Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 05 - The Maltese Manuscript

by Joanne Dobson

  “Well, duh,” Amanda said. We went back for seconds on the bourbon. My brain began to feel extremely…concentrated. The mention of libraries reminded me of overhearing Rachel’s warning to Nellie to shape up or ship out. So I told my companions about that, even though it had nothing to do with anything. I felt so foolish about Denny, I wanted to change the subject.

  Sunnye went up to the bar to order a third round. A husky guy in jeans and a muscle shirt draped an arm around her shoulder. She flashed him a killer smile and snapped her fingers. Trouble bared his fangs. Muscle shirt wimped off. When she returned with the drinks I told them about Peggy Briggs, and how I’d found her car in the field near Elwood Munro’s house. It felt good to get all this stuff off my chest. I drank more bourbon.

  “I don’t understand why I worry so much about Peggy. College students do stupid things all the time. If I let them all get to me, I couldn’t do my job. But Peggy…”

  “I think you over-identify with her, Mom,” Amanda said. “She’s like you were. All that crap you had to go through just to get an education.”

  I frowned at her. Was I so transparent even my daughter could psychoanalyze me?

  “And then,” I continued, evading her remarks, “Paul Henshaw—you know, the bookseller—asked me if I thought Peggy was Munro’s accomplice. She had access to keys, maybe even security codes. But I don’t think—”

  Sunnye jumped in. “Yeah, working at the library does link Peggy to Elwood Munro. But, he’s connected to a lot of people, including those librarians you were just talking about. Even to Dennis O’Hanlon.”

  “Even to you.”

  She gave me a funny look. “Even to me.”

  My mind clouded up even more. Elwood Munro and his bibliomania, I thought, Elwood Munro—his books, his house, his death. Oh, the man did love his books, especially the mystery novels. All those Ross Macdonalds, Mary Roberts Rineharts, S.S. Van Dines. Strange, though, you’d think he would have had some Brits in his collection. Where was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Where was Dorothy L. Sayers? Ruth Rendell? P.D. James? Colin Dexter? My brain was surfing on waves of inebriated brilliance. Where was Miss Marple when you needed her? When you had a body in your own library?

  One of the football players barfed his evening’s beer into a corner. “Damn you,” the bartender bawled. “If you can’t hold it like a man, don’t drink it in my bar.”

  Phew! Time to go.

  We donned our coats. The bartender slammed open a closet door, yanked out a pail and a mop.

  Definitely time to go.

  Halfway out the door, I turned back to Sunnye. There was something I urgently needed to know. “Sunnye? You know what the real question is here?”

  “What?”

  “The real question is—what would Kit Danger do now?”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  We returned to the scene of the crime.

  It was eleven thirty p.m. when I ushered my companions into the building. With the bug-eyed gape of the celebrity spotter, the student worker on the desk recognized Sunnye and her dog. Trouble entered the library with no trouble. In the reference room, a few students more diligent than those we’d run into at Moccio’s hunched over computers. A half-dozen leafed through scholarly journals in Periodicals. Through the glass door of Reference I spotted a trio of students from my FroshHum class passing around a book. Hmm, it looked like a volume from the Masterplots series.

  “Excuse me just a moment,” I said to Sunnye and Amanda. I pushed open the door and headed for the one occupied table. Keith Burrell glanced up and choked on the cold Pop-Tart it was illicit to consume on library premises.

  “Hey, guys,” I greeted my students. “You’re working late.” I plucked the volume from Samantha McCarthy’s hand. “Masterplots, huh? The S volume? This wouldn’t be in lieu of actually reading The Scarlet Letter, now, would it?”

  Frankie Rodriquez was the quickest, and the most glib. “Of course, not, Professor. Simply a preliminary survey of themes and motifs. We wish to approach the text as informed readers.” He could hardly keep the smirk off his face.

  Preliminary survey. Informed readers. Right. The neatly penned words on the open notebook page in front of him read, prison & cemetery = sin & death.

  “You know,” I said, closing the book and setting it on a handy book cart, “I’d really prefer you think for yourselves.”

  Frankie grinned at me. “Sure thing, Professor. If that’s what you think we should do.”

