Chapter 5 #2
Instead I catalog the shape of Shane's questions, the warmth they're wrapped in, and the way each one is asking for something specific about the building's edges and gaps.
The same structural quality as the texts from yesterday.
The same patient, architectural interest in how the space is accessed after dark.
Someone asking those questions once isn’t necessarily doing anything. Hearing them in sequence, in this order, with that level of detail is likely building a picture.
The contractor comes back out twenty minutes later, wiping his hands on a rag. "Four hours of work, give or take. I can start mid-morning tomorrow, if that's good."
Avery nods. "That works. Thank you." She walks him to the door and holds it open, and I hear them exchange a few words about access and timing, and then the door closes.
Then it's just the two of us and Pancake. She relocates to a patch of light near the window and lets out a dramatic sigh even though neither of us has said anything.
I pick up an empty box from the floor and fold it flat. "We'll get out of your way," I say, leaving enough room in the sentence for her to say something else, if she wants to.
She slides a book into place and says, "Shane's coming tomorrow to help with the last of the setup." She reaches for another one and adds, quieter, "You've done enough."
I look at her. "That sounded suspiciously like a dismissal."
She glances up. "You'll survive."
I nod once. "Emotionally, unknown."
Her mouth twitches before she gets control of it again. "Thanks for your help today."
"Yeah, okay." I get Pancake's attention with a click of my tongue and we head for the door.
I turn her words over as we move. You've done enough could mean she doesn’t need the help anymore, or it could mean she doesn’t want it, and I don’t know which one she meant.
I have my hand on the frame when she says, "Wait." I turn back.
She's holding her phone out toward me, and her face is doing the thing I've learned to read over the last two days. Jaw set, eyes level, the particular stillness of someone holding something in that has landed harder than they're willing to let show.
I cross back and take the phone from her.
It's a post from the Port Hueneme Local Business Forum written by Maureen Pike. It's one sentence: Interesting that Why Knee Me Books got a red tag and a Thorpe Holdings lease the same week.
Thirty-seven comments show a mix of small-business outrage, skepticism, and coastal gossip, the kind that latches onto a story that sounds plausible and runs with it.
Half the replies are already talking about Harbor View like it’s another downtown redevelopment grab, big companies pushing locals out one storefront at a time until the whole stretch belongs to somebody with investment capital and a branding strategy.
The implication underneath all of it is worse. If one owner cuts a side deal while everyone else is still fighting to hold on, then the rest of the block gets left exposed.
I hand Avery's phone back.
"What she's implying," I say, "she's wrong. I'm not trying to pull the rug out from under you."
"I know that." Her voice stays steady, but there's an edge under it that has nothing to do with whether she trusts me. She sets the phone face-down on the shelf. "That's not the story people are buying."
I nod toward her phone. "I've seen the comments section. Nobody's buying anything."
Her mouth twitches once before she gets it under control. Then she picks up another book.
"But I'm the one who has to say it," she says.
She turns back to the shelving unit.
I look at the line of her shoulders and the set of her back and don't say anything because there's nothing I can say that fixes it.
"I'll look into it," I tell her. Then I get Pancake and go.
At home, Pancake settles and I keep working because what was done to Avery matters.
Within the hour I’m at my desk with Maureen Pike’s name already in the search field. Her forum history goes back six years, mostly parking complaints on Market Street, a thread about the farmers market hours, a post about a noise ordinance in 2022. Nothing pointed or coordinated.
I know Maureen Pike the same way people in Ventura County know half the names that circle development boards and fundraiser galas long enough.
We’ve ended up on the same downtown revitalization committees before, worked the same coastal cleanup days, sat at the same charity tables because somebody thought pairing local business owners with developers looked good in photos.
Every time, she landed in my orbit for a few hours and then disappeared back into the crowd.
I never gave any of it much thought beyond the event itself.
I follow the threads from her profile and find a professional connection that runs three links deep before it lands on a name I recognize. The staff reporter at the Ventura County Star who connected Avery's pen name to the bookstore in the piece that ran last night.
I lean back in my chair and keep following Maureen’s connections. One post shows a back-and-forth between her and another commercial real estate broker, but it dead-ends into the same kind of industry overlap that exists all over Ventura County if you dig long enough.
I pull up a fresh page and start writing it out anyway. Pike. The reporter. The timing of the post against the pen name article. The inspection. The offer. By the time I lay it out, it still could be coincidence.
Someone gave Pike enough information to sound credible and let her run with it. Maybe that's all this is. Maybe it's just local gossip finding a target. Either way, the forum post landed at the exact moment Avery was stretched thin enough for it to do damage.
I put the pen down and look at what I've written.
If this is being steered, it's starting to look like someone who has a feel for Avery's routines. The details line up with the layout of her building, with alarm schedules, loading docks, and after-hours access. They come up in a way that doesn’t trip the kind of wariness Avery already has.
One detail like that is nothing. A sequence of them, in that order, starts to read like a picture being built.
If that’s true, it would have to come from someone she trusts, someone whose interest in the place passes as practical and whose warmth is real enough that noticing the pattern would feel like overreacting.
Pancake gets up from her bed in the corner, crosses the room, and puts her chin on my foot.
I look down at her. She looks back up at me with a patient, certain focus that has less to do with emotional support and more to do with the fact that it's past her dinner time.
"You’re not subtle either," I tell her quietly.
She lets out a short huff through her nose and stays planted on my foot until I reach down and scratch behind her ears.
When she handed me her phone to show me Maureen Pike's posts, I also snuck a quick glance at her recent texts with Shane. Enough to see his interest in the pop-up's logistics threaded through them.
I think about his voice on that call, easy and warm with the laugh already there before she says anything back.
The questions bother me less than how naturally they fit into everything else.
I sit with that long enough to know the answer should be obvious, but it isn't.
Pancake follows me into the kitchen. I scoop food into her bowl while she circles once around my legs and snorts impatiently at the cabinet like I've somehow forgotten where I keep it.
"Yeah, yeah," I mutter.
She starts eating the second the bowl hits the floor, loud and determined about it.
He’s scheduled to show up tomorrow, and I’m the only one watching him close enough to find out whether I’m wrong or he is.