I closed the apartment door and locked it, and hurried to the back windows. Sure enough, a flashlight bobbed down the path, right where I'd seen someone earlier that day. Winston joined me, growling quietly, as I watched it disappear. Then, still holding the dust mop, I unlocked the door and headed downstairs, Winston a safe ten steps behind me, still growling.
It was weird being in the store knowing someone had just left. I headed to the back door first; it was shut, but unlocked. I opened it; there was no splintering on the door frame, or any sign of forced entry. Did someone other than Bethany and me have a key? I wondered. When I'd bought the place from Loretta Satterthwaite, she'd turned over the keys, and I hadn't had the doors rekeyed. Maybe one of the former employees had a copy.
But why would they be breaking into the store?
At first glance, nothing looked any different than it had when Bethany and I walked through. The desk appeared untouched; nobody had been rifling through the drawers, thank goodness, and the table Bethany had set up in the front room was still pristine.
Something had fallen over, though. I’d heard it.
But what?
I found it in the back room.
Someone had dumped the books off one of the shelves Bethany and I had neatly organized in the Nature section and started to pry the back of the bookcase away from the wall.
If they were looking for a cavity of some sort, they were out of luck; the only thing behind the shelf was wallboard.
I touched the splintered wood of the bookshelf and cursed under my breath, then stooped to retrieve the books that had been thrown to the floor—several were favorites by Rachel Carson and Bernd Heinrich. It bothered me that someone would treat books with such disregard, but I reminded myself to be thankful that the damage wasn't worse. A few had bent covers, but most were okay, and I replaced them carefully on the shelf. I'd have to get someone in to fix the back of the shelf, but thankfully the books covered the worst of it; there was only a small pulled-back area visible above the books on the left end of the shelf.
After I finished rearranging the shelf, I tapped around the other shelves, listening for a hollow sound, but heard nothing suspicious. Then I walked through the rest of the shop, tapping on walls, looking for more damage, and wondering why someone had broken into my shop to pull back a bookshelf.
Had they been looking for something hidden?
And if so, what?
The next day went by in a whirlwind. Bethany's cousins, Shane and Ernest, came by and helped me unload the U-Haul, leaving the formerly empty apartment riddled with boxes and furniture, including my bed, which I'd disassembled for the move and which now lay in pieces on the bedroom floor.
As Shane and Ernest manhandled a queen-sized mattress up the exterior stairs, I turned to Bethany, who was bundled up against the morning chill and sipping coffee out of a heavy pottery mug. "Have you had any issues with anyone breaking in?" I asked her.
"What?" she asked, her young brow furrowed. "Not that I know of... why?"
I related what had happened the night before.
"That's terrifying," she said. "Did you see who it was?"
"No," I said, "but whoever it was seemed to have a key; the back door was unlocked."
"I've had a few things move seemingly of their own accord the last few months, but I put that down to forgetfulness—or you being here when I wasn't. Nobody's taken a crowbar to anything, though. Are you sure the door was locked?" she asked. "It's easy to forget."
"I wish I could say I was," I admitted, "but I don't specifically remember actually locking it." I sighed. "I should probably have everything rekeyed." I didn't want to spend the money, but I didn't want to have to reassemble my bookshelves, either. I did a quick Google search on my phone, left a message for the first local locksmith that came up, and then started hauling boxes up the stairs.
The U-Haul was unloaded in record time, leaving me with a thicket of boxes to sort through. The apartment could wait, though; not only did I have to return the U-Haul, but there were still preparations to be done for the grand opening. As soon as Shane and Ernest left, each with an envelope of cash and some home-baked cookies, I headed out to drop off the U-Haul. It was almost 2:00 before I returned to the store. Bethany was already there, wearing an "I LOVE BIG BOOKS AND I CANNOT LIE" T-shirt and cleaning and setting up chairs she'd found in the storage shed out back; we'd need them for the author reading.
It was an hour before opening when I began putting out cookies and setting out cups and plates, satisfied that I'd gotten everything else about as clean and fresh as I could. Bethany was doing a few last-minute errands while I made the punch and set out the treats. When I had arranged the cookies—I'd included my favorite lemon bars, several dozen of my specialty double-chocolate-chip cookies, and three batches of jam thumbprints—added the last bottle of soda to the punch bowl and filled the percolators with ground coffee and water, I collapsed into the chair behind the big antique desk. Winston, who had spent the day busily running around supervising, sank into his dog bed beside me, looking exhausted. My eyes drifted to the top drawer; Bethany had said there were some important-looking letters in there, but I hadn't gotten around to looking at them yet. I was sure many of them were bills I should probably make