  ***

  The green velvet rope was stretched across the top of the stairs that lead down to the Special Collections division. I walked my fellow sleuths past it and into the deserted corner of Periodicals by the literary theory journals.

  “Okay,” I whispered, “what now?” All that booze had rendered me just a little bit reckless.

  Sunnye sat at the table, made a tent from her fingers, and turned to me with narrowed eyes. She looked as if she were settling in for a prolonged planning session. God help me, I realized with a momentary spurt of clarity, I’d been reduced to functioning as a sidekick to Kit Danger. “Where was the body?” she asked.

  “In the Special Collections closed stacks, but we can’t get there. Special Collections shuts down at five.”

  “Hmm,” she mused. “There might be a way. And the library itself? How late does it stay open?” Sunnye asked.

  “Midnight, except during finals, when students have access round the clock.”

  “Are there finals this week?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” She checked her watch. “Twenty minutes until midnight. Where can we hide?”

  I started, shocked into sobriety. “Hide! My God, Sunnye, what are you up to? You want to get me fired?”

  Trouble was at her side. She reached down and ran a hand over his muscular neck. “I thought you asked me what Kit Danger would do, Karen. I’ll tell you what she’d do. She’d hang around this place until she had an opportunity to investigate the murder scene. She’d search through whatever library records she could get her hands on, especially in Special Collections. And—”

  “We can’t do that! It’s against the law!”

  “Of course it is. Criminal trespass. And I’m good at it.” Sunnye crossed her arms over her chest and chewed her upper lip. She had strong, white, efficient-looking teeth. “You really don’t have a choice, Karen, because now that you’ve got me in here, I’m going to investigate. I’m under suspicion of murder, and I have a right to exonerate myself.” Her hard dark eyes looked straight into mine. “Unless, of course, you’re planning to turn me in.”

  “Sunnye!” I hissed the word. “Don’t do this to me! I could lose my job!”

  But Amanda was wide-eyed. “We’re going in, aren’t we?” She practically buzzed with excitement.

  I swiveled my head toward her. “You’re not going anywhere, young lady!”

  Her face went blank. “Mother, you keep forgetting that I’m an adult now. If we can help Sunnye clear herself, we have a moral obligation. And, Mom…this may not be the best time to tell you…but…I want to work in criminal investigation.” She glanced down at her interlaced fingers. “I’ve signed up to take the state police entrance exam. I want to do what Charlie does, Mom. I want to do what Sunnye—well, what Kit Danger—does. And…tonight…this would give me some hands-on experience with a pro.”

  “Amanda, no!” I stared at her in horror. I’d sensed a growing distance between us lately as I’d blithely blabbered on and on about graduate school applications, and she’d become increasingly close-mouthed about her future. I should have picked up on it sooner. My worst fears had been realized; my daughter wanted to be a cop. That’s what I got for sleeping with police investigators. That’s what I got for consorting with crime writers. I’d put Amanda in harm’s way.

  For one wild moment I wished fervently that she were a toddler again. Then I could shake a finger at her: no, no, no, no, no. Instead, powerlessly, I snipped, “Besides, Sunnye’s not a pro. She’s
a novelist.”

  “Whatever,” Amanda said. Her lips were straight, her clear hazel eyes focused on mine. She’d left her third bourbon untouched on Moccio’s gunky table. “I am very serious about this. I’m not going back to school after graduation. Not now. Maybe not ever. Why does everything have to be about education, education, education? Isn’t there a real world out there?”

  My chest was so tight, I could hardly breathe. If my daughter insisted on joining Sunnye in this investigation, I had no choice but to stay with her. To hang with her, as the kids would put it.

  And, besides, if I was at her side during this madcap scheme, at least I could protect her—if it came to that. Ridiculous, I knew; what danger could threaten anyone in a library, even after midnight?

  But then, as if it were spoken aloud in an actual voice, the thought came to me: Look what happened to Elwood Munro.

  I took a sidelong glance at my daughter’s adamant expression and sighed. “Follow me,” I said.

