Mr. Quisling picked the book up and flipped through it as Emily recounted the rest of the scavenger hunt so far.
“And now I’m stumped with the clue I found in The Maltese Falcon. That’s what I thought you could help me with.” She reached for her backpack to grab the book, but Mr. Quisling held up a hand.
“I don’t want to see it, Emily.”
“But you could help me figure it out. We could work on the game together, and once we get to the end, then we could give the book back. I’ve been planning to give it back all along.”
“If I look at your newly found puzzle, I am sure I will want to solve it. Which is why I don’t want to see it.” Mr. Quisling sighed. “I’ve met him, you know. Mr. Griswold.” He patted The Gold-Bug.
“Then you should understand better than anyone,” Emily pleaded. “People are saying he might…” Emily ducked her head, focusing on Mr. Quisling’s desk. She couldn’t say the words. She had stopped checking for updates on how Mr. Griswold was doing because she was afraid the news would be bad. “He would want his game to be played. He would want me to finish it.”
Emily didn’t look up, afraid Mr. Quisling wouldn’t get it, just as James didn’t.
“You’re probably right, Emily,” Mr. Quisling said. “And it’s fascinating to learn about his game and everything you’ve figured out already. I’m glad you shared it with me, but that doesn’t change the fact that we need to return this book.”
Emily couldn’t do anything but blink at Mr. Quisling. How could he want to return the book after everything she’d just told him? How could he resist not knowing what lay at the end of Mr. Griswold’s game? She almost felt tricked.
“But why?” she finally managed to say. “I know who this book collector is—Mr. Remora. I’ve met him.”
Mr. Quisling raised an eyebrow, which might be the closest he ever came to looking shocked.
“James and I took a tour of Bayside Press,” Emily said by way of explanation. Now both of Mr. Quisling’s eyebrows went up. “We ended up getting to go in Mr. Griswold’s office. Mr. Remora was in there when he wasn’t supposed to be. Later, we overheard him doing business at Hollister’s bookstore, and he just wasn’t very nice.”
“You might have caught him on a bad day,” Mr. Quisling said. “You walk into dangerous territory when you make judgments against a person based on limited interaction.”
Emily couldn’t believe Mr. Quisling was trusting the word of a man he didn’t even know over hers. “Mr. Remora says he needs this book back for his job, but Mr. Griswold had already hidden it for his game. It wasn’t supposed to be in Mr. Griswold’s personal collection when I found it, so why would Mr. Remora be saying it should be?”
“Do you know it wasn’t supposed to be in his personal collection when you found it? Do you have confirmation of that? Or are you making an assumption?”
“I don’t have any proof, but—”
“Did this Mr. Remora lie about Mr. Griswold being his client?”
Emily tugged on her backpack zipper. “No.”
“Did he lie about The Gold-Bug belonging to his client?”
“No.”
“So you haven’t actually caught him in a lie. What it sounds like you really want is a reason to keep the book for yourself, if only for a while. I’m sorry, Emily. I really am. I understand where you’re coming from, but some things are more important than games. The possibility that a man genuinely needs this book for his own job security trumps any game, no matter how intriguing. Are we clear on this, or do I need to call your parents?”
Emily swallowed. “We’re clear.”
Mr. Quisling put The Gold-Bug in his top drawer and returned to his grading. Their meeting was over and on top of everything else, she hadn’t even gotten help with the Maltese Falcon cipher. Emily left his room fighting back tears.
The hallway had filled with an assortment of costumed kids now that the first-period bell was about to ring. Emily bumped against a skeleton’s backpack. “Sorry,” she muttered. She turned corner after corner until she was in front of her locker. She spun the dial and tugged the door open, ducking her head inside under the pretext of sorting things into and out of her backpack. She wiped her nose and stared at the dark recess where The Gold-Bug had been.
Later that day, Emily averted her eyes from Mr. Quisling when she walked into social studies. He stood at the head of the classroom as usual, arms crossed and occasionally nodding at students.
