Siren's Storm by Lisa Papademetriou Read Free Book Online Page A

old?”
    “I’m not sure. I’d have to have it authenticated, of course, but it could be as much as five hundred years old. Are you looking to sell it?”
    “No.” The mere question made Will’s palms itch. He wanted that flute back, but didn’t want to snatch it from the man’s hands. “I just—I just want to know more about it.”
    “I’m sorry I can’t tell you much. The one in the window is extremely rare. In fact, I’m just waiting for some authentication documents so that it can be shipped to its new home in a museum in Nice, France.” He took the flute to the counter and set it down gently.Then he came up with a cloth sack. The man gingerly dropped the flute into the sack, then rolled it back up. He handed it to Will. “Something this precious should be protected,” the man said.
    “Thanks.” Will tucked the flute back into his bag, feeling embarrassed about the crumpled paper bag. “Can you at least tell me where you got the other one?”
    “Interestingly, that was also from a young person. She works right next door.” The man scribbled something onto the back of a business card.
ASIA MARIN
, read the all-capital scrawl.
    “She works at Bella’s?” Will asked, surprised at this piece of luck. “That’s great—I’m headed there, anyway.”
    “The hand of fate,” the man intoned. Will nodded, amused at how quickly the gentleman’s primness had returned. “Maybe so.”
    Will settled into a two-person booth and set his gray messenger bag gently on the table. It was late morning, and the early lunch crowd was starting to trickle in. Gretchen had told Will that she’d been stuck with mostly lunch shifts, but he wasn’t sure she was working today. He surveyed the long space. Men in farmer caps, huddled in their booths, were bent close over fish and chips. Two fat women laughed over a shared banana split. Everywhere, people were talking and eating.
Just like normal life
, Will thought.
    Will pulled the flute from his bag, then carefully stripped it of its wrappings. He supposed he should be wearing gloves like the man in the antiques store,but he’d already held the flute a hundred times, so he couldn’t see what difference it would make now. The wood was light in his hand, like the bone of a bird.
    It had been Tim’s flute. Not that Tim played the flute. As far as Will knew, his brother had played only the guitar. Nevertheless, this was Tim’s flute. At least, Will thought of it that way.
    Weeks after his family installed a headstone over an empty box, Angus’s uncle had called Will down to the station. He said he had something for him. When Will arrived, Police Chief Barry McFarlan had pulled a plastic evidence bag from his desk drawer. He explained that the officer called to the scene of Tim’s death had found the flute on the boat, wedged into the rigging. It didn’t seem to have any bearing on the case, so they could let it go. “I know Tim was really into music. It must have been his,” Barry said, and asked Will if he wanted it, “as a memento.”
    A memento
, Will had thought.
A memento of my brother’s death
. As if he didn’t have enough of those. Still, he’d taken the flute. Then he’d slipped it into his bottom drawer—the one he never opened—and forgotten about it until a couple of days ago. He knew it was crazy to think that the flute had anything to do with his brother. Still, it was connected simply by proximity. And when Will had spotted its twin, or at least its cousin, in the store window, he’d decided to find out something about it.
    Will surveyed the diner, but he didn’t see Gretchen anywhere. A punk-nerd waitress with rag doll hair and a gray uniform was joking with a table of old ladies.The short-order cook—Angel, a Bella’s fixture from the beginning of Will’s memory—was at his place behind the stove. Will could see him through the food-delivery window. Wondering if the punk girl could be Asia, he picked up a newspaper that someone had left