Chapter 17
Roxie stopped abruptly in the entrance to the parlor.
Her beautiful hair was a mess again, as though she hadn’t brushed it. It looked like she had pulled it back in a ponytail and spent a restless night tugging it every which way.
I left the checkout counter and walked over to her. Bags under her eyes suggested she hadn’t slept. Her plump face, usually calm and serene, was flushed bright pink.
“Roxie? Are you all right?” I asked.
Her eyes were large. “Um, Jacquie sent me over for some copies of her books.” She nervously fingered her earring.
Roxie knew perfectly well where we kept Jacquie’s books. “Is something wrong?” I asked.
“No!” She said it too soon and too fast. “I’m just going to get a cup of coffee to warm up.”
I returned to the checkout desk to help a customer but I saw her walk into the parlor, clutching a mug with both hands. When the customer left, I peeked inside the parlor.
Roxie stood at the display window, looking out at the street.
I walked up to her.
“Is it true that Manny was rolled up in a rug just like Hilda said?” she asked.
“His foot was even sticking out.”
She swallowed hard and coughed. “How could she have known that? Jacquie says he was still alive when she told us about the foot in the rug.”
Roxie was right. Hilda had announced the existence of a rug with a foot in it as soon as she arrived. Yet I had seen Manny later on in the evening when he tried to steal Harry.
I gazed at the display window. Harry wasn’t there. Why was someone moving him around?
I could hear Veronica calling my name. I excused myself for a moment. Both Bob and Veronica were at the checkout desk with a guy from the company that had installed our phone system.
“Hi, Florrie. What kind of problem are you having?”
Veronica and Bob scooted out of our way.
I explained about the odd scream and, more important, that a call had been made from our phone to 911 but no one was in the building.
He tested the line and then the phone. “I hate to tell you this, but there are apps that enable people to make it appear they are calling from a different number.”
“You mean like the spammers?” I asked.
“I mean you could do it if you wanted to. Kids do it all the time. It’s a rotten trick, but it’s not all that difficult.”
“You’re saying that someone intentionally arranged to have it look like he was calling the police from the bookstore?”
“Yup. It could have been a fluke. He might have made up a number and it happened to be yours.”
“I don’t think it was accidental. He told 911 that he was locked inside the building.”
The phone guy laughed. “I haven’t heard that one before. Of course, tying up 911 with that kind of stunt is probably illegal. So he created a fuss for no reason. I bet he was across the street watching. Kids do all kinds of crazy things.”
“What about the scream?” I asked.
“There’s nothing wrong with your phone or your connection. Maybe it originated on the other end. Hard to say what it was. Sometimes the weather causes problems. We’ve also seen a lot of issues with other electronic equipment interfering. That’s annoying because you have to unplug everything and reconnect it all one at a time to find out which item is causing a problem. It was most likely a onetime thing.” He grinned. “It’s the time of year when ghosts and witches cause problems, too.”
“Very funny.”
“Call me if it happens again. From what I can see, you’re in fine shape.”
I thanked him and he walked out the door.
“I’ve heard static on a phone, Florrie,” said Bob, “and that scream was not static.”
“While we’re on the subject of odd things happening, did one of you remove Harry from the display window?” I asked.
They looked ever so innocent when they chimed, “No.”
Bob even managed to appear surprised. I thought that might have been a true reaction. After all, he had refused to touch Harry.
“The professor usually comes in early, maybe he moved Harry for some reason.” Veronica did a convincing job of seeming disinterested.
At that moment, Jacquie walked down the stairs carrying the mirror the professor had received with the skull. “Did you see this? It’s marvelous!”
“It’s a black mirror,” Bob said with all the enthusiasm of one who didn’t care about interior decorating.
“Oh, sweetheart! It’s not just a mirror. It’s a scrying mirror.” She turned around. “I think we should hang it somewhere.”
“Crying mirror? What’s that?” asked Bob.
“Sssscrying,” hissed Jacquie. “You can see the future or the past when you look into it.”
“Like in Harry Potter!” exclaimed Bob.
“Honestly!” Jacquie let out a big sigh. “You do know that stories were written before Harry Potter, don’t you? For instance, there was a scrying mirror in Snow White. They’ve been around a long time. Where shall we hang this? Ah, right here behind the checkout desk. I’ll bring a black feather boa to dress it up a little bit.”
“So, if I look into it, will I see the past?” asked Bob.
