It was a productive morning for Jack. Half a dozen customers spent close to four hundred dollars on books which cost him a fraction of that. He’d never seen any of the people before. The town wasn’t a big draw for tourists at any time of the year, so it was unexpected. On the east side of Eureka Falls, there was the site of a minor battle in the Civil War, and the area’s most famous citizen was a singer from the 1960s who’d had one hit single while wearing a hat on fire.
Adam Church, you’ve made us infamous.
He scanned the latest news about the Glick murders. According to local social media websites, people from nearby towns and villages had been coming over since last night, while the attempted murder of Evie had added to the mob.
And you delayed the wolves hanging around my heels, my Evie.
His eyes drifted from the screen towards the bills on the desk. He was only capable of reading two of them before his stomach resembled the worst ride on Coney Island, and he was reluctant, especially after yesterday, to throw up when he had new customers in the shop.
The first letter he opened was one of a handful he’d brought from home. He found it easier scanning bad news in the bookshop, and it was the bank reminding him he’d missed three mortgage payments on the house. There was a polite reminder in the middle paragraph to arrange a meeting to see the bank manager if he was having difficulty with his finances. He rolled his eyes as he read it; that option had long passed. There was also a statement at the bottom, this time in a larger text to ram home the point that another missed payment would lead to an automatic process for repossession proceedings. That next payment was due in two weeks.
Beneath the bank’s letter were three others from the credit card companies to which he owed thousands of dollars. He didn’t bother opening them. The only other one he read was from the bookshop’s landlord; this was even worse than the one from the bank. It was less money he owed, but he also had less time to pay this debt: a week before he’d have to close the shop. Then, with the house repossession on the horizon, there would be nowhere to put the stock. He couldn’t afford storage, and if he sold them, the total value of the books and magazines wouldn’t cover a fraction of his debt.
And he still had six months of alimony to pay his ex-wife. He’d forgotten everything about their three years together apart from the last thing she said to him.
‘When did marriage become My Rage?’
He pushed the memory of her from his head and returned to the internet as social media chatter about the Church siblings distracted him from his money worries. There was a lot of anger directed at Adam and Evie. He thought it was harsh on her. As far as he knew, until very recently, she hadn’t left Shady Acres since stepping inside the place seven years ago, but it had proved potentially beneficial to him. Evie’s novel, queried in his name, had gotten him a well-respected New York literary agent, and she’d told Jack she was convinced ‘his’ book would make him famous and wealthy.
He’d initially told himself the theft of her work was only about the money and preventing his life from collapsing into the same one which overtook his father. If the house and the business were taken from him, he’d be homeless and jobless with few opportunities on the horizon for a nearly fifty-year-old former alcoholic ex-bookseller. And how long would it take before he returned to the booze? Yesterday proved how easy it was for him to return to the bad ways.
So, yes, the money from the sale of the novel would stop his life from crumbling into dust and despair. Still, he had to admit, if only to himself, after having spent more than thirty years failing as a published writer, now that it was in his grasp, even if the book wasn’t his, it was equally as important as the financial rewards.
He raised an invisible glass to the empty shop and the woman who, unwittingly and unknowingly, was about to save his miserable life.
‘Here’s to you, Evie Church.’
But how was he going to deal with her? In those moments between handling customers, Jack had considered several internet searches which might be helpful, from “how to get away with murder” to “how to commit the perfect murder”. But even he knew those would leave a trail across his computer, which the police would easily access. Only last week, he’d read about a man in the next town over who’d murdered his wife and then disposed of her in an acid bath. And what had the police discovered when they took his computer away but numerous searches for “the best way to dispose of a human body using acid”?
Jack realised desperation was starting to consume him, but he wasn’t that stupid. Plus, he had the next best thing to a worldwide web of limitless data: a bookshop heaving with true crime books. He browsed several of them over the morning, his mind drifting between serial killers’ motivations and the processes leading to the police or the FBI catching those same killers. The information was illuminating in sort, but none of it helped him. Eventually, it led him to a different idea altogether.
I don’t have to kill her. I only need to get rid of those messages she sent me.
And that meant getting into her email account, and it might not be as difficult as he’d first thought. He’d dismissed the idea initially when his bloodlust overtook his common sense. It would be too challenging to find her computer, then access it and, it seemed likely, break any passwords and security.
But the more he considered it, the more he understood he wouldn’t need to do any of that. In the modern age, most people, including himself, accessed their emails through their phones as much as their computers. If she was like him, she probably didn’t log out of any of her internet accounts on her cell. So, in theory, all he had to do was get hold of her phone.
He’d pondered the difficulty of that on the way to work, but the news of what had happened to Evie outside that hotel presented him with an excellent opportunity to get her and the phone within touching distance. All he had to do was put his plan into action.
First, it was lunchtime, and he’d had nothing to eat all morning but those two muffins. With the shop empty and his stomach growling, he strode to the front, changed the OPEN sign to CLOSED, then locked the door behind him. He returned to the Shaws’ coffee shop and enjoyed one of their excellent savoury bagels and a piece of the homemade apple pie which was Mary Shaw’s speciality.
After ordering his food and a drink, he picked a seat near the window. The coffee shop had a similar increase in customer traffic to that which his bookshop had experienced that morning. It would appear that death and murder were great as consumerist aphrodisiacs. He smiled as he nibbled at his excellent bacon and cheese bagel. In the distance, he noticed Mary staring at him, and he transferred his smile to her. She blushed and turned away.
Over the years, he’d overheard the Shaws engage in verbal marital disputes too heavy for the gap which separated both businesses. His conversations with them had been professional, polite, and pleasant, with his thoughts about Mrs Shaw rarely drifting into behaviour of a sexual nature. There was one time he’d caught the daughter, Beverly, staring at him when she was a teenager, which had unnerved him, but he’d soon forgotten about it.
He knew the girl had suffered at school, had listened to the parents more than once arguing about what they should do about their unpopular child, and took pity on her when she’d left her educational tormentors behind. She was something of a computer whizz kid, and he’d paid her more than it was worth when she’d sorted out his computer problem. She worked at the school now, and he wondered if her salary was enough to help her parents with their financial issues.
He finished the bagel and took the rest of the coffee and the apple pie back to the book store. He’d finish his lunch there and plan for meeting Evie Church again.
Then she wouldn’t be a problem anymore.