A Novel Death

by Judi Culbertson

  In the late afternoon Colin stopped by, giving a perfunctory knock and then pulling the barn door open. In his hand was the Priority Mail box.

  "How's it going, Rosie?" A reference to Secondhand Rose and one that irritated me. But we kissed anyway, two people who have known how to push each other's buttons for a long time.

  "You have it already?"

  "All they had to do was move it into my post office box. I figured since I was protecting it with my life I get to see what's inside."

  "Sure."

  He brought out his Swiss Army knife. It had accompanied him on so many digs that the red enamel was almost worn away. I had given it to him the year we got married. "You still use it," I said, distracted.

  "It still works fine."

  Better than our relationship.

  But after he opened the flap and pulled the book out, he gave me an odd look.

  "It's worth a lot of money," I said. "It's signed. But it's not mine anyway, it's Margaret's."

  "So why do you have it?"

  "Long story. Guess who I'm having dinner with."

  "Little Black Sambo."

  "No, actually, Bruce Adair."

  "My old friend Bruce. How's he doing?"

  "Fine, I think."

  "Good. Maybe I'll come along."

  I laughed then. "I don't think that's in Plan A. He's taking me to Mirabelle's."

  "Really? Better be careful. People say he has his way with visiting female poets."

  "I'll be okay then."

  We kissed good-bye with a little more intensity, stirring feelings that I thought had departed. What were we supposed to do with so much history? The life we had crafted together-more like a toolshed about to collapse than an estate-was what we had. His grip on my shoulders was proprietary; Bruce had not been that casually dismissed.

  As we moved apart, he remembered something. "You had another package, out on the front porch. I brought it in and put it on the kitchen table. They deliver on Sunday?"

  "Not that I know of. Unless it's FedEx."

  "Well-regards to Bruce" One of those comments that meant the opposite of what it said.

  I went in through the back door, noticing that the message light was blinking. Good. I pressed the play button:

  "Yes, this is Howard Riggs. I cannot imagine what we would have to discuss. But you may reach me at the shop in the next few minutes."

  The next message was an order for a catalog of the French artist Jean Fautrier, whose abstract painting predated Jackson Pollock. Then:

  "Hi, Blondie, it's Marty. This cop just interviewed me about where I was last Friday night when that guy was killed in Margaret's shop. Now they're targeting booksellers?"

  The package, on the oak table, was a medium Priority Mail box but with the same red, white, and blue colors as the box I'd used for Sambo. Picking it up, I looked for the mailing label. There was none.

  Someone had placed a book in the box and hand-delivered it to my front door. Was Margaret giving me more books to protect before she left for New Jersey? In her haste, she would not have taken the time to address it to me, knowing I was the only one who would get it.

  I pulled the tape across the top, peeled back the top edge of the box and looked inside. Not a book. Maybe it wasn't meant for me.

  I shook the box until the doll clattered onto the table and I yelped.

  The nude Barbie with long blond hair had had her neck wrenched back; a red line was lipsticked across it, indicating a slash. On her torso was neatly printed in black marker, Someone who kept something that wasn't hers.

  Bruce was inside the pretty French restaurant when I arrived, charming the young hostess in the foyer. He was wearing a bluestriped seersucker suit and a straw bowler that managed to make him look like a little boy and Maurice Chevalier at the same time. It made me glad that I had put on my black, flower-printed dress and was wearing makeup. I had only eaten here twice, both celebrations-once for Jane's MBA and once when Voices We Don't Want to Hear had been on the short list for the National Book Award. Until I opened the package with the doll, I had been having pleasant fantasies about the food.

  Bruce and I were escorted to a small romantic table with an embossed white cloth, and napkins the deep purple shade of eggplants. A wonderful meal of goat cheese salad and breast of duck unfolded, along with wine and Bruce's stories. As I expected, they were fascinating, many of them about people whose books I had read. I told him a few funny bookselling adventures, but my mind kept circling back to the doll.

