Three Bells Ringing

  A FRIDAY’S CURIOUS SHOP STORY

  FRIDAY’S CURIOUS SHOP

  BOOK TWO

  KAT SIMONS

  THREE BELLS RINGING

  Copyright © 2023 by Katrina Tipton

  Cover design: © 2024 T&D Publishing

  Cover Art: © David Burke © Artem Beliaikin © Thomas Perkins | Dreamstime.com

  Published by: T&D Publishing

  T&D Publishing: https://www.tanddpublishing.com

  Kat Simons Website: https://www.katsimons.com

  Kat Simons Newsletter: https://bit.ly/KatSimonsNewsletter

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  eBooks are not transferable.

  They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  A store for the curious. Enter if you dare…

  Riley’s new job at Friday’s Curious Shop provides a steady paycheck and her bosses supply a steady stream of sandwiches. More than she expected from the dusty secondhand shop located off a side street in Queens. She doesn’t know how her bosses make money, not a lot of customers seem to come through the door, but Riley keeps busy with dusting and rearranging the shelves, her head down, content with the work.

  When costumers do come into the shop, though, they always seem to be a little…odd. Like the man with the strange smile who sets off her alarm bells instantly. Outwardly, a normal man, looking for a perfectly normal item. A jester’s hat.

  A very specific jester’s hat.

  But Riley’s sure that’s nothing to worry about. Even if the man gives her the creeps and the situation feels weirdly dangerous. What could be dangerous about a jester’s hat?

  In Friday’s Curious Shop…

  Author’s Note: This novella is also published in the collection HAUNTS AND HOWLS AND JESTERS BELLS

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Thank You

  Newsletter Bonuses

  Books By Kat Simons

  More Books By Kat

  About the Author

  KatSimonsBooks

  This one’s for my fellow spooky TV show lovers from back in the day.

  And of course, always, for my family.

  Chapter

  One

  Working in Friday’s Curious Shop had introduced Riley Anderson to a lot of unusual people and a lot of unusual things. She hadn’t even been working in this secondhand store for very long. A few months, according to the regular pay deposited into her bank account every two weeks.

  When she bothered to stop and think about it, Riley didn’t really remember applying for the job here at Friday’s, or getting it. She had some vague memories of being unemployed and worried about meeting rent. Worried the three people she shared the small two-bedroom apartment she called home would kick her out if she couldn’t get work. She’d thought she might end up homeless, at least, she thought that had been a worry. Riley didn’t have any backups, any family to help when things got tough. So being out of a job really would have been bad.

  But all that seemed like distant memories now. She was aware of having only worked in Friday’s for a limited period of time because she felt like there was still a lot she was learning. At the same time, it felt like she’d been here for years.

  And yet, there was always something new, something interesting to uncover. A quiet retail job that involved a lot of dusting probably should have been boring. It wasn’t. Riley liked being here. Her bosses, the brother and sister owners of the store, Doreen and Ian Sinclair, were good bosses. They gave her responsibilities and were nice. Easy to talk to when they were around. Well, Doreen could be a little reticent. She never talked about things outside of the store. But Ian was chatty and liked to discuss the things he picked up at auctions and estate sales for the store.

  Friday’s was full of things that, on a good day, might have been considered antiques, but mostly just a load of stuff that other people didn’t want anymore. A treasure trove if you were willing to navigate the piled high tables, stacks of crates, awkwardly placed shelves, and never-ending dust to dig up those treasures.

  One of the most important things she’d learned since starting here was that one person’s treasure was another person’s junk. The other most important thing was not to go into the back storage room without Doreen or Ian escorting her.

  Even a few months of working at Friday’s had been enough time to meet some of the more interesting residents of New York City. Though how they found this place off a small side street in a section of Queens not known for its foot traffic, Riley was never sure. People just wandered in, like the store was located in the middle of a shopping district instead of tucked away near the elevated subway tracks, surrounded by storage facilities and truck rental places. The building itself didn’t look like much from the outside. More like a warehouse than a retail space. Though it did have large windows with stuff piled up against them. And the charming wooden sign over the door announced it as a retail store.

  Friday’s Curious—not curios, curious—Shop was what some might consider a hidden gem. On good days, when it was sunny out and Ian brought them sandwiches from the good sandwich place a few blocks away, she considered the store a hidden gem, too.

  But occasionally, the strange and interesting people who managed to find Friday’s were…not the kind of people Riley would voluntarily talk to if she hadn’t been working here. Sometimes, she wasn’t even sure why she found someone strange. An instinct maybe. Just that sometimes, someone came into the shop and they gave her the creeps.

  This particular customer was one of those people.

  “Can I help you?” Riley asked in her best customer service voice.

