To Helvetica and Back

by Paige Shelton

  “I see,” Jodie said. “You keep saying the one with Mayfair on the back of his jacket. How come not everyone is required to have their name on them?”

  Lillian shrugged. “We ask them to, but someone made such a big stink about it once that we had to make it a suggestion instead of a requirement. Right, Mutt?”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Anything else you can remember? More about the clothes, hair, accent in the voice?” Jodie said.

  “No, nothing.”

  “Thanks, Lillian. If you remember anything else, anything at all, give me a call.” Jodie handed Lillian a card.

  “Will do.” Lillian looked at the card in the palm of her hand. She didn’t strike me as the type who would hold on to it for very long. But one glance at Mutt’s stern face probably told her she should keep this one. She put it in her back pocket and patted it once as if to punctuate that she would do as she was told.

  Jodie turned to Duncan. “Mr. Bates, you know some Mayfairs?”

  “No, I don’t know them really, I just know of them,” he said.

  I got the impression that Mr. Bates didn’t like talking to the police. He held his arms crossed tightly in front of his chest, and he glared at Jodie. He wasn’t much taller than her, but he was puffing, as if to make himself seem bigger. Jodie didn’t appear to notice.

  “Tell me what you know of them,” she said.

  “Just that they’re a pretty quiet group, keep to themselves mostly. They aren’t like some of the crazies who live out in the boonies and bring out their rifles whenever someone drives up their road. But they do live out of town a bit, have a few houses. Don’t know a thing about any guns though. Don’t think so.”

  “A few houses? All Mayfairs?”

  “I think so.”

  Jodie looked at me again, but I had no idea if those Mayfairs were Homer’s family or not. I shrugged and pushed up my glasses.

  “I see. You’re sure you didn’t see or talk to any Mayfairs here?”

  “Pretty sure. I don’t ask everyone’s name, but still . . . I think I know who I talked to.”

  “What do the Mayfairs you know look like?” She pulled out the picture again.

  “Nothing in particular.”

  “Any chance this guy looks familiar?” She held the picture out for the man to look at.

  “Criminently, that’s a dead man!” he said.

  Jodie nodded but didn’t pull the picture away.

  “No, I don’t know. How would I know?” Duncan said, but even I noticed that he never truly looked at the picture.

  “All right. Call me with anything else.” Jodie handed him her card too. He was much less interested in putting on a show of keeping it as he absently stuffed it into his front jeans pocket.

  “That all?” he asked.

  “For now,” Jodie said. She didn’t thank him as he turned to leave.

  “Not much of anything useful. I’m sorry about that,” Mutt said.

  “Do you think they were both being honest?” Jodie said.

  “I do. I can’t think of any reason either of them would lie. They’ve both had a couple run-ins with the law but nothing dangerous. Duncan’s not interested in talking to the police, obviously, but he could have just said he had no information if he’d wanted to. Lillian’s your best bet. It’d be great if she remembered more,” Mutt said.

  As he spoke to Jodie, I inspected him. He spoke well and had bright, intelligent eyes. But he looked like a thug, or a potential thug at least. I was disappointed in myself for the observations. I knew better. But still, I decided to ask Jodie what Mutt’s background report said about him.

  Suddenly, Mutt looked at me, his bright, intelligent eyes now full of question.

  “Clare?” Jodie said.

  “What? Oh, sorry, I was off in my own world. Did you ask me a question?”

  “How many children, exactly, does Homer have?” Jodie said.

  “I think he has two sons and one daughter, but I’m not sure how many kids each of them have.”

  “You know some of Homer’s family is in southern Utah. Do you know who?”

  “No idea. Sorry.”

  “No problem,” Jodie said. She turned back to Mutt. “Just let me know.”

  “Will do. We still on for tonight?” he said.

  I took an unconscious step backward, but Jodie kept it simple. “Tonight would be fine.”

  Mutt smiled. “Very good. See you then. Excuse me, ladies. Duty calls,” he said before he turned and walked away.

  “I need to track down some Mayfairs. See what they look like, see if anyone from their family has gone missing,” Jodie said.

  “Seems like a pretty weak connection,” I said, realizing I now needed to tell her about Homer and his typewriters.

  “It is, but it’s all we’ve got.” Jodie allowed her eyes to watch Mutt a moment longer before she turned back to me and said, “Let’s go.”

  21

  As Jodie—with Baskerville’s curious assistance—hunched over Homer’s typewriters to inspect them for clues, I excused myself to my office, which had the computer, so I could work on Olive’s research.

  A simple Internet search confirmed that my memories about the book were correct. There had been three states—in laymen’s terms, versions—of the Tarzan of the Apes first edition published June 6, 1914. It was Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first novel to be published in hardcover. All of the three states had been bound in maroon cloth. The condition of the cloth over Olive’s book was extraordinary. No matter how much care a book is given, one as old as Olive’s most always shows some wear, or at least partially bent and frayed corners. This one had been as close to pristine as I’d ever seen, its corners only beginning to bend slightly.

