“That’s … odd,” I said, thinking. “There may be an innocent explanation, though. Rick and Aloysius—Ish—have the same general size and hair color, though Rick’s taller. Maybe Lily saw Granny G with Ish?”
“Not sure that would be an innocent explanation, though, from what you told me about them.”
Before we could discuss it further, Mr. Newton came back to the counter with more fishing gear. Jack got a phone call just then and wandered over toward the door to his office to take it. I rang up the sale and learned more about the “silver king of sport fish,” aka the tarpon, than I’d ever wanted to know. But all knowledge is a good thing, as Jack’s late uncle Jeremiah had always said, and I really liked to learn new things. Plus, Mr. Newton was a sweet old guy who could charm the bees out of their honey, so I enjoyed our conversations.
I handed him his bag and thanked him, but he hesitated for a moment, glancing at me and Jack. “Is there something else, Mr. Newton?”
He scratched his balding head and looked at me, his face serious. Finally, he nodded. “Tess, you know I don’t like to gossip.”
I grinned at him. “That’s the truth. I think you might be the only one in Dead End who could say that with any sincerity.”
A smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Thanks for saying that. Mrs. Newton, may she rest in peace, used to tell me that there was nothing wrong with a little gossip in a small town, but I never got the point of it. Anyway, I couldn’t help overhearing some of what you and Jack were talking about, and of course, I saw the town text loop.” He paused and put his bag on the counter.
I said nothing, just nodded. Sometimes, silence was the best way to encourage other people to talk.
“Well, it’s just that the boy—Aloysius—he looks an awful lot like Mrs. G’s late husband. I won’t say mayherest in peace, even though that’s not very Christian of me, because he was a hard man. She deserved better.” He paused, looking inward at a time long before I’d been born. “Anyway, that’s gossip, and old gossip at that. But about that boy. He’s been in town at least once that I know of, when nobody else realized he was here, I think. I saw him with Mrs. G a few months back, and I mentioned it to the sheriff offhand, like ‘I saw your cousin at the gas station’ sort of thing. But she told me, nicely enough—Susan is a sweet girl—that I must be mistaken. That Aloysius hadn’t been to Dead End since he was a little boy.”
“Hmmm.” I didn’t know what to say, but my mind was racing. Ish had been in town secretly? On mysterious errands? With Mrs. G? Also, I was amused at what Sheriff Susan’s response would be to being called a sweet girl, but Mr. Newton had known her since she was a baby.
“What do you think that means?” I asked him.
He shrugged and picked up his bag again, looking troubled. “I don’t know. I just know that side of the family is trouble. I hope they’re not here to cause problems for Susan.”
“I hope so, too.” I thanked him again and watched him walk away, wondering what I should tell Susan about what he’d said.
Two more customers came up with their purchases, and then I wrote up a pawn slip for a Stihl Magnum gas chainsaw that was in great shape. They cost almost $1600 brand new, so I could give my customer a nice chunk of change.
In case you’re wondering, pawnshops work like this: we give micro-loans based on the kind of collateral banks would sneer at. Try taking your chainsaw into your local bank and see what happens. They’d laugh you out of the place. But if you’re stuck for a bit of short-term cash and have something with value, you can come to a pawnshop, and we’ll help you out. You give us your item, we loan you some money, and we hold on to your item in a safe place. You pay installments to us for the loan amount plus a bit of interest, and we give you back your item.
But if you can’t or don’t want to pay back the loan, according to the contractual terms, the item eventually belongs to the pawnshop. We then sell it to pay for the cost of the loan. It’s a nice system, highly regulated, of course, so thieves don’t think they can fence stolen goods with us. And it’s what keeps my shop running and pays my bills.
People also often sell us stuff straight out they know they won’t want back, like Aunt Ethel’s ugly but valuable diamond brooch or the sports equipment they just knew they’d use and then never did. Those things we can sell right away.
This chainsaw would be labeled, noted in my spreadsheet, and carefully put away in the back room for now, and my customer had some cash for whatever unexpected expenses he’d had come up. It was a fair system, when both shopkeepers and customers were fair and honest, and Jeremiah had always operated that way. I was proud to say I’d continued that tradition. I’d never once done any deal that I’d be ashamed to own up to on the front page of theDead End Gazette.
Jack, who’d been in his office making calls, walked back over to me after the chainsaw guy had gone out the door and I had a temporary lull. He had what I thought of as his “big trouble” face on: flat expression, narrowed eyes, and clenched jaw. Whatever was happening in Sedona must have been bad.
Suddenly, I didn’t want him to leave.
“Look—”
“Listen,” he said at the same time.
I tried to smile and then started again. “Look, Jack, I know that you have obligations. That you have to do what you have to do. But since we … I mean, now that we …” I blew out a breath in frustration. “I don’t know how to tell you I’m afraid to let you go.”
His face softened, and then he pulled me into a hug. “I’m sorry. I know this must be hard on you. I can’t imagine how I’d feel about letting you go off and do something dangerous.”
“That’s because you wouldn’t,” I said, laughing a little and pulling away. “You’d be right there next to me. Maybe I can …”
“Tess.” He touched my cheek. “I love that you’d even think that, but you have responsibilities here. And this situation isn’t one that would easily accommodate a stranger to the game.”
“The game?”
“Not the game, but … well. This is just a continuation of an incident that happened before. It’s somewhat delicate.”
“So not something where you can just turn furry and snarl everybody into submission?”
He laughed at that, but I’d sort of meant it.
