How Perfect You Are (Carlson College Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  How Perfect You Are

  by Isabel Fox

  Copyright © 2019 by Isabel Fox

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the author

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2019

  Contact:

  isabelfoxauthor.com

  [email protected]

  For my husband, for all of the love and support you’ve given me,

  all the random questions you answered, and especially for

  giving me the motivation to keep writing when

  I just wanted to hurl my computer across the room.

  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  1

  It was an early morning in October when I woke up suddenly. My bedroom was pitch black, with not even a faint glow from the moon managing to shine past the thick fog that had settled overnight. For a moment I lay very still trying to identify a noise or a cold draft that might have woken me while my eyes adjusted to the dark.

  My room was quiet and warm though, so I willed myself to go back to sleep. I burrowed deep under my down comforter, shifting slightly to realign myself with the spot on the sheets my body had warmed. I closed my eyes and had just started to drift off again when I heard the familiar sound of a text alert coming from my phone.

  I considered ignoring it and had rolled over and tucked myself even deeper under the covers when I thought better of it. Perhaps it was later in the morning than I thought and my manager from the inn where I worked was texting me some kind of schedule change for the day. Maybe, if I was really lucky, the place had burned down in a freak and non-injurious fire so I wouldn’t have to go in at all. That would certainly be worth being woken up.

  My iPhone was still glowing on my bedside table, the blurry outlines of a text just visible on the screen. I fumbled around for my glasses, which I normally left on the nightstand. Not finding them, I settled for grabbing my phone and holding it close to my face.

  The time, I noticed, was almost four a.m. I still had two hours before I had to be at work, thank God. I unlocked my phone and pulled up my texts.

  I don’t need to borrow your glasses to see how perfect you are.

  Confused, I read the message twice. I checked the number, which said simply, “Unknown,” with no actual number in the contact information. I sat up, pulling the comforter with me. Surely this message must be a wrong number, though even in my sleepy state I noted the strange irony of receiving a message about borrowing glasses when I couldn’t find my own.

  I glanced towards my slightly open door, looking for the sliver of light from down the hall that would indicate Amber, my night owl of a roommate, was still awake. The hall appeared dark, though, and everything was quiet. It seemed Amber was, for once, asleep.

  Feeling more than a little disgruntled, both at being awoken early in the first place and that the reason for my early wake-up call was some stupid text that was probably spam, I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Ten minutes of tossing and turning later, though, it became obvious that my brain had determined it was done sleeping. Rather than fighting my awakened state only to manage to drift off three minutes before my alarm would inevitably go off, I elected to drag myself out of bed for an ultra-early start to the day.

  I slipped out of my room and into the bathroom midway down the hall between my bedroom and Amber’s. Not finding my glasses there, either, I quickly put in my contacts so I could actually see. Then I made my way downstairs, trying to be as quiet as I could. The one-hundred-year-old staircase made this something of a challenge, with every other step making some kind of creak or groan.

  The former home of a small-time farmer, the tiny house Amber and I rented had been built sometime around the turn of the last century. One of several older farmhouses that dotted the outskirts of town, ours was one of the few in the area that hadn’t been completely gutted and refinished in whatever constituted farmhouse chic these days. Mr. Wilkes, our positively ancient landlord, wasn’t exactly the type to deck his property out in shiplap, subway tile, and open shelving, or do much of anything at all except the bare minimum of maintenance to keep the place legally inhabitable.

  The stairs in our little house creaked, the wood floors sagged and moaned, the windows were old, single sash ones that resulted in our heating bill rivaling the national debt, and it could have used a good coat of paint. There was also a decent chance that none of the electrical work was up to code and we would one day be subject to the same sort of freak (and hopefully still non-injurious) fire I sometimes wished upon my workplace.

  I loved the house for its undeniable charm and quaintness, though, other shortcomings aside. I had passed many an hour on the massive, covered front porch with a book and a cup of coffee. The clawfoot tub in the bathroom was to die for, and every room boasted plenty of light from the large windows.;

  Mr. Wilkes was also apparently woefully unaware of the amount of rent other landlords in our college town were charging for tiny shoebox apartments half the size of our house, resulting in the rent steal of the decade.

  Downstairs, I made my way to the kitchen and decided to opt for some calming tea rather than my usual coffee. I filled the kettle with water and set it on the stove. While waiting for it to boil, I browsed idly through my Instagram feed (Cat looking stoic. Musing selfie. Dogs playing in leaves. Pouting selfie. This is totally what I look like with no makeup selfie. Are these squats making my butt look better in these leggings?) until I heard the very beginnings of a whistle.

  Pulling the kettle from the stove eye before it could get too loud, I stuck my hand in the old tin container on the counter that held the tea bags. We must have been running low because I had to feel around for one. I finally came up with some strange tea Amber must have brought home from her job at the local health food grocer. The label said “Fennel Spice.”

