The Bookwoman's Last Fling

by John Dunning

  His hands trembled and I waited while he got control of himself. Softly I said, “This really doesn’t look like it’s gonna work out, does it?”

  “Easy for you to say, you’ve already been paid. What the hell are the ethics in that?”

  But then he began to back out of his rage; I could actually see it leaving him, like the steam rising off one of the horses on a chilly fall morning. The moment passed; he shook his head at the floor and said, “Never mind me. I don’t mean what I say.”

  “Then why do you say it?”

  “I’m just pissed over losing those books. Go on, ask your questions.”

  “So the missing books were first noticed when? A couple of years ago?”

  “Yeah,” he said sullenly.

  “Who first noticed it?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I’m sorry, you don’t remember?”

  “Goddammit, that’s what I said.”

  “Why’d it take you this long to start an inquiry?”

  “Mr. Geiger’s decision.”

  We looked at each other.

  “Mr. Geiger had his own way of doing things. Me, I might have done it differently.”

  “Okay then, back to the brothers,” I said. “Cameron’s a jerk. What about the other two?”

  “Damon races at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park.”

  “Until he showed up here, you mean.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

  “Hollywood Park, Santa Anita…those are pretty classy racetracks.”

  “He trains for other people. Some of his clients have money, but that doesn’t mean he knows anything.”

  “Sounds like you two don’t get along.”

  “It’s a dicey arrangement. That’s what we have.”

  “I couldn’t help overhearing you talking out on the porch and in the other room. Sounded really dicey, what I heard of it.”

  “The man drives me crazy. But for now we’ve got to work together.”

  “On what?”

  “We both want to take some of these horses racing. Jesus, what’s this got to do with anything?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Look, a racehorse only has a certain amount of time to do whatever he’s gonna do. They’ll never be three years old again, and one or two of ours would have excellent chances in the three-year-old races at Santa Anita this winter, if we can ever get these people to agree on anything.”

  “So you’re trying to work with Damon.” I looked at my notes. “And the other one?”

  “Baxter. Crazy as hell, hears voices, talks to the gatepost. I think Bax could have been a decent horseman if he wasn’t nutty as a fruitcake. But I hear he gets along. He’s been racing at good second-rate tracks…Hot Springs…Omaha when it was still going…Denver in the old days. Now he’s trying to make inroads at the big California tracks as well.”

  “So,” I said at last: “Who do you think did this and why?”

  “Cameron, of course,” he said at once. “He’s always been a two-bit buck chaser.”

  “But you have nothing solid to base that on, right? So far it’s just your suspicion.”

  “If you get to know him you’ll understand.”

  “How did they get along with their mother?”

  “If you mean Candice, she was their stepmother. Mr. Geiger was married before, long ago. He had the three boys with her.”

  “What happened to the first wife?”

  “She died years ago.”

  “Of what?”

  “She had an accident. Christ, how can that possibly be important?”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “Her car rolled over…went into a lagoon and she drowned.”

  I made a lot of notes. He was starting to squirm when I said, “Tell me more about her life and death.”

  “Tell you what for God’s sake? Look, this was years before Mr. Geiger met Candice.”

  “Then tell me about Sharon,” I said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What’s she like? Where does she live?”

  “What’s she like? Sharon is…”

  I waited, determined to wait him out if it took all day.

  “She looks a lot like her mother,” he said at last, as if that told me everything, and I had a short, sharp vision of another young woman who looked a lot like her mother, a fleeting thought of the Rigbys of North Bend. Everything goes around; everything comes around. When I looked up at him, he said, “Put Sharon in that white dress and shoot her picture and you’d swear it was Candice, thirty years ago.”

  I cleared my head. “What does Sharon do?”

  “She has a horse rescue farm.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She takes in horses that have been treated badly.”

  “And does what with them?”

  “She heals them. She’s got the most amazing hands. Healing hands…I don’t know how else to describe it. I know you think I’m as crazy as Bax now.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “You were thinking it.”

  “It’s not polite to go around telling people what they think, Mr. Willis.”

  “All I’m saying is, I’ve seen Sharon heal horses anybody else would give up on.”

  “Do you like her?”

  “That’s a strange question. Why wouldn’t I like her?”

  “Doesn’t sound as if you care much for the brothers.”

  “Sharon is a far different person than those three…”

  “Those three what?”

  “I was about to say something unwise. It doesn’t matter whether I like them or not.”

  “But you do like Sharon.”

  “Sure. Everybody does.”

  “How was she with her father?”

  He hesitated, just long enough. “So apparently everybody didn’t love Sharon,” I said.

  “You sure read a lot into small things.”

  “I used to do that for a living. Tell me why I’m wrong.”

  I didn’t speak then for the longest time. I walked around the room again but the room was cold: the room couldn’t speak, and even if it could I didn’t think it would tell me any more than I was getting from Willis. He said nothing this time and another full minute passed.

  “Why am I wrong, Mr. Willis?”

  “I was just an employee here. I didn’t tell Mr. Geiger what to do.”