  The man had walked into the store about ten minutes earlier, ringing the little bell over the glass front door. Doreen had told Riley during her first week at work that it was best to let people wander around a bit before offering help. This was the kind of place people liked to dig through, and they didn’t always like dealing with staff. So Riley always gave people a few minutes to wander. And if they looked like they were searching for something specific, she’d offer to help.

  This customer seemed to be hunting for something in particular, not just wandering around looking at all the potential treasures amid the piles of used toys in the wooden and plastic crates and inside the display case where he’d spent most of his time so far.

  When he turned to face her, his smile instantly gave her the creeps. She tried not to judge people by their appearance because she’d seen how that could backfire. One of her roommates had dated the most gorgeous man, only to have him turn out to be a jerk. Another had dated an equally gorgeous man who turned out to be lovely and weirdly humble. And Lauren was dating two people who were pretty ordinary looking and each of them were pleasant, with a sexiness that grew on you.

  Looks didn’t mean much in Riley’s experience. But this guy…

  That smile made her gut tighten and she took an involuntary step backward before she could stop herself. There were a lot of teeth in that smile. White teeth that gleamed in the overhead florescent lights.

  She forced her own smile to cover her reaction, but she didn’t move closer to the man. She wasn’t alone in the shop. She was never alone in the shop. At the moment, Ian was in the back storage room and Doreen was in the cramped little office behind the cash register desk. So there were people within shouting distance if she needed them.

  The fact that she was worried she might have to shout for help wasn’t lost on her.

  “Looking for anything in particular,” she said, forcing a professionalism she wasn’t feeling. Her gut was so tight she was feeling that breakfast wrap Ian had treated her to. And her pulse pounded hard enough she was afraid it was visible in her neck. The rapid thump of her heartbeat made her want to put a hand to her chest to slow it down. Sweat broke out along her spine.

  Riley was aware this was all a very over-the-top reaction to a smile. But she had no control over it. Her logical mind had nothing to do with this. This was all lizard brain fear.

  “I’m looking for a hat,” the man said.

  His voice was surprisingly pleasant after the fear invoked by his smile. Mild and with a nice clip to the end of his words, like he’d had vocal training. One of Lauren’s current romantic partners was an actor and this customer had that same kind of cadence.

  Hearing him speak broke some of the shock his smile had caused and she was able to take in the rest of him finally. Not particularly old, though not young. Maybe mid-forties but a well-preserved mid-forties, with very few lines in his artificially tanned skin. His blond hair was thinning but he hid it well with a good cut. He had a long, pointed chin and high cheekbones, and brown eyes that were a little too close together over a short, wide nose. None of his features went together very well, but not in an obvious way.

  He was dressed for the warmer spring weather, in short-sleeved, white, button-down shirt, and slacks in a bright r ed color that Ian would have admired. He wasn’t carrying any bags or backpacks, so his hands were free. No glasses, no jewelry except for a single ring on his left pinky finger. The ring was a thick silver with a pattern on it she couldn’t see, but the metal caught the overhead light the same way as the man’s teeth had and that made her quickly look away from the ring.

  “A winter hat? Summer hat? Baseball cap? Children’s hat?” She forced another smile. “We have a wide variety.”

  “I’ve noticed,” the man said. “I’m looking for something very specific, though. A jester’s hat.”

  “A jester’s hat?”

  “Crushed velvet, green and white, split into three points. Bells on the ends of each point.”

  Riley nodded, but didn’t immediately comment. Jesters weren’t her favorite things. They were related to clowns. And clowns weren’t her favorite thing either. She wasn’t as terrified of them as her grandmother. But she didn’t like them. They were creepy more often than they were funny in her opinion.

  But the hat the man was looking for didn’t sound like something they had. “I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like that here, I’m afraid.”

  “Maybe in the back?” He folded his hands in front of him and his mouth stretched in what was probably supposed to be a smile, but the expression just made Riley’s insides tight and uncomfortable.

  “How about I ask one of my bosses,” she said by way of an excuse to get away from that smile. “I’ll be right back.”

  “The Sinclairs are here?” he asked.

  And for some reason, the fact that he knew the who Ian and Doreen were made Riley antsy. It shouldn’t have been. If he knew her bosses, it meant he came in her regularly, was a regular customer. She was sure this place had those, even though she hadn’t met any since starting. That she knew of. But a store like this, not located on a regular foot traffic route, had to have regulars to even stay in business, right?

  So this man, whoever he was, was probably one of those regulars. And as such, she needed to be courteous. But also, she really didn’t want to be around him anymore.

  “They are,” she said. “I’ll just check. Maybe they’ve seen something like what you’re looking for.”

  “Thank you,” the man said. Then he turned to the toys he’d been looking at.