  My biggest question and the part I’d been most unsure of was which state Olive’s book was. My research indicated it was the second state for a couple reasons. The publisher, A. C. McClurg & Co., was printed on the bottom of the spines of all three states, but an acorn had also been included on the second state. It was placed between the “A” and the “C” of the publisher’s moniker. Olive’s book had an acorn. I remembered seeing it, but I also confirmed my memory by finding the specific acorn picture on my phone.

  And though the acorn was a sure determination, there were a couple of other features I confirmed. On the copyright page the words “W. F. Hall Printing Co., Chicago” were there in an Old English font, which was a characteristic of the first and second state.

  Inside the third state, the words “W. F. Hall Printing Co., Chicago” were printed on its copyright page using a Gothic font.

  I knew there were other variances that had come into play for different markets, such as the Canadian market, but Olive’s was unquestionably an American first edition, in its second state.

  I also confirmed the existence of a mystery surrounding another state of Tarzan, but that was for my own curiosity only. In a 1964 book by Henry Hardy-Heins, A Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Mr. Hardy-Heins claimed that a fourth state of the first edition of Tarzan had also been printed and was identical to the third state, though it was bound in orange or green cloth. Finding any of those orange- or green-bound books has, as far as I could find, been an impossible task, even though Mr. Hardy-Heins claimed to have spoken personally to some owners of the fourth state.

  One of my favorite parts of the Tarzan mystery has to do with the book that Mr. Hardy-Heins wrote. Originally, A Golden Anniversary Bibliography of Edgar Rice Burroughs was something similar to a magazine that Hardy-Heins created because he was so enamored with Edgar Rice Burroughs. When a man named Donald Grant used Hardy-Heins’s book to launch his own publishing company, the initial printing sold out quickly—those books from that initial printing are pretty valuable too. The book is still available in subsequent editions, though it’s expensive
to acquire. I’d restored a later printing a few years earlier.

  Once I’d taken enough notes and printed out a few Internet pages to give to Olive, I closed the browser and took my own moment to remember the other part of the story, the best part and the good memory Chester had referred to when we’d talked about the book.

  I had a special spot in my heart for Mr. Burroughs and a personal story about him, in a distant way of course. When he began writing fiction, he was also a pencil-sharpener salesman. It was a story Chester told me when I was a little girl (true to our earlier conversation, he never lied or embellished the stories he told me) and we read Tarzan of the Apes together. The book and the wild character of Tarzan spoke to the tomboy in me, the little girl who loved to climb trees and run through the mountainous woods around Star City or race my grandfather down the slopes on our skis. But the story about the author being a pencil-sharpener salesman was even more fascinating to me for some reason; perhaps it made him more real, more human in my mind as he stood next to his wild fictional character. One day, not long after Chester and I had read the book, a paper salesman came into the store when both Chester and I were there. The salesman pulled an electric pencil sharpener out of his bag and tried to get Chester to stock them in the store. I was probably eight or nine, and I still remember tapping on Chester’s arm to get his attention.

  “Is that the writer who wrote about the wild man in the jungle?” I said, pointing at the salesman when I saw the sharpener on the counter.

  “No, that was a different kind of sharpener. I’ll show you one of those later.”

  I looked at the salesman, who looked back at me with obvious question in his eyes. I authoritatively and snottily said, “Edgar Rice Burroughs sold pencil sharpeners, dummy. You should know that.”

  Chester wasn’t sure whether to laugh or reprimand, but he was closer to laughing. And fortunately the salesman had a good sense of humor. He smiled and said, “I did not know that, and you are correct, I should have. Thank you for telling me.”

  Later, Chester, still with a glimmer of humor in his eye, did tell me I probably shouldn’t call anyone a dummy, salespeople included.

  Just as I was getting up from my desk to rejoin Jodie, she appeared at my office door. “Nothing funny that I can find on those typewriters, Clare. I’m outta here for now. I’m going to stop by Mirabelle’s and make sure all is well there and that Homer hasn’t bothered her. You need anything else from me?”

  “I’m good. Let me know about Mirabelle,” I said.

  I’d planned a speech, or maybe it was a lecture, about wanting her to never, ever again butt into my private life by pulling a background report on someone I was interested in dating. Part of the fun of dating someone new was getting to know them, criminal record included, particularly if the criminal record was nonviolent. Most particularly if the crime was about a stolen geode.

  But I didn’t recite the lecture aloud. I’d talk to her later, when I was less irritated about the whole thing, or when Seth someday moved out of the apartment directly across from my house and I didn’t have to see him escorting his dates upstairs for rock tours and lasagna dinners every now and then, and be reminded of the life I could have had.

  “Will do,” Jodie said before she pulled her head back and disappeared, leaving Baskerville in her wake. He stood in the doorway and looked at me as if to ask what in the world I was doing in the office I rarely visited.

  “Working,” was all I said to him. I gathered him in my arms as I exited the infrequently visited space and together we found Chester at the front counter. It was his turn to examine the typewriters.

