Death Sentences

by Otto Penzler

  “My mother’s name is Elaine. My grandmother, my maternal grandmother, was named Nancy. My dad didn’t have any sisters.”

  “It sounds like a woman, right? ‘With love.’ Men don’t say with love to other men, even our fathers. Do we?”

  I had to agree. I only told my father I loved him when he was dying. He rarely said it to me after my childhood. That didn’t bother me. It really didn’t. That was just how men are.

  “Well, it seems like we caught a little bit of a break. We went through Mr. Caledonia’s possessions in his office. His calendar, address book, computer. It wasn’t an easy job. I suppose he’s like most collectors of arcana—a little bit disorganized, a little bit of a pack-rat. But it turns out he’s been carrying on quite a correspondence with a woman named Mary Ann Compton. Does that name ring a bell?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “But you can see the initials, right?” Hyland asked, obviously pleased with himself.

  “It seems pretty clear. M.A. Mary Ann.”

  “But you’re not familiar with her?” Hyland asked.

  “Not that I know of. Does she have something to do with my father? Or this book?”

  “This is the part I didn’t want to bring up in front of your mother,” he said. “You see, these events having to do with Lou Caledonia, they don’t really have any bearing on you. Not directly. Your father died of natural causes, of course. Mr. Caledonia’s murder was only tangentially related to your father’s life. If your father even wrote that book at all.”

  “If.”

  “But I think it’s pretty safe to say now that he did write Rides a Stranger. Very safe indeed.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “Because he dedicated the book to Mary Ann Compton. Back then, when your father wrote the book, she was known as Mary Ann Gates. She was dating your father when he wrote and published the book. And she’s been trying to get her hands on a copy of the book ever since then. She wanted Mr. Caledonia to grant her access to your father, which he wouldn’t do. She killed Mr. Caledonia when he refused her once and for all.”

  “Killed him?” I said. I felt a little shaky. “Over a book?”

  “Not just any book,” Hyland said. “Your father’s only published novel. Dedicated to her.”

  “How are you so certain of all of this?” I asked.

  Hyland smiled. “Because we have Mary Ann Compton in custody. We brought her in last night, and she confessed to the murder of Lou Caledonia.”

  Detective Hyland told me at least five times how irregular it was. He muttered under his breath that if anyone found out—anyone at all—he might end up in a great deal of trouble. But as he walked me back to a small interview room, the room where I would be able to have just a few minutes alone with Mary Ann Compton, he admitted that my seeing her probably wouldn’t do anybody any harm.

  “She confessed,” he said, his hand pulling open the door to the small room. “And, besides, I have a soft spot for this whole case. Or, more accurately, your involvement in it.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “My old man liked to read. Mickey Spillane. Donald Hamilton. Richard Prather. I sometimes wonder if I became a detective because of the books he always read.”

  “You never know,” I said.

  “I think I ought to write a book someday,” Hyland said. “You know, about all the cases I’ve worked, all the crazy things and people I’ve seen. I’ve even tried a few times. It’s not as easy as it looks, writing a book.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “She’ll be here in a minute,” he said, holding the door for me. “And you can only have a few. Make it quick.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  The room held a small wooden table and a few chairs. The table looked like it had been to hell and back. The floor was dirty and stained—coffee, candy wrappers, grime. I took a seat, the chair rickety and squeaky beneath me.

  I thought about the woman I was going to meet. She was my father’s ex-lover. No big deal. People dated others before they got married. But this woman meant so much to my dad he dedicated a book to her, a book he published the year I was born. Wasn’t he dating Mom at that time? Wouldn’t they have been practically engaged by then?

  I ran my thumbnail through one of the deep grooves scarred in the top of the table. Maybe Dad didn’t write the book at all. Maybe the whole thing was a misunderstanding. After all, no one had completely convinced me that the old man had really written the book. An eccentric used book dealer and a jilted lover pointed their fingers at my dad. Those of us who lived with the man, who knew him better than anyone, didn’t think it was possible.

  Who knew best?

  The door opened, and I got my first look at Mary Ann Compton. Detective Hyland led her in. She didn’t wear handcuffs or a prison jumpsuit, but she looked tired. She was an attractive woman, slender and trim despite being in her sixties. Her auburn hair showed a few streaks of gray. She wore no make-up, but the lines on her face gave her character, like someone who had spent a lot of time in the outdoors, soaking up the sun and the wind.

  “Five minutes,” Hyland said and left us alone.

  I stood up. The woman—Mary Ann—took me in from head to toe.

  I held out my hand. “I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” she said. “You look just like him.”

  Her voice was warm, but not effusive. She offered me a weak smile and came into the room and sat at the table. I sat again and rested my elbows on the tabletop.

  She said, “We don’t have much time, so you might as well ask what you want to ask. I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

  “I do.”

  “Then you better go for it,” she said. “I doubt we’ll be seeing each other again.”

  “But we have seen each other before, right? At the cemetery.”

  “Yes, I was there,” she said. She looked down and picked at a piece of loose skin around one of her fingernails. “I got as close as I dared.”

