Best of all, nobody tried to kill us.
I took the win.
16
Monday morning dawned clear and hot. An uncharacteristic-for-September ninety degrees was in the forecast, and I mostly wanted to go back to bed until Tuesday.
Instead, being a responsible business owner, I dragged my butt out of bed and into the shower. By the time I was dressed (Dead End Pawn tee, jeans, and sneakers) and ready to go (fed my cat, filled my travel cup with coffee, grabbed my bag), it was almost eight.
Jack had told me he was "going on patrol" the night before, and I'd left him to it and gone to bed. Apparently tigers needed less sleep than normal humans, besides all their other superpowers, because I'd gotten nearly six hours of sleep and I was still dragging. There was no sign of him, but I couldn't take the time to find him. It was Monday. Time and the GYST bus wait for no woman.
The Golden Years Swamp Tours bus stopped by every Monday on its way to help the nation’s grandparents avoid a day at the House of Mouse. While the grandkids ran around Disney all day with their parents, the grandparents enjoyed the chance to escape the madness. I'd made a deal with the owner/operator to add Dead End Pawn to the itinerary weekly, so the passengers could buy everything they needed to take home from vacation and bore their friends with. Mr. Holby had even added the guys' Swamp Commando Airboat Rides to his itinerary, which made Lucky and the Fox twins happy.
I skipped the donut run because my jeans were getting tight again—dating Jack was hard on the waistline—and because Mellie's Bakery was still closed. Anyway, some of my customers were abusing their donut privileges lately, so I was rethinking the whole donuts policy.
I chuckled at the idea of a donut policy, and then I turned on my music and sang along as loudly as I wanted all the way to my shop.
When I pulled up, the driveway was empty, which was great since I didn't open until nine. I'd have time to do some of the administrative and cleaning chores I hadn't gotten to on Saturday. I did most of the shop cleaning myself to save money and also because I was a picky cleaner and didn't see the point of hiring somebody else who might not do as good a job. A couple of times a year I hired help to do a deep clean, but the other 363 days a year I was Tess Callahan: business owner and floor mopper.
When I parked, I saw that I'd missed a text from Jack.
On the way to Orlando to search for Bubbles.
I laughed and texted back:
There's something you probably never said when you were a scary rebel leader.
He sent back a bubbles emoji.
Still grinning, I unlocked the shop and then relocked it behind me, theClosedsign still on the door, and got to work. The shelves were looking a little bare after the festival shoppers, so I selected some inventory from the back and restocked, humming as I worked. Sure, some nutjob was trying to kill me, but I couldn't operate at a thousand-percent stress twenty-four hours a day. And, hopefully, today we'd be able to get in touch with Nigel and get some answers.
Sometrueanswers.
Eleanor bustled in at nine, just in front of the GYST bus, still beaming in a cloud of joy and happy plans. She plopped a giant bridal magazine down on the counter and pointed to the cover. "What do you think about that dress?"
I stared at it, confused, and then turned it so I wasn't looking at it upside down.
This did not help as much as I might have thought.
"Um, it's kind of… unusual?" I never knew the right thing to say in situations like this. "We need Molly for fashion advice, though."
"It's just weird. Who wants to wear a corset and see-through skirt on their wedding day?"
Please say not you, please say not you, or I'll have to bleach my eyeballs.
"Not you!"
"You're darn tooting, not me. I wouldn't be caught dead in that. But on page eighty-seven, there's a silk sheath that I think—"
"There's Mr. Holby," I said desperately. "Better look at it later."
Thankfully, she let me off the hook and for the next hour we answered questions, exclaimed over the same selfies we'd seen seven million times, with seven million different faces—Tip: nobody really wants to see your vacation selfies, I promise you, even the ones where you pretend that alligator in the background is trying to eat you—and rang up sales.
I kept any unsuspecting senior citizens from buying any magical objects, which was great. But then, just as the GYSTers filed out to their bus, the guy who bought the ukulele came back.
With the ukulele.
This was not great.
