A Bookmarked Death Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Are you open all night?” I asked the young black clerk in the red-and-white smock. She was pretty, with small, neat braids sprouting from her head.
    “Uh-huh.” She twisted around to look at the clock behind her. “Just one more hour for me.”
    “Are you busy, say around three or four?”
    “In the morning? Naw. That’s when I get my work done.” She jerked a shoulder at the textbooks on a stool behind her. “Nothing happens before five. It’s always the same guys anyway, fishermen heading out, delivery guys starting up.”
    “Were you here last night? Saturday night, I mean. Around one or two, say?”
    “Ye-ss.” She stared at me, less sleepy now.
    “Did anyone come in you didn’t know? Some young guys?”
    This was beyond casual conversation. With my tangled hair and navy jacket, my face innocent of makeup, I did not look like anyone official. Unless I was some kind of undercover cop.
    “No kids. A couple with two little girls who should have been in bed. Two older guys came in for coffee. No,” she corrected herself, “one large coffee, one beer.”
    “Did they look like they were staying out here?”
    She shrugged. “Could have been. One was dark, really good-looking, you know? Like that old-time movie star.”
    Old-time? Douglas Fairbanks? Clark Gable?
    “Omar Sharif I think his name is? I bet he used to be a knockout.”
    Used to be? “What was the other one like?”
    “Younger. Geeky.” She gave a laugh. “They weren’t a couple or anything.”
    Three men in fishermen’s vests, not yet shaved, came in and looked us over. “Hey, Steph,” one called. “Wanna bait my hook?”
    She rolled her eyes at him, then laughed. “What passes for humor out here. Are you looking for someone special?”
    “Not really.” I couldn’t think of any excuse to give her, so I didn’t. “Enjoy your morning off.”
    There was no reason why Will Crosley would have stopped at the 7–Eleven, especially if he did not want to be seen. She had described the handsome man as dark, but also referred to him as older. Will couldn’t be any more than nineteen or twenty. Besides, if the fire was the work of a local arsonist, there was no reason to suspect him of being out here at all.

 
    Chapter Five
    W HEN I GOT home from Southampton, I crashed on the living room couch for several hours. The couch was not that comfortable, a stiff olive-and-gold striped wood-framed antique that had been passed down from Colin’s parents, but it seemed decadent to crawl back into bed. I woke up about eleven, had more coffee, then headed out to the Book Barn.
    No matter what else I was preoccupied with, I could not abandon my business. Seasonal sales would begin in earnest after Memorial Day and I would be back on the hunt for treasures. It wasn’t that I didn’t have cartons of books waiting to be listed on AbeBooks.com and the other sites. They stood on the dusty Oriental rugs, waiting patiently for their turn, as humble and undemanding as soup kitchen recipients.
    There was nothing wrong with the books in these boxes; they were mostly history, biography, and vintage novels, a few esoteric craft guides on weaving and glass-blowing, and some nautical sagas. But there were no wildcards left, nothing that collectors would fight over. No one would bid competitively on eBay for these books or pay a premium price on viaLibri. There were no Tarzan s in dust jackets, no early John Steinbecks, no signed Patrick O’Brians. I had skimmed the cream from last summer and sold off those prizes long ago.
    Nevertheless I should have dragged a carton of these books over to my worktable and started describing them to sell. But I was too restless from what had happened that morning. Shirking my duty for a few hours longer, I went back out to my van and drove down into the village to the bookshop I was being paid to oversee.
    Before a shocking murder last July, Port Lewis Books had been known as The Old Frigate. But once death invaded our Long