  “Sounds more like a soup than a tea,” I said, directing my words at Willow, the fluffy gray cat Amber and I had adopted when we first moved in together a year ago. The cat had slipped into the kitchen and was sitting by her food bowl, clearly expecting a post-midnight snack.

  While my soup/tea steeped, I tossed a small handful of cat kibble into Willow’s bowl. She began to inhale it immediately as though she hadn’t eaten in weeks, tho
ugh her rotundity certainly suggested otherwise.

  “So much for that diet the vet said you need to be on,” I murmured to Willow. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Amber if you don’t.” After a quick stroke of her velvety head, I took my tea and retreated to the living room.

  The living room was filled with slightly mismatched furniture evenly spaced along the edges of the wide planked floors. All of our things were comprised of second-hand castoffs from various relatives or else were Goodwill and Craigslist finds. The couch had once sat in Amber’s father’s law office. The leather was well worn and a few patches were faintly discolored, but I loved to run my hand over the buttery material. At one point this couch had probably been worth several thousand dollars, so I considered it fortunate we had laid claim to it before Amber’s older brother, in his final year at Carlson College, the same school where we were juniors, could haul it off to his trendy penthouse apartment downtown.

  I sank back into the cushions and took a long slurp of tea. It was disgusting. So disgusting, in fact, that before I could stop myself I actually choked and sputtered, sending a spray of the devil water splashing over my legs and onto the coffee table.

  “Ugh,” I groaned, using the sleeve of my shirt to mop the droplets off my legs. I got up and went to grab a paper towel from the kitchen. While there I dumped the rest of my tea down the drain and made a mental note to tell Amber that under no circumstances would any tea with fennel in the description be allowed in the house again.

  When I came back into the living room armed with paper towels, my phone was glowing again. Another text.

  Ouch. Hot?

  What was this? Ouch, hot? What did that mean? Suddenly I froze, a strange feeling coming over me. Was someone watching me? Had someone who could see me right this very second thought my impression of a cherub in a garden fountain was due to burning my mouth on a hot drink?

  My heart suddenly pounding, I quickly hurried to the light switch by the stairs and shut off the lights. I waited a moment and allowed my eyes to adjust to the dark. Once they had, I peered out the windows behind the couch, which would be the only way someone could see me in the living room.

  On the porch, I could make out the shadowy shape of the porch swing and the hanging basket of dead impatiens I had been meaning to get rid of. Beyond that, the fog was too thick to see much further. I took the lack of a menacing figure clutching a knife to be a good sign, though.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. It was just a weird coincidence, surely. I did have a habit of entering random sweepstakes and giveaways online every once in awhile when I was bored at work. Sometimes my phone number would end up on some spammer’s list and I’d be inundated with calls and texts offering me a fabulous rate on life insurance, informing me of my all expenses paid trip to Jamaica if I would just wire a small processing fee of $500, or a chance to get rid of my student loan debt once and for all.

  Surely this was something like that, though I had to admit that none of the spam texts I had ever received before had been as lacking in fabulous offers and as oddly relevant to my current situation as the two I had received that morning.

  Not able to come up with a logical explanation, I elected to push it from my mind. I had too much to do that day to get hung up on some weird texts.

  I decided to forgo a new cup of tea and get a jump start on my daily coffee intake instead. Once the pot began percolating I went back upstairs to take an extra-long shower. As I started the process of preparing myself for work, I managed to forget about the text completely.

  2

  "No, no, no,” Susan, my manager, squawked. She sounded not unlike an angry parrot. The new employee she was addressing, Peter or Paul or Pablo or whatever his name was, stopped dead in his tracks and looked alarmed.

  “Not like that,” Susan huffed, gesturing vaguely to the tray of mimosas Peter Paul Pablo was carefully holding in front of him with two hands tightly gripping the rim of the tray. She raised her perfectly manicured fingers to her temples and began pressing against them, her eyes closed as though she was in a great deal of pain.

  “Umm,” Peter Paul Pablo shot me a slightly panicked look. “Not like…what?”

  “Cassie, fix this,” Susan said to me with a wave of her hand before turning on her impressively high stilettos and clacking away.

  I offered Peter Paul Pablo a look of pity as I emerged from behind the front desk where I had been organizing receipts. Holding my hands out, I took the tray from him and demonstrated how to balance it using the tips of my fingers.

  “Like this while transporting it,” I told him, holding the tray off to the side at shoulder height. “Switch to balancing it on your palm and lower to belly button level when you get there. Don’t ever let guests take their own drinks from the tray. They will drop something and they will blame you.”

  Passing the tray back, I watched the poor guy struggle to reposition his hand until he managed to mimic me.

