Birds of a Feather

by Harper Crowley

  “Got an admirer, eh?” He nods at the destruction. Somehow, I don’t think he’s surprised.

  “Is that what you call it?” I scowl at him.

  He chuckles. “What would you rather I call it? A threat from someone who looks like he’s too afraid to do a damn thing about it?” He gestures at the car. “If it’s the same guy who tried to break in, he ran as soon as you caught him. And now this? Yeah, I’d be wary, and I’d take a look at everyone you’ve met since you got here, but what else can you do? I saw a couple officers out here earlier. What did they say?”

  My shoulders slump. “Pretty much that. Someone’s trying to scare me off, but without prints or video surveillance, there’s not a lot they can do until something else happens.” Just the thought of that scares me. “Do you think whoever did this is going to keep trying to scare me off?”

  He shrugs. “If he thinks there’s something of value in the bookstore, probably. Have you found anything valuable in there?”

  The book, although its value isn’t monetary. It’s in secrets. I force a slight smile to my face. “The creepy cat paintings might be worth something to the right collector. Some old books, but nothing that’s worth that much money. I think any value would be in how much a person wants the items, not their actual worth.”

  His gaze travels from the back of the shop to my car, where it lingers on the graffiti. “And apparently, someone wants something pretty badly.”

  “Do you think it’s the same person who killed Sandra?”

  Nick’s brow furrows in concentration. “Hard to say. Yeah, it’s possible, but to go from murder to B and E and then to spray-painting a threat, well, that’s not something you usually see. Perps escalate, not regress.”

  Crap. “So, I might have not one bad guy to worry about, but two?”

  “Maybe.” He still looks troubled, though. “Just let the cops do their jobs. They’ll figure it out. They’re some of the good ones.”

  Good ones, as opposed to the ones who threatened to throw me away for the rest of my life? Sure, Detective Landry seems like a nice enough guy, but I’ll believe it when I see it. I don’t have a great track record.

  A sleek blue sedan that screams money crunches down the alley and squeezes to a stop next to my car. Between my car, a truck that I assume is Nick’s, and the little dumpster, there isn’t a lot of room back here. As Nick and I watch, the door pops open, and the lawyer, Stan Erickson, emerges, wearing a dark-blue suit and tie that match his car. He brushes himself off before reaching into the back seat for his briefcase.

  “Ms. Thompson,” he says. “How fortunate to find you back here. And good day to you, Mr. Smith. I was hoping to avoid Ms. Thompson’s attack bird, if you will.” He peers around me. “Is she still here?”

  “Unfortunately,” I say, but I’m not sure I mean it. Marge might have saved my life, so I owe her one. “Yeah, meeting back here was probably a good idea.” I gesture at the car. “Nick says I have an admirer.”

  The lawyer’s lip curls. “Heavens. In our small town? This is dreadful. I’m so sorry you had to experience this.”

  I wave him off. “At least he didn’t slash my tires or anything.”

  Nick shakes his head. “But you still have to get that paint off the windshield enough to drive it. Let me see if I have some razor blades we can use. Just stop on by when you’re done,” he says, nodding at the lawyer.

  “Great, thanks.” I give him a grateful smile.

  I lead Mr. Erickson into my aunt’s apartment and wave him into her newly clean office. He perches carefully on the chair across from her desk, and I sink into her office chair.

  “Is there something I can help you with?”

  He flips open his briefcase and pulls out more paperwork. “Have you had the chance to look over your aunt’s will?”

  Blood rushes to my cheeks. “No, sorry. Honestly, with everything going on, that’s kind of been at the bottom of my list.”

  He nods. “That’s what I thought. Death is a trying time no matter what, but then to have all of this trouble occur... It’s got to be hard on you and your sister.”

  “Yeah.” I grimace. “Sara wants me to come home.”