  “But he’s gone now. No reason for us not to talk, right? Did he have trouble remembering?…comprehending?”

  “Occasionally, yes,” he admitted, surprising me. “Later in life, especially in the last year. But the next day he’d be fine again. When he was okay, he could remember everything that ever happened to him.”

  Suddenly I asked, “Why does Sharon think Mrs. Geiger may have been murdered?”

  “It was Baxter,” he said at once. “That crazy bastard, what can I say about someone like that? We were standing alone in the serving line at her funeral, just him and me, and out of the blue he says, ‘Which one of us do you think killed her?’ I looked over his shoulder and there was Sharon watching us.”

  “Did she hear what Baxter said?”

  “Sure she did, she was right on top of us. She got white as a ghost, then turned and walked away fast.”

  “How old was she then?”

  “Eleven, I think. How old do you have to be to understand something like that? What she didn’t know then was how crazy her damn-fool brother was. Little girls tend to believe that kind of thing, don’t they, when it’s said by an adult with a straight face?”

  “So in addition to finding out about the books, you want me to track down a killer, twenty years later.”

  “No, I didn’t say that.”

  “I’m sorry, I thought you did say that.”

  “Listen and get this straight. Your job is to find out about those books.”

  “Then why bring the question of Candice’s death into it?”

&nb
sp; “It’s gonna come up, that’s all. I want you to be ready for it.”

  “Ready in what way? What does that mean?”

  “Ready to deflect it.” He tried to wave me off. “Just move past it. I want you to know that it’s the raving of a lunatic. If Sharon brings it up…”

  “Brush it off.”

  “Exactly. You just pin down those books I’ll be happy.”

  Maybe happiness isn’t to be had, I thought. Maybe the books were sold and resold, sold again and again so long ago that there’s no trail to be found anywhere. And murder, once it’s been put on the table, can’t simply be stuffed in a bottle and forgotten. There were still dozens of questions to be asked, but it was time for a different perspective on it.

  “Where can I find Sharon?”

  “What for?”

  “I’ll need to talk to her…to all of them at some point.”

  “Does this mean you’re finished with me?”

  I shook my head. Not by a long shot.

  “Mr. Willis?”

  “This has nothing to do with Sharon’s books. Let’s keep focused here.”

  “Sharon’s books?” I blinked. “What books does Sharon have?”

  “When Candice died, she left Sharon half her books. Mr. Geiger got the rest.”

  “Ah,” I said. “When were you planning to tell me that, Mr. Willis?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with the job you’re here for.”

  “It’s good to know you think that. But I’d like to see her anyway.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I stared him down.

  “Screw it, if you’ve got to, here, take my truck. She lives on thirty acres down the road at the edge of the ranch. I’ll wait here till you’re done.”

  I drove down the muddy road and the question I’d had up in Geiger’s book room was still with me. Why steal a $700 Oz book when a Pinocchio worth at least $65,000 could be lifted as easily? What kind of thief would do that?

  4

  The rain had stopped and the thick clouds in the east were pale orange now. I splashed over the wet road in Willis’s truck and soon I saw a grove of trees and a house; beyond that a barn and a fenced field, a small group of paddocks, another barn, and some animals. I saw two tiny goats and three dogs, a pheasant, a flock of chickens, some ducks, a donkey, and perhaps fifteen horses. The number of horses grew as I came closer until I counted eighteen in the big field and another half dozen in individual pens or corrals at the side of the barn. I pulled up at the edge of the house, stopped the truck, and got out. The three dogs, goldens, came running. One barked menacingly but I got down to one knee and he turned to mush, rolling over on his back in the mud, wagging his tail and begging for a belly scratch.

  I got up and walked around the house. It looked deserted in the gray morning, but then I heard the unmistakable growl of a tractor. I stood at the edge of the porch and watched as she inched it out of the barn. It was a small tractor with a flatbed loaded three high and four across with bales of hay. I was standing about fifty yards away and she missed me in her concentration. The two goats stood up and pranced on their hind legs, actually danced a jig in front of her tractor. “C’mon, guys, get out of there,” she yelled clearly over the motor noise. She jerked forward and they moved aside; the tractor turned into the road and she saw me suddenly and killed the motor.

  “Hey.” Her voice wasn’t challenging but it wasn’t overly warm either. She sat forward on the seat, her long-sleeved shirt rolled up to the elbows, a perfect picture of a working farm gal. She was in her early thirties, I guessed; blond, and probably years younger than her half brothers. I stepped out into the yard and said, “I take it you’re Sharon,” and she nodded slightly, still uncommitted. I told her my name as her eyes took in the truck behind me. “Is Junior here?”

  I shook my head and told her he had loaned me the truck. I started across the yard.

  “So what’s this about?”

  “I’d like to talk to you for a while, if you’ve got the time.”

  “How long’s a while?”

  “Depends on what you say.”

  “Well, it’ll have to be later if it’s something deep. I’m getting a late start this morning. These guys are hungry and I should be done by now.”

