Chime and Punishment Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE CLOCK SHOP MYSTERIES

  “A fast-moving story, and a great start to an intriguing new series.”

  —Sheila Connolly, New York Times bestselling author of the Orchard Mysteries, the Museum Mysteries, and the County Cork Mysteries

  “Holmes creates the perfect contemporary cozy—with a smart and engaging heroine, a quirky and mysterious Berkshires town, and a cast of characters to rival any who live in Cabot Cove. Don’t waste another minute—this is your new favorite series.”

  —Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha, Anthony and Mary Higgins Clark award-winning author of the Jane Ryland series

  “You will be on the edge of your seat until this murder is solved.”

  —A Cozy Girl Reads

  “Delightful . . . The story, with a hunky barber, Ruth’s childhood friends, and conflicts between the new town manager and the ‘old’ Orchard, winds up to a suspenseful and satisfying end.”

  —Edith Maxwell, Agatha Award–nominated and national bestselling author of the Local Foods Mysteries

  “Take one tightly wound plot, a charming clock shop in the Berkshires, a woman you want to be your best friend, and you have Just Killing Time.”

  —Sherry Harris, Agatha Award–nominated author of the Sarah Winston Garage Sale Mysteries

  “With its bucolic setting, engaging characters, and clever plotting, Julianne Holmes has crafted a mystery to stand the test of time.”

  —Jessie Crockett, national bestselling author of the Sugar Grove Mysteries

  “An intriguing premise, a fun mystery, and a town and heroine with heart.”

  —Barbara Ross, author of the Maine Clambake Mysteries

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Julianne Holmes

  JUST KILLING TIME

  CLOCK AND DAGGER

  CHIME AND PUNISHMENT

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Penguin Random House LLC

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the B colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698164338

  First Edition: August 2017

  Cover art by Cathy Gendron; Clock Face © by harlowbutler/Shutterstock

  Book design by Laura K. Corless

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To all who call me Aunt Julie:

  Chase, Mallory, Becca, Tori, Harrison, Emma, Evan, Alex, and Brandon. I love you all to the moon and back.

  Always remember—dreams do come true.

  contents

  Praise for the Clock Shop Mysteries

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Julianne Holmes

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  acknowledgments

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  about the author

  acknowledgments

  Writing this series has been a true delight. While writing is a solitary activity, getting published is not. Were it not for the following people, you would not be holding this book in your hand.

  Tom Colgan, Sarah Blumenstock, Stacy Edwards, Randie Lipkin, Grace House, and everyone else at Berkley Prime Crime. Writing a series at Berkley Prime Crime was a dream of mine for many years. You’ve helped that dream come true.

  Allison Janice, thank you for helping Ruth come to life.

  Cathy Gendron, thank you for your wonderful cover art.

  My agent, John Talbot. He helps me navigate these waters.

  The Wicked Cozy Authors: Jessica Crockett Estevao, Sherry Harris, Liz Mugavero, Edith Maxwell, and Barbara Ross. Your friendship, support, encouragement, and tough love mean the world to me. WickedCozyAuthors.com

  The Wicked accomplices: Sheila Connolly, Kim Gray, and Jane Haertel.

  My blogmates at Live to Write/Write to Live (nhwn.wordpress .com) and Killer Characters (killercharacters.com).

  David and Susan Roberts. My trip to the clock tower was invaluable—thank you both. David and his brother run the Clockfolk of New England, in case you want to visit real clockmakers.

  Sisters in Crime, especially the New England chapter. I am so grateful and proud to be part of this organization.

  Mystery Writers of America, another wonderful support organization.

  Jason Allen-Forrest, my first reader and dear friend.

  Scott Forrest-Allen, thank you for your title help!

  The mystery readers I’ve met while writing this series. I’ve met you at Crime Bake, at Malice Domestic, at Left Coast Crime, at Bouchercon, online, and at book events. You are the reason I write. Thank you for loving the folks in Orchard as much as I do.

  My friends at StageSource, and in the Boston theater community. I love that you are so excited about my alter ego, the mystery writer. Thank you for your support.

  Last but not least, I am blessed with an amazing army of friends and family. Thank you all for being part of my life and being part of this adventure.

  A special thanks to my parents, Paul and Cindy Hennrikus, for being supportive of my dreams. I am so lucky that you are my parents.

  chapter 1

  “Time isn’t going to move any quicker with you staring at the clocks, Ruth,” Nadia Wint said, looking up from her laptop to throw me some side-eye from underneath her black bangs and heavy makeup.

  “Today is winding day. Maybe I should get a jump on it,” I said. I reached under the front counter of the Cog & Sprocket for the winding keys to the row of banjo clocks we had displayed on the left-hand wall of the shop. They ranged in age, in manufacturer, and in worth. But they were all my pride and joy. Especially since they were all synchronized and running like, well, like clocks.

