“Um, anything we can do to help?” I asked.
Belinda straightened. Swiveling around, she removed one of her earbuds and thrust a kitten at my startled cousin. “Here,” she ordered. “Hold Harold.”
Mackenzie blinked in surprise, but did as she was told.
“Wait a minute!” Belinda peered more closely at her. “You’re not Lauren!”
“Um, no,” my cousin replied meekly. “I’m Mackenzie.”
Belinda’s eyes narrowed. “Mackenzie-from-Texas?”
My cousin nodded.
“Well, all right then.” Fishing in the pocket of her overalls, Belinda pulled out a lint-covered breath mint and popped it in her mouth. Sucking on it loudly, she smiled. “Welcome to Pumpkin Falls.”
“Uh, thanks?” said Mackenzie.
I smothered a grin, watching as my cousin got her first dose of Belinda Winchester. I’d told her lots of stories about our retired lunch lady turned bookseller, but it was nothing like having the full experience for herself.
Belinda had shucked off yesterday’s orange and reverted to her purple phase. My cousin’s eyes drifted from Belinda’s white painter’s overalls to the purple-and-white-striped turtleneck underneath, then on down to the purple-and-white-striped socks and purple sneakers. For once, Belinda wasn’t wearing a hat, and she’d combed her dandelion fluff of white hair into a semblance of neatness. Reaching into another pocket, she pulled out a long purple feather, which she twirled between her fingers, a thoughtful expression on her face.
To celebrate Belinda becoming a silent partner in the bookshop and taking over the mystery section—and to help her be a little more presentable to the public, I suspected—Aunt True had taken her on a clothes shopping spree a few weeks ago. This was a prime example of the blind leading the blind and a big mistake, if you asked me, which nobody ever did. Between the two of them, there was more “local color,” as they called it in New England, here in our bookshop now than just about anywhere else in town.
“I have a gentleman caller,” Belinda announced abruptly, with another twirl of her feather.
“Um, that’s nice?” I replied, not quite sure what a gentleman caller was. It couldn’t be what it sounded like. Belinda was way too old to have a boyfriend.
The bell over the bookshop door jingled, and Belinda quickly thrust the feather behind her ear. She removed it just as quickly as my father came in.
He looked around as if he were expecting someone to salute. That rarely happened in Pumpkin Falls—never, actually—but my father hadn’t completely transitioned out of military mode yet, even though he’d been a civilian for nine months.
“True?” he called, frowning.
My aunt emerged from behind the sales counter. “You rang?”
“Memphis is on the loose again,” my father reported. “Lou said that Mr. Henry said that Ed Sanchez saw him just now sitting in one of the rocking chairs down on the General Store porch.”
I was guessing that wasn’t a sentence my father ever imagined coming out of his mouth back before Black Monday. Pumpkin Falls was the kind of place that did that to you, though.
Aunt True sighed. “Spring fever. Happens every year, no matter where we’re living. I’ll take care of it.”
As she headed out to round up her cat, my father waved to Mackenzie and Belinda and me, then disappeared into the back office.
A few minutes later, as we were finishing up the shipment for Namibia, the bell over the bookshop door jangled again. Belinda’s purple feather instantly swooped back behind her ear as someone bounded across the bookstore toward us.
“My angel!” cried the someone.
Beside me, Mackenzie gasped. “Is that—”
“Yep,” I whispered. “Captain Romance, in the flesh.”
Captain Romance was what Hatcher and I called Augustus Wilde. He was our town’s resident celebrity, a romance writer whose books were published under his pen name, Augusta Savage. There were a whole bunch of his titles over in what my brother had dubbed the “shirtless men kissing beautiful women” section. Augustus liked to come in every few days and check on sales. He also liked to rearrange the shelves so that his books were facing out, and I’d caught him trying to sneak them in with Miss Marple’s Picks too.
Augustus was kind of a pest.
“Purple becomes you, my sweet, like heather on the bonnie highland moors,” he cooed to Belinda, who made a noise I’d never heard her make before. It sounded alarmingly like a giggle.
