[Conclusion,Motivation,Rescue,Organization,Evidence]

  “What do you want me to do Laura?”

  “Well, you could start with why didn’t you say that your father was a you know?”

  “A you know?”

  “Yeah you know, Lucy.”

  “You mean a member of the clergy.”

  “Yeah, exactly, a you know.”

  “Laura, it just never came up, plus you are so open minded, I wouldn’t have thought that it would bother you.”

  “No. Lucy, it doesn’t bother me. I just like to be prepared, that’s all. But why did you tell him about the shoplifting? I thought that was our secret.”

  “He asked me where I’d been all day. Then when I told him he asked why you had offered me an internship. So I had to explain that I’d been caught borrowing a book.”

  “You never thought, I should spare the old man the embarrassment and just tell him a little white lie, like I thought I might like a job in a bookstore so I offered the old lady free labor for three weeks to see if we are compatible. I would have covered for you.”

  “I know, Laura, I noticed that you told a little fib, to protect me, I presume.”

  “Lucy, it’s not my job to out people, to parents, or clergy or even popes for that matter. You swore on the booksellers code. Whether you try to steal a book or buy a book, it’s nobody's business but your own, whatever you care to read and part two only fascists ban books. So I noticed your Dad added a week to your sentence, how come?”

  “Because he’s running bible camp for the next month, and he wants me to stay out of trouble. Those were the official reasons that he gave for the ‘punishment’. But I think he knew how much I enjoyed myself working here, but couldn’t just give me something I’d wanted when I broke a commandment.”

  “Well why not sentence you to bible camp? Stars, that sounds like real punishment to me.”

  “Because I am not a believer. It would probably not be good if his church found that out.”

  “Arg, why tell me?”

  “Because I figured it fell under your bookseller’s code. By not saying what a person reads, also covers not saying what a person doesn’t read.”

  “Ah, very smart, you are going to work out well here. At least for the next month.”

  “I thought maybe, you’d give me a job, after my month was up.”

  “I would if I could, but my finances are in a bit of a mess right now. I do have a friend, a financial wizard working on them, so don’t give up hope. But go into it knowing that no matter how much I want to hire you, the actual paying you might be a problem. But I have a fall back, so even if my finances aren’t fixed I still might be able to hire you. It’s just I’ll be stuck editing all day, everyday. But that’s a ways away so don’t worry about that at all.”

  “Alright, I won’t worry about it. So what would you like me to do today?”

  “Two things first, do you have a laptop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good, did you bring it with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perfect, go ahead and grab it, I have two jobs for you today besides waiting on customers.”

  I had her download and install Obsidian onto her laptop. Then I taught her how to create a note. For her first note I had her write the booksellers code part one, Her second note was the code part two. Then I showed her how to link notes.

  “Ok, those are the only two notes I or anyone will ever make you make. But you should definitely make lots of notes everyday. The power of the notes isn’t the information that they contain but rather the links. It’s seeing how things are connected. When I was a kid, there was a wonderful tv show called Connections. One episode showed the connections from learning how to test gold purity straight through a bunch of other connections to the library of Alexandria. The point is connections are important. So are your thoughts and that’s what you put into a note. What do you think about the bookseller code, part one, write a note and connect it to something anything you think connects those two thoughts. Now when you read the graphic novel, if you come across a great idea, make note of it in your own words, not the authors, because if you write it out in your own words, you understand it. If you just copy the author's words you don’t necessarily understand it, you just type well. Then throw in a link. Basically what you are doing is writing your very own wiki. But instead of having information on stuff you don’t care about. Your wiki has information on only the things you think and care about. So go to the reader's nook and take the graphic novel. Look over what you read yesterday. Is there anything you’d tell yourself about what you read so far, if your memory was suddenly stolen from you. If so, make some notes, more importantly what?”

  “Make connections.”

  “Perfect now off you go. Unless you have any questions.”

  “What does this have to do with being a bookseller?”

  “It’s about learning to make connections. What does bodice rippers have in common with Moby Dick. Think about that, write a note and then make a connection. This isn’t a test, I don’t want an answer, alright. The only ‘lesson’ is how to make notes. How you make connections is in your brain, we are pattern matching machines just like LLMs after all. Any more questions?”

