Birds of a Feather Read online

  Nick and the other police officer look over at us.

  Heat rushes to my cheeks. “I didn’t take a coffee break,” I snap. “I brought this.” I take the muffin out of the bag and wave it toward the police officer. “Marge is probably hungry, so I’ll try this to see if I can distract her long enough for you guys to search.” And just maybe, if this works, I’ll be able to use it as I start cleaning up the place until I find another home for Marge.

  “Want us to come with you?” the unbitten police officer asks.

  I shake my head. “No sense in both of us getting attacked if this doesn’t work.”

  Nick chuckles as he joins us. “It doesn’t sound like you’re too confident in your own abilities.”

  “Have you met Marge? The bird is about a hundred years old and completely crazy. There’s no reasoning with this monster.”

  “Well, let’s just hope that the way to this monster’s heart is through her stomach,” he says.

  Adrenaline rushes through my veins as I make my way through the apartment and to the back door of the bookstore. Thankfully, the police officers closed it, so I don’t have to worry about Marge dive-bombing me before I even make it to the door. Behind me, I can hear Nick and one of the police officers. It makes me feel better, more confident, to know I’m not alone.

  Yeah, see how confident they make you feel when Marge goes into attack mode and they leave you in their dust.

  My hand closes around the doorknob, only shaking a little bit, and I turn it slowly. The bookstore is cast mostly in shadows, but toward the front of the room, sunlight shines through the dirty windows. An evil cackling draws shivers down my spine. I’m going to die.

  Marge paces the front counter, her gray toenails clicking against the scarred wood with every step. Her fluffy white crest is at half-mast, and she marches with her wings slightly spread, as if to make herself look bigger.

  She turns smartly at the far end and then straightens her head when she sees me. Her beady little black eyes glimmer with malice, and she lets out an ear-piercing shriek. Yup, I’m doomed.

  Knowing I have witnesses to my eventual failure, I decide that I might as well give it a good effort and creep forward.

  Marge watches me approach, beak open, until I get within about three feet and stop. Heart racing, I tear off a good-sized chunk of muffin and toss it on the counter in front of her.

  When she spies the piece of muffin on the counter, her feathers fluff up, and she tilts her head to the side to study it. Then she tap-tap-taps closer before leaning down to touch it with her tongue.

  Abruptly, she grabs the piece of muffin with her foot and starts devouring it, still watching me from the corner of her eye. Phew. I almost smile at the look of contentment on her feathered face. I can’t believe that actually worked. Before I go back to get the cops, I carefully break the rest of the muffin into bird-sized chunks and set them on the counter for her to eat when she’s done with that piece.

  I turn around to see a look of incredulity on Nick’s face. “I can’t believe that actually worked,” he says, echoing my earlier statement.

  The cop next to him shakes his head. “Me, neither.”

  Me, third. “I think it’s safe for you guys to look around if you want, but I’d make it fast. When she finishes eating, she’ll probably go back into attack mode.” Not to mention that I’m not entirely sure what I’m gonna do with her after that, but I feel a little bit better knowing that there’s a way I can at least get close to her.

  The cops who remain after they removed the woman’s body don’t waste any time. They search the bookstore quickly, giving Marge a wide berth, especially the one whose finger she chewed on.

  After they’ve finished searching, the police officer who bore the brunt of Marge’s affection approaches us. “We didn’t find anything so far that has much value, but we haven’t had time to search the whole place.” He eyes the building, his words emphasizing the probably months’ worth of work there would be if they were trying to catalogue each individual item. “If you can think of anything as you’re cleaning out the place, let us know. Maybe a receipt book or something.” He scratches his head, eyeing the towers and stacks of books in boxes in my aunt’s office. It’s intimidating.

  “Sure, no problem,” I say.

  He hands me his business card. “Thank you. Detective Landry.” So, not a beat cop. In my experience, the detectives who interviewed me leading up to and especially following the fire were the most dogged, the most aggressive. I definitely have to watch what I say.

