“Sure,” I said. “The cards will be ready.”
Marion nodded. Chester moved the typewriter to his other arm, and Baskerville flicked the end of his tail.
Matt met the woman next to the pastel papers and swooped his hand toward the front of the shop. Once they were both there, he opened the door and let her go through first, her shoes still clomping loudly. He sent us one more apologetic smile and a friendly wave before he followed her out the door. A brief moment later, we lost sight of him, the woman, and the man who’d been waiting.
Marion let out a loud breath and then took a seat on a high stool that had been placed at the end of the counter. Baskerville padded over the counter to comfort her.
“You okay?” I said.
“Fine. But that was Matt Bane. O-M-G, that was Matt Bane. I’m making personalized note cards for Matt Bane.”
I smiled as she put her hands to her face and shook her head slowly. She’d be okay in a few minutes. The young were resilient.
“Nice-looking young man, though he could use a haircut,” Chester said. “Is he here for the festival?”
Marion and I looked at each other and smiled.
“Yes, he’s a movie star. Come on, Chester, let’s go see if we can find some wrenches,” I said. “Marion, let me know if you need any help up here. I’ll be in the back. Work on the note cards while you can. We could have more business at any minute.”
The film festival always brought something different to Star City. Different events and stories marked the years. A car had burst into flames one year and a famous director had saved three kids from burning up inside it. It had been so unseasonably warm once that a famous actress had stripped and walked into the final awards ceremony in only her underwear. We’d also had sad moments, with fatal heart attacks and deadly accidents on the slopes.
The Rescued Word had never had its own festival story before. Now we had Matt Bane, his unusual friends, and his note cards. The Rescued Word, and more specifically Marion, would now have something special to mark this year and to share with other Star City retailers and residents. I was sure it would be like any good fishing tale and would get bigger and better with time. However, I couldn’t have predicted how little time would have to pass for it to get disturbingly better, and out-of-control bigger.
2
Jodie, my best friend since high school, repositioned her foot on the chair. She sat on the edge of my desk and had hooked the chair and pulled it toward her with her ankle. She was dressed for work, which meant she wore her police uniform, heavy boots, and a loaded gun in the holster at her hip. It was cold enough that she also wore a department-issued black winter coat, made especially for police officers, with a special attachment that held the microphone of her police radio on her left shoulder. By nature, she wasn’t a delicate person, but when dressed for work, she was better described as rough-and-tumble tough—in the most professional way, of course.
Her bleached blond hair never took on a natural shade, but it somehow looked right on her even when she pulled it back into her favorite work style, a tight ponytail. Despite the lack of froufrou, she was a pretty woman with green eyes that could spot a lie from about twenty feet away.
“Matt Bane, huh? I’ll be. He’s quite the star,” she said, feigning fascination. Jodie had no time for movie stars, particularly during the film festival. She’d seen the misbehaving side of celebrities over the years. The movie people held much less charm for her than they did for us regular civilians, Chester included.
“He seemed like a pretty nice guy. Extremely handsome in person, though that’s not too surprising. I felt a little sorry for him,” I said as I placed a type plate onto the replica Gutenberg press that Chester had built when he first opened The Rescued Word back in the 1950s. I had some printing assignments ahead, but the press had been acting up and I was doing a test run to see if I could determine and then fix what was causing one side of the ink to print too heavily.
My most urgent assignment was to reprint three pages for a Sylvia Plath book. Ariel was treasured by its owner, but this copy was of very little monetary value. Lately I’d been doing lots of those types of repairs. For many of my customers, books were their trade, or the items they collected; those customers bought and sold. But lately I’d seen a surge in customers with only sentimental value attached to their books. Someone’s grandmother had read something to her, or he’d purchased a book on a trip with his loved ones and the story inside never failed to bring back memories of that time together; a missing or damaged page or two made the memory incomplete. I’d been completing lots of memories lately.
Though I never offered up my opinion about the contents of any customers’ books, the second the customer called about bringing Ariel in, I wondered at least briefly if the owner had dark moods like the writer. I couldn’t help it; it was a side effect of the job—trying to better understand people by the books they read, or more precisely by the books that were so important to them that they felt the need to repair them or clean them up. I’d enjoyed a Plath poem or two, but in small doses and usually only when I was feeling melancholy.
My unspoken curiosity was answered shortly after the customer, a pretty, middle-aged woman in jeans and a pink puffy ski coat, handed me the book over the counter with the mandate that I was to take extra good care of it, that it was something she cherished because it had been given to her by her own mother shortly after the customer’s sister had committed suicide.
I’d blinked, straightened my glasses, and tried to think of what to say. She smiled as if acknowledging the speed bump she’d thrown in there, and to let me know that she didn’t require any sympathy on my part.
It was all very morbid, but she seemed in a good place about it. I told her that I took extra care with all the words I rescued, be they a part of a book, the memories of an old typewriter, or the faded scribbles of a well-used pen. The book would be safe with me.
She’d sent Sylvia one last worried look before she smiled cheerily and left to go hit the slopes.
