Small-Town Secrets
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Pamela Tracy
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Chapter One
THERE WERE TWO things Yolanda Sanchez didn’t want to see in her somewhat restored Queen Anne Victorian, whose ground floor now housed the Twice Told Tales used bookstore.
One, a leaky roof. Leaks were bad, very bad, for books. But as she was a worrier, she’d already thought about the roof and installed a new one. Now a roof leak shouldn’t be a problem, especially since her bookstore took up the first floor.
The second threat was fire. Fire was bad, very bad, for books. That’s why the puffs of smoke floating and fading in the air near the history room couldn’t possibly be good news.
Yolanda quickly set the three books she’d been carrying to the children’s section on the nearest empty shelf. In her haste, she misjudged how much room she had and two of the books tumbled to the floor. She ignored them and hurried through the rows of popular fiction, self-help and romance.
She’d been in the history and nonfiction room just this morning doing inventory. Some of the books there were so old she’d put them in Ziplock bags and was considering putting them on display next to the cashier instead of keeping them in their genre area. They were rare and a book lover’s dream, with brittle covers, ragged corners and yellowing pages. They were the most precious of firewood.
No! Not on her watch!
She rounded a corner and stopped so abruptly that her shoes made a squeaky sound. The noise didn’t seem to disturb the room’s occupant. Amidst the books was a tiny lady wearing a light brown sweater and dark brown skirt. Her clothes—right down to her brown, flat shoes—looked dull and faded next to the bright purple walls of the history room. The expression on the woman’s pale face was serious. Without blinking, her bright blue eyes perused the shelves, peering closely to read the titles that even Yolanda couldn’t make out on a good day without the use of her glasses.
“We’re not open yet,” Yolanda sputtered.
What she’d wanted to say but couldn’t seem to form the words was, “Who do you think you are, smoking a cigarette in the middle of my used bookstore?”
The woman reached up to finger a strand of pearls around her neck. “I realized that when I arrived and there was no one to help me.”
The judgmental tone didn’t inspire Yolanda to feel generous. “The sign on the door clearly states that we’re not open yet.”
Obviously, Yolanda needed to work on her assertive nature because the woman merely shrugged and said, “I’m looking for a book about the history of this town.”
Oh, yes, this was a seasoned smoker, with the telltale throaty voice. Yolanda gritted her teeth—customer relations and all that—shook her head and gently suggested, “If you want something immediately, you’ll need to go to the town museum or one of the gift shops on Main Street. We don’t open until Friday.”
The woman’s expression remained disapproving. She didn’t seem bothered one bit by the fact that the used bookstore wasn’t open and that she didn’t belong there. Instead of looking chastened, like Yolanda expected, she looked determined. She inquired, “Do you have other books about Scorpion Ridge? Besides what is in this room. Old books, I mean, perhaps written by someone long ago who lived in this town but who only published for themselves or their family. I’m not finding the book I want. I’ve been to the little museum. They don’t have it. It’s a particular one, probably written a little more than a hundred years ago. I’m looking for proof.”
“Proof of what?” Yolanda asked.
“Just you never mind.”
What a curmudgeon. Unhappiness and anger oozed from her.
But there was something else in her eyes, too, an emotion so fleeting that Yolanda almost didn’t see it. This woman had suffered loss and never recovered. Yolanda gentled her response. “I’m still working on this room. You need to come back some other time. I’ve not quite unpacked...”
Just like that, Yolanda’s eyes teared. And not from the smoke. She love, love, loved that she was living her dream, but she was struggling with all the changes, not only to her way of life but also to her way of thinking. She was living in her grandmother’s house. The history section of Twice Told Tales was located in what used to be her grandmother’s bedroom. Now Rosi Acura, who told everyone she was a little over seventy but who really was quite a bit over eighty, lived in a retirement group home close to downtown.
The home’s director had a bit of a crush on Rosi. Yolanda figured he believed the woman really was in her seventies.
