When I hesitated, Alice muttered something about men, looked up the number for the admin clerk at the federal courthouse, and waited with hands on hips until I had left a message.
Josie returned the call during a recess that same afternoon.
“How’s the leg?” she said.
“Fine. And yours?”
“It’s still in a cast and it itches like hell.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’ll come off soon enough.”
“I’m not talking about the cast.”
“Oh.”
“Can I buy you dinner tonight?”
I waited a couple of heartbeats for her to answer.
“I guess so. But nothing fancy.”
“I know just the place.”
* * *
Siobhan greeted us at the door of Fitzpatrick’s with a big smile and led us to a table in a secluded snug.
Aiden Delahunt was setting up his amplifier on the stage directly across from us. The usual after-work crowd of young lawyers, architects, and ad reps sat on bar stools nursing their pints and yakking with Ronan Gill while he shucked mussels behind the counter. Upon seeing me, he made a gesture of throwing his knife in my direction.
While the Wolfe Tones wailed about the potato famine and that “bastard Lord John Russell” over the Bose speakers, Josie and I silently studied our menus as if they contained the Book of Kells. We hadn’t said much in the jeep on the way over, either. There was too much to explain and no easy way to begin.
When the waitress came, we ordered Guinness and fish and chips. It was either that or the beef stew.
“I gotta know,” I said to Josie after finding courage in my first pint of stout. “What led you to Quist’s basement?”
She put down her glass, dabbed her mouth with the cloth napkin. “It doesn’t make for pleasant dinner conversation.”
“Irish bar cuisine doesn’t qualify as pleasant dining.”
“All right,” she said tonelessly. “I got worried when we lost sight of Langston and Anne and was about to look for them when I recognized you. Believe me, your presence was an unwelcome surprise. I was sure you’d screw up our plans if you approached me so I headed for the kitchen to stay out of sight. I was deciding what to do over a glass of milk when Quist’s men hustled you right past me into the elevator. You stepped on my heel, you clumsy oaf.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know it was you or I would have asked those thugs to stop and let me apologize.”
“No matter.”
She reached across the table to pat my hand. “I knew about the staircase from poking around the place on the day before. God knows, there wasn’t much else to do after Quist entertained us with a marathon showing of slasher-porn movies. Grabbing a knife and hammer from a drawer, I hustled down the stairs just in time to hear his rants. I peeked through the curtains, desperately waiting for an opportunity to attack while you baited him and got Langston tuned in to your crazy rugby trick. I was ready when you jumped into action. You know the rest.”
“Was I part of your plan to bust him? Is that why you started coming to Riverrun?”
“No.” She shook her head. “The bookstore was my island of tranquility. I desperately needed it when the stress began to overwhelm me. But then came the Gareth Hughes business that got you involved with Quist. I knew you were in bigger trouble than you could have imagined. It was stupid getting emotionally involved with you and jeopardizing the case.”
“And I thought I was a big help.”
“We would have got him anyway. At least I think so. You just made it harder and a lot scarier.”
“It’s not like I asked for it.” I tried not to make it sound like a complaint.
“Of course not, Mike. No more than Anne asked for it. I’m just glad it worked out.”
After pretending to read the history of Ireland on the back of the menu, I said, “I’m glad you came back, even if only to provide evidence. It was wrong to avoid you at the hospital.”
“I’ve been snubbed by worse,” she said, smiling. She looked over my shoulder at the stage. Sandra Epstein had joined Delahunt and was testing the microphone by playing a few bars on her pennywhistle.
When Josie looked back at me, her smile was gone.
“I chose this profession for reasons I don’t want to go into. I’ve been an agent six years and worked vice the last four; time enough to put away a lot of scum. Martin Quist may not have been the worst, if you can believe that; in the top three, for sure, but there was a pair of grandparents in Dublin, Ohio, who still give me nightmares. I nailed them with life sentences, but they took a bit of my soul as well. Quist’s getting so close to you and your daughter took more out of me. Most of what I had left. I don’t think I’ll be good at police work anymore. I’m taking a leave of absence.”
I finished my Guinness and ordered another. Sandra and Aiden had finished setting up and would begin playing soon.
“Josie,” I said in a voice that was an octave higher than I would have liked, “we’ve been on a crazy roller-coaster ride. Now that we’ve climbed off, maybe we can start over under more normal circumstances.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Well, for one, Alice Winter has been harping on my lack of female companionship again. She thinks it’s unhealthy and I’m beginning to think she has a point.”
“Sounds to me that she wants you for herself.”
“She’s the one who insisted I call you. She’s a dear friend, that’s all. You’d enjoy her.”
“Like I would have enjoyed knowing your wife?”
“I’m not comparing you to them. Will you consider moving in with me? I’ve got a nice house and a semi-nice cat.”
She chewed her lip and didn’t answer. Our food arrived and Aiden introduced the first number. It was my song, “The Wind that Shakes the Barley.”