  “Nope”

  “Great, then when you are done with that I have something more directly tied to this store, not just bookstores in general. Plus you’ll still have to wait on customers. But I just remembered something I wanted to ask you. Why did you go around the store and straighten up last night?”

  “It just seemed like something logical to do. I was walking around and I saw how far from where they belonged some books were. I assumed it was the customers picking up a book, then putting it down, to look at another and never picking up the original book they were carrying.”

  “You were born for this job, okay go take note.”

  I pulled out my old phone and started watching the surveillance video again, in real time. We were only a few hours down at the pub so it can’t take longer than a few hours to get through this footage. But it was dead boring, no wonder I fell asleep last night. I was starting to get a little tired and I was standing behind the counter watching. Maybe if there are no patterns to match, the brain wants to sleep. That’s why I don’t meditate anymore. A few minutes after I start, I fall asleep. Then I wake up and feel guilty for falling asleep. The benefits aren’t worth the guilt.

  Every once and a while someone walked past on the sidewalk. That would be a nice break from the strip of grass and sections of the house that were constantly in frame except for the rare occasion that someone walked past. I was over an hour in and no one had walked in the hiding spot and fewer people seemed to be walking past as the evening wore on.

  It was almost two hours in when a woman stopped and turned toward the war then approached the car and stared at the camera. It afforded a closeup of her face, after perhaps ten or twenty seconds she’d moved on leaving me to stare at empty space again. Finally at about two hours and fifteen minutes a woman walked by then turned and went up the small grass hill, and into the shadows of the house. I could only see her back as she walked away from the sidewalk. But when she turned around to look at the store, I could clearly see her face. I paused the video. Took a screenshot and sent it to the laser printer in my bedroom / study. Then I called her.

  “Hello Claire, it’s Laura down at Genre’s I got that book that you ordered. I have another customer who ordered the same book, they ordered it first but you are the better customer so if you want to come pick it up today I can hold it for you otherwise I’ll just call you when the one you ordered comes in. That’s great Claire, I’ll see you in a little while.”

  Alright now what I have to do is get rid of Lucy. I don’t think that Claire will be violent, or would hurt a child but I’m also not going to take a chance.

  “Lucy, could you come here please.” I called to her.

  “Yes Laura?”

  “How is the note making going?”

  “Good.”

  “Perfect, now we are going to spice it up.” I opened the register and took out twenty dollars and handed it to her. “Now gather your laptop and graphic novel and go down to the coffee shop bakery, have a drink and a treat on me to celebrate your first day. Then spend an hour making notes there. See if they create any different connections from the connections you already connected. This is important so take your time and have a thorough think before you write that final note.”

  “This has to be the weirdest store to work at in the world.”

  “It very well may be, but you have your assignment, now go make connections.”

  “Yes Laura.”

  She was walking out, just as Claire Becker walked in. Mission accomplished, Lucy is safe. Of course I was alone in the store with a possible murderer. I don’t really believe that she is, but I should have at least texted Amy, or Anais that I was meeting with Claire, so they could have her put away before someone else was injured. But like I say, I don’t really believe that she is the murderer. She is an enthusiastic reader, but not a writer as far I know, so she can’t have anything to do with Lachlan’s dramatic writing improvement.

  “Thanks for calling me Laura, that really came in fast.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I’m sorry but I called you under false circumstances.”

  “What do you mean by false circumstances?”

  I pulled out the image I’d captured and handed it to her.

  “Please explain this before I call the police and inform them I have caught Lachlan’s killer.”

  “Oh, god, Laura, no it’s not what you think.”

  “Please explain it to me then.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “It can’t be worse than being thought of as a possible murderer, can it.”

  “No, it can’t. Are we alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a crush on one of the authors living here. So twice I stood over there to see if they were going out to someplace that I might casually bump into them. But they never came out.”

  “You said twice but I saw you three times.”

  “No, I only watched from there twice I swear, but one night, about four nights ago I did plan on it, but when I arrived I saw a man standing there, already so I just walked on like I was headed somewhere else.”

  “Okay, but you have to tell my attorney the whole story. Let me call her and see if she can come over.”

  I used the landline in the store to call Eve.

  “Eve I have a witness here at the store that saw a man who had the store under surveillance. Claire, she’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  “Laura, I’m really embarrassed.”

