Hester presented Nora with a leaf-shaped cookie. “I was hoping you’d be my date tonight.”
“As long as you’re open to threesomes, then yes.”
Andrews strode up to the counter. “Everything okay here? Any sign of mischief?”
“Everything’s fine,” Nora said, trying not to smile. With his boyish face and long, lean frame, it was easy to forget that Andrews was an officer of the law.
Nora spotted a teenage girl taking selfies near the bookmark spinner. Selfies were one thing. Selfies with dripping ice cream cones were another.
“Please take your ice cream outside,” Nora called out. The girl jumped in surprise. She then rolled her eyes in disgust and flounced out of the shop. Nora turned back to Andrews. “How’s Celeste?”
“Worried. Not about the devil mask. About her daughter.” Andrews lowered his voice. “Bren left the store at lunchtime and never came back. She hasn’t replied to calls or texts and Ms. Leopold thinks she could be in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” Nora asked.
“Ms. Leopold didn’t specify. All she’d say is that she moved here to get her daughter away from a bad influence. The thing is, Bren’s twenty. She’s an adult. With this festival crowd, those of us on duty are already stretched thin.” Andrews put a hand on Hester’s arm. “Text me if you see Bren tonight, okay? If nothing else, I can put a mama’s mind at ease.”
Nora looked at Hester. “Should we ask Celeste to join us?”
Andrews answered before Hester could. “That’s nice of you, but after she closes the shop, Celeste is staying in her apartment. She wants to try Bren on the phone again. We’ll keep an eye on the bookshop, so you and Hester should go have fun. That’s my official recommendation.”
Andrews smiled at Nora, gave Hester a quick kiss, and left.
When the last customer had gone, Hester helped Sheldon clean up the ticket agent’s booth while Nora shelved strays and straightened the table displays. She printed out the day’s totals, locked the cash in the stockroom safe, and turned off the lights.
“I’ll vacuum tomorrow,” she told her friends. “I hear a cheeseburger calling my name.”
The line for burgers was long, but the sound of live music and the jovial atmosphere made the wait easy to bear. June sent a text saying that she was in line for beer and that she’d trade a local brew for a fried green tomato burger if anyone was willing to buy her one.
Hester and Nora wanted iced cider, but Sheldon accepted her offer. Ten minutes later, they met June in the picnic area.
“It’s about time you showed up,” she said. “I practically had to lie down on this table to stop other people from sitting here.”
Sheldon made a big show of cleaning off the place in front of him, which earned him an elbow in the ribs from June. When he could breathe again, he examined his burger. “I’ve never had a spicy Tex-Mex double stack, but I feel like living dangerously tonight. What’d you get, Hester?”
“The black and blue. It’s so good.” Hester took a monster-sized bite and grinned.
Nora was too busy devouring her cheeseburger to talk. She only came up for air when Sheldon offered her some waffle fries. As she reached for the ketchup bottle on the end of the table, she noticed two figures sitting on a bench near the children’s playground.
“Hey,” Nora said. “Don’t look now, but Bren’s on the far side of the park. She’s sitting on a bench, talking to a guy. I can’t see his face. It’s just shadow.”
Sheldon, who was on Nora’s right, clicked his tongue. “Oh, Bren. Methinks that’s not a cigarette.”
Hester swiveled around to take a look. “Is it a joint?”
“Bren’s holding a roach clip, so survey says yes,” said Sheldon.
June sighed. “I wonder if Celeste knows.”
“She told Andrews that Bren might be in trouble,” Nora said. “So I guess she knows.”
As Hester took out her phone to report the sighting to her boyfriend, June’s forehead creased with worry. “Bren’s a young woman, on her own, sitting as far away from the crowd as she can get, smoking weed with a strange man. Can she really be that reckless?”
“Reckless enough to share her drugs. The man just took a hit,” said Nora. “I still can’t see his face, but he blew smoke back at Bren.”
Hester waved her phone in the air. “Jasper hasn’t replied to my text yet, so I think we should keep watching her.”