  His fingers drum on the stack of papers, and his eyes light up. “That might not be a bad idea. Actually, that’s kind of why I’m here. My associates and I have been talking about your unfortunate situation, and we came up with a plan.”

  My unfortunate situation. Does he mean my aunt’s death, or everything else that’s been happening since then? “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Well”—he pauses—“we’ve been thinking that maybe we could help you with that.”

  “Still not following.” I flatten my hands on the desk.

  He clears his throat. It’s pretty clear he hasn’t done anything like this before. “What we’re offering is for you to give us the power to clear the estate, if you will, for you and your sister’s benefit. That way, you wouldn’t have to deal with the minutiae of everything and could get on with your life.”

  Whatever that means. “So, you’d take care of everything?” That sounds appealing but also a bit like what Frankie Kash was offering.

  “Yes. You’d sign papers allowing me to dispense with the property as I see fit, and then I would cut both you and your sister a check.”

  I fold my arms across my chest. “What’s in it for you?” There has to be a catch. There always is.

  His nose twitches. That must be what he does when he’s nervous. He’d be a terrible poker player. “I’d be compensated for my time, of course, but you have to understand. Your aunt was a dear friend of mine.”

  I’ve heard that before.

  “And I’d like to help in any way I can.”

  Yeah, for a price. In the back of my mind, I wonder if I’d find the lawyer’s name in my aunt’s little black book if I looked hard enough, and if I did, how he’d feel about her. Something tells me if that book ever comes to light, she’ll have a whole lot fewer friends and a whole lot more enemies.

  It’s a good thing she’s dead, or someone might kill her.

  I promise Mr. Erickson that I’ll look over the paperwork and let him out the back door. Marge squawks just as he leaves, so I hurry to the front. She’s been quiet for so long, there’s no telling what trouble she’s been getting into. Thank God she’s not as loud as those parrots the bird rescuer has. I mean, she’s plenty loud enough, but the amount of noise those birds made was insane.

  Marge is on high alert, standing as tall as she can on her tree stand, her crest straight up in the air in alarm. A dark shape stands in the doorway, hands cupped around their face, peering in the window. I jump back and throw my hand over my mouth to stifle my screech, immediately thrust back into the night someone tried to break in. Only it’s daytime now, and the face standing at my front door is easy to recognize in the sun. It’s Eddie.

  I hurry past Marge and unlock the door enough to squeeze out. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone. I’m not exactly open right now.”

  He tries to peer around my shoulder, but I’m holding the door so he can’t look inside. “Oh. I was in the area and just thought I’d stop by. You know, maybe take you up on that offer to look through the books.”

  Oh yeah, I did offer that. I totally forgot. “Of course.” Marge scratches behind me, and I cringe. “Just give me a sec. I’ll go take care of Marge, and then it should be safe.”

  Eddie waits outside while I go toss some treats in Marge’s bowl and turn on the TV for her. Once she’s occupied, I wait for him to come in.

  He stares at the shelves greedily, his hands twitching at his sides. “This is amazing.” Unable to contain himself, he trails his fingers down the spines of the books closest to him. “Wanda really had a knack for finding books that no one else had heard of but that were very rare and valuable in our community. It was quite spectacular to watch her at an auction house as she bid on books that she had never even cracked the spine of, but she knew, somehow, that
they were worth bidding on.”

  A bead of sweat drips down the man’s brow, and I imagine it’s taking all of his willpower not to start grabbing books to take back to the library. “Didn’t you say there was a specific book that Wanda had that you were looking for?” She may have been reluctant to give him the book when she was alive, but I have no use for it. Unless it’s worth a ton of money, I’ll probably just give it to him.

  “It’s about this big.” He holds his hands about twelve inches apart in a rectangular shape. “And it has a dark-brown leather cover. The title embossed on the front reads Tranquility Falls, Then and Now, and it was published in 1946. As far as I can tell,” he says, twisting his hands nervously in front of him, “it’s one of the last in existence. I’ve seen pictures of another one, but nothing in as good a condition as this one.”