  “Claire, don’t worry, Eve is an out of state attorney. She’s not going to tell anyone. For some ungodly reason the police think I killed Lachlan. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. But they weren’t even looking for Lachlan’s real killer; they are so focused on me. Which puts the whole community at risk.”

  Eve arrived and Claire went over the story again.

  “Can you describe this man?”

  “Yes he is white, grey hair, dressed all in brown. He had a baseball cap on too.”

  “This was four nights ago that you saw him?”

  “Yes, that's right.”

  “Would you like me to escort you to the police station? You might be in danger until this man is caught, Claire. If you got a good look at him, you were standing in the light on the sidewalk so he probably got a better look at you, than you did of him. It’s just lucky for you that Laura found you before this mysterious man does.”

  “Yes Eve, please come with me, should I ask for protection?”

  “I can’t really advise you because I already have a client in this case. But it never hurts to ask for help. Also better to play it safe than sorry.”

  With that they left, Eve was going to follow Claire to the police station and then escort her in. She also said she’d call me if she came up with any news. I went back to watching the video, it’d be great if I caught the guy on video. Of course now that Lachlan is dead, his reasoning for surveilling the store are gone. Still just to be on the safe side I finished watching and saw no one else unfortunately. Jones would have to take this seriously wouldn’t he? I could only hope.

  A little while after Claire and Eve left a very pretty blonde walked in she sported a Lake Placid Volunteer fire department t-shirt.

  “Hi, I’m Laura. Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, I’m Sarah.”

  “Ah, yes, Faith’s roommate. But wow you two could easily pass for sisters.”

  “Yeah, everybody says that, probably because I’m always borrowing her clothes. But I came to talk to you about Lachlan. Just for the record, I didn’t sleep with the guy. He made out like he was really spiritual and offered to take Faith and I up to the top of McKenzie Mountain and teach us to meditate. So Faith wasn’t into that, she’s like team christ and all and meditation supposed to be this heathen practice. But I’ve been reading about it online and it’s supposed to have real benefits, measurable, not religious stuff.”

  “Yes, I read an article about a monk who had an MRI and the part of the brain that is associated with happiness and peacefulness was enlarged. So the neurologists studied other meditators and found similar results.”

  “Yep, that’s what I'm talking about, real scientific results. Not praying to win the lottery or that kind of shit. Anyways he makes out like he’s been doing it for years. So we get to the top of the mountain and he strips down to his jockey shorts, makes a pile of his clothes and sits crossed legged on them. Then he turns away from me and tells me to do the same, he claims that it works best with as little between the meditator and nature as possible. So he’s not looking, and I know he has a thing going with Faith so I take him at his word. I strip off my T, bra and boots. I sit down cross legged and he tells me to close my eyes, and start counting my breaths. Which I do. But then I hear him standing up. So I crack my eye open a slit, and the creep is standing in front of me naked,with a stiffy. Staring at my tits. Then I heard some hikers coming up the trail, he heard them too and sat back down. I jumped up and ran to the bushes to hide. A few girls came into view, they talked to Lachlan for a couple of minutes and then instead of sitting down to admire the view, they took off laughing. By now I was livid, if I had a violent bone in my body, I would have pushed him off the cliff. Instead I really hurt him, I told him I had standards and his was far too small to be of any use. Then I grabbed my shirt and boots and got off the mountain. Best part, I’d driven us so by the time Lachlan made it down I was long gone. I don’t know how he made it home, but I guess he did.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Faith?”

  “Guy’s are always doing crap like this to us and Faith really liked him. She thought that he was going to be some big shot writer. But if his writing was anything like his meditation instruction it was just pure bull.”

  “Did he talk to you about his writing?”

  “He tried, but I’m not really much of a reader. Sorry to say this in a bookstore but books just kind of put me to sleep. I take a book to bed when I can’t sleep and five minutes later I’m sleeping like a baby. Besides he said his book was a science fiction masterpiece about first contact. He couldn’t have said anything more of a turn off unless he said he wrote comic books. Everytime a guy asks me to go to the movies they either drag me to some stupid superhero movie or Star Wars. I only go to movies with my girlfriends now, and not very often at that.”

  “Well for my part, in letting him a room here in Placid, I’m really sorry for the way he treated you and Faith.”

