Memoirs of a Garroter (Nevermore Bookshop Mysteries Book 4)

by Steffanie Holmes

  Grimalkin strode into the shop like she expected a string quartet to announce her presence. She wore a figure-hugging dress in a slinky fabric that I could tell from the cut was a designer piece. Under one arm, she had a series of totes from expensive brands and under the other, she clutched a brown paper bag from The Third Wheel, Argleton’s super expensive artisan cheesemaker. The corner of a carton of artisanal heavy cream jabbed into my thigh as she shoved her way between us, heading for the main room.

  “I’m not sure ‘missed’ is the correct word.” I grabbed Morrie’s hand and yanked him after me. “What is all this stuff?”

  “Essentials. Now that I have opposable thumbs again, I intend to indulge myself in the manner to which I intend to become accustomed.” Grimalkin set her bags down on the floor. She dug around in the cheese bag and pulled out a wheel of Camembert, which she proceeded to unwrap with gusto.

  “But… you’re a cat. You don’t have a bank account. How did you afford all this?”

  She pulled a credit card out of her cleavage and tossed it to Morrie. “I’ve seen him use that many times to obtain items he wanted. I figured he wouldn’t mind if I borrowed it to do the same.”

  The expression on Morrie’s face suggested that he did in fact mind, very much. “H-h-how much did you spend?”

  “I didn’t really look,” Grimalkin said sweetly as she took an enormous bite out of the cheese wheel. “Currency has little meaning to a cat.”

  “You sure you don’t want some crackers with that?” Quoth asked. He’d come down from the chandelier and was now sitting in all his naked glory on the edge of the table. “Perhaps a bit of quince paste?”

  “Hardly.” Grimalkin took another enormous bite, her eyes closed in bliss. A ring of red lipstick stained the cheese rind.

  “You’re not a cat anymore,” I reminded her, but then something occurred to me. “So you can’t transform between your human and cat forms the way Quoth can? You’re stuck as a human now, forever?”

  “I tried transforming several times upon my prowlings, and it didn’t seem to work. No matter how hard I concentrate, I cannot—”

  Her words cut off into a shriek of surprise as whiskers sprouted from her cheeks. She dropped the cheese as her lithe fingers sprouted fur and pads to form a paw. Her knees cracked against the floor as she toppled forward, her body contorting, her back arching and dark fur sprouting from her smooth skin.

  A moment later, a familiar mottled cat stepped out of a rumpled designer dress and strutted across the floor to nibble the cheese. Quoth burst out laughing.

  In a flash, Grimalkin the woman appeared again. She shook out her hair and tested her fingers, curling them over and scraping her long fingernails through thin air.

  “Hmmm,” she purred. “It appears that I can shift forms, after all. Likely, the shifting is tied to proximity to the spring that delivers the waters of Meles.”

  “Where is this spring?” I asked. “If it’s under the house, how come we’ve never had drainage issues?”

  “Oh, Homer took care of that decades ago.” She waved her hand. “If you go down to the basement, you’ll see where it’s been diverted. Just don’t expect me to show up. It’s damp down there. I don’t do damp.”

  “How do you know all this stuff? About the spring and my father’s comings and goings, and about Dracula?”

  Ignoring my question, Grimalkin picked a volume off the table and opened its pages. “Books have a magic of their own. Did you know that? Especially when the tales inside are woven by a master writer. You have felt that all your life, dear. That’s why you spent your youth in this very shop. You were drawn to the waters of Meles and to the magic of words and stories, as was your father before you. But stories can play their own tricks. Certain books… certain characters… they have a magic of their own. And when your father passed his seed to you, he diluted his own magic, weakening the barrier between this world and the world of books. If a character is strong enough – if he or she has been so damaged that they wish to leave their story, to cut it off before it has come to its full conclusion – they can fall through the barrier and become real.”

  I blanched, reeling at her words. “Are you saying that the reason fictional characters come to life in this shop is because of me?”

  Grimalkin took another bite of cheese, and didn’t reply. My hand flew to my pocket, touching my father’s letter. This time, it didn’t do much to calm my beating heart.