  “Where did Wanda get it?” I ask.

  “She wouldn’t tell me,” he says. “When Wanda joined the Friends of the Library, she invited us over to look at her collection, and that’s when I saw it. We couldn’t stay long because Marge wasn’t much friendlier a few years ago then she is now, but it was like that book was calling to me. I reached for it, but Wanda beat me to it and wouldn’t let me touch it.”

  “Huh, that’s weird.” From what I remember of the summers that I used to spend here, my aunt had always said that I could read any book in the whole store if I wanted. She was never stingy with me.

  “Yeah, definitely, and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

  I glance at Marge, who is happily cracking the shell of an almond. “Let’s take a look around and see what we can find.”

  As quickly as we can, we search for a book matching his description, but we don’t find it. We find several other local history books that he is excited about, though, and after writing down the titles and the author names, I agree to donate them to the library. Neither Sara nor I have any use for them, so at least this way, someone will be able to enjoy them. After I leave here, I’ll never be back, so even if I took them with me, they’d sit in storage, unread.

  With his new books in tow, Eddie leaves, a wide smile on his face. I promised him that if I find the book, I’ll let him know, but unless it’s in the stacks from my aunt’s office I packed away or in the towers yet undisturbed in her bedroom, then he might be out of luck. I don’t see her selling something that’s apparently very valuable though, so it’s got to be around here somewhere.

  But how well do you really know your aunt?

  I’m starting to wonder more and more every day.

  After grabbing a quick bite to eat from the deli, I force myself to take some of the trash bags out to the dumpster. After dumping them, I head back to the store, and that’s when I notice my car. It’s still painted in lovely, grammar-deficient glory, but the windows are clean, devoid of paint.

  Nick. A lump forms in my throat. He had to have been working out here the whole time I was talking to Mr. Erickson and then Eddie, and I wasn’t even out here to help him. It couldn’t be anyone else. I don’t know anyone else well enough in Tranquility Falls for them to do this for me. I scan the rest of the small parking lot, but his truck’s gone. Just in case he’s parked somewhere else, I knock on the back door of his office, but there’s no answer. Maybe I’ll surprise him with a pizza later, as a thank you. I can afford that. Hell, I can even pick it up now that I don’t have bright-red paint on the windshield of my car. As long as you ignore the bright-red paint everywhere else. Yeah, there’s that.

  I write a quick thank you on a sticky note and tape it to his door, along with an offer for dinner as soon as he gets back. There. Now, if I don’t see him drive up, at least he’ll come to me. I’ve never met a guy who will refuse free food.

  My phone rings on my way back to the store. It’s another unfamiliar number, but I answer it without thinking. I’m pretty popular nowadays.

  “Shelby Williams?”

  Chapter 11

  I freeze at the name. Crap—how did they find me? I changed my name months ago, used a burner phone, and covered my tracks as best I could without going into witness protection. Not that I would have qualified, but still. I was thorough. I was careful. I was good at what I did.

  “I think you have the wrong number. There’s no one here by that name.”

  The female voice on the other end chuckles. “No, I’m pretty sure I know exactly who I’m talking to. You were a hard one to track down, Miss Williams. I’m Anika Trimbly from Channel Five News. I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

  I clutch the phone tightly enough that my knuckles start to turn white. She knows who I am. “Leave me alone. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Wait. I just want to ask you a few questions about what happened.” There’s only one what happened she could be talking about.

  “I don’t have anything to say.” How did she find me? Heart racing, I hurry into the store, lock the door behind me, then do the same for the front door. She could be anywhere, watching me. If she has my number, she might know where I am, and if she knows where I am, she could be here, at this very minute, ready to destroy the remnants of the life I’ve been struggling to keep together.

  “Somehow, I doubt that,” she says. “You sure talked a lot after you were arrested.”