Wait a minute, I thought. Was Augustus Belinda Winchester’s gentleman caller? No way! I turned toward my cousin and surreptitiously mimed sticking my finger down my throat. Mackenzie pressed her lips together, trying hard not to laugh.
“As I wrote in my latest New York Times best seller, Sweet Savage Siren, ‘Spring is here, the sap is rising, and so is love,’ ” Augustus continued.
This time my cousin couldn’t contain herself, and neither could I.
“Mock me if you must,” said Augustus, clearly wounded by our laughter. He flipped back his mane of silver hair and struck a dramatic pose. Which was easy to do when you were wearing a purple cape. Eyeing it, it suddenly dawned on me why Belinda had been decking herself in purple lately. “But as the great poet Tennyson says, ‘In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.’ ”
I stared at Augustus. Seriously? A young man’s fancy? He had to be eighty if he was a day, and Belinda, well, Belinda had been ancient when my dad was a kid.
The bell over the door jingled once again. This time it was Aunt True, with Memphis tucked firmly under one arm. She crossed the bookstore to join us.
“Greeting and salutations!” she said to Augustus, then turned to me. “Truly, would you mind putting Memphis upstairs? I think there’s less of a risk of him escaping again if I just keep him in my apartment for now.”
I took the cat eagerly, glad for any excuse to be spared more senior citizen lovebird talk. Before I could head off, though, the bell over the door jangled yet again.
“Uh-oh,” I muttered under my breath to Mackenzie, when I saw who it was. “Incoming.”
“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Ella Bellow.
“Greetings and salutations to you, too!” Aunt True replied mildly. “What is the meaning of what?”
Ella shook a finger toward the front of the store. “That window, is what!”
Aunt True and I exchanged a glance. What could Ella possibly find objectionable about our front window? The two of us had stayed up late Friday night to finish it in time for Maple Madness kickoff weekend, and we’d devoted an entire corner to welcoming Ella’s new knitting shop to the neighborhood.
“You have Maple Country Mufflers on display!” Ella sputtered. “It’s one of the exact same books I’m selling at A Stitch in Time—you’re competing with me!”
“Have a Bookshop Blondie, Ella,” my aunt said soothingly, scooping the tray off the sales counter and holding it out. “We’ll take the book out of the window. It’s nothing to get worked up about—I had no idea you were planning to stock it too. Competing with you is the farthest thing from our mind.”
Somewhat mollified, Ella selected a treat. Her dark eyes gleamed as she spotted my cousin. “You must be Mackenzie.”
My cousin nodded warily.
“I heard you were coming to town—”
“Told you this place was small,” I whispered to Mackenzie.
“—and I want to know all about you.”
Memphis squirmed in my arms as Ella began pumping Mackenzie for information. She might have retired as the Pumpkin Falls postmistress, but Ella Bellow was still in the full-time gossip business.
“I see Rusty has been spending a lot of time here at the bookshop lately,” Ella said to my aunt when she was done extracting Mackenzie’s age, height, grade in school, hobbies, favorite color (green), and parents’ names and occupations.
Aunt True nodded. “Indeed.”
My aunt likes to torment Ell
a by giving one-word answers to her “fishing expeditions,” as she calls Ella’s nosy interrogations.
“I suppose it’s only natural, seeing as how he’s still a bachelor and seeing as how you’re still single. You two used to date back in high school, right?”
“Yes,” said my aunt.
“The two of you aren’t getting any younger, you know.”
“No,” agreed my aunt.
Ella’s mouth pruned up, but Aunt True just smiled sweetly. I smothered a grin. My aunt was rapidly elevating her evasion technique to an indoor sport.
Ella tried a different tack. “Speaking of couples, you two aren’t the only ones in town keeping company. I’ve noticed that Amelia Winthrop has been spending a great deal of time at the coin and stamp shop.”
Really? I thought in surprise. I knew Lucas liked spending time with Bud Jefferson, but his mother did too?
“Interesting,” was my aunt’s only comment.
Nothing escaped Ella’s eagle eye, it seemed. I was just glad she hadn’t seen Scooter kissing me behind the Freemans’ barn, or I’d be the one undergoing the third degree right now.
