You wouldn’t think a bookstore would have regulars, but mine did. Apparently, I’d inherited them, along with the store and the cat. They’d been gathering there in the mornings with their coffee and tea for decades. I guess the coffee shop down the street didn’t have the same ambiance.

“What’s going on down there?” Cordelia Deering looked at me with bright sparkling blue eyes. Her twin sister Hattie, stood beside her and, dressed almost identically, gave me the exact same look of expectant excitement. The women were in their mid-eighties, but had more energy than people who were decades younger. They were always up for hearing a tidbit of juicy gossip and liked to keep up on town happenings. This particular happening, though, I hoped wouldn’t be too much of a shock.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news,” I said as I dug the key out of my pocket and put it in the shiny brass lock of the antique oak door of the bookshop.

“Oh?” Bingham Thorndike, another of the regulars, raised a bushy white brow.

I pushed the door open and gestured for them to go inside. Cordelia and Hattie went first, then Josiah Barrows, the retired Postmaster, then Bingham, or Bing as we all called him.

They all looked at me expectantly as I turned the sign in the door to ‘Open’ and switched on the inside lights. I took a deep breath of the comforting musky-vanilla scent of leather and old paper.

“So, what’s going on down at the library?” Josiah broke the silence. I was surprised he didn’t already know since he seemed to know everything that went on in town, sometimes even before it actually happened.

“I’m afraid Lavinia took a fall.” I bit my lower lip and tried to figure out a gentle way to break the news. After a few seconds, I hadn’t come up with anything so I just blurted it out. “She’s dead.”

Hattie and Cordelia gasped. Bing sipped his coffee. Josiah rubbed his chin. Pandora jumped up on the counter next to my nickel-plated old-fashioned cash register and let out a mournful wail.

“Mercy sakes,” Hattie said as she maneuvered her way past the chair toward the sofa.

“Poor Lavinia,” Cordelia whispered.

I’d recently added a set of purple micro-suede chairs and a sofa to the front of the shop for customers who wanted to sit and read a book while browsing. The four of them settled somberly into the plush seating.

I watched them sip from their Styrofoam cups, their faces in thoughtful repose. They looked comfortable on the sofa. At home. I started to wonder if maybe I had made it too comfortable for them.

“You sure she fell?” Josiah wrinkled his brow at me.

I nodded. “She was getting up in years and not so steady anymore. I found her at the bottom of the stairs—the ones in the back.”