Take the Trophy and Run Read online

  She gasped at a message constructed of words and letters cut from a newspaper and sloppily pasted onto a plain piece of paper. Blobs of dried glue containing colored donut sprinkles and what appeared to be coffee stains at the bottom of the page added to the note’s mystery. Amber held her breath and read.

  gnorman has been gnome gnapped.

  You must not interfere with his journey until all conditions are met.

  gnorman must stay where he is for four days.

  Then you will receive another note.

  If he is moved, I will f ind him and he will be harmed!

  This is a warning. Do not interfere or you will be very sorry.

  Amber flipped the paper over for more, but it was blank.

  No demand for money had been made, no conditions to be met had been listed, nor had there been any mention of the missing trophy. The note also failed to mention Stan’s hated sombrero, although she didn’t know whether that was good or bad.

  In case she had missed something, she read the note again, halting on the word journey. Every gnome owner in the world knew about the famous gnome who disappeared from his owner’s garden to become a world traveler with photos of him at many popular tourist destinations around the world mailed back to the owner.

  Then, as suddenly as he disappeared, he mysteriously returned to his home unharmed and none the worse for his adventure. Airlines and travel agencies had picked up on the story, and a number of them still use a gnome in their advertising. Now, years later, the trend of disappearing gnomes was old news, and garden gnomes around the world were safe.

  Amber slipped the note under her arm, picked up her purse and tote bag, and went inside. As soon as she turned off the alarm, instead of her usual routine of dusting the displays, she headed for the phone and dialed Stan’s auto shop.

  She didn’t give him a chance to finish the usual spiel of greeting before she blurted out, “I just got a ransom note for Gnorman, except there isn’t a ransom.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I also have a clue. The Gnome Gnapper loves coffee and donuts.”

  A silence hung over the line, then he sighed. “That means pretty much everyone in the garden club.”

  Amber stared at the note in her hand, feeling her enthusiasm deflate. “I guess.” It wasn’t like she could look for the donut with the missing sprinkles to lead her to her missing gnome. “This note is so strange. I’m not sure what it’s really saying.” Just as she opened her mouth to read it to Stan, the other line on her phone lit up. “Can I put you on hold? I have to take another call.” She pushed the hold button and was halfway through the greeting for her store when Naomi’s voice interrupted her.

  “I found your gnome,” Naomi said, her voice trembling with excitement. “He’s here beside the fountain. I don’t know how he got here, but when I went outside to water my hanging fuchsias I saw him. Someone must have put him there in the middle of the night. I have to tell you I love the little costume you dressed him in. I’ll get someone to help me take him over to Becky’s yard right now. I thought you should know that.”

  “No!” Amber nearly shouted into the phone, then pressed her teeth into her lower lip and lowered her tone to a normal speaking level. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to deafen you. You can’t move Gnorman. I just got a note that says I can’t move him for four days or something bad will happen. It doesn’t say what, but I don’t want to find out the hard way.” She squeezed her eyes shut, not sure if praying about a ceramic statue was something God wanted to hear, but she muttered a quick prayer of thanks that he’d been found, then cleared her throat. “Does he still have the trophy strapped to his hand? Or the sombrero?”

  Amber closed her eyes to picture the section of the retirement village where Naomi lived. Each ground floor suite had a small backyard with short fences dividing each unit from the other. The rear of the properties opened to the community’s common ground, where Naomi and a few other residents maintained a garden with a small fountain that backed up to the center’s small golf course. She could almost appreciate the irony of the situation—the garden club held most of their meetings at the Lake Bliss Retirement Village amenities building, which was across the complex from where Gnorman had been found.

  “The trophy is gone,” Naomi said, “but a picture of it is taped to his hand. I don’t know why you’re talking about a sombrero. He’s wearing a hat that matches perfectly with his Pilgrim costume. He’s absolutely adorable.”

  “That’s not the costume I put on him. Tell me, is there a note anywhere?”

  “I don’t know. Let me get my binoculars.”

  Amber gritted her teeth while the phone clunked in her ear. She had no idea why Naomi would have binoculars, nor did she want to hear what Naomi used them for, but she was glad they were handy. Naomi’s footsteps echoed, followed by the shuffling of Naomi pushing the curtains aside, then the mini blinds clattering as Naomi pulled the string to raise them up. Amber couldn’t help it, she shifted her weight from foot to foot at the sound of Naomi’s footsteps getting louder as she returned to the phone.

  “There’s an envelope in his other hand. I thought it was part of the costume, but maybe it’s not.”

  “Don’t move him. I’ll be right there.” She hung up the phone as quickly as she could without slamming it in Naomi’s ear, grabbed her purse, and ran for the door.

  At the moment she touched the handle she remembered about Stan, whom she’d put on hold. She nearly tripped as she turned around and flew back to the phone.

  “That was Naomi. She found Gnorman. He’s at the retirement village. I have to go.”

  “I’ll meet you there.” A click sounded in her ear before she could tell Stan that wasn’t necessary.

