Serious Moonlight(104)

The employee hall was empty. No one in security. No manager. No one in the break room. I checked the schedule when I passed the time clock, but it just had a red line drawn through today and tomorrow.

I made a beeline to the employee lockers. Number twenty-seven was locked and had a note taped to the front that read: You have the key.

Did Daniel write this? It looked like his illegible scrawl. What did he mean? I have the key? I checked my purse, but of course it wasn’t there. After glancing around in paranoia to make sure I wasn’t being watched or filmed for some kind of cruel hidden-camera prank, I stared at the note again. I have the key. . . . My gaze flicked to the slits at the top of the lockers. Big enough for a key? I strode to my assigned locker, unlocked it, and what do you know? A tiny key sat on the top shelf.

Grabbing it, I went back to locker twenty-seven and stuck it inside the padlock. Success! I popped the lock, opened the locker, and peered inside. Empty. No, wait. Something sat on the shelf.

A book.

A single yellow sticky note on the cover read Birdie in neat handwriting.

I peeled it off and stared at the peach cover of an old Agatha Christie paperback—The Body in the Library. I’d read it many times. Not this edition, which looked to be from the 1970s or ’80s and had a fifty-cent price tag on the front.

My heart raced. I looked around the locker room as if I’d find Daniel lurking in the shadows. But no. Why had he left this here? Just a random gift?

Or worse: another misdirection?

Never trust a magician.

Right, well . . . Too late for that, wasn’t it?

I inspected the book, thumbing through the pages. No marks inside. Nothing unusual . . . except a receipt that fluttered out.

It was purchased at the mystery book shop in Pike Place Market. This morning. The name of the clerk who rang up the purchase was circled in red ink—the shop’s dull-minded assistant, Holly. Three red question marks were written above it.

Was this a clue?

I looked through the book carefully but found nothing else.

Should I text him? Hold on. Did he want me to go to the mystery book shop? Should I wait here until he comes back and ask him?

He could have given me the book in person. Why go to all this trouble?

I thought about what Chuck had told me, to hurry before it closes.

Before the market closes!

Daniel was handing me a mystery to solve.

“Holy crap,” I mumbled to myself as realization struck. Not a mystery—a mystery hunt, like the one Mona and Ms. Patty had given me in the diner that rainy Easter afternoon.

I glanced around the locker room, clutching the book against my chest, heart filling with joy. But before I broke down and got too emotional to think straight, I remembered the time. If I was going to find Daniel’s second clue, I’d need to get my butt in motion.

It took me ten minutes to speed walk to Pike Place Market. Stalls were packing up, so I jogged through the crowds and down the ramp into the lower levels to the mystery bookshop. Still open! I was breathless when I pushed open the door, scanning the cramped store for Holly. She stood up behind the front counter, lifting a box of used books.

“Holly,” I said.

Her head swiveled toward me. “Yes?”

“Someone left this for me, and they bought it here from you this morning,” I said, flashing her the Agatha Christie book and the receipt.

“Oh, right,” she said. “You’re Birdie.”

“Yes!” I said. “Was it a boy with long, dark hair?”

“Our customers are confidential,” she said robotically, sounding as if she were reciting lines. I was a second away from grabbing her by her cat-with-ball-of-yarn T-shirt and shaking the answer out of her when she pulled something out from beneath the counter. “This is for you.”

It was a ragged DVD box set of a British cozy mystery TV series, Midsomer Murders.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

Holly shrugged. “No idea. I just do what I’m bribed to do.”

I flipped the box set over, where it had a list of episodes. One called “The Magician’s Nephew” had been circled in red with more question marks.

Magician. Magic. Magic shop?

Another clue!

My heart raced, and my feet followed. “Thank you, Holly!” I shouted as I headed out the door and ran across the hall.

I’m not sure what I expected, but Daniel was not there. In fact, I was the lone customer in the shop. An out-of-order sign had been taped to the Elvis fortune-telling machine. I guess even fate broke down once in a while.

“We’re just about to close. Can I help you?” a middle-aged man said from behind the counter. I’d seen him before, showing kids how to walk an invisible dog on a trick leash that had a wire inside to make it stand up. I thought perhaps he was one of the owner’s sons.

I showed him the DVD set and cleared my throat. “Um, hi. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this, would you?”

He stared at me.

I smiled back.

Nodding, he pressed a button on the register. It dinged as the drawer opened, and he pulled out an envelope with my name written on it in red. “This you?”

I nodded. “Did Daniel leave this?”

He zipped his lips. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

I nodded excitedly and took the envelope from him. “Thank you.”