Lost Books and Old Bones

by Paige Shelton

  We climbed down another flight of stairs, these steps more rutted with wear than the others, and took the short hall back to the oversized and ornate red door. On the way we passed a small kitchenette and the toilet before we came upon this door that hid the secrets.

  It hadn’t been long into my relationship with Tom that Edwin gave me permission to tell him about the warehouse. My landlords, Elias and Aggie, had also been invited in. For something that was such a big secret, a legend even, Edwin hadn’t hesitated to trust my judgment regarding who could be included in our small inner circle.

  And even with the warnings about Tom and his love-’em-and-leave-’em ways, and my only knowing Elias and Aggie a short time, I hadn’t hesitated to trust them. So far my trust hadn’t been misplaced. I’d tried to quit worrying it might happen with Tom, that he’d “leave-’em” me, but every once in a while I’d look at my pub owner, become flummoxed by his cobalt eyes and the way he smiled at me, and think that somehow the universe wouldn’t want me to have him all to myself. It was best not to dwell on those worries.

  I put the oversized blue skeleton key into the lock and turned three times to the left, unlatching the dead bolts inside.

  Because it was the rule, once we were inside and after I flipped on the overhead lights, I relocked the door.

  “Cold,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “A wee bit like a dungeon, but in the best way possible.”

  “Yep.” I smiled. I loved my dungeon.

  Shelves lined the walls and, as on the light side, things were messy. However, I had a good grip on what was on most of the shelves. I’d inventoried, catalogued, preserved, and filed more over the last year than I had in all the years I’d worked at the museum in Wichita. The warehouse would always be Edwin’s, but it was mine too now.

  “Over there,” I nodded as I checked my desk for messages and found one from Rosie, “are three shelves I haven’t done a thing with yet because I’ve been saving the hard parts for last and these seemed the most packed. If there are scalpels in here, they must be on one of those shelves. Be careful, though, there are some sharp points and edges, and if there really are scalpels, they might still be sharp enough to do damage.”

  I looked closely at the message. It was from earlier today after I’d left the shop, and said: Birk needs you, Delaney. He says it’s life and death, but you know Birk.

  I could imagine Rosie’s eye-roll. The “Birk” she was referring to was a friend of Edwin’s. I’d done some research for him, and though Edwin thought Birk took advantage of my skills too often, I’d come to enjoy his flamboyance and general outlook on life. He liked to have, to be, and to throw himself right into the middle of “fun.” I’d call him first thing in the morning.

  Tom approached a shelf and moved a few large items, uncovering a small wooden chest on the end of one of the shelves.

  “Seen this before?” he asked.

  “I haven’t looked inside it yet,” I said.

  I didn’t remember even noticing the small chest, but there’d been so much to explore that I might have just forgotten about it.

  “Gold and doubloons inside this one, you think?” he asked as he carried it to my worktable. I also had an old desk that, true to the ad that I’d answered for the job, had seen the likes of Scottish kings and queens. I hadn’t become cavalier about working atop something with such history, but I wasn’t scared of it anymore. I’d acquired a roll of white newsprint and, as one would with a doctor’s exam table, I changed the paper frequently.

  However, Tom was still wary of the desk, so much so that he’d cut a slightly larger path than normal around it. I watched him with the box and smiled at the fact that he’d never even consider setting it on the desk.

  “Gold and doubloons are distinct possibilities,” I said.

  I was curious enough to join him at the worktable.

  There were sliding latches on three sides of the box. Two moved easily, but we had to use a small screwdriver to budge the last one. With one raised eyebrow and a conspiratorial smile that almost did me in, Tom raised the lid.

  “How disappointing,” he said as we looked at the empty space inside.

  “A nontreasure treasure chest,” I said.

  “It’s a lovely wee box, though.”

  “It is.”

  I was glad there were no gold pieces inside the chest. Because of the combined natures of my boss and the warehouse itself, chances weren’t nil that there might be gold pieces nearby, particularly hidden in a small treasure chest.

