1 Lost Under a Ladder (25 page)

thirty

It was no surprise
that Pluckie saw it, too. She barked and ran after
it. The cat slipped into the back room and disappeared before my dog caught up with it.

A good thing. The small feline hadn’t exactly crossed my path or Pluckie’s. Surely it didn’t portend bad luck.

Was it the same one I’d seen after Tarzal’s murder? And/or up on the mountain with Pluckie? Not necessarily. I’d noticed that all cats were welcomed in Destiny, and black cats had a special place in this town’s hierarchy. Of course I’d heard there were caring animal lovers who caught all kinds and colors of strays and had them fixed so there wasn’t an overabundance around—but I felt sure that black cats could get away with a lot more than the rest.

I picked Pluckie up and we both returned to the store’s showroom. Lowering her to the floor, I pulled my phone from my pocket to check the time.

Was it only 8:15 in the morning? So much had happened already—including all those responses to the
Star
’s online interview of me. And here I was, all alone except for Pluckie after seeing a black cat. Maybe it didn’t mean bad luck, but I shivered a little as I tried to shrug off my unease.

Jeri wouldn’t arrive for another hour. I decided to do a quick check of our displays to see if anything needed to be refilled before we opened for business. That was something that the assistants generally did on their arrival before ten a.m. I needed something to work on that didn’t require a lot of brainpower but would distract me from the rest of my thoughts.

“Are you okay, girl?” I asked Pluckie. She stood where I’d placed her and sniffed the air. “Do you still smell that cat?” I wished I could ask my dog if she could tell how that cat had gotten into the shop and understand her response. From Martha’s, upstairs? From outside? I supposed it didn’t matter. Having a cat inside a pet store wasn’t unusual or outrageous, even here in Destiny.

I considered calling Martha but decided to wait till later. She might be up early today, as she was on some days, but in case she wasn’t there was no need to disturb her rest.

But this was a good time to check our shelves.

I went first to my favorites—where the stuffed superstition-related toys for dogs and cats were kept. There were quite a few faux black cats there, along with the other items including rabbits’ feet. On lower shelves, the items for cats such as wands to which representations of crossed fingers and horseshoes were attached were not as plentiful, so I started a list of things to check for in the back room.

The store’s phone rang. A bit early for that, I thought, but hurried to answer. “Hello, Lucky Dog Boutique,” I said into the receiver.

“Rory? Is that you? Oh, I hope it’s you. Could you come over? I need your help.”

It was a male voice—a frantic-sounding one. It wasn’t Justin, but it sounded older than Arlen. Rather than guess, I asked, “Who is this?”

“Preston. Next door. I never thought—not me. But I need help. A demon is after me. I spilled salt, and—please help.”

I knew the superstition of needing to throw a pinch of spilled salt
over one’s shoulder to prevent being attacked by a demon, but that was one I never imagined anyone would think could come true. On
the other hand, a lot of people tossed spilled salt over their shoulders
even without knowing what might theoretically happen to them if they didn’t, simply by superstitious habit.

But Preston? Yes, he was a believer—or at least he made his living off the town’s superstitions, especially those memorialized in his dead partner’s book.

Did this have something to do with Tarzal? His loss? His murder?

Was the killer now threatening Tarzal’s partner?

I recalled Preston’s posting to the
Star
article: worry about me. He probably wasn’t a threat—was he?

I had to find out if he was okay, without being foolish about it.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I told Preston. I leashed Pluckie, not wanting to leave her alone here. And as we went outside and I locked the shop door behind us, I looked along the street. People were starting
to fill the sidewalks again. A few cars were parked at the curb, mostly across the street.

I didn’t see any obvious cop car either stopped or patrolling, but I knew I was under observation. Someone was probably watching me as I headed toward the closest neighboring shop. I wanted to show them where I was going.

Also, just in case, I popped a quick text message to Justin. “Going
next door to bookstore for a few minutes. Preston needs help with something.” There. He wouldn’t be able to complain that I wasn’t keeping him informed.