  “I think you would call this something reasonably deep.”

  “Give me a hint.”

  “It’s about your mother and her books.”

  She sat perfectly still for a moment, as if the words had frozen her there. “Actually I’ve been expecting someone like you. Could you come back in three hours?”

  “I’ve got a better idea. How about letting me help? Maybe that’ll get you done faster.”

  “Or maybe not. Are you any good at this?”

  “I’ve got a strong back and I follow orders well.”

  “Those are the good things. What if one of these horses kicks you in the head?”

  “That would be my responsibility, wouldn’t it?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. You must be a Republican.”

  “I’m not much of anything. I don’t tend to join stuff, don’t belong to political groups.”

  “Hope you’ve got a change of clothes. It gets messy.”

  “I can handle that. These clothes are no great shakes and I’ve got others back at the hotel.”

  She looked at me more keenly now. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name is?”

  “Cliff.”

  “Okay, Cliff, get up on the back.”

  I climbed up behind her and we went rocking along a muddy road that skirted the main field. “Watch I don’t throw you off,” she yelled. “Don’t hang on to the bales, you’ll pull them off on top of you and break your neck if you fall. Grab on to the back of my shirt if you need to hold something.”

  Across the field I could see the horses gathering. One whinnied loudly, a cry that carried over the noise of the tractor. “They’re hungry,” she said. “Hang on.”

  She banked sharp right and stopped at a gate, gestured for me to open it, and I got down to let her in. She rolled out to the middle of the field, where an old roan stood with his teeth bared and dared anyone to come close. “He’s mostly bluff,” she said; “still, it’s best to watch him till he gets used to you. He can give your arm a nasty bite if you get too close.” She stopped the tractor and together we lifted a bale off the flatbed. She cut it open and pulled off another. She asked if I had ever driven a tractor and I told her I could figure it out; she gestured down the hill and said, “Open two more about fifty yards down there.”

  I could see the residue on the ground from yesterday’s drop, and by the time I had the bale off the tractor and cut open she was there, hoisting the second and gesturing me on toward the fence. The bales weighed about sixty pounds each and she handled them as easily as I did. I drove on to the next drop and this was how it went, scattering the hay in half a dozen drops around the field while the horses moved from one place to another. She made no attempt to talk while the work went on. Once we had emptied the flatbed she motioned me to the gate and walked ahead to hold it open. Back to the barn we went, to do it all again. “I’ll throw the bales down from the loft,” she said. “You stack ’em on the tractor.” She climbed a wooden staircase and vanished into the darkness upstairs. A moment later a bale dropped through the chute and bounced heavily on the floor. I heaved it up onto the tractor as the next bale thudded on the floor. We found a rhythm and quickly got the flatbed loaded as the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the earth outside.

  There still wasn’t much talk and what little there was was all business. “You fill up the water buckets,” she said; “I’ll take care of these guys over here.” She disappeared into the barn and a moment later I saw her doing something inside one of the smaller corrals. It looked like she was tending to a horse with a terribly deformed face; feeding him through some kind of syringe drip while she cradled his head against her breast. We hustled back and forth, passing each other but much too
absorbed in the work to do more than make occasional eye contact. “When you’re done there, fill up the water buckets along this row. These guys on this side are in quarantine, so don’t let the hose touch the buckets.”

  The buckets were big and this took a while. Then came the small chores. I swept the barn floor while she worked outside, doing whatever she did. At one point she passed the open barn and the sun coming through from the other end lit her up. She turned and glanced my way, really no more than a look before she moved on past the doorway, but in that span of seconds I saw what Willis had seen: a vision of her mother, the woman in white. Put her in a white dress…

  I joined her at the corral near the horse with the shattered face. “What happened to him?”

  “I got him two weeks ago,” she said. “Some kids were feeding him cherries, where he was before. One of them tossed a lit cherry bomb into his stall and he tried to eat it. He’s lucky he didn’t swallow it.”

  “He doesn’t look lucky.”

  “You should’ve seen him before I wired his jaw together. He was like something from a freak show.”

  We walked across the yard to the house, took off our shoes, and left them there on the steps. The back door opened into a kitchen just off the porch and I could see on past, through a hall into what looked like a living room. I saw some books in a bookcase but the curtains were drawn and the light too dim to see what they were. “I’ll fix us some breakfast,” she said. I had eaten earlier but that was hours ago and I had worked up an appetite. “You make the coffee,” she said, “while I go grab a shower.” She disappeared into a hallway, leaving me to grope around in the cupboards. I found the beans and the grinder, started the coffee perking, and looked for a place to squat in the cluttered room. The kitchen was well lived-in, as if she spent most of her time here. It had a nook with a table and chairs and papers piled high across one end. She had horse pictures on the walls, but none of racing horses and none of her mother. Maybe that told me something, maybe not. So far she seemed relaxed and easygoing. Except for that fraction of a moment in the barn she hadn’t shown any curiosity about what I wanted or why, but her eyes were keenly intelligent and I had a hunch she knew.