“You think it was all a show?” I said.
“Of course. They staged it, but I have no idea why,” Jodie said.
“Yeah, the fact that Donte jumped in to be the conduit gave it away for me,” Seth said.
“I heard buzzing,” I said.
“We all did. I just didn’t want to say that out loud,” Seth said. “I’m sure it came from something they were in control of, a machine somewhere.”
“Actually, I didn’t hear the buzzing, but yeah, I thought it was iffy when Donte volunteered to be a conduit,” Jodie said. “I will most definitely look into Creighton’s involvement with someone named Eloise MacPherson, but setting up a communication with a police officer was a safe bet, and it was easy to find someone who is dead now but had legal trouble when they were alive. It was sure to impress, unless you didn’t fall for it. I know Creighton didn’t. I didn’t either.”
“Did they know he was coming beforehand?” I asked.
“I didn’t tell them,” she said.
“That’s . . . slightly unsettling.”
Jodie grumbled.
“Why would they do that? Maybe so we’d spread the word about her ‘abilities’?” I said.
“That doesn’t seem quite right, but it’s a possibility. I can’t help thinking they’re setting up something,” Jodie said.
“You think they had something to do with Lloyd’s death?” I said.
“I don’t know. It’s difficult not to suspect them. Hell, it’s difficult not to suspect Creighton a little bit of something even if I don’t want to. Something’s up.”
“I sent you an e-mail with some articles that Howard told Seth and me about at dinner. We ran into him at the diner. Apparently, there was some strife at Lloyd’s company, and that strife might have included Brenda.”
“Your twin?” Jodie said.
“Twin?” Seth said.
“I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but I will. Yeah, that Brenda, I think,” I said.
“I’ll read them right away,” Jodie said.
“No word about Nathan Grimes, huh?” I said.
“No, none,” Jodie said. “I will file a missing person’s report when it’s time. I’ve got some guys working on tracking his phone, but he can’t be a priority until he’s officially missing.”
“I keep calling him and it’s still not going directly to voice mail yet, so I think the phone still has battery life,” I said.
“I do too,” Jodie said.
It was the first time I heard a thread of real concern in her voice.
“But there’s still a chance he’s just being a flake,” she continued when she caught me looking at her.
“I hope so. What did you guys think when Donte said ‘Help’?”
“Part of the act,” Jodie said.
Seth scoffed.
“It didn’t sound like either Eloise or Donte,” I said.
“More trickery, I’m sure,” Jodie said.
I hated to say something I wasn’t one hundred percent sure of, but it needed to be said. “Jodie . . . there’s a chance that voice sounded like Nathan’s.”
At once, we all stopped walking. Jodie and Seth looked at me. I had an urge to keep talking, but I didn’t know what else to say. I knew that we’d only heard that voice briefly, and there was a chance my imagination was taking over my common sense, but I hadn’t lied. To me, the voice had sounded like Nathan’s.
“That’s good to know, Clare,” Jodie said. “I hope you’re mistaken, or something.”
“You’re worried,” Seth said. “I’m not discounting what you heard, but perhaps you wanted to because you’re worried.”
“Maybe, but . . . still.”
“I got you,” Jodie said.
Seth nodded and we resumed walking.
“I think I’ll just have to go back in tomorrow and ask what Sarah was up to. Lots of weirdness, but it might not be important,” Jodie said.
“Or it might,” Seth said. “That was an interesting group of people. I didn’t sense anything murderous, but they all seemed like they were afraid someone might tell the truth about something. Probably the truth about their success. It’s rare that someone is as successful as they brag to be.”
“Except Lloyd maybe. I think he was,” Jodie said.
She’d done some research, had probably seen the articles already.
“He did well?” Seth said.
“Very,” Jodie said. She looked at her watch. “Gotta go. Good night, you two.” She turned and headed back down the hill to her Bronco. “You two behave, now.”
“So, what’d you think of all that?” I asked Seth when Jodie was out of earshot.
“It was kind of laughable, but I appreciated that they didn’t try too hard. No hokey music, no incense. It was the least woo-woo séance I could have expected.”
“The whole thing was weird,” I said as we climbed the stairs up to my front porch.
“It was, but I’m with Jodie—they are up to something. It’s hard to know what, though.”
“Yeah.”
I pushed the door open and signaled for Seth to go in first. I looked down toward the bookshop as I followed behind. All was quiet on Main. I agreed with Jodie and Seth that the whole thing had been a show. Except for one part. That last uttered groan and “Help!” had come from somewhere other than someone’s imagination. I didn’t necessarily think it had come from a disembodied spirit, but it wasn’t something that had been a part of the script.
For whatever reason and even though I’d been startled by the door slamming open, I’d kept my eyes on Sarah before the candles flickered out. The surprise on her face had been real, and it was directed toward Donte and that voice. I thought.
I just might have to stop by the bookstore again myself.
15
“Good grief!” Chester said as he flipped the newspaper down again and looked at me over its top. “Did she have to tell the world all these details? What is wrong with her?”
