Brought to Book

by Barbara Cornthwaite

  “Katrina, you’re back,” said Frank.

  “In the flesh,” I agreed. “Anything new?”

  “You missed the scene yesterday.” He grimaced, which is as close as Frank ever got to a smile. “Didn’t you say you had one of the Wilkes kids in your class?”

  “Yes, Matt. He likes old books and I told him he’d enjoy your store. Did he come in?”

  Frank chuckled dryly. “He did. He said he wanted to see my old books, and I pointed out the shelves in the back where you put them, and he went back to look at them. And guess what else is on those shelves?”

  “I don’t know. There wasn’t anything else there last week.”

  “Remember I told you I bought a bunch of books from the Wilkes estate? Well, I had to put them somewhere, so I stuck them there on the empty shelves near the bottom until you would come in and put them in the right places. You haven’t been here in a few days.”

  “Sorry,” I murmured, just as though I deserved some reproach. It was a reflex.

  “As I said, he was looking at those shelves and he saw some of the books from the estate. And he found this one.” Frank picked up a book from his desk and handed it to me.

  “Very old,” I said. “Handwritten. A day-book or journal of some kind.” I turned to the flyleaf at the front of it and found a name: Matthew Wilkes. I looked at the dates—it appeared to start in 1848.

  “Do you think…?” I asked. “The town’s founder?”

  “Not only do I think it, but your student thought so, too. First he told me that I had no right to the book and that it ought to stay in the family. ‘I’m a Wilkes,’ he said, ‘and you need to listen to me!’ Little punk thinks his word is law. Well, not in my store. I told him I bought it from the estate and it was all perfectly legal for me to have it. Then he said he wanted to buy it. And I told him”—Frank paused to let an expression of pure gloating flicker over his face—”I told him it ought to go to a museum here in town because it was a historical document. And that I wouldn’t sell it to him.”

  He was clearly proud of himself for finding a way to frustrate someone from the hated family of Wilkes.

  “Hmmm,” I said. “You may be right about the museum, but I think this might be something for a lawyer to determine.”

  Frank made a sound like “Bah!” and at that moment he looked every bit as misanthropic as a Dickensian villain. “That kid said, ‘I’ll get it back. You’ll see.’ Like a threat.”

  “You might want to put it away safely somewhere—just in case he’s tempted to steal it.”

  “Oh, I will. Maybe I’ll get a safe.”

  “A safe would be a good idea,” I said. “And if you were ever going to expand this place, or have more rare books, you could have a locked cabinet for them.”

  “Is that what they have at that college of yours? They have old books, but I thought anyone could just go in and look at them.”

  “You mean the manuscripts and first editions that were willed to the college by some benefactor?”

  “Right. They used to be in the library. I saw them a bunch of times.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Frank had such disdain for the college and so little reverence for anything literary that it was hard to imagine him frequently going to stare at these items.

  “Why?”

  For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said gruffly, “Someone I used to know was interested in them.” His mouth clamped shut after that and I knew it was the only explanation I was going to get.

  “Well, they might have been out in the open back then,” I said, “But for a long time they’ve been in a locked room in the back of the library that you need special permission to access.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “Yes. I got the teaching job there partly because my dissertation was on Anne Bradstreet’s poetry, and the college has the only manuscript in existence of one of her poems. It’s a fair copy—one that is finished and ready to send to a printer.”

  “It’s valuable, then?”

  “Extremely. It wasn’t even brought to light until about twenty-five years ago. I was a college freshman then, and I remember how exciting it was that such a thing existed. In fact,” I went on, “I think that’s why I developed such an interest in her poetry.”

  He appeared to lose interest in the conversation when I launched into my personal biography, because he turned and went into the little closet where the cleaning supplies and the odds-and-ends of the store collected, still clutching the journal of Matthew Wilkes. I supposed he was going to try to hide it in there. I went back to the shelves where Frank had put the new books from the Wilkes estate and started looking through them to see where they ought to be shelved.

  Many of them had not been opened for years and years—possibly a hundred or more. There were a couple of handwritten volumes: not only the journal of Matthew Wilkes, but an account book from the late Victorian age tracking the household expenses. That would be a treasure for a historian that studied this region; what things were bought and how much they cost at a certain time and place is something historians are always trying to find out.

  There was also the usual quota of deeply moral and badly-written stories that parents and teachers used to give children in the nineteenth century. I paused to caress the cover of one of them—the outside, of it, at least, was a beautiful thing. The soft green was embossed with gold letters that read Boys of Valor, and it was the perfect size to fit into a deep pocket. The next book was a handsomely bound copy of Timothy’s Quest by Kate Douglas Wiggin. I checked the date of printing—1894, twelfth edition, in London. And it included a prefatory note from the author explaining how pleased she was about the wide acceptance of her work in England. That was interesting—someone in the Wilkes family must have travelled to England at some point and picked up this book. Perhaps they wanted an American tale to entertain them while they were abroad?

