Free The Book Thing by Laura Lippman Page B

outlay just now.”
    Her honesty softened Tess. “Understood. Have you noticed a pattern?”
    “It’s not like I can do inventory every week,” Octavia began, even as Mona said: “It’s Saturdays. I’m almost certain it’s Saturdays. It gets busy here, what with the story time and more browsers than usual—often divorced dads, picking up a last-minute gift or just trying desperately to entertain their kids.”
    “I might be able to help—”
    Octavia held up a hand: “I don’t have money for that, either.”
    “I’d do it for free,” Tess said, surprising herself.
    “Why?” Octavia’s voice was edged with suspicion. She wasn’t used to kindness, Tess realized, except, perhaps, from Mona, the kind of employee who would sit on a check for a few days.
    “Because I think your store is good for North Baltimore and I want my daughter to grow up coming here. To be a true city kid, to ride her bike or take the bus here, pick out books on her own. Betsy-Tacy, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Edward Eager and E. Nesbit. All the books I loved.”
    “Everyone wants to pass their childhood favorites on to their children,” Octavia said. “But if I’ve learned anything in this business, it’s that kids have to make their own discoveries if you want them to be true readers.”
    “Okay, fine. But if I want her to discover books, there’s nothing like browsing in a store or a library. There are moments of serendipity that you can’t equal.” She turned to her daughter just in time to see—but not stop—Carla Scout reaching for another book with her dirty hands. “We’ll take that one, too.”
    Back on Twenty-Fifth Street, Carla Scout strapped in her stroller, Tess was trying to steer with one hand while she held her phone with another, checking e-mails. Inevitably, she ran up on the heels of a man well-known to her, at least by sight.
    She and Crow, Carla Scout’s father, called him the Walking Man and often wondered about his life, why he had the time and means to walk miles across North Baltimore every day, in every kind of weather, as if on some kind of mission. He might have been handsome if he smiled and stood up straight, but he never smiled and there was a curve to his body that suggested he couldn’t stand up straight. When Tess bumped him, he swung sharply away from her, catching Tess with the knapsack he always wore and it was like being hit with a rock. Tess wondered if he weighed it down to help correct his unfortunate posture.
    “Sorry,” Tess said, but the walking man didn’t even acknowledge their collision. He just kept walking with his distinctive, flat-footed style, his body curving forward like a C. There was no bounce, no spring, in Walking Man’s stride, only a grim need to put one foot in front of the other, over and over again. He was, Tess thought, like someone under a curse in a fairy tale or myth, sentenced to walk until a spell was broken.
    Before her first Saturday shift at the bookstore, Tess consulted her aunt, figuring that she must also see a lot of “shrinkage” at her store.
    “Not really,” Kitty said. “Books are hard to shoplift, harder to resell. It happens, of course, but I’ve never seen a systemic ongoing plan, with certain books targeted the way you’re describing. This sounds almost like a vendetta against the owner.”
    Tess thought about Octavia’s brusque ways, Mona’s stories about how cranky she could get. Still, it was hard to imagine a disgruntled customer going to these lengths. Most people would satisfy themselves by writing a mean review on Yelp.
    “I will tell you this,” Kitty said. “Years ago—and it was on Twenty-Fifth Street, when it had even more used bookstores—there was a rash of thefts. The owners couldn’t believe how much inventory they were losing, and how random it was. But then it stopped, just like that.”
    “What happened then? I mean, why did it stop? Did they arrest someone?”
    “Not to my