  Edwin had tried to allay my concerns about the value of his collections, but there was no escaping my upbringing. He’d always had money. I’d never been poor, but Kansas farm girls were taught more about sticking to a budget and using all parts of everything than Edwin ever had been. There was always something intimidating, magical but definitely intimidating, about the bigger discoveries.

  We closed and relocked the box and then Tom put it back on the shelf before we resumed searching for scalpels. We continued to find interesting items, like a boot fastener, a plug-in egg scrambler, and, most surprising to me, a map of Arizona that, according to its accompanying text, might actually lead one to the real Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine.

  I tried to call on my bookish voices, that trick of my intuition that recycled lines from books I’d read and spoke to me sometimes when I was at a loss or needed to pay attention to something my conscious self wasn’t aware of. Books usually had to be in the general vicinity for the bookish voices to pipe up, and there were plenty of books close by. However, my bookish voices had been communicating with me less and less at the bookshop. I’d worked so hard to keep them under control that they’d come close to muting themselves, become more like silent coworkers that just kept their heads down and their focus on their own jobs.

  About half an hour later, just as a wave of tired came over me, Tom moved an old kerosene lamp and said, “Dr. Robert Knox was the doctor, right?” He held up a small chrome container in one hand and the brown leather case it had come out of in his other hand. “This was actually under the treasure chest, but I just got to it. There were other things in the way.”

  “Yes, Dr. Knox,” I said as I followed him back to the worktable.

  Gently, Tom set the two things on the table.

  “I’m not qualified to touch those,” he said. “Have at it.”

  The chrome container was small, only about three inches wide by four inches high. Its hinged lid made me think of Zippo lighters, and a memory of sitting on my long-gone grandfather’s lap flashed in my mind. He’d light a cigarette with a Zippo, click it shut, and put it in the pocket on his shirt. I could still remember the leftover tangy smell.

  At first, the engraved stamp on the container was the most interesting part of it. Written in an old cursive font, it said: Dr. Robert Knox, Edinburgh Medical School.

  “It doesn’t look big enough tae hold scalpels inside it,” Tom said.

  “They were different back then,” I said. “More like a barber’s straight-edge razor.”

  “They folded over, hinged?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that … Delaney, just sitting on a shelf in Edwin’s warehouse?” Tom said.

  “I know, Tom, it’s crazy the stuff that’s in here. But, at the moment it seems more than possible.”

  “Are we going tae have a look?” Tom asked.

  I nodded and grabbed a pair of latex gloves from a box under the worktable. After I slipped them on I pulled back on the chrome hinged lid. Packed inside like sardines were what I thought were ivory handles.

  I slipped out one of them and then unfolded it.

  “A scalpel, or maybe it was called a lancet,” I said as I placed it back on the table.

  “That belonged tae the man who bought corpses of people who were murdered?” Tom said as he shook his head.

  “It appears that way. I’ll have to do some research to confirm.”

  “That’s unbelievable,” Tom said.
<
br />   “I know. I’ve felt that way a few times since I’ve been here,” I said.

  “You have an interesting job, love,” Tom said.

  I smiled at the comment and the term of endearment. I was so taken with the guy in the kilt that I almost thought his words were more interesting than the historically significant scalpels. That was not a reasonable opinion for someone in my position, or something a girl-power girl was all about, but there it was.

  “I need to get these in a protective bag before we go,” I said. “It won’t take long.”

  Tom watched as I put the leather case into one bag made for preservation and safekeeping, and the chrome case, filled with more scalpels, into another. Then I put the scalpel that I’d pulled out for inspection into its own bag.

  “Grab that chest again. We’ll put all of the separate bags in it and then the whole thing into a drawer on my desk,” I said.

  I wouldn’t take them with me, because the chances of something going wrong increased the farther they were from the place in which they’d been hiding for who knew how many years. I debated staying in the warehouse overnight—I knew Tom would stay with me. But I also knew that Edwin would think our staying was unnecessary.