Before Ella could ask any more questions, the bell over the bookshop door jangled once again, and Franklin Freeman came in hefting a large box.
“Need some help?” asked Aunt True.
As I started to follow her to the front of the store, Memphis twisted out of my arms and made a dash for freedom. In a furry flash of spring fever, he squeezed through the door just before it swung shut.
“Blast that cat!” My aunt put her hands on her hips and scowled.
“Mackenzie and I will round him up again, Aunt True,” I told her.
My father emerged from the office. “What’s going on out here?” he asked, then saw Franklin. “Oh good, more maple supplies. Those little jugs of syrup sold like hotcakes this weekend, and we’re running low.” Lovejoy’s Books did a brisk business in “sidelines,” the official term for all the stuff besides books that our store sells, and the merchandise from Freeman Farm was among our most popular. “Nice turnout at your place yesterday!” my father added, clapping my classmate on the back with his good hand. “Your parents must be pleased.”
Franklin nodded. He didn’t look pleased, though. He looked miserable.
“Is something the matter, son?” my father asked, peering at him.
“Someone’s been stealing our sap!” Franklin blurted.
We all stared at him.
“You mean from the barn store?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Not syrup, sap! They’re taking it right from our trees!”
Ella’s dark eyes gleamed again. At last, a piece of gossip she could sink her teeth into!
“Bad blood—or should I say bad sap—right here in Pumpkin Falls,” she said with a delighted shiver. “Imagine that!”
CHAPTER 6
Lucas Winthrop was in love with my cousin Mackenzie.
He might as well have fallen in love with my left shoe.
Mackenzie was oblivious, of course. She was too wrapped up in Mr. Perfect Cameron McAllister to notice someone else. Especially someone else like Lucas Winthrop.
Everything seemed normal at first when we got to the pool for afternoon practice. Mackenzie and I changed into our suits and went out onto the pool deck, where we started the warm-up stretches that Coach Maynard had posted on the whiteboard.
“Who’s the kid who looks like a stalk of celery?” Mackenzie whispered as Lucas emerged from the men’s locker room.
“Lucas Winthrop,” I whispered back. “I told you about him, remember?”
I still sometimes felt the need to avert my eyes when I saw Lucas in a swimsuit. He was so skinny, it was painful.
“Oh yeah—helicopter mother.”
Lucas went about seven shades of red when I introduced them.
“Uh . . . hi,” he stuttered, then just stood there looking at Mackenzie, dazed.
“Okay, everyone in the water!” said Coach Maynard, clapping his hands. He flipped the whiteboard over to reveal the afternoon workout. I groaned. He obviously wasn’t planning to go easy on us over Spring Break.
Everyone got into the pool except Lucas, who continued to stand rooted to the spot. He looked like he was going to throw up.
“What’s the matter with you, Winthrop?” Coach frowned at him. “You’d better not barf on my pool deck!”
“I’m fine,” Lucas squeaked, his voice shooting up an octave as he jolted out of his trance and scuttled into the water.
It was clear he was anything but, though. He kept lifting his goggles and peeking at Mackenzie, for one thing. He did it once right in the middle of one of his laps, and swallowed so much water that he almost choked. Coach Maynard had to fish him out with the pool’s lifesaving hook.
When it finally dawned on me what was wrong with him, I almost laughed out loud.
Lucas was a nice guy and everything, but crushing on my cousin? There wasn’t a girl on the face of the planet—well, in Pumpkin Falls, at least—who would describe Lucas as Mr. Perfect. Mr. Scrawny and Undersized was more like it. He didn’t stand a chance.
Despite Lucas’s erratic behavior, swim practice went well, and Coach Maynard singled Mackenzie out several times for praise. He told her he’d be proud to have her on our swim team if she lived in Pumpkin Falls, which I could tell pleased her.
“I think we can do something this week to put some polish on that flip turn of yours,” he added with a wink. “We’ll send you back to Texas all charged up and ready to go.”
Later, in the locker room, Mackenzie brought up the subject of Lucas. “I know he’s your friend and all, but what’s with the way he stares at people?”