  “How do I know you’re not lying?” I said. “You’ve been a cat for several thousand years. You haven’t had a conversation with Homer since Poseidon cursed you. So how could you possibly know all these things? ”

  “Because people, especially lonely people who own bookshops and watch their loved ones from a distance instead of actually telling them the truth, tend to get chatty around cats.” Grimalkin stretched out along the sofa under the window and took another bite out of her cheese. “My son was no exception. Even though I had spent centuries looking for him, I did wish he’d just shut up sometimes. Cheese?” she held out a crescent of white rind to me. I shook my head. Grimalkin tossed the rind on the ground and cracked open a carton of cream.

  Morrie tugged at me. I tightened my grip on his arm. “Don’t leave.”

  “He wants me to go,” Morrie said. “I need to go.”

  “I’m sorry.” My heart ached for him. He looked so vulnerable, so dejected.

  “What do you have to be sorry about?”

  “I should have split you two up sooner. But after our conversation, I wanted to see…”

  Morrie sighed. “I’m the one fucking things up here, gorgeous. Don’t you worry your clever wee head about me. I’ll be fine. Heathcliff will calm down. Things will go back to normal. You’ll see. I have a plan.”

  As he swung his lanky body toward the front door, his shoulders sagged. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that whatever Morrie was planning, I wasn’t going to like it. At all.

  Three hours later, I was slumped over the desk, playing chess with Quoth, drinking my third wine of the day, and trying not to think about the fact I might be responsible for Count Dracula walking the earth, when Heathcliff stomped down the stairs. He watched us from the doorway. I could feel his glower creeping over my skin. It took all of my self-control to ignore him, but I had to. Heathcliff needed to come to terms with things in his own time. If I pushed him, he’d kick me out of the shop next, and I couldn’t handle that right now.

  “Check,” Quoth said, sliding his queen across the board to threaten my king.

  “Mina, I’m going out to price a book collection,” Heathcliff muttered. “Want to come?”

  “Hell yes.” I stood up. Acquiring stock from estate collections was a part of the business I hadn’t learned much about. At least it would be a welcome distraction from the empty shop, the Dracula fears, the kiss, and just… argh, everything. “Quoth’s kicking my arse. I could use a distraction.”

  “Quitting while you’re behind?” Quoth grinned, cracking his knuckles. “Smart move. I’ve been taking lessons from Morrie. I was about to stop going easy on you.”

  At the mention of Morrie’s name, Heathcliff stiffened. I hurriedly grabbed my coat. “Are you okay to mind the shop for us? Remind people that the books on that display table are half-off and—”

  “Don’t bother.” Heathcliff threw open the front door. It slammed against the wall behind, rattling the ancient frame. “No one’s coming.”

  Don’t remind me, I thought sourly as I flipped the sign to CLOSED and shut the door behind us. At the rate our accounts were deteriorating, we’d be out of business within the month.

  Heathcliff shoved his hands in his pockets and rushed off down the street. I had to jog to catch up with him. A bitter wind rubbed my face raw. I looped my arm around his and jammed my hand in his pocket, which felt super-warm but forced me to keep up with his grueling pace.

  “Shouldn’t we call a rideshare?”

  “Nope. The call is local. It�
�s four blocks this way.”

  “How will we get the boxes back to the shop?” I asked.

  “We make a couple of trips.”

  My arms already ached with the thought of it. “I think you’ve overestimated how much I can carry. You should buy a van or something, then you can make trips whenever you need to.”

  “I don’t want a car,” he muttered. “I hate that no one goes anywhere on foot anymore.”

  Heathcliff spent his youth rambling over the moors. He felt most at home in wild places, cloaking himself in mists as he ducked along sough and beck, clambered over rocky crags, and skirted the edges of the deadly mires. Foul weather like this was his jam.

  Not mine, though. I wished I’d thought to bring my phone. “Good. That’s four blocks where we can talk about what happened.”

  Heathcliff said nothing.

  “You didn’t really kick Morrie out of the shop, did you? Like, not forever?”

