I could feel my dogs resting against my feet, and while Taco was still prone, I could feel the rigidness of Mayhem’s back against my leg. She knew something was wrong, but she also seemed to not feel like she could move. Instead, she trembled against my leg and let out a low growl.
“Oh no you don’t, girl,” the woman next to me said. “I’ll be leaving shortly. You just hold steady.”
Mayhem’s body tightened further, and I knew that despite the warning, if this woman harmed me, she would lose a chunk of flesh in the process. But I didn’t know what that would mean for Mayhem, so I tried to soothe my dog. “I’m alright, girl. Let’s just see what this woman wants.”
I nudged my foot a bit further under her and also slid my toes under Taco’s head. Only then did I realized that the basset wasn’t at all asleep but simply pretending to be so. He was as taut as Mayhem but choosing to act like he wasn’t.
“You did well at the press conference this morning, Ms. Beckett. I almost believed you. But almost is not good enough, so I’m going to need you to take a little action. You know, put your money where your mouth is. Let your actions speak louder than your words.”
I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice steady, even as the grip on my hair tightened. “Is my father okay? Symeon? I need proof that they are alright before I agree to anything.”
“Someone else has also watched all the episodes of Ransom, I see. It was such a shame the show didn’t have more seasons. I could have used more tips. Seems like you could have, too. Maybe then you could have avoided your father and your friend’s unfortunate circumstance.” Her voice was light, as if she was talking about the menu choices at her favorite restaurant. “Keep your eyes closed and listen.”
I could hear the sound of a phone ringing near my head, and then when someone answered, the woman said, “Let her hear them.”
“This is Burt Beckett,” my father said. “To whom am I speaking?”
I let out a small laugh. Even under duress, my father kept his formal grammar. “It’s me, Dad. Are you okay?”
“Harvey?! We are fine. Are you okay? What is going on?”
The woman pulled the phone away as she said, “They are both fine. Now listen. I want you to destroy every magazine and every book in your shop that traffics in gossip. Celebrity memoirs, magazines, true crime books. Everything that includes someone telling stories that are not their own to tell. Burn them.”
I nodded. “Okay, I can do that. Then, you will let my dad and Symeon go?”
The pressure on my hair lifted, and when I sat up and opened my eyes, the bench next to me was empty. I stood up and spun around, looking for the woman on the sidewalk around me. Her voice had been familiar, and I hoped that if I saw her I might recognize her. But as I scanned the faces moving away from me and even toward me on the sidewalk, I didn’t get a pulse of familiarity at all.
Until Mart popped up next to me and said, “Ready?” She was smiling, but as she looked into my face, her expression grew dark. “What’s wrong?”
I took out my phone and dialed Jared. “Someone just threatened me out here in broad daylight. I need you and Tuck now.”
He said he’d be at the store right away, and when I looked toward the police station a second later, he was jogging up the sidewalk. The sight almost made me smile. Almost.
“Someone threatened you?” Mart shouted. “When?”
“Just now, while I was waiting for you.” I didn’t have the energy to replay the conversation more than once, so I asked her to help me get the dogs back inside the store.
She took another look at my face and then nodded before grabbing both leashes in her hand. “Let me help you up.”
“I’ve got her,” Jared said as he reached me, bent over, and took both my hands in his. “Are you okay?”
I stood up, and my knees shook. “I don’t know,” I said. “I need to get inside.”
Jared wrapped an arm around me, met Mart’s gaze, and then helped me follow her back up the street to my store. As we reached the door, a police siren sounded behind us, and Tuck jumped out of his cruiser, which he double-parked on the street.
“Harvey, are you—“ he started to ask when Mart interrupted him.
“She needs to sit down,” she said. “Now.”
Apparently I looked as bad as I felt because Tuck stepped ahead of us, opened the door, and then quickly marched to Marcus at the register. The next minute, the two men were moving from customer to customer, and slowly the store emptied. We were clearly closing early, and I didn’t even care.
As I sipped the tea Rocky had handed me and felt my heartrate return to normal, I tried to figure out why the woman had seemed familiar to me. She had talked about celebrity memoirs and true crime, so she clearly knew book genres. There was a cadence to her voice that rang a bell for me. I thought back over her words, and then the phrase, “Literary but with an edge” floated into my mind, and it hit me – she was the customer with the long blonde braid who had wanted the edgy literary fiction, the same woman who had asked Marcus about Margie’s murder.