  Nadia reached out and grabbed my upper arm. “Ruth, stop. Dealing with you is bad enough this morning. If you wind all the clocks, Pat is going to jump out of his skin, and I don’t need that.”

  Our social media/communications/marketing maven was right, of course, in her hipster, twenty-going
-on-forty way. Pat, the Cog & Sprocket’s general handyman, took his jobs at the shop seriously. Winding day was his, and had been ever since my grandfather died last October. At the very least I needed to wait until Pat came in, then offer my help. Problem was, he wasn’t coming in for another hour, and I had nothing else to do. The shop was clean, my apartment upstairs was tidy, and I was too distracted to take on a repair job.

  “Why don’t you go out for a run?” Nadia said, biting the inside of her cheek. Three times a week I got in my running outfit, filled my water bottle, and stepped outside, determined to get past week two of my 5K running program. Something always distracted me, usually the inevitable temptation of a steaming cup of coffee at the Sleeping Latte. In March I decided to call it my Running for Coffee program, but I hadn’t told Nadia that.

  “I’m showered and dressed,” I whined, slumping gracelessly onto the counter and feeling utterly useless.

  “The party starts at noon. Not sure why you felt the need to get dressed by eight. You’re not usually a morning person,” Nadia said, steadily typing away.

  “Nor are you, Nadia.”

  “You’re right. I’ll own it,” she said, ceasing her relentless typing for a moment to look up at me. “I’m a nervous wreck. I was lying in bed, going through lists in my head, and decided I may as well get up and come over here, where I can actually do something. Tell you what—I could really use one of Nancy’s breakfast sandwiches. Would you go down to the Sleeping Latte to pick one up for me?”

  Eggs, cheese, bacon on fresh Italian bread, oozing butter. My stomach gurgled at the thought of the sandwich, and I realized I was hungry.

  “All right. You win. I’m going to take a walk and stop bothering you,” I said, tossing my phone into my going-down-the-street bag with a flourish and a sigh. My going-down-the-street bag contained money, an ID, a notebook, and lip gloss. It weighed twenty pounds less than my normal ready-for-anything bag. It also made a dramatic exit much easier. “I hope that makes you both happy.”

  The effort was lost on my other morning companion. Bezel, the gray cat who lived with me in my clock shop, gave me a cold, hard stare and then blinked her eyes, hard. Her yowl was less “It will all be okay” support, and more “For the love of Mike, get yourself together, Ruth!” She was, as always, correct. I needed to pull it together. After all, today was just another day. Another day on the path to my dream coming true.

  The Clock Tower Signing Ceremony was scheduled for noon. Of course, Nadia was as nervous as I was. This whole extravaganza was her idea, after all.

  Well, not the whole thing. The idea of restoring the clock tower, thereby ensuring that my grandfather’s dream came true—that was mostly me. Thomas Clagan, G.T. to me—for “Grandpa Thom”—left me his shop, the Cog & Sprocket, when he died last fall. He also left me his lifelong dream, a dream he’d been trying to make a reality for the last few months of his life. How could I not take up that mantle? Especially when it seemed like there were a few people in Orchard who didn’t want it to happen. That got my back up and hardened my resolve.

  Dreams like this came at a price, and fund-raising had been tough. We’d gotten a few influxes of cash over the past few months, but clock towers are expensive even when we’re donating the man power. We were close to cutting the dancing figures—a huge part of the design—when Nadia had had her brainstorm on a dreary April day: “Let’s get sponsors.”

  “Sponsors? Like have banners hanging out the window? Have the figures that come out on the hour carrying signs?”

  “No, not those kinds of sponsors. But honestly, that’s not a bad idea. I’ll file it away in case this doesn’t work. No, I’m talking about people paying to etch their names on clock parts. We’ll figure out which. Maybe we could have people sign strips of metal with their names and weld them on something? Would that screw things up?”

  “What makes you think folks would be willing to pay to have their names where no one could see them?”

  “People want a reason to be proud of their town, a part of their community. They want to be a part of that. They want to leave a legacy. And we would social media it up, of course.”

  “Social media it up” was a Nadia term for taking pictures, writing clever captions, sharing them, and generally creating a buzz. I may have doubted her at one point, but in the past six months, I’d seen what Nadia could do. Not only was the Cog & Sprocket busy beyond any reasonable expectations I may have had, but other businesses in the area were benefiting as well. Nadia had adopted Orchard, and its inhabitants, as her new hometown. She still tried to pretend she was too hipster chic to really care, but I knew better.

  “Nadia, I’m not sure . . .”