  She didn’t need Stan’s help moving Gnorman, because Gnorman couldn’t be moved. The issue wasn’t Gnorman; it was the garden club’s trophy, which had been engraved with every winner of The Spring Fling contest since its inception thirty-something years ago, before the club bought a computer for record keeping. The Spring Fling trophy was as important to the garden club as the Stanley Cup was to the NHL, except the Bloomfield Garden Club’s trophy remained small with only one name added yearly, versus the names of every player on the winning team. Because the names were engraved on the trophy, the club used it as their permanent record, which made the trophy irreplaceable.

  The year she had joined the garden club she’d been entrusted with having the trophy engraved, adding the new winner’s name, then placing it prominently in their yard on a pedestal. One of the older ladies had accidentally dropped the pedestal the day of the party, and it had been a last minute inspiration to get Gnorman and strap the trophy to his hand, having her garden gnome triumphantly hold it up rather than trying to balance it on a rock. Everyone loved her idea so much it became a tradition.

  Until the note, she might have considered Gnorman’s disappearance as a prank, but now she wasn’t so sure. If this was personal, then it was no longer a game. She wanted to recover Gnorman, but her main responsibility was to recover the trophy.

  And recover it she would . . . if none of the well-meaning elderly residents of the Lake Bliss Retirement Village community got to Gnorman first.

  Even though Amber hadn’t told him where to go at the retirement village, Stan didn’t have any trouble finding her gnome. Nowhere in the whole town of Bloomfield did news travel faster than among the residents of the Lake Bliss retirement community.

  The crowd of people gathered around the fountain told him where to find Amber’s gnome. As soon as he saw the little gnome, he knew why. It was a strange thing for the thief to do. The thief had changed the gnome’s costume.

  He had to admit, he liked it better than Amber’s Mexican costume, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

  “Hi, everyone. Is Amber here yet?” he said as h
e reached for the gnome to pick it up.

  Like iron filings around a magnet, a sea of wrinkled hands surrounded his arms, halting his movement.

  “I’m sorry,” one of the elderly ladies said. “Naomi told us that Amber said not to move him.”

  “Why not? I was just going to take him and put him in Becky’s yard, where he belongs.”

  Before the woman could answer, he saw Amber running at top speed across the grass.

  “Stan! Don’t touch him!” she hollered at the top of her lungs, waving her arms in the air.

  At the sight of Amber approaching, the hands retracted.

  She didn’t wait to get her breath back before the words tumbled out of her mouth. “The note said not to move him, and that there would be another note here with further instructions.”

  Stan turned his head to the gnome at the same time Amber grabbed a small envelope that had been tucked in the gnome’s hand. In a split second she tore the envelope open and pulled out a piece of paper to read it.

  The envelope dropped to the ground as Amber’s face tightened. One of the ladies tsked, picked the envelope up, and tucked it into Amber’s purse.

  “This one has the same bottom line as the other one. It says that he’s got to stay here for four days and no one is to move him.” Her hand dropped to her side. “That’s it. Nothing about what this person wants or what I have to do to get the trophy back.” She turned and scanned the crowd. “Do you hear that, everyone? Please, no one move him. I have to get the garden club’s trophy back. I don’t know what to do, so we have to do what this person says.”

  Most of the people surrounding them nodded. Others scrunched up their faces, like they were thinking of how to solve the problem, but coming up with nothing.

  Stan turned to look down at the little gnome, his painted smile showing him blissfully unaware of the trouble surrounding him. “I guess all we can do is wait out the four days, but on the third night, maybe we can do a stakeout and see what happens. If whoever did this is going to move him on the fourth night, then we’ll be ready.”

  “But four days is such a long time. We’ve got to do something.” She bent and touched the gnome’s new jacket. “This is really well fitted, almost like it was tailor-made. You have to admit that he’s an odd shape and size. I don’t know anyone who is capable of doing something so intricate except for one person—the town seamstress, Zoe.”

  Amber fumbled inside her purse, pulled out her cell phone, and snapped a few pictures of the gnome in his new outfit. “I think I’ll make a stop on my way back to the shop and see what she says. I’m sorry you had to come all this way for nothing. You should get back to work.”

  Stan felt his jaw tighten. He didn’t know Zoe well, and he didn’t think she was the type to pull this off, but the facts spoke for themselves. “No way. She went through a lot of trouble, so I have a feeling it’s not going to be that easy. I’ll go with you for backup.”

  Amber didn’t argue with him, so he followed her to Zoe’s house and stood beside her as she knocked on the door.

  Zoe opened the door without looking first to see who it was.

  “Please come in.” Zoe stepped aside for them to enter. “Have you had any luck finding your gnome?”

  As Zoe looked into Amber’s face, Stan studied Zoe. Nothing about her revealed any guilt or signified that she was trying to hide anything. Her concern over whether or not Amber had found her gnome seemed genuine.

  “Yes,” Amber replied as she walked into the foyer. “Naomi found him at the retirement center and called me.” She reached into her pocket for her cell phone and flipped it open. “The strange thing is, he’s not wearing the costume I put on him. Instead, he’s wearing a costume that looks like it was made by you.” Amber held her phone open toward Zoe.