The “she” and “her” he was talking about was Jodie. As she’d predicted, Nathan’s missing-in-action status had made it to the media, though I had a sense that she was glad about that, because more people would be looking for our missing author. The front-page, top-of-the-fold story was all about Nathan Grimes, his possible disappearance, and his visit to The Rescued Word to create his own book of poetry, a work of art. Chester’s phone had been ringing off the hook since the first papers hit the street at about five that morning. Jodie had obviously answered some questions and supplied lots of details, and I couldn’t argue with Chester that it might have been better to just state that Nathan was in town and some people had become concerned about his whereabouts. Be on the lookout!
Chester had read the article twice, just since I’d come into the shop and as he sat perched on a stool by the counter. Each reading had been fraught with good griefs, oh mys, that womans, and the snapping and rattling of the newspaper itself.
“We won’t be able to keep up today, Clare,” he said. “Call Marion and see if she can help us out. Olympics be damned, we’re going to be swamped and it will be for all the wrong reasons!”
He was probably right about not being able to keep up with the customers; I’d had to excuse my way through the gathering crowd outside the front door just to get in, and it would probably only grow by the time we opened. Everyone wanted to see where Nathan Grimes had been working on a book. Never mind that it wasn’t destined to be one of his horror masterpieces. Even a thin self-published book of poetry by Nathan Grimes was going to be something sought after. But I kind of thought Chester was overreacting.
“Everyone will want to help search for clues to find him; they’ll come in here and ask a bunch of questions and want to look around, but not for paper or pens. Oh, good grief!” Chester said again. “We’ll have to offer tours of the
workshop. Everyone’s going to want to see the press again. I went through this back when I first built it. I built it to use it, not because I thought people would want to look at it. We don’t even know for sure that he’s missing yet! Gaa!”
He made some good points. “Well, of course they want to look at it. Gutenbergs are rare, even replicas,” I said. “We’ll get through it.” I hoped. “To confirm, though, no one really has heard any word about Nathan?”
Chester lowered the paper. “No, none. I called the hotel this morning and they haven’t seen him. I assumed that if the police found him they’d give us a ring. It’s not good news, but we must remain positive and hope for the best.”
“We have to hope that he’s an inconsiderate, arrogant author who doesn’t mind worrying the people who’ve let him use their printing press, but I think it’s almost been long enough that he can be officially listed as a missing person,” I said.
The paper snapped again.
“We’ll see, I suppose. I’ll call Marion.”
“Oh, please, may I look inside that box?” the girl said. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen.
I held the heavy segmented box of typefaces on my forearm, but I moved it to my desk. There were only three people on my current tour of the workshop. The crowds hadn’t been awful, but they’d certainly been curious and had distracted us all from our real work. At one point, Chester wanted to shut down the shop, tell everyone to go away. I told him that we’d be patient for one day, but if the crowds showed up again tomorrow, we’d lock the doors and not let anyone in.
“What font is this?” she asked as I handed her a Z.
“It’s called Midnight Show. See how it looks like something that might be on a vintage poster for a theatrical production?”
“I do,” she said, seemingly in awe of the small piece of type. The Z had two pointy triangle shapes sticking out from each side of the long, angled connecting line. “It’s amazing how just a little difference in the design can change a whole font.” She looked inside the box. “Where did you get these?”
“I believe my grandfather bought them from someone in Virginia, but you can ask him on the way out.”
The girl’s mother (or so I assumed, since they looked so much alike) became curious. She’d been behaving as if she’d only come in because her daughter was interested in printing as well as in being a horror writer one day, but now she looked over the girl’s shoulder.
“You have to put those in one at a time?” she said as she peered through glasses she stuck on her nose.
I pushed up my own glasses. “Yes, onto this print plate.” I reached to the shelf and grabbed a plate. “One at a time.”
“Sounds tedious.”
“It is. It’s also very satisfying to see your efforts printed onto the page,” I said.
“Any chance you have any Epique?” the girl asked.
“Ah, very Victorian. You know your fonts,” I said.
“You have no idea,” her mother said.
“I do have Epique.” I reached and gathered again. “Go ahead and pick one up, but just by the back part, if you can.”
“Look at the detail on this, Mom. Each letter has a hooked line running along next to part of it.”
“How in the world can you get that detail without blobbing the ink?” the mom asked.
“Lots of practice, and some good luck,” I said.
“What font was Nathan Grimes using?” the girl asked.
“I can’t tell,” I said. “It’s his secret for now.”
“But he’s probably dead,” the woman said. “And probably missing a foot if he’s keeping with our latest trend.”
“I doubt it,” I said with a smile to the girl and hopefully a neutral look on my face. “I think we’ll find him soon.”
“Uh-huh, we’ll see, I suppose,” the woman said.
“Oh, I hope so. He writes such perfectly scary stuff,” the girl said.