  Heathcliff grunted.

  “You’ve got to give me something. He kissed you. You kissed him back. What are you feeling right now? I’m dying here.”

  “I feel like I betrayed you, that’s how I feel.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true. I promised my heart to you, Mina. To you and you alone. Morrie had no right to force me to—”

  “But you must have some feelings for him. Or you wouldn’t have kissed him back.”

  “It shut him up for five minutes,” Heathcliff growled. “You can’t say that’s not worthwhile.”

  I laughed. Heathcliff didn’t. “I want you to know that if you and Morrie want to try out this thing, see where it leads, I support you, as long as we discuss it first.”

  “There’s no discussion because it’s not happening.”

  “Tell that to the hottest fucking kiss I’ve ever had the honor to witness,” I said. “You sound like you’re telling yourself how to feel, instead of acknowledging what’s between you and Morrie—“

  “You sound like you been hanging out in the self-help section,” Heathcliff shot back. “There’s nothing between me and Morrie except a rapidly deteriorating friendship. Morrie didn’t mean it, he was just trying to distract us all from the fact that he’s a selfish tit. I don’t want to discuss it.”

  “You can’t just shut down and ignore your feelings—”

  “Thank fuck, we’re here,” Heathcliff muttered, slamming open a white wooden gate with such force I heard the wood splinter. He stormed up the path ahead of me, not waiting for me to catch up.

  The house was a beautiful Victorian gothic with a white lattice porch and freshly painted weatherboards. I noticed a real estate sign on the front lawn with a giant SOLD sticker across it. Shame to leave such a beautiful house. I hoped it was because the owners were going on to a new opportunity and not because of… other reasons.

  Heathcliff rapped on the door. A smiling old lady wrapped in a black shawl answered and ushered us inside. “The books are through here,” she said. “Both Edward and I are terribly fond of the collection, but of course we can’t fit them all on the houseboat.”

  “Houseboat?”

  “Yes!” She was practically bouncing with excitement. It was adorable. “Edward and I never had much money. This big old house took all our savings to maintain. But then along comes Grey Lachlan, offering four times the worth of the property. Well, it was too good a deal to resist.”

  “Grey Lachlan?” My mouth dropped open in horror. “You know that he’s a big developer. He’s going to knock this beautiful old house down and build a bunch of modern townhouses.”

  “Oh, heavens no! We would never have sold if that was the case. Grey has purchased the house for his wife. He said that she was interested in building a hospitality business, and since her Jane Austen Experience ended up blighted by those nasty murders, she thought she might run it out of here. Apparently, there will be themed teas and a ball and all sorts of fancies. It sounds wonderful, and it’s nice to know the house will be on proud display while we enjoy our retirement. Well, here are the books.” She gestured into a large room with a bay window overlooking the front garden. “I’ll bring through the tea things for you.”

  I stared at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with dread. How did Heathcliff possibly imagine we’d carry all these back to the shop? There must’ve been at least two thousand books stacked on these shelves.

  Seemingly undaunted, Heathcliff started removing books from the shelves. With just a glance at the covers, he sorted them into two piles.

  “Which pile is the books we’re keeping?” I asked him.

  “That one.” He pointed to the smaller pile, which mostly contained railway books. “Anything about planes, trains, local history, or whisky-tasting goes in this pile. Anything that you wouldn’t be caught dead reading on the bus goes in the trash pile. Start in that corner and work your way toward me.”

  I grabbed books off the shelves and sorted them into three piles. Books to keep, books to leave behind (I couldn’t bear to think of any books as ‘trash’), books to ask Heathcliff about. The third pile was by far the largest.

  By the time we’d finished, we had every book off the shelves, and two small cartons of books to bring back to the shop.

  The woman looked disappointed. “Is that all?”

  “Yes,” Heathcliff said. He opened his wallet and peeled out three twenty-quid notes, which he handed to the lady. “Call the charity shop in Barchester. They’ll come to pick up the rest.”

  “Okay. But what’s their number—” But Heathcliff was already heading down the path with one carton of books.