“I know who has my dad,” I shouted.
Mart, who had sat with me as soon as I came back in, said, “What?! How, Harvey?”
“She’s a customer. I can identify her.” I was still shouting, and my anxiety was rising. It felt like one of those dreams where you know what you need to do or where you need to be but you’re too late to get there or to finish on time, and yet you keep trying.
Jared was watching me carefully as he sat next to me in one of the café chairs. “Who is she, Harvey?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head. “I don’t know her name, but if I see her, I’ll recognize her. She was at the recycling thing here yesterday. I saw her. She’s been into the store a couple of times.”
Tuck pulled up a chair and sat down. “Okay, Harvey. We hear you. But first, tell us what happened to you.”
Without thinking, I pulled my hands free from Mart’s and headed toward the bookshelves. “There’s not time. I need to do what she said before she hurts Dad or Symeon.”
Mart followed after me and spun me toward her. “Harvey, you’re not making sense. What about Symeon?”
“He’s fine,” I said as I pushed her hand off my arm. “But he won’t be if we don’t burn these books.”
Marcus stepped in front of me and barred my path. Behind me, I felt someone else step close and saw Jared was right behind me. “Harvey, stop. You need to tell us what happened,” Marcus said.
I started shaking my head frantically from side to side. “Don’t you understand. She’s going to kill them.” I tried to dodge around Marcus, but he caught my shoulders squarely in my hands, and then I felt two arms wrap around me tight. “Let. Me. Go,” I shouted.
“No, Harvey, I won’t,” Tuck said close to my ear. “You need to talk to us before you do something rash. Let us help you.”
He turned me around, and I saw Mart, Jared, Rocky, and Marcus all standing around me, fear etched deep into their faces. Something about their concern cleared the fog of terror just enough that I was able to realize I wasn’t thinking well.
I sank to the floor. “The woman, she let me talk to Dad.” I sobbed then, and Jared sank to the floor beside me and pulled me close.
A few minutes and a shot of espresso later, I was seated back in the café with all my friends around me. I had explained what the woman on the bench had said about burning the books and magazines, told everyone again that I recognized her from the store, and confirmed that Dad and Symeon were both okay, for now.
As soon as I finished speaking, Tuck was on the phone to the deputies from Easton with a description of the woman I had seen and directions to follow her but not engage. “We don’t want to cause her to act rashly,” I heard him say.
“Harvey, I need to get out there and look, but Jared is going to stay with you,” Tuck said and nodded at Jared. “You are not to leave his side. In fact, I don’t want any of you to leave this store.” He turned to Marcus. “Could you please call everyone else and ask them to come here, too? At this point, I think we need to keep everyone together and have an eye on you.”
Marcus took out his phone.
“Remind them not to come alone either. Get someone to pick up Elle and Woody,” Tuck said to Marcus, who nodded and kept texting.
As Tuck headed out, I knew I needed to let myself fall apart, but I wasn’t about to do that out here in the open where all this started and that horrible woman might see me. I asked Jared if we could go to the back room for a minute.
He winked at me and said, “Sure thing, Beautiful.” Then, he gently took my hand and led me back. When he closed the storeroom door behind him, he pulled me to him and let me sob against his chest for a few moments.
Once I’d had my release and been comforted a little, I forced myself to breathe, wiped my face with a tissue, and said, “Let’s go find this woman.”
Jared hugged me one more time. “Let’s do it,” he said as he held the storeroom door open for me and kissed my cheek as I walked by.
In the front of the store, our friends were beginning to gather. Elle and Woody had already arrived as had Mom, Lucas, and Cate. Everyone was in the café with mugs of coffee, and everyone looked strained and tired, just like I felt. “Hi,” I said as I walked back in and hugged Mom, who was sitting with Cate. She looked more exhausted than I’d ever seen her, and while I had never doubted her love for my father, the look on her face told me far more about the depth of her feelings for him than any words ever could.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She huffed out a hard breath and said, “I am not, but I am.” She smiled at me and said, “You?”
“Same.” I looked over to the next table, where Mart and Elle were sitting, also hand in hand. “You mind?”
“No, go. We all need each other,” Mom said.
I pulled my chair over to sit next to Mart, and her head fell against my shoulder. “Did you talk to him, Harvey?” she asked very quietly.
I sighed. “I didn’t, but Dad said he was okay. My dad wouldn’t lie about that, Mart. He’s okay.” I tilted my head to rest on hers and tried to breathe.
