Murder in the Paperback Parlor by Ellery Adams Page B

pretty as a picture. Have you come for lunch?”
    Mrs. Pratt blushed and smoothed her cornflower blue blouse. “Gavin asked me to join him for a meal, and I wasn’t about to pass up a chance to savor Mrs. Hubbard’s cooking.”
    The previous head of the recreation department, Gavin had retired last fall at the age of sixty-five. After recommending his cousin, Landon Lachlan, for his former position, Gavin spent two months in Scotland visiting family. Not longbefore his departure, he’d admitted to Jane that he’d long harbored feelings for Eugenia Pratt. He vowed to woo her as soon as he returned from his trip.
    â€œI hadn’t realized he’d returned,” Jane said.
    â€œHe arrived late last night and probably went straight to bed after phoning me.” Mrs. Pratt did her best to sound nonchalant, but Jane saw the way her fingers drummed against her purse. She was a bundle of nerves.
    Jane grabbed her friend by the hand and pulled her behind a potted fern. “I don’t want to interfere with your lunch date, but would you be willing to extract some information from Gavin?”
    The glimmer in Mrs. Pratt’s eyes turned into a full-blown gleam. Her love of gossip was equal only to Mrs. Hubbard’s. “What about?”
    â€œSee what you can learn about Mr. Lachlan. I have no
sense
of the man. Who are his friends? What are his habits? What is he
really
like?”
    â€œAre you sweet on him?”
    Jane shook her head. “Mr. Lachlan’s been here for months, and I still feel like he’s a stranger. As his employer, I should know him better than I do.”
    â€œAnd that’s all there is to it?” Mrs. Pratt asked slyly. “It doesn’t matter that he looks like he just stepped off the cover of a romance novel?”
    Jane was saved from having to reply by Gavin’s arrival.
    â€œWhat are you ladies doing back there?” Gavin peered between the fronds in amusement. “Are you plotting and scheming?”
    Jane threw her arms around Gavin. “It’s wonderful to have you back. I’ve missed seeing lights on in your cottage.” After examining his outfit, she smiled. “You look very handsome. These are your clan colors, right?”
    â€œAye,” Gavin said, putting a fist on the plaid that crossed over his heart. “Our surname was originally McGavin and my family is kin to the clan MacIntosh. When you were a girl, you said that my kilt reminded you of Christmas because of its red and green.”
    â€œAnd you were as jolly as St. Nick himself,” Jane said. “But forgive me for hogging your attention. I believe someone else would like to admire your ensemble.” Having heard Mrs. Pratt laud the merits of a man in a kilt, Jane winked at her friend, wished her a pleasant lunch, and strolled away.
    Her step was much lighter than it had been before seeing Gavin and Mrs. Pratt. “Love is in the air,” Jane declared en route to her office.
    Inside, she immediately spied a strange object on her desk. It looked like a rose, but Jane could tell that it hadn’t come from a garden or greenhouse.
    Jane approached it slowly, cautiously. After all, she rarely received flowers. When the twins were younger, they used to pick them from Milton’s gardens, but Jane explained that the flowers were more beautiful left intact because more people were able to enjoy them. From that point on, the boys made her tissue paper flowers. Jane half-expected the single stem on her desk to be one of their creations, but it wasn’t. Black letters of uniform size marched across these paper petals.
    â€œBook pages!” Jane exclaimed.
    The stem, which was made of green leather, bore gilt letters from the book’s spine or cover. Jane twisted the stem until she could make out the title. “Not the title. The author. Jane Austen. One of my very favorites.”
    Her curiosity piqued, Jane raised the petals