As I tug on the door’s handle, Jude grips the frame over my head, so close behind me I can feel his warmth, smell the subtle note of that intoxicating cologne.
My stomach flutters.
The bell jingles.
And I force myself to move.
Maggie isn’t at the front counter. Just Poe, who meows his greeting next to an abandoned cup of tea.
Looking left, then right, I seize the opportunity. With a nod at Jude to follow, I speed-walk to the reading nook, unzipping my backpack and pulling out the unwieldy tome as I go. Just as I’m about to slide it into its spot, a familiar, raspy voice makes me jump.
“Good afternoon.”
I twirl around, book in hand.
Maggie peers suspiciously as she stirs her tea, a fresh cup curling with steam. Today, she’s wearing a velvet choker and a black and white hair scarf patterned with moths and crows. A pair of reading glasses hang around her neck; another is perched atop her head.
I hold the tome aloft. “I was just showing this to Jude.”
Maggie turns her suspicious gaze upon him. A lesser man might cower beneath her unblinking stare. Jude doesn’t even fidget.
“The new Vandenberg boy,” she mutters. “You and your stepmother have been spending an awful lot of time with that preservation society.”
“Regrettably.”
It’s the perfect response—one that brings a twinkle to Maggie’s eye.
I make official introductions. When I’m done, she nods at the rolled-up sketch in Jude’s hand. “What’s that?”
“Something we wanted to show you,” he says. “A sketch of a woman. We’re hoping to find out who she was. According to Selah, you’re our best hope.”
He gives her the sketch.
Maggie hands him her tea. She puts on her glasses—the pair hanging around her neck—and unrolls the paper. Her attention pauses briefly over the symbol drawn in the upper right corner, same as the one on the cover of the book. But thenshe catches sight of Ezra’s signature and the symbol is completely forgotten.
“A Vandenberg original,” she says in a breathless whisper, a tremor taking hold of her hands. “Young man, do you have any idea how valuable this is?”
“I could take a guess.”
“Ezra Vandenberg was a prolific limner, but much of his work was burned in the fire.”
“He was a prolific what-er?” I ask.
“Lim. Ner,” Maggie replies. “A portraitist. Three of his pieces hang in town hall.”
“They do?”
She looks at me dully. “Selah Whitlock, you mean to tell me you’ve never noticed those paintings in town hall?”
“Of course I have, I just didn’t realize they were painted by Ezra.” The portraits in question feature our town heroes, the same three men who have their own statues in the square—Amos Vandenberg, Kit Bogaard, and Alexander Doorn.
Maggie brings the sketch to her bosom. “A relic such as this belongs in a museum.”
“If you can tell us who that woman is,” Jude says, “you can have it for yourself.”
She makes a strangled noise, then adjusts her glasses as if his offer is a visible thing, and she wants to make sure she’s seeing it correctly. When his expression remains utterly sincere, she releases a loud bark of laughter. “Tell you who she is? Mydear boy, I will write a dissertation if it means I get to keep this.”
She peers down at the graphite strokes, muttering Molly’s name several times over. “A pretty girl Ezra Vandenberg sketched. Simply a subject, or was she more?” She peers a bit longer, as if considering her own question.
