It was after two in the morning by then and the street was very quiet. Lydia’s BMW was parked by the bookstore, and she was standing on the street in her black coat. Her blond hair glowed in the streetlights. I could only just barely make out the splash of paint on the door, and there was a homeless woman who suddenly started shouting at Lydia. Lydia said something back that I couldn’t make out, then dug around in her purse until she came up with something that she handed to the woman. Money, I later realized.
When I heard from the grapevine that Cassie’s store had been vandalized, I kept my mouth shut. But I started tracking Lydia in the app. I tracked her to Cassie’s apartment. Back to the store again multiple times.
I considered blowing the whistle on her. I never forgave Lydia for what she did to me, and this seemed like a great opportunity to humiliate her. I could have told Joel what she was doing, but she would have denied it. And after that first time, I never caught her in the act again.
So I decided to make my own evidence. I bought three burner phones. Untraceable.
And I started to make my calls.
Cassie
“Anna,” Cassie gasps. She looks down at the pieces of the shattered phone on the ground, then back at Anna. “What… why…？”
“I don’t expect you to understand,” Anna says.
Cassie backs up, nearly stumbling on a teddy bear. “But I thought Lydia…”
“Lydia started the job. I finished it for her.”
Cassie blinks rapidly. She doesn’t know what to say. She’d thought Lydia had to be lying when she refused to admit to some of the harassment Cassie had experienced. It turns out, she wasn’t lying.
“Look in the drawer again,” Anna says. “There’s something else I want you to see.”
Cassie’s hands are shaking as she goes back to the drawer, digging frantically through the cloth diapers, but she knows what she’s going to find even before she sees the brown book inside with the gold lettering on the cover. A Christmas Carol.
A first edition. Worth twenty-five thousand dollars.
Except not really.
“After I had left my little love note in your closet,” Anna says, “I poked around a little. I didn’t expect to find that. I guess even a goody two shoes like you has secrets.”
Cassie can’t find the words to speak. Anna was the one in her apartment. Anna had made the calls to her. Was Anna also the one who sprinkled peanuts in her food?
“I have to hand it to your grandfather,” Anna goes on. “It really does look like a first edition. I brought it to an expert and even he had trouble proving it was a forgery. I can see how they managed to fool all those people.”
Cassie had been shocked the first time she heard the story. It started innocently enough, when Grandpa Marv had somehow gotten his hands on a real first edition of Gone With the Wind. It was in good condition, and he sold it for ten-thousand dollars. After several collectors heard about this sale, he received multiple calls asking if he had any other collectible editions. He didn’t. But it gave him an idea.
It turns out forging old books is not at all difficult. Marv bought walnut oil to age the books and would read up for hours on techniques to make the books appear old and worn. Then he forged certificates of authenticity.
His saving grace was that he didn’t get greedy. He only sold off one book every few months—just enough to keep the floundering bookstore from going under.
Bea and Marv never would have done it if they weren’t desperate. Cassie didn’t discover the truth until Grandpa Marv was already gone, and she was helping Bea sort through some of his belongings. Cassie had picked up one of the perfect first editions and stared at it, hoping it was real but knowing in her heart it couldn’t be.