“Why in the world did you feel sorry for Matt Bane?” Jodie asked as she inspected her cuticles.
“No privacy. Ever, it seems.” I loaded a piece of paper into the paper holder.
“He has enough money to buy his own island. I don’t think you need to feel too sorry for him.”
“I know, but still. I can’t imagine how it would be not to be able to stop in a shop somewhere without being bothered by someone who knows you, or knows who you are.”
Jodie laughed. “Sure you do. You live in Star City. Everyone knows everyone. You can’t go anywhere without seeing someone you know.”
“I can be as anonymous as I want in Salt Lake, though. He can’t.”
She frowned at her cuticles and then waved away my concern. “He’ll be fine. I like my men real, much less polished, a few calluses on their hands, you know.”
I smiled at her. She was, in fact, dating a very real man named Mutt. He was a long-haired motorcycle rider with a heart of gold and an unparalleled work ethic, and probably a few calluses on his hands. He lived in Salt Lake City, which was about half an hour away from Star City. Between his contracted computer-programming hours and his volunteer work with a number of children’s charities, and Jodie’s police schedule, their relationship was made up of infrequent dates and late-night meet-ups at the gas station / café located at the halfway point in the canyon between their two towns. It seemed to be working okay. I’d never seen her happier.
“When do you see Mutt next?” I leaned over and inspected the wood platen, the piece that pressed the paper against the type. I pushed up my glasses, smudging one of the lenses with my finger. I took them off and grabbed a cloth out of my desk drawer. It wasn’t the first smudge of the day, and it most likely wouldn’t be the last.
Jodie shrugged. “Probably tonight. You know us—we can’t plan much of anything in advance.”
“Right.”
“When do you see Seth?” she asked.
Seth, my fairly new romantic interest, and I were also both very busy with our jobs—mine at the shop and his doing his geologist things, which currently included the reclamation of a number of mines around Star City. However, we lived across the street from each other, so I saw him almost every day, or evening when we were taking turns fixing dinner for each other.
I shrugged too, not wanting Jodie to think I was one-upping her on the boyfriend time, and then put my glasses back into place. “Probably tonight.”
“It’s an amazing thing, you and I both dating happily, at the same time.”
“I know. Weird, huh?”
Jodie had always been my best friend, but she became the lifelong titleholder when a few years earlier I’d broken up with her brother Creighton, also a police officer, because he’d cheated on me. It wasn’t strange that she’d chosen my side in the battle, but her vehemence over his cheating was still extra strong even today. I tried not to bring it up too often, but I did appreciate her loyalty, and sometimes it was just fun to get her riled up.
“When are you and Chester going to get some help around this place?” Jodie asked.
“We have Marion.”
“Your Olympic-bound, gorgeous niece who might find her appearances on late-night television talk shows more important than her hours in the shop?”
“You’ve already got her on late-night television talk shows?” I looked back at the platen and thought it might be slightly off-kilter. I’d need a level to confirm. I looked over toward one of the back shelves, the one that held only tools, no typewriters or typewriter parts. I walked around the press and toward the shelf, then spied the level.
Jodie shrugged. “It doesn’t take a Jedi to see the future for that one, Clare. Unless she gets hurt—God and Goddess forbid—there are big things in her future that won’t leave much time for Star City.”
“Jimmy will freak.” My brother, Jimmy, took his role as overprotective father very seriously.
“Yes, he will, but he’ll get over it. And he’ll see that it’s what she wants, and what she wants will become important to him at some point.”
“I suppose,” I said doubtfully as I carried the level back to the press. Jodie sent me a wry smile.
“I suggest you find someone sooner rather than later,” she said.
“You want to quit the police force?”
“No, ma’am. Besides, I doubt you could handle my subtle and delicate ways all day, every day.”
I laughed. “I don’t know when we’ll hire someone else. Chester made me his apprentice. Maybe I need an apprentice. You might be onto something. I’ll talk to him.”
Jodie’s radio buzzed, pulling my attention away from the press.
“Jodie, you there?” The voice of her partner, Omar Miller, sounding far-off and full of static, came through.
“What’s up?” she said as she bent her neck toward the microphone and pushed the button.
“Need you. We’ve got a problem over at The Fountain.”
“On my way. What’s going on?” she said as she stood to leave. The Fountain, a small hotel on Main Street across from Bygone Alley, where The Rescued Word was located, would normally be a quick walk or drive, but you never knew when or where the festival crowds would swell and hinder all traffic.
She was almost out of the workshop and her footfalls were so hard and loud that I couldn’t be exactly sure of what I heard come from her radio next, but I thought it was something like: “Movie star stuff. Matt Bane, you know him?”
She’d moved through the swinging door between the workshop and the front of the store by the time I deciphered the words. A moment later I hurried after her.
She was almost out the shop’s front doors by the time I made it to the counter that hid Marion’s computer and small worktable from customers.
“What’s up?” Marion said as she turned and looked at me.
“Don’t know. You okay here without me for a minute?”
“Sure.”
