
“I don’t even care about birds,” huffed Louise. “I just like looking at him.”
The crew of women, all in their late fifties, headed toward the trailhead, chatting loudly enough that there wasn’t much risk of them seeing any birds anyway.
Once they were gone, Daphne audibly sighed with relief. “Well, that was exhausting.”
“I’m sorry you had to deal with them,” I said, turning to face her. She wore an obviously questioning look, and I knew she was dying to find out what was going on. I hated to have to be the one to tell her that one of her most beloved online creators had been killed.
“Daphne, you might want to sit down for a second.” I guided her over to a park bench, and while she went willingly, I could see that this was ramping up her agitation. “Sebastian isn’t coming because someone killed him last night.”
All the color drained from her face, and she sank against the bench, her breath exhaling in a whoosh. “What?”
I explained what had happened that morning on my way to the hike, leaving out the more grisly specifics of what had been done to him. When I finished, her face made me recall Connor’s back at the B and B, reminding me just how young Daphne really was. Tears beaded on her eyelashes.
“That’s just horrible. Do they know who did it?”
I shook my head. “Not a clue.”
Though that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Because I had a pretty strong suspicion of who the most likely person was, and it pained me to think it, only because all my dealings with Deacon before the signing had just been so lovely. I might not actually know him, but he hadn’t seemed like the kind of person who could resort to murder over a lost job.
That said, I didn’t know him, I reminded myself, and you could fit an entire universe inside the space left by all the things you didn’t know about people. I’d done my part by telling Detective Martin what I knew, and in turn she had trusted me to keep an ear to the ground in case I heard anything else.
It was nice, for once, to be on the periphery of a murder case and not be considered a potential suspect.
I sent Daphne home—she had walked, so I didn’t need to worry about her driving—and made her promise to text me when she was back at her place safely. She was in such a daze I offered to drive her, but she said she wanted to clear her head.
I considered going home and was sure Bob wouldn’t mind the company through the afternoon. It was a gorgeous day, and I could finally get some much-needed weeding done in the garden, but I was too distracted by the murder to do that at the moment.
Instead, I drove over to the store so I could read through some of my old correspondence with Deacon. I didn’t think it would include any obvious allusions to Sebastian’s death, but it might be worthwhile to give everything another look.
It was odd to be in the store with no one else around. We were open seven days a week, and even when it was slow, it felt as if someone were always there. Left on its own, the place smelled overwhelmingly of old books. I didn’t notice it that often during the week, because it would be replaced by the scents of baking bread or cookies or tins of loose-leaf tea being opened regularly. Now it smelled like an old library, and I smiled to myself.
This little shop had a secret life of its own when we weren’t here.
I made myself a cup of Snickerdoodle tea. Despite the weather outside being gloriously sunny and heading in the direction of hot , I had a habit of making myself hot tea whenever I got into the shop. With my tea in hand and the scents of cinnamon and sugar wafting into the air, I hunkered down in the office and fired up our relatively ancient desktop computer.
Back in my previous life, when I’d worked a soul-sucking corporate office job, my manager had been in the habit of sending out emails at all hours of the day or night, with no sense of boundaries in terms of the division between work life and personal life. After leaving that job behind, I’d sworn to myself I would never live in fear of the email notification sound on my phone, so I left work at the shop and didn’t check emails related to the business unless I was physically in the store.
Not that emails about books and special orders created any real sense of drama in my life, but it was nice to not think about work once I got home.
I opened the thread of emails I’d been sharing with Deacon about the signing. His tone was light, friendly, often peppered with lol s here and there or sweet little jokes at his own expense. Everything I read gave me the indication he was just a nice guy helping his best friend run a business.
Then I got to the most recent email, which he’d sent me only a day before the crew was set to arrive in Raven Creek. It was a list of preferences for Sebastian, some dietary requirements for the food I was having made—he’d ordered most of the other food himself—and some important bits of advice for a smooth event.
I had been so caught up in the minutiae of the email the first time I’d read it that I hadn’t really noticed the tone, but now, reading it with fresh eyes and having gone through all our other correspondence, I could see it was remarkably different from everything he’d previously sent.
When he explained how the day should best be handled, he sounded annoyed, like a parent giving instructions to a babysitter on how to deal with a toddler who had been misbehaving recently. There was no joking, no warmth in the words. Everything was very utilitarian, with no sense of love or camaraderie. In previous emails Deacon had acknowledged that Sebastian could be difficult, but he’d done it in the way one teasingly talks about a sibling.
In this email he was almost cruel in his description of Sebastian, though you had to read between the lines to see it. He can be overly demanding sometimes , Deacon wrote. He will make his displeasure known.
Two things especially stood out to me in reading the email anew. At one point, Deacon mentioned that Sebastian preferred a room with a good view. He specifically wanted a room at the B and B with a good view. Apparently, he liked to bird-watch while he worked. I remembered making that request myself when I reserved the rooms.
Yet Melody had mentioned something about letting Sebastian switch rooms, so it sounded like he’d made a swap at some point.
If he’d moved, had he willingly given up the room he requested? Perhaps it hadn’t been the view he’d expected and he’d wanted something different. A bird watcher might be interested in things the standard tourist wasn’t.
Who had he swapped with, then?
The second thing that stuck out to me was a line in the middle of the email where Deacon was explaining some of Sebastian’s pickier demands.
I swear one of us is going to end up in an early grave.