“You might” said Jacquie. “Or you might see the woman you will marry. Now on that subject, John tells me you don’t have a girlfriend.”
I was eager to leave that conversation and scurried into the parlor, where Roxie was chatting with Goldblum, who was making her laugh. I wasn’t about to interrupt that. It was a relief to see her smile again.
I refilled the coffee and, using the need for goodies as an excuse, headed to the bakery where Manny had worked.
A line of people waiting for takeout coffee wound outside the door. But inside the bakery, it was nearly silent. Few people made use of the tables and chairs available for enjoying a treat with a cup of coffee. Mostly I was surprised that I didn’t see anything about Manny. If it had been Bob who died, wouldn’t we have closed the store for the day? Or at the very least, wouldn’t people have been coming by to say lovely things about him? Nothing of that sort appeared to be happening here.
A gentleman with a very short, well-trimmed beard, whom I suspected might be the manager, sat at one of the tables, making out what looked like a work schedule for employees.
I took a deep breath, hoping to gain courage to approach him. “Hi. Are you the manager?”
“Owner. Rami Kuchar.” He looked up at me with interest. “Are you here for the job?”
“Job?” I repeated stupidly before I realized he probably meant Manny’s job.
He pointed at the glass window in front of the shop. “Yeah. The Help Wanted sign?”
I sat down opposite him. “Are you filling Manny’s position?”
He eyed me warily. “You don’t look like one of his friends.”
“Oh? How do they look?” I asked.
“Rough-and-tumble hooligans. He was my neighbor’s nephew. I was trying to do him a favor by hiring the kid, but I regretted that from day one.”
“Why was that?”
“Are you a cop?”
Seriously? I looked like a cop to him? It was sort of flattering. “No! I run Color Me Read just up the street. In fact, I ordered cupcakes and pumpkin cookies from you a couple of days ago.”
Rami’s lean face opened up. “Oh, yeah. I appreciate your business.”
“They were great. And adorable.”
“Yeah?” He brightened, as if I had given him a wonderful gift. “I love to bake but I don’t usually hear what people think unless there’s a problem, ya know? I’m back in the kitchen most of the morning so I depend on my employees to keep things running out here. I guess the bookstore is the same way.”
“It is. I understand completely. As soon as there’s a complaint, everyone comes looking for me.”
We both laughed. I was surprised that we’d found something in common. It lightened the mood.
“So, I guess you heard about Manny,” he said.
“Heard about him? I’m the one who called 911. I can’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to hurt him.”
Rami huffed. “Somewhere deep down I thought he was a good kid. But he was always bluffing and trying to make himself sound important. He ran into some trouble in a judo competition. I did my best to explain to him that he had to straighten up and fly right, but as you see, it did no good.”
“A lot of people were angry with him?”
“Not so much angry as distrustful. Manny was a big talker. You know the kind? Claimed he was the son of a mafia boss in New York. He told stories about learning judo to fend off the people who were after him because he was a police informant. That kind of rubbish. Not a word of it was true.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“His uncle assures me the family has no connection to the mob. And his parents live right out here in Adams Morgan. He was basically a local kid. And the cops would have to be idiots to use him as a police informant. He’d have blabbed everything. He just wanted to paint himself as a big guy who was important. I bet most of the stories he told came straight from movies.”
“That’s sort of sad.”
“Kids like to build themselves up that way, I guess.” Rami leaned toward me. “He was running his mouth about coming into a lot of money. I thought it was another one of his elaborate lies. But maybe someone believed him and killed him for it.”
“Did he say why he was getting the money? Did a relative leave it to him?”
“Hey, Arnie!” Rami gestured to an employee with his hand.
A slender young man hurried over to us.
“What story did Manny tell you?” asked Rami.
“You mean about not needing to work here? He’d found a new lucrative line of work and he wouldn’t be rubbing elbows with guys like me anymore.”
“Did he say what it was?” I asked.
“He gave me some smart-guy answer like, ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you.’ I blew him off. He also said he was gonna win the lottery because he figured out a system. And he was going to buy a racehorse and win the Triple Crown.” Arnie looked bored and shrugged. “I’m sorry he’s dead, but Manny was a phony and a bigmouth.”
“That’s not much of a reason to kill someone,” I observed.
One side of Arnie’s mouth twisted upward. “It all depends on what he might have said to the wrong guy.”