tiny desert oasis scene.
Darla gave her head a reluctant shake, even as she moved to the next window.
“I really need to get back to the bookstore. But Hilda is so talented with her window designs that I always like to take mental notes every time she puts up a new display.”
“Hilda” was Hilda Aguilar, the impeccably coiffed and dressed owner of the boutique. The petite Cuban woman was in her fifties, and bore a faint resemblance to the late Princess Grace of Monaco. She exuded an air of class and good taste that, to Darla’s mind, one had to be born with, though Hilda constantly asserted that she used no beauty products other than what could be found at Great Scentsations. Which gave her customers hope that they could attain similar class and good taste simply by shopping there.
“Not that I can ever come up with anything half as clever,” Darla added on a note of admiring regret. “I thought I was doing pretty good hanging my store with black crepe and jack-o’-lanterns. But next to Hilda, I’m a rank amateur. Isn’t that cute how she made that little Halloween graveyard with soaps for tombstones and those net poufs for ghosts?”
“Yeah, cute,” Jake agreed with a quick look at the phantom scrubbies, though her gaze quickly returned to the genie bottle. Then, with a sigh, she added, “I really shouldn’t be spending anything until I pull in a client or two. But once I cash my first check, a-shopping I will go.”
“All right, but in the meantime, let’s get you out of temptation’s way.” Grabbing her friend by the arm, Darla dragged her back to their brownstone.
They arrived at the bookstore a few minutes later. While Jake headed down to her apartment, Darla trotted up half a dozen balustraded concrete steps to her shop’s door.
She paused as she reached the top to glance over at a second, smaller set of steps that lay to the right of the bookstore’s stairway. At the top of those steps was a modest glass door. This was Darla’s private entrance to a hallway where a long flight of stairs led up to her third-floor apartment. It was a handy arrangement. She didn’t need to cut through the store to go home; instead, an inner door connected that hallway to the shop, which meant she could travel from home to store at any time of day or night without ever leaving her building. She had a feeling that, come winter’s snowy weather, she’d be doubly grateful for this convenience.
For the moment, though, she was looking for cat-sized exits and entrances. She saw no gaps in the bricks, however, which meant Hamlet must be pulling his Houdini trick around the back of the building. Sparing a few choice words for the little beast, she reached for the doorknob. Gilded letters on the door’s wavery glass above it proclaimed “Pettistone’s Fine Books.” As always, the sight gave Darla a small thrill.
Once inside, she headed straight for the counter. Sections of the parlor’s original mahogany wainscoting had been cleverly repurposed to build a narrow, U-shaped counter near the front window where the register was located. Darla fondly regarded this area as her control center, her personal literary cockpit. For the moment, however, her store manager had assumed command and was planted there behind the register.
Dressed in his usual cable-knit vest, handmade Oxford shirt, and sharp-creased wool trousers, James looked more like a model for an upscale gentlemen’s emporium than a clerk in a neighborhood bookstore. A former English professor at one of the area’s more prestigious universities, Professor James T. James was, to put it mildly, terminally stuffy.
James—You may call me Professor James, or you may address me by my Christian name, James. You may not, however, ever call me by my surname sans any honorific. And trust me, I will know the difference—had taken early retirement from the academic world ten years previously. He had been working full-time at the bookstore ever since, both to supplement his pension and, as he put it, to keep him off the streets. While his area of expertise was nineteenth-century American literature, he also was an expert in rare volumes in general. In that capacity, he brought in a nice revenue stream for the store by catering to collectors—one more reason that Darla tolerated his often supercilious air.
The other reason was that she actually quite liked the man. Besides, he and Hamlet, while not exactly bosom chums, got along well together.