  For reasons that she would have had a hard time explaining, Riley backed away from the man, not wanting to turn her back on him until she absolutely had to. She was well behind the cover of a taller glass cabinet filled with music boxes when she finally turned around and hurried toward the office to talk to Doreen.

  She couldn’t go into the storage room looking for Ian, which was unfortunate because having the large man here would be reassuring. Maybe Doreen could call him to the front of the store. Riley felt a little silly for her reaction. The man looking for the jester’s hat hadn’t been threatening, even a little bit. He hadn’t crowded her or made any aggressive moves. He’d smiled and been polite. These were not the acts of a man she needed to worry about.

  Except she was worried about him. And even if that didn’t make a lot of sense in the circumstances, she decided to err on the side of cautions. Erring on the side of caution had saved her butt on a few occasions.

  She ducked around the tall wooden desk that served as the checkout counter, and contemplated the storage room door directly behind it. A curl of some urge, a push to go back there coiled around her chest. She flexed her hands into fists, relaxed them. Then went to the office door off to the left to get Doreen.

  She hadn’t been in the storage room very much since starting work here. She’d learned her lesson on the first day that it wasn’t a place she wanted to hazard without an escort. It didn’t seem like it should be as large, or as confusing as it was. There didn’t seem, from the outside, to be enough building for the sheer length and breadth of space occupied by the storage room. And while the standing shelves seemed to be arranged in neat, orderly rows, it was really easy to get mixed up between rows. Getting lost among the stacks was all too possible. And the last thing she needed to do was get fired because she’d gotten lost in the backroom and left a customer unattended in the front of the store.

  Especially one that gave her the creeps for reasons surpassing logic.

  She knocked on the closed office door and waited for Doreen to say, “Enter!” before she pushed it open.

  Like the rest of the store, the office was an odd arrangement of clutter and organization. There were sturdy wooden shelves with various items from the store that needed repairs placed seemingly at random against one wall. There was an orderly row of tall, gray metal filing cabinets against another wall, their drawers neatly labeled with letters. Until the last filing cabinet which was labeled with numbers. Numbers that didn’t appear to have any obvious order to them, though, like the lettered drawers that went in alphabetical order.

  Unlike the rest of the store, there wasn’t the combination of dust and cleaning polish smell back here. Despite how often Riley dusted and rearranged things in the front, the sheer quantity of stuff meant there was always the smell of old things and dust. She didn’t mind. She liked the smell of old things. And thanks to her new bottle of allergy medicine, she could even tolerate the dust without sneezing constantly.

  But that smell didn’t extend into the office. Back here, the scent of Doreen’s favorite tea—Earl Gray from a place in Manhattan—and Ian’s favorite coffee—Chocolate Macadamia Nut he had specially delivered from Hawaii—dominated. The two flavors of drinks conflicted a little, so the room didn’t necessarily smell great. But it was an ordinary, office smell that overrode any dust buildup.

  There was a small wooden desk with an old-fashioned roll top against the back wall of the office, with a lot of little cubby holes inside the roll top, with three larger drawers on either side of the base of the desk. A modern, comfortably soft, black microfiber chair sat before the desk. And a small three-legged, tall wooden stool to one side. The stool reminded Riley of some of the more rickety stools from the bar right around the corner from her apartment where she’d gone for drinks with her roommates right after moving in. The only time they’d ever been social together.

  Doreen sat in the comfortable chair, but had swiveled around to face the door, which was at her back when sitting at the desk. For some reason, Riley found that arrangement uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to work in here with her back to the door, but she wasn’t entirely sure why that idea bothered her.

  Doreen Sinclair was a pretty woman of indeterminant age, with good skin, pale and freckled. She had a riot of curly red hair that she kept pulled off her face with hairbands that broke frequently in their quests to contain the heavy mass. Her thick glasses, with a solid brown plastic frame, gave her brown eyes a distinctive look that Riley had always liked. Unlike her brother’s more flamboyant fashion sense, Doreen was dressed in one of her usual long, plain skirts, this one a simple brown corduroy material, with a long-sleeved, button-up cotton shirt that was the closest she seemed to come to accommodating the warmer weather as they moved through spring.

  There was an air-conditioner running in the office that made goosebumps rise on Riley’s bare arms. She figured that’s why Doreen insisted on long sleeves.

  Riley cleared her throat and rubbed at the goosebumps to warm her skin. “We have a customer looking for a specific hat, and I told him I’d ask you about it. It isn’t something I’ve seen in here before, but he wanted me to check.”

  “What kind of hat?” Doreen pushed her thick-lensed glasses up her nose.

  “A jester’s hat.”

  Doreen sat up straighter, leaning forward slightly. “Did he describe something specific, or just a general jester’s hat?”

 

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