  I wasn’t the only one to double-check the lock on the warehouse door, however. Tom watched as I turned the skeleton key to the right three times, and then he tested the knob after I did. We both triple-checked the lock on the shop’s front door.

  “Should we call Edwin?” Tom asked as we stood outside in the cold.

  “No, he said that only life and death was urgent enough for middle-of-the-night wake-up calls.” We’d had a few of those, but I still wondered, were scalpels presumably used by Dr. Robert Knox close enough to life and death? I decided they weren’t.

  “Your place or mine?” Tom asked as we started the walk up the short hill to his car.

  I was stunned and happy about the discovery we’d made. I was also distracted, wondering if I really had done the right thing by leaving the scalpels behind, but the outside air and the proposition cleared my mind. I made a big deal of eyeing the kilt. “Yours is closer.”

  Tom laughed, though I could still hear some of his own concern. “Aye, it is. Let’s go then.”

  FOUR

  “Extra strong,” Tom said as he handed me a cup of coffee. “Just the way I think we both need it today.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I sent him a tired smile as I took the mug. He looked tired too, but his hair was perfectly messy. I resumed my explorations out the front window of his small blue house by the sea as he turned to go back into the kitchen. His breakfast specialty was omelets, and he’d already cracked the eggs.

  I sat in my favorite—in the entire universe, probably—chair and let the sea’s waves and foam, both on the mellow side this morning, hypnotize me. I’d already left a message for Edwin, and I had a busy day ahead at the bookshop, so a few moments of contemplation in Tom’s chair before breakfast was the start I needed.

  I’d thought about texting or calling Rena just to see if she and Sophie were doing all right, but I hadn’t done either yet. I’d wait until later in the morning. Though I’d gotten some sleep, the previous evening’s events had been playing over and over in my mind all night long. A lot had happened—at the pub and at the bookshop. I had a busy day of follow-up ahead.

  It suddenly looked like that busy day was going to begin earlier than I thought. Before I could take a second sip of the coffee, my cell phone rang and buzzed from the bag I’d hung over a hook by the front door.

  Tom grabbed the bag and handed it to me just as I managed my way out of the chair.

  “Hello,” I answered the bookshop’s number. It was usually Rosie calling, but not this time.

  “It’s me,” Hamlet said, his voice too high and rushed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s a problem at the bookshop, but Rosie, Edwin, and I are fine,” Hamlet said.

  “Hector, Regg?” The dog went home with Rosie every night but belonged to all of us, and Regg was Rosie’s boyfriend.

  “Regg is on holiday in Australia, remember? Hector’s fine too. I … I think it’s just best if you come in. This isn’t easy over the phone.”

  “I’ll be right there.” I disconnected the call.

  Tom was already gathering my things and his car keys.

  *

  “This is not good,” I said as Tom turned onto Grassmarket Square.

  Four police cars, their lights blazing, and an ambulance were crammed together in front of the bookshop.

  “Hamlet said everyone at the shop was fine,” Tom said.

  “Something’s certainly not right.”

  Tom parked as close as he could without getting in the way of the emergency vehicles’ expected routes, and we hurried toward the shop.

  A police officer, dressed in white crime scene coveralls and with a sour expression on his face, stood outside the door and stopped us.

  “Sorry, not open today,” he said.

  “I work here,” I said.

  “Are ye Delaney?” the officer said.

  “Yes.”

  The officer sent Tom a look, but then let us both inside.

  There were no police officers or EMTs in the shop. Edwin, Rosie, Hamlet, and Hector were all there, but they seemed unharmed as they stood together by the back corner table. Obviously upset in varying degrees, but not visibly hurt.

  “Oh, Delaney, it’s sae awful,” Rosie said when she saw us hurrying to them. “Sae, sae awful.” She’d been crying. She held Hector, who leaned into her and looked at me with hopeful eyes. He wanted someone to fix whatever was so wrong.