“Good afternoon, Emily,” he said as she walked past. She kept her head down but bent her mouth into a smile for politeness’ sake.
She took her seat next to James, averting her eyes from him, too. She caught him looking at her when she pulled her binder from her backpack. Maybe it was her imagination, or maybe it was the Cookie Monster hooded sweatshirt he wore for Halloween, but she could have sworn he looked worried before he turned his attention back to his logic puzzles.
* * *
She had been using the back exit ever since those men chased her and James, but today that meant going through the crowds waiting for the haunted house/cafeteria. She wasn’t in the mood for any of that, and it had been four days since they’d seen those men. She doubted they were even still looking for her, especially since she’d posted to Book Scavenger that she didn’t have the book. Which, ironically, Emily realized was now true. So what did it even matter anyway?
She craved a familiar face and decided to brave her regular route and stop by Hollister’s. Before she pushed through her school’s main entrance doors, Emily studied the idling vehicles in front. No sign of the old tan car.
The afternoon was hot and the sun intense as she walked up the street. Emily shielded her eyes, but still the glaring rays managed to bend their way around her hand, dulling her sight. A metallic pounding grew louder as Emily approached Hollister’s. She stepped over a thick hose draped across the sidewalk that ran from a truck parked at the curb to the inside of the building next to Hollister’s. The hose appeared to be connected to whatever was making the drilling noise inside.
Hollister’s door was propped open.
“Emily-Who-Just-Moved-Here!” Hollister shouted over the drilling when she entered. He stood at his counter, wearing purple robes and a wizard hat topping off his dreads. He stepped out to close the shop door, which didn’t totally silence the noise but did make it bearable. “Today’s been a game of Pick Your Poison,” Hollister said. “Suffer through that racket or work in an oven. That fan doesn’t really cut it on a day like today.” Hollister indicated a rotating fan that rattled in the corner. He returned to the book he’d been wrapping in brown paper. “No sidekick today?”
“James had other plans.” Emily shifted words around the magnetic poetry tray on his counter. Broken. Cloud.
“Ah. So what’s new with you? You still enjoying Poe?” Poe. Mr. Quisling was probably talking to Mr. Remora on the phone at that very second to let him know Emily had returned The Gold-Bug.
To Hollister she said, “I carry the Poe book you gave me everywhere.”
Hollister pulled a piece of twine from a spindle attached to his counter while Emily rearranged more magnetic words. Hard. Fool. Magic. He held the paper folded around his book with one hand and the twine in the other and looked from the pair of scissors lying near the book to the twine and then to Emily. “You mind?” he asked, nodding toward the twine.
“Oh. Sure.” Emily picked up the scissors and leaned across the counter to clip the twine. She watched him wind it around the wrapped book and tie a neat knot.
“Presentation always makes a difference, don’t you think?” He held the book up to Emily, twisting it to show all sides.
“You’re really good at it,” Emily said, thinking of the book-sculpture Bayside Press emblem he’d taken down about a week ago to make his window display Halloween-themed.
Hollister pulled out a notepad from the shelf under his counter and flipped through the pages until he found the one he was looking for. He held th
e notepad out. “Can’t read my own writing.”
Emily leaned forward. “It looks like 2634 Octopus to me,” she read.
“Probably Octavia Street.” Hollister jotted down the address on a sticky note and placed it on the wrapped book.
“Is that for Mr. Remora?” The question came with the memory of Hollister offering to deliver him a book the last time they were both in the bookstore. As soon as she asked the question, Emily realized she already knew the answer. Mr. Remora had complained to Hollister about living on Fillmore Street near the Fillmore, which stuck in Emily’s brain thanks to her brother. She even almost remembered his address—it was something repetitive with sevens, like 1717 or 7171 or 7711.
Hollister studied her for a moment, his one tired eyelid dipping down as it always did. “How do you know Mr. Remora?”