The bell above the front door sounded as Marcus opened it to let Henri, Bear, and Pickle in along with Stephen and Walter. A minute later, Lu knocked, and Marcus helped her carry a tray full of churros to Rocky’s counter. I didn’t feel much like eating but the smell of fried bread and cinnamon was comforting just the same.
“Do you think we should move away from the window?” Stephen asked. “She’s probably watching.”
I sat up and looked around and was about to suggest we move to the back of the store when Jared spoke. “Actually, Tuck and I think it’s good you be up here. She needs to see you all together, and if you are up for it, Harvey, we think we need to act like we’re gathering materials to burn, as she asked.”
“You’re buying time,” Mom said with a flat voice. “You’re trying to give Burt and Symeon more time.”
Next to me, Mart let out a little whimper, and I pulled her close again. “They’re okay,” I whispered. “They’re okay.” I gave her a tight squeeze and then stood up. “Okay.”
I looked into the faces of each of my friends and felt their compassion and support, and then, I slid my emotions aside and went into manager mode. “Elle and Mart, you two pull all the magazines with celebrity mentions. Stephen and Walter, true crime. Henri, Bear, celebrity memoir. Pickle, Mom, Marcus, and Rocky, let’s scour the shelves for anything that has a hint of fact behind it that isn’t about only the person writing it. We’ll pull everything that might be mildly upsetting to this awful woman.” My voice was firm, and I felt my resolve shore up behind it. I’d burn them if I had to.
“Give us an example of what you mean, Harvey?” Pickle said.
I thought for a minute. “Okay, 11/22/63 by Stephen King. It’s fiction, but it takes place around the Kennedy assassination. Or The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr – it’s her memoir, but it deals with her mother’s drinking.”
Pickle nodded. “Maybe we should just get the memoirs, too, to be safe?”
I thought a minute and then agreed. “Let’s take the books and magazines right to the front of the store. We’ll pile them there like we don’t care about them, but if you would, please take a surreptitious picture of the shelves before you remove titles. That way, we can get things back where they belong quickly.”
Heads nodded around the room. “Rocky, can you help me move the front tables?” Marcus said. The two of them slid the two large display tables off to the side, and then we had a large open space on the floor, right by the front door. If she was watching, she was definitely going to see that.
Then, we dispersed to our corners and began pulling dozens and dozens of books off the shelves. Pickle and I headed to the memoirs, and while I loaded up his arms, I answered his questions about what the woman had said.
I carried my teetering stack to the front door, squatted down, and let the tower tumble from my arms. I winced as they fell over, but if this wasn’t painful, then it wasn’t what the kidnapper wanted. So I groaned and threw my hands over my head and then headed back to where Pickle waited for me to fill his arms.
“Tell me what this woman looks like, Harvey,” Pickle said, and something about the way he asked gave me pause.
I studied his face, which was etched deep with lines and looked gray and drawn, and said, “She has a long, blonde braid. That’s her most noticeable feature.”
He shook his head and headed toward the front, mumbling something that sounded like, “But she’s not blonde.” When he came back, he asked, “Tell me more about her?”
Pickle grabbed the next section of books from the shelves and rotated them so they’d stack against my forearms. “She’s small, maybe only five feet.” I let my mind go back to our conversations about books and pictured the woman as we talked. “She moves like she’s very fit, like maybe a dancer.”
Pickle hissed. “And what else?”
I stared at him a moment and then said, “Her accent isn’t Eastern Shore or even Southern, I don’t think.” But then I remembered how she’d said, “Homes” when we were talking about the author’s work. “But maybe she is. Sometimes, she had those long o’s and i’s that I have even though most people don’t think I sound Southern.”
As Pickle put two more books on my arms, he sighed. “Yeah, I know just what you mean.” He sat down then, right on the floor, and leaned back against the shelves. “Give me a minute, will you, Harvey? Maybe go help Stephen and Walter for a bit?”
I stared at him. His jaw was set and his gaze hard as he looked at the reference shelves across the aisle. So I left him and went to find Jared.
He and Rocky were scanning the poetry section for titles. It was a hard task because if you don’t know the poems or the poet, it’s difficult to know if the poems are about their lives. I quickly pulled Bellocq’s Ophelia off the shelf and put it on their pile. I was just about to suggest we move over to cookbooks since I knew some them were commemorating historical events, like Hurricane Katrina, when Jared’s phone rang.
