The Glitter End, page 25
“Sounds fabulous. I’ll snap some pictures for Gran to show her what I’m up to.”
“Great. Now…” Hazel clapped her hands together and said, “Guided tour of my shop. Our shop, I should say. Come on in.” She led the way through the entrance’s double doors.
Delta followed with a pounding heart. She had seen photos of the shop, but she had never been to Tundish in person. This would be her first real-life view of her new enterprise.
Hazel gestured around her at all the warm woodwork and the authentic hearth where a pair of dusty cowboy boots stood ready, as if the sheriff would appear any moment to jump into them and set out with his posse. “This used to be where the sheriff sat to wait for news about a bank robbery or a gang of cattle thieves. You can see that I kept his desk and used it to display the newest notebooks.”
Delta jumped toward the notebooks, eager to pick through the stacks and take Hazel up on the two-for-one offer. But Hazel laughed and pulled her away. “No, no browsing yet. First, you have to see the rest. There, along the wall, I have shelves for crafting packages. You can find anything, from designing your own planner to making a birthday calendar. Then in that old cell…”
Hazel walked through a barred door that led into a small space with a wooden cot pushed against the wall. Above the cot, replicas of original newspaper pages displayed the faces of the Old West’s most notorious gang members, some of them smug, others defiant.
“A few of them spent time in here,” Hazel explained, gesturing around her. “And I put up that bit of rope”—she gestured to a rope tied around one of the bars in the narrow window—“to refer to all the escape attempts made. They tied the other end of the rope to a horse and gave it a scare so it would gallop off and tear the bar right from the window. Crude and often not very effective.”
“I love it.” Delta fingered the rope.
“If you have ideas to give it even more atmosphere, just say so. I’m constantly switching it up to attract people who normally might not walk into a stationery shop but who do want to breathe everything Western. In my experience, once they are sold on the shop’s atmosphere, they also buy a little something, if only to show their appreciation for the way in which I preserved it.”
“You did a great job,” Delta said. “And that’s all the washi tape?” She pointed at countless glass jars filled with rolls of tape.
“Yup. I have unique offerings from Japan and Australia that you can’t get anywhere else in the country. You should see me salivate when those parcels come in. I was tempted to keep all the ones with the pandas to myself. And in the other cell, I have all the collectible erasers.”
Delta followed her into the second cell, which had a rough table against the wall where small glittery objects were lying beside old-fashioned scales and yellowing papers, folded and unfolded so many times that they were torn along the edges. A plasticized card with information warned visitors not to touch the objects because they were authentic and breakable, while also explaining that mining had often been the seed of crime as people sold fake claims or ended up in fights about gold found.
Hazel gestured across the papers. “Real stake claims donated to me by the gold-mining museum. They have a ton of those and didn’t mind me having some. They get attention here instead of sitting in an archive.”
“I love the fake gold clumps. At least I assume they are fake?”
“Created by a loving volunteer at the mining museum who also puts these into small wooden mining carts they sell as souvenirs.” Hazel gestured to the bunk bed against the wall. “There’s our offering of collectible erasers.”
Delta wanted to sit on her haunches to study the products closer, especially the miniature makeup replicas, including a blusher box that could be opened to reveal two colors and a little brush inside. But Hazel tapped her on the shoulder and gestured to follow her out of the cell, back into the main space where the sunlight through the windows gave the wooden surfaces an extra-warm glow.
Hazel pointed. “Now, there in the back we have the old umbrella stands with all the wrapping paper. Above, an old clothes rack with gift bags.”
Bags in several shapes and sizes were hung by their ribbon handles from the rack. They came in bright colors with glitter or in intricate geometric patterns that created visual depth. Delta closed in and spotted a few Christmassy ones among the offerings. Picking out one with a cute design of cocoa mugs and sweet treats, she held it up to Hazel. “Candy canes already?”
Hazel laughed. “Christmas themes sell well all year round. There’s just something quintessentially cozy about them. I’ve already scheduled some early November workshops we can do to teach people how to make menus and name tags to use on the dinner table, or teach pro-wrapping skills where we turn simple presents into gifts extraordinaire. I’ll show you my idea list later on. I’m sure you have lots you want to add.”
Delta nodded eagerly.
“But first to wrap up our tour: here’s the old weapon rack where the sheriff could grab his double-barreled shotgun, now used to hold all my wrapping ribbons, stickers, and tags. The puffy stickers are selling especially well with kids.”
Hazel smiled widely as she encompassed the whole shop with a wave of both her outstretched arms. “Now you’re free to take a closer look at whatever you want to. And yes, co-owners do get a discount.”
Delta made a beeline back to the old sheriff’s desk and took the top notebook off a stack. “These dogs are adorable.” Her finger traced the rows of small dachshunds, poodles, and Labs that marched across the hard cover. “In the city, I never got around to having a dog, you know. I was away most of the time, and it just seemed sad leaving him or her alone in the apartment all day long. I wonder if I could have a puppy here.”
She opened the cover and leafed through the pages. “Wow, every page actually has a different dog. Aw, this border collie puppy is chasing a ball!”
