Page 81 of Mistletoe All the Way

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I’m on helium again.

I thank her, then leave, sliding into the front seat of Phillipa’s car. “Evidently, someone named Chad was there, asking about selling a couple horses,” I blurt out, wasting no time. “Is that Stephen’s secret name? Like how women have a bar name?”

“Chad,” Phillipa says as if testing out the name. “Chad,” she says again, like she’s turning it over and over. She tilts her head, eyes thoughtful, then they turn electric. “Chad! That’s his silent partner.”

It’s as if all the music in the world stopped playing. I stare at my friend, slack-jawed. “Wait. What? He has a silent partner? For his bar?”

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“Chad Tanner,” she says, then sneers. “Some guy he went to college with.”

I’m grabbing my phone faster than a gunslinger in the Old West. Tapping in that name as she talks.

“Remember when I told you about his business troubles? His bar almost went under a few years ago,” she says.

Remember? Of course I remember. It’s the entire basis for my Harriet the Spying. “Yes,” I say quickly, scrolling through search results.

“One of his college buddies bought out half of it, or it was going to go under.”

I whip my gaze away from the screen. “Why the hell did you never tell me this before?” I ask, swatting her arm.

She laughs. “Um, it was never relevant.”

“It’s relevant. It’s so relevant,” I say, amazed I’ve been sitting next to a gold mine this whole night. “How do you even know this?”

She blows on her fingernails. “I’m that good, bestie. But also, Chad came into the diner. He lives in San Francisco. Did this whole pitch about how he has all the experience of a big-city finance guy and was bringing that to our small town, trying to back some other Evergreen Falls food and beverage businesses. And he’d love to have the Candy Cane Diner in his portfolio. I said no.”

“Of course you did. But Stephen said yes,” I say, then spill more beans about what we’ve suspected of Noah’s cousin. Or really, what I’ve suspected. “So maybe the lawyer-y guys work with him and Chad?” My head spins a little more with endless possibilities. “Or maybe they were just meeting with Stephen about his supersecret silent partnership?”

Shaking her head, she laughs. “I love your murder-board brain.”

And my murder-board brain was right to be suspicious. I return to the phone search results, where a picture of a guy in a mustache flashes back at me. No ball cap in his headshot. “That was the other person in the tack shop yesterday! And look,” I say, stabbing my finger at the guy’s bio. “He’s a crypto guy.”

“Of course he’s a crypto guy,” she says.

“I can’t wait to tell Noah.”

She smirks. “Right. You’re totally not into him at all.”

“Oh hush.”