Page 23

CHAPTER 23

W hen Max went off to harass the Ferrells about something, I didn’t try to go with him. Lionel was not my favorite person since he looked at all women as targets for the devastating sexual allure he did not have. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have anything to say to me aside from “Looking pretty today, Rose, call me Lion,” so I’d had enough Lionel for a while.

That’s why, after I saw Max off to the post office and Poppy off to school, I called Luke to ask for a favor and then went next door to check on Coral, telling Anita that Poppy would be in about three to cover for her. Coral was back in her kitchen talking to Quill over a table full of flour and eggs and sugar, so I just said hi and that Poppy would be in, and they both nodded at me absentmindedly, caught up in what they were doing. So that was good.

Then I went back next door and opened the shop, looking to see what Poppy had done there while I’d been dealing with Coral and the honey pots the past two days. The back room that she was calling the library was looking good with two old comfy chairs and that really nice octagon table she and Marley had found, the books on the shelves all sorted out and clean and the big bay window back there polished and clear. She’d found some old mapbacks and other great vintage covers and framed them and then hung them on the vertical support beams of the bookcases, and she’d actually sold a couple of those. And she’d figured out how to do transfers of old covers and ironed them onto fabric that she made into pillows. They looked great and she said they were selling, too. Slowly, but then Rocky Start did not get a lot of drop-in shoppers, mostly people who wandered over full of sugar from Coral’s.

So the library was great, but it was cold back there. We needed to get some thermal curtains up there or some double glazing and thermal curtains, but aside from the winter draft, it was bright and clean and homey and full of stuff people might buy. Poppy wanted to put a lot of it online, which made sense but I was still leery of anything that might bring people to town, so we were discussing it. But she’d shown me some of the photos she had ready to go online and they were good. The kid was doing good work. I was in favor of anything that distracted her from the nightmares and bad memories.

The library was great, but the front room on that side looked like hell, full of boxes Poppy and Marley had found stashed somewhere. Marley had been doing a lot of work in the shop in the past two weeks, mostly hauling stuff, along with oiling hinges and making sure the shelves were firm on the walls, all of which really wasn’t his thing. What was his thing was the big teapot over the table at the back of the first room that poured a tea-colored ribbon and then somehow retracted it into the pot; it took me a while to realize that it was timed to do that every hour, which was a nice, silent version of timekeeping.

I was also beginning to realize that Poppy could get Marley to do anything she wanted, although to be fair, a motorized teapot was probably catnip for him: Motors and movement and figuring things out were his thing. Still, I was pretty sure there was extra motivation for him in figuring things out for Poppy, and she was looking much better, which meant that whatever they were doing was good for her, so I was not going to butt in. Probably.

I went back to the counter and flipped the OPEN sign over and then pulled Ozzie’s box of masks out from under the counter and pulled one out at random. It was the fierce leopard mask marked “Bea,” and I thought I’d never seen a less Bea-like mask in my life.

Then I remembered she hadn’t always been drunk most of the time, that she’d retired early from being a successful agent to run a very successful storefront and online honey emporium on her own, that she’d been a respected beekeeper and a good businesswoman—until she’d met Harvey, the cheating, boozing exterminator she’d loved.

So I looked at the mask and tried to see what Ozzie had seen. I started with a black lace mask over her eyes; Ozzie had bought a lot of those and I was pretty sure I was going to use them as shorthand for “former agent” on all the masks I did. I smoothed that on and then looked at the mask again.

It would be too cruel to glue bottles of booze on there, so I went and rifled through the box of general stuff that we’d been putting things into for ages and found some bees. Years ago, Poppy had done a project for school on bees that Bea had helped her on, back before Harvey ruined Bea’s life, and she’d made a poster with a lot of little fuzzy bees on it. When Poppy had thrown the cardboard from the poster out, she’d saved the little bees she’d glued to it.

So I glued those over the leopard’s spots.

That made sense; Bea was fierce underneath when she was functioning, and she loved her bees.

I found some honeycomb charms and put those in the ears, and I was trying to think of other things I knew about Bea and realized that was pretty much nothing. I’d known her for almost twenty years, and all I knew was that she loved bees and Harvey. And now she was alone and grieving and doing a nosedive into a bottle because she had no backup. All alone in that shop?—

Which is when I had an awful thought. She wasn’t alone in the shop. Hermione had moved back in two nights ago.

On my orders.

Crap.

I put the CLOSED sign up on the door, picked up the mask, and went down the street to rescue Bea.

* * *

The gold honeycomb on The Honey Pot’s window gleamed in the winter sunshine, and the place was warm when I went inside, but when the bell on the door rang as I went in, it was Hermione who popped out of the back room to say, “HELLO, HOW CAN I HELP YOU??”

“Bring it down a little, Hermione,” I said. “That’s really loud.”

“HOW CAN I HELP YOU?” she said again, smiling at me with her own fake Cheery Boost smile.

“I want to talk to Bea, please.”

She lost her smile, which was a relief. “I can help you with anything that Bea could. What do you want?”

“I want to talk to Bea.”

Her face grew stormy. “But I’m just as good as Bea. Better, even.”

