Birds of a Feather

by Harper Crowley

  Nothing.

  I pull the door open a bit more. In the darkness, I barely make out a white flash as Marge darts past my feet and heads toward the back of the apartment.

  “Wait. Where are you going?” I ask, but of course the bird doesn’t answer.

  Unsure what to do, I follow her as she waddles down the hall toward the bedroom with all of the creepy cat paintings. In the doorway, she pauses. There’s a shaft of moonlight coming through the window outside, and Marge stands perfectly in the middle of it.

  Suddenly, my mind wanders to how I’m going to get her back on her tree without losing a finger when she opens her beak and hisses like an angry cat. Her crest stands straight up, and her feathers puff out.

  “Yeah, those pictures freak me out too.” I tiptoe behind her so as not to startle her.

  With her wings held out to her sides, Marge lets out a raucous screech and dives into the room. This is weird, even for her.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” I dash after her.

  The crazy cockatoo passes the paintings and heads straight to the window. In it, framed against the moonlight, is a dark shape. A beam of light sweeps across the room—a flashlight—followed by a pale face pressing against the glass. I scream and stumble back until I hit the wall, banging into one of those stupid paintings. Marge hisses and lunges for the window, but she can’t get far enough off the ground to reach it.

  The stranger’s eyes meet mine before ducking out of view. The bright glow of the flashlight arcs once, then twice, before disappearing. Marge hisses again, but the face and the flashlight are gone. I sag against the wall, heart beating erratically, paralyzed by what I saw. Get up, idiot. You’ve got to call the cops. Now.

  Marge turns away from the window, her crest half raised and with an extra swagger in her step. She gives me a look of disdain before climbing up to perch on the headboard of my aunt’s bed. Okay, point taken. If the bird can scare off a burglar, I can at least get my act together and call the authorities. The thought brings a chuckle to my lips. Landry is going to love me by the end of this.

  I’m about halfway to my bedroom—and my phone—when someone starts banging on the back door.

  “Willa? Are you in there?” I jump, and my heart jumps, and another shriek bubbles to my lips. “Willa? It’s me, Nick. Are you in there?” He rattles the doorknob.

  Nick. Okay. It’s not the guy at the window. Thank God.

  I rush for the door and fumble for the lock, barely opening the door all the way before grabbing his arm and pulling him inside. “Thank God you’re here,” I say. “There was someone trying to break in again. They were looking in the window, and Marge was screaming, and I didn’t know what to do, and—”

  “Whoa, hold on.” He holds up a hand to stop my panicked retelling. “I heard the bird, and then I heard you. Have you called the cops?”

  “No, I-I was going to do that, but then you were at the back door, and—”

  “Okay, okay.” He gently cups my elbow and leads me to the couch. “Where’s your phone?”

  My knees turn weak, my hands start shaking, and all of a sudden, I’m really glad he brought me to the couch, where I collapse onto the worn plaid cushions. “I-It’s in my bedroom. The second one. I-It’s on the nightstand.” Stop stuttering, Willa.

  “Okay. I, uh, left mine next door, so I’ll go grab yours. I’ll be right back.”

  He must really have been racing over here if he forgot his phone. I try not to think about that too much as he reaches the door and stops. “Wait. You said Marge was screaming. Where is she?”

  I bark out a laugh. “Last time I saw her, she was in Wanda’s bedroom, looking all proud of herself.” I drop my head into my hands. “I don’t know what would have happened if she hadn’t started screaming. Seriously.”

  Nick crouches down in front of me and takes my hands in his. I don’t have time to brace for a vision, but luckily, nothing happens. Thank God. I don’t know if I could deal with one right now.

  “Try not to think about it, okay? Worrying about what could have happened doesn’t help anything. I’m going to grab your phone and call this in, okay? Then I’ll be right back. Are you going to be all right?” His eyes search mine until I nod.

  “Good.” He squeezes my hands. “I’ll be right back. That is”—he cracks a smile—“as long as your bird doesn’t kill me on the way.”

