“Sure,” Connor said.
“You can drive with us, Ms. Blackstone,” Watson said, “I’ll send someone to get your car.”
They walked away. Butch followed, his hand on the butt of his gun and his eyes checking out everything around him as though expecting international jewel thieves to leap out of the marsh grasses and accost them at any moment.
“Maybe she wants to make a donation to the town or the library in thanks for the recovery of the necklace,” Charlene said when police car had disappeared. “That’s nice of her.”
Rachel Blackstone did contribute handsomely to the library, but that wasn’t what she wanted to talk to Connor privately about.
“Do you want to accept?” he said to me later that night as we sipped champagne and toasted our future in the quiet of my Lighthouse Aerie. Charles had inspected my glass, decided the bubbles that hit his nose were not to his liking and settled himself onto the cushions on the window seat to wash his paws.
I thought for a long time. “I think I do. Not because of the value, but because the offer is truly coming from her heart.”
Rachel had told Connor she intended to have the necklace broken up. She’d keep a chain with a small diamond for herself, in memory of her grandparents, but the rest she wanted to sell in order to donate the proceeds to adult literacy and organizations promoting girls’ education in the US and in Africa.
She’d sell the rest, except for one flawless two carat diamond which she wanted to give to Connor to have set into my engagement ring.
“I think it’s suitable.” Connor lifted his glass in a toast to me. “That we start our journey through life together with a memory of the latest of your wild escapades. By the way, Rachel has offered to pay to have Bertie’s floor replaced. I accepted on the library’s behalf.” He put his glass down and stood up. He walked toward me and plucked my glass out of my hands. Then he lifted me to my feet and wrapped me in his arms. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Lucy Richardson, life with you will not be boring.”
“Sometimes,” I said, “I could use a bit of boredom.”
He chuckled. “What do you want to do about living arrangements? This apartment is nice and all, but it is a bit … uh … small for two people.”
“Why don’t we start looking for a house together? We’re in no hurry, so we have time to find the perfect place.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” He put his glass down, took mine out of my hand and placed it next to his, and gathered me into his arms.
I’d been living in the Lighthouse Aerie for more than a year, and I loved it here, but it was time to move on. I knew that with Connor beside me, I was ready for whatever life threw my way.
As I settled into Connor’s kiss, I heard Charles yawn.
Author’s Note
The Bodie Island Lighthouse is a real historic lighthouse, located in Cape Hatteras National Seashore on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It is still a working lighthouse, protecting ships from the Graveyard of the Atlantic, and the public is invited to tour it and climb the 214 steps to the top. The view from up there is well worth the trip. But the lighthouse does not contain a library, nor is it large enough to house a collection of books, offices, staff rooms, two staircases, and even an apartment.
Within these books, the interior of the lighthouse is the product of my imagination. I like to think of it as my version of the TARDIS, from the TV show Doctor Who, or Hermione Granger’s beaded handbag: far larger inside than it appears from the outside.
I hope it is large enough for your imagination also.
Also available by Eva Gates
Lighthouse Library Mysteries
Read and Buried
Something Read Something Dead
The Spook in the Stacks
Reading Up A Storm
Booked for Trouble
By Book or By Crook
Writing as Vicki Delany
Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mysteries
There’s a Murder Afoot
A Scandal in Scarlet
The Cat of Baskervilles
Body on Baker Street
Elementary, She Read
Year Round Christmas Mysteries
Silent Night, Deadly Night
Hark the Herald Angels Slay
We Wish you a Murderous Christmas
Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen
Ashley Grant Mysteries
Coral Reef Views
Blue Water Hues
White Sand Blues
Constable Molly Smith Mysteries
Unreasonable Doubt
Under Cold Stone
A Cold White Sun
Among the Departed
Negative Image
Winter of Secrets
Valley of the Lost
In the Shadow of the Glacier
Klondike Gold Rush Mysteries
Gold Web
Gold Mountain
Gold Fever
Gold Digger
Tea by the Sea Mysteries
Tea & Treachery
Also Available by Vicki Delany
More than Sorrow
Murder at Lost Dog Lake
Burden of Memory
Scare the Light Away
Whiteout
Author Biography
Eva Gates is a national bestselling author who began her writing career as a Sunday writer: a single mother of three high-spirited daughters, with a full-time job as a computer programmer. Now she has more than twenty novels under her belt in the mystery genre, published under the name Vicki Delany. She lives in Ontario. This is her seventh Lighthouse Library mystery.
This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Vicki Delany
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.
Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-458-8
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-64385-459-5
Cover illustration by Joe Burleson
Printed in the United States.
www.crookedlanebooks.com
Crooked Lane Books
34 West 27th St., 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
First Edition: October 2020
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
