At Wick's End - Tim Myers [17]
I had a new trade to learn if I was going to keep Belle’s candle shop afloat.
I grabbed the key and unlocked the storeroom door.
A shiver ran through me as I realized that this was where Belle had died just a few days earlier. Why in the world had she been climbing a ladder in the first place, when a strong strapping woman like Eve was nearby? I could reach the top shelf without the stepladder, but I was a good foot taller than Belle had been. She must have had to extend all the way up the small ladder to reach the beeswax sheets and wicks they’d found near her body.
The ladder was leaning against a lower shelf, and I had a sudden urge to break it into a hundred pieces, to burn it or at the very least to throw it away. I went so far as to pick it up, but the touch of the wood turned my stomach, so I put it down where it had been. I backed up against one of the shelves to collect myself and saw something that was otherwise easy to miss. There was a button leaning against one of the boxes, and I noticed the torn threads clinging to it when I picked it up. It was large and brown with an ornate carving on its face, surely one of a kind. I thought about the sweaters I’d packed away upstairs the day before. Had there been anything with similar buttons on it, or could it have been from the clothes Belle had been wearing the night she died?
I found Eve still going over her list. “Does this look familiar? I was wondering if it belonged to Belle.”
Eve took the button from me, frowned a moment, then said, “I’ve been looking all over for this. Where did you find it?”
“In the storeroom,” I admitted. “How did you lose it, do you remember?”
Eve said, “Now if I knew that, I’d have looked for it there. My sweater must have caught on one of the shelves when I was helping Belle move something; I lost this weeks ago.” She tucked the button in her pocket, then said, “Have you pulled anything from the list I gave you?”
“No, not yet.”
“Harrison, we don’t have a great deal of time.”
“I’ll do it now,” I said. Did Eve’s story make sense? I wondered about it as I pulled items from the list she’d given me. At least the boxes were clearly marked. Surely if a shelf ripped a button off her sweater she would have felt it. Was it possible that Belle hadn’t been alone in the storeroom the night she died? Could someone have helped her off that ladder? I couldn’t see Eve doing it, but it was possible, I had to admit that much. She had expected to inherit At Wick’s End; that much was clear. That started a line of thought I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. What if Eve’s story was true, that she’d lost the button earlier helping Belle? Did that necessarily rule out the possibility that someone else might have given my great-aunt a shove? It was something I was going to have to consider, no matter how unpleasant the suspicion was. I found a carton of Golden Yellow sheet wax. It was the exact same wax Belle had died trying to retrieve from the top shelf. Eve had said that Belle knew the contents of their storeroom intimately. So why was she looking up there for something that was readily available without the use of a ladder? Was something hidden there, something she didn’t want anyone else to see? I pulled every box off the shelf where she’d been reaching, but all they contained were the supplies clearly marked.
Eve knocked on the door before poking her head inside. “Good heavens, Harrison, what are you doing?”
“I was just looking for something.”
Eve surveyed the mess. “Well I hope you found it. We’re opening in two minutes. Hurry and put what you’ve got on the shelves out front. You’ll just have to clean this up later.”
I spent the day trying to work in the candle shop, but