Welcome to Nevermore Bookshop

by Steffanie Holmes

  Given that I now knew who Morrie really was, I shouldn’t have been surprised. “No. I want them to catch Ashley’s killer, and besides, that’ll be even more suspicious. We have to wait and hope they don’t bollocks it all up. But that text means Ashley didn’t just follow me in here. Someone wanted her to come. But why? Who would be meeting Ashley?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  After a couple of hours, when they realized we weren’t going to open the shop to allow them their gleeful rubbernecking, the gossips dispersed and Mrs. Ellis returned to her flat. Heathcliff, Quoth, and I drank the shop out of tea and held a chess tournament. Heathcliff refused to let Morrie play, (“He cheats.” “I do not. I simply predict the outcome of the game based on known tells and probability.” “Same bloody thing.”) so he sat on his phone and hacked more police files. We tossed around theories about Ashley’s murder and what she might’ve been involved in, but none of them rang true.

  The thing was, I didn’t know what was going on in Ashley’s life. Not really. Even though we lived together in New York City, we’d been growing apart even since our internship started. She’d made friends with a bunch of fashion influencers from old American money. She’d go out drinking after work and I’d stay at the studio finishing details for the next day’s shoot. When Ashley wasn’t partying on her friends’ yachts, she fiddled with her Instagram account, taking pictures, answering comments, and nebulous ‘networking.’ Companies had even started sending her free makeup and clothing. Ashley’s Instagram read like a comic strip for the dream life I’d always imagined back in Argleton – pictures of the two of us smiling in front of the office, on the red carpet, or front row at Fashion Week. But behind those smiles was a tension pulling us apart. I didn’t know Ashley at all anymore.

  But I knew someone who might.

  I left Nevermore by the back entrance and slipped through the narrow lane at the back of the shop onto Donahue Road, where a tiny cottage covered in wisteria sat at the end of the row. I leaned against the white gate and sucked in deep breaths, letting the scent of wisteria and roses wash over me, carrying memories like leaves tossed on the breeze. Ashley and I sitting on the porch swing, smoking ciggies and drinking rum and Coke and talking about boys we liked. Me standing beside the gate every morning before school waiting for Ashley to come out, swinging her backpack and bitching about her mother. Ashley and I helping her younger sisters make a fairy garden by the front step, sculpting tiny doors and toadstools out of modeling clay to hide amongst the flowers, and stringing fairy lights around the balustrade. My throat closed as I noticed the lights sagging around the iron railing.

  I pushed open the gate. The garden enveloped me as I alighted the well-worn cobbles that I’d walked so many times before. I avoided looking down at the fairy garden, knowing it would cause tears to spill over. I stepped onto the porch, and knocked on the door.

  Nothing stirred inside the house. I waited, my heart in my throat. Maybe she’s not home. Maybe…

  The door flung open. Ashley’s mother stood in the frame, her usually tidy salt-and-pepper hair sticking out at all angles, her immaculate clothes rumpled, her broken heart splattered across her face.

  “Oh, Mina!” She flung her arms around me, enveloping me in her warmth. I sank into her – this woman who fed me after school snacks and fixed my hair for the school formal and who never once forced me to drink a green tea, asparagus, and cayenne pepper smoothie – wishing I could give her what she needed. But I couldn’t give her Ashley back.

  “Hey, auntie Emma.” I mumbled into her shirt. “I’m so sorry about Ashley.”

  “Poor dear, I know you are,” she whispered back. “The police said you found her body. I didn’t even know you were back in town. Ashley was always so grateful you went with her to New York. You girls were such good friends.”

  I didn’t go to New York with Ashley – she went to New York with me! Of course she’d try to co-opt my dream as her own, and make everything about her…

  I pushed aside the ugly thought and focused on what Emma’s words revealed to me. So Ashley hadn’t told her about our falling out. Good, that’d make this easier.

  “I came by to see if I could do anything, if I could help you. I just…” I shook my head. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Me neither, sweetie.” Emma pulled back and held the door open. “Please, come in.”

