Left Turn at Paradise

by Thomas Shawver

  “Damn right,” I said, scooping up the two journals.

  Then I went outside for some fresh air.

  * * *

  That afternoon the jet boat arrived with Jeb at the wheel. Pillow stayed in the lodge. Before climbing aboard, I offered to return the jade pendant Esme had given me, but to no avail. I said I’d write. Esme said, “You’d better,” and kissed me on the cheek.

  Tane did one better, mashing my forehead and nose with a big hangi for old time’s sake.

  “Take care of Pillow,” I told him. “Maybe she doesn’t know it yet, but you’re what she needs.”

  “Yeah, I know. Maybe we can even make this marae thing work.”

  And the big fella smiled like Christmas.

  * * *

  I spent the next five days in Queenstown being interrogated by members of the National Defense Force and the Conservation Department.

  Following that, I flew to Wellington to meet with the deputy prime minister and his staff. I answered a lot of questions, had some tea and cake with the American ambassador to New Zealand. Then I was ushered into a large sitting room to meet a grim-faced representative of the People’s Republic of China.

  He claimed that the whole polonium-210 caper had been a rogue operation of Baotou Rare Earth Holding, Ltd., totally unsanctioned by his government. Considering that the perpetrators had hired an amateur goofus like Daig Kildare, it might have been true. I signed some kind of nondisclosure statement.

  When I asked for a copy, they just looked at me funny.

  That meeting lasted all of ten minutes, and I was released with a polite but stern reminder to never mention China, polonium, and New Zealand in the same breath.

  * * *

  On the day before flying home, I got out of a cab and rushed into the Anthropology Building of Victoria University just as a torrential downpour began. The elevator still wasn’t working, but I bounded up the five stories without breathing hard—one of the few positive results from my highland adventure.

  Cattley Middleditch greeted me with a firm handshake, but he looked uncomfortable as he slowly took his seat behind his desk and I sat in the chair opposite him. A green-shaded desk lamp cast his long, earnest face in a pale yellow glow.

  I got right to business.

  “You’re aware that Pillow let me have the second Gibson journal as well as my own?”

  “Yes. Most generous of her.”

  “I’d like you to edit them.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Gin?”

  “Maybe later.”

  The professor, acting as if he didn’t hear, opened the lower drawer and pulled out a bottle. He filled a teacup for himself and another for me in a glass that had quite recently served as a pencil holder.

  “And why me?” he asked, raising the cup to his lips.

  “I should think it obvious. No one knows more about Cook than you. Of course, you would receive a percentage of the royalties.”

  “Hmmm. And who might you want to publish it?”

  “Oxford University Press? Stanford? Perhaps the Hakluyt Society?”

  “All are fine choices. But I’ll have nothing to do with it. And neither should you.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, surprised and defensive. “Your niece gave me those journals of her own free will as consolation for her keeping the all-important third one.”

  “I know. Penelope told me everything.”

  “Even the separate note by Cook?”

  “Yes. It’s gratifying to know my theory of Cook’s belief in his deification was correct. And the ancestry connection for Ivo and Penelope is quite fascinating. I must say, however, that I’m pleasantly surprised by her decision to not release it.”

  “I’m going to publish the first two, Professor. There are no startling revelations in either. Why won’t you help me?”

  “Once it’s known the first two journals exist, there will be someone every bit as greedy and manipulative as Adrian Hart to suspect there is a third. Penelope’s privacy—perhaps even her life and Esme’s—would be at risk. You should know by now that, given time, there are no secrets in the high-end antiquarian business. It’s inevitable someone will trace it to Paradise Flat.”

  “But what if she just destroys the journal?”

  “No one would believe it. And she could no more do it than her father could.”

  I put down the glass and stood up.

  “I’m sorry, Cattley. I have to consider what’s best for my future.”

  “Then see to it, son.”

  He took a final pull on his cup and dismissed me with a wave of the bottle.

  * * *

  Late that afternoon, I dropped by the Turnbull Library to say farewell to Beryl Cowper, but was told she and her latest boyfriend were on holiday in Fiji.

