Snuffed Out - Tim Myers [8]
“She was early,” I repeated, hoping if I said it enough times, it would make a difference. “What makes you think she’s not coming back?”
Eve said, “I’ve seen that look before, Harrison. You get only one chance with a woman like Mrs. Jorgenson.”
I shrugged. “I’m sorry she’s going to be so stiff-necked about it, but I wasn’t wrong to leave when I did.”
“You’ve lost our best client because of a cat that doesn’t even belong to you. Can’t you see this is a loss we’ll not easily recover from?”
“Okay, I’ll admit Mrs. Jorgenson’s cash infusion was nice, but we’ll do all right without it.”
Eve raised an eyebrow. “Do you honestly believe that, or are you just trying to make yourself feel better about blowing it?”
“A little of both, probably,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“I suppose you’re right. It had to end sooner or later,” Eve said.
“It’s just too bad it’s sooner,” I said, trying to scrape up a grin. It was a pretty feeble attempt. I knew how close to the bone things were run around At Wick’s End, not to mention River’s Edge. With the double blow of losing a tenant and a star student in the same twenty-four-hour period, I was losing some of the glow I’d had earlier myself.
As fate would have it, Eve and I endured the slowest day we’d had since I’d come to At Wick’s End. One older man came in asking for directions and I sold one of our smallest packages of wicks to another customer. I didn’t even cover the day’s electricity bill by the time Eve’s shift was over.
As she was leaving, she said, “Well, that was a day to forget.”
“At least the deposit slip will be easy to make out. On second thought, maybe I’ll skip a day.”
“If you do, Ann Marie will have a fit. She’ll think you forgot.”
Ann Marie Hart was our bookkeeper, and she watched over the store as if it were her own. “Okay, you’ve convinced me. See you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here, whether any of our customers show up or not.” On that cheerful note she left.
I thought about closing the store, since the day was turning out to be a wash. Eve didn’t work every hour I did, but then again, she didn’t own At Wick’s End. That also meant I could close whenever I wanted to, and I was tempted. Still, the hours on the door said Open till 9, so I thought I’d at least give it another hour or two and see what might happen. I might even make that electric bill.
After an hour, I’d had enough. I was just scrawling out a sign that said, open tomorrow 9 a.m., when someone came in. “May I help you?” I asked as a tall stranger with the thinnest face I’d ever seen in my life came in.
“Markum,” he said in high-pitched voice.
“Upstairs. Third door on your left.”
He looked around the room, then backed out slowly. Markum was River’s Edge’s own salvage expert, whatever that meant. I liked the fellow, big and robust with a ready laugh, but I still couldn’t help wondering what exactly it was that he did. As he’d told me once, salvage could cover a great many things.
It was a hopeless day for sales. I taped my homemade sign to the door and slid the deadbolt in place so I could run the register tape and call it a night. I wasn’t three steps from the door when someone pounded on it. Markum’s visitor probably couldn’t find the staircase.
I opened the door and found a frazzled woman with wisps of hair falling down around her face. There was flour on her blouse and something that looked a lot like Silly Putty clinging tenaciously to one shoe. The look of desperation on her face had been enough to make me open the door.
“Thank you, thank you,” she said as she rushed in past me.
“Is there something in particular I can help you with?” I asked.
“I’m having a party for my daughter. She’s ten years old today. I ran out of games,” she added, nearly out of breath. “Do you have anything twenty-four girls can do? Please, you’ve got to help me.”
“I’ve got just the thing,” I said as I led her back to the packets of sheet wax and wicks. “Sheet candles are easy to roll, and it can keep them busy if you have cookie cutters, too.”
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