A Novel Way to Die

FOUR





IT WAS ALMOST CLOSING TIME WHEN JAKE STROLLED INTO the bookstore, folder in hand. “Good news, kid,” she announced. “Your boy Robert is clean. Hire away.”

“Fantastic! I’ll give him a call and make him a formal offer.”

Darla took back her folder plus a second neatly bound sheaf of papers—the background check—from Jake, glancing as she did so at an invoice clipped to its front. She frowned as she saw the total.

“Jake, that’s way too cheap,” she declared, pointing to the dollar figure. “It would have cost me more for one of those online services, and I trust you a heck of a lot more.”

“Eh, just call it the introductory friend rate. I haven’t done backgrounds in a while, so this was good practice for me.”

Still, Darla felt a bit guilty as she unlocked the company checkbook from a drawer beneath the counter and paid the bill. As the owner of her own small business, she knew how hard it was to earn every penny. Which reminded her . . .

“How did it go with Hilda? No, no, don’t worry,” she hurried to add as Jake gave her a look that would have made Hamlet proud. “I’m not going to try to make you break your confidentiality vows, or whatever they’re called. I just want to know if everything is all right with her.”

“Strictly routine,” Jake assured her, grinning a little as she got a look at the check Darla had handed her.

Tired of the boring banker’s green that Great-Aunt Dee had always used, Darla had splurged when it came time to order new checks. Now, in addition to the store name and address, a faint trail of black paw prints ran across every check in homage to Hamlet.

Jake tucked the check into her shirt pocket and gave a satisfied nod.

“Feels good to be earning an honest living again, kid,” she declared, and Darla realized just how frustrating the past couple of years of forced inaction must have been for the other woman. “So, you want to stop by my place for a little celebratory toast after you close up? I’m going to ask Reese and Mary Ann and James to stop in, too.”

“I’d love to. Give me about thirty minutes.”

Though, actually, it was closer to an hour by the time she had closed up the place and, having first sent James on his way to the impromptu party, made her call to Robert. Even though she was the one doing the hiring, she found her fingers shaking a bit as she dialed the number. What if he didn’t want the job, after all? Would she ever find anyone else qualified who could win over Hamlet the way Robert seemingly had?

To her relief, the youth seemed just as eager to accept her offer as she was to hire him. “Sure, I can, you know, be there as soon as you open tomorrow . . . or earlier, if you want.”

Smiling a little at his enthusiasm, she suggested that he hold off until ten a.m. when she unlocked the doors. Then, recalling his affinity for the goth lifestyle, she added, “And the all-black wardrobe is fine for work, but don’t put on any facial jewelry or eyeliner, okay? Our clientele is a bit on the conservative side.”

She heard what might have been a snicker through the receiver before he replied. “No problem, boss. That’s, like, why I cut my lock. I figured I’d get stuck working for the man, so I wanted to be, you know, mainstream.”

Mainstream is something I doubt Robert will ever be, Darla thought with a smile as she hung up a few moments later and then headed upstairs for a final check of the upper level. Still, it would probably do both her and James good to be shaken up a little. Things had been pretty quiet of late, with the only excitement being Hamlet’s recent midnight escape. With that in mind, she paused for a glance through the wavy glass of the uncurtained window, which overlooked Crawford Avenue below. Though the busy daytime traffic slowed considerably in the evenings, enough vehicles prowled the streets in the wee hours to pose a real hazard to any bookshop cat who decided to take in the nightlife. Maybe Robert could help her look for whatever cat escape hatch Hamlet had apparently uncovered.

Darla turned to head back downstairs again, only to almost stumble over the feline in question. Hamlet was sitting silently at attention, his green eyes narrowed in seeming disapproval as he stared up at her. Biting back a couple of bad words over her near fall, she met his glare with an equally stern look.

“Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves,” she warned him, “not that anyone was talking about you. That was your new BFF on the phone. He starts working here at the store tomorrow.”

Hamlet’s emerald eyes widened, and he gave a small meowrmph. Darla laughed. “Oh, so you approve? Maybe you’ll listen to him, then, if he tells you that it’s dangerous for cats to be out after dark.”

