“Where?”
“Well, if the new tapas bar was open we could invite her here, but the timeline calls for it to open next summer. We’ll have to go to Portsmouth. Have you got anything planned for this evening?”
Tricia pushed the last of her burger aside. “No.” She frowned. “Something you said the other day has stuck with me.”
“Darling Trish, everything I say should stick with you, but what pearls of wisdom are you referring to?”
“When you asked if selling books was to be my only future.”
“And now it isn’t?”
“Not necessarily. But I guess when I saw myself in the future, it wasn’t alone. And yet—”
“The pickings ain’t that good here in Stoneham,” Angelica supplied.
“Exactly. Although . . . I spoke with Grant Baker this morning. He’s going to be retiring from the Sheriff’s Department at the end of December and taking a new job near here. He wants me to help him look for a house—maybe furnish it, too.”
“That sounds promising.”
“Maybe,” Tricia said, and drained the bottle of ice tea.
Angelica gathered up her pages. “You don’t have to stay in Stoneham. You could close shop here and reopen in Boston or New York.”
Tricia shook her head. “I like it here. It’s just that I would like it better if I were with someone. I mean, permanently.”
“Well, if you don’t want to wait for Captain Baker, there’s always Internet dating,” Angelica suggested.
Tricia glowered at her. “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested in him.”
Angelica’s grin was positively evil. “Maybe we should talk to Antonio and suggest Nigela Ricita Associates start a dating firm.” The grin faded. “Heaven knows, I might be their first customer.”
“Things still not right between you and Bob?”
“How can they be? He cheated on me,” she said, the hurt evident in her voice. “I’m afraid all we can be now is friends. And how much can I trust a friend who’s already lied to me?” She exhaled sharply. “Back to Ms. Fowler. Are you interested?”
Tricia shrugged. “Why not?”
“Right. I’ll give her a call and set it up. What time? Eight okay for you?”
“Fine.” Tricia got up and deposited her trash in the bin behind the counter.
“I have a feeling that what we learn tonight is going to radically change a certain someone’s life—and not for the better,” Angelica said, with hint of smugness.
“Do you know something you’re not telling me?” Tricia asked, giving her sister a suspicious look.
“Who, little me?” Angelica said. “You know I always share all.” Her evil grin was back again. “Well, almost all.”
Tricia grabbed her purse. “I’ll see you later.”
“Tootles!” Angelica called.
As Tricia made her way back to Haven’t Got a Clue, she thought about what Angelica had said. There was no way whatever she learned tonight would change anyone’s life. Still, a shiver ran down her neck, and she wished Angelica hadn’t decided to start making prophecies—especially negative ones.
In Tricia’s experience, they had a tendency to come true.
Twenty
“That’ll be one hundred ninety-six dollars and twenty-four cents,” Tricia said, and waited for her customer to dig into her purse to extract a credit card.
“This is my first trip to Stoneham,” the chubby, middle-aged woman exclaimed. “I’ve even booked a room at the Brookview Inn so I could spend a day or two just rummaging around all these lovely bookstores.”
Rummage was the right word. The woman had practically examined each and every book on Haven’t Got a Clue’s shelves, refusing any help from Tricia. But she wasn’t going to sneer at a nearly two-hundred-dollar sale, either. Customers like this were few and far between. But now the question was, how was she going to get all these books to the woman’s car? Although it was near closing, Tricia hated to leave the shop unattended, even to help a customer carry books to the municipal lot. Especially when she was hoping to shut down early to get ready for her . . . nondate . . . with Angelica and Michele Fowler. Well, it was the closest she’d gotten to a night out on the town in . . . okay, five days. But her dinner with Grant Baker at the Brookview could hardly be classified as a date. After their frank conversation, she’d hoped he would have called. That he hadn’t . . .
“Would you mind if I left these books here and picked them up tomorrow?” the woman asked.
“Not at all,” Tricia said. Yes! Problem solved!
“I’m going to have to rearrange the trunk of my car if I’m going to get all this stuff home, and I’m just too tired to tackle that tonight. Besides, I don’t want to miss dinner at the Brookview. I hear the chef is magnificent.”
“I’ve eaten his food, and it’s pretty darn good.” Oh, how she missed Jake’s tuna salad!
“I’ll just take my receipt and be back before noon tomorrow to pick up the books.”
“They’ll be waiting for you,” Tricia said, and waved as the woman headed for the door.
She packed the books in a heavy-duty shopping bag and stowed them behind the counter. The shop door opened and for a moment Tricia thought her customer had returned, but instead it was Boris Kozlov. While Tricia had patronized the Coffee Bean on hundreds of occasions, neither Boris nor his wife had ever been inside Tricia’s store. “This is a surprise,” Tricia said in a wary greeting.
Boris looked around the shop before he approached the cash desk. He leaned in a little too close and lowered his voice, sounding like the villain in a cold-war flick. “I have someting for you.” He set a thin, plastic CD jewel case on the counter and pushed it toward her.
“What’s this?” Tricia asked.
“Someting you can use. Or at least someting your ex-employee and the new owner of the Happy Domestic can use.” Good grief. He sounded just like the cartoon character Boris Badenov.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Tricia said, trying to keep her voice neutral.
“Is recording from video camera. I bought the equipment to film Deborah Black putting her trash in our Dumpster. I leave it on at night to see if her mother does the same ting. Last night it filmed more than trash. There’s a twenty-minute section I thought you should see. The robbery next door to me.”
Tricia’s eyes widened. “You caught it on video?”
“Digital. I downloaded it to DVD for you.”
Tricia picked up the thin plastic case. It was scratched as though it had been in circulation for quite some time. “Why are you giving it to me and not the Sheriff’s Department?”
Boris shook his head and grimaced with distaste. “I don’t like talking to the police. Bad memories from Russia.”
“So you want me to be your go-between? They’re still going to want to talk to you.”
“Then they can talk to Alexa. I don’t want to be involved, but I do want the dura who robbed the new owner of the Happy Domestic to go to jail—for a long, long time.”
“You haven’t told me who robbed the place.”
“I tink you know,” he said, and nodded. He straightened. “I go back to the shop now. Alexa can talk to the Sheriff’s Department any time they need. Good night, Tricia.”
There was something creepy about the way he said her name. Almost like Bela Lugosi. She watched Boris slink out of the shop, grateful he wasn’t wearing a black cape and didn’t have fangs.
Tricia eyed the shiny, unmarked DVD inside the case. She did have an idea who might have robbed the Happy Domestic—the very idea being too upsetting to contemplate. She glanced at the clock. The store was due to close in another ten minutes, and as there were no customers—why wait? She’d watch the video and then call Grant Baker and report that she had the DVD in her possession.
Tricia set the jewel case back on the counter and headed for the door, turning the bolt and flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSED.