A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper #1) Read Free Page A

thinking that her head might be a little oblong, but despite that, she looked a little like Rachel. “Your mommy loved Aunt Jane,” he said. “They used to gang up on me in Risk—and Monopoly—and arguments—and cooking.” He slid down the fridge door, sat splayed-legged on the floor, and buried his face in Sophie’s blanket.
    In the dark, Jane barked her shin on a wooden box full of old telephones. “Well, this is just stupid,” she said to herself, and flipped on the lights. Nothing weird. Then, because Charlie was many things, but one of them was not crazy, she turned off the lights again, just to be sure that she hadn’t missed something. “Right. Weird.”
    There was nothing weird about the store except that she was standing there in the dark rubbing her shin. But then, right before she turned on the light again, she saw someone peering in the front window, making a cup around his eyes to see through the reflection of the streetlights. A homeless guy or drunken tourist, she thought. She moved through the dark shop, between columns of comic books stacked on the floor, to a spot behind a rack of jackets where she could get a clear view of the window, which was filled with cheap cameras, vases, belt buckles, and all manner of objects that Charlie had judged worthy of interest, but obviously not worthy of a smash-and-grab.
    The guy looked tall, and not homeless, nicely dressed, but all in a single light color, she thought it might be yellow, but it was hard to tell under the streetlights. Could be light green.
    “We’re closed,” Jane said, loud enough to be heard through the glass.
    The man outside peered around the shop, but couldn’t spot her. He stepped back from the window and she could see that he was, indeed, tall. Very tall. The streetlight caught the line of his cheek as he turned. He was also very thin and very black.
    “I was looking for the owner,” the tall man said. “I have something I need to show him.”
    “There’s been a death in the family,” Jane said. “We’ll be closed for the week. Can you come back in a week?”
    The tall man nodded, looking up and down the street as he did. He rocked on one foot like he was about to bolt, but kept stopping himself, like a sprinter straining against the starting blocks. Jane didn’t move. There were always people out on the street, and it wasn’t even late yet, but this guy was too anxious for the situation. “Look, if you need to get something appraised—”
    “No,” he cut her off. “No. Just tell him she’s, no—tell him to look for a package in the mail. I’m not sure when.”
    Jane smiled to herself. This guy had something—a brooch, a coin, a book—something that he thought was worth some money, maybe something he’d found in his grandmother’s closet. She’d seen it a dozen times. They acted like they’ve found the lost city of Eldorado—they’d come in with it tucked in their coats, or wrapped in a thousand layers of tissue paper and tape. (The more tape, generally, the more worthless the item would turn out to be—there was an equation there somewhere.) Nine times out of ten it was crap. She’d watched her father try to finesse their ego and gently lower the owners into disappointment, convince them that the sentimental value made it priceless, and that he, a lowly secondhand-store owner, couldn’t presume to put a value on it. Charlie, on the other hand, would just tell them that he didn’t know about brooches, or coins, or whatever they had and let someone else bear the bad news.
    “Okay, I’ll tell him,” Jane said from her cover behind the coats.
    With that, the tall man was away, taking great praying-mantis strides up the street and out of view. Jane shrugged, went back and turned on the lights, then proceeded to search for cushions among the piles.
    It was a big store, taking up nearly the whole bottom floor of the building, and not particularly well organized, as each system that Charlie adopted seemed