Charlaine Harris - Crimes by Moonlight

“Lovely,” said Neva Earle on her way in with a heavy box of English stoneware strapped to her dolly. She held a Blue Willow platter next to the vase and said ruefully, “You can certainly see the difference in quality, can’t you?”

“I don’t know,” said Martha Cook. “I have a weakness for Blue Willow. You ought to let me display that platter for you on one of my sideboards.”

They walked away together, and a customer called Mr. Fong back to his booth to discuss a Korean screen.

I finished photographing the Ming vase and moved on to the ceramic goddess. She might not be valuable, but her serene face, half the size of my own, appealed to me, and I took several pictures of her from all angles.

“You have a nice touch with the camera,” said Kendall Loring, who had suddenly appeared from nowhere. “I checked out your website. Good crisp pictures.”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“I guess you got your eye for form from your dad,” she said. “What about your mom? Was she a photographer, too?”

I shrugged. “Dad never said, Ms. Loring.”

“Please. Call me Kendall. You don’t look much like him, so I guess you must take after her.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “She didn’t like to have her picture taken.”

“No pictures at all?”

“Just a snapshot he took when she wasn’t expecting it,” I said grudgingly.

“Was she as pretty as you?”

Oh please, I thought to myself.

“Does it still hurt for him to talk about her?”

God, she was nosy! But her questions made me realize how little I knew about my mother. Could she have been a shape-shifter, too? Even though he never brought her up, Dad certainly answered every question I’d ever thought to ask. They had met in college. The only child of two only children, her father died when she was in college and her mother three years later. As the only grandchild on both sides of her family, she had inherited a ton of beautiful old pieces, which is how she and Dad started the store. No other family that he’d ever heard about. But where she was born? Her maiden name? Her favorite songs and movies? I’d never thought to ask. And there was no way I could say, “Hey, Dad, Mom ever change into a rocking chair when you weren’t looking?”

Not that I was going to tell Ms. Call-Me-Kendall Loring any of this. I made a big show of being absorbed in my work, and she eventually took the hint and went on back to her booth.

Leaving the Ming vase on the table, I shoved the ceramic goddess back into the storeroom and locked the door.

Behind the counter, Jane was absorbed in pulling up type fonts on the computer. As a freelance artist, she mixed aesthetic commissions with commercial ones and was always looking for ideas. She told me she hadn’t sold a thing since Christmas except for a Valentine poster, so money was tight for her. I saw that she was totally oblivious to me, and no one else was around. Two seconds later, I was a copy of the ceramic goddess.

Talk about boring. I watched all day, but the only time it got halfway interesting was when Mr. Fong paused to admire the vase again and asked Jane if I’d meant to leave it out like that. “Isn’t Laurel afraid someone will walk off with it?”

Jane had missed our earlier comments about the worth of the vase and gave an indifferent shrug. “She’ll probably come back and put it away.”

Shortly before closing time, I shifted back into my own shape.

“Oh, there you are,” said Jane. She closed her sketchbook, logged off the computer, and began totaling up the day’s meager receipts. “I thought you were going to help me out on the counter.”

“Sorry,” I said, making a dash for the restroom. Although I could somehow see and hear in my changed state, I didn’t feel hunger, thirst, or any other bodily needs. The instant I changed back, though, my bladder felt like it was going to pop and I was ravenously hungry.

Kendall Loring was on her way out as I helped Jane lock up. I hadn’t realized she was still in the store.

As she pulled on her gloves and tightened a blue wool scarf around her neck, she gave me a hopeful smile and said, “Could I buy you supper?”

“Why thanks, I’d love that,” said Jane. She was busy setting the burglar alarm and didn’t realize the invitation was meant for me alone.

A blast of icy March wind stung my cheeks when we stepped outside and waited for Jane to turn the key in the lock. I managed a fake smile of regret. “That’s awfully nice of you, Ms. Loring, but I have to read a book for a school report. Thanks anyhow. You and Jane have fun.”

Sitting here in my dark, icy prison, the memory of her sour look gives me my first smile since I’d been locked in.

“YOU missed a good meal, Laurel,” Jane said when I got to the store this morning. “Best steak I’ve had in ages. And Kendall ’s so interesting to talk to. We must have rattled on for two hours.”

Didn’t take a genius to know who did the rattling. By the time their dinner was over, Kendall Loring had probably heard everything Jane knows about Dad and me.

Once I’d finished my usual Saturday morning chores, I put the Ming vase back on my photography table and fiddled with the camera some more. When I was sure that all the dealers in the store knew the vase was there, I draped an old tablecloth over it to look as if I was trying to disguise it. Because Saturday is our busiest day, it was almost noon before I found a safe time to shift into the shape of that ceramic goddess. At least it was more interesting than yesterday. More people in and out. Martha Cook sold a nice Sheraton-style china cabinet, and Jimmy Weston finally unloaded a large gilt-framed mirror that he’d been switching from store to store for several months.

Thomas Fong came by to lift the cloth on the vase and run his hand over it enviously.

“Careful you don’t rub the scales off that dragon,” Neva Earle teased as she passed him on her way out of the store.

At one point, I thought I had spotted a shoplifter when a woman took a needlepoint cushion from a nearby stand while Jane was away from the counter and brazenly walked out of the store with it. She brought it right back, though, and I realized that she had a swatch of upholstery in her other hand and had merely wanted to see if the two colors matched in natural light.

I was so busy watching her that I didn’t realize that someone had approached from the other side until a heavy cloth was thrown over me. A moment later I was wheeled out to the sidewalk on a dolly and shoved into the back of the van. The cloth slipped enough for me to see a pair of female hands cushion the Ming vase in a cardboard box beside me, and that was it, until those same hands unloaded me at the storage facility and locked me inside.

I must have slept because that thin line of light beneath the door is even thinner now. Sunset, and I still haven’t come up with a way out of this predicament.

“I could turn into water,” I mutter aloud to myself. “Run under the sill and onto the pavement.”

Like a whispered thought came a soft “No!”

My own subconscious telling me what I want to hear? I’ve been afraid to try liquids. Too amorphous. What if couldn’t hold it together and soaked into the ground? What if there’s a storm drain right outside this door, and I’m swept down to lose my identity in dirty water before all of me seeps past the sill?

A moment later, I hear a vehicle stop outside and voices. A key turns in the lock. Before the door rolls up, I drop my blankets, push my way deeper into the locker, and shift into the shape of a cardboard box tall enough to see over the other boxes.

As light floods in, I see for the first time, an upright, five-foot-tall wooden bear identical to one in the store. They must have stolen it when they took me. I focus my attention on the two women. They’re silhouetted against the sunset, and I can’t immediately make out their faces.