Chapter 45

CHAPTER 45

M ax's questions to Pike about how much could be hidden in the house upset my stomach. I wasn't sure why, but it took some of the joy of Coral's baking away. Not Max's fault. I'd spent so long being used to being on the edge of broke that the thought of thousands of dollars hidden in the shop brought up a lot of conflicting emotions. The amount in Poppy's bank book from Ozzie had overjoyed me but also staggered me with the reality of that much money so readily available. Poppy had an edge up on life that I had only dreamed of, courtesy of Ozzie. The possibility of me getting anything like that was so unbelievable that a part of me didn't want to look.

But a bigger part of me wanted to. It was a treasure hunt. At home. And then there was the idea of adventure, which Ozzie had known would intrigue me. "Go fetch, kid." So I grabbed a cup of coffee to go and some blitzkuchen and a biscuit for Maggs and went back to the shop. Coral gave me a wink when I left, which was better than bitching at me for not getting naked with anybody. I was firmly in the "getting naked with Max" category now. And Maggs greeted me as I came in the shop door, tail wagging, which made me smile for real as I scratched her behind the ears and then gave her the dog cookie with permission to eat it. It was going to be almost as hard letting go of Maggs as it would be letting go of Max.

I put the coffee and cake on the shop counter, turned the OPEN sign out (old habits die hard), and surveyed the North Carolina side of the shop. Tall, dusty, miscellaneous bookcases that Ozzie had picked up along the way. Old dining room tables that he'd found in people's barns, side tables jammed in between them. Baskets and boxes shoved under tables. It was going to take months to inventory all of this and get it arranged into displays.

Poppy would love that.

I started with Ozzie's tables in this first room, full of knick-knacks and gizmos and old tools and china and pieces and parts of who knew what. If I could just get it sorted into related groups?—

The shop door opened and Barry walked in, which was a surprise. He'd never come in the shop before.

"Morning, Rose," he said. "I saw you turn the sign."

Which meant he'd been watching, which was weird. "Good morning, Barry."

"About that ten K Ozzie promised me?"

Which explained both the watching and the promptness. He probably had a bookie or a mobster waiting in his office right now with a threat of broken thumbs if he came back empty-handed.

"Right. Hold on." I went behind the counter where I'd stashed the bank bag Max had given me and unzipped it. There were five bundles of hundreds. The wrap on each bundle was faded but read "$10,000." It was the most cash I'd ever held in my life. I put a bundle on the counter. "Here you go."

Barry blinked as he scooped it up. "So Ozzie did leave a bunch of cash? Even after he and Pike bought up most of the town?"

Oh, great. He hadn't come by just for the fee.

"This was just an emergency stash," I said. "That Max found. It's not much more than this."

"Max found it?" Barry frowned. "Who exactly is this Max? What's his background? What's he doing here?"

"He's someone Pike gave Ozzie's badge to," I said .

Barry blinked again. "What?"

"Yep," I said. "There's a new sheriff in town." And he's living here with me , I wanted to add, but I figured Barry would have picked up on that from the grapevine.

Barry's eyes shifted around, more nervous than usual, perhaps worried that Max would suddenly appear. I realized one reason Barry had never come here was he was afraid of Ozzie. Maybe Max had that same "keep your distance" vibe that Ozzie had? Poppy and I hadn't seen it, but then we'd missed it on Ozzie, too.

"Well. That's interesting." Barry was sort of backing up, still looking around. "You know, you and I should have dinner some time. Talk."

"About what?" I said, confused.

That seemed to confuse him. "Oh, just get to know each other better."

Which I read as "Find out how much money Oz had . " "Goodbye, Barry," I said.

He mumbled something and was out the door.

Okay, then.

I started with teacups. We had so many. It was weird that Ozzie had picked up so many over the years and that Betty Baumgarten bought so many, but that was pretty low on my current list of weird. I went through and pulled all of them off the shelves and stacked them on the counter and the floor, and then went into the Tennessee side and did the same until I ran out of counter and floor. Then I got boxes from under the table next to the front door and emptied one tabletop and the book case behind it with the general miscellaneous stuff Ozzie had shoved there. That tabletop and bookcase were going to be my new teacup display. I was thinking of maybe arranging them in graduated colors?—

The door opened and Sid Quill came in.

"I heard about the will," he said to me, trying not to step on a teacup. "Congratulations. Do you need any help with the search? Or anything else? "

"Good morning to you, too," I said. "Nope, Max and Poppy and I have it covered."

"You know, Rose," Sid said, leering at me. I think it was actually his idea of a smile. "We should talk more, you know, now that we own businesses that are side by side."

I frowned at him. "About what?"

"About the future," he said, leering harder.

"Well, right now it's about getting Poppy ready for college and cleaning out the store." I paused, and he opened his mouth to say something, and I said, "Which Max and I will be doing. Max is a huge help." I almost added "I don't know what I'd do without him," but I was afraid Sid would have suggestions.

"Max." Sid scowled at me and shook his head and left.

"Your approach needs work," I told the empty doorway and went back to cleaning off the tabletop and the shelves for the cups. When everything was wiped clean, I sorted the teacups into colors, ignoring style and condition, and put the red ones on the top shelf, shading them down through orange and yellow and green into blue and purple on the tabletop. Nothing could make most of the cups look good, but with the colors ordered like that, at least there was a display that was fun to look at.

I was trying to figure out what to do with the white and black ones and had just decided they'd look great on that shelf with the Maltese Falcon, when Harvey Ware, the exterminator, came in and congratulated me and offered his help in searching the place for Ozzie's money. I told him Max was helping me, and he warned me about trusting strangers and then left.

Yeah, I was seeing a trend developing.

Then Oxley Crothers came in from the bookshop to give me a copy of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning and offered to help search since he was used to dealing with a lot of small things, and I thanked him and said there was no need, that Max would be back soon, and Ox said, "Yeah, but he's leaving, right? You're gonna need a man around, Rose."

"Pretty sure he's staying for a while, but thank you anyway ," I told him, hoping he'd get the hint to leave, and when he was gone, Don Jones came by with a new pair of running shoes like the ones I'd bought from him ten years ago and asked if I needed any help searching, but he phrased it so oddly I almost agreed before I realized what he was actually asking so I had to backtrack quickly and say no.

After I got rid of him, I thought about putting a sign out front that said, "Max is still here, not leaving any time soon," just to cut down on the interruptions. I didn't; Max wouldn't like it, and it probably wasn't true, but it was tempting.

Geoffrey Nice, the other funeral director in town, came in to check on me and congratulate me on inheriting and brought me flowers that I was pretty sure hadn't come off a casket. Geoffrey was too nice for that. He also brought me his watch, which had a band that kept breaking, so I got out my tool kit and fixed it for what seemed like the millionth time; I was pretty sure he broke it every month or so just to have a reason to come to the shop, but he was a good guy so I fixed it every time. Then he helped me get some heavy things down from the upper shelves of the bookcase next to my teacup rainbow—heavy things I could have lifted, but he really wanted to help and he's tall—and then blushed when I thanked him and went back to his funeral home.

I was never going to get anything done at this rate, so I flipped the CLOSED sign to the front, locked the door, and thought about my next move. Teapots, I thought, although probably not a rainbow, we just didn't have enough of those.

Then I went back to work, sorting and cleaning and checking in teapots and small decorative things with lids, hoping to find money and really hoping that Max would get finished in Bearton fast and get his ass back to where he needed to be.

With me.