  I left the place sad not to have seen her one last time.

  Walking along the harbor on the way back to the Duxton Hotel—I was careful to avoid the alley between Johnston and Featherstone Streets—I stopped to buy a newspaper. The dreadlocked young man behind the counter looked familiar, and I suddenly realized with a shock that he was the vagrant who had put the injured tern out of its misery. Only now he had lost that forlorn look. He was quite cheerful, as a matter of fact.

  He told me he’d pitched in to help when the proprietor, an old gent, who used to give him food for the birds, fell ill. He said he liked selling magazines and candy to the people from Centre City Plaza.

  I gave him a dollar for the fifty-cent paper and told him to keep it.

  “Tihei mauri ora,” he said, returning the change. “I salute the breath of life in you.”

  It wasn’t exactly a lightning bolt that struck me—more like the nudge of a cattle prod—but there’s no doubting that his generosity ignited something within my soul.

  I’d traveled halfway around the world in search of a lost prize. I recovered it and a second one to boot—twice!—but acted as if I’d been cheated. It took that ragtag Maori Jesus to make me realize that I had discovered in New Zealand something far greater than a couple of old water-stained journals. And while I still believed that the best pint of Guinness was where your friends happened to be, the minimum would never again be good enough for me.

  * * *

  I slept easy that night and awoke refreshed and as clearheaded as I could ever remember being. After packing my suitcase and stuffing a couple of Petone Club rugby shirts in the backpack, I carefully wrapped the two journals and set them in a FedEx box that I’d picked up the night before. I slipped in a note that said “A real bookman never breaks up a set,” sealed the package, and addressed it to Penelope Wilkes, Paradise Flat, Glenorchy.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Five months later, Josie and I sat at the front counter of Riverrun Books sipping Irish coffees and going over numbers. Neil Young wailed “Old Man” on my ancient CD player. We’d locked the doors an hour earlier when the last of the customers departed and turned out the lights except for the lamp on the counter.

  Sales in July and August, normally a slow period, were decent enough to cover two months’ back rent. This was undoubtedly due to lunch and dinner traffic at the increasingly popular Café Provence, but we weren’t complaining. We just accepted it as an intangible benefit of our new positive attitude.

  Our customers had noticed a change in the atmosphere at Riverrun as well. Despite living a hand-to-mouth existence, we’d recaptured the enterprising spirit, once I quit blaming the Internet and focused on improving our stock. We even started throwing Friday-afternoon parties again.

  Using the equity in my house, we took out a ten-thousand-dollar loan, paid another two months’ back rent with half of it, and purchased a private library from a friend of Charlie Walsh’s with the rest. It meant peanut-butter sandwiches, Two-Buck Chuck wine, and ramen noodles for the next year, but it was a chance to score a return of eight to ten times that amount—if we could hold out long enough. As always, a very big “if.”

  CSN&Y had begun sing
ing “Ohio” when Josie got up from the counter.

  “Mike,” she said, pointing to a U-Haul truck that pulled up outside the shop. “I think you’d better check that out.”

  I looked to see a lean character wearing a baseball cap adorned with the Stars and Bars step out of the cab. He had the face of a not very healthy fox. Age about thirty, five feet ten, lots of tats on sinewy arms sticking out of a dirty undershirt.

  “This summer I hear the drumming….”

  He slunk back to the shadow of the truck when a group of customers crossed the street on their way to Café Provence. Once they had passed, he sauntered to our front door. He cupped his hands on either side of his face and peered inside.

  “Four dead in Ohio….”

  Lately, there had been a run of smash-and-grab robberies of storefronts a few blocks east on Oak Street. I wasn’t taking chances.

  “Get behind the counter and keep your head down,” I said to Josie as I reached for my old hurling stick. “Be ready to call 911—and turn off the CD.”

  Keeping to the side wall, I edged toward the front door just as the music went dead. He spotted me when I walked into a beam from the streetlight outside.

  “Got a delivery for ya!” he shouted through the pane glass.