  He leaves quickly, and his absence seems to suck the air out of the room. I hug my arms around my chest to stop my hands from shaking. A few seconds later, he’s back, and he holds my phone out for me to unlock it. I do, still feeling numb, and he calls 911 for me, pressing the phone to his ear while he talks.

  After he’s finished talking to them, he hangs up and hands me my phone. “They’re on their way,” he says. “But before they get there, we should probably make sure Marge is put away. I’m sure the cops are going to want to take a look around, and it would be easier if the bird was safely contained.”

  My lips twitch even though I still feel numb. Marge, safely contained? There’s no cage in the bookstore, just the tree stand that she usually stays on, and even that, apparently, is no barrier for her when she really wants something.

  Still, I stand up. He’s right. Even though the cops looked around after we found the woman’s body, they’ll probably want to look again, which is fine by me. The sooner they find whatever it is that someone wants, the quicker they can hopefully solve this case and get everything wrapped up so I can sell the bookstore. It’s starting to look like staying here is just as dangerous as where I came from, and that’s saying something.

  By the time we find Marge, she’s made her way back to her tree and has her head tucked under her wing, so it’s a moot point.

  “I think if the police are quiet,” I say, eying the bird, “They should be fine. I wouldn’t want her to go into attack mode again, though. That was terrifying.”

  Nick runs his hand through his short black hair. “Yeah, I bet.” He meanders into my aunt’s bedroom and picks something up off the floor. It’s the creepy cat picture I knocked over after seeing the figure staring into the window. He flicks the lights on so he can put it back up and stops. “Hey, Willa?” His voice sounds funny, curious, more than the strict authoritarian tone he had earlier.

  Leaving Marge to her slumber, I quickly join him. “Sorry about that. I knocked it over when I saw that guy in the window, and—”

  “No, not the picture. That.” He points at the wall where the picture hung, and there, set flush with the drywall, gleams a gunmetal-gray wall safe. “Did you know Wanda had a safe in her wall?”

  I gulp down my surprise. “Nope.” Never in a million years.

  Chapter 7

  We show the safe to the cops, but none of my aunt’s keys work, so it’s a bust until they can get someone in to break into it.

  “Well, at least we found it,” I mutter.

  “If that’s even what the perp was looking for,” Nick says morosely.

  “What else could they be here for?” I gesture around my aunt’s bedroom. “I don’t see anything in particular worth a lot of money, do you?”

  He shakes his head. “No, but there’s got to be something. Did anyone else know about the safe?”

  “I don’t know. I had no idea it was here. As far as I know, Wanda wasn’t seeing anyone, or I’m sure that person would have come out of the woodwork by now.”

  Nick laughs. “To do what? Claim Marge? If she was dating anyone, they probably ran for the hills, terrified they’d end up with that spawn of Satan in there.”

  “Marge is not...” Except she kind of is. Never mind.

  Nick leaves the apartment and goes back outside, toward where the police and the crime-scene tech are finishing their initial investigation and gathering evidence.

  I hurry after him and catch up on the other side of the crime-scene tape outside my aunt’s window. I agree with him, but I don’t know what the safe contains. Besides, what’s the urgency now? My aunt’s s
hop sat empty for a couple of weeks, except for Kathy stopping by to take care of Marge. If someone desperately wanted something inside the shop, they had ample opportunity to get it before I moved in.

  Nick crouches, watching a crime-scene tech dust for prints along the edge of the windowsill. I hadn’t looked closely before, but from here, I can see that part of the screen has been cut. A shiver of unease that has nothing to do with the night breeze trails down my spine. This isn’t good, not by a long shot.

  “If we just knew what the guy was looking for,” Nick mutters, more to himself than to me, I think, “then we could figure this out.”

  “What do you mean?” I squat beside him. “We’re not figuring anything out. I just want out of here. I don’t really care what’s going on behind the scenes. I want to do what I came here for and then leave. I’m not a cop, and neither are you. This isn’t our fight.”

