Page 34 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
Roses Are Dead, Violets Are Bluetook place in February, so there was only one reason for a sprig of fresh mistletoe to be in that particular book—on that particular page: it was a clue. Maggie was certain. Now all she had to do was follow it.
But follow it where?
Eleanor had written at least ten different stories set at Christmas, butMurder Under the Mistletoehad been her breakout hit. She’d even named her home Mistletoe Manor. So it all had to be connected. It had to matter. It had to...
Maggie was halfway up the stairs when she saw something out the window. The snow wasn’t falling quite so hard, and something about the endless stretch of white that blanketed the grounds made her think about her fourteenth birthday. She’d only asked for one thing: a custom-order stamp that pressed words right into paper.
From the private library of Margaret Elizabeth Chase.
She’d spent all afternoon on her bedroom floor, sitting cross-legged and pressing those words into the title page of book after book, running her fingers over the letters. Wishing she could press them into her skin.
That was how the ground looked.Embossed.Like a pattern had been pressed into the earth. White on white, with long lines of shadows and bits of leafy green hedges standing out starkly against the pure white snow. A labyrinth.
“A maze.”
It looked exactly how Maggiehad always imagined it—exactly how Eleanor had written it in her very first bestseller. And for the first time in a long time, Maggie knew exactly what she had to do.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Maggie should have been freezing, but she wasn’t. The hedges were thick and tall beneath their blanket of snow and ice, blocking out the wind and the world. From the window, the maze had seemed like Eleanor herself—complex and spiraling and too good to be true, but as Maggie turned down narrow path after narrow path, it felt more like Maggie’s life. She didn’t know where she was going or how she was going to get there. She just knew she was alone and she had no intention of giving up.
So she pinched that sprig of mistletoe between her fingers and she kept moving, using her own footprints as a cheat sheet to know which way she’d been.
Every time she hit a dead end, she marked it up as a path she didn’t have to go down anymore, and she kept searching. Because the dead ends weren’t setbacks. Not if she learned from them. Maggie had been backing up and changing directions her whole life. She could do this. She wasgoingto do this. She just had to find—
Snow crunched behind her. Unfamiliar footprints laid ahead. And there was a deep voice on the wind, saying “Well, this is a funny place to look for Eleanor.”
Maggie cursed beneath her breath but slowly turned and looked at Ethan, gave him her biggest, most innocent eyes. “Well, like you said, I’d feel awful if she’d wandered off and gotten lost in here. An almost ninety-year-old woman—”
“She’s eighty-one.”
“Well, you can never be too careful.” Maggie pushed past him.
“So careful you ran out without a coat?” he called as she reached another dead end.
“You’re right!” She spun on him. “Let’s go—”
Ethan sidestepped and blocked herway. “I’m going to ask you one more time, Margaret Marie.”
“Still not my name!” She pushed past him and headed down another path, then made a turn and—
Slammed right into Ethan.
“How did you get ahead of me?” Maggie asked, stumbling and a little unsteady.
“You sure seem awful busy out here. It’s almost like you’re...looking for something.” He flashed a knowing grin and, suddenly, Maggie couldn’t meet his gaze.
“Just Eleanor. But you’re right. She’s not here. We should go.”
She started back, but it was ridiculous how easily he kept pace beside her.
“So what’s with the mistletoe? Is it because you want to make out? Because if you want to make out—”
“No, thank you.”
“You’d have to hold it over your head first. Or I can hold it. Do you want me to hold it?”
“Nope.” She made a turn and hit another dead end, and Maggie wanted to scream. It felt like the temperature had dropped ten degrees, but Ethan was standing there in his leather jacket, looking so hot the snow might melt. Meanwhile, Maggie’s jeans were wet from the knees down and she’d lost feeling in at least four toes and her nose was starting to run.
