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CHAPTER FIVE

I’d just reached the bottom of the stairs at a quarter to five, dressed in my favorite yellow swing dress with white piping and pearl buttons. Chowder clicked down the stairs after me in his yellow vest and bow tie.

“It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing…shoo bop, shoo bop, shoo bop, shoo bop, shoo bop, shoo bop, shoo bop, shoo bop.”

I was trying to perk myself up after only a couple of hours of sleep, and I was praying the concealer I’d applied liberally was doing its job.

My phone rang just as I reached the mudroom to collect my handbag and keys—I decided to drive to work after Dash’s warning. I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?” I answered, wedging the phone between my ear and shoulder as I slipped on my white sandals.

“Sorry to call so early,” Dash said.

“I should’ve known it was you,” I said, scowling. “It’s not even five o’clock in the morning. How did you get my number?”

“I’m a cop,” he said dryly.

My lips pursed and I opened the mudroom door for Chowder. “You saw me three hours ago. What could you have possibly forgotten to say that you couldn’t say in normal daylight hours? I thought you were going home to sleep? I thought?—”

“Mabel,” he said, cutting me off. “Listen, I need to?—”

The line went dead mid-sentence.

“Sheriff?” I said, checking to make sure the call was connected. “Dash?”

Nothing.

A tendril of unease worked its way up my spine. I tried calling back, but it went straight to voicemail. Chowder whined softly at my feet, sensing my disquiet.

I unlocked the door of my mint-condition powder-blue 1959 Karmann Ghia convertible and Chowder hopped onto the white leather interior, making himself comfortable in the passenger seat.

I looked at my phone one more time, hoping to hear the phone ring again, but it stayed silent.

“It’s probably nothing,” I told him, not entirely convinced myself. “Dead zone. Or maybe his battery died.”

I slid into the car and opened the garage door, and then I turned the key, listening to the purr of the engine as it came to life.

Chowder woofed softly and I looked over at him, so dapper in his bow tie. “You’re right. Maybe he went back to sleep. He probably doesn’t get enough rest. I’m sure being sheriff is a stressful job.”

But the unease from the phone call didn’t leave me.

The early morning was still dark, streetlights casting pools of light on the empty roads as I drove the short distance to The Perfect Steep.

I parked behind the shop, unlocked the back door, and went through my normal opening routine on autopilot—turning on ovens, measuring loose tea leaves, and setting out supplies for the day’s scones.

My mind was still on Elizabeth’s diary and Dash’s strange call.

I’d just pulled the first batch of lemon scones from the oven when Walt knocked on the glass window of the back door, his Navy veteran cap perched precisely on his silver hair.

“You’re early even by Walt-standard time,” I said as I let him in. “Is everything all right?”

“Not here,” he said quietly, glancing around despite the empty kitchen. “Too exposed.”

I set down my oven mitts and led him into the small office at the back of the shop, closing the door behind us.

“Something’s happened,” Walt said once we were alone. “There was a break-in at the sheriff’s office last night. Evidence room ransacked.”

My stomach dropped. “How do you know this?”

Walt tapped the police scanner clipped to his belt. “Never leave home without it. Been monitoring police frequencies since ’89. Heard the call come in about twenty minutes ago. Officers discovered the break-in when they arrived for the morning shift.”

“So it happened sometime overnight?” I asked, trying to piece together the timeline.

Walt nodded. “Between when the night shift left and the morning shift arrived. Sheriff Beckett is down almost a dozen officers since Milton’s arrest. Three more were arrested with him and several resigned, so Sheriff Beckett is working short staffed.

They’ve been closing the sheriff’s office for a couple of hours each night because there aren’t enough officers to fill the gap. The break-in happened then.”

I opened my bag and carefully unwrapped the leather-bound journal. “Sheriff Beckett brought me this last night. Elizabeth Calvert’s diary. He found it hidden in the evidence room and didn’t trust leaving it there.”

Walt’s eyes widened as he stared at the diary. “I was wondering what he was doing at your house so late. Deidre called me to let me know you weren’t being harmed.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “Good grief.”

“You’re a young woman who lives alone,” he said. “It was good of Mrs. Pembroke to call and let us know. Eye-witness accounts are very important.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Did you drive by my house?”

“You should get blinds for your kitchen windows,” he said. “I could see the two of you plain as day.”

I gasped. “You have to look over my fence to see in my kitchen windows!”

