Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

M ax left again. He said he had to make a phone call, and from his expression, he wasn't looking forward to it. I took Poppy into the kitchen, Maggs following us. Poppy sat down on the floor in the morning sun in front of the big bay window back there, and Maggs lay down beside her and put her head in Poppy's lap, and then William, our cat, jumped down from his shelf and curled up on her other side, two warm animals, the best comfort Poppy could have.

She stroked Maggs' furry head and William's furry, purring body while I made her a huge cup of hot chocolate, the only comfort drink I could think of, and when I handed her the cup, she said, "Did you know? Before Serena Stafford, I mean?"

"About all the ex-spies in town?" I shrugged. "I always knew the town was odd, but nobody here talked about the past, so I was good with whatever it was. Actually, I thought it was witness protection, or people on the run like me. I was laying low until I got you through school and out into the real world. Then Ozzie died and I learned a lot fast."

"About Max?"

"About everybody. When Junior showed up here and tried to turf us out, Coral slashed him with a knife, getting blood so she could have Sid Quill run a DNA test. When Junior pulled a gun on me, Mrs. Baumgarten tased him without blinking and Melissa hauled him away. Those were big clues. I still don't know how large a percentage of the population has skills, but it makes sense that it wouldn't be just those people. And Ozzie. Ozzie was hiding out here, that's why he wouldn't let you put the shop online."

Poppy sniffed and nodded. "But we can do that now, right?"

"I'm not sure. You'd have to be very careful. I'll have to talk to Pike and Max first, but you can design a website now." I was hoping that would distract her. "I think we can sell online as long as we don't link a physical address to it. We'll figure out how to get some order to the shop and make things easier to find, and we'll make a sales plan, and then when everything is ready, if Pike says it's okay, we'll go online."

"So you're good with my gap year?" Poppy looked wary but focused on her objective.

"We have ten months before you need to be at college." I smiled at her, trying to be positive, inflicting a Cheery Boost on my kid, which was just so wrong. "And you've already been accepted to UNC. Let's see how things go."

Because "Hell, no, I'm not good with a gap year" was not the thing to say to Poppy at the moment. Especially since I could use a gap year myself. Reality was starting to wear on me.

Poppy nodded and leaned into Maggs, sipping her cocoa in the sunshine, and I decided she was okay for the moment and turned to go back to my day job.

"Mom?"

I turned back. "Yes?"

"What were you going to do after I went to college?"

I blinked because it was such an out-of-the-blue question. "I don't know. Keep working for Ozzie, I guess."

"You said you'd made your plan up until I went to school," Poppy said. "Did you have one beyond that?"

"Oh. No, not really. I wouldn't have left Ozzie alone."

Poppy looked at me for a long moment, as if she were going to say something, but then she nodded and went back to petting Maggs and didn't say anything else.

That was disturbing, and so was the fact that Melissa was dead, that there was a killer out there, an active killer, and Melissa would no longer stand at her window, watching the street, which had always been a little creepy, but I had liked Melissa, and she was gone, and Poppy was about to come apart?—

Get a grip, Rose.

I had work to do.

* * *

Since the first room of Oddities was pretty much cleaned and sorted, I moved into the next two rooms, full of boxes and things jumbled on tables and shelves, dust and disorder and potential disaster. The worst of the junk was all the books piled in the back room on that side.

Do not misunderstand me; I love books. Books have gotten me through some really bad times in the past, fiction to let me live other lives, non-fiction to help me figure out the latest mess I'd gotten myself into. But Ozzie had bought books by the pound, boxes of books without rhyme or reason, cramming them all into the big back room that could have been really charming since it was the echo of our kitchen on the other side of the wall: a large bow window, lovely quiet at the back of the building, lots of potential sunshine once I got the godawful rotting velvet drapes down.

I wondered what Melissa's favorite books had been. I should have asked her.

So I needed to get everything off the shelves and the floor so I could clean—that was going to take a while—and then put the most interesting and colorful books on the lower shelves where people could see and maybe buy, and the duds higher up for wallpaper. And maybe I could make things from the worst of the books. There are a lot of ways to make art from books. I could learn how. I could do that.

That sounded like me.

I dragged the step ladder back there and began to rip down the drapes, dropping all that moth-eaten velvet on the floor in a cloud of dust, and the sun poured in as I sneezed, and I felt some of my tension go. This was the right thing to do. It had been so long since I'd been sure of the right thing to do that I was giddy with the thought.

I looked out the window and thought about Melissa. Had she seen something out her window? Maybe Ozzie'd had the right idea: Cover up the windows.

But the sunlight was intoxicating, so I gathered up all that fabric, coughing in the dust, and went out back to put it in the dumpster. Poppy saw what I was doing as I passed through the kitchen and said, " Good ," and I saw she had her sketchbook out, and I thought, Good for you, too, kid.

We were going to be just fine.