  To avoid being startled all over again, I had put the slaughtered Barbie out of sight in the dining room hutch. Somebody knew that I had Little Black Sambo. Somebody believed that they had a claim to the book and would slash my throat to get it.

  As soon as dinner was over, I would be on the phone to Frank Marselli. This time he could not shuffle me off to my local precinct.

  Over coffee and trois-chocolat mousse came what my friend Gail and I call "the pitch over the plate."

  "You're an accomplished woman, Delhi," Bruce said, tilting his head with a wistful smile. Evidently "You're a beautiful woman" had fallen into disfavor. I missed it.

  "I do sell a lot of books."

  "I don't mean that," he purred. "I'm talking about everything you know. And do. Your photography."

  I sighed. "Bruce, I only did photography so I would have something to do on Colin's sabbaticals, besides laundry."

  "I don't believe that. You're too-"

  "Accomplished?"

  He waved a small hand. "I've always admired women who can do many things."

  "So have I."

  "But you can! And look pretty besides."

  Don't go there, I begged him. You're too late.

  He did anyway. "You're quite beautiful. We're both accomplished people."

  For one twinkling moment I had an image of us in Venice, Bruce a Toulouse-Lautrecian figure in the gondola, me lying back in a white lacy dress, looking appropriately pretty. Later we would tour St. Mark's and eat fritto misto. A scholarly, accomplished, nineteenth-century pair enjoying the highest communion of the mind. But then I remembered Roger's parting kiss and my response. Even Colin's good-bye embrace had stirred me more, and Colin was a leaky ship indeed. I knew I was ripe for the plucking, but the fingers had to be right.

  The vision of Italy dissipated into the smoke from the plum-toned candle.

  "It must be an adjustment for you, living alone," he was saying kindly, his deep blue eyes looking into mine.

  "Well... a lot less laundry." Bring back the cynical Bruce, I begged.

  "Less other things too."

  "You know what? There's a lot of freedom living by myself, doing exactly what I want."

  He considered that. "You've never lived alone before?"

  "Never. I didn't even get a womb to myself."

  He laughed, but added, "Will you tell me when the novelty wears off?"

  "Sure."

  Bruce sat back, satisfied, and I knew that at least a part of him was relieved he would not have to change his life-not tonight anyway. He would not have to give up an occasional poetic tryst or alter his dinners out.

  To change the subject I said, "Do you want to see something interesting? Written by one of your countrywomen?"

  "A Scotswoman? Delhi, I've had a lot of wine, but I can't think of a one."

  I took the book out of my bag, removing it from its plastic protection. "Helen Bannerman?"

  "Helen..." He twisted his head to see, recognizing the title, of course. "She was Scottish?"

  "Born and raised in Edinburgh. This is a first edition."

  He handled the book carefully, as I knew he would, and then handed it back. "'The grandest tiger in the jungle,"' he mused. "I'd almost forgotten where that came from."

  I took a sip of the very good dessert wine he had insisted on ordering, to be polite. "There's something else interesting." Holding the glass in my left hand, I found the painting and the inscription with my right, and then jumped
my chair closer to him so he could see. "This is original art. And I think it's inscribed to Rudyard Kipling."

  "Really." He was suddenly much more interested and we both looked closely at the image of Sambo bowing. We were still looking at it when the drop of condensation from my glass fell onto the side of Sambo's cheek. Brown puddled into green immediately, taking some of that color too and streaking into his red jacket. "Oh, no!" Then, "Don't!" as Bruce reached to blot it with his napkin.

  "I've ruined a hundred-year-old painting," I wailed. And taken thousands off the value of the book. "How could I do that?" I was distraught. Margaret would kill me! It would surely be the end of our friendship. If I hadn't been trying to show off ...

  "Delhi." I felt Bruce's hand cover mine. "Calm down. You may have blurred this picture a little, but it's hardly a century old."

  I looked at him.

  "Believe me. I've examined many holographs, manuscripts that old and even older, and the color dries out completely. It might moisten up a little, but it would never run. You'd really have to soak something that old to get any reaction at all."

