SLY SAID, GIVING VOICE TO MY thoughts. “You promised me the story of that parrot.”I stalled. “Bluebeard? I inherited him from Uncle Louis, along with the shop. Didn’t you already know that?” Giving up my secret, adding another person to the circle, was difficult.Jake reached over and patted my hand where it rested on my knee. He knew what was coming, what I had to confess, and he was trying to let me know it was all right.Not that it was. There was nothing all right about telling someone my shop was haunted by the ghost of my dead uncle.“I knew that, Miss Glory. But what I don’t know is how that parrot knew my name.”“I assume because he heard Uncle Louis call you by name.” It was the obvious explanation. If you didn’t count the possibility that it was Uncle Louis.Sly shook his head. “Makes sense,” he said. “Except I never was in that shop while Louis was alive. There’s no way Bluebeard ever heard him talk to me.”That stopped me cold. Jake squeezed my hand, but I couldn’t tell if he meant to be supportive or if the news had startled him as much as it had me.There was no other explanation.