  “Thanks but it’s not your fault. There are lots of guys like Lachlan, too many. I won’t walk off alone into the woods with a guy, I don’t know a whole lot better than I knew Lachlan. Faith is great, I love her like a sister, but she has lousy taste in men. I’ll remember that the next time one of her boyfriends asks me on a hike.”

  “Well don’t let it turn you off from meditation, personally everytime I try I fall asleep but I have read and heard a lot about its benefits.”

  “So I guess, I didn’t really help you out with stories to tell Lachlan parents, but I’m glad I got that off my chest anyway.”

  She left and I started to do some research about Adirondacks Lives Magazine. I was trying to find a phone number for their main offices. I was pretty sure that most of the writers were probably freelance but I had a plan for getting them to come to me. I was still looking for contact info. I hated their website. It was information dense, but didn’t follow any kind of regular layout and had no index at all. It was basically a blog. You log in and see the latest article, but there are no side bars pointing to related content nor contact information. It looked like it might have been set up around the same time that geocities shut down.

  I might have to buy a physical copy of the magazine just to find the contact information. But Lucy came back and I wanted to put her on her next task, I didn’t want her to think I was jerking her around. When in reality I was just trying to keep her safe.

  “So, you look confused?”

  “I’m just not sure what all these notes have to do with books and book selling.”

  “Okay, a group of notes is great because they are connected. Yesterday without any prompting from me you did two things which really impressed me. The first was the map of the store. If you think of the shelves as notes and the aisles as connections. Let’s say you are in the science fiction section. Reading I Robot by Issac Asimov, which always hit me as a mystery set into the future. So you think of Douglas Adams series about a detective. That’s a fantasy, so you need a connection to fantasy to get there. But the lone bookstore clerk, you are waiting on a customer at the register. So the customer has two choices: wander around the store and find the fantasy section or come and wait in line just to ask a question. Both of which are bad from the customers point of view. Wandering around the store is good from the bookseller's perspective. He might make an additional purchase, but bad from the customer's perspective. They just want to purchase the book that they want now, so that they can get to reading it as soon as possible. But what if they had, what you made yesterday in hand, all they would need to do is find where the science fiction section was on the map and then they’d have their route to fantasy in hand. They move to the appropriate section and tada they pick up the book they wanted and get back to the register just as you are telling your last customer to enjoy the book.”

  “So you want me to draw a map of the store.”

  “Yes I do, but make it personal, we want unique doodles placed here or there. It doesn’t need to be to scale, just a general map. But make it fun. Something a kid would pick up and enjoy looking at while his mother actually did the navigating of the aisles.”

  “Laura you mean doodles like a magnifying glass for mysteries.”

  “Sure, but that was your first thought for a mystery right?”

  “Yep.”

  “And it’s a good one, but I want you to make this your own, think of the second and third thing that might be used and think of the one out of the three that will best suit the customer. Are you willing to give it a try?”

  “Sure.”

  “I have to go upstairs and do something, but if it gets busy at all just yell up the stairs and I’ll come right down okay?”

  I went up to Lachlan’s room, I’d been avoiding doing this. It felt like a violation of privacy and also from the murder investigation point of view pretty useless as the police likely have everything that is relevant to the investigation in their evidence locker or room or whatever they have here in town.

  This was the first time that I’d been in his room since before he’d moved in. I try to never bother the writers in their rooms because I don’t want to disturb their reason for being here in the first place. Questioning Anna and Clara had been the first time I’d been in either of their rooms. Lachlan’s room was a mess, dirty clothing all over the floor. I stripped the bed and gathered all the scattered clothing and went down to the laundry room where I started the first load of laundry.

  I went back up and started searching the drawers, it was easiest not to miss anything to just take the clean clothes in the dresser on his bed. I went into the closet and took out the duffel bag that he’d used in place of a suitcase. It was completely empty, no secret pockets, at least that I could see. I started packing his belongings. This assured me that I touched and folded every item of his clothing. This way not even a single piece of paper would escape my notice. I emptied the dresser and moved onto the nightstand where a few books, two paperbacks and a hardcover lay on top. I tossed the paperbacks into the duffel after making sure to flip through each book looking for notes or stray marginalia. Finally in the third and last book the hardcover, was a napkin from the Brew House. In black magic marker or sharpie was written. ‘You better keep your mouth shut or else.’

  I ran back downstairs to get my phone and call Eve.