“But I can’t afford it without your discount,” Muffy said.
“It’s not money out of your pocket.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen said. “You’ll have to get something else.”
Muffy raised her voice so heads turned. “I can’t buy the book I want. It’s all your fault.” Then she stomped off to the Cooking section.
When Helen saw her next customer, she didn’t have to be psychic to predict more trouble. It was Melanie Devereaux DuShayne, the POD author. Helen wondered how she had the nerve to walk into the store after the Page Turner debacle. Her blond hair trailed down her back. She wore a tight, short sea foam–green sundress with a froth of polyester lace down the plunging neckline, and those clear plastic shoes.
“I got a call that my book has come in,” Melanie said.
Her voice trembled and her face went pink.
Now Helen knew what she was doing there. An author would endure any humiliation for her book. She checked the hold shelf. “You have two copies, actually. That will be twenty-nine ninety-five each, for a total of —”
Melanie’s face crumpled. Her voice was teary. “That much? I get a discount if I buy from the publisher, but it looks better if I order them at a real bookstore.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen said. “We don’t give author discounts.
I wish we did. We do take credit cards.”
“I’m maxed out,” Melanie said. “I bought the editing package.”
Helen looked at her. “Editing package?”
“I wanted the best for my book, so I paid nine hundred ninety nine dollars for the deluxe package. It includes copyediting, five free books, plus two favorable reviews.”
“Where do the reviews run?” Helen said.
“On the UBookIt Web site,” she said. “They’re really supposed to help sales and I wanted to give my book every chance.”
Poor Melanie. No one would read those reviews but other POD authors. Her book was the bastard child of the book industry. She’d been seduced by a greedy publisher who only wanted her for her money. Helen felt sorry for her.
“POD books are not returnable. You have to take both copies.”
“I’ll have more money next month. Can’t you keep one until next payday?”
It was against the rules. But Helen figured Page Turners owed Melanie that much. She rang up one book and buried the other on the hold shelf.
“Thanks,” Melanie said. “Where are your romances?”
Helen directed her to that section, and hoped Melanie could find something. The romances had been around.
Helen was embarrassed to sell them.
“Helen,” said Gayle, her blond hair shining like a halo in the bright sun. “My reading glasses came apart. I have to finish the weekly financial report. I’m going to run to the optometrist down the street and see if he’ll fix them. Will you watch the shop for a few minutes? Albert is due in any moment. Until then, you’re in charge. You and Denny can do a slush run. Brad can run the register.”
Helen felt like she was on an Easter-egg hunt. She found stray books under tables and chairs, shoved under shelves, and hidden in displays. She wished it was as easy to look for Page’s killer. She was running out of suspects. She was missing something, too. It nagged at her. When she turned the corner and saw Mr. Davies, the store’s oldest inhabitant, in his usual chair, she knew what it was.
He’d tried to tell her something last time she’d talked with him. Except Helen had been too impatient to listen.
Now she sat humbly on the footstool at Mr. Davies’ chair and said, “I cut you off last time. I’m very sorry. That was rude. On the night of the murder, the pretty redhead in the green Kia brought Page Turner back to the store, didn’t she?”
Mr. Davies sat up eagerly, his bright squirrel eyes gleaming. “Oh, my, yes. I know I talk too much. It makes the young impatient. That young Detective Jax was the same way. Don’t you think the police are looking younger these days? I really wonder how anyone that young can be trusted with a gun, but they say fourteen-year-olds take guns to school now. It was so different when I was young.
He didn’t bother listening to me.”
Who? Helen wondered, then realized Mr. Davies was talking about Detective Jax.
“And he did not apologize like you did, my dear.”
Helen dug her nails into her palms for patience while she waited for Mr. Davies to get to the point.
“The redheaded girl—excuse me, woman, I do try to say the right thing—the redhead was back after ten minutes. I thought Mr. Page Turner was very foolish to spend so little time with such an attractive young person. She left him at his private parking spot behind the store.
“But then I dozed off, and at first I thought it was a dream, she was so beautiful, and I told that detective that, and he said he didn’t care about my dreams, he just wanted the facts. But I wasn’t dreaming. I’d been reading
They are so much richer at my age. I read a biography of Mark Twain, but you can learn more about an author by reading his work—or her work, excuse me. Authors always write about themselves. The good ones are better at disguising it.”
Helen suppressed a sigh and felt some sympathy for Jax.
Would Mr. Davies never get on with it?
“I’d just finished the page when this lovely blonde showed up in a silver car. A silver coach for a golden princess.”
This wasn’t much help. “Lots of blondes are in the store,” she said.
“Not like this one. She had yellow hair and looked like Cinderella.”
“Helen to the front, please, Helen to the front.” She was being paged. It sounded like Denny.
“Cinderella? What do you mean?” Helen was desperate for more information.
“Helen to the front. Please come to the front!” It was definitely Denny. He sounded desperate.
“Gotta run. I’m being paged. I’ll talk to you later, Mr. Davies.”
“Don’t worry, dear, I’ll be here,” he said. “I always am.”
Sadly, that turned out not to be true.
Chapter 21
“What is it?” Helen said. She was out of breath, running for the cashier’s desk.
“It’s Mr. Goggles,” Brad said. “Denny spotted him.”
“Oh, Lord. Not that pervert. This store is crawling with kids.”
Summer was the season of the feral children. Bands of wild teenagers roamed the bookstore until it closed at midnight, swiping CDs, shoplifting computer books, and paying for their double lattes with hundred-dollar bills.
Where did teens get that kind of money? Helen wondered. From parents who gave them everything but love?
Or were they selling drugs?
Their little brothers and sisters were set free in the bookstore while Mom and Dad shopped, drank, dined on Las Olas—or sat in another section of Page Turners and read books.
The abandoned children ran through the store, tearing up books and shrieking, sitting on the floor and sobbing, sometimes even reading. Their complacent parents thought their children were safe. They never guessed a creature like Mr. Goggles was lurking nearby.
Mr. Goggles haunted local libraries and bookstores. Librarians and store managers called the cops or threw him out when they saw him, but Mr. Goggles slipped in like mist on the ocean and drifted back to the Children’s
