October 8
You'd think after all these years and in a town this small there'd come a day when we'd run out of folks to gossip about. Today ain't that day.
While I was shelving some new books who should walk into the shop but Beatrice Curtis. Now I've not laid sight on her since her daughter Peggy left her husband and married that huckster lawyer from Carmel, New York, whose name escapes me at the moment. But there she was looking like she just stepped out of Liddy's salon. She was carrying a small blue box in one hand and a thick leather bound book in the other. After greeting one another and each of us boasting about what our children are up to in those big cities that they must live in, she handed me the box. Of course I did what anyone who'd just been handed a box would do, I opened it. I didn't realize that she was hoping I'd try and guess what was in the thing, but the face she made after I lifted the lid told me as much. There in it was a diamond necklace, sparkling like the stars on a new moon night.
"It's from Tiffany's." she told me, clearly wishing I knew who Tiffany was.
When I told here I thought it wasn't something anyone would wear to the annual Christmas pageant my envy showed straight through and I later wished I'd just said "it's pretty."
She seemed about to tell me something else when Frank Perkins arrived with the day's mail. Of course I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't direct him to the counter where a stack of new deer hunting books was waiting to be sorted and shelved. He set the mail behind the register and started thumbing through 'em one at a time. He wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.
Beatrice pulled me between the cooking and fishing sections and spoke in a soft whisper trying to not let Frank pick up on her words.
"I need you to keep this here for me." she said. "I can't have it up at the house. I just don't feel like it's safe there."
She didn't have to draw me a picture. I knew from looking that the necklace didn't come out of her husband's wallet. I wasn't fixing to be a guest at this party of fools. I told her no. I didn't want to be responsible for such a pricey baubble.
"You won't be responsible" she said. "I just want to stick it on that shelf with all those old books back there in your office. No one will even know it's there. Look."
She opened the book she was still holding and revealed a hole that had been chiseled right through the pages. A hole just big enough for the box. She slipped the box in and closed the cover.
"See." she said. "It's all hidden and safe."
I was still refusing when Frank came around the corner of the bookshelf holding a book he wanted to buy: Fishing Vermont's Streams & Lakes. So I followed him to the register.
I was just finishing ringing up Frank's purchase when Beatrice hurried over and placed her book on the counter."Thanks for letting me borrow this." she said and winked in a way that Frank wouldn't have noticed. Then she was out of the store. The only time I'd seen her run that quick before was when they changed to open seating at bingo.
After Frank left I picked the book that housed Beatrice's little secret
and felt my blood pressure start pumping itself up--not on account of whatever
Beatrice was up to, that's for her conscience to balance. But the shameless
woman wrecked a perfectly good book.
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