Page 2 of Daddy's Little Librarian
Shaking, Scotti held onto her phone long after the line disconnected. Eventually, Gopher stopped stabbing. Sniffing once, he pushed off her ruined bed. She heard the click of the knife as he put it away.
“You’re mine until I let you go,” he told the room.
There was no relief in watching his boots walk away. He got as far as the open doorway, then paused. Turning back around, he lowered himself to one knee and deliberately bent to look at her under the bed.
“Mine,” he repeated, while she burst into tears. “Don’t you ever forget that again.”
She flinched, scrambling as far away from him as the dubious protection of the bed would allow when he came close again. But when he lifted the pink skirt, it was only long enough to collect Bat Bear (her favorite Build-A-Bear; a dark blue teddy in a Bat Girl costume) off the dresser and offer it to her under the bed.
She took it, half out of fear, half out of reflex. It was her favorite and he knew that. It was the one she always turned to when she wanted comforting and no one was there to give it. He knew that, too.
“Answer my God damn calls,” Gopher told her as she clung to it. This time when he walked away, he didn’t stop at the door and he didn’t come back.
Scotti stayed where she was, hiding under the bed, hugging Bat Bear to her as tight as she could, until she heard the front door open and close again behind him.
Covering her mouth with both hands now, she burst into tears all over again.
Chapter Two
Pirate Pete’s Squid House looked like a fast food restaurant on the outside and the deck of an old wooden ship on the inside. Ropes, buoys, and fishing nets provided a certain, seaside decoration. A giant saltwater aquarium was positioned right at the door of the fenced-in outside play area where it attracted the eyes of the children who happily lost their minds in this place. Above the cash registers, a massive smiling squid in a sailor’s outfit spread its multitude of arms out around the walls as if it were inviting everyone who placed an order in for a hug. Another slightly more menacing one was perched in the small hallway off to the right where, as it looked to Kurt Doyle as he waited for his job interview to proceed, it perched on the verge of snagging unwary customers on their way to and from the Buoys and Gulls bathrooms.
Seated at a wooden table meant to look like a cargo crate, covered in a paper tablecloth meant to be colored on, Kurt jiggled his leg up and down and waited for the day to get him. He knew it would happen. He even had a pretty good idea of how it would happen. It was a Monday, after all, and Mondays had never been good to him. Not even when he was a boy.
It was on a Monday when he’d caught his first really good case of the mumps, which had in turn made him too sick to go to his first baseball game with his grandfather. He’d crashed his first car through the window of Jacobson and Meyer’s hardware store when he was sixteen on, of course, a really sucky Monday. He’d loved that car.
He’d even kissed his first true love on a Monday. Ordinarily, that might have counted as a good thing if only the object of his ten-year-old affections had returned his tender sentiment instead of punching him squarely in the nose.
And though all that had happened a long, long time ago—before his military days and his scant four years on the force—Mondays were still out to get him. Anymore, they’d even stopped being subtle about it. And already he could tell this particular Monday wasn’t planning on being the exception to the standard rule.
He slowly blinked his gunmetal gray eyes at the pimple-faced, peach-fuzz of a goatee-wearing kid sitting at the crate across from him and tried his best not to feel resentful. The kid wore a captain’s hat on his head and a stuffed parrot hanging crookedly off his left shoulder and, more importantly, a plastic name tag on his shirt that read Captain Tommy right under the capitalized title of ‘SHIFT MANAGER’. Captain Tommy couldn’t have been a day over seventeen and here he was, shaking his head as he looked over thirty-two-year-old Kurt’s employment application.
Just one more Monday in a long dismal line of the same.
“Wow,” Tommy said, flipping the application over to read his work history on the back. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a cop apply at Pirate Pete’s before. What’d you do, arrest the boss’s daughter?”
Tommy snorted as he laughed, thoroughly enjoying his own joke, and because his door wasn’t exactly being beaten down by other employment opportunities, Kurt made a half-hearted attempt to smile back.
“Ha ha,” he said, not quite deadpanned but close enough so that it wasn’t worth differentiating. “Yeah, that’s funny.”
Tommy seemed to think so, but obviously he hadn’t risen to the ranks of Captain on sense of humor alone. Laying the application aside, he folded his hands on the table and looked at Kurt. “Okay so, this is the thing. Pirate Pete plays favorites for no one. Even though you’re” —he glanced sideways at the front of the application again— “older than most of the guys I get working here, you don’t have any current restaurant experience, so I can’t really start you out as a cook. But we do have a cabin boy position open. That means you’ll be clearing tables, fetching silverware and drinks, mopping floors and cleaning the bathrooms at least once an hour. Under no circumstances are you allowed to operate the cash register or the fry machine.” Tommy gave him a stern but friendly ‘I-know-it-sucks look’, as he said, “There’s times when you’ll be tempted, but it’s for your own safety. The job pays seven-fifty an hour, thirty hours a week, because, you know, nobody but the captain gets full-time benefits in this economy. Now, I know that sucks too, but I’ve no doubt in my mind that if you apply yourself, with time and dedication, you can eventually rise up through the ranks to become a first-rate swabbie, then maybe a deckhand. In a year or so, if you show you’ve got the stuff, you might even earn your stripes as first mate. If you’re really good, someday” —his reedy voice grew cocky— “you could even be a captain.”
“I can hardly wait,” Kurt said. Please, somebody, shoot me. “When can I start?”
“I like your enthusiasm,” Tommy said, picking up his application and flipping it over. He blinked twice as something caught his eye, and his smile slowly faded.
And here it comes. “What?” Kurt said, no longer bothering to hide how tired this whole process was making him.
“Well, it says here…” Captain Tommy cleared his throat. “Uh… under felony convictions… that you, uh…”
“Did two years in Two Rivers Correctional Facility?”
The stuffed parrot fell facedown on the table as Tommy leaned toward him. His eyes were huge. In a hushed voice, he asked, “No shit, dude, are you an ex-con?”
Kurt stifled a sigh. “I’ve been out ten days.”
“That,” Tommy exclaimed in hushed reverence, “is the coolest thing I’ve heard all day. I still have to start you out as a cabin boy, though.”
“Can’t have you breaking the rules, can we?” Kurt said dryly. Pirates certainly not being known for that.