  I sat on the floor and opened it. It had been years since I had read this. “Minerva Court! Veil thy face, O Goddess of Wisdom, for never, surely, was thy fair name so ill bestowed as when it was applied to this most dreary place.”

  The bell over the door of the store tinkled as someone came in. Grateful that I couldn’t be seen, I hoped Frank would be able to handle the customer on his own and not interrupt my reading. I could hear Frank get up from the desk and move toward the front of the store.

  “Are you Frank?” said a man’s voice.

  “Yep.”

  There was silence for a moment and then there was a bang. A very loud bang. I jumped and then froze. That was a gunshot. There was a sound like someone falling down. Stay still. Stay still. Don’t move. Don’t move. The thoughts repeated themselves over and over. I tried to breathe silently, but my heart was pounding so hard I was sure I could hear it outside my body—and so could anyone else. Please, God, keep me safe. Don’t let the man look around the store. Please make him leave.

  It took about a minute, I think, maybe less. I heard the bell tinkle again. He’s gone. Still I didn’t move. What if he comes back? What if he’s waiting to see if someone comes out of the store? What if he’s still in here and trying to make me think he’s gone?

  I sat there for another minute. What if Frank needs my help? Dear Lord, what if Frank needs help?

  I had to see if I could help. If I died, at least I would die trying to do the right thing. Cautiously I put down Timothy’s Quest and crept down the aisle between the shelves and then past the other four rows of shelves out into the open part of the store. Frank was there, face down, on the ground. There was a puddle of blood under him.

  “Frank?” I whispered. There was no response. I crawled over to him and tried to feel for a pulse. I’m one of those people that has a hard time finding my own pulse, let alone someone else’s. I couldn’t feel anything. That might have been because my heart was still pounding and I was shaking so badly I could hardly pull my phone out of my pocket.

  9-1-1.

  “9
11, What’s your emergency?” It was a female voice.

  “Someone’s been shot,” I whispered. “I don’t know if the man with the gun will come back. I don’t want to talk much.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Frank’s Book Store on Elvery Avenue in Wilkester.”

  “Is there somewhere you can go to be safe?”

  “I think so.”

  “Go there and stay on the line. I have help on the way. Stay on the line if you can, but you don’t need to talk.”

  I got up from where I was crouching beside Frank and ran to the closet. I pulled the door shut behind me and found there was a lock on it. I locked it.

  “I’m in the closet in the back,” I whispered into the phone.

  “All right,” said the voice. “Just stay there until the police arrive.”

  I sat quietly in the dark with only the faint light from my phone shining up from the floor where I had laid it. Please, God, let Frank be all right. He doesn’t know You. I shared the gospel with him once…please let him be ok. Time passed slowly in the silent dark. I was conscious of every single breath. After several minutes had gone by, I could hear sirens. They were very faint at first but grew louder with every second.

  “Wilkester Police!” shouted a voice as the little bell tinkled and there were footsteps—more than belonged to just one person.

  “I’m in the closet!” I called. “I’m the one who called 911!”

  “Stay there, ma’am, for just a minute.” I could picture the policemen roaming around the store with their weapons out, the way they do in detective shows.

  “It’s safe to come out now,” said a voice. “But come out slowly with your hands where we can see them.”

  Of course, I thought. They don’t know if I’m the shooter or not. I stood up and slowly opened the door with one hand while the other was up in the air. There were two policemen right in front of me. They only had their guns trained on me for a second. Then I saw them relax.

  “It’s over,” one of them told me. And to my horror and great embarrassment, I burst into tears.

  Chapter 3

  I sat at a table in a small, windowless room at the police station with a bottle of water someone had given me and a box of tissues the police officer had handed to me when she put me in the room. I had sniveled my way through the process of being fingerprinted and having my details taken down. The fact that I was still crying an hour after I emerged from the closet was fairly humiliating. I had the sensation of being “handled”—not that the officers were unsympathetic or rude, but they must have seen weak, shaken women dozens of times and weren’t unduly stirred by my emotion. I wanted Kim or someone who could say, “How terrible! I can’t imagine what you’re going through!” and give me a hug.

  A detective would be coming to talk to me, I was told. I tried to calm myself down. The odd thing was, I wasn’t really all that mentally disturbed. It had been a shock, of course, but God had protected me. Frank was dead—I knew that before I had been whisked out of the bookstore—and there was nothing I could have done about that. As far as I knew, he had died without Christ. That was the worst part. I also knew that nothing I could have done would have made him believe the gospel I had told him; my duty had been to tell him, and the rest I could leave with God. I couldn’t understand why I was still crying. That is, I could make myself stop and be calm for a while, but a few minutes later the tears would come again.

  The door opened and a man came in. He looked official but was wearing a suit instead of a uniform. He sat down across from me at the table.

  “Hello, Ms. Peters. I’m Detective Todd Mason. I need to ask you some questions, if that’s all right.”

