Chapter 30
Heathcliff
“…and she made this noise… I wish you could have heard it, big guy.” Morrie has draped himself over my chair, long legs dangling in his expensive loafers as he recounts, again, the story of him and Mina fucking.
He’s doing this to torture me, I know it, but it’s working, and I hate that it’s working. “Quoth heard it, didn’t you?”
Quoth, who’s decided to remain a bird this morning, probably for the safety of being able to fly away if I decide to start beheading my friends, nods vigorously. “Croak,” he says.
“Exactly. Croak.” Morrie sighs happily. “It was sublime, being buried in her. So warm. So tight. And she took every inch—”
He ducks as my book flies at his head.
“What? It could have been you she was taking, you know, if you weren’t so busy moping about mourning your girlfriend’s skeleton when she’s inside a fictional book and wasn’t even that nice to you—”
“I’m not mourning Cathy.” I hurl another book at him. “I’m trying to save Mina from falling for Heathcliff. I know what happens to people who fall for Heathcliff. And you should be doing the same thing! Mina doesn’t need a criminal mastermind in her life! Do you want to ruin her?”
Morrie tilts his head to the side. “Yes. That’s exactly what I want. To ruin her in all the fun ways.”
“Arggh!” I yell. Morrie dives for cover as I throw a chair.
I stomp downstairs, my heart racing. I stand in the middle of my bookshop, where my brand new copy of the Doomsday Book sits in the desk, because she’s inspired me to do a little detective work of my own, in the one place I’ve felt safe since I emerged from my book, a place that no longer feels safe because of her, because everything smells like her and I don’t trust myself around her—
A key turns in the lock.
No. No.
I can’t run. She’ll see me if I race up the stairs. I could bolt for the back door, but I stacked a bunch of Dan Browns in front of it. I’m frozen and she—
“Morrie, Quoth, get your asses down here. I’ve figured out—”
She stops in her tracks as she sees me. I guess even for a blind girl, I’m hard to miss. I take up the whole doorway of the main room. Panic roars inside my head, and I cling to something, an offering, my own little investigation…
“Mina,” I say. “Come with me. I have something to show you.”
Her lips open in surprise, but she follows me into the main room. I slide into my chair and drop an enormous book onto the desk between us.
“What’s this monstrosity?”
“This is the Doomsday Book. It records the property of every man in England during the reign of William the Conqueror.”
“The title sounds ominous.”
“It was called thus because it constituted what was seen as an accurate account of holdings and values, so William could determine the taxes owed under Edward the Confessor and reassert the rights of the Crown. Its decisions, like those of the Last Judgement, were unalterable.”
“And you keep this tome around for a little light reading?”
“I wanted to see if it had a record of this property.”
“In 1086? But this building is Georgian and Victorian.” Mina tilts her head to the side.
“Yes, but there have been many buildings on this very spot. You can see at least two different layers of Tudor walls in the basement.” I open the cover.
It thumps on the desk, sending up a cloud of dust. I run my finger down a list. “On this spot in 1086… was the office of Herman Strepel, bookseller and copyist. Strepel’s team would take orders from the clerics and canons for particular volumes and then have those volumes made up in the client’s chosen style.
Basically, the medieval equivalent of a bookshop.
Would you like to see? How’s your Medieval Latin? ”
“I was sick the day we had Medieval Latin class at fashion design school. Is this news weird?”
“For a building to have the exact same function for many hundreds of years? A little weird, yes.” I slam the book shut, raising a cloud of dust that sets Mina off in a coughing fit.
I lean back in my chair, studying the ceiling because if I look at her, I’m going to – in Morrie’s parlance – ruin her. “Mina, I—”
Speak of the devil. Morrie struts in and throws his arm around my shoulders. All the words jumbling about in my head fly away.
Quoth swoops down from somewhere in the shadows and perches on the armadillo.
“You hollered for us, gorgeous.” Morrie grins at her. Mina’s cheeks colour, making my chest tighten. Don’t imagine them together, don’t imagine them together…
Don’t imagine you with them…
“There was shrimp for the starter at the gala.” Mina holds up her phone.
It takes me a moment to realise that she’s talking about her ex-friend’s murder case.
“Ashley was so excited because she’d never had shrimp before.
She talked about it over and over, and it turns out the shrimp was completely disgusting.
But this is how she’s getting messages to her guy! ”
“Say what?” Even Morrie looks confused.
“I’ve figured it out. Look.” She taps the screen.
Morrie peers over her shoulder at the phone.
“She’s using her social media. In this photo, she tells the buyer to meet her at the gala dinner, and that she’ll make the drop after the first course.
That’s why she mentions the shrimp. I bet there are other messages buried in the photographs, too. ”
She scrolls right to the end of the feed, stopping on the very last photograph – the one she’d taken right here in the shop on the day of her murder. Mina reads the caption aloud.
“‘Dropped off a very special illustrated book at this quaint bookshop in my hometown. I also found a copy of High Fashion and the Culture of Excess, a classic for any fashionable minx!’ That’s how the buyer knew to come to the bookshop to pick up the pictures.
He was following her Instagram feed.” Mina frowns.
“But if this message is correct, Ashley collected the money and dropped the picture in the afternoon, so why was she in the shop that night?”
Perhaps she wanted to confront him, or she was hoping to get the pictures back off him and keep the money? Quoth offers inside our heads.
Mina hands the phone to Morrie. “Can you get an IP address for these comments?”
“I can, but it’s useless.” Morrie taps away on his phone. “It’s a residential proxy. Tracking the real IP will take me some time, and even then, it’s not a guarantee.”