  I mutter a few curse words she’ll have to edit out before she airs the footage, because air it she will. I’m sure of it. These parasites always do. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.” That was the wrong thing to say.

  The reporter chuckles. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll find that I know quite a bit. For starters, I know you used to teach eighth-grade English. In fact, you loved it and taught that grade for years—that is, until you resigned after accusations that you were involved in an arson case at the home of one of your former students.”

  This can’t be happening. I was careful. Sure, I’d had to publish the name change in the newspaper, but I’d chosen to file it in a small border town that didn’t have an online counterpart. There should have been no way for her to get my information.

  A bead of sweat drips down my forehead. This is really bad. If she knows this much, I’ll have to run again. I was always planning on leaving, but not starting over from scratch with a new name, a new identity, a new me. Oh God.

  “I also know that when you were confronted, you started babbling about a fire and how the kid was in danger, when the only danger the cops saw was you.” She continues as if I’m not having a breakdown here on the other end of the line.

  My fingers ache, and I stare at my phone screen as if willing the battery to die or Marge to start screaming. I need something to give me the power to hang up.

  “Furthermore,” she says, “according to this report, neighbors reported you were seen, on several occasions, watching your former student’s house before the actual fire.”

  “Twice,” I whisper. “It was only twice.”

  The woman on the other end of the line crows. “I knew it was you. And”—she continues her awful recounting of my history—“when you were questioned by the police, you described in great detail a fire that would not occur until four days after your release. You nailed almost every single detail.”

  As if I could forget any of it. I close my eyes, but it’s burned into the back of my retinas, the flames licking at the edges of the wooden doors, turned black from soot, the smoke billowing from the broken windows, the screaming.

  She must have been waiting for me to respond, but I don’t. I can’t. There’s nothing I can say that will make this woman and so many others think I’m not guilty. I was trying to warn them. I always try to warn them. Sometimes, it’s enough. But sometimes, it’s not.

  “In fact,” she continues, “you’re lucky no one was killed and that they couldn’t tie you directly to the crime with physical evidence.”

  “The only lucky thing about the whole damn situation is that no one died. I was still accused, tried, and convicted, just not in court,” I snap, finally fin
ding my voice, if not my courage. I wouldn’t call the hell I went through after the fire any kind of luck.

  “Good, you’re still there,” she says. “See, that’s what my bosses think. They believe you’re an arsonist who got away with your crime, but I’m not so sure. I think there’s something else going on here, and I want to get to the bottom of it. This is my first big investigation, so I dug into your past and talked to a few people who knew you when you were younger. And—surprise, surprise—it turns out this wasn’t your first brush with the law, was it?”

  My fingers go numb, and I drop my phone, watching it crash to the floor. The corner hits the edge of a metal table leg from one of the tables in the aisle, and the screen shatters, throwing a dozen little spiderwebs across the number still mocking me on the screen. I pick it up and chuck it against the wall, the reporter’s shrill voice growing softer, and the screen goes black. I collapse on the floor and lean against the front counter, my eyes burning.

  It’s happening again. They’ve found me, they want my blood, and they’re never going to leave me alone again. I was a fool for thinking I’m safe.

  Nick finds me there on the floor, staring into space, my arms wrapped around my knees. Marge paces the counter above my head, but I ignore her. He has to bribe her with a handful of walnuts to get her to leave my side long enough to figure out what’s wrong.

  Nick drops down beside me. He touches my shoulders, and I don’t have time to steel myself or pull away. I don’t get any visions, but I can’t even rejoice in that. That woman’s horrible words run through my head, stealing what little bit of calm I’d been able to grasp and ripping it away. Hopelessness replaces it. I’m going to have to run again. It’s too late. They’ve found me, and they’re not going to stop with just knowing my name. They never stop there.

  “Willa?” He checks me up and down. I’m pretty sure he’s looking for injuries, but when he finds that there are none, he’s at a loss. “Are you all right? Talk to me. What happened?”