  “But this seems way less balanced,” he said uneasily, eyeing the long-stemmed champagne flutes as if he expected them to demonstrate agreement by toppling over in a dramatic fashion.

  “I know it seems like that, but I promise you get used to it,” I tried to sound reassuring. “Susan thinks it looks more impressive. She saw the wait staff at some fancy New York restaurant do it this way, and now we have to as well. At least she gave up on having us try to balance plates all the way up our arms like they do at Mexican restaurants. My arms were way too short for that. I could only manage to get two on there at a time.”

  “For real?” Peter Paul Pablo grinned and started taking a shaky step towards the patio. I trailed behind, warily eyeing the tray as if I would actually be able to catch the mimosas if he dropped them.

  “I’m just teasing. Don’t get me wrong, Susan did want us to try it, but Danny, you know, the chef, told her that he would stop making her a Monte Cristo every afternoon if she did that. I guess he realized how many dishes he would have to remake because we would have been dropping things right and left.”

  Peter Paul Pablo let out a hearty chuckle. I winced as I saw the tray wobble slightly, but thankfully the flutes stayed upright. I watched from a safe distance as Peter Paul Pablo used his free hand to open the front door, then navigated the wide stairs of the front porch and made his way over to where Wendy Burgess, a wealthy and somewhat batty local regular, and her two friends were sitting around a game of what looked to be poker at one of the marble topped tables that dotted the front garden.

  Moving to lean against the door frame, I kept watching as the mimosas were distributed. Wendy was talking animatedly and Peter Paul Pablo gave her a friendly smile and said something in return. He gave a polite nod and started to move away from the table when Wendy reached out and grasped his bicep in her tanned, well-manicured hand.

  I groaned inwardly. I had forgotten to tell Peter Paul Pablo about Drop and Go. It was a technique Amanda, one of my favorite coworkers, and I had developed to avoid getting trapped in long, boring conversations with the guests. Anything you bring them, be it food, extra towels, or more pillow mints, drop it and go. Be polite, but use minimal words. Absolutely no small talk. Only brief eye contact, a quick smile, and nod. Don’t stand there for too long so they don’t have a chance to physically restrain you.

  Sure enough, Peter Paul Pablo, not knowing all the unwritten rules yet, had said just a few words too many. Now it looked like Wendy had him in a death grip. Her companions were beaming at him, delighted with their young, handsome new friend. Sighing to myself, I shook my head and retreated back to my spot behind the front desk. I picked up the stack of receipts I had been organizing by date and continued my sorting.

  I had been working at The Walker Inn since my senior year of high school. In spite of Susan-induced working conditions that should have earned us a spot on Amnesty International’s watch list, I had stayed throughout my time in college.

  Amber thought I was a glutton for torture for sticking around. In reality, it was more
the fact that as one of the senior most employees (God knew only a handful of us managed to last more than a year), and one of the few Susan seemed to tolerate (like was far too strong of a word), I got paid surprisingly well for only working part-time. I also had the flexibility to work around my classes. It didn’t hurt that the owners, Tobias and June Walker, were possibly the nicest people in the world. They treated me, and the rest of the staff, like their grandchildren, inspiring a surprising sense of loyalty in us few old timers.

  Unfortunately, this grandparent-like level of affection and over-tolerance also extended to Susan for some unfathomable reason. Any complaints about Susan’s insanity went mostly unheard.

  “Oh, she means well, the poor dear. She just works so hard and gets so stressed, and sometimes she takes it out on others,” June Walker would say, while her husband tsked in agreement, shaking his head in a “what are you going to do?” fashion.

  I was long since past complaining about much of anything, though, and now I usually managed to laugh at Susan’s antics rather than let them get to me. Another major positive was the fact that amongst those of us who had stuck around for more than a few months, there was a certain sense of camaraderie and fellowship. I could only assume it was akin to a group of soldiers who had survived boot camp together, or something. It made us pretty close for coworkers.

  It was only in the early hours of the morning, when I was grumpy and desperate for a few more hours of sleep like I had been earlier that morning, that I tended to wish I had other employment.

  I was working the early shift today. The six a.m. start time was loathed by most of the Walkers’ employees, but I actually didn’t mind it too much. Waking up at five-thirty, which I had determined was the absolute latest I could sleep and still make it on time and looking presentable, was certainly a pain, but there were some advantages.

  The early hour ensured that most guests weren’t awake for the first part of the shift and thus not able to annoy me. Check ins didn’t begin until eleven, either. The main extent of my duties usually wound up being entering reservations on the computer, organizing paperwork, trying to keep Susan from compelling the entire staff to quit at once, checking guests out (which was only unpleasant if they complained about having to pay the minibar fee when they only had “One teensy little bottle of water!”) and appearing, as Susan put it, “pleasant and available for our guests,” making it unclear if I was supposed to look like a front desk manager or a hooker.