Part 1 (1/2)
COPY CAP MURDER.
by Jennifer McKinlay.
For my son, Beckett Orf.
With your quick wit and compa.s.sionate heart, you are one of my very favorite people. I am so proud of the fine man you are becoming and I look forward to watching you pursue your own happiness as you go forth in life. Love you forever.
Acknowledgments.
Setting a mystery series in a London hat shop was such a leap of faith for me. I didn't know if I could write a book in a foreign setting, about a business of which I know nothing and in first person no less. I have come to love this series, and I am so tickled by all of the readers who have told me that they love it as well. Thank you all so much!
I want to thank my editor, Kate Seaver, for never doubting me and Katherine Pelz for keeping track of the details. Special kudos to the art department for the amazing watercolor covers that capture the setting so well.
I also want to raise a gla.s.s to my travel buddies Beckett and Wyatt Orf and Susan McKinlay for hiking all over London to help me with my research. Lastly, special thanks to the Hub, Chris Hansen Orf, for encouraging me to go wherever the stories take me. I love you all.
Chapter 1.
There was a sneaky draft taunting me while I worked the front counter at Mim's Whims, the hat shop I co-own with my cousin Vivian Tremont. It slipped through the cracks of our old building and snuck up on me; sliding beneath the collar of my s.h.i.+rt with its cold fingers and making me s.h.i.+ver.
Well, two could play this game. I had stopped by the Tool Shop in Marylebone over by Regents Park and picked myself up a caulking gun and the junk you put in it. I felt like one of Charlie's Angels with my caulk gun on my hip, filling in any gap that allowed November to blow its wintery breath across my skin.
I had already filled four cracks when I felt another gust of chilly air. I pulled my caulk gun out of my tool belt and whirled around, ready to fire goop into the offending orifice.
”Blimey, don't shoot, Scarlett. I just had this suit pressed.” The handsome man who entered the shop slowly raised his hands in the air as if this would make me less likely to blast him.
”Give me one good reason why I shouldn't,” I said. I did not lower the gun; instead I squinted at Harrison Wentworth over the top of it as if I were adjusting my aim while I tried to ignore the ridiculous fluttery feeling that filled my chest at the sight of him.
”Rough day, Ginger?” he asked. His voice was kind when he used my nickname but his eyes were laughing at me and it looked like his lips weren't far behind as he pressed them together as if to keep the guffaws in.
”Yuck it up, Harry,” I said. I liked to use his nickname, too, the one he'd gone by when we were kids. The one he didn't care for now. I holstered the caulk shooter. ”You're not the one freezing to death in this drafty old building.”
”It's Harrison,” he corrected me. ”And I think it's actually quite toasty in here.”
He shrugged off his overcoat and draped it over his arm. ”Maybe you should wear more layers.”
I glanced down at my outfit. I had on a cashmere heather gray turtleneck, a black wool cardigan and a black corduroy miniskirt over thick gray tights paired with my favorite black riding boots.
”I'm pretty sure the only people wearing more clothes than me this early in November live in the polar regions,” I said.
This time he did laugh. ”Scarlett Parker, your Florida is showing.”
”It is, isn't it?” I asked. ”What I wouldn't give for a martini on the beach right now.”
”I can't offer you that, but I can give you a mulled wine and a bonfire in Kensington,” he said.
”No palm trees?” I asked.
”No, 'fraid not.”
”No sand between my toes?”
”No.”
”No bikini?”
”No, d.a.m.n shame,” he said.
”Actually, that's a high point,” I said. ”With this ghostly complexion I've got going I'd scare even the sharks away.”
”I don't think anyone in their right mind would notice your complexion if you went trotting by them in a swimsuit,” he said. The look he gave me scorched.
And that right there was the trouble with Harry. He gets me so fl.u.s.tered I can't even think. Yes, it could be his charming British accent or his wavy brown hair, his broad shoulders and his bright green eyes, but I think it was more than that. Honestly, I liked Harry for more than the sw.a.n.ky packaging. I liked him for himself.
I liked the way he was unfailingly polite to everyone from waiters to bus drivers to elderly ladies in the street. I loved the sound of his laugh and how he always seemed delighted to find himself laughing and it made him laugh even harder. I enjoyed the way he whistled when he made tea, even though he was not the most gifted person in the whistling arts. And I loved how gentle he was with the young children and pets we frequently ran into on walks in Hyde Park. Even his own particular scent, a manly bay rum sort of smell, had worked its way into my head and I found any man who didn't smell like Harry was lacking.
”Well, what do you say?” he asked.
”I don't know,” I hesitated.
First, I needed to be clear that this was not a date. Yeah, I know he was the perfect male but that didn't mean I was ready to date. My mother, bless her heart, had convinced me to go one whole year without dating anyone at all. This may not sound significant but I had never gone more than two weeks between boyfriends before, so yeah, kind of a big deal.
Why did I agree to my mother's crazy suggestion? Good question. True story, funny story, okay, it isn't funny to me yet, but I've been a.s.sured that it will be someday. In a nut, my last boyfriend and I had a breakup of epic proportions, the kind that found a video of me, aka the party crasher, throwing fistfuls of wedding anniversary cake at him.
Yes, you read that right. My boyfriend was married, not to me, and I didn't take the news very well. It went viral on the Internet and I pretty much had to flee the state of Florida and, well, the continent of North America to save face. Talk about your walk of shame.
Needless to say when my cousin Viv sent me a one-way ticket to London encouraging me to take up my half of the millinery business we had inherited from our grandmother Mim, I was all in. It's been eight months now and it's almost begun to feel like home.
I love my cousin and our friends, dearly, but as the holiday season approached, and the cold air took up permanent residence in our abode, I was surprised to find I was feeling more homesick than I had expected. And I did not want to throw myself at Harrison in a weak moment of pitiful loneliness, so I needed to be very clear on the boundaries of his suggested mulled wine and bonfire.
”How does one dress for a bonfire?” I asked.
Yes, this was my pitiful attempt to get more information. Harry knew I wasn't dating and he'd said he was willing to wait, which I hadn't believed, but it had been months and as far as I knew he wasn't dating anyone else. Another point in his favor, unless this was his sly way of getting me to go on a date without actually asking me on a date; boys can be sneaky like that, you know.
”Bonfire?” Viv asked as she entered the store front from the workroom in back. ”Who's dressing for a bonfire?”
”We all are,” Harrison said. ”My company is having a huge Guy Fawkes party and you're all invited.”
”Me, too, yeah?” Fiona Felton, Viv's apprentice, asked as she followed Viv into the room.