The Book Thing Read Free Page A

Saturday to The Children’s Bookstore.
    And another and another and another. The next four Saturdays went by without any incidents. Tate showed up, delivered his boxes, made no mistakes, dropped nothing. Yet, throughout the week, customer requests would point out missing volumes—books listed as in-stock in the computer, yet nowhere to be found in the store.
    By the fifth Saturday, the Christmas rush appeared to be on and the store was even more chaotic when Tate arrived—and dropped a box in one of the store’s remote corners, one that could never be seen from the cash register or the story-time alcove on the converted sun porch. Tess, out on the street on her bike, ready to ride, watched it unfold via Facetime on Crow’s phone, which he was holding at hip level. The action suddenly blurred—Mona, taken into Tess’s confidence, had rushed forward try and help Tate. Tate brushed her away, but not before Carla Scout’s sippee cup somehow fell on the box, the lid bouncing off and releasing a torrent of red juice, enough to leave a visible splotch on the box’s side, an image that Crow captured and forwarded in a text. Tess, across the street, watched as he loaded it, noted the placement of the large stain.
    It was a long, cold afternoon, with no respite for Tess as she followed the truck. No time to grab so much as a cup of coffee, and she wouldn’t have risked drinking anything because that could have forced her to search out a bathroom.
    It was coming up on four o’clock, the wintry light beginning to weaken, when Tate headed up one of the most notorious hills in the residential neighborhood of Roland Park, not far from where Tess lived. She would have loved to wait at the bottom, but how could she know where he made the delivery? She gave him a five-minute head start, hoping that Tate, like most Baltimore drivers, simply didn’t see cyclists.
    His truck was parked outside a rambling Victorian, perhaps one of the old summer houses built when people would travel a mere five to fifteen miles to escape the closed-in heat of downtown Baltimore. Yet this house, on a street full of million-dollar houses, did not appear to be holding its end up. Cedar shingles had dropped off as if the house were molting, the roof was inexpertly patched in places, and the chimney looked like a liability suit waiting to happen. The delivery truck idled in the driveway, Tate still in the driver’s seat. Tess crouched by her wheel in a driveway three houses down, pretending to be engaged in a repair. Eventually, a man came out, but not from the house. He had been inside the stable at the head of the driveway. Most such outbuildings in the neighborhood had been converted to new uses or torn down, but this one appeared to have been untouched. A light burned inside, but that was all Tess could glimpse before the doors rolled shut again.
    That man looks familiar, she thought, as she had thought about Tate the first time she saw him. Is he famous or do I know him?
    The man who walked to the end of the driveway, she realized, was Walking Man. No backpack, but it was clearly him, his shoulders rounding even farther forward without their usual counterweight. He shook the driver’s hand and Tess realized why she thought she had seen Tate before—he was a handsomer, younger version of Walking Man.
    Tate handed Walking Man the box with the red stain. No money changed hands. Nothing changed hands. But even in the dim light, the stain was evident. The man took the box into the old stable and muscled the doors back into place.
    Tess was faced with a choice, one she hadn’t anticipated. She could follow Tate and confront him, figuring that he had the most to lose. His job was on the line. But she couldn’t prove he was guilty of theft until she looked inside the box. If she followed Tate, the books could be gone before she returned and she wouldn’t be able to prove anything. She had to see what was inside that box.
    She texted Crow, told him what