  We climbed the worn marble staircase that led to the literature stacks on the third floor. “Cool,” Amanda said, as we turned a corner into the shadowy, vaulted chamber in which American literature is housed. “This is like the best part of a bad movie. But where’s the gibbering scholar? Where’s his hunchback henchman?”

  “The gibbering scholars are all safely tucked into their tenured little beds with volumes of Foucault where they belong,” I retorted. The clanking of a security implement belt caused me to gasp. “Not dodging security guards in libraries. Watch out, here he comes!”

  We ducked into a darkened study alcove. The guard strode by us, flicking off light switches as he passed each rank of books. In his wake, the room’s dim illumination assumed an eerie red glow from the EXIT signs.

  “He’s getting ready to close the place down,” I whispered. My head was spinning.

  “Good,” Sunnye replied. She placed a hand on my arm. “Now, don’t worry, Karen. I know what I’m doing. Trust me. I can get us in and out of the closed stacks without tipping anyone off. Compared to the Paris sewers, this is a piece of cake.”

  “Yeah?” I pondered the thought for a moment. In for a penny, in for a pound. “And the Special Collections office, too?”

  “No problem. Now, tell me, you said you stumbled across a bad scene between two librarians…?”

  “Rachel and Nellie. Rachel’s the professional librarian. Nellie works the desk.”

  Sunnye waved the distinction away. “What if one of them committed this homicide?”

  “Couldn’t be,” I objected automatically. “They’re librarians.” Then I thought about it: Librarians work very hard; they’re poorly paid. It was possible, I supposed, that one of them might have at least colluded with Elwood Munro.

  Suddenly Rachel’s BMW came to mind. And all those valuable editions passing through her hands, day after day.

  Books are designed for maximum portability, easy to slip into a briefcase—or even a pocket—at the end of a day. Easy to pass on to an obsessed collector for a monetary consideration.

  Easy, in Rachel’s position, to leave a door unlocked, keys in full view, the alarm system turned off. Easy.

  “Rachel has a new BMW,” I said.

  “So do I,” Sunnye replied. “What’s your point?”

  “Her salary’s probably not much more than fifty thousand a year, and the cost of living around here is astronomical.”

  “Oh. Point taken. Let’s search her office first.”

  “I like Rachel,” I protested. But Sunnye was already leading the way to a remote corner of the AmLit stacks and through a short corridor to a narrow arched doorway I’d never even known was there.

  “Aha! I thought I’d find a door here. These are the stairs Elly took when we went into the restricted area. It’s some kind of service staircase from before elevators. They’re closed to the general public, but library workers use them all the time. Elly said the doors were alarmed if you opened them from the outside, but not from the inside. Sooo…”

  “We’re on the outside,” I said. Not unreasonably, I thought.

  “But maybe not for long. Look around. See any heating vents?”

  “Here.” Amanda pointed to a large vent at floor level. It was covered with medieval-looking black grille work.

  “Hmm,” Sunnye said. “I could probably squeeze in there.”

  “Jesus, Sunnye!” That was me.

  “Let me do it.” That was Amanda.

  “No!” Me again.

  “Well, you’re skinnier than I am. You feel up to it?” Sunnye.

  “Sure.” Amanda was grinning like a lunatic.

  “Please, Amanda, don’t,” I pleaded. “You’ve been so sick.”

  “It’s not going to hurt her, Karen. We’ll unscrew this grate from the wall and she’ll go in. I’ve got the tools. I’ve even got a dust mask. All she has to do is slide through until she comes to an opening on the other side of the wall. Then she can push out the grate, and, voila, she’s inside. It’s easy.”

  It took a half-hour. It took forever. Sunnye sat at a study carrel. I paced back and forth in the pinkish gloom. Then the doorknob turned, and we were in. Trouble led the way. We crept down the narrow staircase. The steps were stone, and felt slick and worn beneath our feet. Then Sunnye pushed open a door, and we entered directly into the prohibited space of the dimly illuminated closed stacks.

  ***

  Row after row of tall shelves stretched back into the shadows, seemingly into infinity. I had a sudden eerie sense of disconnection from the present, as if we had somehow escaped the confines of time and matter and entered simultaneously into all the worlds pressed in ink and bound into these volumes, as if we had penetrated the collective consciousness of brains long since reduced to scattered molecules of insensate matter.

