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Eliot says each cat has three names. Their everyday name, their fancy name, and the name that only they know.
Maybe what she needed was a new name for the shop.
“The gray is Anne Mice.”
“The little orange-and-white calico is going to be Catnip Everdeen.” Lou couldn’t help the grin that peeled across her face.
“I settled on Purrt Vonnegut. In honor of our mystery man and his muttered reference to Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron.”
These names are great 👍
Her friend certainly seemed to know a lot about a man she purported to hate.
A room full of books and people who loved books were always welcome,
“Weird that Frederick doesn’t have a display. I thought for sure he’d be here,” an older woman said in a shrill, self-important voice.
A man these two book people knew was missing? And it sounded like he was a fellow bookseller. This could very well be her mystery man. Intrigue spiked inside Lou, and she followed them as they walked.
What had her mind racing with questions was the thing he’d done just before he lied. He took off his baseball hat, scratched his head, and put the cap back on as if it were a nervous tick. He’d also performed the same motion before he’d said he didn’t know where this Frederick person was and when he’d told Lou and Willow that he didn’t recognize the man in the sketch.
The older woman shook her head. “Although, now that you mention it, they do look rather alike. But no, this is obviously Frederick. He’s a rare-books dealer in the county.”
“What’s his last name?” Lou asked. “Alvarado. He lives in Tinsdale,” the woman said.
“And what is the name of the man who’s wearing the baseball cap over there?” Lou asked, trying to sound curious instead of desperate for information. “That’s Lance. Lance Swatek.”
Lou waited for Easton’s expression to light up with the news, just as hers had when she’d learned of Frederick’s identity. It didn’t.
“We found his brother’s body and when we went to notify him, and couldn’t locate him, realized he fit the profile of our John Doe from Lou’s alley,” Easton explained. “Do you think the brother killed Frederick and then killed himself?” Lou asked through a cringe. Easton’s posture tensed. “No, his brother had been dead a couple of days prior to Frederick’s death. He was the victim of a hit and run with a semi truck last week, but we didn’t find his body until today.”
she saw a figure lurking by her back door. They wore a long coat and a hood pulled up over their head. The figure paced, stopped in front of the back door, and then paced again.
“What do you want? Why do you keep coming here?” She kept her voice steady. The cloaked figure remained silent. “Answer me. The cops are on the way,” Lou threatened. Instead of answering, the figure let out a low meow. Lou squinted, trying to see in the darkness.
wasn’t directly in his eyes, his face remained in a grimace. “I’m sorry. I-I didn’t know where else to go.”
“It wasn’t me.” The man reached into his coat and produced a cat so black, Lou almost couldn’t see it in the darkness. “It was Shadow, our cat.”
“I know what you did. I don’t know how you put it past me, but believe me, you’ll pay for this. I’ve told everyone I know not to trust you or to shop at
Button Books. You can avoid my calls all you want, but you can’t avoid me. Eventually, I will find you.” The message clicked off. Lou shivered. What had Kimberly gotten herself into?
When Lou crouched to investigate, she found a brass dimple key. She gasped in a lungful of air. A memory of Frederick tapping anxiously on the table with a similar key flashed
into her thoughts from that night he’d stopped by. Had the book page been only one of the things he left behind?
The hard lines of Reynolds' scowling face softened. He leaned forward. “Listen, word is Kimberly got threatening messages all the time, mostly because she never answered her phone.” He snorted.
“To be honest, once they identified Victor Alvarado’s body, the brother of the guy in your alley, they found he’d
been missing a couple fingers, before he got hit by that semi.” Reynolds waggled his eyebrows knowingly at Lou. But
“Which is a sign the guy was in deep with some loan sharks. They most likely went after his brother, Frederick, once they realized Victor was dead and wouldn’t be able to pay.”
even though Officer Reynolds saw a tidy bow on the case, Lou couldn’t help but feel like something was wrong. She held tight to the key in her pocket as she left the station.
There was something that told her this key was Frederick’s, and if it didn’t open his door, that meant it might open something inside.
“Take Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice and treat your curiosity as the most useful gift you were endowed with,”
she stopped short when she was about to put the copy of Cat’s Cradle back. At the back of the bookshelf was a black ribbon. Lou placed the book on the desk behind her and pulled at the ribbon.
Lou’s eyes locked on to the front where a combination lock sat above a handle. At the top of the handle, there was a keyhole. Fumbling with the key in her excited state, Lou finally pushed it into the lock and turned. The safe clicked open.
Freddie, Just so you’re aware, I know what you’re up to. I’m waiting until the perfect moment to expose you. I can’t believe you thought you could get away with something like this. I’m two steps ahead of you, until the day you die. Eloise
Lou thought of the threatening phone message she’d gotten. “I think you’re right about Kimberly being involved in this. I think she and Frederick might have been working together.”
knowing Kimberly for the year she was in town, I’d bet on her being involved in a scam every time over her being a victim. The woman got herself involved in a betting ring, two email scams, and even a multilevel marketing scheme all in the mere twelve months she lived in Button.”
Kimberly was becoming so much more of a thorn in Lou’s side than she could’ve predicted.
The problem was, Lou couldn’t yet decide if Kimberly was more of a victim or an active participant in the dangers surrounding her.
As much as she wanted to believe it had been the loan sharks, like Easton believed, Lou had a terrible feeling the violence wasn’t over and that she’d been inadvertently pulled into harm’s way.
She only does that so she can get close to these people before they die. They talk about her nonstop, so if they happen to … pass”—his nostrils flared—“their families usually reach out to her. She gets an invitation to their estate sale before the rest of us and nabs all the best books. A couple times, she’s convinced their families a book was worthless only to turn around and sell it for hundreds or even thousands.”
Either this Tiffany woman was as dense as a two by four, and didn’t realize why anything she was saying would offend Willow, or she was an evil mastermind who found joy in rubbing her relationship in Willow’s face.
“Pain is pain,” Lou said. “Just because we’ve had different painful things happen, doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to feel yours. This is hard.
The idea of one favorite book was often too weighty a decision to be made.
The painted words might wash away from the door, but they felt stained in her brain, reminding her what was at stake.
The mirror swung easily away from the wall. In the space behind it was a hole in the wall that led to a person-sized passageway. Lou beamed back at Willow and then climbed through.
Even though they weren’t illegal anymore, it was fun to follow clues and find the secret bars.
While she’d seen the signed copy of Slaughterhouse-Five in Frederick’s safe, she hadn’t seen The Catcher in the Rye.
Lou thought back to the dedication she knew Olivia Queen hadn’t written. She’d been right. It was a fake.
“Frederick texted me a few days before he died, saying he was worried his brother was up to something. Victor changed the password on Frederick’s email while he was traveling, and he couldn’t access his account.”
After gaining even more proof that it had been the fake first editions that had gotten Frederick killed, she was legitimately worried for her safety.
“Everybody seems desperate when they’re about to lose a finger. What’d the guy expect when he only brought sixty K of the hundred twenty he owed? What I wanna know is why’d he hide this thing in some random bookshop?” “Said he stole it while his brother was out of town and knew the guy would check his apartment when he saw it was missing,” the first guy explained.