Hamlet had no comment on that last. Instead, he rose and turned tail, spilling down the stairway like a small oil slick. Darla shook her head. With trouble like Hamlet roaming the store, she suspected that Robert joining their ranks could only be a good thing.

* * *

AS PROMISED, ROBERT SHOWED UP RIGHT ON TIME THE NEXT MORNING. Darla quickly got him settled in and put him to work. To her pleased relief, he picked up on the routine immediately, and by the end of his shift had even waited on a couple of customers. Things were progressing so smoothly, in fact, that she should have known it was only a matter of time before something went wrong. And so Darla was distressed but not unduly surprised when, a couple of days later, something did.

“I got a beef with you,” a belligerent voice rasped, the harsh sound an unpleasant counterpoint to the pleasant tinkling of bells that always announced someone entering the bookstore. Startled, Darla glanced up to see an unknown man heading toward the counter where she was busy reconciling the morning’s paperwork.

Fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down, was her first reflexive thought.

He was squat rather than simply short. His bullet-shaped head jutted well past his rounded shoulders, giving him the familiar Neanderthal hunch common to men who’d long since forgotten their mothers’ admonitions to stand up straight. Oversized hands that dangled from longer-than-normal arms contributed to his cavemanlike bearing. The man’s wardrobe didn’t help matters. He was dressed in a faded blue-striped T-shirt emblazoned with the FCC’s favorite four-letter word, while his baggy jeans were less a deliberate fashion statement than a case of belly out-sizing butt.

Had his pale blue eyes been filled with friendliness rather than disdain, his physical features might have appeared less unsavory. As it was, from his doughy, pockmarked face only slightly camouflaged by a patchy red-gray goatee, to the stringy tonsure of matching hair, he exuded an angry, unkempt air that made her want to break out the hand sanitizer. She’d never met the man before; that much was certain. So what possible beef, as he’d put it, could he have with her?

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name,” she replied, deliberately assuming her most polite shopkeeper manner in an attempt to stave him off.

He bared small, tobacco-stained teeth, but the gesture fell far short of a smile.

“Name’s Bill. You stole my best employee from me.”

“You’re Porn Shop Bill?” she blurted before she could catch herself.

Remembering Robert’s nickname for the man—“the Not-So-Great Ape”—she was surprised it had taken her as long as it had to connect those dots. The man did bear more than a passing resemblance to the orangutan from those old Clint Eastwood movies. Though she doubted that the simian in question had ever viewed his surroundings with as much jaded malevolence as this man did, surveying her store.

Now, he snapped the bullet head back around to look at her, and the pale blue eyes narrowed. “Hey, lady, don’t get all high and mighty. You and me, we’re in the same business. My customers just happen to be a bit more freethinking in their choice of”—he paused and assumed a deliberately effete accent—“literature.”

“Literature, my . . . foot.” She’d almost ended that retort with another body part, but the thought of possibly being overheard by the pregnant stay-at-home mom in the reference section made her purposely temper her word choice.

“And I don’t steal employees,” she went on in the same deliberately calm voice. “They apply, they meet my requirements, I hire. So unless you want to buy a book that has an actual plot, why don’t you leave before I call security?”

His reply was a variation of his T-shirt slogan. Darla’s temper flared, and she snatched her cell phone from under the counter, hitting the speed dial for Jake.

“You. Out. Now,” she demanded in a voice that trembled only a little, pointing at the door while she listened to Jake’s phone ringing.

Pick up, pick up, pick up, she silently urged her friend, and then bit her lip in dismay when she heard Jake’s voice-mail message kick in. James wouldn’t be in for another hour, so it was just Robert and the pregnant lady for backup. She’d have to handle Porn Shop Bill on her own.

“Hey, Jake, it’s Darla,” she told Jake’s mailbox, doing her best to sound as if she was talking to the real thing. “No, not so good. We have a situation up here. Can you come up right away? Great.”

Hanging up, she said to the man before her, “Security will be here in a minute. If you’re not already gone by then, I’ll see that you’re arrested for trespassing.”

