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“Will do.”
With one more swipe of his furniture polish, Sam stuck his rag in his back pocket and we left the same way we came in.
The Witch’s Brew was only a few blocks away, but Sam didn’t want to block the alley, so he swung his car around the block to park on Harbor Street and we walked the rest of the way.
I opened the door to the enticing aroma of fresh baked blueberry muffins and knew I’d be going on a run later.
“Morning, guys!” Landry was behind the counter but I found myself looking around to see if Sara was here. I decided to ignore the reasoning behind that.
“Hi Landry. We’ll take a couple large coffees to go.”
“And some of those muffins you just pulled out of the oven. Sam’s paying.” I smiled and Sam rolled his eyes but nodded.
“You guys will never believe what happened! You know how Eryn Blake was in town last week?”
I tried to hide my eye roll but doubted I was successful. Sam played along.
“Yeah, put our little town on the map for a minute.”
“Well she put The Witch’s Brew on the map too. Look!” She handed us our coffees and grabbed her phone out of her back pocket. Showing us her screen, she swiped through pictures of Eryn Blake’s Instagram. Sure enough, they were all of The Witch’s Brew. It was even tagged as the location in the post.
“She only just posted this a half hour ago. She told me when she was here that she always delays posts that give away her location so no one knows where she is in real time. Apparently her house has been robbed like three times.”
Landry kept yapping about Eryn Blake but I was more concerned about my muffins. I was about to say so when the swinging door to the kitchen opened and Sara walked through, carrying a tray of what I sought.
“Morning, hippie.”
“Oh. Good morning.” Disappointment flooded my head from the lack of entertaining comeback. I tried to ignore it.
“Those blueberry?” I gestured with my coffee cup to the tray she was still holding.
“Yeah. You want one?”
“Obviously. Make it two.”
“Okay.” Sara put the tray in the display case and then grabbed a brown paper bag and put two muffins inside, along with a couple sugar cookies from the next tray over. She was always good like that. You almost never left with only what you ordered, always more. But I noticed her movements were a little stilted. She didn’t have that graceful air about her that she normally did. She stood holding the bag for a moment, staring at the ground.
“You okay there?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem like it.”
“Well how would you know exactly what ‘fine’ is for me?”
“I know more than you think there, tree-hugger.”
“That’s funny, I didn’t realize jock cops knew anything.”
There it was. I smirked and she huffed. Her eyes rolled and her hips did a little sway as she shook her head. It was at that point I ignored the spark in my stomach.
Handing the bag to me over the counter, Sara nudged Landry with her elbow.
“Can you please go package up the orders for the Millers? They’re scheduled to pick them up soon.”
“Oh! Sure.” Landry put her phone back in her pocket and headed to the back. Sara rang Sam up and then grabbed a rag to wipe down the already-spotless counter.
“So that’s some pretty exciting free advertising for you,” Sam said as he put some cream in his coffee.
“Huh?”
“The Eryn Blake thing. Alex told me last week that chick gets like half a million dollars per social media post when it’s sponsored. Can you imagine?”
“Half a million dollars? For one post?” Sara asked. “Why on earth?”
“I guess just because of how many people see them. And they’re lucrative or something. She’s like the biggest celebrity on the planet right now and doesn’t do that many, so companies with big pockets shell out.”
Sara bit down on her thumbnail, staring off into space. Something was definitely up. Sam was oblivious, stirring his coffee and checking his phone. But I saw it. Sara was never nervous like this. I was about to call her on it again when my phone rang.
Pulling it out of my pocket, I noted that it was dispatch.
“Baldwin,” I answered.
“Sheriff, there’s another fire. The FD is already on their way.” I put all other thoughts on the back burner. We hadn’t had a single fire in over a decade and now we had two in less than two weeks? This was too much of a coincidence.
“Where?” I spat out.
“The lumber mill out on Route 40.”
“I’m on my way.” I tucked my phone back in my pocket and turned to Sam. “I need my truck now.”
“What’s going on?”
“Another fire.” He looked shocked, but put the pieces together fast. This was suspicious and there was a possible threat to our town.
“Let’s go.”
