After forty-five boring minutes of sitting behind the counter in the hardware store, waiting for a customer to come in the door, Jessica was regretting her hasty decision to cut Michele loose. There had been no customers, and it was a little eerie, being alone for the first time in several days. What if Michele had been right? What if Cat really did plan to kill her? She was all alone and this would be a perfect opportunity for him.
There was a loud thump that seemed to come from the storeroom, and Jessica jumped up from her stool. She was halfway to the door before she heard an accompanying meow, and she laughed out loud. It was only the store cat patrolling the area. Her father kept a big yellow tomcat in the back storage area to catch the field mice that always seemed to come in during the fall and winter.
“Hey, Bruiser . . . did you catch your supper?”
Jessica grinned as the cat meowed again. Bruiser was a real character. If you asked him a question, he meowed. She’d held long conversations with Bruiser on the days she’d worked at the store, and one day she’d worked him up to twenty-three meows before he’d grown bored and stalked off to the back storage area to look for mice.
Jessica looked up as she heard a car engine. It was Brett’s mother, and she was making a U-turn at the corner. Jessica hoped she was coming to the hardware store to buy something.
It would he nice to have a customer. But Brett’s mother parked across the street, instead, in front of Millie’s Cafe. Jessica watched her walk in, and then come out several minutes later, carrying a square bakery box. Jessica didn’t have to look inside the box to know what was in it. It was one of Millie’s pies, and Brett had mentioned that his mother always picked up a cherry pie on Monday night for dessert.
Although Clearwater had a population of over five thousand, it was a small town at heart. And everyone in town was interested in everyone else’s business. Since the Stevens family had only lived here for a little over a year, Mrs. Stevens didn’t know how things were done in Clearwater. She had no idea that most of the Clearwater women thought that buying a pie, instead of making it yourself, was the height of laziness.
Seeing Brett’s mother made Jessica think of Brett. He really was handsome, and he was going off to college after he graduated. Brett would be a success, Jessica was sure of it. He wasn’t anything like Neal, who’d told her he’d be content to settle down in Clearwater and stay close to his friends and family.
Perhaps she should try to date Brett. Jessica began to smile at the thought. She’d be with him at the coronation because he was bound to win the contest for Valentine’s Day King. They would dance the coronation dance together, and sit side by side on the thrones for the ceremony. She hadn’t actually asked Neal to the dance yet, although everyone assumed they were going together. Perhaps she should tell Neal to find another date, and ask Brett to take her to the dance. But would that be fair to Neal?
Jessica sighed and shook her head. Of course it wouldn’t be fair. She’d gone out with Neal for over a year, and he expected her to go to the Valentine’s Day dance with him. Telling him to find another date wouldn’t be fair at all. But life wasn’t fair, and Neal would get over it, sooner or later. She had to consider her own happiness.
The more she thought about it, the better it sounded. Neal would understand that since she was going to be the queen, she had an obligation to date the king. She could even suggest that he take someone unpopular to the dance, someone who wouldn’t otherwise have a date . . . like Amy, or Colleen.
Someone else was pulling into the parking spot that Brett’s mother had vacated. Jessica peered out through the window and recognized Mr. Waller as he got out of his old green Honda. Mr. Waller was a widower, and he always ate his evening meal at Millie’s Cafe. Mr. Waller was carrying several packages, and Jessica started to grin. The rumor around town was that Mr. Waller was sweet on Millie, and since he was the town mailman, he always hand-delivered her packages, instead of leaving a little notice in her mailbox.
“The mail!” Jessica jumped up the moment she thought of it and hurried toward the front door. Her parents had been in a hurry when they’d left, and they’d probably forgotten to bring in the mail. There might be a letter for her. Or if she was lucky, there would be a notice from the Riverside Mall, twenty miles from Clearwater, telling her that the new shoes she’d ordered for the dance had arrived.
There was a big stack of mail in the box, and Jessica carried it inside. She spread it out on the counter and let out a whoop of pleasure as she saw the postcard notice from Ivert’s Footwear. Her shoes were here, and she could hardly wait to drive out to the mall to get them.
Jessica went through the rest of the mail, sorting it into piles on the counter. There was a hunting and fishing magazine for her father, a letter from her grandmother in Arizona, a book of recipes her mother had ordered, several bills, and a whole stack of ads. But when Jessica saw the envelope that had been hidden at the very bottom of the pile, she gasped in fright.
It was a red envelope with no stamp and no postmark, but her name was printed on the front. Was it another Valentine from Cat? She wished she’d paid more attention when Brett was discussing his printing.
Jessica’s fingers trembled as she picked up the envelope. She had the urge to toss it in the big wastebasket under the counter, but perhaps it wasn’t from Cat. It could be a Valentine from someone else. Most Valentines came in red envelopes.
Slowly and carefully, almost as if she were dealing with a rattlesnake that was ready to strike, Jessica loosened the glue on the flap. Then she drew out the card inside, and shivered. It said, Violets are blue, roses are red. An unworthy queen is better off dead.
