“Oh, and about your Eddie,” Uncle Mick said.
“Not my Eddie, but what about him?”
“Nothing. Nada. Zip.”
“Really?”
“I don’t think the guy ever had so much as a parking ticket.” Obviously, my uncle felt this was a character flaw.
“Did you find out anything about him?”
Mick shrugged and spooned dog food into the designer dish with the white paws on the red background. It would take more than that to make the duck and sweet potato goop look good, but Walter’s curly tail came to life.
“Grew up in Harrison Falls. Went to school here. Never left.”
“That’s it?”
“Works as a postal carrier. Quiet, close to retirement, no job problems, nothing on his routes, no complaints.”
I shrugged in disappointment.
“Supposed to have a thing for Vera Van Alst.”
“What?”
“No accounting for taste,” Mick said, setting down the dog food for Walter. “Since they were kids is what I heard.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I FOUND VERA in the library, a cool sanctuary on a warm day. I used my code to get in. She seemed to wear a ratty dung-colored sweater no matter what day it was. She was stroking the dust jacket of a volume. I couldn’t make out the title.
“You have disturbed the sanctuary of my collection with your tale of missing volumes. Now I think that a full inventory will be required before I can rest easy.”
I didn’t care if she could rest easy. Something terrible was going on, and it was worse than missing books.
“Seems Alex’s parents don’t remember whether his keys were in the box you insisted on having returned.”
Made her blink.
In her normal gravelly voice she said, “I made no such request.”
“I realize that, but someone did, a woman, from this number.”
She frowned. “But except for you and Fiammetta and me, there is no woman in the house. I didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t think it was you.”
“Fiammetta would be very distinctive.”
My heart wasn’t in it, but I had to ask. “Could she possibly fake it?”
“I doubt it very much. She learned English as a young adult when she came from Italy to work for my family. She’ll never lose that accent. Did she insist that they eat?”
I chuckled. “It couldn’t have been the signora, and I know it wasn’t me. Do you want to talk to the Fine family to confirm this?”
For the first time, I saw a flicker of alarm cross her features.
“I do not care to,” she said, as if I hadn’t figured that out.
“Then you’ll have to take my word for it. All this stuff is connected. I bet the missing books are part of it too, so that makes it part of my job. I have to figure out what’s been going on. By the way, Karen Smith is still in danger, although she’s improving and is expected to survive.”
I left her to think about that, and headed toward the kitchen pretending to want some lunch. I walked through the dining room and banged on the swinging door. Signora Panetone popped her head out.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said, still standing in the dining room, “but I’m awfully hungry. Any chance of a sandwich or something?”
“You eat soup!” she shouted. “Good soup. Carne in brodo. Go to conservatory. I meet you with soup.”
“Sure thing,” I said, hoping that Eddie was listening. “Hold on, my phone’s vibrating. I have to take this call. You need to heat the soup anyway, no?”
“All ready! Soup is ready now!”
I held up my finger and took the imaginary call.
“Hello?
“What?
“Great news! Are you sure?
“That’s wonderful. Thanks for letting me know, Doctor.”
I snapped the phone shut.
Signora Panetone said, “Is good? Good news?”
“Very good, Signora. My friend Karen is going to be all right.”
“Going home? I send soup!”
“No, no, not yet. She’ll have to stay in the hospital for quite a while, but she’s conscious, awake.”
“Good, good. You go, I come.”
I went and made myself comfortable in the conservatory. Large fans made a little breeze, and the whirr of the wheelchair approaching told me that Vera must have decided to join me. Carne in brodo turned out to be meatballs in broth with, naturally, freshly grated Parmesan. Soup and fragrant fresh bread was more than fine with me.
Vera parked herself on her regular side of the table and produced her best scowl. She took a deep breath before saying, “I am sorry about what has happened to Miss Smith. I have no idea why she was attacked.”
“And Alex?”
For once she didn’t meet my eyes. “I suppose I wanted to think that he was simply careless and stupid. He was an odd young man. Very reserved. Hard to warm to.”
Hard to warm to?
I couldn’t imagine Vera really warming to anyone. She sure hadn’t warmed to me.
“He was secretive.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, but never mind that.
“Secretive how?”
A flash of the familiar Vera. “In a secretive way, of course.” She stopped, caught herself. “I’m sorry. He kept things from me. He liked to have information that other people didn’t. He wasn’t good at hiding that. You, for instance, are much more subtle.”
“Funny,” I said, “and all along I’ve thought you were keeping things from me. Which you were, naturally.”
“I was.”
“And I hope we can get past that and put an end to whatever is going on. But you’ll have to level with me.”
“Now I need to accept that boy must have been murdered.” She shivered, despite the sweater and the warmth of the conservatory.
“Exactly, by someone posing as a homeless man, who then stole his laptop. And why would someone murder him?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
I leaned forward and said, “I think it’s time you told me the truth. Enough people have suffered. I need to know why.”