  “Where’s the librarian’s office?” Sunnye asked.

  Her voice slammed me back into the present, and I scrutinized the darkness. “I’m disoriented. Where are we? East? West?” It was only the second time I’d been in the closed stacks. The big fluorescent tubes that lit them during the day were turned off, but every twenty feet or so a naked sixty-watt bulb cast a faint illumination. Then my eyes caught the distant red glow of another Exit sign. “If we make our way toward that Exit light, I bet we’ll find it. There’s a door leading from the stacks directly into Rachel’s office.”

  We crept through the tortuous aisles of books, then Sunnye opened the door to the curator’s office, turned on a desk lamp, and started issuing orders. “Amanda,” she directed, as she booted up Rachel’s computer, “you take those file cabinets. Karen, the desk. A systematic search should give us some idea if anything fishy is going on with these librarians.”

  The desk was set up against the wall and strewn with scrawled-over printouts and pink telephone-message slips. A rank of plastic file holders lined its back edge, stuffed with directories, manuals, catalogs, manila folders and envelopes. How Rachel could function amid such disorder was incomprehensible to me. “What am I looking for?” I asked helplessly.

  “A signed confession saying ‘I killed Elwood Munro’ would be good. If that doesn’t jump out at you, just use your brain. Check for something that’s not where it’s supposed to be, something that doesn’t belong where it is. Whatever.” Sunnye was distracted by her futile attempts to access Rachel’s computer files. “Now, what would a librarian’s password be?”

  “Due date,” I suggested.

  Keys clicked. “Nope.”

  “Late fine?”

  More clicking. “Nope.”

  “Book.” I was reaching now.

  She tapped the keys. “Bingo,” she said. “I’m in.”

  “You’re kidding?” I stared at her. Sunnye clicked “My Documents” on the virtual desktop and began scrolling.

  I shrugged and turned to the actual desktop. A systematic search, huh? I could do that. Beginning at the left, I plucked out tightly wedged folders from the desk racks, sorted through their contents: a
cquisitions; deaccessions; cataloging; pre-cataloging; systems management; personnel. Boring.

  Next came rare book and manuscript catalogs. I leafed through them. Whew! The prices! Book collecting had become a high-end business, indeed. An anonymous Treatise on the Police of London, By a Magistrate. First American Edition, 1798. $1,000. An perfect American first edition of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet in original wrappers. $17,500. And, oh my God, a mint copy of the first edition of The Maltese Falcon. $35,000! “Lookit this, guys,” I exclaimed. They ooohed and ahhhed.

  The computer manuals were next, not nearly so interesting. I opened the closest. Incomprehensible. I shook each one. Nothing hidden between the leaves.

  Then I tackled a series of battered interdepartmental mailing envelopes. The nearest and fattest was wedged tightly in its own plastic niche. I eased it out and unwound the string closure: a ream of paper bound by wide rubber bands. The cover sheet identified the document as Systems Management Operational Draft. Great. More computer gobblety-gook. I set it aside and reached for the next envelope. Then my eyes, even in the dim light, noted an anomaly in the thick systems management draft. Whereas the cover sheet was the bright white of standard computer paper, the pages themselves were yellowed at the edges. Hmm. I edged the thick document over closer to the desk lamp and began to remove the rubber bands.

  Sunnye glanced up from the computer monitor. “You got something?”

  “Probably not.” But even to me the attempt at nonchalance was unconvincing.

  Amanda abandoned her file cabinet. “What is it, Mom?” She peered over my shoulder.

  I pulled off the second rubber band. The cover sheet fell away. Underneath, a thick old-fashioned typescript tied in off-white cotton ribbon. The yellowed page was densely typed on an old-fashioned manual typewriter, with several cross outs and a few handwritten corrections. The title read “The Maltese Falcon.”

  “Jee-zus Christ,” Sunnye whispered. “Will ya look at that!”

  “So, it wasn’t Munro, after all,” I exclaimed. “She’s the one who took it!”