  “Sorry, pal. It’s a little late for a business call and I don’t order things by the truckload.”

  The guy shrugged and climbed back into the driver’s seat.

  “What did he want?” Josie asked, stepping out from behind the counter.

  “He’s got the wrong address.”

  “That one doesn’t seem to think so.”

  I turned to see another refugee from a Daniel Woodrell novel at the door. Unlike the other one, he didn’t look nervous.

  “Cletus” was the name embroidered on his gray Carhartt work shirt. He was big—wide and beefy, with a twenty-inch neck, give or take an eighth. His enormous head was bare and ringed with curly brown hair. He seemed awfully tired and grumpy. His armpits were dark with sweat. Maybe he wasn’t looking for trouble, but he seemed more than able to deliver it.

  “Like I told your partner…” I began, while making sure the door was secured.

  The big man sighed. “He ain’t ma pard’nuh. Best I could get at this hour.”

  “Buzz off before I call the police.”

  “You might jes’ wanna put that stick thing down,” Cletus said with a grunt of annoyance, “and read this h’aar lettuh.”

  He planted an envelope on one of the panes at eye level.

  From what I could see in the dim light, the printing looked very official—three-color and in Copperplate Gothic font. I remember thinking that if these two yokels were the best the county could do for its process servers, it might consider raising the sales tax again.

  Watching the big man’s eyes, I opened the door with the hand that didn’t hold the hurley.

  “You expectin’ trouble?” he said genially, as he handed me the envelope.

  “This time of night? Two beauties like you showing up unannounced with a truck big enough to empty everything I own? Why would I be suspicious?”

  “Yeah, I suppose it seems strange. The container arrived at Inter-Model two hours ago in Lenexa. Didn’t have no insurance papers with it so they wanted it out of their warehouse pronto. My brother-in-law’s the foreman. He calls me when this type of thing happens.”

  I opened the letter.

  At the top of the fine linen paper was the embossed heading of a London solicitor’s firm.

  Jaynes & Naast, LLP

  495 High Holborn, London WC 1V 7QR

  Dear Mr. Bevan,

  My client, Mrs. Penelope Wilkes-ffolkes, has instructed me to transfer, entirely free of compensation, the entire stock of The Book & Bell Antiquarian Bookstore, lately of 12 Cecil Court, London, to Riverrun Books…etc., etc., etc.

  Yours most sincerely,

  Alistair Jaynes, LL.B

  My eyeballs shifted briefly upward, but I remained composed long enough to notice a folded slip of paper at the bottom of the envelope.

  Quid pro quo, it said, accompanied by the drawing of a floating feather.

  “So you want us to bring this stuff in or not?” Cletus asked.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Josie Majansik sat lotus-style among the clutter of empty cardboard boxes, Styrofoam pellets, and sheets of plastic bubble wrap. Her face was drawn and there were dark circles under her eyes. She was dressed in the same baggy sweatpants and T-shirt from when we began unloading books eighteen hours earlier. The red bandanna tied around her head, combined with the large circular earrings, accentuated her Eastern European features. She looked like a gypsy who had just skinned a rabbit but no longer had the energy to cook it.

  She stretched her arms over her head, yawned, and looked into the last of the boxes. We’d lugged them into the front of the shop that morning from the storage area where Cletus and his helper had stacked them seven weeks earlier.

  Yawning again, she uncoiled her legs and walked over to where I stood on a ladder arranging books on the top shelf of Riverrun’s vastly improved classic literature section.

  “Time for some shut-eye, Mike. Big day tomorrow.”

  I looked at my wristwatch. Hard to believe it was nearly three A.M.

  “When does the mayor arrive?”

  “Ribbon cutting is scheduled for noon,” she answered sleepily. “I imagine he’ll arrive ten seconds before that. It’s not like he’s opening a bridge across the Missouri River.”

  “This proud Brooksider begs to differ,” I said, feather-dusting a 1764 edition of The Castle of Oranto by Horace Walpole. “The new bookcases look great, don’t they?”

  “For thirty thousand dollars, they should.”