  "The painting is not a hundred years old," I said numbly.

  "I doubt it's a hundred days old. It hasn't cured."

  "Then Helen Bannerman didn't paint it."

  "Not unless she's also the world's oldest Scotswoman."

  "Then who painted it?" But of course it was a question that he could not answer.

  "We could test the inscription to see if it's real," he suggested.

  "No!" I was terrified he would try it before I could stop him. "I mean, why smear that too?"

  He brought the book close to his face, moved it away, turned it slightly. Then he looked at me. "I'd say that it is and it isn't."

  "Meaning?"

  "'The tiger's pounce' and her initials look contemporaneous with the book's age. I'd put money on it that the first initials are more recent."

  "You mean the JRK was added?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  Good-bye, Rudyard. "'Things fall apart."'

  "'The center will not hold."' He completed the quotation for me with a wry smile.

  Things fall apart.

  What else is there to say? I left Bruce with promises to cook him a down-home dinner, fried chicken and whipped sweet potatoes, which he said were his favorite American foods, then drove back to my house. I thought about what would have happened if I hadn't blurred the painting. The book could have gotten all the way to auction or into the hands of a private collector. Would that have been so terrible? I couldn't decide. I just knew I was not ready to give up the image of Helen Bannerman creating the charming little picture for Rudyard Kipling.

  But when I pulled the van into the driveway, the memory of the Barbie doll cut through the haze of exquisite food and wine like the moon knifing through clouds. What was I doing? Perhaps the sender was right now sitting at my kitchen table, patiently holding a knife, ready to threaten me into giving up the book. Going into the house could be the stupidest thing I had ever done. I would call Frank Marselli-but not from my home phone.

  I backed out of the driveway and drove downtown into Port Lewis, parking illegally over some white cautionary stripes. With tourists crisscrossing the street in front of me, I felt safe enough to check my answering machine for any threats.

  There was one message

  "Delhi? I guess you're out, but I have to see you. I need the book as soon as possible. Can you bring it tomorrow morning or as soon as you get it back? I'm sorry to involve you, but you're the only one I trust. I'm in Montauk." She gave me the name of a motel and a room number.

  I was so startled that I had to play the message again to write down the information. Then I sat staring at my cell phone.

  I knew what I had to do. I had been given an order that even a five-year-old child could not misinterpret. "You will call me."

  Reaching into my woven bag, I found the wallet which held Frank Marselli's card, and then stopped. I had promised to call him when I knew where Margaret was. And I would. But that did not mean I had to call him from Port Lewis. All I needed was a few minutes with Margaret, a chance to give her the book and see how she was. There would be chaos once the police arrived.

  I couldn't go back to my house anyway, not with the mutilated doll. And I couldn't call Frank Marselli about it without telling him about Margaret. He hadn't told me I couldn't talk to her; he just told me to tell him where she was. I'd be in and out before he even arrived.

  In the end, I was my parents' daughter. I could no more disobey a police order than smuggle flowers out of a botanical garden or speed away after causing an accident. Or smuggle rare books out of a library.

  I stopped and bought the largest size coffee possible at Qwikj ava, and then worked my way to Nicolls Road, keeping to the speed limit until I reached the road to the south fork, Sunrise Highway, and turned east. This Sunday night most of the traffic was going in the opposite direction, a slow slog of cars returning to Manhattan after the weekend. I exited at Bellport and found a convenience store. Then I extracted Frank Marselli's card and dialed.

  "Homicide."

  "Detective Marselli?"

  "No. What's it in reference to?"

  "The murder in Port Lewis? He wanted to know when I heard from Margaret Weller."

  "Right, I'll patch you through."

  I squeezed the little telephone in my hand. With the glow of the wine gone, I felt a jittery dread. Terrible things were being set in motion, even worse things than receiving a mutilated doll. Across the parking lot three young men in muscle shirts and head kerchiefs leaned on the hood of a Jeep, smoking and watching me. They did not look menacing, but any approach from them would have shoved me over the edge.