On the sidewalk right in front of the bookstore was a heads-up
penny. The few people around us apparently hadn’t seen it. I stooped
, picked it up and thrust it into my pocket as Pluckie pranced beside me. “Hey, it won’t hurt to try for a little more good luck,” I told her.

The door to the Broken Mirror Bookstore was unlocked, so Pluckie
and I walked right in.

The place looked much as it always had to me—a table covered with copies of Tarzal’s
The Destiny of Superstitions
right in the prime center
position, surrounded by an uneven myriad of filled wooden bookcases that formed a maze in the shop.

But I didn’t see the man who’d called me, or anyone else, for that matter.

I watched Pluckie to see if she appeared excited or nervous or interested in a scent, but at first she had her nose to the floor. Then she put her head up, pulled on her leash, and barked.

“Preston,” I called. “It’s Rory. Are you here?”

I followed Pluckie around some shelves as she kept pulling me forward.

When we passed the last tall bookshelves near the jutting wall of the interior office, that’s when I saw that the new mirror that had been hung to replace the one involved in Tarzal’s murder had also been broken. Large shards were on the floor. Framed five-dollar bills remained mounted beside where the mirror had been.

This time, there was no dead body. No odor of death.

Even so, I picked Pluckie up to protect her paws again and, shaking, I pulled my phone out of my pocket as I turned to leave the shop.

“Oh, there you are, Rory.” Preston sped toward me through the door that led to his storeroom. As always, he was dressed nattily in a suit, this time a charcoal tweed. His eyes were huge, and his silver hair looked uncombed in a manner I hadn’t seen on him before. “Thank heavens you’ve come. I’m so afraid— It was like this when I came in this morning. I had breakfast in the back room first, and that’s where I spilled the salt. A lot of it. I tossed a pinch over my shoulder but I was so worried anyway, and when I came in here and saw this—it’s horrible!”

“What happened here?” I asked. “Chief Halbertson is already on the way here, but I’m going to call him again and let him know that another mirror is broken here.”

“Let me show you something else first.” Preston gestured for me to follow, and I hurried in that direction.

Which was when he grabbed me, yanked my phone out of my h
and, and shoved me into the back room—after also yanking Pluckie’s
leash from me and slamming the door in my dog’s face.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

But I had a bad feeling that I knew: My snooping had, in fact, led me to the person who’d killed Tarzal and dognapped Pluckie.

Or not. Maybe there was another explanation.

“I need to show you what else I found this morning,” he said. He was almost crouched at my side, no longer touching me. But he still had my phone.

“Not till I get my phone back,” I said. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but—”

“But I know how fond you are of Martha. And she came in here this morning. She’s the one who broke the mirror, who killed my poor partner. I was able to subdue her, but finding her here was what led me to spill that salt.”

He wasn’t acting consistent with what he’d said before. He also wasn’t making any sense. In fact, he acted as if he’d been drugged.

Had Martha drugged him? She still was on some pretty heavy-duty meds at times. What if—

Preston hurried ahead of me and around some large piles of boxes
labeled with book titles, including one tall stack of Tarzal’s. And there was, in fact, what appeared to be a whole container of salt spilled on the floor near them.

“Look,” he said.

I followed, avoiding the salt, and did as he said.

Martha was there, lying on the floor on her back at the far side of the boxes. She was unconscious, her hands bound with string in front of her.

I quickly knelt and touched her neck. She had a pulse, at least. I turned to stand and confront Preston.

Too late. He’d maneuvered his way behind me and threw his arm
around my throat. I saw gloves on his hands. I started to gag. Could I go limp and make him let me go? I tried—but he shoved me onto the floor.

When I turned back toward him, he was aiming a gun at me.

“I don’t want to shoot you, Rory. That would lead to all sorts of questions I won’t have answers for. But, you see, Martha will have called you to meet her here—and she’ll stab you with part of the latest broken mirror. Since you were not only still snooping but bragging to the world about it thanks to the
Destiny Star
, she had to stop you. She figured that killing you the same way she did Tarzal wouldn’t point to her but to me once she got back to her shop and hid out upstairs. But I’ll have come in here, just a little too late. I couldn’t stop her from killing you, but I was able to subdue her. And, poor thing, she spilled salt so she was subject to a lot of bad luck.” He grinned nastily. “She’s such a druggy now that putting this all together wasn’t all that hard.”

