Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

I stood in the middle of the shop— my shop —and looked at what I'd done so far. It was better than thinking about Max.

Think about the shop. That's survival.

I considered my work of the past week good, given everything else I'd been dealing with. Not great, it was still a shabby secondhand store, but a rainbow span of different teacups was arranged on very clean shelves—red cups and saucers at the top shading down into purple on the bottom—and the black and white teacups were on the very clean shelf where the Maltese Falcon used to be. (I really need to glue that back together.) And there were round teapots and round bowls arranged by size, small to large, on the bookshelf and the newly polished table beside the teacups, and Ozzie's shell (ammo, not sea) ashtrays that I was now calling candle holders, displayed small to large, each holding a fat candle that I'd bought in Bea's shop. This first part of the shop was starting to look organized so that people could actually find something they might want to buy.

There also hadn't been any money in any of the teapots.

I still had the jumble of papers and ledgers that Ozzie had stashed under the marble counter to go through, but I'd get to that later. For right now, it was getting the shop looking good—well, better—taking an inventory, putting prices on things (Ozzie had just liked to announce how much something was when somebody tried to buy it, based on how he felt about the purchaser), and making plans for the future.

What kind of plans, I had no idea. Just like I had no idea who the hell might walk in and want to buy a teacup, besides Betty Baumgarten. Sometimes we got thrill seekers from Bearton, but they usually didn't buy anything. I was going to have to take the shop online, but I'd have to be very careful not to put the Rocky Start address anywhere on there. Bearton, maybe. I could get a post office box there.

It all sounded exhausting and boring and probably not worth the cost of renting the PO box.

The other side of the shop, through a broad archway into what had once been a separate building, was two large rooms full of totally random things jumbled together, no organization at all, some of it still in boxes; the entire first floor of one of the two buildings Ozzie had combined into one. The front room was the size of the first room of the shop and was gloomy and depressing, but the back room had bookshelves and a big bow window in the back like my kitchen, so that had potential once I got it cleared out.

And possibly somewhere in those two rooms was more money. I am not a money-grubber, but we'd already found fifty thousand dollars bundled in a bag in Ozzie's apartment. Ten thousand of it had to go to Ozzie's lawyer, and the rest would keep the wolf from the door for a while if I was careful (I'm always careful), but if there was more, I was open to finding it.

For now, I had this front room on this side cleaned and organized, the first room that people saw when they came in. So there was that.

The problem was, this side of the shop was clean and sorted and cheery, but it wasn't fun . It wasn't exciting and different. It wasn't . . . me. Okay, most people wouldn't describe me as exciting or fun or different, but I had a rich inner life they knew nothing about.

That's what I was thinking when Poppy rattled the front door and I went to let her in.

"Hello, baby," I said, trying to sound upbeat and not worried at all as I unlocked the door. "Why aren't you in school?"

"I needed a mental health day." She dumped her backpack on the counter, her chin out as if daring me to say that her mental health was just fine, her black curls framing a face that was in a I've-made-up-my-mind-so-don't-cross-me frown.

I wouldn't have. After last week, it wasn't surprising she had some issues to deal with. But it was bothering me that she was ignoring them and didn't want to talk about it. Poppy was always so upfront and efficient.

"The guidance counselor said I should come home," Poppy was saying virtuously, and I knew she'd scammed the poor woman to get a free day, but I was pretty sure that she really needed it, whether she'd admit it or not. It wasn't like Poppy could tell the counselor what really happened here in Rocky Start. The town of Bearton where she went to school was only seventeen miles down the highway, but it was a world away in terms of reality.

"Okay, then," I said. "Does your mental health day involve a darkened bedroom and headphones with Taylor Swift, or can you work on the shop with me?"

"The shop," she said firmly. "I have many ideas."

"Let's hear ‘em." I got my notebook off the counter and a pen from my apron pocket, happy that she had many ideas that weren't about getting carved up by Serena Stafford.

"Well, the first one is nonnegotiable." Poppy's chin went up again, which meant that leaving school early wasn't the only thing she was going to be firm about.

"Go on," I said, putting a little threat in my voice just to remind her who was the mom here. As if that was going to work.

"I'm going to take a gap year," Poppy announced, a little louder than her usual voice. "I'm going to help you with the store and get the online business set up, and then the year after that, I'll have business experience, which will make a business degree a lot more interesting because I can apply everything I learn directly to?—"

"No." I know that wasn't cooperative or a smart thing to say to an upset teenager, but I hadn't buried myself in Rocky Start so that she'd have a safe childhood and grow up to go on to better things, only for her to throw it all away on a secondhand store I wasn't even sure I wanted to run. Poppy was meant for things bigger than Oddities and Rocky Start, great things, amazing things. She was not going to rot in this town, not on my watch.

"You can't just say no," she was saying. "We can discuss it, but it's my life."

"Ozzie gave you money so you could go to school," I began, but even I knew that was not a winner. Ozzie had left her a ton of money, but it was hers to do what she wanted with.

Poppy wasn't buying it. "Ozzie saved up money so I could have a good start on life. I don't think he'd have cared if I didn't go to college."

She was right there; he'd have been thrilled if she'd spent the rest of her life here having breakfast with him and discussing the junk he brought home. Plus, he hadn't exactly saved up the money. More like stolen it from the government and used most of it to buy up the town of Rocky Start as a giant safe house.

"He wanted the best for you," I began, and she cut me off.

"And I'm the only one who knows what's best for me," she finished, her mouth set but her chin a little wobbly.

Max had said, "PTSD," when she'd blown up at me this week, several times, something she'd never done before. "It hits everybody differently," he'd said, "but she's definitely a prime candidate after Saturday night."

So, I'd spent the week looking up PTSD and trauma in between feeding Poppy and Max, keeping an eye out for any leftover money Ozzie might have stashed, ducking my suitors, and trying to figure out how to make the shop pay, just happy that nobody was trying to kill Poppy anymore. Or me.

"Okay," I told her now. "We'll come back to this later. I know you've had a lot to deal with, but we're safe now, everything's back to normal?—"

The shop door opened, and I turned to snarl, "Not now," at whoever was showing up to take his shot at marrying me, but it was Max, alone this time and definitely not interested in marrying me (good) and looking grim (bad, but not unusual). "Now what?"

"Don't yell at him," Poppy said, glaring at me. "He looks awful. If you're mean to him, he's going to?—"

"I'm pretty sure he's leaving anyway," I told her. "I can be as mean to him as I want."

" You're leaving? " Poppy said to him, her voice going up.

"It's okay, Pops," I started to say, and then Max said, "I'm not leaving. Not right away."

That got my attention. "What happened? And don't give me any of that ‘I'll tell you later' crap."

"Melissa Merriweather is dead," Max said.