I was reading everything by her age too, but I wondered whether her mother had paid attention to exactly how perfectly scary Nathan’s stories were and whether the two of them ever discussed some of the scenes.
“Well, come on, sweetheart, I need lunch before we hit the slopes this afternoon.”
The girl looked longingly at the box full of Epique and then at the shelves filled with other boxes of type.
“Feel free to come back anytime,” I said to her. “I might put you to work.”
“Really?” she said.
“Absolutely.”
They and the third person who was with them, the girl’s quiet and disinterested brother, I assumed, turned and left the workshop. I sent my own longing look at the sealed box we’d received with the almost-Bridgnorth type. We’d decided not to open it and look until Nathan was back with us, safe and sound.
The most popular font of the day had been Snakehead, probably for its name, but it was an awesome type, handcrafted-looking letters, something older and not seen much these days. The type box with Snakehead was open on my desk. Since there was a break in the action, I picked it up to put it back on the shelf. I knew where Chester had gotten that box of typefaces: a back alley in a small town in Colorado. He’d had to knock a code on the back of a shut-down newspaper office and meet a kid who could give him the sealed box of typefaces only if Chester gave him money first. Cash. Nothing else would do. The kid took the money and ran, only dropping the box of type before he disappeared from the alley and onto the street. Chester had run after him, but stopped to pick up the box and lost sight of the kid. He’d tried to knock on the back and front doors again, but no one answered.
Or that was the story he told. Chances were pretty good that someone had brought it into the shop one day and Chester had grabbed some money out of the cash register to pay for it.
I stepped from around my desk and looked at the three Hoovens. For the most part our morning visitors had thought they were just a bunch of typewriters on old wooden stands that reminded them of sewing machines. No one behaved as if they knew we had three stupidly expensive typewriter contraptions in the workshop. And that was what they were: contraptions put together with the same idea the Frankenstein monster had been created from: some of this, some of that. I’d named the printing press Frank, and now we had three Frank Jrs. Maybe it was fitting that the author who’d gone missing was a horror writer. I shivered and tried to hold on to the hope we’d find Nathan alive, but that hope was definitely beginning to wane.
I wished for the time it would be appropriate to give the Hoovens to Lloyd’s parents. I wished the machines were out of the shop, and away from my responsibility. I wanted to look at each of them closely, grab my tools, and tighten down a few things. But I didn’t dare touch them. They weren’t mine. At least, I couldn’t think of them as mine.
Had Lloyd been killed in some way because of them? Would I have more readily accepted them if he’d given them to me in person? I sighed.
A murder and a disappearance. It was not a banner week in the small mountain town I called home.
The rush was over, it seemed. A few customers shopped out front, but no requests for press tours sounded as I joined Chester, Adal, and Marion.
“That was fun,” I said.
The three of them, all a bit harried, looked at me like they weren’t sure they’d heard correctly.
“No, really, I enjoyed talking about the press and typewriter repair. I think it was good for business too. Maybe we should publicize tours every now and then?”
“Yay for the Olympics,” Marion said.
Adal tried to look cooperative.
From high atop the front ledge, Baskerville growled.
Chester looked up at the cat and then back at me. “I’ll head to Salt Lake City on those days. I’m sure I can bother Ken every now and then.”
Ken Sanders, rare book dealer i
n Salt Lake City, had become one of Chester’s favorite people to visit. Always a gracious host, Ken had a shop downtown with comfortable seating wherein Chester could relax and ask him all sorts of book questions, and probably make up stories to share, even if Ken could always tell a real story from a fictional one.
I’d bring up my idea again later, once everyone had recovered.
“I guess it’s back to normal unless we get any curious late-afternoon visitors,” I said.
“I have a few orders to fill,” Marion said. Adal had taken over most of her duties in our personalization department, but when she was in the shop, she liked to create her masterpieces. Talk about someone who was good with fonts. Marion’s eye was impeccable, and she could take an order from a customer and turn it into something more than the person ever expected. Adal was good too, but not as good as Marion.
“I’ll work in the back. I might go ahead and set up a print tray just to give things a try. But I won’t open the box. I’ll use something we have,” Adal said.
“Good idea,” I said. “Hey, go ahead and use our Bridgnorth if you want.”
Adal’s mouth pinched and he nodded. Chester and Marion were silent, but I knew they agreed with me. I hoped we’d all just get to be angry at Nathan for being a flake, but as the minutes ticked by, it was becoming more and more difficult to think he was okay.
“I’m going to go see Ramona,” Chester said as he stood from the stool. “And then I might go skiing. I need some time on the slopes.”
“Have fun and tell Ramona we all say hello,” I said.
Once Chester was out of the shop and Adal was in the back, I stepped behind the counter toward Marion and her computer.
“I know you’re busy, but I have a quick request,” I said.
“Sure. I’ve got the rest of the day to work, and these orders won’t take too long. Whatever you need.”
“My computer in the back is terrible and slow. I know yours is better, and you spend lots more time in the Internet world than I ever would. Could you look up a couple of things for me?”
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