Chapter 4
When I walked into the library I felt some of the tension disappear from my neck and shoulders.
This place, I knew.
‘Come with me,’ I said to Alice, and she fell into step next to me.
I’d spent plenty of time in this library over the years, with my mom when I was younger, then on my own once I was old enough to come here unsupervised.
I’d always liked to read, and, because I was homeschooled, my mom often sent me here to complete assignments.
I had a feeling it had been more about getting me out of the apartment and into the world than doing schoolwork, especially when I was going through my loner phase, but I’d never minded coming here.
The best place to start was the information desk. There were only a few people in line ahead of us and it moved quickly. When it was our turn, I walked up to the woman behind the desk with a big, fake smile, my plan already set in my mind.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping you can help.’
‘Of course. What do you need?’ she asked, offering me a smile in return.
‘I’m trying to find a book that my mom asked me to get for her birthday,’ I said, the lie stinging more than I wanted to admit. ‘I forgot the title of it, but I don’t want to ask and sound like a shitty daughter. I know she read it not that long ago.’
‘Right,’ she said.
‘Is there any chance you could give me, like, a list or something of the books she checked out recently?’
‘Let me see.’ She tapped something into the computer. ‘Do you have her library card?’
‘No, sorry. Her name’s Corrine Walker. I can give you our address?’
‘Give me a second. You said you’re her daughter?’ I nodded. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Kendra,’ I said, holding my breath.
She smiled at me. ‘Your account is still linked to your mom’s. You have a Young Adult card, right?’
I nodded again, relieved I hadn’t bothered to upgrade to an adult card yet. ‘Yeah.’
‘Let’s have a look on the system. How far back do you want me to go? Your mom checks out a lot of books.’
‘I know,’ I said, groaning a little for effect. ‘Like, a year, maybe? I’m kind of a visual person. Once I see the title, I know it’ll jump out at me.’
‘Give me a second, Kendra.’
She rolled her chair back from the desk and disappeared through a door, then came back a moment later with a sheet of paper.
‘I can’t do this all the time,’ she said, warning me gently as she handed it over.
‘I wouldn’t normally ask. I really appreciate it.’ I folded up the paper and tucked it safely in my pocket.
‘That was smooth,’ Alice murmured as we walked away.
I grinned. ‘I have my moments.’
We headed for a free table, and I checked over my shoulder again before we sat down.
We’d essentially doubled back on ourselves, and, though I was pretty sure we hadn’t been followed here, it was still smart to check.
Then I pulled out the paper and flattened it on the table so I could start scanning the list of titles.
‘What are we looking for?’ Alice asked.
‘I have no idea,’ I told her, feeling more excited by that than annoyed. Having something to figure out, something to do, was giving me energy. ‘This might not even be the right place, but we have to start somewhere.’
The list included the date, title and author of each book my mom had borrowed, and the lady on the desk was right – there was a lot of them. Some of the titles made sense to me – books about certain time periods or art styles. Others were totally obscure.
I scanned the list twice, looking for something that made sense, except nothing did.
‘You want to find all of them?’ Alice asked. ‘Or maybe we’re not supposed to be looking for a book at all. There might be another note hidden somewhere in the library, like at Grand Central.’
Knowing she could be right didn’t help. I leaned back in the chair and pushed my fingers through my hair, noticing that the headache from this morning had mostly gone. The curls fell back over my shoulders, and I shook my head to reset my thoughts.
‘This place is huge,’ Alice said, tipping her face up to the ceiling, and apparently not minding that I wasn’t holding up my side of the conversation. ‘It’s going to take a long time to search.’
I held up my hand before she could say anything else. ‘I need to think for a second.’
Her expression fell and I was determined not to feel guilty. She was the one tagging along on what was meant to be a scavenger hunt just for me.
A few minutes passed and I let out a frustrated sigh, still no closer to working out what my mom wanted me to find next.
‘Maybe we break for today?’ Alice suggested. ‘I can take a copy of the list home with me, and we can meet back up again tomorrow and see if either of us has figured something out?’
