The Butterfly Clues Read Online Free PDF Page A

Filled suddenly with a hot, rising anger that I can’t resist, I blurt out: “You shouldn’t put things out that you don’t want people to buy, you know. It’s not fair.”
    “Sorry, don’t know how that one got in there,” Mario says, grinning at me.
    He squats, reaches under the card table, and scoops up the rest of the fallen objects, then dumps them back on the tangle of stuff piled on his table. Mario’s hair is a shock of Manic Panic red, a color I see dripping down the foreheads of most of the punk kids in gym class as they sweat. But he’s way too old for high school— forty, at least, sporting an over-size Jimi Hendrix tie-dyed T-shirt and faded jeans, skin leathery full of lines.
    “Everything else is for sale, though,” he says. “Go ahead and pick something out. Pretty girl like you; I’ll give you a discount.”
    “I’m just looking,” I say automatically. I debate leaving the booth entirely but the things—the beautiful things—are calling out to me. I continue picking up the fallen items, lifting, finally, a clot of jewelry from the center of the table, sorting through the dislocated tangle of necklaces, earrings, and pins. Mario eyes me the way salesmen do, sussing out how best to swindle me.
    Tangled with the rest of the jewelry is a necklace that seems oddly familiar: rusted silver chain, horse pendant dangling heavy from a wire ring. I turn it back to front, examining its every detail, searching for something that I can’t quite identify—a fact, an image—lodged in an unyielding corner of my brain.
    “If you like that one, I’ve got some other stuff you might like, too.” Mario turns to a plastic bag behind him and begins extracting things from it, directs me to a semi-cleared corner of the table, plunks the items down one by one.
    “Should have put these out when I first set up,” he says, “but they’re all real new, and I just plain forgot.” He claps his palm to his forehead, exaggerated, smiling: a clown, a con artist.
    Everything he lays out is so beautiful it makes me shiver— a crescent moon pin made of dark satiny silver, a bird ring in silhouette, some bangles in sparkly night-sky purples and blues. The thing that I love the most, though, is a jeweled figurine in the shape of a butterfly—it’s luminous and glittery and sad-looking.
    But all at once the fact is loosened from some dark corner of my brain. Butterfly figurine. Rusted silver chain, horse pendant. Both were things pilfered from the murdered girl’s house. Sapphire.
    My hands and feet go hot. The articles I read online didn’t mention anything about most of the other darkly glittering things Mario shows me, but somehow, without knowing how I know, I’m positive that everything he has just spread before me belonged to her. Objects can tell us a lot, if we’re willing to listen. These are screaming.
    It’s him; he’s the one who killed her. He’s the one who fired the shot that nearly grazed my cheek. He must be. And he’s too stupid not to sell her things just days later. My breath is coming in short gasps, but I manage to ask: “Hey, um—” Pause. Inhale. I can’t look him in the eye. “Where’d you get this stuff? It’s really great.”
    “Which stuff? Got tons of stuff here. Comes from all over.”
    “These things.” I gesture toward Sapphire’s objects.
    “Can’t say for sure. Get things all the time, can barely keep track anymore.” He laughs, a little nervous guffaw.
    Now I do look at him, his darting eyes and gross cherry-colored hair. “You told me a second ago these things just came in.” I point to the plastic bag; he narrows his eyes. “And, now, you’re telling me you can’t remember where they came from?”
    He’s avoiding my gaze. “Where I get my stuff is none of your business.” He shifts a little from foot to foot.
    “A girl was murdered,” I say, trying not to choke on my own words. “I recognize some of this stuff from the news. So …” My head is