  Edwin stood behind Rosie and put his hand on her shoulder as he grimly nodded for me and Tom to take a seat. Hamlet, who was already sitting, looked at me with wide, scared eyes. When I sat too, Hector squirmed himself away from Rosie and into my lap. Tom sat next to me, closer than normal.

  “Delaney,” Edwin began. “Hamlet and Rosie came in early this morning. They arrived at the same time and became alarmed when the front door was ajar.”

  Tom and I shared a look, but we didn’t interrupt Edwin’s story.

  Edwin continued. “They called the police, but then they both came inside.” He paused. “The shop was fine, over here, but then they moved over tae the other side and found that things weren’t so fine over there.”

  Hector whined as he must have noticed me become tenser. Absently, I patted his head.

  “Over there,” Edwin nodded, “they found the window in the kitchen had been broken.”

  “Was the grate still over it?” I interjected with the first thought that came to my mind.

  “Aye, but that led them to wonder further what had happened to the window, so they went back out to explore the close.”

  “The alley,” Hamlet interpreted.

  Hamlet had been my interpreter since the first day I’d come to the bookshop. When something distinctly Scottish came up or someone, mostly Rosie and my landlord Elias, used a Scots word, Hamlet would jump in and clarify. I knew what a close was, though. In fact, as Hamlet had offered his help this time, my mind had gone back to that first day, when he’d been the one to greet me in the shop. We’d gathered coffee and tea in the kitchen and he’d first told me about closes, their names, and the stories and histories that went with them.

  I nodded and sent him a quick smile, but it was clear that he was just as rattled as Rosie. Rosie sniffed and grabbed a tissue from the box on the table as the tears began to flow down her cheeks again.

  “What did they, you, find?” I asked.

  “Tragically, they came upon a dead body,” Edwin said.

  Some words changed everything forever.

  “Oh no,” I said. Hector snuggled closer. I swallowed hard. “Who?”

  “At first we thought it was a stranger, but the police retrieved some identification and it looks tae be someone you might possibly know. You’ve become friends with some student
s at the medical school. We all met the women who brought in the books, but only briefly,” Edwin said.

  I could barely breathe. “Sophie or Rena?”

  “No, it’s a lass whose identification said her name was Mallory Clacher. Did you know her?”

  “I met a woman named Mallory last night, but I didn’t catch her last name.” I swallowed hard. “Bleached blond hair?”

  “Aye,” Rosie said as Hamlet nodded.

  I nodded and swallowed again as my hands got ice-cold and I began to shake. “I was with her last night, or at least I’m guessing that was her. I’d have to see her to confirm, but I think so.”

  “Lass, I’m so sorry,” Edwin said.

  I looked at Tom and then back at Edwin. “Where are the other officers? I, we, need to tell them about last night. Or should we tell the one at the door?”

  Tom nodded and took the hand that wasn’t on Hector.

  Tom said, “We were here last night too, Edwin.”

  Edwin opened his mouth to speak again, but I jumped in. “We came to search for something. We found things that we put in the desk drawer. I’ll give you and the police all the details. But I’m sure we both double-checked all the locks.”

  “The front door was just open?” Tom asked Rosie.

  “Aye,” Rosie said.

  “Any sign of a breakin?” Tom asked.

  “No,” Rosie said. “That’s why Hamlet and I thought it okay tae come inside. I was the last one oot yesterday and I thought meebe I’d left it open, or meebe Delaney or Edwin was inside already.”

  “We checked the locks,” I said as I looked at Tom. “We checked them all more than once.”

  Tom nodded. “We did.”

  “I have no doubt,” Edwin said.

  But how could he not doubt what Tom and I were saying? I was as sure as I could be that we’d confirmed that the shop and the contents inside it were secure, and I still doubted.

  “Delaney, Tom, the door was open but there was no sign that anything had been taken from inside. No damage to anything,” Edwin continued. “Other than the window, and that looked to be broken in from outside.”