  “So you and Dad … my dad … you were a couple.”

  “We were meant to be,” she said. “He was the one, and we belonged together. He was the great love of my life.”

  The words sounded so strange. Who talked that way about my father? Not my mother, that was for certain. It was hard to imagine anyone thinking that about him, but I believed this woman when she said it. Her words carried such conviction.

  I was aware of the press of time. I didn’t hesitate.

  “So, why weren’t the two of you together?” I asked. “If you loved each other so much?”

  “I suspect you know the answer to that,” she said, looking up at me.

  I thought about the dedication again, the publication date of the book.

  “How did that happen?” I asked. “How did my mother get pregnant if you and Dad were together?”

  “We weren’t together at the time,” she said. “We had a little bit of an on and off relationship. We were off for a while when he met your mother. He was with her when he found out two things that changed his life. One, his novel was going to be published. Two, he was going to be a father. Both things meant a lot to him, of course, but he certainly cared more about being a father than about that book. In the end, that’s how he felt.”

  “And you know that because …”

  “Because I got the book dedication,” she said. “And you and your mom got him. I can’t really blame him, of course. A child is a big deal. And he didn’t want you to grow up without a father. It was the right thing all around. But …”

  “But he could have kept writing even after I was born,” I said. “Lots of writers have families and day jobs, and they still write. Why did he stop?”

  It took her a moment to answer. Then she said, “We weren’t together when the publishing deal went south. You know about that, right?”

  I nodded.

  “But we still talked from time to time. He was devastated when that happened. We didn’t talk about it much,
but I could tell. I think he just took it as a sign. It offered him a clean break with the past. With the time and effort he would have to put into writing … and with me.”

  “Jesus.” I slumped back in my chair. “I can’t imagine the disappointment he must have felt over the book. To have tried for that and then have the book just disappear, to never even hold it in his hands.”

  “He did hold it in his hands,” Mary Ann said.

  “He did?” I asked.

  “Your dad received all of his author copies,” she said. “He had at least one whole box, maybe twenty or thirty copies. That’s what Lou Caledonia was trying to get his hands on. And that’s how all of this ended up happening.”

  “You mean Lou Caledonia’s death, right?” I asked.

  She nodded. “He found out your father wrote that book. For years, no one knew who the author was. Everyone knew the book was rare, and no one knew what happened to the author. Some people assumed it was a pseudonym of a well-known author. Some people thought maybe an editor wrote the novel and used a different name.”

  “Who thinks these things?” I asked.

  “People on rare book message boards. Book dealers and collectors.”

  “Are you one of those?”

  “No, but I followed the discussions. I knew who wrote the book. I was curious to see if anyone else did.”

  “And Lou Caledonia figured it out?”

  “He did. He started hinting on the message boards that he knew something about Herbert Henry, that very soon he hoped to have a big discovery about the book. He should have kept his mouth shut to be honest. But I think the guy just couldn’t resist bragging. After all, they call that book—”

  “The white whale of vintage paperback collecting.”

  “You did your homework. Anyway, Lou Caledonia had found someone who used to work for Monarch Books. He found out some things about the author of the book. Can you imagine his surprise when he found out that the author of Rides a Stranger lived right in the same town he did? It probably made that fat little man think he had found his destiny at long last. All I wanted was a copy of the book. Just one copy.”

  “You didn’t have one?”

  “No. Like I said, your father and I weren’t seeing each other by the time the book came out. I guess I could have written to him or called him. We were right here in the same town as well. But I decided that he had moved on for all the right reasons and I needed to let that be. He had a wife and a son. I ended up getting married and moving on with my life as well. I planned to let the whole thing go. I should have, you know?”

  “So why didn’t you?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath. When she did that, I saw the lines on her face deepen, and just for a moment, she looked her age. She let the breath out and composed herself. “I found out that your dad was dying. I ran into a mutual friend from the old days. John Colfax? Do you remember him?”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar from my childhood. I couldn’t attach a face to it though. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He heard from your dad from time to time, and he heard about the illness. He told me, and we tried to keep our conversation about it casual. We said what everyone is supposed to say in those situations. ‘So young.’ ‘Isn’t that awful.’ ‘I’ll be thinking of him.’ We said all that and parted ways. But it rocked me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I had buried those feelings a long time ago, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t excavate them.” She shrugged. “So I sent a card. I didn’t hear anything back. So I called. The number is right there in the book. I knew the neighborhood your parents lived in. I called and spoke to your mother.”

  “And? What happened?”

  “She pretty much hung up on me,” Mary Ann said. “She said your father was too sick to come to the phone. She said it was best if I didn’t call anymore and left them in peace. I got the brush-off basically.”

  “Mom knew who you were?” I asked. “What you once meant to Dad?”

  “I’m sure she did,” Mary Ann said.

  “She says she never knew about the book,” I said.

  “I guess that’s possible. I don’t know if your dad talked about it with anybody once he decided he wasn’t going to be a writer anymore.”

  “I don’t understand why you killed Mr. Caledonia,” I said. “You really killed him, right? That’s what the detective said.”