  I entered the cottage. Familiar, comforting smells washed over me. I’d spent so much time in this house as a teenager, eating Sunday roasts and putting on makeup and dancing around the living room to Rancid. Ashley had two younger sisters, and her house was the exact opposite of mine – warm and suburban and filled with toys and name-brand snacks and artwork on the walls and furniture that didn’t come off the side of the road and money in the budget for fun things. I couldn’t quite see into the corners anymore but I knew they were packed high with toys and board games and box-sets.

  “Do you want some pie?” Emma waved her arm toward the kitchen counter, which sagged under the weight of Pyrex dishes and casseroles. “The neighbors keep bringing food over, as if I can’t cook for myself.”

  “Um… sure.” I didn’t, but I knew from my own grief over my eyes that doing something helped you get through the day. Emma loved playing the hostess, and her body remembered the motions even though her heart was numb. She bustled around the kitchen, wiping off a plate and lifting the lids of various dishes.

  “Have the police been around?” I asked, leaning down to sift through the totes and purses hanging over the clothes pegs in the hall. Is there anything of Ashley’s here?

  “Oh yes. They asked me all sorts of questions. Why did Ashley come home from New York? Who was she going around with? Did anyone have a grudge against her or did she mention being afraid of anyone? As if my Ashley would have enemies.” Emma gulped back a sob. “She was so happy in New York, and she just got that wonderful job.”

  “Yes, she was very lucky,” I said, struggling to keep the venom out of my voice.

  “I just don’t understand it.” Emma slammed the refrigerator door hard enough to rattle the shelves. “Ashley should be in New York right now, living her dreams, not lying in the morgue, murdered. Do you know why she came home? She told me that designer chap went on some kind of retreat, but she seemed… off. I didn’t ask her. I should have asked her.”

  “Shhhh.” I dropped the tote I was riffling through and rushed to the kitchen to embrace Emma. “It’s not your fault. We don’t know what happened.”

  She looked at me through tear-stained fingers. “I’m so sorry to be exploding all over you like this. I just… what was she even doing in that filthy bookshop? No one in the village trusts the gypsy who owns it. Foul-mouthed, drunken creature. I bet he—”

  “Mr. Earnshaw may be a little rough around the edges,” I said, squeezing her a little harder than I intended. “But he’s not responsible for this. He has an alibi. I promise you I’m going to do everything I can to find out who did this. Speaking of which, I was also wondering, did Ashley have any luggage with her? We were working on a project together and I wanted to finish it before the funeral, to honor her.”

  “Of course. I think Ashley would love that. Her backpack is on the end of the sofa.” Emma turned back to the bench, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “I’m getting you some toad-in-the-hole, too.”

  “That’s lovely, thanks.” I fumbled down the edge of the sofa and pulled out Ashley’s beautiful Hermes traveling case. I unzipped it and riffled through the stacks of clothing and makeup, hunting for anything that might give me a clue as to why she’d really come home. The police had her Birkin bag, but oddly enough she wasn’t carrying her wallet with her. I found it in the hidden pocket inside the case. I flipped it open, but there was nothing of interest in there – just a wad of crunched up US dollars, her business cards – ‘Ashley Greer – fashion influencer’ – and a note from Marcus Ribald written on a black-rimmed Post-it. ‘You’re my star, Ashley! You’re the only one
I trust.’”

  Fire flared in my veins. He was supposed to trust me.

  “Did you notice Ashley wearing a diamond ring?” I asked Emma as I rifled through the pocket.

  “The police asked me about a ring,” Emma called back, clattering dishes. “I’ve never seen it before, and it wasn’t exactly her taste.”

  “Yeah. It’s probably a freebie from a fashion event. We’re always being given random stuff.”

  Behind the wallet was a thick envelope and a stack of paper – thick stock, the kind we used in the office for fashion drawings. I held the paper up, but the light in Emma’s living room was too dim for me to make out what was drawn on them. I shoved the sheets and envelope into my pocket just as Emma emerged from the kitchen, carrying two plates heaped with food.