At this rate, I’d be looking for a new job before dinner.
“Miss Bingham, may I remind you that it’s what you need to tell me that counts.”
“Miss Van Alst, you’re the one with the missing information.”
“Isn’t that what I pay you for? To find out things?”
“Books, yes. Research, yes. But I didn’t sign on to let people be killed. Was that your intention?”
Her head snapped back and she glared at me. “Of course not. What do you take me for?”
I waited.
Finally she said, “Alex said he’d found the manuscript. Found the play. He said it was called When She Was Gone.”
I’d suspected, but I should have known she’d been keeping something key from me. “Found it? Where?”
“In New York City.”
It was quite a distance from the spa at Harrogate to Manhattan, but not impossible. “How?”
“Through an intermediary.”
“Let me guess. The intermediary was Merlin.”
“Yes. Merlin.”
“And do you know where they were to meet?”
“He didn’t tell me. He needed the money to acquire the play. I arranged for it.”
“He took his fiancée when he went to the city.”
“Stupid. Lucky she wasn’t killed too. He didn’t mention that he was planning that.”
“You’re right, Ashley may have been lucky, but someone’s been trying to make up for that. And by the way, she doesn’t really know anything about Merlin. If he even exists.”
Vera shrugged, tired out by all this truthfulness. “Maybe he doesn’t.”
“Exactly. There’s something not quite right about the whole story.”
“My money’s gone.”
“Ashley didn’t mention any money. Just that Alex was going to make the arrangements.�
�
“I told you Alex was secretive. From what I’ve heard, that girl is quite a talker. He wouldn’t have told her. He wouldn’t have wanted her to blab.”
I almost grinned. “Blab” was not a word I’d expect to hear from Vera. But I agreed.
She said, “If he hadn’t needed to get that money from me, he wouldn’t have told me anything either.” She managed a small bitter smile.
Vera was right. Ashley wasn’t the sharpest knife and she would have let it slip to some customer without imagining any consequences. Word would have spread like wildfire. Had she done that without knowing what she was saying?
She must have known something without realizing the significance. Or someone thought so. My guess was that person was worried Ashley would remember a conversation about Alex’s project and recall a face or a name.
“If Alex was murdered to get the money, then it must have been a fair amount. How much was involved?”
I waited. I didn’t see any value in letting her off the hook.
She glared at me.
I said, “I assume you’d like to see this person stopped before anyone is wiped out.”
“Of course. What do you think I am? Some kind of monster?”
The answer that came to my mind was “a self-centered, antisocial, obsessive collector.” But most likely not a monster. “I think you were thinking about the object of your desire and it blinded you to what was going on.”
“Someone must have found out, even though Alex was so secretive. But who could have known?” she said.
“Whoever was meeting with Alex to sell the manuscript.”
“Merlin. Of course. He got to keep it all,” Vera said. “My money and my play.”
I interjected, “Or there never was a manuscript and he was after the money anyway. He just had to kill Alex to get his hands on it. If Merlin knew when and how Alex was traveling, he could have intercepted him and pushed him onto the tracks.”
“I preferred to believe it was an attack by a deranged homeless person.” Then Vera muttered, “Unless Alex was in on the scam all along.”
I shook my head. “I think there was more to Alex. His parents believed he was a strong and reliable person.”
Vera’s face was gray and drawn, her gravelly voice softened. “I am afraid you may be right.”
Could it be that she accepted some responsibility? In fairness, Vera hadn’t pushed Alex onto the tracks, but perhaps she had mentally pushed him into something shady and perilous. We sat in silence. I was thinking about what had happened to the money, to Alex, to Karen and to Ashley and whether lily-white Eddie McRae was involved in any of it. I assumed that Vera was thinking the same kind of thoughts.
Signora Panetone crept forward, the large tureen at the ready. “Soup!” she said, a bit of hope in her voice.
Vera waved her away.
Even I wasn’t hungry anymore.
* * *
I CALLED ASHLEY’S cell. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay. I’m going to have to go to work, though. I can’t hide out at my dad’s forever.”
“Is he with you?”
“Yes. I’m all right when he’s around.”
“Can he watch out for you at the concession? Is he strong enough to protect you?”
She hesitated. “He has his own job. I don’t want him to lose it.”
I was hoping to find the permanent solution to Ashley’s problem. But I needed to know she was safe for the moment. “It won’t be forever. Promise me you won’t go anywhere alone.”
“There’s an antique fair today. There are tons of people. Dad can get away to help me set up and close down.”
“I don’t know if that is enough, Ashley. I’ve learned something new about Alex’s death.”
I heard her sharp intake of breath. “What? What could you have learned about Alex’s death?” Her voice cracked. “I was there when—”
I waited until she stopped sobbing. She said, “Tell me. I want to know what you’ve learned.”
“Possibly the reason why Alex was killed.”
“Reason? Crazy homeless people don’t have reasons. It’s the voices in their heads. That’s what everyone keeps telling me. They can’t help it.”