“I love being at the home,” Gramma Rosi kept telling Yolanda. And Yolanda didn’t doubt that she did. Rosi’s best friend lived in the room next to hers. The group home’s caretaker—who had been Yolanda’s history teacher way back when—enjoyed squiring her grandmother around on any errand she wanted. Plus, a van took her shopping, to bingo and once a month on some sort of touristy excursion. That, combined with helping Yolanda’s new venture, did a lot to distract Rosi from the grief of losing her oldest child.
A year ago, Yolanda’s mother died, quietly, without pain.
Yolanda’s mom, Trina Sanchez, had invested wisely and had lived frugally. She’d left six figures, all to Yolanda. Yolanda would rather her mother have taken her to Disneyland when she was ten, to the beach once or twice, or even a few excursions to the big city of Phoenix and a movie night or something. Instead, Yolanda had spent many hours alone in the house while her mother worked. Mom had been adamant about the security of savings and worried about every penny spent.
Maybe at the end, though, her mother had reconsidered her practical philosophy. Because a stipulation in her will emphasized that the inheritance could only be used to build a dream.
Possibly because Trina had not fulfilled her own dreams?
“This room looks quite full.” The raspy voice snapped Yolanda out of her reverie. The woman’s eyes swept the room. Her lips pursed, as if she didn’t like what she saw. “Do you have anything in storage? I’d be glad to help you unpack. Or perhaps you’ve a special place for your really old books?”
Yolanda straightened to her full height, which put her eye to eye with the petite woman’s just over five-foot frame—and that counted the curly top of the woman’s gray hair. In her most commanding small-business-owner voice, Yolanda said, “Ma’am, we’re not open, and even if we were, smoking is not allowed on the premises.”
Finally, the woman’s expression changed but only marginally. Her red lips pursed when she glanced at her cigarette as if just noticing it. She then looked around for a place to put it out. As the ash was almost at the length where it would soon drop to the floor, Yolanda reached for the bright yellow coffee cup she’d left on the windowsill this morning. It was from a set of four that her grandmother had given her. Butter yellow with an orange daisy painted on it, three cups had survived a household of kids.
“I can search through the trunks in the attic,” the woman volunteered, giving the cup a disdainful look before dropping her lipstick-tipped cigarette into the coffee cup as if it were a gold-plated ashtray meant just for her. “It would have to be now, though.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Yolanda said. Only one trunk of books remained to be unpacked from her Gramma Rosi’s attic, where the remnants of Yolanda’s ancestors were stored, gathered by her family for the last hundred years and maybe even earlier. Yolanda wasn’t sure. The books in the final trunk appeared to be as old as the house and just as precious.
Used books were the lifeblood of Yolanda’s new business. That the first ones shelved had been from her attic made the venture all the more special. Besides yard sales, friends simply giving her their already read offerings, and buying the surplus from a used bookstore in Phoenix, Yolanda had also snagged more than five hundred books from the town of Gesippi, just an hour to the north. Its library had closed just two weeks ago, and Yolanda had purchased a good deal of their inventory, but she hadn’t had time to go through all her purchases. They were in the carriage house.
For a moment she thought the woman would argue, so Yolanda continued. “We’re right on schedule for the opening, and I have plenty of volunteers. Come back on Friday.”
The woman gave the shelves one last perusal. “Did you put any books on reserve?”
“We’re a used bookstore, not a library.” Yolanda’d been patient long enough. “Who are you?”
“I’m staying with relatives right now,” the woman said. “Maybe you’ve heard of Chester Ventimiglia.”
Yolanda didn’t know a Chester, but she did recognize the Ventimiglia name. Richard Ventimiglia and another man named John Moore had been the town’s founding fathers. There were still a few Moores in Scorpion Ridge, but the Ventimiglias had long since left or died out.
“I do know the name, but...” Yolanda’s words tapered off as somewhere in the old Victorian something clattered to the floor, the sound as effective as a fire alarm. Yolanda stepped from the room, listening. Maybe the old woman wasn’t the only one snooping in the used bookstore before the grand opening. In the silence she moved closer to one of the vents where now she could clearly hear talking—singing?—and relaxed when she recognized Adam’s voice. He’d said he’d be by later, something about replacing the hinge on one of the saloon doors he was hanging for her.
“This isn’t really yours,” came a throaty whisper.
When Yolanda turned back, the woman was gone.
