Her fingers were not trembling as she retrieved her phone. The spilled coffee had been hot, that was all. There were six missed calls and a text message from Katie.
Spnt nght cxng A Ruby off H2O twr. Come home.
Tempting.
Allie took a deep breath as she snapped the phone closed.
But no.
She didn’t know if it was smart or stupid or just bloody-minded to step outside the store, to cross the sidewalk to the curb, and to look up. At some point between the time she’d left the window and arrived at the curb, the pigeons had come out from under the newspaper box and flown to perch along the low stone parapet of her building like nine small, feathered gargoyles. Eight of them were staring at whatever it was pigeons stared at. One of them watched the sky.
Allie tipped her head back, following its line of sight. As far as she could see, the sky held nothing but a bit of cloud the heat would burn off before too long and the distant, familiar silhouette of a bird of prey. She’d seen more kestrels in Toronto than out at the farm; they nested in most major cities in Canada, adapting to cliffs of concrete and steel, feeding well off the fat-and-oblivious birds who’d dulled their survival instincts with French fries and cigarette butts.
Squinting, one hand raised to block the sun, Allie tried to get a better look at the hawk, only certain it was a hawk by the way it moved. Predators were unmistakable in the air. Unfortunately, it was just too damned high for her to pick out details.
“Hey, Blondie! Nice ass!”
She turned just in time to see a muscular young man leering out the window of a passing pickup before he was swept away on the tide of morning traffic. Too far away and moving too fast to toss a charm after him. And besides, it was a nice ass and a little moderately skeevy appreciation never hurt.
It took her a moment’s search to find the kestrel again, a tapered black cross rising still higher against the blue.
How high would that passing shadow have had to have climbed in order to look like a small hawk from below?
Wondering where that thought had come from, and really wishing it had stayed there, Allie moved closer to the building until she found herself standing with one hand on the door. According to the sign taped to the bottom of the nearest window, the store was open 10 AM to 6 PM Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. 10 AM to midnight Friday. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
It was Thursday at seven forty.
Two hours and twenty minutes to search for clues…
“Oh, dear God, I am turning into Nancy Drew.”
… before she was expected to open and become a crucial part of the local community.
The store didn’t look significantly better than it had yesterday although, in all fairness, it didn’t look any worse. It was a bright, sunny morning, but the light spilling through the windows seemed unwilling to move very far away from the glass.
“All right, then.” She took a deep breath and flicked on the overhead fluorescents, banishing some but not all of the more interesting shadows. Piled high on tables, spilling off of shelves, in boxes opened for rummaging—the amount of crap gathered together in this one place was overwhelming. What were the odds of finding a clue to her grandmother’s disappearance in that amount of crap?
“I am so screwed.”
If she’d dragged half a dozen cousins to Calgary with her, they might have a chance to bring something resembling order out of chaos.
Actually…
She flipped open her phone.
And closed it, frowning, half an hour later wondering what the odds were that every single cousin she’d called was busy and expected to remain busy for the immediate future. Betsy, after a winter of almost no teaching gigs, had been called in to finish out the school year in Odessa. Uncle Don had fallen out of the mow and broken his leg, leaving Carol and Theresa to deal with the fieldwork. Sandi, ready to give up acting and become an accountant like her mother, had actually gotten a part as Chava’s understudy in a revival of Fiddler on the Roof. Bonny was giving serious thought to bringing a member of the county road crew home to meet the aunties.
“If they approve him, they’ll get plowed out first all winter.”
“They already get plowed out first,” Allie reminded her.
“But this way, they won’t have to put any effort into it.”
Allie had her doubts that the aunties put any effort into it, relying instead on reputation, but she wished Bonny luck and snapped the phone closed.Until the younger kids finished school, it looked like she was the only member of the family unemployed and/or emotionally uncommitted.
“Well, don’t I feel special.”
On her own, the store would take her months to catalog and, unless she stumbled over her grandmother’s diary, months longer to start piecing together any relevant information even if she used the cataloging software she’d acquired at her last job.
And that was ignoring the time she’d have to put into running a business to pay the bills.
Not to mention ignoring whatever had flown over the store at dawn.
Actually, ignoring whatever had flown over the store at dawn seemed like a great idea. Any weirdness going on in the airspace over the city of Calgary was not her concern.
“Here’s a thought,” she said to the obligatory velvet Elvis fronting a box of bad art. “Why don’t I assume Gran knows what she’s doing and, if she’s not dead, she’ll fill us in when she’s good and ready?”
Velvet Elvis offered no opinion.
All things considered, Allie was actually pretty happy about that.
Instead of a cash register, Gran had a heavily charmed cashbox containing four hundred and seventeen dollars and twenty-seven cents on a shelf under the counter. Next to it, three ledgers that looked liked they’d been picked up at a yard sale given by a Victorian mortgage broker. In mint condition, they’d be worth serious money to a collector although Store, Extras, and Yoyos scrawled in black marker on the oxblood leather had likely devalued them a bit.
On the wall behind the counter was a seven-by-three grid of cubbyholes numbered from one to twenty-one. Some of them held…
“Mail?” Allie stared down at the envelope she’d pulled from cubby number one. The name looked vaguely Eastern European and the address was definitely the store’s. Gran seemed to have been allowing the homeless to use the store as a mail drop. Surprisingly community minded, Allie allowed, putting the envelope back in the cubby where she’d found it.
Next to the cubbyholes, a locked cabinet.
Turning to pick up the keys from the counter, she screamed.
The translucent young man, face and hands plastered to the glass as he peered into the store, jumped back, mouth open, eyes wide.
Heart pounding, Allie took a deep breath and then another, and reminded herself that most of the lingering dead were harmless. Granted, some of them had issues they took out on the living, but this redheaded twenty-something she could see traffic through seemed more the former sort. He’d been at least as startled by her as she was by him.
She could almost hear the aunties telling her to ignore him.
Although, if peering into the store was part of his regular morning routine, then it made more sense to pump him for information. He might have seen something, or heard something, or—depending on how long he’d been dead—actually been part of something to do with Gran’s disappearance.
When she got to the door, he was still standing where he’d landed, leaning forward slightly, gaze tracking her movements. That was good. The revenants with a little lingering self-determination were easier to talk to.
When she opened the door, the young man solidified.