  “Miss,” I said without thinking. I hate Ms.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s Miss Peters,” I said, and then blushed. Why would I make a big deal about it at a time like this? Making sure he knew I was single! He must think I was some kind of man-hunting floozy. I looked at his ring finger involuntarily—he had no wedding ring. “Never mind,” I added in a small voice.

  I thought he smiled faintly. He looked like a nice person—about my age, with brown hair and brown eyes that looked tired. I would have liked to make a better first impression.

  “Miss Peters,” he corrected himself. “Can you tell me why you were at the bookstore? Did you come in to buy something?”

  “Not exactly. I was working. Sort of. I guess you could call me a volunteer.”

  “You volunteer at a bookstore? Like a charity?”

  “No, not really a charity. I used to go in there a lot to read the books and then I started helping out...”

  “I see. So you knew the victim well.”

  I nodded. More tears were falling and I grabbed a tissue.

  “Do you have a job besides volunteering at the bookstore?”

  “Yes, I teach at Wilkester College and do some freelance editing.”

  He wrote all that down.

  “Were you there volunteering today?”

  “Yes. I was organizing some books on the shelves near the back. I showed the policemen where I was when they came to the bookstore.”

  “So you couldn’t really see what happened.”

  “No. I just heard things.”

  “Can you tell me exactly what you heard, please?”

  “I heard the door open—at least, I heard the bell ring and the noise of traffic on the street got louder, and I knew someone had come in. And then I heard Frank get up from his desk—he always grunted a little when he got up—and go out toward the open area. The man said, ‘Are you Frank?’ and Frank said yes.”

  “Did you recognize the voice?”

  “No. I mean, it was only three words, and the voice was quiet. It wasn’t someone I know well, I’m sure of that.” I paused, trying to think if I had heard anything else before the fatal moment. I couldn’t remember anything. “Then there was a bang. Really loud. I don’t know why I didn’t scream—I usually scream when I’m surprised.”

  “It might have saved your life that you kept quiet.”

  “Must have been God closing my mouth, like the lions,” I said, more to myself than anything. I saw Detective Mason’s eyebrows go up and that faint smile came again.

  “And then,” I said hurriedly, “I heard a thump like someone falling—I’m sure it was Frank falling down.”

  “Did either of them say anything else?”

  “No, nothing. I remember some faint noises like maybe the man was moving around. I was just so scared he was going to search the store or something and find me.”

  “And how long did that go on?”

  I wiped another tear that had come trickling down my face. “I’m sorry,” I put in. “I don’t know why I’m still crying.” I took a deep breath. “I don’t think it went on for very long. Maybe a minute? It felt like forever. I never thought about looking at my watch or anything.”

  “No one would expect you to,” he said as he wrote down my answer. “And don’t worry about the tears. It’s just a physical response to shock. You’re doing very well.” His eyes met mine. It was the first moment of real comfort I had had since the shooting.

  “What happened after that?”

  “I heard the bell ring and the door open, so I thought he must have left. I wasn’t sure, though—I thought maybe he might come back in or maybe he had pretended to leave to see if anyone would come out, so I just stayed there for a while. Probably another minute or two.”

  There was another pause while he wrote some more. “And then?”

  “Then I came out and saw Frank on the floor, tried to check for a pulse, and called 911. The lady told me to get to a safe place, so I hid in the closet until the police came.”

  “And you didn’t hear anything while you were in the closet?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Thank you. That is all very clear. Now, there are few other things I think you might be able to help us with. Do you know if he has any family?”
>
  “No, I don’t know of any. He wasn’t a very talkative person, but I never heard him mention any family.”

  “Do you know if anything valuable was taken? Or anything at all?”

  “I don’t think they took anything. I mean, I didn’t search, but nothing was missing that I could tell. Although I thought when the man didn’t leave right away that maybe he was looking for something. There was a little bit of noise like he was moving around. But he didn’t make much noise—he certainly wasn’t ransacking the place—and later I couldn’t see anything out of place. And even if it were Matt, he would have looked for the book on the back shelf where I was, I think, not in the closet. I forgot to see if the book was actually in the closet.”

  “Who is Matt?” The detective looked up from his writing.

  “One of my students. Matt Wilkes. He was in the store yesterday and found a book he thought should be in his family.” I repeated what Frank had told me.

  “And Frank said it sounded like a threat?” said Detective Mason. “He used that word?”

  “Yes. And that reminds me—I heard him use that word to someone else last week. On the phone.”

  That brought up the whole story of the college wanting to buy Frank’s building. I reported the phone conversation as accurately as I could.

  “Who was he talking to when he was on the phone?”

  “I don’t know. Probably someone from the Department of Advancement—aren’t they the ones that would be trying to get more buildings for the college?”

  “It seems likely,” the detective agreed. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find out. What do you think he meant by saying they were threatening him?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. It might not have been anything—he was rather a grumpy old man. He might just not have liked what they were saying and threw that into the conversation because he felt like it.” For some reason that made my eyes fill up again, and I pulled out a fresh tissue and wiped them. I gave a half-hearted laugh. “I hope I can stop crying before I have to teach tonight.”