The Ex by Freida McFadden(42)

Anna rests a hand briefly on Cassie’s arm, then smiles and pulls away. There’s no way Cassie would consider going back to that party, but it’s good to know at least one of Joel’s friends’ wives is on her side.





Chapter 26: The New Girl


Cassie sleeps fitfully after the party, tossing and turning all through the night. She texted Joel that she wasn’t feeling well and decided to head home, and although he did call her to make sure she was okay, she was disappointed he didn’t ask to come over to check on her. They’ve been spending more and more nights together lately, and she finds she misses him on the nights they aren’t together. Joel even cleared out a drawer for her last week to fill with her stuff so she doesn’t have to feel as much like a nomad.

Of course, then she wondered if the drawer used to belong to Francesca.

At nine in the morning, Cassie is awakened by a text from Zoe. She fumbles for her phone, and stares blearily at the words on the screen. It takes a moment for her to make sense of it, but then she’s wide awake.

The store has been trashed. Call me.

Cassie grabs her phone off the nightstand and calls Zoe, her heart slamming in her chest. The store has been trashed. She imagines the rows of books, painstakingly arranged, mostly by Cassie but many by Grandma Bea and even Grandpa Marv, shredded and burned.

“Zoe,” Cassie gasps into the phone. “What happened?”

“The place is a mess,” Zoe says. “Books everywhere. Paint on the carpet. I called the cops.”

“Shit,” Cassie breathes. “How’d they get in? Did they break the window?”

Zoe is quiet for a moment. “That’s the crazy part. The windows weren’t broken. The lock wasn’t damaged. They just… got in.”

Cassie shivers. She feels the same way she did when she found the writing on her door. Someone is targeting her. Someone who knows where she works. And where she lives. And now can somehow get into her store.

“I’ll be right there,” she tells Zoe.

She’s tempted to hop in a taxi to get there as fast as possible, but she’s thinking about the cost of getting the store cleaned up, so the last thing she should be doing is springing for a taxi. She doesn’t need any unexpected expenses right now.

When Cassie arrives, the sight of the store makes her stomach turn. Just as Zoe described, there are books everywhere. Half the contents of the store have been ripped from the shelves. They are lying on the ground, pages ripped and bent. Cassie steps over volume after volume, a lump growing in her throat. She keeps walking until she gets to the spot where Grandpa Marv keeled over from a heart attack all those years ago. She looks up and sees the word scrawled in black ink on the back of the empty shelf:

SLUT

No. Not again.

The police officer—this one named Rogers—had been taking a statement from Zoe when Cassie arrived. He looks just as young as the last one did—not even old enough to grow a beard yet. And he’s just as jaded and disinterested in finding the culprit.

“Lots of break-ins in this neighborhood,” Officer Rogers says.

Zoe is infuriated. Her entire face turns as pink as the streak she added to her hair a few weeks ago. Well, maybe not quite that pink. “But this wasn’t a break-in. There was no sign of forced entry.”

Officer Rogers raises an eyebrow. “And you’re sure you didn’t leave the door unlocked?”

“I did not!” Zoe says indignantly, although truth be told, a couple of times Cassie has arrived in the morning to find the door hadn’t been locked the night before. “They had a key!”

“Well, who else has a copy of your key?” the officer asks them.

“Nobody,” Cassie says. She looks at Zoe.

“Nobody,” Zoe says. “Just the two of us.”

Yet somebody must.

“And look at what they wrote!” Zoe points at the word scrawled on the bookcase. “This is clearly a personal attack. It’s a judgment on our sexual habits.”

Cassie doesn’t appreciate the tiny smile on the policeman’s lips at Zoe’s assertion.

“Listen,” the officer says. “I’ve got all the information. We’ll do our best. But if you never gave out a copy of your key, I’m not sure how someone got in. My advice is to change the locks.”

“Thanks a bunch, Officer Obvious,” Zoe grumbles.

Cassie lifts her eyes and that’s when she sees her peering through the door to the bookstore. Maureen the Homeless Lady. Watching them. An unreadable expression on her filthy face.

Cassie nudges Zoe. “Hey, Maureen is staring at us.”

Zoe tosses a glance behind her shoulder. “Oh. What—you think she might have seen something?”

“Maybe,” Cassie says. She averts her eyes from the door. “Or…”

She doesn’t say what she’s thinking, which is that it always makes her uncomfortable to pass Maureen every morning. She doesn’t like the way Maureen looks at her and occasionally laughs at her. Surely it’s mental illness or possibly drugs, but it still makes Cassie uncomfortable.

Zoe explains about Maureen to Officer Rogers, who obligingly goes out to talk to her. Cassie lingers at the entrance to the store, once again certain Maureen won’t have anything helpful to add. But not absolutely certain.