Cassie sleeps fitfully after the party, tossing and turning all through the night. She texted Joel that she wasn’t feeling well and decided to head home, and although he did call her to make sure she was okay, she was disappointed he didn’t ask to come over to check on her. They’ve been spending more and more nights together lately, and she finds she misses him on the nights they aren’t together. Joel even cleared out a drawer for her last week to fill with her stuff so she doesn’t have to feel as much like a nomad.
Of course, then she wondered if the drawer used to belong to Francesca.
At nine in the morning, Cassie is awakened by a text from Zoe. She fumbles for her phone, and stares blearily at the words on the screen. It takes a moment for her to make sense of it, but then she’s wide awake.
The store has been trashed. Call me.
Cassie grabs her phone off the nightstand and calls Zoe, her heart slamming in her chest. The store has been trashed. She imagines the rows of books, painstakingly arranged, mostly by Cassie but many by Grandma Bea and even Grandpa Marv, shredded and burned.
“Zoe,” Cassie gasps into the phone. “What happened?”
“The place is a mess,” Zoe says. “Books everywhere. Paint on the carpet. I called the cops.”
“Shit,” Cassie breathes. “How’d they get in? Did they break the window?”
Zoe is quiet for a moment. “That’s the crazy part. The windows weren’t broken. The lock wasn’t damaged. They just… got in.”
Cassie shivers. She feels the same way she did when she found the writing on her door. Someone is targeting her. Someone who knows where she works. And where she lives. And now can somehow get into her store.
“I’ll be right there,” she tells Zoe.
She’s tempted to hop in a taxi to get there as fast as possible, but she’s thinking about the cost of getting the store cleaned up, so the last thing she should be doing is springing for a taxi. She doesn’t need any unexpected expenses right now.
When Cassie arrives, the sight of the store makes her stomach turn. Just as Zoe described, there are books everywhere. Half the contents of the store have been ripped from the shelves. They are lying on the
ground, pages ripped and bent. Cassie steps over volume after volume, a lump growing in her throat. She keeps walking until she gets to the spot where Grandpa Marv keeled over from a heart attack all those years ago. She looks up and sees the word scrawled in black ink on the back of the empty shelf:
SLUT
No. Not again.
The police officer—this one named Rogers—had been taking a statement from Zoe when Cassie arrived. He looks just as young as the last one did—not even old enough to grow a beard yet. And he’s just as jaded and disinterested in finding the culprit.
“Lots of break-ins in this neighborhood,” Officer Rogers says.
Zoe is infuriated. Her entire face turns as pink as the streak she added to her hair a few weeks ago. Well, maybe not quite that pink. “But this wasn’t a break-in. There was no sign of forced entry.”
Officer Rogers raises an eyebrow. “And you’re sure you didn’t leave the door unlocked?”
“I did not!” Zoe says indignantly, although truth be told, a couple of times Cassie has arrived in the morning to find the door hadn’t been locked the night before. “They had a key!”
“Well, who else has a copy of your key?” the officer asks them. “Nobody,” Cassie says. She looks at Zoe.
“Nobody,” Zoe says. “Just the two of us.” Yet somebody must.
“And look at what they wrote!” Zoe points at the word scrawled on the bookcase. “This is clearly a personal attack. It’s a judgment on our sexual habits.”
Cassie doesn’t appreciate the tiny smile on the policeman’s lips at Zoe’s assertion.
“Listen,” the officer says. “I’ve got all the information. We’ll do our best. But if you never gave out a copy of your key, I’m not sure how someone got in. My advice is to change the locks.”
“Thanks a bunch, Officer Obvious,” Zoe grumbles.
Cassie lifts her eyes and that’s when she sees her peering through the door to the bookstore. Maureen the Homeless Lady. Watching them. An unreadable expression on her filthy face.
Cassie nudges Zoe. “Hey, Maureen is staring at us.”
Zoe tosses a glance behind her shoulder. “Oh. What—you think she might have seen something?”
“Maybe,” Cassie says. She averts her eyes from the door. “Or…”
She doesn’t say what she’s thinking, which is that it always makes her uncomfortable to pass Maureen every morning. She doesn’t like the way Maureen looks at her and occasionally laughs at her. Surely it’s mental illness or possibly drugs, but it still makes Cassie uncomfortable.