* * *
FOR SUCH A little thing, Yolanda Sanchez sure made a lot of noise. So much so that Adam Snapp stopped his singing. Last time he’d honored the Beatles with his limited musical talent, she had poked fun of his voice. Poking fun at him was something she’d done since fifth grade, when she’d noted that he’d worn two different colored socks to school by accident. Used to be, he’d tease her back, saying something like, “Across America, socks are standing up and shouting, ‘We don’t have to all be the same.”’ He’d said it loudly and made sure there was an audience. Yolanda hadn’t seemed fazed.
Today he wanted to quip, “Better to sing off-key than not to sing at all.”
For the last few months, though, his ability to joke his way through life had taken a severe hit. Which was why when his father got sick and the family business went from profitable to precarious, it had been a simple decision to come home and help. He’d not told anyone the mess he’d made of his once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
Straightening the toolbox he’d accidentally stumbled over, Adam listened to Yolanda’s stomping and huffing. Occasionally, she’d call out, “Ma’am?” Something or someone had her riled; he was glad it wasn’t him.
Picking up a Phillips screwdriver, he held the door level while screwing the pivot hinge into the doorjamb. The blank surface beckoned him but only for a moment. Personally, he didn’t think saloon doors belonged in this late-nineteenth-century Queen Anne. And they were a ridiculous choice to separate a private office from a place of business. She’d get no privacy.
She, however, thought they were pretty.
He reminded himself that he’d signed on to help her complete general handyman duties and to follow her directions about decorative shingles and dormers and enclosed breezeways. His job was not to tell her how she could make the two-story Victorian even more authentic and artistically pleasing.
The house was her canvas, not his.
She came up with ideas; he obliged to the best of his ability. Like these pressboard saloon doors that she wanted him to paint brilliant orange.
The old Adam Snapp would have painted books on one side; after all, this was to be a used bookstore. Then he would have added real covers and used shellacked fanned-out pages for a 3D effect. He’d also have painted a caricature of Yolanda, her nose in a book, as it always was, on the other panel. He’d have glued a pair of glasses above that perfect little nose. She, all female with slim lines and slight curves, was a painter’s dream. She often displayed a Mona Lisa smile. Her hair, black and straight, would look simple on anyone else: normal, everyday. On her it accentuated big, smiling black eyes filled with determination.
Her lips had always been a challenge for him to capture. For some reason, whenever he’d painted her—and he had many times back when they’d both been teenagers working for the local animal habitat, BAA—her lips had come out bigger than they really were and always seemed pursed. She’d gotten mad at him on a few occasions, accusing him of making it look as if she’d just swallowed a pickle.
Yes, he could picture exactly how he wanted the saloon door to look. He clenched his fingers. Desire rose, fell, disappeared. It didn’t matter what his heart told him to do. Right now, when his fingers grasped the pencil so he could start to seriously sketch, nothing happened.
Nothing.
So it was best to just tighten the screws, adjust the hinges, check to make sure the doors were level, paint the stupid panels Kool-Aid orange and be done with it.
“Ahem.”
Adam looked down. She hadn’t used to be able to sneak up on him. He was really off his game. But then, in the weeks he’d been working for her, she’d been too involved with the plumbers and electricians to pay much attention to him. Almost gave him a complex.
“What was that noise? And did anyone come past you?” Yolanda demanded, all righteous indignation. When he didn’t answer fast enough, she added, “There was an elderly woman over in history and nonfiction. I turned around, and she was gone. I’ve searched the nooks and crannies of the first floor book areas. I even went upstairs to my private suite.”
Adam hadn’t been up there yet. Yolanda’s priority was the bookstore. As a result, he had a to-do list in his back pocket that would keep him busy for a year. He’d make, he figured, not even half of what he’d made the last five years painting murals, and he’d work harder. It would take longer to get it done.
Up until a couple of months ago, his life had been about creating art, murals specifically. Most of his creations had been done outdoors. Now he was indoors, hemmed in, without space to call his own. To Yolanda, creativity, when it came to her old house, was categorized as either “That’s not practical” or “Not in the budget.”
