Pushing Up Daisies Read online

  PUSHING UP DAISIES

  (Tea Shop Cozy Book One)

  KATHERINE HAYTON

  Copyright © 2018 Katherine Hayton

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One - Berry Murderous

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  “Don’t worry about that,” Willow Foxglove said, ushering her best-friend Harmony toward the front door. “You can return it when you want to. It’s not like I’m going to hunt you down and force you to pay late fees.”

  Harmony turned on the threshold, looking back. “But I feel so bad—”

  “Nonsense.” Willow started to pull the door shut, despite her friend turning back to face her. “When have I ever given you a reason to worry about returning books on time? I’m not a librarian.”

  “No.” Harmony gave a small shrug and a giggle, stepping back. “You’re far too loud for that!”

  Willow started to relax as her friend backed up another step. If Willow could say goodbye right this second, she’d have just enough time left to replace the herbs with freshly cut stems from the garden. After that, she could have the tea things poured, ready and waiting for her guest to arrive at six o’clock. Or thereabouts. He’d been tardy a few times recently.

  As Harmony stepped toward her again, Willow hoped today was one of those days her guest was running late. Usually, her best friend’s company was a treasured thing, but today…well. Today, it seemed like Harmony was overstaying her welcome.

  Almost suspiciously overstaying.

  “Bye,” Willow said, hurriedly closing the door before Harmony could manage to get back inside.

  She leaned her forehead against the door, feeling her heart race in her chest as she listened to the sounds of her friend leaving. As soon as the familiar clunk of the car door came, Willow stepped back and smoothed down the front of her dress.

  She wanted to change before her guest arrived, but that would have to wait until after she’d visited the garden.

  From long years of habit, Willow pulled on an apron from the back of the kitchen door as she went outside. It had never been used for cooking, but she liked to keep her clothes as clean as possible from the potential garden stains, so she often wore it outside the house. Gloves, too. They protected her soft hands from the sharp barbs of the wild roses or the occasional nettle.

  Willow closed her eyes and tipped her head back to feel the last full rays of the sun. It would be heading over the yardarm soon—at this time of year, it ran away quicker and quicker each day.

  There was nothing in the world Willow loved more than her garden. She knelt down and pulled the wide-open buds of chamomile toward her. The last of the season. After a second’s inhalation to appreciate their full scent, Willow snipped off three large daisy heads. The sharp green tang of cutting filled the air. Sweet and sad. Willow plucked a weed out near the path’s edge before it could take root and flourish. Next up, a few sprigs of fresh mint.

  Willow couldn’t resist twisting out of the mint leaves between her forefingers, then burying her nose into her cupped hand, inhaling the delicious scent.

  A pest—her mother had taught her growing up. Mint would get into everything and anything if given half the chance. The lessons had been heeded well by Willow, and her stock of mint was in a separate bed with wooden framing buried deep in the ground on each side, to box it in below the soil.

  With a small groan, Willow got to her feet, then looked over her shoulder to check that nobody was around to hear. Far more disturbing than finding the first gray in her honey-blonde hair had been realizing that she made a sound every time she got up from the couch. That was old age—everybody knew it—and the one sign that distressed Willow above all else.

  She walked back to the side of the house, rinsing her snips under the garden hose, then wiping the blades with a soft cloth before hanging them up in the shed. Each tool had its spot, marking out in white paint on the old wood. Satisfied that everything was in its place and all was right in the world, Willow walked back inside with her treasures from the garden.

  There was a drying rack always hanging in the kitchen, and she quickly pinned up the herbs to that. The flowerheads and leaves Willow would use for the tea tonight were already dried and ready. Take one thing out and replace it—that was the secret to a well-prepared life.

  Only a few minutes to go now. Willow raced into her bedroom, untying her dress as she went, ready to plunge her arms into the new one laid out on the bed.

  When the knock at the door came, Willow raised her head, eyes wide as she glanced at the clock. Early? It seemed so unlike her guest.

  Still…

  Willow zipped up her dress and flung on a crocheted cardigan as a barrier against the encroaching cold. The sunlight had faded to the very edge of the window—all heat gone. She flicked on the lights to the room as she went out, then ignored the second knock at the door to come back and turn the switch off again. Lights on in the bedroom was an open invitation Willow wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to offer. Not at this early stage.

  The hall light was safe though, as was the living room and outside bulb that hung directly above her front door. A split-second rest with her fingers wrapped around the front door handle, then Willow opened it with a cheery smile.

  “Hello, love. Thought you must be stuck out back or something, it took you so long to answer.”

  Willow’s second-best friend, Reg Garnett, walked in through the door, not waiting for an invitation. With a worried glance along the street to reassure herself that her actual invited guest’s arrival wasn’t imminent, Willow closed the door and turned to Reg with a slightly more strained smile.

  “It’s a bit late for you to call, isn’t it?”