I smiled. At “people”? You’re the only one he was staring at, I wanted to tell her, but we had a whole week together, and she’d eventually figure things out for herself. Meanwhile, there was no point depriving myself of the fun of watching the Lucas in Love show.
So all I said was, “He’s actually really nice,” and then changed the subject. “You want to stop by the General Store on the way home? We could get ice cream.”
Lucas was lying in wait for us outside the rec center.
“Why, thank you,” drawled Mackenzie, her voice all full of Texas honey as he sprinted over and held the door for us. “Aren’t you the gentleman!”
I don’t think Lucas’s feet actually touched the pavement the entire length of Main Street.
When we reached Lou’s Diner, the door flew open and Mrs. Winthrop popped out, like a bird from a cuckoo clock. She’d obviously been watching for her son. Lucas’s mother kept him on a really tight leash and tended to panic if he was the least bit late for anything.
“There you are, sweetie!” she said. “I was beginning to get worried. You’re usually so prompt.”
Lucas looked like he wished the sidewalk would open up and swallow him. As Mackenzie and I said good-bye, his face flushed scarlet. His mother looked at him anxiously. “You’re not coming down with a fever, are you?” She held the back of her hand to his forehead.
Spring fever, maybe, I thought, suppressing a smile. Could Augustus Wilde be right with all his poetic talk about springtime and rising sap? Was love bubbling up around Pumpkin Falls the way the sap was rising in the maple trees? The thought of maple trees made me think of Freeman Farm, and my smile faded. Between the sap theft and Scooter’s ambush, I had plenty of reasons not to want to be reminded of that right now.
“We’d better get some chicken soup into you,” Mrs. Winthrop added, hustling her son inside. “Bye, girls!”
Mackenzie and I continued on past the Starlite Dance Studio and Mahoney’s Antiques and the Suds ’n Duds, then paused to look at the window display at the Pumpkin Falls Patriot-Bugle.
“This maple thing is a big deal around here, isn’t it?” said Mackenzie.
“Everything’s a big deal around here,” I replied, eyeing today’s headline: MAPLE MADNESS KICKOFF WEEKEND DRAWS RECORD CROWDS! From the
newspaper’s breathless coverage, you’d think alien life had been discovered on Mars.
We crossed the street to the General Store. Inside, I spotted Scooter and Calhoun at the ice cream counter. My stomach lurched. So much for not being reminded about Freeman Farm. I really wasn’t ready to face either of my classmates again just yet.
Running into them was unavoidable, though, in a town the size of this one. Might as well get it over with, I thought glumly.
“Hey, guys,” I muttered, and they turned around.
“Hey, Truly!” said Scooter, all smiles.
Calhoun didn’t say a word. He didn’t smile, either.
“This is my cousin Mackenzie,” I told them, suddenly conscious of the fact that my damp hair was still plastered to my head. Mackenzie’s hair was perfect, of course. She’d taken the time to blow-dry her strawberry blond Gifford curls—the very same kind that Pippa was born with—and they looked as perky as she did.
“Hello, boys!” My cousin’s voice was dripping with Texas honey again, and she smiled the same Gifford sunflower smile at them that I see every day on my mother and Hatcher.
A funny expression settled over Scooter’s face, somewhere between dazed and thunderstruck. It was a look I’d seen before. Quite recently, in fact. Lucas had been wearing it back at the pool. Another one bites the dust, I thought in amazement.
I didn’t know whether to be annoyed, disgusted, or relieved. Annoyed, because even though I absolutely truly didn’t care a speck for Scooter, it still hurt my pride a little to be passed over so quickly. Disgusted, because, well, Mackenzie and Scooter Sanchez? Eew. And relieved, because at least I wouldn’t have to worry about Scooter trying to kiss me again. In the space of a split second, he’d transferred his affections to my cousin.
Mackenzie turned to Calhoun. “What did you say your name was?”
“Calhoun,” he replied. “That’s not my first name, though. My first name is Romeo.”
My mouth dropped open. This was the first time I’d ever heard Calhoun voluntarily offer up this bit of information. He hated his real name.