Zoe explains about Maureen to Officer Rogers, who obligingly goes out to talk to her. Cassie lingers at the entrance to the store, once again certain Maureen won’t have anything helpful to add. But not absolutely certain.
“Ma’am,” Officer Rogers is saying to Maureen. “Did you seen anyone enter the bookstore during the night last night?”
Maureen hugs her giant coat closer to her body. “Nope,” she says. “Didn’t see nobody!”
And then she cackles hysterically.
“But you were here all night, weren’t you?” the officer persists. “You must have seen something.”
“I didn’t see nothing,” Maureen says with a smile.
Officer Roger does what he can, but it’s obvious this crime won’t be solved today or ever, and definitely not with the help of Maureen. When he’s gone, Cassie gets that now familiar rush of relief every time a police officer leaves her store without snapping handcuffs on her. She had been right not to call the cops about the incident at her apartment—there’s nothing they can do.
Cassie keeps the store closed the rest of the morning, while they try to clean up. It will take ages to get the books organized the way they were before, but they try to at least get the books back in the correct sections. As for the word “SLUT,” Zoe scribbles over it with permanent marker, but Cassie can still tell what it says.
“I wonder if it’s my roommate,” Zoe muses as she toys with the new ring she just got in her lower lip last month. That one looks painful—but they all sort of look painful. “Lindsey totally could have swiped my key and copied it.”
Cassie picks up a sports almanac from the ground. “I think it was aimed at me.”
“You?” Zoe laughs. “You’re not a slut. You’re practically a nun. At least, before Joel.”
Cassie shakes her head. “There was… another incident. At my apartment.”
Zoe’s mouth falls open. “Seriously? What happened?”
Cassie tells her about the paint on her door at home. And how it was the same paint smeared on the door to their shop the other day. Zoe’s
eyes widen as she hears the story.
“Holy crap,” she says. “Why would someone do that to you?”
Cassie hesitates. “I have an idea, but… you promise you won’t say anything to Joel?”
“Sure, of course.”
Cassie sighs. “I think it could be Joel’s ex-girlfriend.”
“You think so?” Zoe pulls a face. “Didn’t you say she was some sort of gorgeous successful chef or something? Why would she still be pining over him all these months later?”
“I don’t know, but…” Cassie chews on her lip. “Joel acts really weird about it whenever I bring up her name. I really don’t want to start accusing her of anything to him.”
She doesn’t say what she’s really afraid of, which is that Joel might take Francesca’s side.
Before Zoe can say anything else, they’re interrupted by a rapping at the door. Cassie goes to tell their potential customer that they’re closed for the day, but then she sees Joel peering into the store. She suddenly remembers they agreed to have lunch together. Before.
She opens the door for him after a beat of hesitation. His eyes widen as he takes in the disarray of the store. “Christ, what the hell happened here?”
“We had a break-in,” Zoe says before Cassie can shush her.
“Wow.” He looks around. “The vandals sure did a number on this place.”
“I know.” Cassie’s shoulders sag. “It’s pretty bad.”
“This neighborhood isn’t great,” Joel points out. “Lots of crime. You literally have a homeless woman living a few feet away from your store.”
Cassie’s cheeks burn. It’s not like she chose this neighborhood. Back when Grandpa Marv’s parents opened the store, it was a fine neighborhood. Those were the exact words he always used. A fine neighborhood. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“Right, of course.” Joel frowns. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know.” She nods, pushing away her frustration. “Anyway, it’s taking us forever to get it cleaned up.”
Joel is looking at something. She doesn’t know what it is until she follows his gaze to the front desk. She isn’t sure how they missed it before, but the word “SLUT” is written on top of the desk, in the same black marker.
“Jesus,” Joel says.
“We’ll get it cleaned up,” Cassie says, ignoring the tears suddenly pricking at her eyes. “But lunch probably isn’t a good idea.”
“I disagree,” he says. “If you’ve been dealing with this shit all morning, you need a break.”
She just looks at him.
“Come on,” he says. “If you come to lunch with me, I’ll help you guys clean up after we get back. I’ve got nothing to do this afternoon anyway.”
“Your boyfriend is way too nice, Cassie,” Zoe says. “I think you should take him up on his offer.”
Cassie looks around the store, at the mess still on the ground. It would be nice to take a break. And even nicer to have Joel’s help while they’re cleaning this up all afternoon.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”
