Page 29

CHAPTER 29

I had gone upstairs, trying not to cry about losing Mei. I had done enough crying, I needed to do something . So I got dressed in my jeans and my big, thick, light blue hoodie that said “Tell Your Dog I Said Hi” and put on my furry boots, and went downstairs to get the box that Marley and I had found the day before, a box labeled “Betty” that had been shoved under one of the tables in the messy front room we still hadn’t fixed up. When I opened it, it was full of cracked but otherwise intact teacups that Ozzie had picked up somewhere. That seemed mean—Mrs. Baumgarten really liked teacups and cracked ones would leak tea—so I had showed it to Marley and he said, “Yeah, she uses them for target practice.”

I should have known better. Ozzie didn’t make mistakes.

I knew Mom was planning to go out to check on Mrs. B., so I went into the kitchen to tell her about the teacups and ask if I could take them—I really needed to get out and walk and think—and saw she was talking to Mr. Crothers, who runs Cover Stories. He looked like he had big problems—he kept looking over his shoulder as if somebody was after him—so of course he’d brought them to Mom.

He was whining. “—and now she’s calling the bookstore ‘our shop’ and rearranging things.”

“Can’t you just tell her to leave?” Mom said, looking exasperated.

“I tried ,” Mr. Crothers said. “But, you know, we’d spent the night together—” He shot a glance in my direction. “— looking at books , and, well, I kind of owed her—” He sighed. “And she has my keys. Somehow. I don’t remember giving them to her. Exactly.”

“Oxley,” my mother said firmly. “You do not owe her. And if you do not get rid of her, she’ll own your store by the weekend. The woman is a professional leech.”

Mr. Crothers looked miserable. “Well, and I kind of wanted—” He looked back at me. “—to, you know, look at books again.”

“Then you’re going to have Hermione in your shop holding onto your keys,” Mom said and looked at me. “What’s up, Pops?”

I smiled at Mr. Crothers, who evidently was pretty open-minded about who he slept with, and lifted the box so my mother could see it. “This is a box of cracked teacups that Ozzie wrote ‘Betty’ on, so—” I looked at Mr. Crothers. Clearly, he had other things he wanted to tell Mom that I did not want to hear. “—I’m just going to take these out to her.”

Mom looked surprised. “Are you sure? That’s in the woods and . . .” She stopped, and I knew she wanted to say “and you’re scared,” so I stuck my chin out, faking bravery; my mom never gets scared, so I’m not going to be weak sauce either.

“The sun’s up and nobody’s gunning for high school kids,” I told her. “And I need the exercise.”

“Well, I did promise Betty I’d go out and check on her, but . . .” She looked at Mr. Crothers—who looked at her pleadingly—and then back at me. “Are you sure you’re okay going out there alone? You should wait for me. Or Marley. Where’s Marley?”

“Somewhere with Max,” I said. “Mom, nobody has gone after us except that stupid snake since Serena died, and even then, she just kidnapped me for leverage, not because she was after me. I think I’m safe.” I really didn’t want to look timid, like I needed somebody to protect me. I could do this. Easy.

Then it occurred to me that what I needed was a gun. Everybody else had one. And I was going to see Betty Baumgarten. She probably had extra. We had the shotgun but mom always hid the shells.

“I’m going,” I said. “I really need the exercise.”

Mom gave up, although I could tell she wasn’t happy. “I’ll be out there later this afternoon.” What she didn’t add was “After I get Oxley straightened out,” but it was there. That was going to take a while.

“I’m on it,” I told her. “I haven’t seen Fernanda in a while, so I’ll take her a banana to remind her who I am.” Fernanda loved bananas.

“Max is out in the forest with Dmitri,” Mom said. “You have Max’s satellite phone number, right?”

“Yep.”

So I walked out to Mrs. Baumgarten’s cottage in the woods with my box of teacups and a banana. It’s kind of a ways out of town, but it’s a nice walk and the box of teacups wasn’t that heavy and neither was the banana. The only human I saw was Hermione Witch, who ran across the street from the bookstore to ask me my favorite Christmas song. I told her it was “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer,” and she didn’t seem happy about that. By the time I reached the bridge into the forest, I realized it would have been easier without the box of cups, but Mom had said Max walked that route with his heavy rucksack to keep fit, so I could carry teacups to be fit. Although sometimes I think men just like hurting themselves, like Mr. Crothers with Hermione, who everybody knew was trouble.

