A Secret Message (Lavender Cove #1)

Four

VIXEN OPENED HER NOTEBOOK after her third cup of coffee. A minimum of 240mg of caffeine needed to enter her system for her brain cells to work on a regular day, and about 25% more than that when challenged with unusual circumstances like, say...accepting The Case of the Dead Woman's Letter.

A wry smile played over Vixen's lips at the way her mind had already conjured a case title for Claire's predicament, and it was the exact motivation she needed to pick up her pen and begin to write.

CLUES | QUESTIONS

Vixen had taken every Choose Your Own Adventure book she read quite seriously back when she was a kid, and after each chapter, she would then come up with a list of clues and questions meant to help her solve the mystery.

Back then, there had been no better feeling than being able to gradually piece everything together, and when she eventually graduated to Nancy Drew novels, her two-column lists were consequently renamed CLUES | SUSPECTS.

Hmm.

There were no hard and fast rules in solving a mystery. That much she learned after reading her first Perry Mason novel, and while Claire's case seemed more like a treasure hunt than a whodunnit...

Vixen: Are there any other beneficiaries aside from you and Scott?

It took only a few moments before her friend texted her back.

Claire: Just Uncle Jorge. He's Great-Aunt Joy's son.

Vixen: What did he think about the letter?

Claire: He had this funny look on his face. Like he didn't believe his mother would just leave me a letter. He asked if he could see it, so I gave it to him. And here's something funnier...

Vixen clicked on the video message Claire sent.

'He took my letter and went to the window and raised it up like this..."

Vixen's friend raised up an imaginary letter towards an imaginary sun and squinted at it.

'Isn't that weird? He's acting like the letter's forged or something. Is it so hard to believe that his mother would want to write me a letter before she..."

Claire's face suddenly crumbled, and tears slowly ran down her friend's cheeks.

"I'm sorry. I think it's my hormones. I cry a lot these days," Claire said with a sniff. "And I think it's only starting to hit me that she's gone. I'll never see her again."

Claire was still crying when the video message came to an abrupt end, and Vixen's heart ached for the other woman. A text message popped on her inbox then, also from Claire.

Sorry I got emotional. And I really appreciate that you're taking this seriously. Whatever happens, even if you don't find anything—-I'll always be grateful.

Vixen's resolve grew after reading this, and she played the video again to study Claire's reenactment of her uncle's response. It wasn't the most reliable piece of evidence, but one had to work with what was available.

Claire's uncle - suspicious reaction to the letter. Does he know something? Or hiding something?

Vixen felt a mixture of guilt and pleasure as she wrote her first entry under the Questions column. As much as she enjoyed solving fictional mysteries in her spare time, this was why she would never make a good detective in real life.

It might be SOP to treat every party as a suspect until proven guilty, but Claire's uncle was a real person with real feelings, and she would feel so terrible if he were to find out he was on her list of suspects.

In the meantime, however...

'Uncle' Jorge was a suspect still, and Vixen reached for the letter to study it for the nth time.

Letter - Black ink. Beautiful cursive writing. Proper grammar and punctuation. Impeccable spelling. Heartfelt message.

She listed the words under CLUES, but none of it was in any way indicative of Uncle Jorge's innocence or guilt.

Vixen looked around as she racked her mind for ideas. The restaurant had quickly filled up in the past half hour, the tables mostly occupied by couples enjoying the sunset views that only the Lighthouse's outdoor dining area could offer. Many of them were gazing into each other's eyes, smiling over the candlelight...

And that was when it hit her.

Vixen managed to catch the eye of one of the servers, and Patty's eyes widened at her request. "You're joking, aren't you?"

"Why would you think I'm joking?" Vixen was genuinely bemused.

"Oh, uh, nothing." Patty started grinning, and Vixen's bewilderment grew. Patty grew up in Lavender Cove while Vixen had only moved here a few years ago. Maybe this was a joke that only locals would get, but she hadn't been around long enough to understand?

Patty came back and carefully placed the candle holder at the center of the table before lighting the candle. "I'm so happy for you," the other woman gushed.

"Um...thanks?" She wasn't exactly sure why Patty was happy for her, and the other woman had already hurried away to attend to another customer before Vixen could ask her about it.

Weird.

What was it about today that there seemed to be a mystery to solve no matter where she went? If she were to write a book about this, Patty's would be something like... The Case of the Strangely Smiling Server?

Vixen set the thought aside and reached for her notebook. It had a built-in pocket sleeve at the back, and Vixen was relieved to see that the letter was still in pristine condition upon pulling it out.

She held it over the candlelight, and her gaze slowly ran over its contents from top to bottom. Just as she expected, nothing out of the ordinary caught her eye, and Vixen started feeling foolish for ever suspecting Claire's uncle. His actions might have been perplexing, but it could in no way be considered as evidence of his—-

What?!

Yellowish lines started to appear behind the words Claire's great-aunt had written, and Vixen quickly gave the letter a sniff.

Aha! Lemon juice!

Using acid ink to write a secret message was such a classic move, and Vixen's lips slowly curved into an appreciative smile when she remembered Claire saying how the older woman was a huge Agatha Christie fan.

She held the letter over the flame once more, and Vixen was able to make out the first clue.

.————.—-..——.

Well, that was easy. It was '1989' written in Morse code, but below it, however...

Huh?

The set of scraggly lines went up and down, and since Claire had to fly to Denver for her great-aunt's funeral, could this be a hastily drawn map of... The Rockies?

Vixen was feeling more than a little giddy after writing down her second set of clues, and as she stood up after paying her tab, Vixen looked around and saw that the other couples were also looking rather giddily as well, albeit in a different sense of the word.

Good for them.

Seeing couples dating like this didn't bother her at all, but many of Vixen's old friends refused to believe that she wasn't worried about being single for so long. She was about to turn thirty-five in a couple of months, but Vixen had never had a boyfriend, and she would only smile and politely say no every time someone offered to pair her up with a blind date.

Vixen didn't like saying this out loud unless pressured to do so, but she had complete faith in God's will. It was and would always be His choice if she was meant to have her own Mr. Right in the first place, and if she did, Vixen was also confident she would eventually meet him in God's perfect timing.

Patty's face fell when Vixen said her goodbyes. "Are you sure you don't want to stay longer?"

Vixen shook her head. "Maybe next time."

As she walked away, she heard Patty whisper, "Poor girl. I think she's been stood up."

Huh .

The words lingered in Vixen's mind as she carefully made her way down the steep and narrow driveway that connected the Lighthouse to the main road. There was something about those words that bothered her. Something that she should've realized away. But what?

It was a long but scenic walk back to her place, and as a car drove past Vixen on her way down, she was momentarily distracted when she caught a glimpse of its driver...and was stunned to feel butterflies actually come alive in her tummy.

Oh!

The man behind the wheel had raven-black hair, strong-jawed, and deeply tanned. He was handsome in the most classical sense of the word, and Vixen was almost unnerved at how instantly attracted she felt to a complete stranger.

She wished she could make herself believe this was God's way of introducing her Mr. Right, but... nope.

Vixen wanted to take care of her heart the way God took precious care of it, and so she determinedly pushed all thoughts of Mr. (Possibly) Right out of her mind.

If he's the man God has chosen for me, then I'll meet him again, one way or another.

But for now, Vixen had her first honest-to-goodness case to solve, and a follow-up question to her first one. Had Uncle Jorge seen the same secret message, and if he had—-why hadn't he told Claire?