“Yeah? Well I’ll slap you with a civil suit for unfair business practices,” the porn shop owner threatened right back, stabbing a bony, nicotine-stained finger in her direction. “Tell ya what. Let me talk to the kid a minute, and I’ll be on my way. No harm, no foul.”

Before Darla could whip out another bluff, she heard Robert call from behind the stacks, “Hey boss, can you, like, tell me where to find—”

The teen’s question broke off abruptly as he poked his head around the edge of the reference section and caught sight of his old employer. Bill, meanwhile, had swiveled in the direction of Robert’s voice. Spying the youth, he bared his teeth again.

“You, kid, c’mon out. You and me, we gotta talk.”

“Robert, you can go right back to helping your customer,” Darla countered. “This . . . gentleman . . . was on his way out the door.”

“It’s okay,” Robert said, looking equal parts frightened and defiant as he started toward them. “I’ll talk to him.”

“If you’re sure,” she reluctantly agreed, phone tightly clutched in one hand and ready to step between the two if the situation warranted it. “But I’m staying right here. If things get out of hand, I’m dialing 9-1-1.”

The teen shot her a grateful look before turning to his former employer. His voice small, he asked, “How did you find out I was working here?”

“Them teenage girls, they gossip about everything. I stopped one of your little friends outside the shop, and she told me.” Now, the bony finger was thrust in Robert’s direction. “So where you been the past week? I’ve been shorthanded for three nights running. I should fire your butt.”

“Don’t you remember? You, like, already fired me a few days ago.”

Bill gave a rusty chuckle, though Darla spied no matching humor in the pale eyes. “Naw, I was just in a bad mood. I didn’t expect you to off and take another job. C’mon back to the shop, and we’ll forget all that nonsense.”

Robert shook his head, his confidence seemingly returning. “No way, dude. I work for Ms. Pettistone now.”

“Yeah, well I need someone tonight. So have your butt at the store seven thirty sharp,” the man told him. “Besides, I paid you for two days you didn’t work. You owe me.”

“I figured that was severance,” the teen replied, and then turned an uncertain look on Darla. “I wouldn’t have taken it if I didn’t think he wanted me to have it. I’d give it back, but I already spent it. Do I really have to go work for him again?”

“Certainly not,” Darla declared before Bill could reply. To the porn shop owner, she said, “If you overpaid Robert in error, I’ll advance him the money to repay you so you two can call it even. How much are we talking?”

“Give or take a few cents, a hundred bucks.”

Darla looked over at Robert, who nodded. Slipping her phone into her pants pocket, she punched in the code to open the register and then withdrew five twenty-dollar bills, which she handed over to the teen.

“There you go, Robert, an advance on your first check. Go ahead and repay the man . . . and be sure you count it out so there’s no question later.”

While Robert obediently laid out the money on the counter one bill at a time, Darla pulled out a receipt book from beneath the register drawer. Swiftly, she filled out the top copy and handed the pad to the teen. “I suggest you have Bill sign a statement that he received the money from you, and that it repays him in full.”

“I’m not signing nothing. Now give me my—”

Bill broke off abruptly, eyes widening as a sleek black shadow spilled across the line of twenties. Hamlet, coming to the defense of his new “bro,” Darla thought in surprise as the feline abruptly sat atop the money.

“Get that cat outta the way,” the man demanded and made as if to shove Hamlet aside. Hamlet, with a deep-throated growl that sounded more Doberman pinscher than domestic shorthair, raised a large paw to display a set of formidable, needle-sharp claws.

“I think he, you know, wants you to sign first,” Robert replied, a hint of a grin on his lips as he held out the pen and receipt pad. The cat seemingly confirmed the teen’s words with another Baskerville-ian rumble.

With a cold look that encompassed all three of them, the man scrawled his name on the pad and ripped off the top copy, then slapped the pad back on the counter. Hamlet obligingly rose and padded to the far end of the counter, where he sat and surveyed the man with cold disapproval.

“You two think you’re smart,” he snarled, reaching for the bills, “but I won’t forget this. Mess with me, and I’ll—”

Whatever his threat might be, Darla wasn’t to learn. The shop door jingled, and a jovial voice boomed, “Hiya. Anyone home?”