“Yes, but you are not, in fact, Bea. I want to talk to Bea, not about buying something, just talk, like people do.”

“I can talk,” Hermione said, sounding sulky now.

“I know,” I said. “But I want to talk to Bea. ”

“What about?” Bea said, coming down the stairs from her apartment. She was in her robe with something frilly hanging out of the bottom, so she was sleeping late these days. Probably trying to come back from whatever the drinks had been the night before.

Hermione glared at her. “I told you I’d take care of the store.”

Bea looked at her with disdain. “Yeah, like I’d give you the key to the cash register. Go back and finish the inventory, Hermione. That’s what I hired you for.”

“It’s boring,” Hermione said.

“That’s why I told you to do it.” Bea turned to me. “What do you want, Rose?”

She didn’t sound welcoming, so I just said, “I’m worried about you. I just wanted you to know that if you ever wanted help, I’m here.”

“I could use some help,” Hermione said.

“Yeah, you’re good at that,” Bea said to me, ignoring Hermione. I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or just dismissive. “Help the whole town, that’s what you do.”

“I didn’t want you to think you were alone. You have friends, Bea.”

Her face changed then; the sneer was gone and for a moment she looked lost and vulnerable. I know all about lost and vulnerable. Sometimes you just need to know that somebody sees you, knows you’re there, is maybe looking out for you.

“I could use a friend,” Hermione said, and Bea went back to exasperation.

“Well, thank you very much, Rose,” Bea said. “But I know who my friends are and they’re not you.”

“Okay,” I said. “But please be careful. I don’t think that woman who came for Coral is a one-off. And when you drink, you’re really vulnerable.”

“She has me,” Hermione began and Bea ran right over her.

“I don’t drink that much,” she blustered, which I knew was bluster because Bea had to know she was usually drunk by noon, if not earlier.

“Bea, too much happened to you too fast.” I took a deep breath and went for it. “You need rehab.”

“People from Rocky Start don’t go to rehab,” Bea said.

“I could take care of the store if Bea goes to rehab,” Hermione said brightly.

Bea looked at her, frowning. “Didn’t I fire you?”

Hermione blinked. “Well, yes, but then I came back and you told me to do inventory.”

Bea closed her eyes. “Hermione, go away. You’re fired again. Do not come back. No, you cannot have my store. You cannot have anything more than you’ve already taken.”

“ Borrowed ,” Hermione said. “I borrowed things.”

“Good,” Bea said. “Give them back.”

“Well,” Hermione began, but I wasn’t paying attention because I’d just realized something awful.

Bea was drunk. Not rolling, slurring, falling down drunk, but that early stage of liquor when you just can’t quite remember where your feet are. It wasn’t even nine yet, and she’d been drinking.

“Bea,” I said. “Please let me help you before you get killed.”

She turned her sneer on me. “I’m not going to get killed. I told you, I know people. So thanks very much for your concern, now get out.”

Not much I could do after that. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Hey, Malone,” Bea called as I reached the door. “Harvey never gave a damn about you. He just wanted Ozzie’s money.”

“I know,” I said. “I told you: I had no interest in Harvey.” I did not add “And I’ve never understood what you saw in him . ”

“Yeah, well, he loved me ,” Bea said, and I reached for the door and realized I was holding her mask.

I went back to the foot of the stairs. “I made you a mask,” I said, “like Coral’s rabbit, but this one is fierce like a leopard, a leopard that loves bees.”

I handed it up to her, and she took it automatically and then sort of woke up and started to sneer, but the mask caught her attention, and she looked at it closely, held it up to the light, her face surprised, not sneering anymore.

“You think I’m fierce?” she said, touching one of the bees gently.

“Everybody thinks you’re fierce, Bea.”

She looked at me then, her mouth open, blinking hard, and then she turned and went upstairs, clutching the mask.

“I’d like a mask,” Hermione said. “I’m fierce, too.”

I looked at Hermione then, really looked at her, and thought that in her own way, she was fierce. She went after what she wanted, no rules, and she did not give up. She was obnoxious and dishonest and probably a kleptomaniac, but she knew what she wanted and went for it. And somehow, she seemed to get it.

“Let me think,” I said.

“I should have a mask,” Hermione said. “I deserve a mask.”

That’s when I began to wonder how much of Hermione was con and how much was legitimate delusion. Like maybe she needed my help, and I should try harder.

Or maybe . . .

“Let me see what I can do,” I told her.

Her eyes lit up as she said, “You know what else would be good?”

“No,” I said.

“This town needs Christmas music,” Hermione said. “Christmas is only two weeks away. I could help you do that. You know. Us. Together. At Oddities.”

I saw the light in her eyes, and it wasn’t friendship. She’d have Oddities stripped by the weekend. She was like a human Roomba, rolling in and sucking up everything in her path.

“So what should we do first?” she said. “We’ll need a speaker system.”

“No,” I said. “This town does not want Christmas music.” As far as I was concerned, no town wanted Christmas music.

“We’ll see,” Hermione said, looking at me cheerfully, clearly already making plans to move in, and I said, “ No ,” and went back to Oddities to open the shop.

Without Christmas music.