I realized that I needed to retrieve all the mail that had accumulated for the bookstore since the murder. Frank had had a post office box for the business, so armed with an official letter from the lawyer to say that I was now authorized to deal with those letters, I went into the post office and emerged with a grocery bag full of mail.
I took an entire afternoon to sort through it, taking breaks when I needed to. Many of them were requests for books or receipts for past transactions. One of them was actually addressed to me.
Dear Miss Peters,
I have discovered from an old friend, George Weatherill, that you have inherited Frank’s Book Store. He mentioned that he’d heard you were thinking of selling the books en masse instead of keeping the store going. If this is so, may I beg to look them over and make an offer for some of them? I do not know precisely which books you have, but I know that some of the collections Frank acquired were very good, although I fear not correctly valued by him.
Cordially,
Otis Glass
I’d heard of Otis Glass, of course, He’d had some dealings with Frank’s store before, and Frank had mentioned him a few times as a reputable dealer in old books. Mr. Glass had included his email address and telephone number on the letter, and I called him immediately. He didn’t answer, but I left a voice message telling him I’d be very interested in having him look at the books and buy what he liked. With any luck, he would pay me good prices for the books that were valuable, and I might be able to sell the rest to a dealer who didn’t specialize in any particular literature.
Todd called me that evening.
“Hey, how are you feeling?”
“Better all the time. I drove into Wilkester today. It was nice to get out of the four walls.”
“I’ll bet it was.”
“Any news on the case?”
“Yes, a little bit, which is why I called. We found the burglar who attacked you. He’s in custody now.”
“Oh, that’s a relief.”
“It was worrying you?”
“It must have been. I hadn’t thought much about it, but I feel so much lighter now. Is he the one that murdered Frank, too?”
“I’m afraid not. He says he was hired to find a book—in fact, the one with the water stains.”
“So we were right!”
“Yes, apparently. The thing was, the man who hired him had the name of the book slightly wrong. He said he wasn’t sure but he thought it was a very old book called Peasant Tales from Other Lands. And he mentioned water stains. Yateman—he’s the thief—couldn’t find it, of course, but that’s why he pulled the old books out in your store, to check for water stains.”
“So he was the one who broke into my store.”
“Yes.”
“Why was my apartment so trashed and the store wasn’t? I didn’t think it could be the same person doing both.”
“That was because of timing. He searched the store in the middle of the night and ran very little risk of being caught. He knew he could take his time. With your apartment, he had no idea how long you would be gone, so he searched it the fastest way he could. When he searched Frank’s house, he also had all the time in the world to do it carefully—that’s why we didn’t even notice.”
“He seems to have confessed to a lot,” I said.
“Well, he was facing a charge of attempted murder. It was in his best interest to be cooperative.”
“So I guess the big question is, who hired him?”
“He doesn’t know. It was all done by email with an email account that has since been deleted and an IP address that was someplace in Thailand—obviously routed that way to camouflage the identity of the sender. Our computer guys are doing what they can, but they’re not holding out a lot of hope.”
I stifled a sigh. I was sure the policemen were doing everything that was humanly possible, but on TV mystery shows the computer guys can trace anyone within a few hours and come up with their bank records, work history, tax returns, photos, and favorite candy at the click of a button.
“But listen,” I said. “I’ve been thinking. Why would someone go to so much trouble, first to create a manuscript like this, and then to cover it up? It’s not like a Shakespeare folio that would be worth millions.”
“I don’t know, but I’m guessing that whoever is responsible has a lot more at stake than just whatever penalty they would get for forgery and fraud.”
“I see.”
There was a pause.
“Anything new with you?” he asked, as if he was trying to find a way to prolong the conversation.
“Other than getting out of the apartment today, not really. Oh, I did make contact with a man who wants to look through the books at the bookstore and buy some of them. He’s a dealer Frank has done business with before.”
“You mean you were going to meet with him at your bookstore?”
“That’s the plan. I don’t know how else he could see the books.”
“Alone?”
“I guess so. I hadn’t really thought about it. Wait, you think he could be the murderer?”
“It’s possible. You know that whoever did the forgery is the main suspect for the murder, too. And we know that the forger had access to old books and a lot of knowledge about old manuscripts.”
“Oh! Well, do you think I should take someone with me to meet with him?”
“I think I should be there. If you unmask a master criminal, I want to be on hand to arrest him.”
“No problem,” I said. “If you want to come.”
“I do. Let me know as soon as you have the meeting set up. Listen, I have to go. Take care.”
He hung up before I could even say goodbye. I wondered how many cases he was investigating at the same time.
I drove myself to the Coles’ for dinner the next day. I felt like a long-lost relative coming home. Everyone embraced me, even Sam and Josh, and Molly the St. Bernard gave me a slobbery kiss on my elbow. Houdini contented himself with jumping up on me and barking repeatedly until Sam took him away and put him in a crate.
