Grover the Grocery Store Clerk's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Grover found the fourth note under the register drawer, folded twice. "You'll be sorry," it said, in the same block letters as the others. He worked as a clerk at the little grocery on the corner, and someone kept slipping threats into the back office. He had told no one. He wanted to catch the writer first, before the words turned into something worse. The problem was hiding the notes. He kept them stuffed behind the office filing cabinet. But the cabinet moved when the cleaner mopped. Boxes shifted. Anyone with a key could reach behind it. Grover had counted three notes last week. This morning he found only two. One had already vanished. He needed a pattern. Dates, wording, where each note appeared. If a note disappeared before he could study it, he lost the thread. He couldn't leave them in a place his enemy controlled. So he took them home. Grover's apartment sat above a shuttered shopfront, a single room he rented cheap. He unfolded all three surviving notes on his small table. He smoothed each one flat. Then he looked for a spot no one else could reach. The closet held a loose floorboard near the back wall. He had noticed it the day he moved in, when it squeaked under his boot. He pried it up with a butter knife. Beneath it was a shallow gap, dry and empty. He placed the three notes inside. He added a fresh sheet of paper and a pen, so he could log each new one the moment he got home. Date. Location. Exact words. He fitted the board back down and pressed until it sat flush. Grover stood and tested it with his heel. No squeak. Nothing to see. The notes were his now, safe from the cleaner, the mop, the shifting boxes, and whoever kept leaving them. He sat on the floor and read the three again. "You'll be sorry." "Last warning." "I'm watching the store." He lined them up by the day he found each one. A gap of four days. Then two. Then one. The spaces were shrinking. Grover's mouth went dry. He had wanted a pattern, and now he had one. The notes weren't slowing down. They were speeding up. Whoever wrote them was closing in, and the next one would come sooner than the last. He pressed the floorboard once more, though it was already tight. Tomorrow he would open the store like always. He would smile at customers, stock the shelves, ring up bread and milk. And he would watch the back office door, waiting for the fifth note he now knew was coming fast.