  Reg ignored the chastisement hidden in her words and walked through into the lounge, picking up a china figurine of a penguin as he went through.

  Willow’s anxiety began to creep up an internal scale, a small buzzing starting at the base of her skull.

  “Did you want something?”

  Reg dropped by without prior arrangements all the time but usually within the confines of daylight. Willow often tuned out Reg’s long-winded explanations for how he spent his evenings. Most of the talk about UFOs was well above her head, and Willow didn’t mind it staying that way. However, she knew he liked to be out in the open, looking for suspicious activity in the night sky.

  From the way Reg’s shoulders tensed, Willow knew he wanted to ask for something. She bustled past him, ignoring her own increasingly rapid pulse, to put on the kettle and wait for him to spill what was on his mind.

  “Have a seat,” Willow said, more on the lines of an order than a question, pulling out one of the old, wooden chairs around the kitchen table.

  As Reg sat, she plucked the penguin out of his tenuous grip to replace it in the living room. She’d lost many an expensive figurine to Reg’s arthritic fingers over the years and had no wish to add to the pile.

  “I saw Harmony on the walk over,” Reg said, staring out the kitchen window until Willow pulled the blinds to shut out the darkness. “
She didn’t even wave to me as she went past.”

  Willow gave a snort. “Probably listening to one of those public radio shows on something technical. She never sees me when she’s out driving either.”

  The kettle gave a whine and pinged off. Without asking, Willow began to prepare an herbal tea of deep, dark licorice for Reg, just pouring a mug of water for herself. She didn’t want to spoil her ‘tea appetite’ for later.

  “Here you go.” Willow placed a large mug in front of Reg and took a seat opposite him. Despite her midsection being wound so tight that her breathing was shallow, she tried to look relaxed.

  “Was over at the school today,” Reg said after a few sips. “They’ve lost half the roof on the art department building.”

  “Really?” Willow shook her head. They didn’t often have storms in Aniseed Valley, but when they did, the winds tended to be a doozy.

  Reg dropped by the school at least once or twice a week. He’d been the groundskeeper there for a decade before retirement and still liked to keep an eye on the place.

  “I wonder if we should organize a fundraiser,” Willow said, rubbing under her eye where it had started to twitch. “That really helped them back on their feet when the truck plowed through the front gate and into the principal’s office.”

  That memorable event had taken place a few years ago. The gossip around it had kept many a town council meeting going well past its appointed hour.

  “Maybe.” Reg took another sip of his tea, smacking his lips together with satisfaction. “I did wonder…”

  He trailed off, but Willow sat upright in her chair. Thank goodness. The man was finally getting to the reason why he’d come here.

  She didn’t glance at the clock on the wall. It was better for her nerves that she didn’t check the time.

  “Do you still have Molly’s old binoculars lying about the place?”

  The request came out of left-field, leaving Willow blinking in confusion for a moment. Then she nodded.

  “Sure. They’re in his wardrobe.”

  She stood up, ignoring Reg’s offer to get them. “You wouldn’t know where to look. Just sit tight, and I’ll be right back.”

  Her husband had been fond of birdwatching when he was a younger man. Molly would walk off for a few hours at a time, glasses affixed to his face as though they formed part of his anatomy. When a neighbor called by to complain one day, Willow had found out the ‘birds’ her husband liked to spy on weren’t necessarily of the avian variety.

  After a stern talk, the binoculars had gone into the top shelf in the wardrobe and were only taken down again for picnics or such, when the both of them were in attendance.

  Even at five-foot-eleven—the giantess of the high school many decades before—Willow had to get on tiptoes to reach far enough back to snag them. She held them out at arm’s length while grabbing a duster to get them clean. It was too late to change again if she got covered in dirt, and besides, she would have nothing suitable to switch into. She was already wearing her best dress. To don a house frock because of some unexpected dust would be a tragedy.

  “Here they are, good as new.” Willow handed the binoculars over to Reg and patted him on his shoulder before taking his mug to the sink and walking to the front door.

  Reg sometimes missed social cues, so Willow went out of her way to toss them about liberally when she needed him to do something.

  What she needed from him most right now was to leave.

  Don’t look at the clock!

  Too late. Willow tore her eyes away, her heart skipping a beat in her chest before racing to catch up. Twelve minutes past six! Her guest was sure to arrive at any moment.

  When she opened the front door, Willow so expected her guest to be standing there that for a split second she hallucinated him. A few blinks of her eyes cured that, but she knew that in another minute or two, the vision would solidify into reality.

  “Thanks very much,” Reg said, loitering in her hallway as though neither of them had any other place to be. “You know, it was the darnedest thing, but I dropped—”

  “You’ll have to tell me another time, Reg,” Willow said, giving him a helpful shove toward the front door. “Come by tomorrow and tell me everything, including your UFO watching results from tonight.”

