at the back of my knee, and when I looked down, he whined tentatively, questioningly.
“I don’t know, buddy. I think he went to do something. I hope he’s not bothering Iris.” There weren’t a lot of people he could talk to, and she was the main one who came to mind.
I set our plates on the table and Fluke climbed into his chair, sniffing curiously at the pile of pancakes. I hadn’t tried them as I cooked, but they’d be okay, right?
There were butter and syrup in the fridge, and enough of those could cover a multitude of cooking sins. I coated breakfast liberally with both, cut a piece of pancake, and looked up at Fluke. “Here’s to us, buddy. Hope I didn’t make the worst breakfast ever.”
They were the most delicious pancakes I’d had in my entire life, and we both cleaned our plates.
Winning.
Just as I set the dishwasher running, Fluke gave a yip and turned to the door, where a decidedly ruffled Gideon was standing. He wasn’t wearing his hat or coat, and his longish hair looked windblown.
“Are you okay?” I rushed over, but of course, there was little I could do even if something was wrong.
He gave an exaggerated shrug. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
At that, I pulled back and lifted my brows in my best “excuse me?” glare. It worked.
“I’m fine,” he assured. “I can tell you how to decode your father’s cypher, but I don’t think we’ll learn anything from it.”
“You—” That was when my brain engaged, and I realized. Gideon hadn’t gone to a living person for help. He’d gone to the source: my father. To threaten or cajole, or however it was one forced a ghost to do their bidding. Threaten, I thought. Gideon wasn’t much of a cajoler. “He didn’t know?”
He waved it away with a sigh. “He’s got theories, but no. He doesn’t actually know a damn thing.” He turned and looked at the books on the table, almost like he wanted to kick them. “I guess that means those won’t uncover anything either.”
“You never know. Like you said, I’m smarter than him, and you know more.” I had no idea why my father being useless had inspired me. Maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe it was the pancakes, or the fact that Gideon had gone and threatened my father in the quest to keep the bad guys from hunting me down and killing me.
It didn’t matter why. All that mattered was that for now, I had almost everything I wanted, and I was going to damn well cling to it with both hands for as long as the world let me.
Chapter Twenty-Four
By Tuesday morning I wasn’t feeling quite as hopeful.
We’d spent most of the previous day trying to find information on my predecessors, but it wasn’t easy. It had all happened in a time before the internet, when people weren’t as easy to track. Some information from back then had been digitized, but most had not, and it seemed that what I needed hadn’t been important enough to make the cut.
We found articles on the murders of Meredith and another woman, and I let Gideon read the ones on my mother’s death so he could see how similar the stories were. It hadn’t helped.
So on Tuesday morning I went to work as usual. Beez was working for me on Wednesday and Saturday, which was going to be absolutely amazing. Two whole days a week to do whatever I wanted. I didn’t even have to train her, since she’d filled in for me occasionally in the past.
At least for the first week, I intended to take full advantage, sleep in, and not go to the shop at all. Let Dad rail at Beez; she couldn’t hear him anyway.
I was still rearranging the new releases when the first customer of the morning arrived. No surprise, since Tuesday was always—
“David?” Okay, that was a surprise. Tuesdays had more customers than average, but he’d never been one of them. But there was David, with his sheepish smile that was practically made to be on camera aimed at me on a Tuesday morning.
Oh no. He wasn’t there to ask me out again, was he? I glanced around surreptitiously for Gideon, but he was nowhere in sight.
David, still smiling, bit his lower lip and literally—I fucking kid you not—scuffed his foot on the carpet. “I know, not my usual day. And I’m sure you’re busy, but if you didn’t mind, I wanted to ask you some