  No sooner have the police officers left than my phone rings. My sister’s number flashes across the screen. I almost stuff the phone back into my pocket, but then I figure she’ll just call back about fifty times, so I might as well answer it.

  “Oh, thank God,” she says. “What happened? You said something about cops.”

  “You know, just Marge being herself.”

  Sara groans. “That bird is still alive? Crap. So what are you gonna do?”

  I need to do a lot of things, but it looks like not much will get done, at least for now. “I don’t know. The animal shelter won’t take her, so I’ll have to figure something out, because my realtor won’t list the bookstore with her in it.” And then I laugh, because that’s not the only reason Dorothy won’t list the bookstore. “Then there’s... Well, this morning, I might have found a dead body out back.”

  “What?” she shrieks.

  “That’s not all.” I take a deep breath and tell her everything that happened this morning.

  “Did you seriously throw a muffin at Marge so the cops could search the bookstore?” she asks.

  That part of the memory makes me chuckle. “Yeah, and it seems to have worked.” I eye the bird. Marge is back on her tree with her head tucked under her wing. Right now, she’s at peace, but I know that can change at any second.

  “This is dumb,” Sara says. “You need to come home. Have the realtor take care of everything.”

  My fingers tighten around my phone. “I can’t. Besides, who would take care of Marge?” It’s a lame excuse, but it’s also true. She’s not a cuddly little puppy everyone wants to adopt who loves to give kisses and looks adorable.

  “Seriously,” she says. “Come home. It’ll be fine.” Yeah, fine. Sure.

  “I’m okay, really. I’m just going to let the dust settle and clean this place out, and then I’ll head back home.” I cross my fingers behind my back. Things won’t be that easy. They never are.

  If Sara knew that I have no idea where I’m going to go after I leave this place, she’d probably flip. For a little sister, she’s quite the planner. And for once in my life, I have no plan. It kind of scares the hell out of me, but after everything I’ve been through, it doesn’t terrify me as much as it might have once.

  “So what’s your next step?” Sara asks. I can almost picture her sitting at her desk, her fingers drumming the counter as she tries to keep from multitasking.

  “Well, I think I’m going to take advantage of the few minutes I have before Marge goes back into attack mode and start cleaning. I don’t know when I’ll have another opportunity.”

  Sara chuckles. “That’s probably a good idea. Besides, the sooner you get that place cleaned out and sold, the sooner you can come home. We miss you.”

  My heart tightens. “Yeah, I miss you guys too.” It’s a stark reminder that the decisions—no, the mistakes—I’ve made have had a large impact on others, and not just myself. I’ve got to be careful not to make the same mistakes again. It’s not just me that’s affected, it’s my sister, her husband, and their two kids. “I’ll see you soon. I promise.”

  With Marge still sleeping next to the front desk, I quickly change out the water bowl on the edge of her tree stand without waking her. That mission accomplished, I had to my aunt’s office, determined to start making a dent in all of the paperwork and the trash.

  The office is a disaster. Looking at the stacks of paper and boxes lining the
walls and covering her desk, I can’t even tell how hard the police officer searched. I also don’t know how I’m going to get through all of it.

  Okay, Willa, enough procrastinating.

  I scan the room and decide to focus on the overflowing bookshelves against the back wall. If I can clear those off first, I’ll have a place to organize piles of paperwork as I go through them. I don’t want to just put everything on the floor, or it’ll be an even bigger mess than it was when I started.

  The first two shelves are easy, mostly filled with receipts from gas stations and fast-food meals my aunt must’ve eaten before she passed. I feel weird, handling her things, the tangible evidence that she was here, with us, not that long ago. I guess someday, someone might have thoughts like that when they go through my things.

  I should have gone to her funeral. Even though we hadn’t talked in years, I should have gone. You were hip deep in a police investigation. They take ‘don’t leave town’ pretty seriously.