The suggestion was entirely reasonable, which was probably why I was annoyed. I wasn’t used to dealing with rational, reasonable people. The sad truth was, I felt more at home dealing with people like Wilson and the assholes he’d sent to follow me. At least I knew how to handle them.
‘Fine,’ I said eventually.
Alice reached round me to take the list, then took pictures of both sides on her phone.
‘Same place tomorrow?’ she said, pinning me with an intense look, like she was expecting me to say no. ‘Ten o’clock?’
I shook my head. ‘I have to open the shop tomorrow. I can meet you here after we close, though. Or, after what happened earlier, you know you can just leave me to it, right? I can look for the jewelry on my own and let you know if I find it.’
‘I want to find it myself,’ she said firmly. ‘And I’m not scared of those guys.’
‘If you say so,’ I said, thinking back to the panic and fear that had flashed across her face earlier.
‘The library closes at six,’ she said, consulting her phone. ‘So we could meet back here at, like, five thirty if you’ll be done by then?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
Alice smiled serenely. ‘See you tomorrow, Kendra.’
God fucking damn it. I would have much preferred to continue on my own, but I wasn’t Wilson – I wasn’t going to do anything to try to scare her off. She was a civilian, after all.
Alice got up and walked away, not looking back at me.
I grabbed the list and folded it up before shoving it into my pocket.
For a minute I turned my phone over in my hands, debating where to go next before I decided it was best to just head home.
Being around other people still felt like too much – too noisy, too crowded, too much energy that made me feel itchy and uncomfortable in my own skin.
The subway would get me home quicker, but walking would only take forty-five minutes, and I decided the fresh air and exercise would be good. I jogged down the steps of the library, then started moving south.
One thing I still couldn’t work out was how my mom had intended for this scavenger hunt to start.
I was confident that she was planning to leave the city that day – she had taken a bag with her when she left the apartment – though I didn’t know if she was going to stay with friends or if she intended to leave the country entirely.
She would never have left without telling me that she was going somewhere, though.
I had to assume she’d been planning to call me when she got to wherever she was going so she could tell me about the note in the shop.
If I’d started the scavenger hunt that same day then it was possible that I would have finished by my birthday, a week after she died. She might have even planned to let me keep some of the jewelry as a birthday present.
It didn’t really matter, though. My mom had never made it to wherever it was she was going, and my grief and depression spiral had kept me from realizing that the note on the book was a clue.
Maybe if my mind had been clearer, it would have come to me sooner, but I couldn’t dwell on that either.
The old saying was true: ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.
’ I knew from painful experience how accurate that was.
As the scavenger hunt started to unravel before my eyes I couldn’t avoid the connection between Alice’s jewelry and my mom’s death.
It seemed like she had gone to a huge effort just before she died to hide the jewelry behind a string of clues that only I would be able to solve.
But why? And who would have cared enough to kill her for it?
I couldn’t see the whole picture yet, but at least things were starting to get clearer.
No matter how difficult this got, I wouldn’t back out now. Not just because of Alice’s reward money but because, after all this time, I hoped I’d finally find out the truth about why my mom had died.
The shop came into view faster than I expected, having spent the walk home lost in my own thoughts.
All the talk about safes earlier had reminded me that there was another one that we rarely used tucked away in our apartment.
A few years ago, for my birthday challenge, my mom had sent me on a whole tour of the city, deciphering clues related to street signs, that eventually brought me home again.
My birthday present had been hidden under my bed.
It wouldn’t be like my mom at all to do the same thing twice, but what if she didn’t have a choice? If she was in a rush to leave the city, she may have had to make do with the best option available to her.
I went to the kitchen and sat on the floor in front of the sink. It took a minute to move the cleaning products out of the way, then I carefully pried off the false back of the cupboard to reveal the pipework and a small, metal safe attached to the wall.
My fingers felt cold, numb, as I entered the code.
This was the only place I could think of in the shop or our home where my mom would hide the jewelry.
I hadn’t even known this was here until a couple of years ago, and I had a feeling I was the only person left in the world who knew it existed, which was why I’d needed to wait for Alice to be elsewhere before I checked it. There could be anything inside.