“No!” Jessica stuck the card back in the envelope and resealed it quickly with the glue stick that her father kept on the counter. She still didn’t think that Cat was a killer, but a card just like this had brought bad luck before. It was almost like the curses that the ancient witches had put on people, and she had to get rid of it quickly.
Jessica picked up the envelope and hurried back out the front door. She stuck it back in the mailbox and closed the lid with a bang. Perhaps she could break the curse if she put it back where she’d found it, and no one knew that she’d read it.
She felt a little better as she went back inside and took her place at the counter again. She didn’t actually believe in curses, but it never hurt to play it safe.
Jessica reached for the phone to call Michele and ask her to come down to the store to keep her company. But then she remembered that Michele was no longer her friend, and she hung up before it could ring. There was always Neal.
Basketball practice was over by now, and he would be at home.
But he wasn’t, and Jessica sighed as she hung up the phone. Where was Neal? He was supposed to be her bodyguard, and she was here all alone.
It was getting dark inside the store, and Jessica got up to turn on the bright overhead lights they used at night. The daytime lights had to be shut off first. The old wiring was overloaded, and the fuses would blow if both sets of lights were on at once.
Jessica flicked the switch behind the counter and frowned as the daytime lights went off. It was really getting dark fast.
The switch that controlled the overhead lights was on the wall by the storage room door, and Jessica shivered slightly and headed for the tool aisle. It was even darker back here, and the blades of the hatchets and axes gleamed in the reflected light from passing cars on the street. They looked sharper and more menacing than they ever had in the daylight. Every time a car passed on the street outside, and its red taillights were deflected on their shiny metal surfaces, it looked almost as if they were covered with blood.
Jessica walked a little faster, but she was careful not to stumble. The tool aisle was crowded. They’d just received a new shipment, and there were still boxes of things to be shelved.
It was getting very dark now, and Jessica wished she’d thought to turn on the lights earlier. As the rush-hour traffic increased on the street, the headlights from the almost steady stream of cars swept the interior of the store, making the shadows of the tools and implements sway and move in crazy and frightening patterns.
She took a deep breath and told herself that no one had ever been hurt by a shadow; but her heart beat faster, and her legs began to shake. The moving shadows made the big scythe seem to swing from side to side, as if it were ready to drop from its overhead hanger. And the dark shadow of the hedge clippers resembled a huge pair of scissors with wickedly sharp blades. Even the shadow of something familiar and ordinary, like a garden rake, seemed to turn into a lethal weapon with its elongated, sharp points.
Just then the bell on the front door tinkled, and someone came into the store. Jessica whirled to look, but it was too dark to see who it was.
“Mr. Ford? Jessica? Is anybody here?”
A voice called out in the gathering darkness, and Jessica gave a huge sigh of relief as she recognized it. “I’m here. Stay right there and I’ll turn on the lights.”
“Do you need some help?”
“No. I know where they are. I just have to get there.”
There was a moment of silence, and then Jessica heard him chuckle. “This is a hardware store, isn’t it?”
Jessica winced as she stubbed her toe on the edge of a wheelbarrow, and her voice was much sharper than usual. “Of course it is. You know that.”
“Doesn’t Ford Hardware carry flashlights?”
“Very funny!” Jessica gave an exasperated sigh. He was right. She should have thought to grab a flashlight while it was still light enough to see. But he didn’t have to remind her of that.
“Do you want me to find one for you? There’s a display right here, by the front door.”
“No, thanks.” Jessica began to frown. His voice had sounded closer, but perhaps that was just her imagination. She hoped he wasn’t trying to come back here. He’d probably trip and hurt himself, and then he might try to collect on her father’s insurance. “Stay right there. I can manage just fine on my own.”
A few more moments of groping in the darkness, and she’d made it to the back wall. The wall switch was right in front of her, and Jessica was about to flick it on when she heard the sound of breathing behind her. She’d told him not to come back here, but he hadn’t listened to her.
“I told you not to come back here!” Jessica turned toward him with a frown. It was so dark that she couldn’t see his face, but she knew he was there. She could hear him breathing. “It’s too dark to see. What if you’d tripped over something?”
He laughed, and Jessica gasped as he grabbed her hand, pulling it away from the light switch. It was a laugh she’d never heard him use before, scary and menacing.
“Don’t you know, Jessica? A Cat can see in the dark.”
“But you’re not a . . .” Jessica couldn’t finish the sentence. Her vocal cords were suddenly paralyzed with fear. He was Cat! She was alone with Cat! And Cat had threatened to kill her!
“I’ve got a little present for you. It’s something you really deserve. Hold still while I put it around your neck.”
Jessica struggled, trying desperately to pull away, but he was much stronger than she was. And then she felt something cold on her neck, and she reached up to grab it. It felt like a chain, a thin gold chain, and she screamed as she realized that it was a half-heart necklace, just like Tanya and Gail had been wearing.
“Wait! Please! You made a mistake! You can’t—”
But Jessica never finished her thought. There wasn’t even time to scream before something sharp and pointed smashed into her head, knocking her into a sea of perpetual darkness.