Not that Adam had much creativity himself these days. He wasn’t sure where his muse had gone off to and doubted it would come back. And right now he was too worried about his dad and his family to go after it. “Adam,” Yolanda said impatiently. “Did someone go by you?”
“No, I haven’t seen anyone.” He watched as she peered past him, as if someone really could have sidled by and taken up residence in her tiny office. “The front door was open when I got here. What about the back?”
“I thought they were both locked,” Yolanda stated.
“You should start checking.” The last five years Adam had lived in a few off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods. He’d learned to value a good door lock. When she finally focused on him again, he said, “I’m glad you’re here. Check this out.”
He opened and closed the doors a few times. “Hear anything?”
“No, but I heard something earlier. What did you drop?”
Okay, so she didn’t appreciate his handyman skills. “I tripped over the toolbox.”
She looked down. “I can tell by the assortment of tools spread out on the floor that today is ‘Get rid of loose hinges’ day.”
“Hey, I can’t believe Hallmark hasn’t thought of creating such a holiday!”
Yolanda didn’t laugh. In all the years he’d known her, she’d never responded to his humor. She’d been the straight A student who kept trying to tell him, “You should try harder,” while he’d been the class clown responding with a “Maybe later...”
And she’d been right. When later came, he’d been ill prepared. He’d had the opportunity of a lifetime the last few years and because he’d not had good business sense, he’d made one mistake after another.
Yolanda continued, “I think I’ll use that shade of orange on the upstairs baseboards. It will add a little character to the place.”
Adam shook his head. He might make poor business decisions and have no clue when it came to women, but he knew that would be wrong. This house was almost three thousand square feet of historical space and sculpture. The shade of orange she wanted hadn’t been invented when this house was built.
“Of course,” she continued, “I shouldn’t even be thinking of the upstairs until after the bookstore is a success.”
It would be a success, Adam thought, because she’d poured her heart into it. Per Yolanda’s orders, he’d painted every room—the foyer, study, parlor, dining room, bedroom, bathroom, enclosed breezeway and kitchen—a different vibrant color. The grand lady, a Queen Anne who probably missed her flowered wallpaper, had never shined so bright. Next he’d be working on the second-floor bedrooms. When he finished that she wanted him to turn the upstairs of the house’s two-story garage, which used to be a carriage house, into an apartment she could rent out.
He might not agree with her color choices, but he appreciated the work to take his mind off his mistakes and his family’s problems.
“This old dame doesn’t need any help with character. She’s loaded with it.”
“You did a great job,” she admitted. “But I’m more concerned about the woman I just spoke to. Are you sure no one went past you?”
“I didn’t see anyone.”
“She was old, really old, and tiny. She had gray hair with a hint of blond left. The cut was straight and close to the scalp. Her eyes were blue. She wore tiny pearl earrings and a matching necklace. Her face was as wrinkled as any I’ve seen, and she was smoking a cigarette.”
“I don’t smell anything.”
Yolanda frowned. “I don’t smell it anymore, either. That’s so odd. Come, help me look. Maybe you can figure out how she just vanished.”
Adam followed her into what used to be the living room. Now it housed popular fiction. From there he passed her, meandering through horror, true crime and mystery before finally stopping in the history section.
“No. No lingering smell of cigarette smoke. Are you sure she had a cigarette?”
“I caught her right here, in this area. I didn’t recognize her, and when you made such a noise—” Yolanda glared at his tool belt as if it were somehow to blame “—she somehow got past me. I’ve never seen her before, and I didn’t get her name. I was hoping she came by you so you could fill me in.”
“What did she want?”
“She wanted to know if I had any old books about Scorpion Ridge.”
“Sounds harmless enough,” Adam said, “except for the cigarette.”
“I used to catch people trying to sneak cigarettes at BAA, but they always did it in some out-of-the-way corner. This woman didn’t care that she was breaking the law,” Yolanda said.
Adam had also been vigilant about smokers during his tenure at Bridget’s Animal Adventure. He’d taken the infraction a bit personally, as his autistic brother was bothered by smoke, so much so that he often demanded to be taken home if he smelled it, no matter how important the event the family was attending.