  After I stack the receipts and the old bills on the floor next to a pile I’ve already mentally dubbed as trash, I start on the next two shelves. The first one wobbles a bit when I start pulling the file folders off of it. Come on, be careful.

  The top shelf leans dangerously, but I don’t see it until I grab the first of the file folders. In a rush, the papers spill off the shelves. I reach to grab them, but instead I grab the shelf as it tips toward me.

  Oh God, I’m going to die. With a strangled shout, I fall backward into the desk, turning just in the nick of time so that the brunt of the thin plyboard shelving hits my shoulder. The impact sends little pricks of agony up through my shoulder and down my arm, but I miss braining myself. It’s a small miracle.

  Shoulder throbbing, I wait for the dust to settle before I survey the damage. The shelf is leaning against the desk. A crack splits one side, and the shelf I’d been reaching for has been broken into two pieces. So much for that plan.

  Swearing under my breath, I try to move the shelf then freeze. My heart skips a beat. Tucked behind the shelf is a door about four feet tall and two feet wide.

  Holy crap. There’s a secret passage in my aunt’s bookstore.

  I pull my phone out really quickly, snap a picture, and send it to my sister with the caption, “Did you know about this?” She doesn’t reply.

  Okay, Willa. You can handle this. Call the cops and let them know about the door. The thought strikes me that this might be why that poor woman had been murdered. What if she was looking for the door and fell victim to someone else?

  No, that’s stupid. If she had been looking for the secret passageway, then why was she behind the bookstore? It has to go somewhere.

  Or, that little voice inside my head says, it could just be extra storage. All buildings like this are full of closets and cupboards and stuff. Your aunt probably just covered it up so it would be out of the way.

  Yeah, that’s probably it. I tell myself that there’s no sense involving the police to come and open up a musty old closet. I should check it out first. Then, if it turns out to be something important, I’ll give them a call.

  Still rubbing my sore shoulder, I turn my phone flashlight on and grab the small brass doorknob. Then, after taking a deep breath, I pull it open. Darkness.

  Well, what did you expect? the little voice inside my head says. It’s not like your aunt was going to install motion-activated lighting. Dust billows out of the opening. This is going to be just lovely for my allergies.

  I shine the flashlight into the mouth of the narrow tunnel. It’s only about two feet wide, and the thin wooden slats on either side are literally coated with cobwebs. My nose twitches as I fight back a sneeze. The tunnel stretches out in front of me, the end disappearing past my flashlight’s glow. Nope, this isn’t a closet.

  I should call the cops. This might be important. But then another side of me wonders how it could have anything to do with the death of the person behind the store. This is an old building, and all these buildings are rife with secrets. It probably has nothing to do with the case. Maybe I should just take a little look and then call the cops if I find anything. Yeah, that’s a better idea. The less I can involve law enforcement, the better.

  I take a deep, dust-filled breath, crouch down, and step into the tunnel. The walls close in around me, their dusty sides pressing up against my arms. Stupid idea. I’ve never done well with enclosed places, so I don’t know what possessed me to think that this was a good idea.

  Still I press on, mostly because I’m too stubborn to give up. Besides, if I give up now, I’ll have to back out, because there isn’t a lot of room for me to turn around.

  Abruptly, the tunnel ends in another wall, but it’s not a dead end. This wall has a doorknob and a rough seam along the edges. Huh. I wonder where it goes.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. I grab the knob and twist slowly. The door clicks and swings outward, into another darkened room.

  Plastic totes line each side of the small space, and a rack of men’s suit coats hangs in my face. Now, I really am in a closet. I squeeze all the way inside and turn around with just enough time to see the door swinging shut behind me. There’s no doorknob on the side. Crap. I scrabble for the edge and wedge my fingers into the crack just before it closes. That was close.

  With my free hand, I grab one of the empty hangers on the rack and wedge it in the door so that it stays open. I might not know for sure where I am, but I definitely know that I don’t want to get stuck here.