  He gives himself a shake. “Sorry.” He stands up and runs his hand through his hair. “I guess I’ve always loved a good mystery. That’s actually how I met Wanda. I moved in before they got internet or cable turned on, so I stopped by to see if she had some books by authors I like.”

  I watch him closely. Something’s not adding up. “I thought you wanted to buy the place. I mean, I’ll be selling it as soon as I can, so...” I let my voice trail off.

  “I did,” he says with a chuckle. “But that was before I sank all my money into my place. I was hoping I could get it cheaply enough to make a profit after fixing it up. That is, if Wanda was ready to retire. She wasn’t interested.”

  From the spotlights illuminating the space outside the window, I get a good view of my aunt’s bedroom. Creepy cat paintings stand sentinel on the walls, their eyes following us, their creepy, wide smiles unnerving. “What do you think is in that safe?”

  He brushes off his jeans and heads back toward the alley behind the shops. “I don’t know, but we’ll find out soon enough. Sure would have been nice to find the key, though.” He barks out a quick laugh. “But it’s never that easy.”

  “Nope, never.”

  Something’s bugging me about the picture and the safe, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I can’t give up on the safe and wait for the cops to get it open. It might contain useless papers, nothing at all, or even something embarrassing. I would hate for them to open it and find my aunt’s smut collection, if she had one.

  A yawn overtakes me. Dawn creeps up on the horizon, but I know that even if I try to go back to sleep, I won’t succeed until I find out what’s in the safe. I creep into the bookstore, grab my aunt’s key ring, and try every key again. Nothing. There has to be a reason my aunt didn’t put the key on her ring. Maybe she didn’t want whatever’s inside to be found, or she lost it a long time ago. That’s what I would do, if I had a wall safe hidden behind a creepy cat painting.

  I study the safe and use the flashlight on my phone to peer into the lock. Whatever key it is has to be smaller than average to fit into that lock, and—crap. I jump up, my mind locking onto the key I found in my aunt’s desk. No, that can’t be it. There’s no way she would have gone to all this trouble just to leave the key in her desk.

  I rush into her office and dig through the box of office supplies until I find the key. I have to try it, even though I’m sure it won’t work. Knowing my aunt, she had to have hidden the real key somewhere we’ll never find. Somewhere under the floorboards, perhaps, or hidden in a book that was hollowed out to hold such an item. I slide the key into the lock.

  Click.

  So much for that theory. I must be reading too much into all this secrecy stuff. Maybe my aunt was just a crazy old lady with dubious gifts and few admirers, not unlike myself.

  The door starts to swing open, but I stop it. I really should call the police. Maybe they can, I don’t know, dust for prints or something. Dude. What are they going to find? It’s not like the person who was trying to break in had a key. Just look inside. Don’t be a wimp. If it’s nothing, you can call them, tell them so, and save them some time.

  Okay. That’s what I’ll do. I take a deep breath and pull the safe’s door open. The inside is a lot smaller than the outside, about the size of a shoe box. Inside is a thin stack of papers. The first papers I pull out are the deed to the bookstore as well as my aunt’s birth certificate and bank information.

  Underneath all of those is a little black notebook, small enough to comfortably fit in my back pocket. I pull out the notebook and stare at the cover. I have no idea why my aunt would store a little notebook in her safe. It’s probably important addresses or bank information. That’s all. A wave of prickling unease washes over me. Sure, keep telling yourself that.

  I glance over my shoulder at the window, but thankfully it’s empty. Of course it’s empty. Whoever-it-was would be stupid to come back so soon after almost getting caught. Just to be on the safe side, I take the book and the rest of the paperwork to my aunt’s office, lock the door, and plop down at her desk. Here goes nothing.

  Allen Andrews. Feb. 4, 1987. Found him digging through my trash, looking for receipts for some old books his ex-wife sold me. He claimed she sold me something of sentimental value that belonged to his parents. I know the truth. He’s been sleeping with his secretary for years, and his wife finally caught wind of it and got revenge by selling his used book collection at a huge loss. Good for me. Stinks for him. He deserved it.