  “Oh, yes.” Reg turned in the doorway, blocking Willow’s view of the street. “I’m planning on keeping tabs in the center of town. Mrs. Matthewson said she saw something very odd there a few nights ago. Seemed most relieved when I said I’d keep an eye out on her behalf. She was quite upset.”

  “You’re a good man, Reg.” Willow had no trouble infusing the words with sincerity; in a hurry or not, she truly believed he was. Otherwise, he’d hardly be so high on her list of friends.

  The one thing he didn’t have was good timing.

  As Willow finally got the front door shut and smoothed down her best dress, ready for company, a thought flitted across her mind. It was strange for Harmony to linger so long, then even odder for Reg to turn up at this hour.

  If Willow didn’t know any better, she’d think her friends were trying to spy on the guest she wanted to entertain.

  A fleeting thought but like a wild seed from a dandelion, it planted itself firmly in the soil of her mind and started to grow.

  Not wanting to risk being interrupted midway through the dishes, Willow shoved the empty mugs into the fridge and hoped her guest didn’t look in there. No reason he should, of course, but today had been full of things happening without due cause.

  Willow took her best china out from the cupboard—stored at the very back behind prying fingers and eyes. It was the most beautiful thing she had inherited from her mother, apart from her svelte figure and height. The delicate blue swirls nestled inside each other in a play of movement and color that delighted Willow every time she looked at it. Only for the best occasions had been her mother’s rule for the crockery, and Willow followed it religiously to this day.

  It was well after six now. Willow tried her best to keep her eyes off the clock and focused on the dried herbs in front of her. She packaged them up in tiny silk purses that could be rinsed and reused, except for a single chamomile flower she left out to float to the top of her guest’s tea. Daisy tea, he called it, and Willow let it go without correction. In the long years of her widowhood, she’d finally learned the wisdom of letting things go.

  At five minutes to eight, Willow sighed and put the china back in the cabinet. Even if she desperately tried to convince herself otherwise, it was clear there’d be no guest tonight.

  As she moved around the kitchen, Willow caught sight of her reflection in the window. She stretched out a hand, almost touching the ghostly apparition, then pulled it back, pressing it flat against her chest instead.

  As a teenager, Willow had been the prettiest girl in school. Then she’d gone off on a wild adventure, becoming a model. Suddenly, she was lost in a sea of beautiful women, each one held up to intense scrutiny and found wanting.

  It was hard to find that feeling again, the confidence that came from knowing you looked good. Willow’s husband Molly had never given her that impression.

  On fleeting moments, when entertaining her guest, Willow had felt that sensation again. The knowledge that she was the prettiest girl in the room. Well aware that she could be inwardly focused to the point of selfishness, Willow wasn’t sure if she wanted to see him for the value he brought or just to experience that feeling.

  She shook her head. Not that it mattered tonight! Her guest would never arrive this late; it was almost time for her favorite show. Even if Willow wanted to call him and find out where he’d gotten to, it would have to wait.

  As Willow changed into her dressing gown and slippers and sat on the couch, sipping a mug of sleepy-time tea, she tried to push away her disappointment. Even so, it took a good fifteen minutes of Miss Walsham Investigates for her to let go of her troubles and become fully immersed in the show.

  Chapter Two

/>   The tinkle of broken glass woke Willow, and she sat up in bed with a gasp, her hand clutched to her chest, where her heart was beating fast.

  Just as Willow started to relax, thinking the noise must be the last vestiges of her dream, a clunk and crack of breaking pottery came echoing through the house.

  Someone was inside her home! Someone had broken in while she was sleeping!

  Thinking she should definitely phone the police straight away rather than confront the burglar herself, Willow pulled on a dress and cardigan and grabbed the heaviest object she could find as a weapon. The Almanac of the world’s navies must have been left behind by Harmony at some point. The woman’s tastes in reading—and everything else—were strange and eclectic.

  The sound of broken shards crunching underfoot broke Willow out of her brief reverie. Yes. She should definitely phone the sheriff’s office. Perhaps as soon as she apprehended the intruder herself.

  Willow avoided all the squeaking floorboards as she crept closer to the origin of the noises. They were coming from the conservatory. An odd choice for a break-in since any burglar would still then have to get into the house, but Willow supposed thieves wouldn’t be the smartest folks in any room.

  At the door, formerly a rear exit to the house, Willow pressed her ear up to the wood, holding her breath while she listened.

  Nothing. More nothing.

  Then the unmistakable sound of a pot being pushed off a bench and shattering on the floor.

  Willow turned the key and grabbed the handle. One wrench downwards, and she shouldered the door open, holding the large book above her head, ready to strike.

  After a moment, she lowered it, looking about the room in puzzlement.

  The shards of ceramic and glass on the floor showed the signs of an intruder, but there was no one there. Even the smallest of thieves would have trouble hiding from view, given that apart from the earthenware pots stacked along the bench, and some chairs sitting where they’d catch the most sun, there was no other furniture in the room.