Page 118 of Secrets Along the Shore

If only all my clients were so obliging.

By the timeJake shuffles upstairs to do his homework, I’ve got no steam left. I get up to go ask Grace about my takeout order when she walks over with it already bagged up.

I sigh. “You’re a mind reader.”

Grace shrugs. “Figured with everything going on today and”—she tilts her head at the place Jake had been sitting—“his little crisis, you’d be desperate to head home as soon as possible.”

“Right as usual,” I say, taking the bag from her. I don’t bother to tell Grace to put it on my tab. I have a standing one I pay off monthly. “He’s fine, by the way.” I know Grace won’t pry, but I also know she’s likely a smidge worried. “Kid at school’s been stealing his lunch.”

“Hmm,” Grace mumbles, the same fire in her eyes I felt when Jake told me the story. The kind of fire that would send a grandmother—or pseudo-godmother like me—down to an elementary school toaddressthe situation, were it not for her better judgement.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to help him make it clear what’s going on. Just need a few days.”

Grace grins. “I’d like to see that go down.”

“You and me both.” I raise the bag. “Thanks for this.”

“Anything for Riverview’s best private investigator.”

“Riverview’sonlyprivate investigator,” I call out on my way to the door.

“One and the same, kiddo. One and the same.”

I’m halfway home before I realize that, as with Cole, I forgot to ask Grace her thoughts about the note left on my windshield.

My brain is apparently pretty scrambled.

You would think I’d spent the last week helping to put a serial killer away or something.

CHAPTER

FOUR

Home is lessthan a five-minute drive from The Ink & Ivy, down a winding, narrow two-lane that splits off Main Street. It leads to one of the larger tracts of private land uptown, and the only one that serves as a small farm. The property, owned by Grady and Ellen Dunmore—in their early sixties with grown sons who live down the road with their families—have turned the place into something of a Renaissance homestead. It’s packed with livestock, including chickens, cows, goats, and pigs. They grow blueberries and blackberries and maintain apple and pear orchards. Muscadines climb trellises in a well-ordered vineyard and best of all, there are half a dozen honeybee hives, producing the most luscious honey I’ve ever tasted.

I turn onto a gravel drive marked with a sign announcing “Dunmore Farms” and keep going. I pass the turnoff to the Dunmores' house—a red-brick two-story with white columns and a wraparound porch—and then the livestock barn, following the drive to where it ends at my place.

Just before Daniel and I moved in, the Dunmores renovated their second, smaller barn, adding metal white siding and crisp black window frames to match the black Gambrel roof. They kept the original sliding barn doors, but refinished them to a deep pecan. The result was an idyllic home Joanna Gaines would envy.

In the early spring, before the mosquitoes descend en masse, andagain in the late fall when those Jurassic holdovers have died off, I can open the double doors, and my living room becomes part of the outdoors. Since it’s at the rear of the Dunmores’ property and surrounded by dense trees and thicket on two sides, it is utterly, wonderfully quiet. The only noise comes from the natural sounds of the woods, all of which I find extremely calming—except, again, for the coyotes. It's so charming, it makes you believe in the simple things, and I fell in love with it the first time I saw it. So did Daniel.

I am going to miss it.

The timer has turned the front door lights on, as well as a few inside. Living alone these last years, I’ve found it much nicer—and safer—to come home to a house that’s welcoming you back. I open the door and am tackled by my blue-nose pit bull, his silver front paws pounding me.

“Hey, boy! Bilbo, down.Down!”I say it, knowing good and well he isn’t going to listen. Bilbo is highly trained and I pity the person he’s ordered to take down, because Bilbowilltake them down. The only bad behavior I get from him? Attacking me with love at the door, especially when I’ve been gone all day and come back carrying Grace’s spaghetti and meatballs.

“Come on, now!” I shout, as another well-meaning knock from my seventy-pound baby nearly sends the takeout flying. I step back, give a click of the tongue signaling I mean business, and his chaotic wiggle-butt instantly sits as he awaits further instruction.

“Good boy. If you want to share, you’ve got to behave, right?”

Bilbo waits patiently as I head to the kitchen at the back of the open-concept space. The first floor includes the kitchen, the living room, a modest office nook, and a dining area anchored by a reclaimed wood table. The beamed cathedral ceiling runs the length of the barn, except for the small loft over the kitchen that houses the bedroom and master bath.

I plop the takeout bag on the counter, inhale a huge cleansing breath, and exhale until my lungs are empty. “It’s nice to be home,” I say, then pat my leg, which brings Bilbo trotting to me.

Bending down, I give the blue-gray fur ball a big hug. When he flops onto the floor, the hug turns into a ten-second belly rub on thewhite patch on his midsection. He rolls around with his legs in the air like a bug that can’t right itself, making it hard to believe he’s capable of ripping out a throat on command. He’s my secret weapon, security system, stake-out partner, and best pal.

“Mom is beat, boy. Whatd’ya say we crack open this pasta before I fall asleep standing up, huh?”