  Zoe’s brows scrunched in the middle. “I remember that little costume. I made six of them for a display at the museum last year. I’d made rag dolls and dressed them up as Puritans for a Thanksgiving display. I heard it was really popular. Then, after everyone recovered from Black Friday, they gave the dolls back to me. I didn’t have anything I could use them for, so I sent them to the consignment store.”

  “I don’t understand. How could that jacket have fit Gnorman so well?”

  Zoe smiled ear to ear. “When I asked what size they needed for the dolls, they said about the size of a garden gnome. So I went to Victoria’s house—remember she won last year—and measured your little gnome and used him as my model.”

  Stan gritted his teeth. “That means everyone who has been to the museum last fall has seen this outfit, and there are five others like it.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Amber glanced out the window. “You said you took them all to the consignment store. Maybe we can go there and see who bought the dolls.”

  Stan checked his watch. He’d told Mark that he would only be gone for twenty minutes and he’d already been much longer. He wouldn’t make his staff work overtime, so he would have to work late tonight to catch up on the lost time to have his customers’ cars ready for them to pick up in the morning.

  But this piqued his curiosity. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to play hide-and-go-seek with Amber’s gnome, and even though it was probably childish, he wanted to be the first to find out who it was. Although, if he had to admit it, he liked the idea of helping Amber find out who had pulled off this caper.

  It seemed more challenging than some of the other things he’d helped her with. A few years ago he’d rigged up a timer for her pottery oven so her creations would be finished when she got into the shop in the morning without being left sitting in the hot oven all night. He still didn’t understand how one could overbake a statue, but he didn’t really want to know the details. He only needed to know that Amber needed his help.

  More recently he’d tried to help her conquer her fear of heights and took her on the Ferris wheel the last time the fair came into town.

  He smiled at the memory of Amber holding onto him as if her life depended on it while their car swayed at the top, screaming into his chest so loud his ears rang for a week. To calm her down, he’d kissed her, and it was a moment he’d never forget. Since then, he’d wondered what he could do to make that happen again, a difficult task without a Ferris wheel.

  Finding out who bought a bunch of dolls was so easy it would almost be cheating.

  Almost, but not quite.

  “Let’s go. I’ll drive.”

  Chapter Four

  I love that color on you. It really brings out the green in your eyes.”

  Amber smiled weakly at her friend’s comment, ran her hand down the jade-colored shirt, and continued dusting her display of smoked-glass butterflies.

  “Thank you. I got this at the consignment store. I didn’t know how much nice stuff they had in there.”

  One of Sarah’s brows quirked. “Consignment store? Once I heard you say that you would never buy anything from there in case someone came in to your store and saw you wearing their old clothes.”

  Heat flooded Amber’s cheeks. “I might have made too quick a judgment call on that. Tessa told me that she never takes anything into the store that shows any signs of wear. All the clothing people bring in for consignment is required to be nearly perfect, or she says she tells them to take it to Goodwill instead. She says most of the clothes in her store are things people bought either without trying it on at a department store, or got as a gift so they couldn’t take it back, or something they wore once for a special occasion and don’t want to wear it again in the same crowd.”

  “That’s nice that you changed your mind, but I sure would like to know why you went into the consignment store in the first place.”

  Amber sighed and then turned to her best friend. “I guess by now you heard that we found Gnorman by the fountain. Stan and I di
d a little detective work that took us to the consignment store. When we arrived, there were only five dolls instead of six. We asked Tessa who bought the sixth doll, and she said the strangest thing. A couple of weeks ago she was straightening her display and noticed one of the dolls was missing. Where the doll should have been, someone had left an envelope with money and a typed note saying they didn’t have time to wait in line, so they left the money and ran out.”

  “That really is strange.” Sarah crossed her arms. “There’s never a line at Tessa’s consignment store.”

  Not only had there not been a line during the entire time Stan and Amber had lingered in the store, but not a single other person had come in. “I didn’t mean about Tessa’s store not having many people in it at a time. I meant, doesn’t it strike you as strange that the note would have been typed? What did this person do, not want to wait, go all the way home, type a note, and come back? That would have taken ten times the amount of time of just standing in line. If there was a line, which there probably wasn’t.”

  Sarah’s mouth formed an O.

  “That’s right. Someone had planned to buy the doll before they even got to the store. Tessa says it was the exact change for the right amount, including the sales tax. Someone didn’t want to be seen buying the doll, and now we know why.”

  “You have to admit, that’s pretty clever. But at least we know that the person isn’t a thief.”

  “Not a thief?” Amber crossed her arms over her chest. “Of course the person is a thief. He or she stole Gnorman and the trophy.”

  Sarah waved one finger in the air. “It’s not really stolen. They’re just leading you on a rabbit trail. Maybe this is just a bad practical joke.”

  Amber turned and stared blankly out the window so she wouldn’t have to face her friend. “I’m afraid it might be more than that. I think someone has something against me, and they’re trying to get me kicked out of the garden club.”

  She heard Sarah’s quick intake of breath. “What are you talking about? Why would anyone do that? I’m sorry to say this, but your garden isn’t exactly competition to anyone else wanting a prize.”