The Book of Candlelight by Ellery Adams

Author:Ellery Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2019-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-

house, and dark square is a picture feverishly

turned—in search of what? It is the same with

books. What do we seek through millions of pages?

—Virginia Woolf

Nora entered the bookstore by the back door and immediately called Sheriff McCabe.

“Have you touched anything?” was his first question.

“I read crime novels. I know better than that,” Nora said, surveying the damage. When she’d first seen the broken window, she’d been scared. Now, she was angry. “I doubt you’ll find anything useful. It’s a brick.”

McCabe was annoyingly calm. “Is there anything written on it?”

Nora hadn’t had the chance to look. “I don’t know.”

“We’ll check it out. Be there in five,” McCabe said. “And Nora?”

“Yeah?”

“Make yourself a strong cup of coffee. Bricks through windows are not a nice way to start the day.”

For the first time, Nora wished she had a security camera. She’d love to pull up the feed and see the face of the brick-throwing jackass. But she didn’t even have a security system. She had smoke and carbon dioxide detectors. Fire extinguishers. But theft prevention? She couldn’t afford that.

How much does a plate glass window cost?

Worried and angry, she reached out to the row of spines on the fiction shelf. Her fingers came to rest on Austen’s Northanger Abbey.

“Coffee,” she murmured, heading for the ticket agent’s office.

She was scooping grounds into the filter when Sheldon called out, “Nora? Where are you?”

“Here!” she shouted. It felt good to shout. To raise her voice and bellow. It also felt good to have Sheldon in the store. She’d left the back door unlocked for McCabe, but she was far more comforted by Sheldon’s arrival.

Suddenly, he was standing in the ticket agent’s office window. Jerking his thumb toward the front of the store, he asked, “What the hell is that?”

Nora thought of the toppled books. Of the glass fragments on the sidewalk. Of the jagged hole. Her beloved shop had been injured. Deliberately damaged. Her thoughts jumped to the word on June’s house. Were the members of the Secret, Book, and Scone Society being targeted?

Sheldon came into the office and opened his arms wide. “Come here, you.”

Nora accepted the invitation. Sheldon smelled like wool and peppermint. He smelled like her grandfather—the one who’d passed away when she was a young girl. His arms felt like her grandfather’s too. They were soft but strong.

Sheldon held her in his fierce bear hug for a long time. When he finally released her, he gave her one more squeeze and said, “There. That’s better.”

Nora didn’t think she’d ever had a better hug. She told him as much.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Now, go.” He shooed her out of the office. “The cavalry will want coffee. Oh, and I picked up the pastries on my way over. I put them in the stockroom because I was in too much of a hurry to give you that hug.”

Before Nora could reply, she heard Sheriff McCabe’s voice. “Ms. Pennington?”

Not Nora, she thought. I’m a citizen today.

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