“Yes. Okay. On my way. Send a deputy here?” he said.
“We think we got her, Harvey,” he said as he moved toward the front door. “An anonymous tip just came in. Tuck and the other officers are on their way to a fishing cabin just outside of town. I’m meeting them there.” He kissed me quickly and then sprinted toward his cruiser on the street.
I stared after him for a minute and then looked at Rocky, who was already walking away to tell the others the good news. I took a deep breath and went to find Pickle.
He was sitting right where I’d left him, still staring at the shelves in front of him. “You okay?” I asked.
He looked up at me and said, “I am now.” Then he pushed himself to his feet and said, “Think Stephen has a flask on him.”
“Does he ever not?” I said as I put my arm around his shoulder. “Let’s go.”
Fortunately, Stephen had come prepared, and we all shared generous portions of whiskey in the fresh cups of coffee that Rocky made for us as we waited for news in the café. I couldn’t help the knot of grief I felt in my belly as I looked at the pile of books tumbling in the front of my store. I knew some of them were damaged, covers ripped, pages bent, but I also knew that we had needed to do this. We had needed this time, this moment, for many reasons. I glanced over at Pickle, but he avoided my eyes.
“Do we begin to reassemble?” Marcus said.
I felt my spirits lift just a little. “I think so. Can we all start to put the books back where we got them? You up for that?”
“Up for it. I can’t wait,” Cate said. “It nearly killed me to dump those books there. I can’t imagine what it felt like for you, a real book lover.”
“Worth it,” was all I said as I headed to grab the pile of memoirs I had last contributed. As I began to stack the titles, I could see some damage on a few of them, so I said, “If you see a book that has been injured, let’s make a triage pile.” An idea was starting to form at the back of my mind, but I needed to let it build before I could act on it.
“Maybe you and Marcus should evaluate what’s damaged while we put everything back?” Elle suggested.
“Good plan,” I said as I moved toward the front of the pile and began sorting books by genre and condition. It was because I had my back to the front door that I didn’t see it coming.
Something hard and heavy slammed into the back of my head, and I toppled forward onto the stack of books. The next minute, I heard the bell above the door sound, and then a foot was on the back of my neck.
“I told you to burn them,” she said.
I tried to turn my head and look up, but she was pushing my face harder and harder into the books below me. The muscles in my neck were beginning to scream.
That’s when I heard two snarls and then a yelp as Taco and Mayhem latched onto my attacker’s leg and pulled.
The weight on my neck lifted, and I heard a thud behind me. When I looked over, I saw a tiny, brunette pinned beneath Marcus’s arms and my two dogs growling with bared teeth as they stood guard on either side of me.
Stephen called the dogs off and petted them profusely as two sets of hands lifted me to my feet, and I looked over to see my mom, tears in her eyes. “Are you okay?”
I rubbed a hand over the back of my head and neck. I was going to be sore and swollen, but I wasn’t bleeding, surprisingly. I nodded.
Then, I turned to see Bear and Walter help pull the woman to her feet. She strained against the men’s arms, and while I could tell she was very strong, quite fit as I’d surmised, she was too small to wrench free from the two large men.
As she squirmed and struggled, she reminded me of a cat I’d once had who was so feral that if you tried to take her to the vet, she suddenly became super-cat with the strength of a thousand cats and the teeth of a shark. She hissed and tried to bite Walter, but the men held her fast.
Then, Pickle walked up. “Melinda?” The surprise in his voice was clear, and he didn’t flinch when she tried to kick him. “Melinda, don’t say anything. You hear me.” His voice was firm, but she didn’t seem to hear him.
“They only hear what they want to hear,” she screamed. “They don’t see the truth, only what makes for good gossip. They never see me.”
I sighed and let myself feel a tiny bit of compassion for this woman who was so obviously very traumatized and very hurt. I almost wanted to hug her, but then I remembered what she had done to my father and Symeon, what she had just done to me. I stood and watched as the deputy Jared had sent ran in, took the woman, and handcuffed her arms behind her back before forcing her past the broken glass from the front door and out to the back seat of his cruiser.
Once she was contained, the officer came back in and began to interview us one by one. While he talked to Walter and Bear to see what they had witnessed, the rest of us milled around and waited.
Stephen looked at Pickle. “You knew her name,” he said quietly.
“I do. She’s my client.”