  “Ruth, when are you going to get it? This isn’t just about a clock tower. This is about Orchard getting its heart beating again.”

  “Orchard getting its heart beating again? Did you just come up with that?” I’d said, cocking an eyebrow at her.

  “No, Freddie Hamilton wrote it on her blog last week.”

  “Freddie Hamilton has a blog?” Freddie Hamilton—Orchard native and rising baking superstar over at the Sleeping Latte—was a bit of a flibbertigibbet, mildly put. She and Nadia were the same age, but whereas I’d trust Nadia with my life, I wouldn’t trust Freddie to hold a thought. I couldn’t imagine her writing a paragraph, never mind an entire post. She could barely hold up her end of a conversation. That said, the girl could bake.

  “You’ve got to get with it, Ruth,” Nadia’d said, smoothing her fingers over her sleek ponytail. “Having a blog isn’t that big a deal. In fact, it can be a little old-school. But Freddie is mixing it up, posting photos. Anyway, she took a picture of you polishing up the old bell, and posted that. Not sure if it was you, or the clock tower, but it went viral.”

  Nadia bent over her phone for a moment and then handed it to me. Sure enough, a lovely picture of me, wild red hair half clamped down by safety glasses, a shop jacket covering my dress, leggings tucked into my Doc Martens.

  “It would be swell if someone let me know they were taking my picture,” I’d said, feeling a bit exposed. “This is a little frightening.”

  “Swell? How old are you, anyway? Half the reason it works is because it’s an action shot.”

  “Great. Ruth Clagan in action. Anyway, tell me more about this idea.”

  “We get some folks to sign up in advance. Make it more expensive closer to the day—let’s call it Signing Day. Then the day of, we can get those things Pat uses all the time. The things with the different tips—”

  “Dremels?” I said. Not as precise as some of the tools I used, but very handy for a lot of the restoration work we took on.

  “Dremels. Right. With the engraving tip. We’ll get a few of them and have people etch their names on these strips of metal. We can attach them to something, maybe the clock weights, later. We’ll charge different amounts for different-sized panels. Make it a party. Raffle off something or other. It will drum up interest. May get folks to contribute more to the fund.”

  “But that sort of etching won’t last forever,” I said, thinking about the handheld tool we planned to use.

  “Of course it won’t. But they’re easy to use, and that’s important. For the next fifty years, people will walk by the clock tower and tell people that their name is up there.”

  • • •

  I had to learn never to question Nadia and her schemes. We’d announced Signing Day for the first Saturday in June. Today. We’d thought we would have a dozen or so folks sign up. Instead, we had close to fifty, with dozens more making donations to the fund. It was overwhelming on so many levels. No wonder I hadn’t been able to sleep past six this morning. Now Nadia and Bezel were kicking me out of my own shop. Fine. The Sleeping Latte called to me, and who was I not to listen?

  “I’ll be back,” I said, heading out the front door. Nadia barely looked up from her laptop on t
he counter. Bezel turned and offered me a generous view of her backside as she sauntered lazily toward the back of the shop.

  • • •

  I walked out the front door and stood on the front porch for a full minute, letting the fresh air and small-town charm of Orchard wash over me. The Cog & Sprocket wasn’t the largest shop in town, but we did have the best view. We were on the corner where three roads intersected. A river ran behind the shop, the roaring current a constant layer of white noise. I’d come to depend on that sound to help me sleep at night.

  Across the street, Been Here, Read That, the newest business on the block, was still dark. Beckett Green, its owner, would be in soon enough to open up. Hopefully our paths wouldn’t cross until I’d had a little more coffee. Beckett was trying to be a better citizen of Orchard, but trust was still an issue.

  If Been Here, Read That was quiet, the Corner Market was anything but. Ada and Mac Clark’s grocery store was open from seven thirty in the morning to nine o’clock in the evening, six days a week. On Sundays they closed at six. The success of the business was both welcome to the Clarks, and overwhelming, especially since their son, Jack, was just six months old. They had hired some help, but I wasn’t surprised to see Mac Clark himself sweeping off his front porch. He looked up and waved when he saw me. I waved back and smiled a genuine smile.

  The old Town Hall sat in between the two stores. I looked at it, and as it always did, my heart skipped a beat. As a result of a series of legalities I still had trouble wrapping my brain around, I had inherited the building last fall. Kim Gray, the town manager, and I had wrestled over what that ownership meant, but since the New Year, the path had been clear. I created a nonprofit so we could apply for grants. Both Harris University and the town of Orchard were tenants, helping with operating support. I’d used the opportunity to start the renovation of the clock tower. From here, that work was barely visible since the clock wasn’t running yet. But I knew the hours that had been spent on this project already, and smiled in anticipation.