Lost & Found : A Private Eye Bookstore Mystery #1 (A Cozy Mystery)

Chapter One

Ivy St. John was lost and had been for some time. The taxi coasted along slowly on the empty road. Ivy sat in the front with the driver, Mike. She hated to sit in the back for long rides.

"We're still looking for River Road, right?" asked Mike.

"Yes." Ivy glanced at the folded paper in her hand even though she knew what it said. The side facing up was her mother's acceptance of Ivy's self-imposed visit with directions to her new apartment. The side folded underneath, the side Ivy knew by heart but refused to acknowledge, was her email to her mom, full of lies.

Her mom wasn't one to use road name all too often or distances. Landmarks, like a barn and a diner, were how she navigated. Ivy had a compass in her pack that, while helpful during a trek across steppes, was useless with her mom as her guide.

"If we pass the Double TT Diner then we've gone too far," she said.

"Passed that a minute ago." Mike slowed down and executed a U-turn in the middle of the road. No one else was on the road to protest. It wasn't early, almost noon actually, but this area, two hours north of Philadelphia, was severely underpopulated.

They both pointed when they spied the diner. A moment later, Mike switched on his left-turn blinker with a grunt of satisfaction and turned onto River Road. The taxi slowed as he maneuvered a sharp turn that also inclined. The tall pine trees hugged the road and hung their limbs overhead in a claustrophobic canopy. At another turn the sign appeared. It was carved in wood with the letters in relief painted a sharp blue – Welcome to the Village of Miller Springs.

"This is it," she said, finally relaxing into her seat.

"Just tell me when to stop," said Mike.

They passed a realtor's office, a sign for a metal works studio and several small house set back from the road. Then there trees and rocks, trees to the left and an exposed rock face to the right. Ivy could have held her hand out the window and touched the rock. The road continued its sinuous path with several blind turns and swells and dips that road the mountain the town was built on.

Her mom was a newly official resident of Miller Springs, although she had lived in the town for the past year. When she retired from her job as the high school principal's secretary, her mom had sold her house and moved in with her best friend who lived in Miller Springs. Ivy almost cried when she read the email asking for her permission to sell the home her mom had worked so hard to buy. The internet café in Estonia was not a place for crying so she had quickly responded with her assent and went back to her hotel to cry in private.

When her parents split up and her father kept the house for his pregnant girlfriend, Ivy and her mom had lived in a one-bedroom apartment for three years until the divorce settlement came through. Her mom finally got their share of the house's value and she went out the next day and bought the small house near Ivy's high school they both admired. It had sat empty for years and was yearning for some love and care. They had turned it into a home. It was where Ivy returned to after her assignments. She travelled too much to bother with a place of her own and her mom loved having her decamp to the house for a month or two in between six, nine or twelve-month gigs. Ivy wasn't able to swing a trip stateside before the house was sold. It was probably for the best.

Her mom hadn't properly explained why she was retiring and selling the house at the same time. She had bought it outright so it wasn't a money problem. Ivy suspected that her mom didn't want to be in the front office of the high school and see her ex-husband's children every day or their mom. Retiring would have solved that but their home was on the walking route from their old house to the school. Her mom never did anything halfway and moving away was the only guarantee.