  I stared at the plate in horror. She’d mixed every possible food type together – toad-in-the-hole, an enormous slab of lasagne, two slices of pizza, some kind of fishy-smelling taco. On the side was a slice of blueberry pie, gravy leaking over it.

  “That’s… quite some feast, auntie Emma.”

  “Oh,” Emma stared down at the plate as though she was seeing it for the first time. “I’m sorry, I guess I got carried away. Please, just eat what you want and leave the rest. Oh, and here, someone gave me this bag of caramels and I don’t want the girls to eat them all after I just paid for their braces. Take them, please. Share them with your mum.”

  I shoved the caramels into my back pocket, where they sat against the papers. Emma took a tentative slice off the edge of the lasagne. “I just can’t believe someone would do this to my Ashley. She never did anything to hurt anyone.”

  Not entirely true. I thought of Ashley’s smug face as I passed her in the hall outside Marcus’ office, and the way she’d make snide comments about other girls’ outfits whenever she met someone more powerful than her, and even the way she used to torture poor Darren in secondary school. “Have the police told you anything?” I asked. “Do they have any leads?”

  “They said they’re narrowing in on a suspect, but they won’t tell me any more than that.” Emma stared at her plate, moving the vegetables around with her fork, but not raising it to her lips. “They’ve been asking lots of questions about Ashley’s time in New York, about her friends, even about you, can you imagine? My daughter is lying on a metal slab, and they’re wasting time looking into her best friend.”

  “Right, yes, well, they’re just doing their jobs.” I squirmed in my seat, Ashley’s papers burning a hole in my pocket. “And I did find her, so they have to look at me. I’m sure it’s just routine.”

  Just routine. As much as I tried to tell myself that, and that Jo was right and this text they found might exonerate me, I had a chill in my spine that said this nightmare was only just beginning.

  I sat with Emma for another couple of hours until the girls came home from their grandmothers. As soon as the house was a screaming mess again, I left. Emma needed to be with her family.

  I passed by the bookshop. It was now past closing and the front door remained locked. I noticed the lights on in the upstairs windows. Something twisted in my gut. I didn’t want to go home to Mum and her wobbling stomach. Not tonight, not yet. I wanted to show the guys what I found.

  I banged my fist against the door, then realized there was no way they’d hear me from upstairs, especially if Morrie had his gaming headphones on and Heathcliff was determined to ignore the outside world. I pulled out one of Emma’s caramels from my pocket and tossed it at the upstairs window.

  After a second caramel hit the glass, the window slid open and a shadow appeared over the ledge. “Who’s there?” A voice called. Quoth. “Who’s rapping at our chamber door?”

  “It’s Mina. Can you let me in?”

  “Sure. As long as you stop wasting perfectly good caramels.”

  Quoth let me in through the back door. Once upstairs, I found the guys exactly where I expected them to be – Heathcliff by the fire, Grimalkin curled up in his lap and a book draped over the chair arm. Morrie at his computer. Quoth retreating into the shadows.

  “I just visited Ashley’s mum.” I flopped down into the chair across from Heathcliff and tossed the caramels onto the table beside him. “I found something hidden in her suitcase. Want to see?”

  That got a reaction. Morrie shot across the room like I’d offered a foot massage. Heathcliff leaned forward in his chair, tipping Grimalkin onto the floor where she glared indignantly at her master before leaning over to lick her arsehole. Quoth slipped from the shadows and draped himself over the back of Heathcliff’s chair, his black hair spilling in a luminous waterfall over his face.

  There was a standing lamp on a long arm beside my chair that hadn’t been there earlier. I pulled it across so it shone on my lap, and spread the pages underneath the circle of light. They were fashion sketches – women with impossibly long legs and nipped-in waists adorned with frou-frou layered skirts shot with leather details, leather jackets with high collars and lace inserts, and high-necked blouses with PVC cuffs – an ingenious mix of Victorian mourning and rock’n’roll chic.

  Are these Ashley’s drawings? She’d never shown them to me before. I held each page up to my face and inspected the lines. No, not Ashley’s. For one thing, they were amazing. The structure of the garments, the level of detail… they read more like a professional designer than a first-year intern. But something about them did seem familiar…

  “They’re just drawings of really naff clothes.” Morrie held up the lace and leather jacket beside Quoth’s face. “Hey mate, this looks like your style.”