“Remember that it’s two for the price of one now! Speaking of, where did I put that arrow?” Hazel checked both hands and then began to look around her. “Maybe I dropped it outside?”
“Then it must be gone. There was a strong wind when I drove over here. Or someone stepped on it and it stuck to their shoe.”
Ignoring Delta’s predictions, Hazel ambled outside, scanning the pavement for the missing arrow.
Delta was completely engrossed in choosing the four notebooks she planned to purchase. Four initially seemed like a lot for someone who already had more notebooks than she knew what to do with, but in no time, she had selected six and was eyeing two more: one with dancing flamingos and one with letters that formed hidden words. Why not take them all?
Vaguely, she heard a footfall behind her, probably Hazel entering the store.
Suddenly, she felt a slight tug at her hair, and someone said, “Two for one. Yes, please.”
Turning around, Delta found herself face-to-face with a grinning man with wild blond curls and brown eyes, a dimple in his cheek. He wore a crisp, white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, and dark-blue jeans with a silver belt buckle of a running horse. He held up the bright-yellow arrow. “This was stuck to your back, half in your hair.”
Delta flushed. “It must have gotten hung up there when Hazel said hello to me. She’s looking for that arrow. I’ll take it out to her.” She reached out her hand, and the man put the arrow in it. His infuriating grin stayed in place. “I haven’t seen you here before. New to town?”
“I’m coming to live here. To run Wanted, with Hazel.”
“Really? She didn’t mention that to me.” The man looked puzzled. Delta couldn’t figure out why this man would think Hazel should have told him that Delta was moving to Tundish. Could it be her friend was dating him? Hazel hadn’t mentioned anything about it, but then again, over the past few weeks, their conversations had been focused on practical details for Delta’s move and the financial arrangements for co-ownership of Wanted, so maybe Hazel had figured she could tell her once she was in town.
Hazel’s most recent relationship had ended in heartbreak when she found out the guy had been cheating on her. Delta had assumed her friend wouldn’t have been eager to dive into something new, especially not one with a man whose athletic physique and cute dimple probably got a lot of female attention.
“Oh, there it is.” Hazel buzzed up to Delta and reached out for the arrow with a smile. “I had no idea where it had disappeared to.” Ignoring the man completely, she hurried outside again to put it in place.
To make up for her friend’s rather brusque behavior, Delta asked quickly, “Is there anything you need from the shop?”
The man picked up a notebook with peacocks, their large purple-and-turquoise feathers adorned with little sparkly gold foil elements in them. It was the first on top of the stack, and he didn’t look inside or check the price, just handed it to Delta as if he couldn’t wait to get this chore over with. “Can I have this?”
“Of course, but”—Delta knew men often didn’t like shopping, but still, he was entitled to a second notebook, under the deal advertised outside—“it’s two for the price of one, so you can pick another for free. I can find you one that matches what you already have. Blue and gold…” She wanted to dig into the stacks, to extract those spines that looked like they might offer a color match, but he waved her off. “I only need one. Can you gift wrap it for me?”
“Certainly.” Telling herself that the customer was always right, no matter how illogical their decisions might be, Delta took the notebook from his hand and walked to the cash register, feeling a little giddy at making her first sale. This was awesome, even better than she had imagined. She detected several rolls of wrapping paper stacked under the counter.
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Acknowledgments and Author’s Note
I’m grateful to all agents, editors, and authors who share online about the writing and publishing process. A special thanks to my amazing agent, Jill Marsal; my wonderful editors, Anna Michels and MJ Johnston; and the entire dedicated Sourcebooks/Poisoned Pen team, especially Katie Stutz and Shauneice Robinson; and Anne Wertheim and Dawn Adams for the adorable cover.
And thank you, reader, for picking up this book. The series as a whole combines two of my loves: stationery and the great outdoors. But in this installment, I could add another of my interests: miniatures. Tiny buildings, furniture for doll houses—I love everything on a small scale and even make some attempts at creating my own. Crafting very small objects is challenging, and at times frustrating, but also very satisfying when the result is lifelike and adorable. I just had to bring a miniature version of gold rush Tundish to Delta’s store!
I loved including some new canine characters, Buddy and Prince, also, to underline the important work canines do in search and rescue. Dogs bring a book to life for me, and I love creating their very different personalities as much as I love writing my human characters.
If you’re ever near Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, you can see the remains of its gold rush past for yourself in the authentic little towns that inspired Tundish. I’m delighted that the Paper Posse’s Wild West nicknames keep the stories alive of those remarkable women who were, as Mrs. Cassidy once put it, “seamstress by day, bank robbers by night.”
I hope a slice of small-town life brought you a pleasant diversion and you will soon want to escape again into one of my fictional worlds. Happy reading!
About the Author
Always knee-deep in notebooks and pens, multi-published cozy mystery author Vivian Conroy decided to write about any paper crafter’s dream: a stationery shop called Wanted. Her other loves, such as sweet treats, history, and hiking, equipped the series’ world with a bakery, gold miners’ museum, and outdoor activities. Never too far from a keyboard, Vivian loves to connect with readers via Twitter under @VivWrites.
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Vivian Conroy, The Glitter End