I waited again while Ashley sobbed. After a while she said, “The therapist says it’s better if I can learn to forgive. But I will never forgive him.”
“I’m not so sure that he was crazy. Maybe he just looked like a street person. There may have been method in his madness.”
I wondered if she’d understood. I heard nothing but silence. I blundered on. “There was a lot of money, Ashley. Alex planned to give it to the person who said he had the manuscript. I guess that was Merlin.”
“But Alex didn’t have any money. Vera hardly paid him anything.”
“Believe me, Miss Van Alst provided the money for this sale.”
“Oh my God. Why wouldn’t he say? Wait, I know why. He worried about everything. He would have been so afraid that I would tell someone.”
Again, I gave her time to calm herself down. Finally she said with a quavery voice, “I have a hard time keeping my mouth closed. We were like opposites. If I’d been Alex, I wouldn’t have told me either.”
I said, “The person who took the money may believe that you can identify him or put two and two together.”
“You mean that’s why the guy came after me?”
“I believe so.”
“He’ll keep trying.”
“Yes.
“When I tell my dad this, he might be able to get the day off. Hang on.”
I hung on.
Ashley was breathless when she came back on the phone. “No worries. He’ll let his boss know. We’ll stick together. We are quite a team.”
Even with all my uncles, I’d always wondered what it would be like to have a dad. Despite everything, Ashley had some good luck in her life. I said, “I have to ask you to keep thinking. There may be some tiny memory in the back of your mind that will give us a clue as to Merlin’s identity.”
“All right. I’ll try, but I really don’t think I know anything.”
I made Ashley promise not to go anywhere without her father, not even to the corner. “Remember, last time was right in your driveway. And if he found you, he could find your father.”
“Thank you so much for all this, Jordan. I hope we can stop him before anything else happens to anyone else, even you.”
“Stay safe.”
* * *
I KEPT THINKING about what I’d said to Ashley about tiny memories. Something was nagging at the back of my own head. Some detail I’d seen in Alex’s room. One of those pictures? I kicked myself for not taking the time to study them. I’d had keys and access codes on my brain. Mind you, none of them seemed to have anything to do with Alex’s death. I’d stared long and hard at the one of Alex and Ashley. All I got was a guarded slightly awkward man in love and a donkey-faced girl who’d found the man of her dreams. Briefly.
The photos I hadn’t studied were the ones when he was a child and the shot of his graduation. There was something about them. I gave his parents a call to plead for one last trip to interrupt their lives. No answer. They’d probably already left to visit the brother in Ithaca.
Damn.
I left a message and kept going. I had an idea who might have an answer. I really didn’t want to use my breaking-and-entering tools on the Fines’ house.
* * *
AS I HUNTED for Lance in the library, the colorful displays of grinning kids surrounded by books caught my eye. It reminded me how much I’d enjoyed the library’s summer reading program when I was younger. I’d met the first people I had something in common with, not including my larcenous relatives. I was still in touch with those friends even though we were scattered across the country now.
The boys in the photos on Alex’s wall must have been important to him in the same way. If I could track down one of the kids in the photos, I might be able to get some insight
s into Alex.
Lucky me. Mr. Eye Candy Librarian was on duty. Lance grinned as I walked in.
“I’m looking for a summer camp. Say, Black Pine. Especially photos.” I didn’t mention our meeting at the Café Hudson, although I’d sure thought about it. “Plus I need to talk to someone who was involved with Black Pine Camp fifteen to twenty years ago and who might remember Alex Fine.”
“Hello to you too, beautiful lady.”
“Sorry. Kind of caught up in some bad stuff right now.”
“No kidding. I’ve heard that bookseller, Karen Smith, is still in bad shape.”
“She is improving. But there’s been another attempt on her life.” I didn’t bother to mention my various uncles keeping watch. They’re just too hard to explain quickly. Especially to a man you are thinking about getting involved with.
“Another attempt on her life? But she’s in the hospital, isn’t she?”
“She is and she was attacked right in her room.”
“But you’re here looking for information on Alex Fine and summer camp. So do you think there’s a connection between Alex and Karen?”
“I am pretty sure there is one. They moved in the same book circles.”
“And the connection with the summer camp?”
“That’s a stretch. I doubt it has anything to do with Karen. But I need to pursue all angles.”
“You do know there are all kinds of privacy issues to do with kids.”
“I realize that, but we need a way to get past it. There’s a picture at Alex’s parents’ house that has me wondering, but they’ve left on a little trip. I don’t want to wait until they get back.” And I don’t want to have to break in.
“I hear you. We may have some photos here. We have a lot of vertical file material on summer camps, and Black Pine is very big in this area. Give me a couple of minutes.”
I kept myself busy checking for any Christie reference books I hadn’t found yet, while Lance went off on the hunt. He returned with a stack of files and handed them off to me. I spent the next half hour finding out more than I wanted to about summer camp. Everything but what I needed to know.
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