  “Clare,” he said, “do you have any idea when your brother’s going to quit being so worried about Marion? I think we’re fine here, and we sure could use her help. I just got another stationery order over the phone. I also know the little vixen likes to make money, and I have it on good authority—a text from her—that she’d like to come back and make more of that money.”

  “Vixen?” I said.

  “I meant it as a term of endearment. She looks like you, but you were pretty clueless when you were her age. She knows the power her beauty wields.”

  I shook my head, deciding that it would be better to ignore most of what Chester had just said.

  I was less concerned about our safety than I had been a day earlier. Perhaps the passing of twenty-four hours or so with no horrible incidents was not enough, but I felt much better about Marion coming back into the store. “I have no idea, but call Jimmy. Let him know we’re good and we miss her. I’m sure she’s driving him crazy too. And when did you learn how to text?”

  “I’m so much more than just a pretty face, Clare.”

  “Hello y’all!” Ramona said as she came through the door.

  “Oh, Ramona and I are going out for coffee,” Chester said.

  “Hi, Ramona!” I said.

  Chester didn’t say anything as I handed him the cat and then walked past him.

  “Ramona,” I said as we met in the middle of the store, just this side of the holiday shelves and next to what I called the Skittles shelves, a rainbow of brightly colored paper and card stock. “Good to see you again.”

  “You too!”

  “I hear you and Chester have coffee plans,” I said.

  “We do, and we would love for you to join us,” she said, her drawl so appealing that I had the sense that if I moved closer to her, I’d smell southern things, like lilacs and sweet tea. “Or maybe just you and I could go to lunch?”

  “I don’t want to intrude on coffee and I have a bunch to do through lunch, but I’d love to invite you to dinner. Tonight even? Are you available? Chester, you can come too.” I looked at him.

  “I would love to join you for dinner,” Ramona said, sending Chester a smirk that made me wonder if she was letting him know that he hadn’t needed to be so weird about her not meeting his family.

  “I would too,” Chester said.

  I had to give him credit. He was properly chastised and humbled by Ramona’s smirk. He must really like her. Maybe I’d ask Jodie to do a background check on her.

  “Excellent. Be at my place at seven. I just live up Main, Ramona. Small blue chalet. There’s a sign by the mailbox: Little Blue.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” Chester said to her.

  “See you both then,” I said.

  “Thank you, Clare,” Ramona said, the sincerity somehow more real with her thick accent.

  “I look forward to it.”

  I watched the two of them, arm in arm, leave and meander to the diner across the street. I continued to spy on them as they sat down in a booth and, facing each other, started to smile, laugh, and talk. Interrupting my covert surveillance from around a pillar, Baskerville batted my ankles with his head.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He blinked up at me as if to ask if I was paying attention.

  “I am,” I said.

  He took the familiar route up to his high sunny perch, but once there, he didn’t go into repose mode, but looked down at me and meowed instead.

  “Okay?” I said.

  He started walking along the top of the ledge, stopping every few steps, and meowing down at me.

  From the ground level, I matched his path. “I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.”

  Baskerville looked at me like I was hopeless and then walked back to his favorite spot in front. He sat and looked at me again, meowing one more time.

  I did not think he could communicate based upon what he’d learned from human conversation, but I thought he was a very in-tune cat. I didn’t know if what he was trying to tell me was what I suddenly seemed to “get,” but something became clear as I looked where the cat had brought my eyes.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and hit Jodie’s contact.

  “Hey, what’d you forget?” she s
aid when she answered.

  “Nothing. You know the pictures that were on leather man’s camera?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Any chance I can take a look at them again?” I said.

  “I’m not sure I’m supposed to pull them out of evidence, but it sounds like you really want to.”

  “I do.”

  “Want to meet me at the station?”

  I looked at Chester and Ramona across the street. They were still smiling. “Actually, I’d like it if you could bring them up to The Rescued Word. Any chance that can happen?”

  “See you in half an hour?”

  “Deal.”

  22

  Chester had been correct. Marion was champing at the bit to get back to work. She enjoyed the job and was unquestionably our best personalization expert. She also really liked to earn money. While I waited for Jodie, I convinced Jimmy that I would never want his daughter back in the store unless I was one hundred percent sure she was safe, and that was true. I didn’t think she was in any danger. In fact, the only person I thought was dangerous was the man who had been killed in the walkway on the day he came in wanting Mirabelle’s typewriter. I didn’t think his killer was interested in harming any of the rest of us. I hoped not.

  Though she said she would bring the pictures, Jodie wasn’t the officer to show up. Instead her partner, Omar, in full uniform, came through the front door with a laptop under his arm.

  “Jodie got busy. She told me I was supposed to show you these pictures, but we aren’t supposed to let anyone else on the force—no, let’s see, she said that we weren’t allowed to let anyone else in the entire ‘expletive’ universe know that I showed them to you.”

  “Secret’s safe with me,” I said.

  “And me,” Marion said from behind the counter where she’d eagerly gotten to work only a few seconds after driving her Jeep to the store. Her father finally released her “from her abominable parental prison.”

  “I didn’t think I’d need to convince either of you,” Omar said as he set his laptop on the counter.