Page 124 of It Runs in the Family

She still looked hesitant, but after a moment she nodded and headed back to the counter.

I stayed by the rack with the orange bracelets.

“These bracelets cost less than ten dollars,” Boone said, lowering his voice as he nudged the price tag on one of the orange ones. “Why would they keep a record of who bought a seven-dollar bracelet?”

“Just wait,” I said, heading over to the counter. Boone scanned the shelves as he followed.

Cynthia came out of the back room with Marvin in tow. His back was slumped, and he took slow, halting steps. His face was covered in wrinkles and white hair grew in tufts on his liver-spotted head.

“How old is he?” Boone whispered in my ear.

“About a hundred and ten,” I said. “Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.”

Cynthia dragged a stool over to the counter and Marvin slid onto it, wobbling enough that Boone looked like he was about to reach over the counter and steady him. But Marvin righted himself and said in a creaky voice, “I hear you want to know who bought Item 03470274BU.”

Boone’s eyes widened.

“The blue bracelets you had in last fall,” I said.

“That’s what I said!” he shouted. “03470274BU!”

“Sorry, Marvin,” I said, trying to sound sincere. “I didn’t know the item number.”

His eyes squinted. “I should think not. Know your place, girl.”

Boone placed a firm hand at the small of my back and took a step closer to me.

“Sorry, Mr. Marvin,” I said in a meek voice.

“Here’s the log,” Cynthia said cheerily as she set a large logbook on the counter.

“Open it to October sixteenth,” Marvin said, then started making weird mouth noises, like a cow chewing his cud.

Cynthia did as instructed, revealing lines of barely legible chicken scratch. His gnarled finger pointed to the top of the page and slowly ran down a column. Grunting, he said, “I can’t see a damn thing.”

“You should put on your glasses,” Cynthia said.

“Where are they?” he asked, his head swinging around.

“In your pocket, Marvin,” Cynthia said, unfazed.

“Oh… yes…” He removed his hand from the journal and started patting around his shirt.

“Here, let me…” Cynthia said, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out his glasses. She unfolded the arms and put them on his face. “There you go.”

“I could have done that myself,” he snapped.

Cynthia just smiled at him. “Of course, Uncle Marvin.”

“Now where… was… I…?” He pressed his finger to the top of the page and started running down it again. It took him half a minute to get to the bottom of the page, then he started on the next column, doing the same thing.

Boone glanced down at me, a dubious look on his face.

I couldn’t blame him. Marvin wasn’t painting a picture of competence, but it was still worth waiting him out.

When he started on the fourth column, Boone began to grow restless.

“We’re going to look around while Marvin checks the book,” I said to Cynthia.