  I winced at her harsh reminder of the cost. It had taken another generous loan from Eddie Worth’s bank and a month-long closure of the store to construct the thirty-two handcrafted mahogany cabinets. The museum-quality treasures Pillow had bequeathed us demanded no less.

  Josie stroked the two-day stubble on my chin once I had my heels on the floor again.

  “I didn’t mean to be flippant, Mike. It’s everything we dreamed of. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks, babe. But the business still has a long way to go before we’re farting through silk.”

  That brought a sigh, along with a kiss.

  “You should have been a poet, my love.”

  “Josie.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been thinking about us.”

  “What about us?” she asked thickly.

  “What say we get married?”

  Josie exhaled softly. Her hand went to her mouth.

  “For the sake of the bookstore, I suppose?” she said between her fingertips.

  “That’s as good an excuse as any.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll buy that.”

  * * *

  Romantic devils, ain’t we?

  After the kissing, I handed the keys of the Jeep to her.

  “Think I’ll stick around a bit longer.”

  “Okay, sweetie. But try not to do any more work tonight.”

  “Thanks. Get some sleep. I’ll walk home.”

  Once alone, I headed downstairs to the old boiler room that I’d converted into a workshop.

  The only furniture consisted of a steel filing cabinet, a cane chair, and a makeshift desk that was nothing more than a broad piece of plywood resting on stacked concrete blocks. Rolls of brown wrapping paper and boxes of Styrofoam lay helter-skelter on the bare concrete floor. The canvas backpack that once belonged to Adrian Hart dangled on a hook affixed to a hot-water pipe.

  I cleared a space on the table, then walked over to the filing cabinet and unlocked the door. My body felt loose and relaxed from the hard day’s work in the way it used to get after a grueling but immensely satisfying rugby match.

  The drama that had begun twenty years earlier in Newport with my discovery of Samuel Gibson’s first journal had n
ot yet ended. As I removed the linen bag from the bottom drawer, I wondered if it ever would. Something within me had changed, something born of having touched the void and survived unscathed when everything seemed lost.

  It was one of those epiphanies in which all the contradictions of life converge to resolve themselves. I felt the pure old things I used to operate on when I was twenty-four and immortal.

  I needed to know if it was real. After placing the bag on the desk, I settled onto my chair and gently removed the cloth. Then I proceeded to have a nice long chat with the captain.

  It’s amazing what you can still get through customs these days.

  To my sister, Phyllis Deane.

  Acknowledgments

  I wish to thank, with deepest appreciation, my agent, Victoria Skurnick, and Kate Miciak, editor extraordinaire.

  Photo: Hollis Officer

  Thomas Shawver owned Bloomsday Books, an antiquarian bookstore in Kansas City. An avid rugby player and international traveler, Shawver is a former Marine officer, lawyer, and journalist with American City Business Journals. He’s at work on the third Rare Book Mystery featuring Michael Bevan, The Widow’s Son.

  Facebook.com/ThomasShawverAuthor

  If you enjoyed LEFT TURN AT PARADISE by Thomas Shawver,

  read on for an exciting preview of the next Rare Book Mystery:

  WIDOW’S SON

  Prologue

  JUNE 27, 1844

  Four Mormons resided on the second floor of the Carthage jail when the attack began.

  The mob crashed the door down and Hyrum Smith was the first to die, felled by five musket balls. Joseph fired six shots at his brother’s killer, nearly severing the man’s arm. More bullets and balls poured into the room from the hallway, missing Willard Richards but wounding John Taylor. Joseph rushed to the window only to be greeted by a seething multitude of vengeful men below.

  In full-throated despair the Mormon prophet cried out the Masonic symbol of distress: “Oh, Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow’s son?” Then bullets fired from the doorway struck him in the back so that he fell from the window. He landed on his shoulder and rolled over, unconscious. One of the militia ran forward and pulled him against a well curb. Joseph Smith opened his eyes but there was no light in them. Colonel Levi Williams of the Warsaw militia ordered his men “to shoot the damned rascal.” Four men did their duty: the prophet was dead.