  My escape plan secure, I turn my attention toward the front of the closet. This tunnel has to be important, even if I don’t know how yet. Nobody puts a secret passageway in a building without a reason. Maybe the dead woman and whoever killed her were looking for it, or there’s something on the other side that is valuable.

  With my flashlight on low, I scan the front of the closet. Boxes and clothes fill the space. That little spark of excitement in me fades.

  What did you expect? Buried treasure? Another dead body? You should be happy that all you found was somebody’s old clothes in boxes. It would be far worse if you ran into the person who put the body there. Yeah, that would definitely be worse.

  Finally, half hidden behind a man’s navy blazer, I find a doorknob. I listen at the crack for a few seconds in case there’s someone on the other side, but all I hear is silence. I take a deep breath, shore up a little, and open the door.

  Sitting in front of a sleek mahogany desk with his feet propped up is Coffee Guy—I mean Nick.

  He sputters, the coffee cup he’d been drinking from dropping to the floor, and jolts backward, losing his balance. “Shit!” he yells, leaping to his feet. His eyes are round and more than a little bit wild, and in his hand is a small black pistol. “You... What are you doing here?”

  I stumble backward, holding my hands up in surrender, too terrified to speak. Just the sight of the gun thrusts me back into the vision I saw when I touched Nick yesterday. Only this time, he’s holding a gun, and he’s pointing it at me.

  The rational part of my mind tells me that we’re not in a dark hallway. There’s no guy wearing a hoodie holding a gun. It’s not the same as my vision. But that is the gun Nick will shoot someone with. Not me though, and not now. I push my fear to the back of my mind.

  “I-I mean... There’s a tunnel, and”—I wave vaguely at the closet behind me, my eyes still trained on the gun in his hand—“I didn’t know it would bring me here. Can you... Can you put that thing away?”

  Nick glances down at the gun in his hand as if seeing it for the first time. “That depends. You still haven’t answered my question. What are you doing in my office?”

  Chapter 4

  Nick whistles as he pokes his head into the tunnel. “I never would have guessed Wanda had it in her.” When he ducks back out, his lips twitch in a faint grin, and something akin to admiration crosses his face. “She was always so strict and straitlaced. I never would have thought she’d have built something like this.”

/>   I try to reconcile that with the aunt who taught me how to play poker and made moonshine in her back bedroom, but I can’t. “Strict and straitlaced doesn’t sound like her.”

  He slants me a curious look.

  “I mean, from what Shelby and Sara told me.” Watch it.

  “I guess not. But it doesn’t really matter now, does it? I still wouldn’t have pegged her for the kind to do this.” He gestures at the tunnel as if my aunt was doing something illegal by having it there.

  “Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe the person who built the building put it in. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean she knew about it. There was a bookcase in front of it, remember?” I cling to the thread of innocence. “I bet she didn’t even know it existed.”

  He barks out a laugh. “I find that hard to believe.”

  I plant my hands on my hips, irritation welling up inside me. “And why’s that?”

  “Because Wanda built this building. Both of them, actually. There’s no way she didn’t know about it.”

  He has a point. I have a feeling he knows more about my aunt than I do. “I’m really sorry about this,” I say. And I am. I never would have intruded on this guy if I’d known the tunnel would lead here. “I was going to call the cops, but I thought it was maybe a hidden closet or something.”

  He skeptically raises an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. I’m not sure it merits alerting law enforcement, anyway. I doubt it has anything to do with Ms. Munich’s death.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Nick shrugs. “No, but if they were looking for the tunnel, why didn’t they break into my place? I only met Ms. Munich once though, and she didn’t strike me as the type to break into a bookstore. I heard she used to be married to the guy who runs the pawn shop. Have you ever been in there?”

  I shake my head. “No. Like I said, I got here yesterday. I haven’t been anywhere except the bookstore and the café.” And now here. I glance around the room. “What is it you do again?” I have to change the subject before I start seeing visions of dead bodies in my head again.