  “I’ll call them for you if you like.” I smiled at the lady. She beamed back. “Thank you so much for letting us take a look at your collection. Enjoy your houseboat!”

  “I will. Thank you, dearie.” The woman slipped one of Heathcliff’s notes into my pocket. “You’re much more friendly than that horrid man.”

  He’s not horrid. He’s just been kissed by his best friend and doesn’t know how to deal with it. But I smiled and accepted the money.

  I wanted to try to talk to Heathcliff about Morrie again, but he was so far ahead of me and the books were so heavy that I had to focus all my energy on putting one foot in front of the other. With every step, the weight of everything dragged against my body.

  Halfway there, I dropped my box on the side of the road and slumped down beside it. A moment later, Heathcliff was standing over me, frowning.

  “Why are you doing? It’s freezing out here.”

  “Yes, it is.” I rubbed my hands together under my hoodie. “I’ve decided I’m just going to sit here and wait for erosion to pull me safely back to the shop’s entrance.”

  “Mina.”

  “The box is heavy. I’m taking a break. I’ll be fine as soon as I can feel my fingers again.”

  Heathcliff set down his own box, dragged mine on top of his, and hefted both of them into his arms. “Erosion waits for no one,” he called out as he took off toward the shop in a brisk pace.

  I caught up with him just as he set the boxes down in the hall. “You okay?” he asked.

  No, I’m not okay. My life was finally coming together and everything was falling into place and then Danny Sledge and my cat grandmother and Dracula and you and Morrie and fucking Grey Lachlan had to go and throw a spanner in the works. “Why is Grey buying up the town?” I asked.

  Heathcliff shrugged.

  “I don’t like it. Something about it doesn’t sit right. He can’t get his hands on Nevermore, can he?”

  Again, Heathcliff shrugged. “You’ve seen the accounts. How much longer can we hold on?”

  I winced. I’d been hoping he had some magic plan up his sleeve, some secret deal with the bank he was going to pull out at the last minute. But of course, that was more Morrie’s style. “Maybe we ask Morrie to bail us out, just this once—”

  “I’m not begging Morrie for his money,” Heathcliff snapped.

  “All right. I’m so
rry.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to use his coin, anyway, seems as how it undoubtedly comes from the profits of criminal activity?”

  “I don’t.” I buried my hand deeper into his pocket. “I also don’t want to lose the shop.”

  As Heathcliff moved the empty boxes, I noticed a small square of paper laying on the welcome mat. ‘To the residents of Nevermore Bookshop’ was written in an elegant script. My heart beat faster, and my hand flew to my pocket, where I still kept my father’s letter.

  But this wasn’t my father’s handwriting. “Heathcliff, did you see this?”

  I handed the envelope to Heathcliff. Frowning, he ran his finger along the seal to break it, unfolding a small square of paper and a newspaper article. He handed the article to me.

  I held it up to the light and scanned it. It was an article from the Argleton Gazette, dated fifteen years ago. It showed the headline, ‘Local teen sentenced on drug charges.’ This seventeen-year-old girl, whoever she was, had been in deep trouble after being caught selling to local kids. Because she was still underage, the paper didn’t print her name or show her picture, so I had no idea who it was. Abigail? Or someone else?

  Weird. Someone wanted us to have this. But who. And why? Is it connected to the drug dealing Danny and Jim used to do? I turned to Heathcliff, who was frowning at the note.

  “What’s it say?” I asked.

  Heathcliff lowered the paper. “It says, ‘you’ve got a date with a funeral’.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Danny’s funeral attracted hundreds of mourners. He was the closest Argleton had to a real celebrity, so everyone wanted to be seen as his close personal friend. As Morrie and I entered the church, heads turned to watch us. My skin prickled from all the eyes on me. I grabbed Morrie and yanked him into the back pew.

  “You can’t see from back here,” Morrie pointed out.

  “It’s a funeral. I know how it ends,” I whispered back. “I just don’t think we should sit up the front when Danny was killed in our shop and everyone thinks Nevermore is cursed or whatever. Plus, from back here we can people watch.”