He nodded solemnly. “If I can do it, that means anyone can.”

“Good grief,” I muttered again. Walt was eighty years old. He could have broken a hip. That was the problem hanging out with senior citizens—none of them realized they were as old as they were.

He patted me on the shoulder like he was afraid I was going into hysterics. “That was wise of the sheriff to bring you the diary,” Walt said. “He’s got good instincts. That’s something that can’t be taught.”

I let out a slow breath. There was no reason to be aggravated with Walt or any of them. The people of Grimm Island were who they were—a bunch of stubborn, know-it-all busybodies—and there was nothing that would change them save the Rapture.

“Sheriff Beckett said the diary was hidden in a false panel in a filing cabinet in the evidence room.” I ran my fingers over the worn cover. “Someone must have discovered it was missing.”

“That was fast work,” Walt said. “And now the mayor knows about it, and word on the street is he’s furious. I heard Mayor Cromwell called an emergency council meeting with Sheriff Beckett.”

I remembered the abrupt end to our phone call earlier. “Sheriff Beckett tried calling me this morning, but the call cut off. I thought it was just a bad connection, but now…”

“Now we have to wonder what happened,” Walt finished, his eyes sharp with concern.

“The diary must be what they’re looking for,” I said, clutching it tightly. “What should we do?”

Walt’s expression grew serious. “First, we need to make a copy. If you trust me with it I’ll take it over to the library and use the copy room.

They open at seven, but hardly anyone is there first thing in the morning except old Mr. Verlander.

He likes to have his coffee and a muffin at his desk every morning, so I don’t think he’ll give me too much trouble. I promise I’ll bring it right back.”

I bit my lip nervously. “I do trust you. But if someone broke into the sheriff’s office looking for the diary then they might be willing to hurt whoever has it.”

“Then I’ll make copies for all of us,” he said. “He can’t hurt us all, and the more copies we have the more power we take from him.”

I nodded and handed over the diary. He immediately put it in the inside zipper pocket of his windbreaker and zipped it up.

“Okay, but if you’re not back in an hour I’m closing up and coming to look for you.”

“Deal,” he said. “I think we should call an emergency meeting of the Silver Sleuths. But not here—too many eyes. Your house, tonight.”

I nodded, the seriousness of the situation sinking in. “I’ll let the others know.”

Walt headed for the door, then paused. “Take a different route home tonight. And Mabel?” His eyes were steel serious. “Watch your back.”

With that cheery advice, he left, and I returned to my scones, my mind whirling. I went through the motions of opening the shop and serving my morning regulars, all while keeping an eye on the door, hoping Dash would walk in.

He didn’t. But I’d at least felt the tension leave my shoulders when Walt had walked back in, almost exactly an hour later, and passed me the diary like we were doing an undercover drug deal.

When I still hadn’t heard from Dash by midafternoon, I took matters into my own hand. I put the Back in Fifteen Minutes sign on the door, left Chowder napping in the window seat to stand guard, and drove to the sheriff’s office.

The place was buzzing like an overturned beehive. Deputy Mark Reynolds was at the front desk, looking harried. When he spotted me, his usual easy smile flickered briefly through the stress.

“Mabel,” he said, his voice warmer than his professional demeanor would typically allow. “This isn’t the best time for your afternoon tea delivery.”

“I need to speak with Sheriff Beckett,” I said, trying to peek past him into the main office area. I happened to notice a hallway at the far backside of the large square room where desks were shoved together, and it was cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape.

Reynolds lowered his voice, leaning slightly over the desk. “He’s been in meetings all day with the mayor and county commissioner. Something big’s happening.” His eyes showed genuine concern. “Everything okay at the shop? You look worried.”

“Just need to talk to the sheriff,” I said, not wanting to reveal too much, even to a friendly face.

He studied me for a moment, then sighed. “I can try to get a message to him when he’s free. You know I’d help if I could, Mabel.”

As Reynolds spoke, the door behind him swung open, and Deputy Larson stepped out, his perpetual scowl deepening when he saw me.

Where Reynolds had been on the force for decades, a constant in the island’s law enforcement landscape, Larson was relatively new—hired during the Milton administration about ten years ago.

He was hard edged where Reynolds was soft, all sharp angles and rigid posture.

The creases in his uniform were military precise, his dark buzz cut equally severe.

“Another tourist lost her way?” Larson asked.