“I’m serious,” I said at the end of the mournful tune. “I love you.”
Josie silently turned her attention to the stage.
“If you prefer, I’ll sleep in the bathtub,” I persisted.
“That would be uncomfortable.”
“All right, the couch, then.”
She smiled sadly. “I don’t think so.”
I studied my plate, pushing coleslaw away from the crumbled fish flakes.
“Is there somebody else?” I asked. “One of your agent pals? Eddie Worth?”
“Maybe,” she said, lifting my chin with her fingers. “Let’s face it, Michael. You’re still married to a ghost. I don’t know how to compete with that.”
We finished eating and listened in silence as Sandra Epstein sang “Barbara Allen.” Maybe the tragic tale of lost love had a palliative effect on me because by the time the check came I wasn’t feeling so much like a brokenhearted fool.
At the door to her hotel room later that night, I kissed Josie on the cheek and thanked her for all she had done.
She said, “Think nothing of it.”
“Sure,” I said in my best wise-ass voice. “So what if you saved my daughter’s life and mine as well? I’ll just forget it.”
But we both knew I could never forget her. Before I got into the jeep, I looked back to see her leaning against the doorway. The light from inside her room shone through the cotton dress outlining her perfect legs. She put a hand to her lips to blow a kiss just as she had done an eternity ago in front of Riverrun. And I knew then that Edward Stuyvesant Worth IV had better be something more than just a handsome millionaire if he wanted to keep Josie Majansik.
Driving up Wornall Road, I played a Saw Doctors disc and sang at the top of my lungs to a song about happy wars and sad love affairs. As Grandpa Bevan would say, “God bless the Irish for getting their priorities straight.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Thursday, November 18
Indian summer had ended. Dead leaves covered the sidewalk like a brown blanket. I sat in the shop’s bay window catching the last sun rays of an autumn afternoon and studied the classif
ieds, searching for a new employee. It would soon be Thanksgiving and the best retail season of the year would begin, but I was woefully unprepared for it.
Brian Canady, one of the Irregulars, had pitched in to run the coffee cart and found he still had enough energy after four hours of cappuccino-making to work on his newsletter. A couple of nice college kids helped with the afternoon shift as well, but my efforts to find someone to match Violet’s expertise were going nowhere.
Riverrun had become dependent on the bookselling dot-coms such as AbeBooks and Alibris, which presented my inventory to book buyers throughout the United States and the world. What a pity the person who had helped me establish the books on the Internet had turned out to be a coconspirator to murder.
I felt low for other reasons as well. The Colette, along with the other erotica, had been returned to Beatrice Land who, at my suggestion, placed it with Sotheby’s for its winter rare books auction. She’d get an appropriate price, more than enough to keep her in whips and dog collars to the end of her days. I had dared to hope after numerous hints that she would give me one or two of the Japanese scrolls, if not in gratitude, than as a commission. But it was not to be. Riverrun would remain just a used bookstore.
Dr. Guffey’s in our time was returned to Delaware’s Special Collections Department where it now rests in its half morocco slipcase three floors underground in the bowels of the Morris Library. I spent the $250 reward (approximately 1/1000th of its fair market value) on a first-edition biography of Captain James Cook by J. C. Beaglehole. It sits on my bookshelf at home next to The Endeavour Journal of Sir Joseph Banks, edited by the same Professor B.
Anne hadn’t e-mailed or phoned from L.A. in a week. We’d gotten in the habit of communicating every other day, but I trusted her enough not to worry about the lapse. Like she had said not so long ago, I needed to get accustomed to having an adult child.
Even the Irregulars had stopped coming in regularly. It was as if the Violet and Weston Preston business had put a curse on the store. It got to the point that I seriously questioned whether Riverrun was worth operating anymore.
Although I knew the Internet drill well enough to get by, I couldn’t watch the shop, price books, go on buying trips, and do everything else necessary to run the business by myself. In the five months since the encounter with Quist, it was more than I could continue to handle and still make a profit. My customers, having become accustomed to the place being open ten hours a day, began to dwindle after I cut back the hours.
Maybe Violet was right about my being a lousy bookman. Despite my love for books and the joy that comes with owning such a comfortable gathering place, I really had failed to make a real go of the business. Not ready to quit, however, I advertised for the kind of help I needed: a hardworking, sensible, devoted book lover with an eye for numbers and a good sense of humor.
A lot of people answered my ad. The first words out of their mouths were invariably, “I just love books and bookstores.” When I told them what I could afford to pay, most said they didn’t love books that much and those who said they could live on minimum wage didn’t know James Joyce from Joyce Brothers.
I interviewed several bright people who could make change, knew a good mystery writer from a bad one, and had spouses with good jobs or had made their money in earlier careers and were bored with retirement. In the end, I passed on every one. It wasn’t because of the nose rings worn by the grandmother in her sixties or the retired insurance salesman’s ridiculous hairpiece.