The noise was a little deafening, and Kim had to remind the kids two or three times to keep their voices down. I didn’t mind, though. I was in the mood for celebrating. A bit of a headache was a small price to pay. Dinner was spaghetti and meatballs with salad.
“The kids all helped to make it,” said Kim.
“I cut the lettuce!” announced Mia. “Isn’t it good?”
“It’s just about the best lettuce I ever tasted,” I said, and she beamed.
After dinner there was an argument about the best way to spend the evening. Most of the kids wanted to play a board game, but Josh and Sam wanted a video game tournament. I felt like either of those was going to be too noisy for me.
“I know!” I said. “Why don’t we all walk to the park? It’s such a nice evening. We could even bring the dogs. It will still be light for a couple more hours.”
The novelty of the idea was enough to make the kids agree to it. Ed said he needed to stay home to work on a presentation for his department, but everyone else grabbed a jacket and Sam put leashes on the dogs. Josh took a soccer ball.
“This is nice,” I said as Kim and I walked the dogs behind the kids who had run ahead of us toward the park. “Weather perfect, fellowship with friends, health restored…well, pretty much restored.”
“So update me,” said Kim. “Yesterday you told me about that Otis guy writing to you. Did he write back after you left the message?”
“Yep. We’re meeting on Monday afternoon at the bookstore.”
“And you’re not going alone to meet him, right?”
“Right. A policeman will be there. Although you know they caught the guy who attacked me. He’s in custody.”
Kim smiled. “That policeman who will be there with you—he’s not a detective by any chance?”
I rolled my eyes. “Before you start in commenting on that,” I said, “Tell me how that visit with Mia’s birthmother went
yesterday.”
Kim shuddered. “It was pretty awful, actually. I wasn’t there, of course, but it was supervised by a social worker and she told me that Rhonda—that’s the birthmother—told Mia she was going to bring her back home with her.”
“Yikes! Can she do that?”
“Not without fulfilling a number of requirements. It would be a while before that could happen. The court has to give her a chance to get her child back, but she would have to do her part, and the social worker reminded her of that. She got upset and started saying all kinds of things, like no one had the right to keep her child from her, and she was going to get her back no matter what. Mia was pretty terrified. The social worker cut the meeting short.”
“Poor Mia!”
“It’s one of my nightmares,” said Kim, “That an abusive birth parent will find out where we live and try to kidnap their child.”
“Don’t even think about it,” I advised. It would be one of my nightmares, too, if I became a foster parent. I had my first serious qualm about whether or not I could actually be a foster parent and face that possibility. I wondered if I had been too hasty in deciding against going to PNG.
We had reached the park by then, and Kim and I sat on a bench and watched the kids for a long time as they played hide and seek and tag together. Ben was a remarkably good “finder” and seemed to be able to sniff out his siblings no matter where they hid…all except for Mia. I had watched her slide under the leafy branches of a bush and disappear, otherwise I might have been worried.
As daylight turned to twilight, Kim called the kids to collect their jackets and the soccer ball so we could head home. They groaned but submitted.
“I’ve got ice cream and strawberries at home for them,” she said softly to me. “They wouldn’t be so reluctant to obey if they knew what was coming.”
“I suppose I’m like that, too,” I said. “I’m always afraid that obeying God is going to make me miserable.”
“Don’t we all,” Kim said.
I went to church on Sunday and was greeted joyously by my troupe of pre-schoolers. I even taught the lesson about Daniel in the lion’s den and made the mistake of having a contest to see which child could roar the loudest. My ears were still ringing when the service was over.
“Any news?” said Becky when the last child was picked up.
I told her the latest about the case and was given a disgusted look in return.
“That’s not the kind of news I meant,” she said.
On Monday at two o’clock I met Todd outside the bookstore. He had told me not to get out of my car until he was there, so I waited until his car pulled up before opening my door. I’d wondered if we would have any time to chat, but Otis Glass’s car arrived just as Todd was saying hi to me.
Otis was a small round person, chatty and cheerful and looking like the absolute antithesis of a cold-blooded murderer. Still, I’ve read a lot of novels where the most unlikely person turned out to be the bad guy, so it was reassuring to have Todd along. I introduced Todd simply as “my friend,” which happened to be true, and thus was spared the moral dilemma faced by Christians involved in covert operations that include telling lies.
The bookstore smelled a little musty after so many weeks of disuse, and we propped the doors open to air it out a bit. Todd pulled out a book from one of the shelves and sat at the desk to read it. I gathered that he didn’t think Mr. Glass was likely to pull out a gun or tip a bookshelf over on me.
“Well, this is very nice,” Otis said, as he surveyed the shelves. “Quite a wide variety of books. Some people specialize—myself included—but it’s amazing the treasures you find sometimes when everything is thrown together.”
“True,” I said, thinking of Emily Post. I was going to keep that one book, at least.
“Has Weatherill seen these yet?”
“No, not yet. He sent a message saying he was interested in getting some books from me, but he hasn’t contacted me directly yet.”
