Category: Jesse Donovan

“The library says they sent you. What do you want?”

Couldn’t she have asked them? Ah, maybe she did. Slick operator, this one. Nobody was catching her unawares.

“I’m checking on the surveillance equipment you checked out. It’s overdue.”

“Well, as I told you young man, they haven’t come yet.”

At this point, I expected a blue police box to land in the yard so David Tennant could take me somewhere, which made even less sense than this. After two heartbeats, I gave up on the Tenth Doctor and returned to Ms. or Mrs. Millhone.

“Who hasn’t come yet?” I almost added “ma’am” but fewer words felt safer.

“The vandals who’ve been stealing my grapes.”

She was now perilously close to making sense.

“You borrowed the equipment to watch for vandals stealing your grapes.”

“Certainly. Isn’t that what it’s for?”

“You want me to lean on kids who didn’t return A Tale of Two Cities on time? Twist their arms for the nickel fine?”

She laughed. Out front, her underlings jumped at the sound. From the wary looks, it wasn’t a sound they heard often.

“Oh, no, not at all, though should we ever need such services I cannot imagine anyone better than you to provide them. I could imagine better with a name, I suppose.”

I told her. She introduced herself as Edie. It wasn’t what the nameplate on her desk said. I went with Edie.

“So Dickens is safe. Who’s not? Rare books?”

“Any book that couldn’t be replaced for a few dollars isn’t allowed out of the building. Unfortunately, electronic devices don’t fall under the same umbrella.”

“Nintendo decks, things like that?”

“No, we only loan the games for those things. What we’re losing control of is some expensive audiovisual equipment.”

I glanced toward the Thug brothers. No movement, still just black blots on the otherwise nearly white rocks.

“Time to swim and scramble. At the marina gate, you go right, and I’ll go straight. Find a computer and email me. Easier than dealing with phones.”

“Okay. Ready?”

I nodded.

We swam.

Once we committed there was no point looking back. When we hit the end of the dock we barely slowed. As we hit the gate Rosie went right without a word. I glanced left.

They were at the end of the jetty, but still half a block away. I sloshed my way to the right, around the block, but my car was parked at the end closest to them.

Hoping they’d follow, I ran flat out around the block to where my car was parked.

I was soaking the seat in a second-gear slide around the corner in front when they rounded the corner behind.

I drove. Fast. Getting stopped by a cop would be just fine with me.

“Uh, okay. You usually match numbers to other numbers.” It wasn’t like she didn’t know almost as much about bookkeeping as I do. She just liked the game of prime-and-pump and I’d learned to keep nudging her or she’d grind to a halt.

“There are numbers in the stories, silly. They should match the numbers in the spreadsheets. If so, you can bill me your hourly.”

“And if they don’t?”

Silence wasn’t Rosie’s thing. She was usually starting her next sentence before you’d finished yours. After plenty of time for the ticking and clacking of gears, she answered.

“Then we’ll talk about a weekly rate.”

She should have sounded smug. She loved having the upper hand and made no secret about it when she had you in her palm.

She didn’t sound smug. She sounded scared.