“What would we do with this person’s address, anyway?” Mina rubs her temple. “Go over to his house and beat him until he confesses? We can’t exactly speak to the police about Ashley’s conspiracy. They’re never going to believe us based on some drawings and an Instagram post.”
“There’s got to be a way we can trick him into confessing,” Morrie says. “My nemesis fooled many of my contemporaries in such a way.”
“But how? He obviously knows Ashley’s dead.
It’s not like we can just send him another message saying – omigod, that’s it.
That’s exactly what we can do.” Mina points to her phone in Morrie’s hand.
“You’ve already hacked into her Instagram, right?
So I can post something, and it will appear as her? ”
Morrie taps a few buttons on the phone and hands it back to her. “There you go.”
“I need paper and a pencil. And somewhere to sit.”
That I can help with.
I sweep my arm across the desk, sending a cascade of pens, papers, and books onto the floor.
I leap back before the Doomsday Book slams down on my toes.
Morrie grabs the monitor before it joins the rest. I settle Mina into my chair while Quoth flies upstairs and returns with some fancy art paper and pencils in his beak.
Mina bends over the paper and sketches out a design.
It’s amazing to see her work so quickly, her tongue poking at her cheek as she sketches a woman’s rough form, with an hourglass torso and impossibly long legs, wearing a figure-hugging fishtail dress with leather and lace inserts that matches the general style of Marcus’ latest collection.
When she’s finished, she arranges a few books around it, making sure to include the volume where we’d found the money.
She leans over the table and snaps a picture, does some kind of phone magic to punch up the colours, and uploads it to Ashley’s site.
“That’s quite clever, gorgeous,” Morrie says.
“Now for the final touch.” Mina types a caption that sounds pure Ashley. “Hey twats. I might be dead, but I’m not buried yet. You’ll find me under the full moon, in the place where we last met. This zombie bitch is ready to kick some serious arse.”
She hits publish, and the post appears in Ashley’s feed. Immediately, the phone starts pinging with annoying bells. “There. Now whoever turns up at this store tomorrow night, we know they were the one who killed Ashley.”
I start to tell Mina that she’s clever, but Morrie barrels in front of me.
“Excellent work, gorgeous.” He sweeps her into his arms and kisses her hungrily.
I turn away, but that’s almost worse, because I can hear the wet sound of their lips and the little moan she makes in the back of her throat.
I kick the Doomsday Book. All that succeeds in doing is sending up another cloud of dust and making my foot throb.
Mina draws away from Morrie, her lips bruised, and grabs her purse. “I’d better go, it’s late and my mum still wants me to set up a Facebook page for her wobbling business.”
“You’re not walking, are you?”
“Nah, I’ll take a rideshare. It won’t be cheap, so it would be nice if someone paid me,” she says with a glare at me.
I grunt. That’s all she’ll get from me, because if I try to speak, I will beg her to stay. Mina calls up the car on her phone. She hugs Quoth and Morrie goodbye, then turns to me, jiggling back and forth on her feet as if she doesn’t know what to do.
That makes two of us.
“Wait with me outside?” she asks.
“I’m busy.”
“Please.”
I can’t do it. I can’t say no.
I follow her out into Butcher Street.
“Listen,” Mina says as we stop under the streetlamp.
She hugs her handbag to her chest. “I know you’re mad at me about yesterday, but you can’t treat me like this.
As much as I love the bookshop, I can’t work in a place where the boss is ignoring me and avoiding me.
So you need to either talk to me about it, or I won’t be at work tomorrow. ”
“I’m not angry with you, Mina.”
“Then why did you yell at me?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. You’re my boss. Don’t you get that the kiss and these mind games aren’t appropriate?”
“Is that the only reason you’re upset with me, because I’m your employer?”
“No. You kiss me, and then you yell like that? I assume I’ve upset you or hurt you in some way. Against my better judgment, I care about you, okay? As… as more than a boss. And that’s bad, too.”
I can’t stand her thinking she’s at fault.
I stare up at the moon, which is full and harsh, like the moon on the night I fled Wuthering Heights.
Inside, I’m still running, I’m still hearing Cathy’s harsh words about me, how it would degrade her to marry me.
I’m still thinking of all the things I did after that in the book, during my return.
All the horrors I inflicted upon people because I was hurting.
And I don’t want to believe things could be different, because I want to keep Mina safe more than I care about my own selfish feelings. But I can’t bear her upsetting herself, thinking this is about her. So I sigh, and I ball my hands into fists, and I try to find the words to explain.
“Morrie and Quoth, they didn’t leave anyone behind. But I left her, and every time I look at you, I feel as though I’m betraying her.”
She swallows. “Cathy.”
“I read my book,” I growl out. “I know what happens to her, and what it does to me. I know the monster I become. I promised myself that I’d never make that mistake again. If I never loved in this world, I would starve the monster of the fire he needs to rage. But then you came along and I… and I…”
I can’t. I can’t say it.
“You what?” Mina whispers.
Behind us, the shop door bangs, and the bell tinkles.
“I’ve never been so happy to have a customer.
” I bolt, racing away from her and back to the shop’s door, which is swinging on the hinge.
I hear her footsteps behind me. I enter the hall, singing out, “Come in, come in. Make yourself at home. We’re open late tonight!
Pull out your mobile phone and selfie as you please.
Books are this way! Come distract me with your inane questions—”
I stop short when I see who our visitors are. They’re not here to buy books.
Inspector Hayes shoves past me and looms over Mina, pinning her with a fierce gaze. “Wilhelmina Wilde, we’re arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Ashley Greer.”