Even if Melissa wasn't.

I threw the curtains in the dumpster that Coral and Sid and Ozzie had shared and went back in, trying not to think about Melissa. Maybe if I'd paid more attention, I could have helped her. Maybe if I'd picked up my head and seen something besides the ground . . .

What? Me against a murderer? Right, Rose .

I stacked all of the books on the floor along the walls in the front room on that side and then dragged a step stool out of the laundry room and tackled the first shelf at the top, thinking about decoupage and collage and anything I could do with an old book to make it something that would sell.

Half an hour later, I stopped planning art projects and deliberately not thinking about Melissa when I reached for a red-bound book on the top shelf on the other side of the room, one I'd intended to be careful with because the spine was a beautiful old red and would look great on the lower shelves. But when I pulled it out, it was metal, an old box made to look like a book, and I lost my breath for a moment.

A box designed to look like something else. That was Ozzie all over. Hell, that was Rocky Start all over. Nobody was what they seemed.

Maybe Melissa had a secret that killed her. There were a lot of secrets in this town.

Ozzie had been secretive to the point of paranoia. Like if it was a box he didn't want opened, he might have rigged it to explode; he was perfectly capable of putting a grenade in a box . . .

Get a grip, Rose . Sure, he'd put a book-shaped grenade in a shop where Poppy might find it . . . never. Listen, if you'd had the past couple of weeks that I'd had, a book-shaped grenade would not be out of the question.

I climbed down the ladder and looked at the box more closely. It had "Gourmet's Delight" on the spine, so it was probably some kind of advertising gimmick, but I could see how, from far away, the red metal cover had looked like a real book. Ozzie had probably picked it up on one of his buying trips to use as a cache box, a place to hide things . . .

Like money.

It was heavy, and I hoped it wasn't full of ancient biscuits as I fumbled with the hidden catch and opened it.

Money.

It was crammed full of money.

Not a cache box, a cash box.

"Rose?" somebody said, and I slammed the lid down and turned to see Harvey Ware in his dumb flamingo shirt, standing in the archway leading to the front room. "Find something good?" he said, looking avid.

"Just an old book of Ozzie's," I said, my heart hammering in my chest. Now I had to get rid of Harvey so I could close the shop and find out how much money was in there.

"That looked like money in there," Harvey said, coming closer. "Anything I can help with? You know I'm always here for you, Rose. You found some cash? Hey, have you found any gold?"

"Gold?" I took a step back. "It's a secondhand store, Harvey, not a pirate island. No, I did not find any gold. Poppy and I just need some time to ourselves." With this money.

"Max is gone, though," Harvey said, coming closer, his hands out, reaching for me. "You're gonna need?—"

I side-stepped him. "Max is still here." Harvey stopped and looked around, and I added, "He's staying for a while. And I have to go see about Poppy, she's still a little shaky, so I'm closing the shop now." I tried to move around him, like I was shooing him out, and he just stood there, a stupid grin on his face.

If he tried to touch me again, I was going to yell for Maggs.

I was trying to think of a polite way to get rid of him when I thought, Why? I hadn't invited him, I had clearly hinted he should be gone, we were past the point of politeness, and I was trying to kick my Cheery Boost habit anyway. " Goodbye , Harvey," I said, and his smile disappeared, and he waited a moment, for what I don't know, and then he nodded as I detoured around him.

"You call me if you need anything," he told me, reaching for me as he followed me toward the door, too close, his tone more of an order than an invitation, so I flinched away from his hand and said, "No."

He looked surprised, so I said, "Max is here, and Pike looks out for us. You don't need to bother about us."

"It wouldn't be any bother," he began, but I opened the front door, tapped my foot impatiently, a new move for me, and he gave up and went out.

I closed the door, threw the deadbolt, and pulled down the shade.

Then my phone buzzed and I checked it.

Don't worry about Harvey. I'm watching over you.

That was so weird. Max's texts were nothing like him. He didn't announce what he was doing, he just did it. And how the hell did he know Harvey had just been in? I shook my head and put my phone away and decided to tell him that while I appreciated the concern, creepy texts did not improve my day.

Then I carried my metal book box back into the kitchen.

"What's that?" Poppy said, perking up a little when I put the box on the kitchen table beside her sketchbook. Maggs was lying at her feet, looking very content.

"One of Ozzie's books that's not a book." I opened the hinged lid and turned the box around so she could see inside.

"Oh," she said, staring wide-eyed at the cash.

"It was just on the shelf," I told her. "What if somebody had bought it?"

"First they'd have to find it back there, which is pretty much impossible," Poppy said, and that was so much like my normal daughter, her dry voice and practical outlook, that I smiled. For real. "And then there was Ozzie with his lousy customer service, so he wouldn't have sold it. And he always insisted those grungy curtains stayed closed so the room was always dark."

"Right," I said. "Let's count some money."

That cheered her right up.