  Several clicks on the line. "Marselli."

  "Hi. It's Delhi Laine."

  "You heard from Ms. Weller?"

  "Yes. She left a message on my answering machine. She's still on the Island."

  "Where?"

  "Montauk Point. At someplace called the Captain's Comfort Motel. Room 16."

  "Montauk? Sheesh! Why didn't she just swim to Block Island? Where are you?"

  "In Bellport."

  "Bellport?"

  "I was having dinner with a friend." A non sequitur, though he did not know it.

  "Go back to Port Lewis. I'll call you later."

  "But-"

  And then my finger slipped onto the END button, cutting us off.

  To conserve the battery, I turned off the phone.

  To stay alert I tuned into an oldies station and listened to Frank, Ella, and Bing. But even with the music on I obsessed about what I would say to Margaret. How could I tell her that the book she was counting on was a forgery-and that I had ruined even that? If I hadn't sent it to Colin, if it had still been in my bag when she came for it, this never would have happened. The book would be as pristine as when she had mailed it to me.

  But if she's an artist, she can just repair it, my inner cynic pointed out.

  That was ridiculous; there was no point in repairing a fake.

  I kept to the various speed limits and braked whenever traffic lights turned yellow. In Southampton the road changed from a treelined parkway to one lane of restaurants, plant nurseries, and inns. The brief glitter of Bridgehampton gave way to a quieter stretch before the placid village of East Hampton with its canal. After that, the road wound through pools of darkness, broken only occasionally by house lights. Amagansett came next, and then the emptiest stretch of all before the lights of Montauk pointed the way into the Atlantic.

  I was wondering if I would have to drive into the village itself when I saw the sign for Captain's Comfort-a painted board with the usual grizzled face in a yellow slicker. It was illuminated by a spotlight and the neon word NO was lit up next to VACANCY.

  As it was, I almost missed the turnoff into the parking lot. Thankfully there was no one on the road behind me; I braked quickly and slipped in, bouncing over broken clam shells. The white stucco build
ing had been built in an arc so that every room faced the ocean. But this was no resort. Beside the office door, a painted wooden Dutch boy and girl leaned together, bottoms out, engaged in the world's most boring kiss. A large plastic swordfish was mounted to the door's right and I guessed the motel had been built in the 1950s for sport fishermen.

  The parking lot was full. It was after eleven P.M. and most of the cars looked snugged in for the night. Pulling into the only available space, farthest away in the shadows by the road, I climbed down from the van, shocked to find that my first steps were a cramped stagger. The ride had taken two tense hours. I was heading for the cement walk that led past the front doors of the units when I saw an East Hampton Town police car angled in front of the path. Had they already approached Margaret? Or had Frank Marselli contacted them to make sure no one left the motel room-or went in-before he got there?

  Fishing in my bag as if looking for a room key, I turned and walked in the opposite direction. At the edge of the highway, the shoulder was paved with more clam shells that crunched loudly under my black sandals. Unaccustomed to high heels, I felt as if I were walking on stilts. But I kept my shoes on until I reached the property where another motel, The Montauk Light Inn, began. Then, stepping out of the sandals, I crossed the grass that divided the two buildings. I moved steadily ahead until I reached the beach and stepped onto the sand.

  Instinctively, I jerked my foot back. The sand felt cold, even clammy. Although the beach was unlit, I could see from the glow of the full moon that it was deserted. An empty lifeguard's chair tilted like an abandoned toy. As if the ocean had been given a reprieve from performing, the waves barely rose and fell, making a soft plash. A wrinkled reflection of the moon bobbed near the horizon like a deflated beach ball. Only the crisp sea salt smell was strong.

  As I trudged past windows with closed Venetian blinds, I could hear snatches of TV, a baby crying, a couple arguing in sharp, staccato bursts. You're the one who had the bright idea to come. But most of the rooms were silent, and some were already dark. Margaret's door, identified by tarnished brass numbers, was louvered with whitepainted slats. A small life preserver hung to one side. It was not a place I would have imagined her staying.