“Lots of break-ins in this neighborhood,” Officer Rogers says.
Zoe is infuriated. Her entire face turns as pink as the streak she added to her hair a few weeks ago. Well, maybe not quite that pink. “But this wasn’t a break-in. There was no sign of forced entry.”
Officer Rogers raises an eyebrow. “And you’re sure you didn’t leave the door unlocked?”
“I did not!” Zoe says indignantly, although truth be told, a couple of times Cassie has arrived in the morning to find the door hadn’t been locked the night before. “They had a key!”
“Well, who else has a copy of your key?” the officer asks them.
“Nobody,” Cassie says. She looks at Zoe.
“Nobody,” Zoe says. “Just the two of us.”
Yet somebody must.
“And look at what they wrote!” Zoe points at the word scrawled on the bookcase. “This is clearly a personal attack. It’s a judgment on our sexual habits.”
Cassie doesn’t appreciate the tiny smile on the policeman’s lips at Zoe’s assertion.
“Listen,” the officer says. “I’ve got all the information. We’ll do our best. But if you never gave out a copy of your key, I’m not sure how someone got in. My advice is to change the locks.”
“Thanks a bunch, Officer Obvious,” Zoe grumbles.
Cassie lifts her eyes and that’s when she sees her peering through the door to the bookstore. Maureen the Homeless Lady. Watching them. An unreadable expression on her filthy face.
Cassie nudges Zoe. “Hey, Maureen is staring at us.”
Zoe tosses a glance behind her shoulder. “Oh. What—you think she might have seen something?”
“Maybe,” Cassie says. She averts her eyes from the door. “Or…”
She doesn’t say what she’s thinking, which is that it always makes her uncomfortable to pass Maureen every morning. She doesn’t like the way Maureen looks at her and occasionally laughs at her. Surely it’s mental illness or possibly drugs, but it still makes Cassie uncomfortable.
Zoe explains about Maureen to Officer Rogers, who obligingly goes out to talk to her. Cassie lingers at the entrance to the store, once again certain Maureen won’t have anything helpful to add. But not absolutely certain.
“Ma’am,” Officer Rogers is saying to Maureen. “Did you seen anyone enter the bookstore during the night last night?”
Maureen hugs her giant coat closer to her body. “Nope,” she says. “Didn’t see nobody!”
And then she cackles hysterically.
“But you were here all night, weren’t you?” the officer persists. “You must have seen something.”
“I didn’t see nothing,” Maureen says with a smile.
Officer Roger does what he can, but it’s obvious this crime won’t be solved today or ever, and definitely not with the help of Maureen. When he’s gone, Cassie gets that now familiar rush of relief every time a police officer leaves her store without snapping handcuffs on her. She had been right not to call the cops about the incident at her apartment—there’s nothing they can do.
Cassie keeps the store closed the rest of the morning, while they try to clean up. It will take ages to get the books organized the way they were before, but they try to at least get the books back in the correct sections. As for the word “SLUT,” Zoe scribbles over it with permanent marker, but Cassie can still tell what it says.
“I wonder if it’s my roommate,” Zoe muses as she toys with the new ring she just got in her lower lip last month. That one looks painful—but they all sort of look painful. “Lindsey totally could have swiped my key and copied it.”