Emily reminded him of that day. “You told us he’s a rare-book specialist and Mr. Griswold is one of his clients.”
“I remember now. Indeed, I did. And no, this isn’t for him.”
An idea occurred to Emily. It wasn’t a well-thought-out idea, and it probably wasn’t a good idea, but Emily asked anyway. “Do you need help delivering your books? I could take that one you just wrapped, and if you have Mr. Remora’s book ready, I could deliver that, too.…” And then maybe when she delivered Mr. Remora’s book, she could tell him she was the student who had found The Gold-Bug and ask if she could borrow it back for a short period of time.
Hollister adjusted his wizard hat. “Isn’t that kind of you. Thank you, doll. But no, I cannot take you up on that offer, I’m afraid. Too young to be my employee for one. Even if that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending you around the city on your own to run my errands. Maybe if it was you and James together, but even then…” Hollister shook his head, dreadlocks swishing across his purple robes.
Hollister watched her push magnetic words. Salt. Heart. Wake.
“You know,” he said. “I appreciate my customers. And many of them are fine, fine people. But not all book people are good people. Don’t mistake shared interests with shared ethics.” He tapped his pointy cap. “There’s some wizardly wisdom for you today.”
Hollister stepped away from the counter and fiddled with books on a nearby shelf, straightening some, pulling a title off one shelf and moving it to the row below. His words made Emily think about Hollister’s former friendship with Mr. Griswold. Both were book people. Both seemed like good people. And despite not having been friends for the past thirty years, Hollister had cared enough to dedicate his window display to Mr. Griswold in a time of need.
“Hollister? Have you talked to Mr. Griswold since he’s been in the hospital?”
If her question surprised him, Hollister didn’t show it. “I don’t believe he’s in a conversational state,” is all he said, but the lines of his face sagged.
“There are people on the Book Scavenger website gossiping about him,” Emily said. “They don’t think he’s going to survive his attack.” Emily wasn’t sure if that was something she should have said, but she’d been carrying that worry in the back of her mind, and voicing it to someone who knew Garrison Griswold helped. “I don’t like thinking about that,” she said.
Hollister sighed. “Negativity has never been a friend to anyone.”
“What was he like when you two were friends?” she asked.
He finished his fussing and surveyed his store, almost like he was scanning the room for what task he could do next. Emily thought maybe he hadn’t heard her question or was just going to ignore it because he didn’t want to talk about Mr. Griswold. But then he said, “Gary was young. Very creative. Ambitious. We idolized the Beats.” He looked to her, some of his dreadlocks swinging over his shoulder. “You know the Beats?”
“My dad’s a huge fan of Jack Kerouac.”
“Good taste, good taste.” Hollister nodded, and his wizard cap skewed to an angle. “The person Gary and I looked up to most was Lawrence Ferlinghetti. When we opened this bookshop, we fancied ourselves like Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin when they started City Lights.”
“We? This bookstore used to be Mr. Griswold’s, too?” She envisioned Mr. Griswold walking out from the back with a box of books to shelve, greeting customers as the chimes signaled their entrance. Was it possible to feel nostalgic for something you never experienced?
“This was before Bayside Press, of course. We were young. Too young to be a part of the Beat movement, but old enough to be influenced by it. But—also like Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin—our partnership eventually severed. Ours less amicably, I’m afraid.”
“Why?”
“Similar interests, different priorities. That may not make sense, how two people can be passionate about the same things and still find room for disagreement, but it happens.”
“No, that actually makes a lot of sense,” Emily said, thinking of her fight with James.
“Gary always had a grand plan, a way to make things bigger. My vision was to keep the bookstore small, a community place. Gary wanted to spread his energy and enthusiasm for the arts to as many people as he possibly could. Back then I thought his generous spirit had turned greedy, and we had a falling out. Over time I realized that, even though money and success came to him eventually, it was never his motive. Money changes your circumstances, but it can’t change your core. A spiteful person becomes a spiteful person with money. A kind person, a kind person with money.”