“And,” Yolanda continued, “the expression on her face wasn’t harmless. She stood in the middle of the room as if she had a right to be here.”
“At BAA we called that attitude entitlement.”
“Yes,” Yolanda agreed. “That’s exactly the attitude she personified.”
Adam glanced around the room loaded with history books. It even smelled old. This was not a place he would normally spend much time. His taste bent more toward true crime and horror.
“You really think people will buy old school history books?” he asked.
“I used to.”
“Well, you’ve always been a bit strange.”
Her color deepened, exactly the response he’d hoped for. He bent down, picking up a book that had fallen to the ground. “Soiled Doves of the Desert,” he read. “I’m thinking these aren’t the kind of doves that squawked.”
Yolanda took the book from his hand and placed it on the shelf. “I’m being serious. Something about her wasn’t right.”
“Well, she didn’t come past me. I’d have seen her.”
Annoyed, Yolanda said, “Which means she went out the back door, which is definitely not a public exit. And just how did she know where it was?”
“Are you talking to me or just muttering to yourself?”
“Both,” Yolanda retorted. She patted a bookshelf, moved a book then looked at the shelves below and above. “Oh, I almost forgot. She flicked the ashes...”
“What?”
Yolanda had gone pale. Not a color he liked seeing on her. She whispered a response, “She used my favorite yellow coffee cup as an ashtray. But the cup is gone.”
She kept searching the shelves and then went to the end table and chair in the corner of the room.
“You think she swiped your cup?” Adam asked.
“I can’t imagine why. This makes no sense.”
“You’re probably overreacting.”
“I don’t overreact, ever.”
That was true. She was always in control, always did what she was supposed to do. Yolanda had once been in a school play, and the stage had collapsed under her feet. She’d kept saying her lines even as the actor playing the cowardly lion helped her out of the hole.
“You had to have seen her.”
You have to pay more attention...
He’d heard that a million times growing up, mostly from his father. They’d never seen eye to eye on anything, particularly after he’d dropped out of high school, and Adam had been desperate to leave Scorpion Ridge as soon as possible. Now he was back.
“No one walked past me. She must have gone out the back.”
“But—”
He ruffled her hair, knowing it would distract her. “It doesn’t look like anything’s missing. It was probably some tourist who wandered in, realized she’d made a mistake and then wandered out.”
Yolanda nodded, though she didn’t appear convinced.
Adam checked his cell phone and turned to leave. “I’ve got to be at the Tae Kwon Do studio in thirty minutes, and I still need to finish the door.”
“Tell your brother I said hi.”
“I will.”
Snapp’s Studio, his family’s business, had employed the whole Snapp family for years—except for Adam. He was there now, though, once again working for his father. Only this time if his father made a request, Adam jumped to it, trying to make his dad’s life easier.
Tonight Adam was scheduled to give a lesson to a beginner class. His twin brother, Andy, would be there stacking mats, folding towels, offering advice from the side of the room. If the noise and chaos got overwhelming for Andy, he’d go into the back office away from everyone. But usually it was where Andy felt most comfortable.
Right after his brother was diagnosed with autism, a well-meaning counselor had handed Adam’s mother a pamphlet and recommended a group home for him.
Both parents decided that was not in Andy’s future.
Adam respected all they’d done to keep that from happening. Snapp’s Studio was the result of taking what Andy loved most and making it his life’s work.
Yolanda followed Adam. “You know, the old woman didn’t give me her name but she did say something about a relative. Have you heard of Chester Ventimiglia?”
“His name is on the courthouse wall. On a plaque.”
“Trust you to remember that. If an historic politician is commemorated anywhere in an artful way, you’ll know. Are you sure you don’t mean Richard? Wasn’t he a judge?”
Adam bent down, opened his toolbox and soon cleared the floor.
He was sure. Both Chester and Richard’s names were written on the courthouse, but they were two different engravings.
All his life his father had been telling Adam to pay attention to what went on around him, not to lose himself in whatever project he was engaged in.
And he’d been right.
Adam Snapp had become a successful artist, but he hadn’t been able to balance art and life. His art had become his sole focus.
All the while, the rest of his life had fallen apart.