  Martha Brink. Husband #1 died 1988, stomach ailments. Husband #2 died 1991, food poisoning on a cruise ship. Husband #3 in and out of hospital since wedding in 1999. The only reason the poor bugger is still alive is because they don’t live together. Watch for his obituary soon, though.

  Eddie Garant. Upstart librarian thinks he knows more about the history of this town than I do. Thinks he can just have any book he wants, even ones that don’t belong to him. Caught him poking around my desk. He’s lucky Marge was taking a nap, or she would have killed him. He would have deserved it.

  Fred Keyes. Owns Keys Mechanics. Great for tires, bad for brake lines if you’re the husband of a pretty woman.

  Beth O’Connell. Conniving homewrecker whose only claim to fame is winning the chili cook-off five years in a row. Watch your husbands and your valuables with this one.

  Um, wow. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it sure wasn’t anything like this. What I’m looking at is a whole bunch of people whose lives could be ruined if their secrets got out. I’m not sure how anyone could know this was here, though. I flick through the pages and glance at the dates. Some of them go back to the early eighties, and one’s from the seventies. If someone knew about the book, they’d have had ample time—decades, in fact—in which to act on that information. Why now?

  I thrum my fingers on the cover with Nick’s comment about being able to solve this case if we knew what they were looking for running through my head. But I’m not a cop. There’s no reason I should get involved, especially after someone’s already lost their life over it. No, the smartest thing to do would be to turn the book over to the cops and let them deal with it and the repercussions. Because even though I know it’s a police investigation and they’re supposed to keep this stuff confidential, Tranquility Falls is a small town. And in small towns, nothing stays secret for very long.

  You could go around and talk to people. You wouldn’t really be investigating, just talking to some of the people in the book. Nothing dangerous, of course. Just to get an idea about whether or not they might be angry enough to break into the shop. Besides, maybe whoever was breaking in really was looking for a rare collection of creepy cat paintings.

  Yeah, sure. If that’s what they want, I’ll just give them the paintings. It would save me time having to find a thrift store to take them.

  I leave the book on the desk and pace my aunt’s office. I could tell Nick. He’s an accountant, not a cop. But something tells me he would tell the police about the book.

  Besides, can you really trust him?

  Scratch that. I think I’ll
just stick to my first plan and talk to some of the people in the book and see if there’s anything that might warrant calling the cops about. Yeah, then it’d be less of a waste of their time if there’s nothing there.

  With that decided, I put the rest of the paperwork back in the safe and lock it. I’ll tell the cops that I found the key after they left, which is true. It’s not technically lying.

  Sitting back down at my aunt’s desk, I rifle through the pages and look at the names again. Eddie Garant, the librarian—that would be easy to check out. I make a mental note to start with him after I get some sleep.

  Fighting a yawn, I tiptoe into the bookstore. Marge perches at the top of her tree, idly destroying a chunk of wood attached to the stand with a thick, metal chain. Yeah, remind me never to get on the receiving end of that beak.

  After filling her food and changing her water, I sneak behind the register and tuck the book under a stack of old magazines. Above my head, Marge gives an almond a satisfying crunch, cracking the shell easily into two pieces. The book should be safe here. Marge is far better than an alarm system.

  I check the locks for the second time and crawl into bed, this time leaving the door adjoining the two halves of the building open. If Marge is willing to be my guard dog, I’m certainly not going to stop her.

  Chapter 8

  I only get a couple of hours of sleep before the police call. Still groggy, I stumble into the kitchen and brew a cup of coffee while telling them I’d found the key.

  “Did you open it?” Detective Landry asks. He’s a real no-nonsense kind of guy.

  “Yeah.” I blurt out without thinking. I should have come up with a cover story. Crap. “I didn’t think it mattered, and I could save you a trip if there wasn’t anything important.”

  He snorts. “Yeah, well, next time leave the investigating to us.” Then he sighs. “What did you find?”