The fellow with the toupee had been pleasant, even humorous, and he certainly knew his books. The grandmother claimed to have been on the magic bus with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and quoted whole poems by Gary Snyder in her interview. By all accounts, both seemed like honest, likable, and interesting people. But I didn’t know them, and the two employees I had known and trusted for five years tried to set me up for a murder that they committed.
I got out of the chair by the window and went into the closet that serves as my office to place a call to one of the best used bookstores in Omaha. I knew its owner had long wanted to open a second shop in Kansas City.
“Pimpernel Books, Mingos speaking,” answered the familiar gravelly voice.
“Hey, Carl. It’s Mike Bevan.”
“I heard you had some excitement this summer. Got any books for me?”
“You might say that. Riverrun’s for sale if you want it.”
There was a long silence, then an exhalation of breath.
“The whole thing? You sure about this?”
“I’ll fax the details today. You’ll be able to afford it and there’s three years left on a very favorable lease.”
“Damn, I should be jumping out of my shorts about this, Mike, but, you’re a good bookman and there aren’t too many of us left.”
“Thanks,” I said, remembering that I’d thought something similar about Gareth Hughes after he was dead. “I’m tired of it, Carl.”
“Horsehocky! You can’t be tired of books. That isn’t natural.”
“It’s not the books or even the business. Maybe it’s people I can’t handle.”
For a moment I thought the line had gone dead.
“All right,” Carl said quietly. “E-mail me the numbers.”
I hung up the phone, pulled a Diet Coke out of the minifridge, and started to add some sales figures.
“Are you hiring?” a voice said from outside the office door.
“No,” I said as I tried to finish an entry in the accounting notebook. “I’m afraid that will be someone else’s decision.”
“Too bad. I so wanted to work with you.”
I looked up to see Josie Majansik standing at the sales counter.
She wore a sporty red jacket and a crisp white blouse with the top two buttons undone. She had the same crooked, sweet-natured smile that I’d found so endearing the first day we met. Seeing that gamine face, an erotic mixture of tragedy and triumph, rekindled the longing for her I’d tried so hard to suppress.
I got up and walked to the counter. The air around her was flowered with jasmine and peach. I found it difficult to speak.
“Well, are you hiring?” she repeated.
“I just offered Riverrun to another book dealer.”
“So I heard.” Her voice faltered a little. “Don’t do it.”
“Do you really want to work for me?”
“No. I want to work with you. I know books, but you should know that I prefer Chandler to Hemingway and Turgenev to Tolstoy.”
“Can you operate a computer?”
“Second nature to my generation.”
“It’s not a very adventurous job.”
“I’ve had enough adventure for a while.”
“What about the FBI?”
“Like I said before, I wouldn’t be good at it anymore. Besides, I broke rule number one.”
“What’s that?”
“I fell in love on the job.”
“So you indicated to me that night at Fitzpatrick’s. I suppose it’s a fellow agent; if it was Eddie Worth you wouldn’t be looking for work. When’s the wedding?”
“That’s up to you.”
“I don’t get it.”
She reached for my hand. “You’re the one, you blockhead.”
She stood on tiptoes to lay a kiss on my lips.
“But I thought …”
“You thought wrong. When you refused to see me I was terribly hurt. I thought you could never really care for me. After our dinner at Fitzpatrick’s, I returned to Columbus to start life over again, thinking I could get you out of my mind. I couldn’t. It just got worse with every passing week. I picked up the phone a dozen times to call you, but each time put it down, afraid you’d reject me again. A week ago, Anne contacted me out of the blue. Her encouragement was all I needed.”
“And you were the one who said you’d bring her back to me.”
“She sounds happy.”
“The editing work on the film is keeping
her out of trouble,” I said. That was as far as I’d go to give Langston credit for my daughter’s continuing recovery.
A lady brought in a bag of paperbacks to trade. I told her to leave them on the desk and have a cup of coffee next door while I added them up. I looked back at Josie.
“That’s the kind of excitement you can expect around here. Do you really think you can handle such pressure?”
“I love you, Mike. Do I get the job?”
“Just a moment,” I said.
I dialed Omaha.
“Hello, Carl?”
“Yeah?”
“The deal’s off.”
“Riverrun lives?”
“Yup. I found all the help I’m going to need for a while.”
For Nancy, who dances on tables.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my agent, Victoria Skurnick, and my editor, Kate Miciak, for their unwavering support and guidance.
About the Author
Tom Shawver owned an antiquarian bookstore in Kansas City for fifteen years. Prior to that, he was a Marine officer, lawyer, and journalist. This, his first novel, begins a series featuring bookman Michael Bevan.
If you enjoyed The Dirty Book Murder, you don’t want to miss the next
Rare Book Mystery featuring Michael Bevan:
Left Turn at Paradise
by Thomas Shawver
Every great mystery needs an Alibi
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