I didn’t take the time to go back for my coat, but I’d be somewhat warmed by the sun once I got off Bygone and out from the shadows of its old buildings. I hurried toward Main Street, passing the newly added Old-Tyme Chocolate Shop and the Loom, a fiber and yarn shop, before I stepped out into the middle of groups making their way either up or down the street. The bulging hordes of people would be a common sight for the next ten days, and then the crowds would mellow back to their normal large size through the rest of the ski season. I wasn’t complaining. Visitors and tourists were the reasons our little town thrived. But at the moment I didn’t have a good visual of the hotel entrance across the street, and while everyone was in my way, I got in their way too when I started to thread my way through the crowds.
After a slew of “pardon-me’s,” I was at the curb and could finally see the hotel. It was an old brick two-story building, having been a saloon and brothel back in the day. An extension had been added to its back side at one point, and the saloon space and the three upstairs rooms had been transformed into a total of eight hotel rooms and a small but grand front lobby. It was difficult to book space at The Fountain, even during non-festival times. It was one of our more highly sought-after places to hang your hat, and always the place where the biggest movie stars stayed. I’d never seen inside the rooms, but I’d heard they were cute and old-fashioned with scuffed-up wood floors and antique furnishings.
I didn’t see Jodie anywhere, so I assumed she’d already made her way inside the hotel. A police car was parked in front, situated like all the other cars on the street, aligned against the curb, not at an angle that might indicate the officer driving it had been in a hurry. Also, its lights weren’t flashing, making me think that maybe the emergency inside the hotel wasn’t dire. It was unusual that anyone, police officers included, managed to get such a good spot—street parking this time of year was even more difficult than booking a room at The Fountain.
Both the cold air and the shining sun bit at my nose and cheeks. It was so bright under the mostly blue sky that I squinted and my eyes started to water. Carefully, as I wove through thick vehicle traffic moving more slowly than the pedestrians, I made my way across the street and to the bottom of the steps leading up to the hotel doors.
I saw nothing to make me think I shouldn’t go inside.
I took the few steps up to the wide double doors and opened one of them, then stepped into the lobby, my glasses fogging slightly at the sudden warmth. A wood-burning fireplace on my right blazed with medium-sized yellow flames that crackled behind a grate. Two ornate red velvet chairs and a short table were placed in front of the fireplace, but the chairs were both empty and the newspaper on the table was folded too neatly to have been looked at yet.
The other side of the lobby, with the wood counter and the old-fashioned hooks for keys on the wall behind it, was also empty. I peered down the hallway in the middle, but didn’t see any activity other than the sudden dimming of a bulb inside one of the iron sconces on the walls. I looked up to the landing at the top of the polished mahogany staircase and didn’t see anyone there either.
For a place that was so popular, it sure seemed empty.
But that changed only a moment later.
From the second floor above, I heard noises. Rumbles of both voices and footfalls coming in my direction.
I debated running back out of the hotel, but instead I moved to a spot in between the front window and the counter. I’d be out of the way there, though not invisible, no matter how much I tried to blend in with the scenery.
As though they traveled only together, a group of people appeared on the landing: Omar; a man I didn’t recognize, dressed in a plush, white robe; and the short man with the glasses and big eyes who’d come into the shop looking for Matt Bane. Jodie was there too, wra
ngling a handcuffed prisoner, who was the movie star himself. Matt was no less handsome with a deeply worried and scared frown on his face and even messier hair. I noticed what I thought must be drying blood on his hands and a bloodstain in the middle of his white T-shirt. I couldn’t let myself focus on the blood—in fact, the reality of it didn’t want to register with me.
Just a prop, or a special effect maybe, my mind said.
He no longer wore the khaki ski coat, and the thought that he was going to get cold out there occurred to me as I watched Jodie guide him down the stairs.
His frantic eyes caught mine momentarily and I thought I saw brief but uncertain recognition in them. Weirdly, I nodded at him. Our silent communication didn’t make any sense and he looked away quickly.
Omar, Matt’s friend, and the robed man were all talking at once. I didn’t get the specifics, but things like “I couldn’t believe it!” and “Be tough!” and “He’s so well-known!” came through. Those snippets didn’t give me much of anything to go on, but there was no doubt that Matt was being arrested for something, and whatever it was, it included the shedding of blood, which was never a good sign.
No, just a prop. It’s not real. It can’t be.
As the group moved off the stairs and through the small lobby toward the front door, Jodie looked at me and silently mouthed, “What are you doing here?”
I lifted my eyebrows above my now fog-free glasses and shrugged a tiny bit. She sent me a Jodie-glare. I’d been the recipient of a few of those over the years. She’d want to discuss this later.
Omar pulled himself away from Matt’s friend and the man and held the front door open for Jodie and Matt, and then spoke to the other two inside. Omar wasn’t a big man and he was as fair as the winter snow on the slopes, but he knew how to command respect.
“We’ve got more officers on the way and you’ll both need to answer some questions. For now, please remain in the lobby. Clare, I have no idea why you’re here. Did you just come in?”
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