The Books of Fell Read Online Free Page A

in Brooklyn, my mother had a part-time job at The Gleeful Gourmet. She’d bring home some new delicacy for us to sample nearly every night: guacamole, cold lobster mousse, artichoke hearts with mushroom sauce — things we’d never tasted before. Sometimes my mother’d make salads for the place, or hors d’oeuvres or desserts, and I’d help her. That was when I discovered that I liked to cook, and that I was good at it.
    My father’d retired from the force by then. He was doing private investigating. I’d fix him the food he’d take on stakeouts, surprise him with things like deviled meatballs, Chinese chicken wings, or stuffed grape leaves.
    When we moved out to Seaville, after his first heart attack, we were talking seriously about opening a place like Plain and Fancy, where I’d gotten my part-time job.
    What we hadn’t counted on was the high rents for stores in a resort area. The stores in Seaville cost from a thousand to two thousand a month.
    Since my father’s death, all Mom talked about was getting back to Brooklyn and opening something there.
    I was just flipping the omelet over when my mother’s Volkswagen pulled into the driveway, with the Born to Shop decal still fixed to the back fender. I figured she hadn’t noticed it yet.
    I told her that I’d been stood up, leaving out the encounter with Pingree because I didn’t want to get her on my back about the dent in the Dodge just yet.
    “Would you mind making one of those for me, too?” she asked. “I’m really beat! We had three customers come in at five minutes to eight. I said, ‘We’re closing at eight,’ and one of them said, ‘We won’t be long.’ What time is it now?”
    “Quarter to ten,” I said. “That’s too long to leave Jazzy alone.”
    “Mrs. Fiedler was coming over every twenty minutes, Johnny.”
    “Mommy? Georgette had fwogs’, frrr-ogs’ legs for dinner!”
    “That’s nice, honey. I know it’s too long to leave her, but I couldn’t walk out on a thousand-dollar sale, and I called Mrs. Fiedler to be sure she was home and could check on Jazzy. A thousand dollars in an hour and a half, and only two of them were buying! I don’t know where people get their money! Do they rob banks?”
    “They put it all on credit cards,” I said. “You know how that goes, Mom.”
    “Don’t start on me tonight, Johnny!” she said. “Just because your fancy girlfriend stood you up, don’t take it out on me!”
    “Keats’s father doesn’t like Johnny,” Jazzy said.
    “Johnny should stick with his own kind if he doesn’t want to be treated like a doormat,” Mom said.
    I passed Jazzy her omelet. “What’s my own kind? Dad always said it was the wrong kind.”
    “It was! But that’s over. We moved out here so you could meet just your average kind of kid. Can’t you settle for your average kind? And now I hate it out here!”
    “I hate it out here, too,” Jazzy said.
    “Jasmine, eat your omelet your brother was nice enough to make for you.”
    “Do you want cheese and bacon and tomato in your omelet, too?” I asked my mother.
    “I’d eat ants and grasshoppers and spiders in my omelet at this point!”
    Jazzy began to giggle.
    Mom put her arms around her. “At least someone thinks I’m funny.”
    Mom did look tired, but she was still a good-looking woman, even after nine and a half hours behind the counter at Dressed to Kill. We were all blonds in our family, although my mother’s hair was veering toward orange because of something she was using to “highlight” the color. My deep-blue eyes had come from my mother. Jazzy’d gotten her pug nose.
    “How did your girlfriend get Quint Blade over there so fast?” My mother asked what I’d been asking myself ever since I left Fernwood Manor. Don’t tell me Quint Blade didn’t have a date for his Senior Prom?”
    “Maybe there are two jilted people with broken hearts tonight,” I said. “Me, and Quint Blade’s original date.”
    “Or just maybe she never