“What?”
“Write books?”
“Oh.” She pursed her lips at that. “I don’t know. I think I just like reading them.”
“Maybe you can be a librarian. Or open a bookstore. I’d come to your shop all the time.”
She took off from there, shooting off lots of ideas about what would make a great bookstore (coffee and sweet treats, of course), how it had to be cozy (I had to agree), and they would bring back midnight release parties. Apparently, she was very disappointed when she learned they used to be a big thing but weren’t anymore.
She was such active company that for the half an hour or so she was in the shop, I’d forgotten all about the murdered woman. About the box she’d left with me for safekeeping. A box that maybe she’d been killed over.
It wasn’t until I watched Charlotte and Christopher disappear down the subway steps that her image popped up in my mind.
Not the picture from the news, that must have been taken from her social media, with such a strong filter on it that not only did she not have pores, but she practically didn’t seem to have a nose.
No, I was seeing her as she’d been in the shop that day. Gorgeous without a filter and with some texture and the kind of imperfections that only managed to make her even prettier: a slightly too pointed canine tooth, a smile that tugged more to one side than the other, and unusually elegant hands.
I remembered how nervous she’d been, how eager she was to put that box in my hands, to unburden herself of it… or to keep it safe.
No matter how many times I replayed it, I couldn’t figure out which was more likely.
Maybe it was both.
Whatever it was, it was extremely valuable to her, and she wanted to make sure it didn’t fall into someone else’s hands… but she was also relieved not to be the one to keep it safe any longer.
I flicked off the lights and slid the lock before moving through the shop, trying to remember where I’d stashed the damn box.
I usually kept that stuff up front, but behind the counter. When I started digging through my shelves, counters, and under-counter storage, I didn’t come across any boxes.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Had they actually gotten it?
I wouldn’t have noticed a little music box missing. Even one I’d promised to keep a hold on.
I mean, I did just do a deep clean.
Maybe when I’d emptied out the cabinets to give them all a good twice-yearly scrub, I’d decided to locate the box.
I wish I could claim to have the kind of memory where I had detailed recollections of every move I made every day. Especially when it came to moving stuff around in the shop. I was a chronic shuffler. I was forever rearranging things. To keep displays fresh. To move creepy shit away from the front so they weren’t staring at me. To just get rid of some restless energy that was a chronic problem when all you did was stand around and try to make some sales all day.
The box could have been moved five times in a single day for all I knew.
But I would have remembered the promise I’d made not to sell it until it sat for a while. So while I did glance at the shelves as I moved through the store, I wasn’t expecting to see it anywhere except maybe in the back somewhere.
“God, I need a better system,” I grumbled to myself as I stood in the doorway, hands on my hips, surveying the racks upon racks of unorganized crap.
It was even worse than it usually was. The break-in meant picking up everything that had hit the floor or gotten knocked over and setting it back on the shelves. With literally not a single thought to what I was doing. I’d just been annoyed about the whole situation.
With a sigh, I moved toward the closest set of shelves, going through each one. This meant I was starting to organize as I went, making the simple process that could have taken twenty minutes stretch closer to an hour.
I was losing hope.
I was starting to believe the criminals had walked away with it after all when I spotted something rectangular sitting at the very top of my shelf of cleaning supplies.
Reaching up, my fingers closed around the wood and pulled it down.
