I looked up to see Max staring at me, pulling up the spare stool to sit. “What?”
“The magnifying glass is sort of silly. You pull them out of pockets like you’re an old-timey detective.”
“I tripped down the stairs wearing bifocals when I was younger,” I answered while setting the glass aside and stacking the junk and bills together. “Broke my arm.”
“Yikes.” Max reached out to push my salad around with the fork. If he planned on scalping my meal, the sogginess must have changed his mind. “So why was Neil here?”
“I don’t know.” I stood, brought the mail into the office, and dropped it on the desk.
The morning had been resting heavily on my mind. Usually I was closed on Mondays, but holiday demands often changed my schedule, so I had been open yesterday. When I closed the shop last night just after six, it gave someone a thirteen-hour window to break inside. Max and I had spent the remaining hours of the morning going through the Emporium, and from what we could tell, not a single item had been misplaced.
It wasthatconcept that puzzled me the most. Why break into an antique shop, get past the security alarm, only to steal nothing?
So someone came in, put a decaying pig heart under the floorboards, and hightailed it without taking so much as an old button?
More upsetting was the matter with Mike Rodriguez. I had worked for Mike for a few years before going into business for myself. I respected his knowledge and the success of his shop—he’d been in this line of work for over twenty years now—but he was a cranky old fuck. He hadn’t liked me all that much when I worked for him, and I’m certain he felt slighted, to say the least, when I took everything I had learned to open the Emporium.
Mike specialized in higher-end antiques. Georgian and Victorian furniture, clothing, paintings, and other works of art. It wasn’t where my interests were, and the Emporium was cluttered and stuffed instead with books and old documents, maps, photos, and every little gizmo and gadget from another century. People enjoy the odd and bizarre, like Victorian glove stretchers or tear bottles. The Emporium was doing very well after only a few years of business, and I suspected Mike was insulted.
I walked back out of the office, leaned against the doorframe, and crossed my arms. Mike and I weren’t exactly on friendly terms these days—we certainly weren’t mailing each other Christmas cards—but how the hell had he come to the conclusion that I should be looked at as a possible suspect? Had he waited three years to seek revenge against me? And it wasn’t even revenge so much as insulting my integrity and character.
“Man, look at it coming down,” Max murmured as he stared out toward the front door, watching the storm continue.
“Jingle Bells” started to play on the shop’s speakers. Dashing through the snow, all right. The city was getting buried.
“Why don’t you get out of here early, Max.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The subways are going to be a wreck, I bet,” I said while walking to the counter.
“Are you leaving?”
Honestly, I wanted to swing by Mike’s place and ask him what was going on, but it didn’t seem like the smartest idea. Maybe I’d give him a call. That was less threatening. As much of an asshole as he was for accusing me of doing something like breaking into his place of business, we had a long history and Ididwant to make sure he was okay.
“Probably.”
“I’ll walk out with you, then,” Max replied as he stood and started cashing out the register for me.
The shop phone rang, and I reached to take it off the receiver. “Snow’s Antique Emporium.”
“It’s me.”
Neil.I collected myself. “Hey.”
“Busy?”
“We’re closing up early. The weather’s getting bad, and Max has to take the subway to Brooklyn.”
“I’m ducking out,” he replied. “I’ll swing by for you.”
“I can walk home.”
Neil took an aggravated breath. “Sebby, please don’t argue with me just once this month, okay? Let me pick you up.”
Why was I getting angry at him for wanting to drive me home instead of making me walk in this nasty weather? “All right. Thanks.”
“Want me to grab anything for dinner?”