“If she’s such a druggy, then why couldn’t I stop her?” I demanded
, knowing how strange the question was. But talking was better than any action right now …

“Good question. Well, she caught you by surprise so it was too late for you, but I saw what she did and was able to grab and bind her.” His voice was hard now, not at all the airy, frightened, strange tones he’d used before to lure me here. Nor was he still grinning.

“Like I said, the cops are on their way,” I reiterated as strongly as my shaky voice would allow. I hoped it was true.

“What a shame. They’ll be too late to save you from Martha.” He kept the gun trained on me as he edged sideways. He picked up a large, wicked looking glass shard from the top of a nearby box—part of the mirror—and held at an angle. I had no doubt that he was serious.

What I didn’t know was why.

I had to ask. For one thing, it might buy a little more time. Maybe
I could figure out another way to distract this madman.

What superstitions were there that involved insanity?

“I don’t understand, Preston,” I said as calmly as I could despite the tremor in my voice.

“You should,” he said coldly. “Like everything else, this is about money.”

Not superstitions? Or was it about superstitions involving money?

“I get it. You wanted more.”

He nodded, his gun still aimed at me.

I had to ask. “Why would you kill your own partner to get more money? I mean, he was the reason for the bookshop and its success, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, but we could have made a lot more money around here, thanks to him. Instead, he was going mad.”

Interesting, coming from this man.

“He didn’t even stop his stupidity when he spilled milk and tripped
on it and got hurt—obviously suffering bad luck,” Preston continued. “A situation I planned, of course. He might even have figured that out. He was on top of the world of superstitions. The world-proclaimed expert. He knew they were real—or at least he should have known better than to question them. They were making us rich, at least till he changed. But he was even considering writing a second book, a tell-all about the gullibility of people rather than the reality of superstitions.”

“Did he have reason to question them?” Maybe, on my possible deathbed, I’d find my answers about Warren and walking just once under a ladder.

Not that I intended to die here …

“He thought so,” Preston sniffed. “He saw that things considered lucky didn’t always work, and the same about supposedly unlucky things. But for either to be valid, you have to believe in them.”

A rather circular argument, I thought, even if it was true.

The thing was, I’d started to believe more in luck since I’d gotten here. And in the validity of superstitions—at least some of them.

And now—well, I had walked under a ladder twice yesterday to save Pluckie. I had no regrets about rescuing my dog—even if it had resulted in the bad luck that brought me here, with a gun held by a madman pointed at me. But I hadn’t died immediately.

Neither had Warren, though his death had happened fairly soon. But I now thought that the superstition of walking under a ladder, no matter how many times you did it, could be one of those that was real. Or not—if I managed to survive, which I intended to do.

It would help to keep Preston talking. And maybe I’d get more answers.

I was really uncomfortable lying there on the floor, so I shifted a little. I wasn’t far from where Martha lay. There were stacks of boxes containing books nearby, but I didn’t see anything I could use as a weapon or even a distraction.

I glanced toward Martha. “Why did you decide to frame Martha in Tarzal’s death?”

“The killing of two birds with one stone.” His brutal smile caused a shiver of fear to creep up my back. “Although that’s a saying, not a superstition.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know that thing Martha said about your black and white dog being an omen about a good business meeting?”

“Yes.” I wondered if he’d gone off on some incomprehensible tangent.

“Well, Tarzal and I actually had planned to meet with her. We—especially I—wanted her to sell to us the property that damned pet store sits on. I’m trying to buy up a lot more property in Destiny, lease it to the right kinds of businesses that’ll attract more tourists and pay more rent. That site’s a good one. I also intend to buy the property along Fate Street behind this store, but Destiny Boulevard is really this town’s prime location. Martha didn’t want to sell. Tarzal
was wishy-washy about buying. So, getting rid of both of them would
help with my goal.”