  As if on cue, Hyland opened the door and stuck his head into the room. “Time’s up,” he said.

  “Wait.” I held up my hand. “Just another couple of minutes.”

  “Yes, please,” Mary Ann said.

  Hyland looked us over, and then he tapped the face of his digital watch. “Two minutes. No more.” He shut the door.

  Mary Ann said, “I wanted a copy of that book before your dad … was gone. I went to Lou Caledonia and asked him if I could have one, if he ever managed to get his hands on that box your dad had.” She shook her head. “First he wanted to use me. He told me to go back to your parents’ house and try again. He said if I could get inside there and get whatever copies of the book your dad had, he’d share them with me. He called it a finder’s fee because he located your dad.”

  “But you didn’t need him to locate Dad.”

  “I know. I guess I’m a sucker for a hard luck case. I told him he could have as many copies as he wanted, as long as I got one. That’s it—I just wanted one to keep. I never got one way back then, you know.”

  “Did you go back to my parents’ house?” I asked.

  “I did. And I got the brush-off again. This time, your mom was less polite. I reported this to Lou, and then about a week later, your dad was gone. I went back to Lou to ask him if he was going to try to buy any part of the estate. He was evasive. He was giving me the brush-off as well. But I saw the obituary on his desk. I knew what he was thinking. He was going to go to the funeral and try to talk to someone, probably you. I walked out of there. I just walked out. I told myself it was all over, everything was over. Your dad was gone, that relationship was long in the past, and I really did need to just forget about it. That’s what I told myself.”

  “But?”

  “But I hated sitting home during the viewing. I wanted to see your dad one more time. I thought I should be there, but I didn’t go. Instead I went to Lou’s store that night. My ex-husband bought me a gun when we split up. I brought it with me. I just wanted to scare that little ogre of a man. I wanted him to know that I wanted a copy of that book. Just one.” Her voice started to rise. “Is that too much to ask? Just the one copy? It’s dedicated to me.” She paused and gathered herself. Her voice returned to its normal volume. “He denied me again. He said he had a line on the books, and those were going to fund his retirement to Florida. I don’t know what happened really. I’d been brushed off so many times … so many times in my life. Your mom. Lou.”

  “My dad?”

  She nodded. “I shot the little weasel. I went to the cemetery the next day, knowing I was guilty and knowing I would turn myself in. I saw the coffin, your dad’s coffin. That was as close as I could come.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It was a crime of passion … committed forty years after the romance died and directed against the wrong man. That’s the story of my life.”

  Goodwill stores smell different from bookstores. In used bookstores—like Lou Caledonia’s—I could smell the pages and the dust jackets and the endpapers. It was a fresh, hopeful smell, despite the age and condition of the books. But a Goodwill store smelled like desperation. In a Goodwill store the accumulated detritus of thousands of unconnected lives merged together to create the odor of surrender, of loss. Of defeat. Goodwill provided a home for things that couldn’t be discarded anywhere else. Goodwill was for everything that couldn’t be sold in a consignment or an antique store. I hadn’t entered one since high school.

  This location sat about a mile fr
om my parents’ house in a neighborhood that had once been nicer. As I kid, I remembered driving through and seeing middle-class homes with yards that were tended and clean. Not anymore. The houses around the store looked dingier and more rundown. The yards were full of toys, the grass worn and dying. It seemed appropriate somehow.

  I went into the store and walked past the musty racks of clothes and the ragged and cheap furniture. Near the back I found the books. Two tall shelves stood side by side. Near the top I saw hardcovers, mostly book club editions with missing or frayed dust jackets. I scanned down to the bottom where the paperbacks were. I ran my eyes over the spines. Lots of James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, Mary Higgins Clark. Most of the spines were creased. I flipped through them like they were cards in a Rolodex, moving each one I touched to the left and going on to the next. I passed mysteries and romances and the occasional science fiction or fantasy title. Not many westerns. A few Louis L’Amours and one or two Max Brands. But no Herbert Henry.

  I went back through the shelves again, just in case I missed something. But I hadn’t. The books weren’t there.

  Did I think it would be easy?

  I went back to the front looking for an employee. I found a longhaired, wiry guy, wearing a store smock. I explained my problem, and he went to fetch his manager. She turned out to be a middle-aged woman with hair dyed the color of honey. She also wore a store smock with a nametag that said “Patti,” and her authority rested in the set of keys she wore attached to her wrist by a Day-Glo rubber cord. I thought her presence would work in my favor. I had prepared a story—which wasn’t really a lie—and I assumed she’d be more susceptible to it.

  “How can I help you?” she asked.

  I told her about Dad dying and Mom giving the books away. I told her about the box of books that my dad had written—and I left out the part about the books being really rare and potentially valuable. I also left out any mention of Lou Caledonia’s murder and Mary Ann Compton’s confession. I didn’t think she needed to know that.

  While I spoke, Patti’s face remained neutral. I felt like my words weren’t getting through, that they were like darts hitting a brick wall and bouncing away, leaving behind no discernible mark or impact. But I kept talking, hoping that the more I talked the more likely she would be to understand.