  “These are Marcus Ribald’s designs, I’m sure of it. But I’ve never seen these pieces before.” I squinted at the tiny scribble in the corner – yup, there was Marcus’ signature. There was some writing beside it, too small for me to make out. I passed the drawing to Heathcliff. “Can you read that?”

  Quoth snatched it from Heathcliff’s hands. “It says Couture, PFW.”

  I sucked in a breath. “This is Marcus’ upcoming collection for Paris Fashion Week. No way would he ever let these drawings out of his sight, let alone out of the studio. We all have to sign a non-disclosure agreement when we start work for him to keep concept drawings secret from his competitors. Marcus would never let one of us carry them around like this. He was too worried about—” I clamped my hand over my mouth.

  “What is it, gorgeous?” Morrie leaned forward, an evil grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Did you just figure out your friend was selling these to the highest bidder?”

  No way. No way would Ashley sell Marcus’ designs. She worshipped Marcus just as much as I did, and if she got caught her fashion career would be over. She wouldn’t blow her chances by…

  Holy Isis.

  Last year, rival designer Holly Santiago previewed a crimson coat with Persian embroidery on the runway a few weeks before Marcus released his Empire collection. Commentators dragged Marcus through the tabloids over the similarities, calling him a copycat and unoriginal for his take on the coat. Marcus was pissed about it, convinced someone in the office had stolen his design and sold it to Holly. But I’d reassured him it was just a coincidence. After all, Marcus couldn’t have been the only one to think of combining ancient Persian culture with high fashion.

  That same week, Ashley was showing off a brand new Louis Vuitton bag… she said the company gifted it to her because of her Instagram following, but that was an expensive bag to just be giving away to someone who was a virtual nobody… and now Ashley had been killed with a knife from that very show and here were drawings for a never-before-released Marcus Ribald collection in her purse…

  At the bottom of the stack was the white envelope. Ashley’s name was written across the front in a scrawled print I didn’t recognize. There was tape on the corners of the envelope, and some paper had been pulled off when the tape was ripped away. It looked a little like the page in a book, but it was hard to be sure.

  I slipped my finger und
er the tape holding it shut, and pulled out a stack of hundred-quid notes.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I stared at all that money in my hands.

  It’s true.

  Ashley was selling Marcus Ribald’s upcoming designs to another designer, probably Holly Santiago. Either that, or Marcus Ribald had given her one hell of a bonus.

  That might explain why Ashley came back to Britain, but it still didn’t explain how she ended up dead in the shop.

  “The text message,” I whispered. “Maybe Ashley was meeting someone in the shop to exchange the drawings. But why would she meet here—”

  “When she came in during the day, you said she was acting weird?” Morrie asked.

  “Well, Ashley being in a bookshop is weird. The only time she ever came in here was when she hung out with me. She used to say it was so depressing and lonely.”

  “Maybe that’s what made her think of it as a good place for the exchange. But why would she come in here beforehand and…” Morrie clicked his fingers. “I’ve solved it. I’m a genius. Follow me.”

  “Do I have to get out of my chair?” Heathcliff growled.

  “Yes. Come on!”

  I followed Morrie down the stairs, curious as to what he’d uncovered. He stopped in front of the Sociology shelf, right where Ashley had been standing the other day. He scanned the spines. I could practically see the cogs turning in his brain.

  “This should be easy. There’s a layer of dust on the shelves because Heathcliff is a disgusting human who never cleans. Since people don’t shop in this section the dust line is completely undisturbed. Unless someone pulled out a book recently and left a mark—Ah!” Morrie pointed to a trail across the dust, and pulled out a book. “Here’s our culprit.”

  Morrie handed the volume to me. High Fashion and the Culture of Excess, read the title. A little on-the-nose, but that was Ashley. As I flipped the book open, a brown envelope fell out of the dust jacket. I handed the book to Morrie and bent to pick it up.