Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the sixteenth post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the
Café Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get
recipes from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion
tips from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts
every Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
Violet had rung up her last
order for a while. Graham was flirting with her and she was, in her cool way,
flirting back, just as any couple six weeks into their new relationship should
do. He told her he was going to head out and he’d see her later, and that it was
going to be such a boring day without her, and so began a back-and-forth about
who was going to miss whom more. Mrs. C told them it was unhygienic to slobber
so close to the food.
Then, Amy walked in.
A tempestuous gust pushed in
with her, smacking the overhead bell. After unusual heat lasting for several
weeks in February, we’re back to cooler temps, although it’s still more like
October than March. The last couple days have been gloomy with occasional bouts
of rain, and today’s no exception. I feel I should be going home, lighting a
jack-o-lantern, and putting on a scary movie to watch while awaiting
trick-or-treaters.
Every day that Amy comes in,
Violet and I ask her if she’s found anything at the library on old Applewood,
something that might reference the tunnels we found deep under the town. Since
that’s where we saw the hooded man, and the hooded man is related somehow to
the quake and the mental fog, we thought there might be some clue about those
tunnels that would start to solve this whole conundrum. And, every day, Amy
says the same thing she said this morning:
“Nope. Haven’t found a thing
yet.”
Only, this time, she said it
a little too emphatically, a little too quickly. She ducked her head down, her
corkscrew curls bouncing around her round face. Amy’s a stout woman, and
shorter even than me or Violet, and her face is naturally a touch ruddy. Just
now, it looked like she’d drunk a bottle of Tabasco.
Violet poured Amy’s coffee
into a takeout cup, and lidded it, all the while trading suspicious glances
with me and Graham. Violet came around the counter, cup in hand, and put an arm
around Amy.
“Uh,” said Amy, digging into
her purse, “hang on, lemme pay you.”
“It is on the house, oui?”
said Violet. She handed Amy the cup, and started walking with her back through
the café.
I came up on Amy’s other
side, and mirrored Violet. Graham followed us.
Amy looked up at us. “Where
are we going? I’ve got to get back. Radinka is the only other librarian on
shift, and you don’t want to keep the boss waiting--”
Near the far corner of the
Woodwork Room, Violet nodded to me. We ran Amy into the pocket room, a little
closet-like cubby, one of which is off of each main room. Graham ran in with
us; he locked the door behind him, and Violet and I each locked the other two
doors that lead to adjoining pocket rooms.
“You
know something about the tunnels,” said Violet. “Tell us or we don’t go outside
this room.”
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