When I got to Mrs. B.’s, I stopped outside the white picket fence where Marley and Reggie had rigged a doorbell, balanced my box on the gate, and pressed the bell. I waited and then Fernanda came trotting around the corner of the cottage, followed by Mrs. B.

“Poppy!” she called out. She tied Fernanda to the hitching rail on the side of the cottage and walked across the small bridge spanning the moat to the gate. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

I held up the box. “Ozzie left you a box of cracked teacups with your name on it. And I brought Fernanda a banana.”

“That was kind of him and you,” she said, opening the gate and waving me in. “But I could have picked them up at Oddities. Does your mother know you’re out here?”

“Yep. But things came up.”

Betty raised her eyebrows. “Things?”

I thought about being discreet, but this was Rocky Start. Everybody would know shortly anyway, and Betty didn’t talk. “Oxley Crothers slept with Hermione Witch last night and now she has his keys and she won’t leave. She’s insisting on working in the bookstore, and she’s calling it ‘our shop,’ and he’s panicking all over my mom. And Hermione is asking everybody for their favorite Christmas music, so be ready.”

Mrs. B. looked unsympathetic. “Anybody who sleeps with Hermione Witch deserves what they get. That woman will take anything that’s not nailed down.” She took the box from me and began to walk to the back of the cottage. “Come on. I was just having tea.”

I fed Fernanda her banana, which she ate, peel and all, and then we went around to the back of the cottage to the white table with the four chairs Mrs. B. had set up there. The back picket fence was far away, up against a hillside, and there was a lot of stuff lined up on it—evidently, Mrs. B. didn’t just shoot teacups—but the amount of broken china around the fence made it pretty clear that was her target of choice.

She put the box down next to the table.

“Teacups, huh?” I said as she knelt and opened the box.

“Oh, how nice,” she said when she saw how many cups there were. “Very kind of Ozzie. Yes, teacups for target practice. You can definitely tell when you’ve hit one and they’re small enough to be a challenge at a distance. Also, cheap.”

“In this case, free. Ozzie wanted you to have them.” I was still staring at the teacups. “Could I have the broken pieces from under your fence?”

Her eyebrows went up as she stood. “Whatever for?”

“Mosaic. I can break them into smaller pieces and do mosaics with them.” That might turn out to be awful, but it might not, too. And Mom might get into it. She needed to do more art; that’s what she loved doing the best.

“Of course,” Mrs. B. said. “Let me unpack this box, and you can have it to put the pieces in. But be careful, dear. The edges will be sharp . . .” She looked down at my hands, at the red marks and white scars still there from the cuts thanks to Serena a month ago. “Well, that was remarkably tactless of me. I apologize.”

I shook my head and hesitated, then got up my courage. “Could you teach me to shoot? A handgun, I mean. Ozzie taught me how to fire a shotgun., but its not the same thing, is it?”

She looked at me for a moment, as if trying to understand. “I could, but why? Coral tells me your mother isn’t in favor of firearms.”

“I can’t sleep. Nightmares. It’s always the same thing. Serena comes for me out of the dark and I’m tied up and can’t defend myself.” I hated sounding so pathetic. “And now with somebody coming for Coral . . .” I stopped because she looked appalled. “Never mind, it was a dumb idea. Mom would never allow me to have a gun.”

“No, I understand,” Mrs. B. said. “I used to be very good at mixed martial arts and was never really fond of firearms, either. But one must adapt as needed as we get older.”

I thought about her in action, this sweet little old lady surrounded by big, bloodied guys battling in a cage.

My money would have been on Mrs. B.

“A firearm is a good compensator,” she said. “Let’s have some tea and talk.”

So it wasn’t a flat-out no, but I had a feeling I was going to have to make a pretty compelling case. Besides “I’m terrified of a dead woman who threated to cut pieces off of me, and now I have nightmares about her coming back for me.”

“Please, sit.” She gestured to a chair. “Do you take milk or sugar with your tea?”

“Neither, please.”

I took one of the chairs and she went through a sliding glass door, then returned with a tray holding a teapot and two teacups and saucers—no cracks—and a plate full of Oreos. She put the tray down and poured us each a cup. She slid one of the cups and the plate of Oreos over to me.

Then she reached into one of the pockets on her dress and produced a pistol which she put next to her cup.