The door’s Tinkerbell impersonation started up again, followed by a loud “Hi-yooooooo!”
Vinny Nardini, our Dependable Delivery Service man, strode in with clipboard in hand and the old
If my brother had lived, I was certain he would have made close to the same choices as Vinny, who had taken a job in Quindicott, married a girl from Quindicott, and quickly begun to raise three children in Quindicott. Vin was pretty typical of most of the people with whom my brother and I had gone to school. He was also one of the happiest guys I knew.
“Hi-yo, yourself,” said Sadie. “What are you doing here? We’re not even open yet.” My aunt was as surprised as I was to see a DDS man on a Saturday.
“I’m collecting names. A petition to save the town square squirrels,” he said, presenting his electronic clipboard to Sadie. “Sign here, young woman, to stock the city hall with nuts.”
“I hope I’m not signing for a shipment of narcotics,” said Sadie.
“I only deliver heroin on Thursdays,” said Vinny.
The ghost voice. Again.
As Vinny went back out to his boxy brown DDS truck, the door tinkled yet again.
“Good morning, all,” said Professor Brainert Parker. He was such an old friend, and good customer, ignoring the CLOSED sign had become routine.
On teaching days, Brainert always wore a three-piece suit and tie. Today, however, was “casual” weekend wear, which for Brainert expressed itself in a wrinkle-free yellow cotton buttoned-down tucked into pressed J. Crew khakis with a knife-sharp crease.
“Have you seen the
Sadie rolled her eyes. I held up the offending front page.
“Elmer Crabtree strikes again,” said Brainert.
The door swung wide once more, with Vinny pulling a handcart filled with cardboard boxes. He unloaded twenty in all. Five at a time. Each held twenty-five hardcover books. Sadie read the words stamped on the side of each box:
“This must be a mistake,” I said in shock. “We already received this order!”
“No mistake,” said Vinny, piling the last of the boxes up by the checkout counter. “And Sadie’s signed, so it’s off my hands—and my truck. Toodles.”
“Oh, my goodness,” I told Sadie. “I remember now. That Shelby woman from Salient House, the publicist, she cornered me right before Brennan spoke. She said she’d convinced Brennan to stay over a few days and come back to our shop to sign all weekend. She said she had the warehouse on her cell phone and needed the store’s account number to approve an order of ‘a few’ more books. I agreed to ‘a few,’ not five hundred!”
“Hen’s teeth,” said Sadie.
“What do we do?” I said. “Brennan isn’t about to rise from the dead to sign these now—”
Ohmygod.
“You’re right. We’ll never move this many copies,” said Sadie. “After last night’s run, I think we already must have sold a
“Can’t you just send back the unopened boxes to the publisher on Monday for credit? No harm done?” asked Brainert.
“Normally, yes,” I said. “But Salient House just instituted a new penalty policy.”
“Oh, dear. I’d forgotten,” said Sadie.
To discourage returns, the publisher now made bookstores pay a penalty when returning more than 50 percent of any order. Plus postage.
“We’ll still come out ahead,” said Sadie.
“Yes, but it’s a shame to lose
“Well, why don’t we at least refill the display?” she suggested. “Who knows, we might move a few copies over the weekend.”
We unpacked exactly one box of
On Monday, the bulk of this shipment would surely go back to the publisher’s warehouse under the most dreaded designation in the book trade—a ghastly, horrifying word no bookseller, publisher, or author ever wished to utter:
RETURNS.
CHAPTER 7
Chandler began to wonder whether even hard-boiled murder stories were not going to seem “a bit on the insignificant side” . . . considering the publicity given to real-life urban homicide.
AS I RETURNED from the storage room, I noticed a crowd gathering on the sidewalk.
Customers? Already?
Buy the Book wasn’t supposed to open for another fifteen minutes or so, but now I considered opening early. I glanced briefly at the crowd and spied a familiar face: Josh, Shelby Cabot’s assistant from Salient House. I assumed he’d come to pay a courtesy call on behalf of the publisher. “We’re so sorry our author dropped dead on you and we stocked your business with an immovable ton of his unsigned books.”
I was just calculating how many
The door opened and I jumped backward. A huge figure loomed in the doorway. Massive shoulders blocked out the sun. I saw a square chin covered with blond stubble, a bull neck, icy-gray eyes, and that big gold badge.
Suddenly I felt queasy all over again.
“Excuse me, ma’am. My name is Detective-Lieutenant Roger Marsh of the Crime Investigation Unit of the State Police. I have a warrant to seal and search these premises and any indoor or outdoor space attached to this address—”
He dangled an official-looking document in front of me as a small bull-necked army of men—some in plain- clothes, with silver metal attache cases, and some wearing gray uniforms with red trim and Smokey the Bear hats —filed into my store.
“Why? Whatever could you want here?” Sadie demanded, rushing out of the stockroom. Lieutenant Marsh ignored her, his eyes fixed on me.
“—And to confiscate any and all materials deemed relevant to the investigation,” he continued.
“But—” I muttered.
Lieutenant Marsh’s cold gray eyes shut me up. He studied me with such ferocity, I felt my cheeks burning with a sudden flush, realizing how disheveled I must have looked. Marsh noticed my discomfort immediately. I swear his eyes grew even more frosty.