“James and I had a fight.” Emily concentrated on lining the magnets into a row rather than see how Hollister reacted to her confession.
“That’s bound to happen. Even with the best of friends.”
“I don’t think…” The drilling next door reverberated dully through the shared wall. Emily took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to be a good friend.”
Hollister blew a raspberry. “Nonsense. There’s no ‘how’ about it. Just be. Just do. That’s all a good friend is. That’s what Gary did for me. He reached out for years, but I didn’t appreciate it at first, and James might not, either. But if your intentions are good, and the friendship was true to begin with, he’ll come around.”
The mechanical pounding stopped suddenly, making the silence feel stark. The magnetic words scraped on the tray as Emily pushed them, absorbing what Hollister had to say. Bird. Whisper. Shadow.
CHAPTER
33
EMILY LEFT Hollister’s. The drilling started up again and her footsteps fell in rhythm. Sweat trickled down her neck as she made her way up the shop-lined street and turned onto a residential one. She was looking up at a cat perched in a bay window when a voice she didn’t recognize said from behind, “Hello, Surly Wombat.”
Emily whirled around to see the two men from the BART station and Lombard Street. She stepped backward uphill, the steep slope forcing her step to be a small one.
“We’re not here to hassle you,” the tall man said, raising his hands.
The short man stepped toward her, and Emily instinctively took another uphill step back. “We want that book,” he leered.
“Clyde!” the tall man snapped. The fake smile disappeared. Beads of sweat dotted his upper lip like he was the nervous one.
Emily clenched fists around her backpack straps. All the buildings on this street had garages on the ground level and the houses stacked on top. Long flights of stairs led to front doors. Someone would have to be right at the window, looking down, to notice her. The roar of a vacuum drifted down, threading through the faded drilling.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” the tall man said.
Don’t want to wasn’t as reassuring as aren’t going to.
A car door slammed up the hill, and Emily jerked to look behind her. Red rear lights of a car parked all the way at the top turned on, and the car eased away from the curb, driving away.
“The best thing to do is just give us the book. We know you have it.”
The short guy—Clyde, the other had called him—stepp
ed toward her again, but his friend swung an arm in front of him. “Just wait,” he said.
“What—” Her voice croaked when she tried to speak. She started again. “What book are you talking about?”
“That one from the BART station,” the tall guy said. “Let’s not play games anymore, okay? That was clever what you did, posting the book like you hid it in Outer Sunset. We spent a good deal of time at that park, and we know it’s not there.”
Clyde flipped his hand in the air. “This is a waste of time! Let’s just grab her bag and go!”
“No!” Barry snapped. “No,” he repeated, more calmly. “We don’t need to steal, okay?” To Emily he said, “Give the book to us, and we’ll be on our way. You’ll never see us again.”
Emily had to think of something to do, and fast. These men could grab her without even taking a step—that was how close they were. And that Clyde looked like a dog who wanted to fight. The problem was, she really didn’t have the book.
She could tell them that, but would they believe her after she’d already sent them clear across the city? And what would they do if they didn’t believe her? She couldn’t outrun them. Her only choice was to outsmart them. An idea came to her, but it was risky. It would only work if these guys knew as little about Mr. Griswold’s book as she hoped they did.
“Is it Poe?” she asked.
“You know it is,” the tall man said.
“A maroon cover?”
She swung her backpack to her front and tucked her chin to hide her nervous swallow as she unzipped her bag. She took another step backward and uphill. Any space she could create between them, the better.
“I was enjoying reading it, but if you need it that badly…”
Emily pulled out the collection of Poe stories from Hollister.
The tall man accepted the book, holding it at arm’s length to study the cover before Clyde grabbed it and flipped it open. Emily swallowed again and stepped back, sure her bluff was about to be called.
Book Scavenger Page 17