“Ah, well, for once I’ve got the jump on him. Doesn’t happen often, I tell you. That man knows everyone.”
“I can imagine,” I said. “He’s been around books forever—teaching about them, buying and selling them. He was actually one of my professors at UCSC.”
“That would be before he moved to Portland,” nodded Glass. “He’s been at North Oregon University for years now.”
“Oh, is that where he is?”
“Yes. Travels all over, of course.”
He ran his finger across a row of books and pulled out one by Thackeray. Unhurriedly he opened it and casually turned a few pages.
“Now this is a prize. The Book of Snobs.”
“Yes, that’s a British edition—not a first edition, of course, but still pretty old.”
“Not only that.” He pointed to a signature on the flyleaf: Harriet Fuller. “You know who that is, of course.”
“No, sadly, I don’t.”
“Thackeray’s granddaughter. It was she who gave the job of writing the first authorized biography of her grandfather to Gordon Ray. This book was once in her library.”
I was suitably impressed. “I don’t suppose she left any original letters from her grandfather in its pages?”
“Ha ha! Yes, you’re thinking of the Bradstreet manuscript, left between the pages of the family Bible. I was surprised Weatherill didn’t buy that Bible when it went up for auction. He was an acquaintance of that Bradstreet descendant, you know. He’s a canny fellow—scrapes an acquaintance with every descendant of famous authors that he can. He’s gotten some of his best finds that way. When that descendant dies, he finds out where the books are going, and if they’re for sale, he’s on hand to snap them up.”
“Who did buy the Bible with the Bradstreet manuscript?”
“Oh, some fellow named Boyd. Never heard of him before that. Come to think if it, haven’t heard of him since. As soon as he found the manuscript he brought it to Weatherill—don’t know how he knew him—and Weatherill vetted it and had it looked at by a couple other experts—protocol, you know—and he sold it on pretty quickly to a collector. That’s how it ended up at the college, I believe. Donated by that collector?”
“Right,” I said. “Well, I’ll leave you to look over the books and see which ones you might want.” I retrieved Emily Post, assured Todd that he didn’t need to give up his chair, perched on top of the now-empty desk, and refreshed my knowledge of the etiquette of tea parties. It is advisable, if one is serving more than just tea, that small tables be set out for use by the guests. “In fact,” Emily warns, “the hostess who, providing no individual tables, expects her guest to balance knife, fork, jam, cream cake, plate and cup and saucer, all on her knees, should choose her friends in the circus rather than in society.” I laughed aloud.
“What is it?” asked Todd. He had moved the chair to the side of the desk so that he was sitting more or less beside me.
“Oh, nothing really,” I said. “I just like the way she puts things.” Nothing is worse than reading aloud a passage you find funny to someone else and having them try to laugh at it, too, when you know they don’t see anything amusing about it. I made sure I didn’t make any more noises after that.
It was an hour before Mr. Glass had finished looking through the books. He stacked them on the counter by the cash register—nearly fifty of them. I added up the prices and then gave him a discount for buying in bulk. He was so pleased that I wondered if I should have asked for more money.
We helped him carry the books out to his car—he’d brought along boxes to put them in—and then bid him goodbye. I closed the doors, turned off the lights, and locked up the store again.
“Well,” I said as I stood by my car with my keys in my hand, “Do you think he was the murderer?”
“No,” said Todd, “but we need to find this man Boyd who bought that Bible from the auction of the Bradstreet descendant’s library. Nothing would be easier than to slip it into a book you just bought and say you d
iscovered it there.”
“I remember you telling me a couple weeks ago that one of the next steps was to trace who had bought that book. Were you not able to find out who from the auction house?”
Todd sighed. “It was on my list of things to do. I called them, but their records aren’t online and I was going to have to go over their books in person—it was an auction house in Eugene, Oregon. The thing is, there’s been another case that’s been taking up a lot of time. In fact, I’m late for a meeting about it now.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said. “Not because of you not having time for this case, I mean, but because you must be tired. You don’t look too tired—I wasn’t saying that because you look bad or anything—but I’m sure it’s hard to be so busy.” I bit my tongue to stop the babbling.
The charming smile flashed in my direction. “I’ll survive. See you soon.”
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Sorry
Dear Dr. Peters,
I feel that I owe you an apology for my behavior about Matthew Wilkes’ journal. Do you remember me telling you that I really liked old books? That was why you sent me to Frank’s Book Store in the first place. The reason I like old books is because of my great-grandfather. My mom used to bring me to his house when I was young and she would talk with him and I would look at the books. I read some of them, and some he wouldn’t let me touch because they were valuable.
I don’t think he ever read any of them himself, actually. He had inherited a lot of them from his father, and he had added a few himself, I think because he thought they were an investment more than anything. I remember him telling me about someone who came to assess the worth of the books and how it took him three days to catalogue all of them and figure out how much they were worth. He was really proud of having something that impressed a professor.
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