The pleasant middle-aged pastor at the Christian Fellowship Church had said they visited Bell twice a week to offer spiritual guidance, feed the rat, and clean the sheets. Her much-less-pleasant friend had wrung out a cloth in thick, callused hands and said they’d not expected him to live so long, or get a rat, otherwise they would have thought better of the commitment. The pastor wasn’tquitepleasant enough to pretend to care about that.
According to them, Bell hadn’t left the house since he came back to town. He’d had a few visitors. Some of them had thought that Bell might have been moved by the threat of judgment to give some peace to the families of his victims. Others hadn’t wanted to share why they were there. Most of them only came once.
Once a week, though, someone from the church had gone into town and collected a stack of books from the secondhand store. Then after a week, they’d take them back and collect Bell’s new to-be-read pile. Always the same secondhand store.
Last Chapter Books.
On Fennick.
Ledger walked down to the dull red door—the name of the store picked out in gold letters on the glass—and pushed it open gently. The Last Chapter was a big square box of a store, broken up with a maze of shelves double-packed with books. Other books were stacked along the cracked white plaster walls in unsteady piles taller than Ledger.
It smelled like books. Nothing else.
Oh, if Ledger checked a few spines, he’d find blood and grief on a handful. Maybe it was the last book a dying man read, discarded by mourners who didn’t realize what it was. Or a book someone was halfway through when they received news of a death. There was a lot of suffering in the world, and it stuck to odd relics. If the storespecializedin odd relics, however, the salt would stick to the walls.
That was why Ledger spent most of his time on the road and not at the store.
Ledger grabbed a book—the cover saidOne Night in Dallas, so it was lost by few states—and tucked it under his arm as he picked his way through the shelves. He could hear someone muttering from the back of the store—either to themselves or on the phone. As he got closer, he was able to pick out a few words.
“…say it like that. It’s true… nothing to do with me…”
That was all he was able to eavesdrop on before the speaker stopped abruptly.
“Sorry, sorry. Hold on,” they said. “Excuse me. Is someone there?”
Ledger stepped out from behind the Travel Guides bookcase.
The thin brown-haired man behind the counter was naturally pale. When he saw Ledger, his face turned the color of congealed porridge, and he bolted up from his stool. The phone in his hand dropped to the counter.
“How… How are you…” He stumbled over his words as he backed away. His shoulders hit the wall, and he had to stop. His Adam’s apple scraped against the stiff collar of his off-white shirt as he swallowed hard. “What do you want? What do you want from me!”
Ledger had been pretty sure the bookstore was implicated in his father’s schemes in some fashion. Now he was certain. He wasn’t particularly vain, but he was somewhere north of unremarkable in his appearance. People didn’t blanch at the sight of him.
“Just browsing,” Ledger held up the book to prove it. “Little light reading for the plane.”
Uncertainty twitched the corners of the man’s pale eyes. He glanced from Ledger’s face to the book and back again.
“That’s not from the pull list?” His voice tried to be dubious and apologetic at the same time. The name tag clipped to his sweater vest said Dale and that he was the manager. It was hard to imagine him telling anyone what to do. “He’s not left anything in for you.”
Ledger set the book on the counter and let the duffle bag slide off his shoulder. The books hit the ground with a thud that made Dale jump. He didn’t blink. Not once. He hadn’t since Ledger had come into the store. That was odd.
“I’m not Bell,” Ledger said. “It’s interesting that you thought I was.”
Dale smoothed his sweater vest down over his chest with one hand. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Ledger gave the bag of books at his feet a kick. “I brought Bell’s books back. Maybe you can tell me what he wanted them for?”
“To read?” Dale said with a twitch of a smile. He left the wall and stepped to fumble at the register until it spat out the drawer with a rattle of coins. “I’m sorry, but I have to go out.”
“Now?”
Dale pulled a handful of notes and shoved them into his pocket. “Yes,” he said, overly brightly. “My book club meets here tonight. I have to get coffee and cookies.”
Ledger stepped in front of him as Dale came from behind the counter. “It can wait.”
“That’s… I mean…” Dale laughed nervously and scratched his jaw. “That’s not your call, is it?”
“Bell read non-fiction books,” Ledger said. He put his arm out to block Dale when he tried to skitter around him. “Exclusively. He didn’t believe in imagination.”
